Good Efficient Butchery

HEREDITARY
(US - 2018)

Written and directed by Ari Aster. Cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, Mallory Bechtel. (R, 127 mins)

The buzz around HEREDITARY has been nonstop since it was screened at the Sundance Film Festival six months ago. Written and directed by Ari Aster, it's one of the most confident and impressive debuts in a long while, a harrowing, cerebral shocker that eschews the overplayed jump scares in favor of a slowly escalating sense of suffocating dread, hopelessness, and absolute terror that mercilessly tightens its grip over two intense hours. It's not surprising that A24 acquired the distribution rights--they've been positioning themselves as Blumhouse's nerdy, brainier alternative and the home for "serious" horror for a few years now, going back to THE WITCH, THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER, and IT COMES AT NIGHT, all thoughtful, uncompromising films that earned significant critical accolades but tended to frustrate and alienate mainstream audiences. With the festival hype calling HEREDITARY "this generation's EXORCIST," you can expect the same commercial response again once the multiplex moviegers and the horror scene's notoriously insular "gatekeeper" (© Jason Coffman) crowd gets a look at it. Unlike the increasingly generic horrors offered by Blumhouse, A24 acquisitions like HEREDITARY provoke thought, discussion, and are works that play the long game and will stand the test of time. It's not the game-changer that THE EXORCIST was because horror is probably past the point where game-changers even exist. There isn't much more that can be classified as "innovative," and like any filmmaker who grew up watching any kind of movie, Aster is going to be influenced by the works of others that paved the way.

So to that end, yes, there's familiar tropes in HEREDITARY. Yes, there's shout-outs to THE EXORCIST and ROSEMARY'S BABY. And yes, Aster has clearly seen THE SHINING several times (and other Kubrick classics, judging from some shot compositions and several nicely-done match cuts). But HEREDITARY takes those elements and uses them to fashion a devastating metaphor about the pain of a family in turmoil and hanging on by a thread, a family overwhelmed by grief, dysfunction, a history of mental illness, and other things always there but left unspoken. It's about things passed down, genetically and otherwise. No film in recent memory has offered more disturbing evidence that you don't get to choose your parents and that nothing is in your control. In what is unquestionably her career performance thus far, Toni Collette is Annie Graham, an artist who creates obsessively detailed miniature dioramas of her life. She's mourning the death of her estranged mother Ellen. To say their relationship was frayed and perpetually at a breaking point is an understatement. A domineering, controlling woman who suffered from depression and dissociative personality disorder, Ellen dealt with a lot in her life beyond her own psychological problems: a clinically depressed husband who starved himself to death when Annie was a baby, and a schizophrenic son named Charles who hanged himself when he was 16, leaving a note for his mother blaming her for putting the voices in his head. Annie has a seemingly "normal," upper-middle class suburban life with her doctor husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), stoner teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff), and odd, withdrawn 13-year-old daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro). Ellen's passing stirs all sorts of trauma that's been bubbling under the surface in the Graham household--unresolved issues, long-buried resentments, things that should never be spoken aloud, and habitual secrets and lies (Annie attends a weekly grief support group but covers it with a lie about "going to see a movie," and Steve is notified by the cemetery that Ellen's grave has been desecrated but keeps it to himself). HEREDITARY is the kind of movie where going in knowing as little as possible is really the only possible way to approach it. But in the midst of the grief over Ellen and everyone handling it in their own way, something happens around the 40-minute mark that is so unexpected and so traumatizing (to the Grahams and to the audience) that Aster instantly sends the message that the screws are tightening and that no one--onscreen or in the theater--is safe going forward.

Everything that unfolds over the next 90 minutes is a direct result of what happens at the 40-minute mark, so it's impossible to discuss without spoiling everything. What can be discussed is the ensemble cast. The unique-looking Shapiro creates an instant impression as Charlie, the Graham family member who was closest to Ellen and the most outwardly affected by her death. Her appearance and her bizarre "clucking" tic (which gets extremely creepy as the film goes on) will probably guarantee her a spot on the roster at any horror con of her choosing for the rest of her life. Wolff is superb in what becomes an unexpectedly complex and difficult role, Ann Dowd (THE HANDMAID'S TALE's Aunt Lydia) has a small but important role as a support group acquaintance of Annie's, and Byrne brings a stoical standoffishness to Steve, who loves his family but is convinced that ignoring the increasingly bizarre mayhem going on around him is for the best and everything will just work itself out. In any other scenario, Wolff's performance would be HEREDITARY's secret weapon, but this is Toni Collette's movie from start to finish. Horror films typically aren't known for containing gut-wrenching performances that exhaustively run the gamut of emotions, but Collette throws herself into this role and into Annie's indescribable pain with a commitment bordering on feral. You don't often see performances on this level in films that don't contain Daniel Day-Lewis.

At 127 minutes, HEREDITARY is long and takes its time building its multi-layered story. It demands patience and attention but it's never dull and there's never a wasted moment, even from the start with a brief glimpse of a creepily-grinning onlooker at Ellen's funeral. It's not a perfect film. Astor is a little too ham-fisted in making sure we know that Charlie has a nut allergy and one significant plot turn doesn't really pass the smell test: as a point of comparison, it would be tantamount to Minnie and Roman Castevet and all of their neighbors taking pictures of their activities and leaving them in a photo album for Rosemary to discover later on. I guess it's HEREDITARY's "All of them witches" moment but this particular variant seems forced. And the final scene has the distinct feeling of a producer pleading with Astor to explicitly spell out what would be best left ambiguous. That said, this is a bold, terrifying, and profoundly unsettling film with numerous moments and images that will haunt you for days. And Collette's performance will likely go down as the best in any movie in 2018.

THOROUGHBREDS
(US - 2018)

Though it's anchored by two of the year's top performances, the noir-inspired THOROUGHBREDS never quite gels together like you hope, or at the very least, it's never quite as clever as it thinks it is. It's the directing and screenwriting debut of playwright Cory Finley, and though its talky script contains some insight and some often lacerating dialogue, the film never seems to shake the notion that it might've been a better fit for the stage. Lily (THE WITCH's Anya Taylor-Joy) and Amanda (READY PLAYER ONE's Olivia Cooke) were once best friends in high school but have grown distant in the years since. Now in college, they awkwardly reconnect when Lily agrees to tutor Amanda, who's awaiting trial for animal cruelty in the killing of her horse. As they spend more time together, the dynamic of their relationship undergoes subtle shifts and Amanda, who's been "diagnosed with everything" in the DSM-V ("I don't have any feelings. Ever.") brings out the sociopath within Lily, who's grown intolerant of her boorish, asshole stepfather Mark (Paul Sparks) and doesn't need much prodding when Amanda suggests killing him. The murder plot involves securing the services of a fall guy in the form of Tim (the late Anton Yelchin in his last film; production wrapped just two weeks before his tragic death in June 2016), a none-too-bright local drug dealer and registered sex offender following a fling with a high school student ("I wasn't 25, I was 23!" he tries to explain). Amanda records Tim agreeing to the plan to kill Mark and the girls prepare their alibi, but since this is that kind of film, things don't quite go according to plan.

THOROUGHBREDS only made it to 500 or so screens during its spring 2018 release, but it was one of those films that managed to develop a cult following while it was still in theaters. Many people went for the easy description of "HEATHERS meets AMERICAN PSYCHO," which is pretty much meaningless as far as what the film is all about. It's more of a cerebral mood piece in the guise of a Hitchcockian thriller, but its strengths come not from suspense but from the outstanding performances by Cooke (also great in the recent THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM) and Taylor-Joy. They manage to create multi-dimensional characterizations even though Finley's insistence on withholding details often works against building any kind of flow or momentum. That works when the film plays more cinematically, but for a film that most often has the feel of a play, it too frequently comes off as forced and trying too hard, with characters referencing things they already know but having to stop and backtrack to shoehorn vital info in to get the audience caught up, leaving them to realize "Oh, Lily's father died?" or "Oh, she was expelled." Cooke and Taylor-Joy are terrific, and with limited screen time, Yelchin creates a memorably hapless sketchball with entrepreneurial pipe dreams that are clearly going nowhere fast, but THOROUGHBREDS is a film where the end result is a bit less than the sum of its parts. (R, 92 mins)

DELIRIUM
(US - 2018)

Hot on the heels of STEPHANIE comes another long-shelved Blumhouse production, this one from director Dennis Iliadis and screenwriter Adam Alleca, the team behind the surprisingly not-terrible 2009 LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT remake. Shot in 2015 under the title HOME and quietly dumped on DVD two weeks after its gala VOD premiere, DELIRIUM is marginally better than the obviously unfinished and abandoned STEPHANIE, but that's not exactly a glowing recommendation. Released from a mental institution where he's been held since he was 12 years old, Tom Walker (Topher Grace) is placed under house arrest and left alone for 30 days at the family mansion where his disgraced politician father (Robin Thomas) has recently committed suicide. Tom is regularly badgered by his chain-smoking, flask-swilling, bitch-on-wheels parole officer Brody (Patricia Clarkson), but things get worse when he starts hearing noises and catching glimpses of his father's decaying corpse. He finds a tentative friend in grocery delivery driver Lynn (Genesis Rodriguez), but then his psychotic older brother Alex (Callan Mulvey) shows up and periodically vanishes as Tom is no longer sure what is real and what's in his imagination. 20 years earlier, 12-year-old Tom was rejected and humiliated by a girl and Alex talked him into getting back at her with a prank. Instead, Alex forced his little brother to watch as he beat the girl to a pulp and drowned her. Alex was sent to prison and Tom to a mental institution, and their shell-shocked mother vanished, leaving their domineering and impossible-to-please father behind. As the possibly paranormal hacktivity continues, Brody isn't buying Tom's stories of the house being haunted and doesn't believe that Alex has been visiting him because he was recently killed in prison fire.

Even on a rudimentary jump-scare level, DELIRIUM is a dull, unfocused mess. Iliadis drops the ball early on by never really getting the audience acclimated with the house, so when we hear noises and see Tom exploring, we really have no clue where he is in relation to the other areas or how he gets from one place to another. There's missed opportunities with the handling of Clarkson's character, who vacillates between sympathizing with Tom and openly expressing her desire to send him back to the institution for good. She even tries to seduce him at one point in what could've been an intriguingly perverse plot development, but then it's just dropped, which is a shame because Clarkson gives this thing its biggest jolts of life. The film spends a lot of time trying to convince you that Lily and Alex are figments of Tom's imagination, which is the only way those characters can possibly make any sense. Grace is cast radically against type as Topher Grace, and the film attempts to mine some easy humor from Tom being 20 years behind on pop culture and rocking out to The Presidents of the United States of America's "Lump" while wearing a Gin Blossoms concert tee and not knowing what Wikipedia is. DELIRIUM is bad, and while it's not quite engulfed in the dumpster fire flames of STEPHANIE, it's still easy to see why Universal sat on it for three years before a borderline covert release. Co-producer Leonardo DiCaprio took his name off of the movie, probably around the time that REVENANT Oscar buzz was picking up some heat. (R, 96 mins)

I KILL GIANTS
(US/Belgium/China/UK - 2018)

Adapted from Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura's 2008 graphic novel and counting Chris Columbus among its boatload of producers, I KILL GIANTS is an earnest and sincere examination of a child coping with the grieving process that's frequently too heavy-handed for its own good. It's also a victim of bad timing. J.A. Bayona's A MONSTER CALLS explored very similar territory two years ago, and while the I Kill Giants graphic novel preceded both the book A Monster Calls and its eventual film version, the impact of I KILL GIANTS can't help but be diminished. In a small town on the coast of Long Island (but shot in Ireland and Belgium), young Barbara (Madison Wolfe of THE CONJURING 2) is living with her adult sister Karen (Imogen Poots) and teenage brother Dave (Art Parkinson). Karen is struggling to keep up with her own job and taking care of her siblings, and while Dave is engrossed in his video games, Barbara is acting out, seemingly spending her time with 20-sided die role-playing games but quietly prepping the town for an inevitable giant attack that she's certain she can ward off with traps and an all-powerful weapon she dubs "Covaleski," named after early 20th century Phillies pitcher Harry Covaleski. Derided as "the nerd queen" by Dave and relentlessly bullied at school by imposing mean girl Taylor (Rory Jackson), Barbara is frequently visited by "harbingers" warning of the pending attack. At the same time, she reluctantly befriends shy, lonely British transfer student Sophia (Sydney Wade) and gradually opens up to her and school psychologist Mrs. Molle (Zoe Saldana) about her plot to take on the giants.

Of course, the absence of a visible paternal figure in the house and Barbara's head-first dive into a complicated fantasy world is too big of a tip-off as to where I KILL GIANTS is ultimately headed, especially if you've seen A MONSTER CALLS. Making his feature debut, Danish director Anders Walter (an Oscar-winner for 2013's Best Live Action Short HELIUM), gets a marvelous performance out of Wolfe, who's so good that you'll wish her dedication was in service of a more consistently strong film. The ultimate reveal may result in more questions than answers--such as "How did this family situation never come up in conversation?" and "Is Dave even a member of this family?"--but it has some convincing visual effects and some genuinely heartfelt moments that may make it therapeutic for younger children coping with similar circumstances. Some strong parts but it never quite comes together as a whole. (Unrated, 106 mins)

HOTEL ARTEMIS
(UK/US/China - 2018)

Written and directed by Drew Pearce. Cast: Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Dave Bautista, Charlie Day, Zachary Quinto, Brian Tyree Henry, Jenny Slate, Kenneth Choi, Evan Jones, Josh Tillman. (R, 94 mins)

Publicity materials, trailers, and TV spots for HOTEL ARTEMIS did a good job of hiding that it could more or less qualify as sci-fi, with its future dystopia setting, high-tech surgical procedures, and assassins upping their game with ocular implants. The feature directing debut of IRON MAN 3 co-writer and music video vet Drew Pearce--a member of the inner circle of hipster rocker Father John Misty, who appears here under his real name Josh Tillman--HOTEL ARTEMIS is a derivative mash-up of BLADE RUNNER and SMOKIN' ACES, with generous doses of JOHN WICK and John Carpenter. It's exactly the kind of mid-budget film that used to do decent business in spring or early fall but is virtually guaranteed to bomb in the summer season of sequels-and-superheroes. HOTEL ARTEMIS doesn't have an original thought in its head, but what it does have is a wildly eclectic and very game cast, some colorfully effective future/neo-noir cinematography by frequent Park Chan-wook collaborator Chung-hoon Chung, and an appropriately synthy, Carpenter-esque score by Cliff Martinez. It's fast-paced, has some dark-humored wit, and there's no shortage of blood-splattered mayhem. Admittedly, there isn't really much here of any substance, but it's enjoyable fun while you're watching, and it's gonna have a long life on streaming and cable not long after its blink-and-you-missed-it departure from theaters.

In a corporation-controlled 2028 Los Angeles, the water supply has been cut off from all but the extremely wealthy, leading to large-scale, city-wide rioting. The police are overwhelmed, and even with drones and missiles regularly hitting targets throughout the area, the city is a crime-infested hellscape. Caught in the rioting are a quartet of bank robbers that's reduced to a duo after a shootout with cops (for the curious, Father John Misty bites it fairly quickly). They make their way to the Hotel Artemis in the heart of downtown L.A., a 12-story building where the penthouse floor is a secret hospital for the city's criminals seeking refuge and off-the-record medical attention (the first rule: "No killing the other patients"). Membership is required and everyone is given an alias based on their room assignments. The brothers--sensible, diligent Waikiki (THIS IS US' Sterling K. Brown) and irresponsible, drug-abusing Honolulu (Brian Tyree Henry)--arrive and are tended to by The Nurse (Jodie Foster), who runs a tight ship with her loyal orderly and security chief Everest (Dave Bautista).

With Honolulu requiring a new 3-D printed liver, Waikiki is forced to wait out the night while his brother recovers, and he mingles with other "guests," including his old flame Nice (Sofia Boutella), who shot herself in order to hide out at the Artemis on purpose in order to whack another patient, and loud, abrasive, and xenophobic arms dealer Acapulco (Charlie Day as Joe Pantoliano). The frumpy and sarcastic Nurse, a shut-in who's been holed up at the Artemis for 22 years and is still haunted by the overdose death of her son, tries to keep it together, but multiple complications ensue, starting with Morgan (Jenny Slate), an injured cop who knew The Nurse's son when they were kids, and Crosby Franklin (Zachary Quinto), a sniveling hothead who's nearly an hour away and en route with his gunshot-wounded father Orian Franklin (Jeff Goldblum), aka "The Wolf King," L.A's most powerful crime boss and the owner of the Hotel Artemis. When the city shuts down the grid, a power struggle ensues with The Nurse and Waikiki trying to escape as Crosby and his goons try to get in, thus creating another one of those classic RIO BRAVO/ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 situations.

The first thing that's obviously going to come to mind when watching HOTEL ARTEMIS is the Continental, the swanky hotel-for-hired killers in the JOHN WICK films. Granted, the Artemis is significantly more rundown and Skid Row-ish with its elaborately grungy production design both in its postmodern interiors and in its secret passageways. And that's the dilemma with HOTEL ARTEMIS on a creative level: almost everything in it has been done before. It's hard to believe it's 2018 and we're still getting a restaging of the OLDBOY corridor scene, which was already done to death when the instantly-forgotten Jude Law bomb REPO MEN did it eight years ago, and that was three years before Spike Lee's ill-advised OLDBOY remake which also redid it. Just because Boutella is using knives instead of a hammer doesn't make it unique. Pearce doesn't do it in a single take, and while it and the film are better showcases for Boutella than THE MUMMY ever could've been, it's still the same idea. The film does offer one very inspired "death by 3-D printer" scene that's pretty entertaining, and a restrained and almost regal Goldblum gets a terrific intro and offers a withering dismissal of his "soft" son's aspirations to be just like his father. The standout though, is Foster in her first acting role since 2013's ELYSIUM. Under unflattering aging makeup, slightly hunched, and taking brisk and tiny steps like a little old lady while using a broad accent, she seems to be relishing the chance to kick back and ham it up a bit in a junky B-movie. Her no-nonsense Nurse isn't afraid to stand up to ruthless killers, and she has a surprisingly endearing mother-son relationship with Everest, who respectfully defers to her ("Yes, Nurse") even as she's busting his chops to lose weight ("I'm not fat!"). HOTEL ARTEMIS may not offer much in the way of originality, but it does give you the Jodie Foster/Dave Bautista comedy team you never knew you wanted.

THE DEBT COLLECTOR
(US - 2018)

Busy DTV action star Scott Adkins reteams with his SAVAGE DOG and ACCIDENT MAN director Jesse V. Johnson for THE DEBT COLLECTOR, an attempted departure that offers plenty of fight scenes but lacks the necessary screenwriting skills to accomplish its unexpected goal of being a Shane Black knockoff. Sporting his sparingly-used natural British accent and in Jason Statham mode, Adkins is French, a ex-British military man and Iraq War vet who's strapped for cash and about to lose his tiny dojo in a rundown L.A. neighborhood. Thanks to a referral from wealthy client Mad Alex (Micheal Pare), French gets a job as a collector for local gangster and loan shark Big Tommy (Vladimir Kulich). Big Tommy pairs French with Sue (Louis Mandylor), a burned-out, hard-drinking cynic who fell into a sketchy life of Hollywood crime after a brief stint as an actor 30 years ago in D-grade '80s ninja movies. Sue shows French the ropes, and much of THE DEBT COLLECTOR's first hour has French learning the ins and outs of "collecting," with a hesitant bond forming between the two. Some semblance of a plot forms when Big Tommy does a favor for powerful club owner Barbosa Furiosa (Tony Todd), who wants French and Sue to track down a rogue employee (Jack Lowe) who he claims embezzled cash from one of his clubs.

ACCIDENT MAN was one of Adkins' most entertaining films not directed by Isaac Florentine, and it signaled a shift into more versatile fare for the actor. THE DEBT COLLECTOR really wants to continue that shift, but its aspirations are far beyond the talent it's got at a core level. Johnson and co-writer/Adkins pal Stu Small seriously lack the gift for biting wit, smartass repartee, and crackerjack plot construction that Shane Black has, which is really a key thing if you're trying to go for something along the lines of KISS KISS BANG BANG or THE NICE GUYS. Instead of lighting-quick ballbusting and guffaw-worthy one-liners, the script just gives Adkins and Mandylor a lot of grumbling and bitching, which is loud but not very funny. THE DEBT COLLECTOR's idea of clever wit is the running gag about French being British--which usually involves someone being introduced to French and replying "Your name's French? You don't sound French"--which lands with as big a thud the tenth time as it does the first. It even tries to go for that self-referential meta-humor with an opening scene that has a trio of gangsters trying to strongarm French into signing over ownership of his dojo, with French even commenting that their plan sounds like something out of an '80s movie. That works if you're KISS KISS BANG BANG, but THE DEBT COLLECTOR just doesn't have the personality or the personnel to play in that league. It's commendable that Adkins is demonstrating a desire to stretch, and he should've been headlining major theatrical action movies for years by now, but with every new Adkins vehicle, I find myself repeating that he's paid his dues and is ready for bigger action movies. The script is lacking, but Johnson also directs Adkins and Mandylor to play their characters way too seriously for this kind of L.A.-set shaggy dog crime story that also fancies itself to be a DTV version of INHERENT VICE with its colorful supporting characters and their silly names. Well-intentioned, but a swing-and-a-miss. (Unrated, 95 mins)

INCOMING
(US/UK - 2018)

Workaholic Adkins also stars in INCOMING, a very low-budget sci-fi thriller shot on the cheap in Serbia. It's got a potentially interesting idea that's conveyed in a derivative fashion for the most part, though like THE DEBT COLLECTOR, it does represent a stretch of sorts, this time with marginally better results. INCOMING is set in a future where the world's terrorists are all held at the International Space Station, a sort of Gitmo-in-space that's a black ops site sanctioned by all of the world's governments but still somehow a secret. The whole operation is run by one guy, eccentric and sadistic Kingsley (Lucas Loughran), who regularly subjects the prisoners to "enhanced interrogation" and also designed the infallible (SPOILER: it's fallible) security system. Supply pilot Bridges (Aaron McCusker of SHAMELESS) arrives for a delivery with a pair of visitors in tow: rogue CIA agent Reiser (Adkins), who's ostensibly there to check on Kingsley, and Dr. Stone (Michelle Lehane), who's there to make sure the prisoners are being treated in a humane fashion ("The Geneva Convention doesn't apply in space!" Reiser barks). Stone expresses concern over Kingsley's treatment of Argun (Vahidin Prelic), the suspected "Alpha" leader of a terrorist organization known as "Wolf Pack," who claimed responsibility for the destruction of Big Ben in London five years earlier (a really shitty visual effect that opens the film). Of course, bleeding heart Stone disobeys protocol and lets herself into Argun's cell to talk to him, and he promptly overpowers her and frees his other Wolf Pack cohorts. They gain control of the Space Station and commandeer its nuclear-capability self-destruct system, steering it toward Moscow, rendering the spacecraft a giant suicide bomb that will start WWIII.

INCOMING doesn't really do Adkins any favors as far as advancing his career beyond DTV, but he at least has the chance to play a sociopathic, cold-blooded anti-hero, taking on both the Wolf Pack and Stone and Bridges, who he eventually sees not as allies but as potential whistleblowers. The film isn't really interested in exploring those implications, but it doesn't have the budget to do much else, so there's a lot of talking and walking around to get it to a reasonable running time. The "standoff on a space station" motif can't help but remind you of somewhat similar scenarios in OUTLAND and the obscure SPACE RAGE, and when the Wolf Pack takes over the vessel, INCOMING essentially turns into CON AIR IN SPACE, minus a cast of recognizable character actors seeing who can go the most over the top. No offense to Prelic, but Argun is hardly the next Cyrus the Virus. Despite the Asylum-level visual effects, INCOMING has a harmless, early '80s New World vibe to it, with a space station set that's moderately effective in a GALAXY OF TERROR/FORBIDDEN WORLD kind of way. It's hardly the worst thing Adkins has done, but it's another example of him spinning his wheels in forgettable fare when he should be headlining bigger movies. It seems like I just said that... (Unrated, 89 mins)

AN ORDINARY MAN
(US/UK - 2018)

There's probably an interesting film to be made of the daily life of a most-wanted fugitive from the 1990s Yugoslav Wars in present-day Belgrade, but AN ORDINARY MAN is inert and lifeless, and in the end, just feels like a vanity project for producer and star Ben Kingsley. A hammy Kingsley does a lot of acting as The General, still beloved by many of his own countrymen but under indictment by The Hague, making him the subject of an international manhunt with a $10 million bounty placed on him by the US government. After nearly two decades of a solitary existence as he's moved from one safe house to another by his chief handler Miro (Peter Serafinowicz) and supported by donations from hardline loyalists, The General has never left home and more or less hides in plain sight. He refuses to stay put and regularly walks to the nearest market or newsstand, and is recognized by citizens who still support him and stay silent out of respect. After The General intervenes in a robbery, a frustrated Miro moves him to yet another new location and provides a maid named Tanja (Hera Hilmar) to handle all of his outside needs and errands to keep him inside. Tanja can neither cook nor clean, and it isn't long before The General is forcing her to take him places, be it shopping or at a swanky dance hall. They form a tentative bond after The General suffers a medical emergency and Tanja reveals herself to be an agent in the employ of Miro, assigned to keep The General on a tight leash and provide assurance to his benefactors--many of whom are high-profile figures in the Serbian government--that he'll behave himself.

With the exception of a handful of times Miro is seen, AN ORDINARY MAN is largely a two-person show, with Hilmar's Tanja mostly left in a reactionary role as writer/director Brad Silberling (CITY OF ANGELS, CASPER), helming his first big-screen work since 2009's LAND OF THE LOST, lets Kingsley take over. The General talks a lot, and Kingsley probably loved the idea of having long, verbose monologues and scenes where his character gets to sarcastically harangue Tanja about her cooking, her fashion sense, and everything else ("I've seen detention cells with more character!" he says of Tanja's apartment, to which she replies "Well, you'd know"). There's little dramatic tension or any kind of story development or forward momentum. If she's supposed to be an agent assigned to keep The General on his best behavior, Tanja proves to be a bumbling incompetent almost immediately: a naive maid would go along with going to a dance hall, but would a trained agent? Silberling seems more concerned with showing the human side of a monster whose atrocities and war crimes are the stuff of legend, but we still don't learn enough about him to care about his inevitable and undeserved redemption (nor does the film explore the implications of The General still having so much love and support from the locals). Hilmar works well with Kingsley when their characters are on the same level and Kingsley isn't dominating the proceedings (they also co-starred in 2017's THE OTTOMAN LIEUTENANT, both shot back in 2015 and logging some time on the shelf before being seen by no one), and there's some occasionally effective location work in gray, foggy Belgrade. But this is just a tedious, pointless exercise that feels like a transparent attempt by Silberling (who's been busy in TV, most recently producing the CW's DYNASTY reboot) to establish some arthouse cred by crafting the most boring drama about a fugitive you'll ever see. (R, 91 mins)

FIRST WE TAKE BROOKLYN
(US - 2018)

Every bit the piece of cinematic magic you'd expect the directing debut of a NYC promoter and club owner to be, FIRST WE TAKE BROOKLYN plays like a glossed-over highlight reel of Scorsese, SCARFACE, CARLITO'S WAY and every other gangster movie from the last 30 years, with production values around the level of a late '90s Master P rapsploitation joint. It's co-written, produced, directed by and starring Danny A. Abeckaser, known as "Danny A" in the Manhattan club world, who's been hanging around the VOD action scene for a few years now, landing bit parts in some Lionsgate/Grindstone releases like FREELANCERS and MARAUDERS and taking a stab at respectability by co-producing Michael Almereyda's little-seen 2015 Stanley Milgram biopic EXPERIMENTER. He also produced and co-wrote the semi-autobiographical CLUB LIFE, with Jerry Ferrara as a Danny A-type club entrepreneur named Johnny D. As an actor and filmmaker, Abeckaser is a great club owner, starring here as Mikki Levy, who's in an Israeli prison, 18 years into a life sentence for murder handed down when he was a teenager. His sentence is overturned after consideration of his age at the time, and a long-stashed envelope from his dead mother includes a wad of cash and a note telling him to go to Brooklyn to visit his Uncle Dudu (Eli Danker) and Aunt Gale (Kathrine Narducci). Dudu associates with some shady types and helps move merchandise of the "fell off the back of a truck" sort. He also runs a gambling den in the back of a bar owned by Avi (Guri Weinberg), who's being hassled by Russian gangsters in the employ of the ruthless Anatoly (what are you doing here, Harvey Keitel?), who's forced his way into the business as a 50% partner. It isn't long before hot-tempered Mikki makes his presence known, and when Anatoly's goons almost beat Uncle Dudu to death after being dissed by Mikki, he becomes a powerful drug and gun dealer over what appears to be a single hip-hop montage, naturally intercut with shots of Mikki nodding while counting Benjamins.

Mikki also hooks up with sexy bartender Esther (AnnaLynne McCord, who I thought would be going places after her remarkable and fearless performance in 2012's EXCISION) after killing her asshole boyfriend, a partner of the Russians. As Mikki and Avi gain power in the Brooklyn underworld (cue more hip-hop montages with money and sped-up shots of Brooklyn neighborhoods in lieu of actually, you know, constructing a story) by whacking Anatoly's goons, a showdown is inevitable, along with trite dialogue like Avi being told, re: Mikki, "You've created an attack dog. They attack...that's what they do." It's also inevitable that it won't involve Harvey Keitel, who looks to have worked on this for a day, tops. He has three or four brief scenes where he's sitting in a restaurant giving orders or getting a manicure, and one where he takes a call that his nephew's been killed and it appears he may break out the legendary Keitel Cry, but he obviously concluded that a Danny A. vanity project wasn't worthy of the effort. Abeckaser's obviously a successful and wealthy guy in his field, and as a producer, he can afford to bankroll someone experienced like David Lynch protege Almereyda for something like EXPERIMENTER. But FIRST WE TAKE BROOKLYN just has an amateurish, student-film, shot-on-digital, slapdash cheapness to it, right down to the trailer misspelling Abeckaser's name as "Abekacser," which would be unacceptable even if Abeckaser's name wasn't all over the movie. Abeckaser can't act and tries to do a lot of Al Pacino bellowing but ends up sounding like Charlie Day. The only thing that really separates this from any run-of-the-mill DTV D-list gangster saga is that Abeckaser tries to go for some authenticity with probably half of the film being in Hebrew with English subtitles. It ends up being all for naught, since the characters would be cardboard cutouts in any language (and like his recent turn as a shady Greek businessman in LIES WE TELL, a slumming Keitel can't even be bothered to attempt an appropriate accent for his Russian crime lord and apparently just showed up for the free mani), but it indicates some degree of sincerity on Abeckaser's part, for whatever that's worth. It just had to be difficult for producer Danny A. Abeckaser to convince director Danny A. Abeckaser and star Danny A. Abeckaser that they were liabilities to whatever producer Danny A. Abeckaser was trying to accomplish. (Unrated, 90 mins)

IN DARKNESS
(US/UK - 2018)

IN DARKNESS might be of interest to GAME OF THRONES superfans, as it stars three series alumni--Natalie Dormer, Ed Skrein, and James Cosmo--and is co-written by Dormer with her fiance, veteran British TV director Anthony Byrne (RIPPER STREET, PEAKY BLINDERS). It begins as an intriguing throwback to "blind woman in peril" standard-bearer WAIT UNTIL DARK, but Dormer and Byrne's script starts trying too hard by throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Dormer is Sofia McKendrick, a London-based pianist who's been blind since she was five. Self-reliant and a bit of a quiet loner, Sofia's world is turned upside down when she hears some loud thuds above, followed by upstairs neighbor Veronique (Emily Ratajkowski) taking a dive out of her window to her death. Only with the resulting media attention does Sofia learn that Veronique is the estranged daughter of Zoran Radic (Jan Bijvoet as Rade Serbedzija), a powerful Serbian businessman and reputed Bosnian War criminal with a shady charity foundation and ties to (of course) the Russian mob. Radic has a sibling henchmen duo--Marc (Skrein) and Alex (Joely Richardson)--tasked not only with killing Veronique but also with getting an incriminating USB stick out of her apartment. The cops rule Veronique's death a suicide, but Marc was in the building and in her apartment with her and came face to face with Sofia while she was getting on an elevator. Believing Sofia to be a witness, he attempts to befriend her with the intent of killing her, but backs off when he realizes she's blind and couldn't have seen him. That's not good enough for Alex or for Radic, who wants all loose ends tied up and needs whatever vital info is on the USB, with all parties are unaware that Veronique secretly stashed it with Sofia before her death.

The basic set-up of IN DARKNESS might've made for an old-fashioned nailbiter, but then it decides to get "tricky." It's fairly early in the film when it's revealed that Sofia is the only survivor of a Bosnian family brutally slaughtered by Radic 25 years earlier. We also learn that she's spent her entire life plotting to kill Radic and she intentionally sought out Veronique and got an apartment in the same building in the hopes that it would get her closer to her target, all under the watchful eye of caring and now-terminally ill adoptive father figure Niall (Cosmo). But that's just the beginning of IN DARKNESS' wildly improbable twists and turns. It gets more contrived with each passing scene, with some details left frustratingly vague--the film never does establish exactly what Marc and Alex do for Radic, nor does it adequately explore their strange relationship, where it's at least hinted that Alex is jealous when she finds out her brother has slept with Veronique. That's a shame because, while Skrein is bland and forgettable, an invested Richardson seems game for some perverse weirdness that never comes to fruition. Neil Maskell does an alright job as the rumpled, perpetually stubbled detective investigating Veronique's death, getting his inevitable wide-eyed Chazz Palminteri-in-THE USUAL SUSPECTS moment of realization when he finally pieces everything together. And it's a lot to piece together, as Dormer and Byrne can't stop piling up the surprise reveals with reckless abandon in the third act. One is so thuddingly obvious that you'll call it long before Sofia figures it out, and other is one of those that pretty much negates the entire movie and convincingly makes its case for the dumbest twist ending of 2018. (Unrated, 101 mins)

FLOWER
(US - 2018)

You know a movie's trying way too hard to be edgy when it opens with its 17-year-old heroine blowing the local sheriff, who asks "Where'd you learn to give a hummer like that?" and her reply is "Middle school." FIGHT CLUB already did a similarly tacky joke exponentially better (Helena Bonham Carter's immortal "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school"), but everything about FLOWER feels like you've seen and heard it years ago. If you can imagine Gregg Araki making a belated JUNO knockoff, then you'll have an idea what this has to offer. Directed and co-written by Max Winkler (Henry's son) and produced by the EASTBOUND AND DOWN and OBSERVE AND REPORT team of David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and Jody Hill, FLOWER stars 23-year-old Zoey Deutch (Lea Thompson's lookalike daughter) as Erica Vandross, a teenage sociopath in a small California suburb who has a lucrative secret gig blackmailing local guys by giving them blowjobs in parked cars while her best friends Kayla (Dylan Gelula) and Claudine (Maya Eshet) sneak up and record her finishing them off. Kayla and Claudine spend their cut of the take on clothes, but Erica is stashing hers away to bail her father out of jail, where he's been sitting awaiting trial after trying to rob a casino. Erica's mother Laurie (Kathryn Hahn) has moved on and is dating doofus nice guy Bob, aka "The Sherm" (Tim Heidecker), who's about to move in, much to Erica's disapproval. Coming along as part of the "Sherm" package is his troubled son Luke (Joey Morgan), a withdrawn, overweight outcast who's been in rehab for a year trying to kick an oxy addiction. He has a panic attack his first night out of the facility but rejects Erica's offer for a blowjob to help calm him down. The two later grab a burger at the bowling alley, where Luke has another anxiety attack after spotting Will (Adam Scott), a regular at the lanes who's dubbed "Hot Old Guy" by chronic daddy issues case Erica. It turns out that Will used to be a high school teacher who lost his job three years earlier after allegations that he fondled a 15-year-old boy. The accuser? Luke.

This sets in motion a half-assed scheme to blackmail Will but Erica finds herself falling for him. Unforeseen problems ensue in ways that recall both HARD CANDY and the forgotten PRETTY PERSUASION, and those comparisons, combined with the obvious JUNO influence, end up making FLOWER feel like a 15-year-old Sundance offering that was found frozen in the mountains surrounding Park City and just now thawed. From the various transgressions and would-be shock tactics that fall flat ("If we don't act now, then other little kids might get butt-raped!" Erica says when everyone else wants to back out of their plan to extort Will) to the casting of the appealing Deutch, everything about FLOWER feels forced and affected, and by the time things pan out in a predictably tragic way that culminates in Erica and Luke donning cheap wigs and fleeing to the Mexican border, it's clear that FLOWER doesn't have much to say. Deutch is a tremendously appealing actress, but Winkler tries to make Erica similarly appealing when she's really not, and a film that really wanted to explore the kind of darkness inherent in the story would recognize that turning her into the white trash version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (© Nathan Rabin) is the wrong approach. As a result, nothing feels real or believable for a second, not even when Laurie--who's historically been more interested in being Erica's buddy than her mother--finally melts down and tears into Erica for chasing away all of her potential boyfriends and calling her a "selfish twat." There is one legitimately funny line when Erica is asked what she plans to do with her life and boasts "I'm goin' to DeVry, bitch! 98% acceptance rate!" but no film that imagines itself to be an edgy and shocking dark comedy would actually have Erica look at Luke with tears in her eyes and say "I don't wanna run...I don't wanna spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders."(R, 94 mins)

ALIEN PREDATORS
aka THE FALLING
aka ALIEN PREDATOR
(US/Spain - 1987)

Written and directed by Deran Sarafian. Cast: Dennis Christopher, Martin Hewitt, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Luis Prendes, J.O. Bosso, Yousaf Bokhari, Yolanda Palomo. (R, 90 mins)

The vault pickings must be getting slim for Shout! Factory if ALIEN PREDATORS is out on Blu-ray. Shot in 1984 and released overseas under its original title THE FALLING, the US/Spanish co-production was rechristened ALIEN PREDATORS for its belated 1987 US release through Trans World Entertainment and subsequently became a fixture in every video store in America. It's the directing debut of then-26-year-old Deran Sarafian, the son of veteran director Richard C. Sarafian (VANISHING POINT), and a sometime actor (he had a bit part as a murder victim in 10 TO MIDNIGHT) who spent most of the '80s working in Europe. In addition to ALIEN PREDATORS, he also directed the late-period Italian post-nuke INTERZONE and starred in 1988's unintended Lucio Fulci/Bruno Mattei collaboration ZOMBI 3. Sarafian returned to the States and quickly established himself as a competent journeyman with 1989's vampire film TO DIE FOR, 1990's Van Damme prison brawler DEATH WARRANT, and a pair of 1994 actioners with GUNMEN and the A-list Charlie Sheen vehicle TERMINAL VELOCITY. Now 60, Sarafian hasn't directed a feature film since 1995's straight-to-video THE ROAD KILLERS, but has since stayed very busy as a go-to hired gun for TV over the last 20-plus years, piling up directing credits for shows like NASH BRIDGES, CSI, CSI: MIAMI, COLD CASE, LOST, HOUSE, FRINGE, HEMLOCK GROVE, HELL ON WHEELS, and BLUE BLOODS. While he'll never be mistaken for a visionary auteur, Sarafian's career is a success just in terms of the sheer volume of TV gigs he gets, but if ALIEN PREDATORS accomplishes nothing else (and rest assured, it doesn't), it proves the old saying that everybody's gotta start somewhere.

Sarafian's script has an intriguing idea at its core, dealing with the 1979 falling of Skylab back into Earth's orbit. In actuality, the space station, launched in 1973, crashed near Perth, Australia but for the purposes of Spanish producer Carlos Aured (who directed several Paul Naschy films in the 1970s), the location has been moved to Duarte, Spain. It also didn't have a parasitic virus of sorts onboard that turned the entire population of a nearby town into INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS rejects. Three American tourists--Damon (Dennis Christopher), Michael (Martin Hewitt), and their platonic female friend Sam (Lynn-Holly Johnson)--are passing through Duarte in an RV with a dune buggy on a trailer en route to Madrid when the mayhem breaks out. "Breaks out" is a term used loosely, as there only appears to be three people who live in Duarte, and most of our time is spent focused on the trio of annoying tourists, with Damon and Michael in a competition over Sam, followed by the eventual jealousy of Damon once she clearly chooses Michael. One can hardly blame her, considering how broadly Christopher plays the obnoxious Damon, who busts out terrible impressions of James Cagney, Elmer Fudd, and Robert Duvall from APOCALYPSE NOW (Christopher's gift for mimicry was put to much better use in the 1980 slasher film FADE TO BLACK). They're eventually joined by rogue NASA scientist Dr. Tracer (Luis Prendes, sleepwalking and mumbling his way through the film with an expression that seems to say "I'm almost Fernando Rey"), who informs them that Skylab brought back an alien life form that inhabits and takes over both humans and animals, and at the rate it's going, all of Europe will be wiped out in a matter of three weeks.

THE FALLING is actually a more appropriate title, and that's what's on the print used for Shout's Blu-ray (it also occasionally runs on MGM HD and Comet under this title). It barely even qualifies as an ALIEN ripoff except for one faceburster scene at the very end, which is the first time we even get a clear look at a creature. Mostly, we see the gory after-effects of a cow being taken over, a corpse with an alien fetus bulging out of his neck, and one local with his face shredded. The creature effects are sparse but deliver the splattery goods when Sarafian gets around to them. But in the end, ALIEN PREDATORS is a total slog, with far too much time spent on an uninteresting love triangle that doesn't even seem interesting to the three actors, who got a nice vacation out of the deal but probably had to question how their promising careers led them to a cheap Spanish horror movie in such a short amount of time. At the time of filming, Christopher was only a few years removed from his breakout role in 1979's coming-of-age classic BREAKING AWAY and 1981's CHARIOTS OF FIRE; professional figure skater Johnson was nominated for a Golden Globe for the 1978 hit ICE CASTLES and was a Bond girl in 1981's FOR YOUR EYES ONLY; and Hewitt co-starred with Brooke Shields in 1981's popular but multiple Razzie-nominated ENDLESS LOVE, and was part of the ensemble of the 1983 Monty Python offshoot YELLOWBEARD.

ALIEN PREDATORS did nothing to further their careers by the time of its eventual 1987 release: Johnson and Hewitt both logged time in the world of DTV (Johnson in Cirio H. Santiago's 1988 Filipino post-nuke THE SISTERHOOD before retiring from acting in the late '90s to focus on her family, Hewitt in several early '90s erotic thrillers like SECRET GAMES and NIGHT RHYTHMS, his last credit to date being a guest spot on a 2003 episode of ER), while Christopher was already reduced to playing the title hero's sidekick in 1986's JAKE SPEED, Hollywood's one-and-done attempt to make Wayne Crawford a big-screen action star. Christopher did play the adult Eddie Kaspbrak in the 1990 TV mini-series version of IT and was a regular presence on TV throughout the '90s and '00s, but it wasn't until 2012 that he had another prominent role, as the attorney for Leonardo DiCaprio's nefarious Calvin Candie in Quentin Tarantino's DJANGO UNCHAINED. Christopher's place in film history is secure thanks to the beloved BREAKING AWAY, but bottom-of-the-barrel duds like ALIEN PREDATORS only succeeded in killing any momentum he had going. Sarafian would certainly go on to make better movies (am I the world's only GUNMEN fan?), and while I totally get the feeling of nostalgia for the 1980s VHS glory days, there can't possibly be a cult around ALIEN PREDATORS, can there? Sarafian's on a commentary track on the Blu-ray, and judging from the long periods of dead air and the fact that he basically pulls a peace-out and calls it a day five minutes before the movie's over are pretty solid indicators that even he doesn't have much affinity for it.

JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
(US - 2018)

Directed by J.A. Bayona. Written by Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow. Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, Jeff Goldblum, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, BD Wong, Geraldine Chaplin, Isabella Sermon, Peter Jason, Robert Emms, Charlie Rawes, Kevin Layne, John Schwab. (PG-13, 128 mins)

Five films into a 25-year-old blockbuster franchise--let's count this all as one series--and it's understandable that coming up with fresh ideas might be a little difficult. JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM, the follow-up to the 2015 reboot/sequel JURASSIC WORLD, recognizes this, and while it includes numerous visual callbacks and shout-outs to previous installments (including the brief return of an iconic fan favorite), it basically opts for the insane route, with a second-half shift into territory that's so illogical and ludicrous that it can't help but make itself oddly endearing. There's enough sly moments throughout--Bryce Dallas Howard's introduction begins with a close-up of her high heels that's so blatant that it can't be anything but a middle finger to everyone still bitching about her footwear from JURASSIC WORLD--that I'm actually willing to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt. Feel free to argue the plot holes and inconsistencies all you want, but I think they're well aware that they've made what will probably be the dumbest movie of 2018. I can't recall another director harangued more for getting a lucky break than Colin Trevorrow was with JURASSIC WORLD three years ago. Though the directorial reins have been handed off to Guillermo del Toro protege J.A. Bayona (THE ORPHANAGE, THE IMPOSSIBLE, A MONSTER CALLS), Trevorrow remains onboard as a producer and co-writer. With that in mind, it's very much Bayona's film, especially with its improbable second-half location change, but the director seems more than willing to help his franchise predecessor troll the trolls with bits like that high-heel intro, and a later shot where Howard's character arrives on an island and Bayona is sure to spend more time than necessary showing the audience that she's wearing boots.

When a raging volcano threatens the dinosaurs still living on Isla Nublar, the home of the ruins of Jurassic World, Congress must decide whether to intervene and rescue them or allow them to perish once again. Arguing in favor of letting them go extinct is Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), who briefly appears at a congressional hearing to repeat the same arguments he leveled at spare-no-expense multi-billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) a quarter century ago. Congress eventually decides the US will not intervene, but then former Jurassic World PR head and current dinosaur conservationist Claire Dearing (Howard) is summoned to the northern California mansion of Hammond's previously unmentioned business partner Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell). Lockwood is dying and the day-to-day operation of his empire is left largely in the hands of his right-hand man Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), who hires Claire and two of her staffers--paleoveterinarian Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) and dweeby IT expert Franklin Mills (Justice Smith)--to join a covert operation to rescue numerous dinosaur species and move them to a protected island sanctuary. Also necessary to the team is dino-whisperer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), who reluctantly goes along since one of the creatures they want to rescue is Blue the Velociraptor, with whom he's shared an emotional bond since it was born. Of course, once they're there, they realize they've been tricked (who saw that coming, other than anyone who's seen a previous JURASSIC movie?) and that, unbeknownst to the benevolent Lockwood, Mills' team of contracted mercenaries led by Wheatley (Ted Levine) aren't there to save the dinosaurs, but to gather the most valuable ones to sell to the highest bidder as part of a moneymaking scheme engineered by Mills and wealthy asshole Eversol (Toby Jones). Wheatley's job is to return the dinosaurs not to Lockwood's island sanctuary but to his estate, where a three-story, military-industrial-sized bunker exists underneath to house both the new captures as well as other hybrids, like the new "Indoraptor," engineered by original Jurassic Park scientist-turned-improbable supervillain Dr. Wu (BD Wong). Wu stole some DNA samples from Jurassic World with the intent of selling the newly-created creatures as military weapons, an idea first suggested by Vincent D'Onofrio's character in the previous film.

Once the story moves back to the Lockwood estate, JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM more or less becomes THE OLD JURASSIC HOUSE, with Mills and Eversol holding a dinosaur auction for stock types like Slovenian arms dealers and hulking Russian mobsters, presumably taking a break from buying abducted girls from underground human traffickers before running afoul of Liam Neeson. But instead of Neeson, they're forced to contend with dinosaurs who escape from the holding area on one of the lower bunker levels and proceed to rampage through the mansion. Lockwood's precocious granddaughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon) ends up teaming with Owen and Claire, who are being held captive but break out with the help of a Stegosaur in the adjacent cell as the Indoraptor prototype wreaks havoc and pursues everyone through the mansion. This allows Bayona to showcase his gothic horror/del Toro influence and somehow turn JURASSIC WORLD into an "old dark house" throwback.

There's also a completely batshit revelation about Maisie that goes nowhere and must be a set-up for the inevitable sixth film in the franchise. JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM is a spectacularly dumb movie with dumb people making spectacularly dumb decisions (we've already established that the Indoraptor is super-intelligent and ready for military use, but yeah Wheatley, sneak into its paddock to yank out a tooth for a trophy while it's unconscious--there's no way it's playing possum with you; and why would Jurassic World have been built on an island with a such a large and dangerous active volcano?), but amidst the idiocy, Bayona still brings his own sense of style and a personal touch. There's the gothic interiors of the Lockwood estate, Maisie being a young girl with no friends and largely left to use her vivid imagination (young Sermon recalls both Ana Torrent in THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE and CRIA CUERVOS, and Ivana Baquero in PAN'S LABYRINTH), and the presence of Geraldine Chaplin--a Bayona regular and fixture in Spanish art cinema since her professional collaboration and romantic relationship with filmmaker Carlos Saura in the 1970s--as Iris, Lockwood's nurse and Maisie's nanny. Given his past films and his experience, Bayona has more of a knack for this kind of genre fare than Trevorrow (whose only feature film prior to JURASSIC WORLD was the 2012 Aubrey Plaza indie comedy SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED) demonstrated and despite being an idiotic franchise installment, it still ends up coming across like a film by its director rather than an assembly-line product and audience obligation. JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM is so stupid that it has to be by design, but it seems hesitant to fully commit to its own lunacy or go far enough in fashioning itself as an auto-critique. Sure, Trevorrow and Bayona call out the tireless keyboard warriors with the Howard shoe shots, but they also drop the ball a few times. As much as Maisie sneaks around the labyrinthine Lockwood manor in the dumbwaiter, you'd think it would foreshadow an inevitable moment where a smaller dinosaur hides in it and attacks someone trying to use it to get away. I was all ready for JURASSIC WORLD: DINOS IN THE DUMBWAITER but it failed to transpire. It would've fit right in with a movie that has all manner of dino species milling about inside a loading dock patiently waiting for a door to open so they can get out. I don't think anyone who made this film took it seriously. This is supposed to be a comedy, right?

HUMAN EXPERIMENTS
(US - 1979)

Directed by Gregory Goodell. Written by Richard Rothstein. Cast: Linda Haynes, Geoffrey Lewis, Ellen Travolta, Aldo Ray, Mercedes Shirley, Darlene Craviotto, Lurene Tuttle, Jackie Coogan, Marie O'Henry, Wesley Marie Tackitt, Caroline Davies, Cherie Franklin, Bobby Porter, James O'Connell, Teda Bracci. (R, 85 mins)

There's a welcome drive-in grunginess to HUMAN EXPERIMENTS, a forgotten women-in-prison/psychological thriller mash-up that's just been rescued from obscurity thanks to a new Blu-ray release from Scorpion. It's not surprising that it looks and feels a lot like a TV-movie, as director Gregory Goodell went on to spend the rest of his career largely on teleplay duty for movie-of-the-week offerings like the 1986 Martin Sheen alcoholism drama SHATTERED SPIRITS for ABC and the 1992 Patty Duke supernatural thriller GRAVE SECRETS: THE LEGACY OF HILLTOP DRIVE for CBS, among numerous others. An early screenwriting credit for Richard Rothstein, who went on to create the HBO anthology series THE HITCHHIKER and co-write 1992's franchise-spawning UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, HUMAN EXPERIMENTS is Goodell's only feature film to date and he took the opportunity to revel in some hard-R sleaze with some skin and some gutter talk (including 1950s Hollywood vet Aldo Ray dropping a C-bomb), and a really grim downer of a scene where the heroine masturbates after moistening her fingers with her own tears. Despite the potential, it isn't nearly as over-the-top as a lot of films with a similar setting behind bars, but it still somehow ended up on the UK's infamous Video Nasties list (to lump the comparatively tame HUMAN EXPERIMENTS in with the likes of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and FACES OF DEATH shows how absurd the whole situation was). While its fusion of genres never quite gels and the villain's master gaslighting plan doesn't make a whole lot of sense, the whole project is offbeat enough, and demonstrates a well-deployed since of bitter irony in its denouement that it ends up an interesting curio even if it's not entirely successful.

HUMAN EXPERIMENTS is carried almost entirely by a go-for-broke performance by cult actress Linda Haynes as Rachel Foster, a small-time country music singer from Florida who's driving cross-country on the back roads, picking up gigs in dive bars in podunk towns along the way. At one stop in a California desert town, she's cheated out of a good chunk of her promised $50 by creep bar owner Matt Tibbs (Ray) and doesn't get any help from the asshole sheriff (Jackie Coogan!), who happens to be Tibbs' big brother. On her way out of town, she wrecks her car swerving to avoid hitting a bloodied, shell-shocked young woman in the middle of the road, and when she finds the nearest house to call the police, she walks into an in-progress massacre with an entire family being shotgunned to death by their teenage son. Rachel kills the son in self defense, but when Sheriff Tibbs arrives, he sees her holding a gun and decides to close the case immediately, with circumstantial evidence apparently all that's required to get her a life sentence for murder. She doesn't adjust well to life inside the oddly small facility, where the warden (Mercedes Shirley) is allowing prison psychiatrist Dr. Hans Kline (Geoffrey Lewis) to conduct secret brainwashing experiments on unwilling inmates in a perversion of rehabilitation where their minds snap and they come to believe they're someone completely different, a method that leads not so much to rehabilitation but "rebirth." Rachel soon begins questioning her sanity after she sees new friend Pam (Caroline Davies) hanging in a cell only to have the body disappear and be told she was paroled. There's other subtle examples of Kline playing mind games with her, like buying the car that was owned by the family she was convicted of killing and driving it past her on the prison grounds, and purchasing a painting found at Tibbs' scuzzy motel and hanging it in the prison rec room.

Kline's ultimate motive is still a little foggy even after it's explained, but he's the clear villain in that he's not above killing a test subject if he doesn't get the desired results. To that end, HUMAN EXPERIMENTS is somewhat of a precursor to the much trashier 1985 WIP potboiler HELLHOLE. It doesn't have the merciless scenery chewing of a heroin-addicted Ray Sharkey, but it does have a committed performance by Haynes in what was her only top-billed headlining gig. She's an absolute trooper in this, especially in one horrific scene where she's locked in solitary and cockroaches, spiders, and other insects are poured directly on her through a grate in the ceiling in an attempt to get her to break and let go of "Rachel" and become what Kline wants her to be. Born in 1947, Haynes had a short run in Hollywood in the 1970s, with a handful of feature films and several TV credits. Her most notable roles were as the love interests to dour and paranoid mob flunky Jason Miller in 1974's underrated THE NICKEL RIDE and to unravelling, vengeance-obsessed Vietnam vet William Devane in 1977's ROLLING THUNDER. Haynes had a quality that was hard to pin down, one that can best be described as "the cute girl next door who hit some rough patches and had a habit for falling for the wrong men but wants to get her shit together and settle down." This made her a very natural and unaffected presence in most of her films but Hollywood simply didn't know what to do with her. According to Goodell on the Blu-ray commentary, even the producers of an exploitation grinder like HUMAN EXPERIMENTS tried to talk him out of casting Haynes because she "wasn't glamorous enough." That's precisely why she's perfect for the role of a loner musician with no family or friends disappearing down the back roads of America, barely scraping by with pick-up gigs in shitty dive bars. You don't need to know what it is to know that she's running away from something, which, for better or worse, makes HUMAN EXPERIMENTS the perfect starring vehicle for Linda Haynes. The film was in and out of American drive-ins and grindhouses in a week, but it--or more specifically, Haynes--found some acclaim in Europe, where Haynes won the Best Actress award at the 1981 Sitges Film Festival in Spain, which focuses on the fantasy and horror genres. HUMAN EXPERIMENTS ended up being her penultimate big-screen project, as she would abruptly retire from acting in 1980 at just 33 after supporting roles in the Robert Redford prison drama BRUBAKER and the Emmy-winning miniseries GUYANA TRAGEDY: THE STORY OF JIM JONES.

A publicity shot of Linda Haynes
from the mid-1970s

She vanished without a trace until journalist and Haynes superfan Tom Graves began searching for her in the mid-1990s. He chronicled his quest in the piece "Blonde Shadow: The Brief Career and Mysterious Disappearance of Linda Haynes." She had no agent, no ties to the industry, left no personal or forwarding info with SAG and seemed to be off the grid by choice. After some time, Graves managed to get her phone number from an assistant of Quentin Tarantino's. Also a Haynes fan, Tarantino named his short-lived Miramax-owned cult distribution label Rolling Thunder Pictures after ROLLING THUNDER, and unsuccessfully attempted to lure Haynes out of retirement to play Sherry Stringfield's mother in a 1995 episode of ER that he was directing. Haynes turned him down--having been out of the industry for a decade and a half and with little interest in movies, she had no idea who Tarantino was and was completely unaware of the cultural impact of RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION. But the elusive actress consented to an interview with Graves, telling him that in the 15 years since her self-imposed exile, he and Tarantino were the only two who ever tracked her down to discuss her acting career. In Graves' interviews, Haynes revealed that she was developing a serious drinking problem around the time of HUMAN EXPERIMENTS and it was really becoming an issue while shooting GUYANA TRAGEDY. Her marriage was falling apart, she was growing increasingly depressed and having suicidal thoughts, and she decided she needed to get away and clear her head. After a stint in rehab and a divorce, she found that she lost interest in Hollywood and was afraid going back would perpetuate the cycle of alcoholism and depression once again. So she walked away. She moved to an isolated area of Vermont and, eventually to Miami, where most of her family resided. She went to college, got a degree, and began a new career as a legal aid. With the advent of the DVD revolution, Blu-ray bonus features, fan conventions, and social media, the now-70-year-old Haynes has found that her acting career, just a decade in duration, has not been forgotten. She remains one of the best actresses of her era who never quite made it (she's just perfect in ROLLING THUNDER), and even a scuzzy B-movie like HUMAN EXPERIMENTS, made at a time when her personal life was beginning a downward spiral, gives you a good look at what made Linda Haynes such a unique figure in '70s cinema.

SPINNING MAN
(US - 2018)

The kind of glossy thriller that would've starred Michael Douglas and been the #1 movie at the box office for at least two weeks 20 years ago, SPINNING MAN instead went straight to VOD with the best cast that 2002 had to offer. It's pretty good most of the way, with college philosophy/linguistics prof Evan Birch (Guy Pearce) being mercilessly hounded by persistent detective Malloy (Pierce Brosnan), when a young college student named Joyce (Odeya Rush) goes missing. Joyce was last seen working at a kayak rental stand at the lake and a witness saw her talking to an older man in a car that looks just like Birch's. Malloy's investigation reopens old wounds for Birch's wife Ellen (Minnie Driver) who has some understandable trust issues with her husband after a scandalous affair with a student forced him out of another university five years ago. Malloy has done all the research on his suspect's lecherous past, and Birch still can't save himself from his inner entitled horndog, whether he's smugly accepting an apology from a student fling from last semester (Alexandra Shipp) when she blames herself for letting things get out of hand, or drifting off in the checkout line of a hardware store when he starts fantasizing about the college-aged cashier. Then Birch finds himself in a hole that keeps getting deeper: he can't keep his story straight, he can't explain why he was 40 minutes late picking up his daughter (Eliza Pryor) from a school event the day Joyce vanished; lip gloss that isn't Ellen's is found in his car, and Malloy has forensics impound his car and finds several strands of hair on the backseat that are a DNA match with Joyce.

So far, so good, with director Simon Kaijser and COCO screenwriter Matthew Aldrich (working from a 2003 novel by George Harrar) going with the bold decision to make Pearce's Birch kind of a prick, especially with the smirking self-satisfaction on his face when he sits there and lets a naive student blame herself for their affair (you'll want to punch him when he pauses and says "Well...I accept your apology"). At first, Driver's Ellen seems like a harping stereotype, but the more time you spend with Birch, the more you sympathize with her because he's a serial adulterer who can't stop lying and she's just trying to hold it together for her family (they also have a five-year-old son, played by Noah Salsbury Lipson). Best of all is Brosnan, who really sinks his teeth into a de facto Columbo character as Malloy, who turns up at the most inopportune times and clearly relishes being a pain in Birch's ass. Brosnan conducts a master class in passive-aggression the way his aging, seen-it-all cop cuts his prey down to size and asks "Excuse my ignorance...but what does a philosopher do?" and the way he offers his cutting critique of Birch's most recent book ("Thick!"). Clark Gregg even scores a few points in small role as Birch's cynical attorney buddy ("Cops don't ask questions, they plant landmines!"), and Jamie Kennedy has a small role as one of Birch's colleagues, for some reason. But just as it's reaching the final act, SPINNING MAN spins out of control and can't recover. It might've worked on the page (many Goodreads posts about Harrar's novel seem to indicate that it didn't) but it definitely doesn't on the screen. It wants to be abstract and philosophical but instead ends up coming off as a lazy deus ex machina that plays more like an ill-advised acknowledgment of Christopher Nolan's 2001 breakthrough MEMENTO, simply because Guy Pearce heads the cast. It's a shame, because it's an intriguing film that's a must-see for Brosnan fans until its weak and unsatisfying cop-out of an ending. (R, 101 mins)

TERMINAL
(US/UK/Ireland - 2018)

Until it goes bonkers in its closing 15 minutes, TERMINAL could've saved a lot of time by just having debuting writer/director Vaughn Stein post pics of his Blu-ray collection on Instagram. A veteran assistant director on films like SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN and WORLD WAR Z, Stein displays some undeniable style with TERMINAL's neon, rain-soaked cityscapes that look like BLADE RUNNER crossed with an MGM musical. But the script is a tired retread of influential 1990s touchstones like Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, and THE USUAL SUSPECTS. Enigmatic mystery woman Annie (Margot Robbie, who also produced) encounters suicidal, terminally-ill schoolteacher Bill (Simon Pegg) at an empty train station while she works the graveyard shift at its bar, called the End of the Line Cafe. While they discuss ways for him to end his life, she tells a story that goes back three weeks where she crosses paths with two hit men, Vince (Dexter Fletcher) and Alfred (Max Irons), at a bar called The Rabbit Hole, and they're all in the employ of the ominous and unseen "Mr. Franklyn," who lords over the city's crime operation behind a voice scrambler in large control room.

There's a lot of yakking amongst the actors in that '90s Tarantino way, but instead of hip and funny pop culture references, everyone's dropping quotes from Alice in Wonderland. Yes, at a pivotal moment, someone actually declares "We are through the looking glass!" and "We've tumbled down the rabbit hole!" almost as if Stein has no idea that 2010's barely-released MALICE IN WONDERLAND already tried updating Lewis Carroll into a postmodern Guy Ritchie-inspired scenario with equally unsuccessful results. The Ritchie worship extends to the presence of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS stars Fletcher and Nick Moran in a small role, and there's even a PULP FICTION POV shot from inside the trunk of a car as its opened, looking up at Fletcher and Irons, who still doesn't appear to be any closer to happening despite his busy schedule and being sired by Jeremy. Though TERMINAL looks great, Stein's direction is a lot of Dutch-angled self-indulgence and his shamelessly derivative script goes full USUAL SUSPECTS by setting up "Mr. Franklyn" as a Dipshit Keyser Soze. This was already in the can by the time Robbie got an Oscar nomination for I, TONYA, but who knows what she or anyone else saw in Stein's script, other than a chance for her to recycle some of her grinning, crazy-eyed Harley Quinn schtick? The impressive production design isn't enough to maintain interest while the actors are babbling incessantly, and it's always a good rule with movies of this sort to keep your eyes on any prominently-billed name actor who doesn't appear to have much to do with anything that's happening. Also with Mike Myers, in his first big-screen role since 2009's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, under some aging makeup as a limping and perpetually "Danny Boy"-whistling janitor who occasionally pops up on the story's periphery and likethat...he's gone! Is Stein really making it that obvious? (Unrated, 96 mins)

ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES
(US/China/UK - 2018)

2013's ESCAPE PLAN was an enjoyable prison-break pairing of aging '80s action icons Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger that failed to generate much interest and flopped at the box office. Like some other underperformers, it proved to be a huge hit in China, which explains the existence of the needlessly convoluted, partially Chinese-financed ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES, the first of two sequels shot back-to-back for DTV release in the States and a theatrical rollout in Asia. Schwarzenegger is out and top-billed Stallone is back, albeit in largely a supporting role, but the nominal lead is popular Chinese actor and singer Huang Xiaoming as Shu, the newest member of security expert Ray Breslin's (Stallone) Atlanta-based team. After a botched extraction from a Chechen prison results in the death of a hostage, Breslin fires one of his men, Kimbral (Wes Chatham), for deviating from their set routine. A year later, Shu is in Thailand visiting his tech mogul cousin Yusheng Ma (Chen Tang) when both are abducted and thrown into Hades, a super high-tech prison nine stories underground that holds regular fighting showdowns (that's original) in "The Zoo," where the victor earns time in "The Sanctuary," a room with virtual reality imagery that provides a brief respite for the prisoners. Jake (Jesse Metcalfe), another Breslin staffer, goes rogue and tries to investigate Shu's disappearance on his own only to end up in Hades himself, where he and Shu encounter an incarcerated Kimbral. It then becomes clear--to them but perhaps not to the viewer--that it's all a set-up against Breslin as revenge for him escaping from "The Tomb" in the previous film, which means one thing: Breslin must do what he does best and get himself thrown into Hades, essentially breaking in to find a way to get his guys out.

Though Stallone is playing the same character, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson is back as his right-hand man Hush, and co-writer Miles Chapman also returns, ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES seems like it takes place in a different world than its predecessor. It's got such heavy futuristic sci-fi leanings that it could almost pass as a FORTRESS or CUBE reboot, and at the rate this franchise is going, ESCAPE PLAN 3 could very well be set in space. Director Steven C. Miller, who's helmed several chapters of Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series, churned this out in an undistinguished fashion, with constantly jittery cinematography and motion-sickness inducing shaky-cam in the action scenes, and some of the most unacceptably shoddy CGI in recent memory (a couple of iPhone-app-level explosions and Stallone administering a CGI neckbreak that's just atrocious). Huang is a dull hero, though to his credit, he's not acting in his first language. Half-asleep and sporting a terrible rug, Stallone is largely relegated to the sideline, almost-but-not-quite-Willis-style (Breslin actually leaves his office), until he ends up in Hades about an hour in and more or less becomes the focus. Dave Bautista has little to do but manages a couple of laughs as a fixer colleague of Breslin's who gathers intel for their search for Shu, strong-arming assistance from a hacker played by Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz (and speaking of pointless cameos, Atlanta Falcons RB Devonta Freeman can briefly be glimpsed as a Hades inmate). ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES is lazy, cheap-looking, and laughably cliched, right down to its (ostensibly) chief villain, evil warden "The Zookeeper," played by Titus Welliver. A reliable ringer when it comes to character roles, a glowering Welliver looks like he's in physical pain being forced to gravely intone lines like "I know everything about my animals...I'm the Zookeeper," while one inmate helpfully waxes poetic with "That's why they call it The Zoo...we're all animals here...survival of the fittest." Between these hastily-shot sequels that were only made to satisfy the demand of the Asian market and the apparently ill-advised direction CREED 2 seems to be headed from the sound of things (why is Ivan Drago back?), it looks like Stallone is completely squandering the serious cred he got from that CREED Oscar nomination. Had he won it like he should have, we might've been spared ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES. Or at least Miller could've rewritten the script to keep Breslin completely confined to his office so Bruce Willis could've stepped in and taken over the role. (R, 93 mins)

CHINA SALESMAN
(China - 2017; US release 2018)

It's pretty clear from the moment CHINA SALESMAN begins that it's gonna be something special. There's an opening certification stating that it's commissioned by the Chinese government, one of the 16 (!) production companies is represented by a typo ("Gloden" God Video & Culture), there's 72 (!!) credited producers, and former action star and current sleeper agent Steven Seagal is listed as "Steve Segal" in the opening credits. A $20 million epic that tanked in China a year ago, CHINA SALESMAN was picked up for the US by Cleopatra Entertainment, the company that gave us the Kazakh shitshow DIAMOND CARTEL, and prominently features Seagal and Mike Tyson in its advertising, making it a veritable Who's Who of #MeToo. But, like ESCAPE PLAN 2, the Hollywood guest stars have relatively minor roles, with the focus on Li Dongxue as Yan Jian, an ambitious representative from Chinese tech company DH Telecom, who's in Uganda trying to negotiate a lucrative contract to establish 3G wireless communication at newly-constructed cell phone towers in the civil war-torn country. Pretty scintillating stuff, with a lot of screen time devoted to captivating meetings and boardroom backstabbing as Yan Jian and his associate Ruan Ling (Li Ai) are in constant danger of being railroaded by duplicitous Eurotrash shitbag Michael Duchamp (Clovis Fouin), who's also trying to close the deal for his company and seems to be on the good side of Susanna (Janicke Askevold), the head of the independent committee charged with deciding the victor in the 3G bidding war. But Susanna eventually sides with Yan Jian, who's heroically depicted as the only person who can save Uganda, right down to a patently ridiculous scene where he risks life and limb to plant a Chinese flag, which he and Susanna then passionately wave as they drive past cheering Ugandan soldiers.

Tyson, who relooped his dialogue but still can't match his own lip movements, plays Kabbah, a religious mercenary from an unnamed African country who ends up as a flunky for Duchamp. Seagal has little more than a cameo as Lauder, an expat bar owner ("Of all the gin joints in the world...") and arms dealer on the side who, for some reason, has a framed action still of Steven Seagal on his desk. CHINA SALESMAN shows its only signs of life in the first ten minutes during an out-of-nowhere bar brawl between Tyson and Seagal's double, which starts when Kabbah refuses a drink for religious reasons, prompting Lauder to have one of his goons piss in a mug and try to force him to drink it. There's an admittedly amusing moment when Seagal('s double) flicks Tyson's ear in a way that has to be an Evander Holyfield dig, but what perfectly caps the scene is an enraged Kabbah shouting "You serve me pee...YOU DIE!" Beyond that, CHINA SALESMAN is an oppressively overlong bore, filled with the kind of crummy greenscreen and CGI that only Chinese visual effects teams can pull off, and populated by actors so stiff and uncomfortable with English (even Tyson) that Seagal ends up looking like a world-class orator by default. (Unrated, 111 mins)

THE ESCAPE OF PRISONER 614
(US - 2018)

It's rare that you encounter a movie that has no reason to exist. One of the most self-defeating films of 2018, THE ESCAPE OF PRISONER 614 initially appears to be a B-grade, Redbox-ready take on HELL OR HIGH WATER by way of the Coen Bros., with nitwit sheriff's deputies Jim Doyle (FREAKS AND GEEKS' Martin Starr) and Thurman Hayford (Jake McDorman of CBS' LIMITLESS spinoff) idling their days away in the sleepy and sparsely-populated rural town of Shandaken in upstate New York in the late 1960s. They have little to do but play cops & robbers in the woods and get on-the-house pie at the local diner, and without a single arrest in the last year, the stern, no-nonsense sheriff (Ron Perlman) comes down from Albany to fire them. But they find a way to regain their jobs when they get word of an escaped convict known only as Prisoner 614 (George Sample III) on foot and headed their way. They hike deep into the woods--idiotically wasting all their bullets in a pissing contest where neither of them can shoot a beer can at ten paces--finding 614 and taking him into custody. 614 is wanted for killing a deputy from a neighboring county, but insists he's innocent and that the deputy died of a heart attack, and as time goes on, Jim and Thurman believe him. Once they get back to Shandaken, they can't convince the sheriff, even with a sworn statement from a witness that the obese deputy had a heart attack while 614 was simply standing near him. Their actions get Jim and Thurman rehired, but then they risk it all by going against the sheriff and aiding and abetting a fugitive to get 614 to freedom in Canada.

It's hard telling who this movie is even for. Nothing sums up its utter futility like having a character unknowingly guzzle Ipecac in a set-up for what must be a showstopping comedic projectile vomiting set piece, but then it has that very character drop dead of a heart attack before the Ipecac kicks in. Is that like making a porno where two people are about to fuck and then just watch TV? THE ESCAPE OF PRISONER 614 subverts your expectations to the point where the entire movie just feels like one long dick move. Is it a comedy without laughs or a thriller without suspense? And is it that way by design? Starr and McDornan seem like they'll be playing affable goofballs but then just seem to wander aimlessly through the movie with no real character arcs or progression, while Sample has even less to do, even when writer/director Zach Golden throws in a cursory mention of the charges against him being racially-motivated. Perlman pops up here and there to slow burn at the deputies and basically be "Ron Perlman," but Golden doesn't seem to know what kind of movie he was trying to make, so he plays it too safe and makes what amounts to a movie about nothing that goes nowhere. The period detail is atrocious, and you can only gauge that it's 1967 or thereabouts from Jim mentioning that he recently saw COOL HAND LUKE (you should probably do the same). There's a few old cars and people chain-smoking indoors, but no one looks or sounds like they're in the late '60s. Speaking of sounds, if this is upstate New York in the Catskills, why is everyone breaking out overbaked Southern drawls like they're auditioning for a community theater version of IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT? (PG-13, 97 mins)

SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO
(US - 2018)

Directed by Stefano Sollima. Written by Taylor Sheridan. Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Catherine Keener, Isabela Moner, Jeffrey Donovan, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Matthew Modine, Shea Whigham, Elijah Rodriguez, Bruno Bichir, Graham Beckel, Raoul Trujillo, David Castaneda, Faysal Ahmed. (R, 122 mins)

The tough and uncompromising SICARIO opened to much acclaim in the fall of 2015, but it didn't end on a note that left anyone demanding a sequel. SICARIO director Denis Villeneuve and star Emily Blunt are out, but co-stars Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, and Jeffrey Donovan are back, along with writer Taylor Sheridan (HELL OR HIGH WATER, WIND RIVER, and, since he continues to pretend it doesn't exist, VILE). Italian director Stefano Sollima (the son of legendary Eurocult director Sergio Sollima, best known for THE BIG GUNDOWN and VIOLENT CITY) makes his US debut and does a solid job of adhering to the style set by Villeneuve, with a particular affinity for those overhead shots of fast-moving military caravans that were so memorable the first time around. Though Del Toro's contracted agent Alejandro is the titular sicario, or assassin, it was Blunt's rookie FBI agent who served as the core of the story and the connection to the audience as she barreled headlong into a situation far more violent and dangerous than she ever anticipated. The shift in focus to Del Toro isn't a surprise considering it began about 3/4 of the way through SICARIO, when Blunt's agent was relegated to the sideline while Villeneuve and Sheridan concentrated on Alejandro's quest for revenge against a cartel underboss who killed his family.

It takes a little while for Alejandro to show up in SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO (which was titled SICARIO 2: SOLDADO when the first trailer appeared), as the globetrotting intro jumps from migrants being stopped at the US/Mexico border to an ISIS suicide bombing in a Kansas City supermarket to CIA agent Matt Graver (Brolin) in Djibouti before being sent to Somalia to interrogate a pirate and terror suspect who knows the connection between the seemingly unrelated incidents. It turns out that the Mexican cartels have found a lucrative side gig in smuggling people over the US border, including Islamic terrorists. To combat this unforeseen front in the war on terror, the Secretary of Defense (Matthew Modine) and CIA chief Cynthia Foards (Catherine Keener) assign Graver to a top-secret mission to start a war between the cartels and hope they all wipe each other out, of course with the stipulation that the government will deny any knowledge and Graver is on his own if the truth leaks out. Assembling his usual crew, including bespectacled right-hand man Steve Forsing (Donovan) and the elusive Alejandro, with the caveat "No rules this time" (were there rules last time?), Graver oversees the assassination of the top lawyer of a major cartel boss and orchestrates the abduction of 16-year-old Isabela Reyes (Isabala Moner), the daughter of Carlos Reyes, another top cartel honcho. This starts the war they intended as Graver and Alejandro stash the girl at a safe house in Texas, but when they try to get her back into Mexico, the entire plan goes to shit. Graver and the crew end up back in the States while Alejandro and Isabela are left on their own in Mexico, as the President, the Secretary of Defense, and Foards scramble to explain why CIA and US military were engaged in a firefight in Mexico, ordering Graver to clean up the mess, including any trace of Alejandro.

SICARIO worked fine on its own, and SOLDADO is sufficiently entertaining if completely superfluous. Brolin is fun as Graver, who often seems like what might happen if The Dude was ever in the CIA. But Del Toro is the primary focus this time, and the film wants to further humanize Alejandro, with Isabela essentially serving as the surrogate daughter to replace the one he lost under the orders of her own father. Isabella's father, seemingly an important figure, is never seen, and there's a lot of time devoted to a tenuously-connected subplot involving Miguel (Elijah Rodriguez), a Mexican-American teenager in McAllen, TX just over the border. Impressionable Miguel has a passport and gets roped by his older cousin into working as a mule for cartel flunky Gallo (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo). Miguel and Alejandro have a passing encounter in a mall parking lot that will come into play much later, but when it does, it still feels forced and hackneyed. It's indicative of the indecisive nature of Sheridan's script. The political implications of the story muddled enough as it is (how exactly does the Secretary of Defense think it will emerge from this half-baked plan unscathed?), but between the Alejandro/Graver/Isabela and the Miguel storylines, SOLDADO feels like two ideas Sheridan couldn't flesh out, so he tried to cram them into one. Indeed, by the time we get to the abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion, which leaves several threads dangling and the door wide open for a third installment, the realization sets in that SOLDADO plays like the two-hour premiere of a SICARIO TV series that's cleverly disguised as a feature film. A hypothetical SICARIO: THE SERIES on Netflix sounds like a better idea than the strange determination to turn the Alejandro story into a big-screen franchise.

TAU
(US/Luxembourg - 2018)

Directed by Federico D'Alessandro. Written by Noga Landau. Cast: Maika Monroe, Ed Skrein, Fiston Barek, Ivana Zivkovic, voice of Gary Oldman. (R, 97 mins)

After WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY, THE TITAN, and ANON, it seems like Netflix's apparent criteria for acquiring sci-fi films to stream as original movies begins and ends with "Could this pass for a middling feature-length episode of BLACK MIRROR?" Such is the case with TAU, the directing debut of Federico D'Alessandro, a veteran storyboard artist and animatics supervisor who's been buried in the closing credits of many a Marvel blockbuster. Given D'Alessandro's experience with the visuals of films in their planning stages, it's no surprise that TAU, set largely inside an expansive, high-tech house, looks terrific. Its early exterior scenes have that sort of rainy neon that's been de rigueur for the sci-fi genre since BLADE RUNNER, but it's a look that rarely gets old. TAU's inspirations come from other sources, mostly video store fixtures from a generation ago, like Richard Stanley's 1990 cult classic HARDWARE, Stephen Norrington's 1995 HARDWARE-esque DEATH MACHINE, and the same kind of dystopian atmosphere of 1993's CYBORG 2, not to mention an imposing, AI-controlled robot called Aries that looks like the ED-209 from ROBOCOP's significantly less graceful cousin. Factoring out some expectedly janky CGI explosions and destruction in the climax and TAU probably could pass for a straight-to-VHS Vidmark Entertainment title from 1995. Scraping by fencing stolen watches and credit cards acquired at clubs, wrong-side-of-the-tracks Julia (Maika Monroe of IT FOLLOWS) has dreams of going to music school and lives in the usual drab apartment with the light from an exterior neon sign constantly flashing into her bedroom. She's knocked out and abducted and wakes up in a cell wearing a Hannibal Lecter-type mask made of rubber. There's two other captives, who reluctantly tag along when Julia plans an escape. The other two are killed almost instantly while the more resourceful Julia survives and meets her captor: brilliant and deranged scientist Thomas Alexander "Alex" Upton (Ed Skrein).

Alex is hard at work on a billion dollar project for a mysterious tech firm, and he's using unwitting test subjects to create the perfect "memory algorithm" for use in "Tau," a sentient artificial intelligence that he's designing. His massive home is run by a prototype of Tau, who follows every command and also controls security robot Aries and numerous baseball-sized "drones" that can do all the chores around the house, including cooking and cleaning. From the start, it's clear that Julia (or "Subject 3") is smarter than other test subjects, so in time, she's granted a bit more freedom around the locked-down house as long as she completes her tests administered daily by Tau while Alex is at the office. It isn't long before Tau--voiced by Gary Oldman, presumably before his recent Oscar win--grows fond of Julia in a friendly way and becomes eager to explore its human side that cruel Alex has kept in the dark. Of course, none of this would occur were it not for Skrein's Alex being one of the dumbest villains ever. Even after she manages to nearly escape numerous times, and even after he concludes Julia is more intelligent and perceptive than he anticipated, he provides her with enough expository info to foreshadow his own downfall. "You control the information, you control the behavior!" he says of Tau, adding "Tau doesn't know about the outside world...and he never will!"

Naturally, as soon as he leaves Julia alone with the childlike and inquisitive Tau, she's reading it books about classical music, art, and poetry from Alex's massive library ("I'm not allowed to read the books," Tau explains), teaching it independent thought and action. It also works in Julia's favor that dumbass Alex designed Tau as the most easily-manipulated AI in sci-fi history, so much so that you could make a drinking game out of how many times Tau emphatically declares "I am not permitted!" before immediately folding like a card table when Julia asks it to do something it's not allowed to do a second time. The production design in Alex's house is first-rate, the few exteriors are appropriately gloomy and despairing (this was shot in Serbia, though the unseen Oldman probably phoned his lines in over a DARKEST HOUR lunch break while in full Winston Churchill makeup), and the score by Bear McCreary is decent. TAU is maybe worth a stream on a slow night or if you're an Oldman completist. It's completely disposable and forgettable, but on the Netflix Original grading curve, there's been much worse.

DEVILFISH
aka MONSTER SHARK
(Italy/France - 1984; US release 1986)

Directed by John Old Jr (Lamberto Bava). Written by Gianfranco Clerici, Frank Walker (Vincenzo Mannino), Dardano Sacchetti and Herve Piccini. Cast: Michael Sopkiw, Valentine Monnier, John Garko (Gianni Garko), William Berger, Dagmar Lassander, Iris Peynado, Lawrence Morgant, Cinthia Stewart (Cinzia de Ponti), Paul Branco, Dino Conti, Darla N. Warner, Goffredo Unger. (Unrated, 94 mins)

With its Key West locations and Florida setting at "Seaquarium," it's likely that DEVILFISH (aka MONSTER SHARK) was meant to be a low-rent Italian ripoff of JAWS 3-D. Showcasing one of the most amateurishly cheap-looking monsters this side Roger Corman's IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, DEVILFISH is a flat-out terrible movie and completely deserving of its MST3K skewering back in the day, but it has its undeniable charms for Eurocult aficionados. Considering how shoddy and stupid the film is, there's a surprising amount of top Italian genre talent for the time. It's directed by Lamberto Bava (under the pseudonym "John Old Jr," a shout-out to his father Mario's alias on 1963's THE WHIP AND THE BODY), after his impressive early films MACABRE (1980) and A BLADE IN THE DARK (1982) and just a year before establishing himself as a major name in Italian horror with 1985's Dario Argento-produced DEMONS (DEVILFISH apparently made it into a handful of US theaters courtesy of Cinema Shares in 1986 before its VHS release by Vidmark Entertainment). It's co-written by Eurocult stalwart and frequent Lucio Fulci collaborator Dardano Sacchetti (CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD), from a story co-conceived by Luigi Cozzi (STARCRASH) and Sergio Martino (TORSO). Bruno Mattei (STRIKE COMMANDO) was an assistant director, and the score is by Fabio Frizzi under the pseudonym "Antony Barrymore." Nobody is having their best day here, but it may be a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. It's hard to believe that Cozzi, Martino, Sacchetti, and Bava all had a hand in some of the illogical idiocy that unfolds in DEVILFISH. It's the kind of movie where people trying to find the location of a deadly creature that's part-octopus and part-prehistoric fish decide to take advantage of their downtime by going for a leisurely swim in the very area they're canvassing. It's the kind of movie where the sheriff is told that the creature can reproduce more of itself from its own severed flesh, and decides the best solution is to grab a shotgun and try to blow it into a million pieces. It's the kind of movie where a covert project to secretly develop a killer sea monster is stealthily codenamed "Sea Killer." It's the kind of movie where Bava tries to pull off some dazzling camera moves and ends up with an unexpected cameo by one of the lead actor's balls.

There's an unusual amount of exposition, intrigue, and soap opera histrionics, most of it just for the apparent sake of killing time and keeping the laughable creature offscreen as long as possible. A body is pulled out of the ocean with its legs bitten off, and cranky Sheriff Gordon (Gianni Garko) doesn't think it's an accident. Meanwhile, Seaquarium marine biologist Bob Hogan (Dino Conti) and dolphin trainer Stella Dickens (Valentine Monnier) get sonar readings and imagery indicating a large creature of some sort lurking in the deep waters. They get help from local electrician and equipment supplier Peter (Michael Sopkiw, who starred with Monnier in 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK and would reteam with Bava for BLASTFIGHTER) and outside oceanography expert Dr. Janet Bates (Darla N. Warner) and begin tracking down the aquatic monster, revealed to be man-made crossbreed of an octopus with the DNA of an extinct sea creature from the age of dinosaurs.

But before we get to any of that, there's Peter's flirtation with Stella, much to the chagrin of his employee and friend-with-benefits Sandra (Iris Peynado); there's a research institute where Dr. Davis Barker (one-and-done Piers Morgan lookalike Lawrence Morgant, possibly a pseudonym for an Italian or maybe a local Florida actor; either way, he's dubbed by the venerable Ted Rusoff), who's having a clandestine affair with Sonja (Dagmar Lassander), the wife of his boss Prof. Donald West (William Berger); and Florinda (Cinzia de Ponti), a disgruntled West research assistant who knows of Davis and Sonja's affair and is threatening to tell the press about illegal experiments at the lab before she's killed by Miller (Paul Branco), a local lumbering lug who's been hired by someone to silence her, resulting in one of the most ridiculous "kamikaze disrobings" (© Leonard Maltin) this side of Kelly Lynch in Michael Cimino's DESPERATE HOURS. It's also not enough that he kills her, but he also dumps the body in a full bathtub, then tosses a plugged-in hair dryer into the water. Between the chintzy special effects, the dumbass story machinations, the idiotic characters, and Morgant (with some help from Rusoff) having one of the most overwrought death scenes ever, it's easy to see the MST3K appeal.

Code Red just released DEVILFISH on Blu-ray under the title MONSTER SHARK (because physical media is dead), and it looks great in its proper aspect ratio and its HD upgrade, but the commentary is yet another embarrassing shitshow typical of Code Red head Bill Olsen. Sopkiw (who left the movie business after his fourth film, 1985's MASSACRE IN DINOSAUR VALLEY) is on hand, along with DIY cult filmmaker Damon Packard, and to the surprise of no one, it's mostly useless and filled with erroneous information that shows that no research was done by either moderator prior to the recording. Sopkiw seems nice enough (nicer and more cooperative than he was with Nathaniel Thompson on the BLASTFIGHTER Blu) but he doesn't know much about movies, doesn't seem to like movies, and his memory is foggy on a lot of things, while Olsen (seen with Sopkiw in an intro before the movie and wearing his "Banana Man" costume, which he still seems to think people find amusing) almost instantly lapses into his usual schtick of mispronouncing Italian names a minute into the movie and fixating on inconsequential matters (he seems really perturbed that Sergio Martino didn't "die-rect" the movie and keeps bringing it up, despite Sopkiw repeatedly telling him that he didn't even know Martino came up with the story). Neither Olsen nor Packard have any idea who anyone in the supporting cast is. They think Iris Peynado is "Cynthia du Ponti" (Sopkiw doesn't remember Peynado's name and agrees with them), then they think Cinzia de Ponti is Dagmar Lassander. They think William Berger is Italian and his name was a pseudonym (nope--born in Austria, birth name Wilhelm Berger). Packard thinks Mario Bava directed SUSPIRIA (he does correct himself with "Oh, that was Argento," which is appreciated, but the proper thing to do after such a gaffe would be to just get up and leave). They ask Sopkiw if he dubbed himself, which he obviously didn't, then Packard seems surprised to learn that actors in multi-country co-productions were often speaking different languages on set before being revoiced in post. I'm sorry, but if you're moderating a commentary track for a specific film, there's an assumption on the part of the listener that you know something about the subject at hand. I bought the Blu-ray. I shouldn't correcting these guys in my head as they go. Dagmar Lassander has been in a ton of Eurocult movies. They should know who she is. I realize this is only DEVILFISH we're talking about here, but can we get our shit together, fellas? Is that asking too much? If only there was some kind of website on the Internet that served as a sort-of database of movies or maybe even an easy-to-navigate search engine that could've been consulted for research on the film you're fucking talking about...

211
(US - 2018)

It's DOG DAY AFTERNOON on a Bulgarian backlot with 211, the latest Nicolas Cage walk-through in what's looking like a busy 2018 for the--hang on while I check to see if it still stands...ok, yes, right--Oscar-winning actor. Produced by Avi Lerner's Cannon cover band Millennium Media, 211 doesn't get much help in the credibility department with the familiar and thoroughly un-American-looking Nu Boyana facility in Sofia, Bulgaria doubling for a small Massachusetts suburb (even though most of the license plates say Louisiana), whose downtown features a posh art gallery called Art Gallery. Inspired in part by the North Hollywood shootout over 20 years ago--itself inspired by a legendary sequence in Michael Mann's HEAT--211 juggles more characters than it can possibly handle and tries to be both a generic B actioner and a shamelessly heart-tugging American Heroes saga like WORLD TRADE CENTER or PATRIOTS DAY. Set in the fictional town of Chesterford, 211 stars Cage as Mike Chandler, a cop who's just filled out his retirement papers (oh boy), even though all he knows is being a cop, so much so that he wasn't really there for his late wife when she was battling cancer. This is still a sore subject with his daughter Lisa (Sophie Skelton), whose husband Steve "Mac" MacAvoy (Dwayne Cameron) is Mike's partner. Lisa just found out she's pregnant and Mac shares the good news with his father-in-law but that joy is short-lived as a bomb goes off in a downtown coffee shop as a decoy for a robbery going on at Unity Savings & Loan, a bank so trustworthy that the Bulgarian art department guys couldn't even be bothered to make the letters straight on the mock-up sign. The guys orchestrating the heist are ex-black ops mercenary goons led by Tre (Ori Pfeffer) after $100 million in war profits belonging to a shady contractor they killed after a botched extraction in Kabul (did Bulgaria know it would be playing dual roles here?), which attracts the attention of dogged Interpol agent Rossi (Alexandra Dinu). A chaotic situation is made even worse since Mike and Mac have a ride-along in teenager Kenny (Michael Rainey Jr), a bullied high school student in a scared straight program after a teacher walks in on him sucker-punching a douchebag who was just trying to shove his head in a toilet.

Isaac Florentine has a producer credit, and one gets the feeling that 211 might've been intended at some point to be another of his collaborations with Scott Adkins. Director York Shackleton does what he can with trying to make a Massachusetts suburb out of a Bulgarian backlot that can barely even pass for Bulgaria. The script is riddled with trite cliches and clumsy exposition, especially in a cringe-worthy early scene where Mike's backstory is laid out in an argument between Lisa and Mac, with Mac defending him while Lisa, still angry that Mike wasn't there when her mother needed him most, shouts "It was chemo and radiation and PAIN!" In relation to Cage's recent clunkers like LOOKING GLASS and THE HUMANITY BUREAU, 211 is a very marginal step up. Shackleton handles an extended shootout better than you might expect considering what's at his disposal, and Cage, wearing one of his better hairpieces of late, has moments where he seems to be giving a shit, along with some bits where he's Cage-ing it up for his YouTube highlight reel (his outburst at the SWAT team commander has some WICKER MAN-style histrionics). Its entertainment value lies mostly in its unintentional humor and the complete lack of effort in making the surroundings look (or sound, considering the extensive and sloppy ADR work on most of the supporting cast) even slightly American, but there's some unexpectedly competent bursts of action amidst the clock-punching apathy. (R, 87 mins)

THE LEISURE SEEKER
(Italy/France - 2018)

There's a few fleeting moments of raw emotion and brutal honesty in this adaptation of Michael Zadoorian's 2009 novel, and they come courtesy of a pair of cinema treasures in stars Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. It's too bad that THE LEISURE SEEKER decides to squander them by spending too much time trying to be the geezer comedy that the more somber, serious novel wasn't. Making his English language debut, acclaimed Italian filmmaker Paolo Virzi (HUMAN CAPITAL) overcompensates and leans a little too much on the "America" thing, especially with its summer 2016 setting that allows for recurring, shoehorned-in political references to the Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump presidential showdown. The film even opens with a pickup truck driving down the street and blaring a Trump speech out of a large speaker, for no real reason at all. Married for 50 years, elderly couple Ella (Mirren, with a shaky on-and-off Southern accent) and John Spencer (Sutherland) take off in "The Leisure Seeker," their ramshackle 1975 Winnebago for a road trip from their Massachusetts home en route to her Savannah, GA birthplace to their ultimate destination: Ernest Hemingway's home in Key West, FL. John is a retired high school English teacher and is in the relatively early stages of Alzheimer's, still having stretches of clarity--especially when it comes to lecturing strangers about Hemingway and William Faulkner--but still frequently forgetting his wife's name or how old they are ("I start a sentence and by the time I get to the end of it..." John says, trailing off, suddenly lost). Ella keeps popping medication and grimacing, clearly in the midst of a mystery ailment that she seems to be hiding from John as well as their grown children Will (Christian McKay) and Jane (Janel Moloney).

Despite his condition, John is driving the Leisure Seeker, and the trip becomes a series of misadventures that range from improbable to wacky to patently absurd, whether they're getting the upper hand on a pair of knife-wielding teens trying to rob them while they wait for AAA to fix a flat or John waltzing into a nursing home with a shotgun looking for Ella's now-dementia-addled boyfriend from over 50 years ago (the late comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, who died eight months before the film's release), and somehow not being arrested. A confused John even winds up accidentally attending a Trump rally, while classic rock soundtrack cues underscore various plot developments: Carole King's "It's Too Late" plays at the beginning and Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" kicks in when John takes off from a gas station and leaves Ella behind, forcing her to get a ride from a guy on a motorcycle (how did Virzi not segue from Chicago to Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" here?). THE LEISURE SEEKER never finds the right tone (you know the trip is getting off on the wrong foot when one of the first things out of John's mouth is "Did you fart?"), but Mirren and Sutherland manage to class it up, especially in a devastating scene later on where John's mind wanders and he thinks he's talking to their neighbor Lillian (Dana Ivey) and ends up confessing to Ella a brief fling from 48 years ago. It's a scene that packs a wallop, but then Virzi blows it by having Ella react in the most hysterically overwrought way possible, leading to a conclusion that just doesn't ring true. Such is the dilemma of THE LEISURE SEEKER, a well-meaning but aimless and uneven film that's worth seeing for fans of living legends Mirren and Sutherland (who previously starred together in 1990's BETHUNE: THE MAKING OF A HERO), even though both deserve stronger material. (R, 112 mins)

BORG VS. MCENROE
(Denmark/Sweden/Czech Republic/Finland/Belgium - 2017; US release 2018)

Neon planned on rolling this out wide until they flinched shortly before the release date, ultimately limiting it to just 51 screens and VOD. Maybe it was that half of the film is in Swedish, but even subtitle-phobes maybe could've been won over by the riveting story, as BORG VS. MCENROE really could've been a sleeper hit if it had a chance. Chronicling the 1980 Wimbledon showdown between Sweden's Bjorn Borg (Sverrir Gudnason, soon to be seen opposite Claire Foy in THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB), the top-ranked player in the world and going for his fifth consecutive win, and America's John McEnroe (Shia LaBeouf), the brash, ill-tempered anger management case who's ranked #2. Documentary filmmaker Janus Metz, helming his first narrative feature, and screenwriter Ronnie Sandahl delve deep into the psychology of sports and competition, flashing back to the formative years of both tennis greats and the ways they pressured themselves and were pressured by others. Young Borg (played as a pre-teen by Bjorn Borg's son Leo) finds a mentor in Davis Cup scout and retired player Lennart Bergelin (Stellan Skarsgard), who spends years conditioning Bjorn to internalize his anger and use it on the court, one point at a time. Meanwhile, young McEnroe has perfectionist parents who push him too hard (he gets a 96% on a test, finishing first in his class, and his mother asks him "What about the other 4?" and criticizes his obsession with tennis), slowly turning him into a powderkeg of nervous, uncontrolled rage. As McEnroe ascends in the world of professional tennis, his endless tantrums, meltdowns, lashing out at spectators, and arguing with line judges earn him little respect, but Borg has been watching him and sees himself in McEnroe, the difference being that Borg's fury manifests itself in his Zen/iceman persona and his obsessive-compulsive rituals that the loyal Bergelin understands, but prove alienating to Borg's fiancee Mariana Simianescu (ANNIHILATION's Tuva Novotny).

Borg and McEnroe's epic showdown unfolds over the last 30 minutes of the film, and even knowing the outcome, Metz's verite-style brings a suspenseful and exhausting immediacy to it. The actors are extraordinarily well-cast--Gudnason is a dead ringer for Borg and it doesn't get much more inspired than having LaBeouf play McEnroe. Much like McEnroe, the actor is a chronic bridge-burner who seems uninterested in making friends in his profession, which is why he's so ideal. It's probably his career-best performance thus far, even though nobody saw it. It has to play a little fast and loose with the facts at times (McEnroe's iconic "You cannot be serious!" outburst at an umpire is depicted here in a semifinal against Jimmy Connors, but in reality, he shouted it at the 1981 Wimbledon against Tom Gullikson), but BORG VS. MCENROE is a thoughtful, insightful, and riveting look at what tennis fans almost universally consider the greatest match of all time. This is an under-the-radar gem worth checking out. (R, 108 mins)

LEAVE NO TRACE
(Canada/US - 2018)

Directed by Debra Granik. Written by Debra Granik and Anne Rosselini. Cast: Ben Foster, Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey, Dana Millican, Michael Prosser, Isaiah Stone, Art Hickman, David M. Pittman. (PG, 109 mins)

"The same thing that's wrong with you isn't wrong with me."

In their first narrative project since 2010's WINTER'S BONE, director/co-writer Debra Granik and writer Anne Rosselini again delve into a largely unknown part of America and into an insulated world that exists far off the grid. Rather than the inherently dangerous goings-on in the meth-addled Ozarks with WINTER'S BONE, LEAVE NO TRACE is a quiet and compassionate character study of a loving but codependent relationship between a father and daughter where it becomes inevitable that the roles will have to change. Like a grittier CAPTAIN FANTASTIC, LEAVE NO TRACE centers on Will (Ben Foster), a military vet with severe PTSD, and his teenage daughter Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie). They're deep in the forest in a national park in northwest Oregon, and it soon becomes apparent from the supplies and their daily rituals that they've made this spot their home. They make occasional trips on foot to the VA in nearby Portland so Will can get his ineffective medications, which he immediately sells to a homeless vet for groceries and other necessities. It's a rustic, simple life and father and daughter seem happy, but their idyllic existence is upended when police and rangers raid their tent after Tom is spotted by a hiker and notifies the authorities. Will is arrested for squatting on federal land and Tom is taken in by children's services, and once it's ascertained that she's not in danger (we learn nothing about Tom's mother other than she died when Tom was young and she has no memories of her), a social worker (Dana Millican) takes their case and tries to reintegrate them into society for Tom's sake. Kindly rancher and tree farmer Mr. Walters (Jeff Kober) reads about the pair in the newspaper and offers them a small guest home on his property in exchange for Will working for him, and Tom, whose aptitude test results indicate that she's further along in her education than students of the same age, is enrolled in school. She also takes an interest in a local 4H club and makes a new friend (Isaiah Stone), but restless and agitated Will can't adjust and isn't really putting forth the effort ("I think it would be easier if we tried to adapt," Tom tells her father). And so they hit the road, first going back to their old squatting grounds to find it a wreck, then taking a bus out of town.

Tom is unhappy about the decision ("I like it here...are you even trying?"), but goes along because she's the child. But now she's experienced some degree of social interaction that her father has chosen to avoid and the early bubblings of quiet resentment begin brewing over his making that choice for her. A cliched Hollywood product would have Tom rebel and act out, but Granik and Rosselini don't take it in that direction. Though Will makes numerous ill-advised decisions--including a trip deep into bitterly cold woods of Washington that proves dangerously exhausting to Tom--he loves his daughter and she loves him. She's fiercely protective of him but once an injury to Will forces them to temporatily settle in at a remote RV park managed by Dale (Dale Dickey, further cementing her status as the rural Melissa Leo), Tom welcomes the sense of belonging and community, especially among a group of people who also seem to be living in relative isolation from the world by choice but have found kindred spirits with one another (like much of the supporting cast other than jobbing vets like Dickey and Kober, these people don't seem like professional actors, giving the film an even greater sense of authenticity that alludes to Granik's other gig as a documentarian). The always-intense Foster turns in some career-best work here, playing Will as tightly-wound but never going off (again, a Hollywood movie would have him indulge in at least one total meltdown). He brings a low-key sense of nervous, ticking energy to any scene that takes place indoors, often conveying with total silence Will closing himself off and shutting down. He can't sit still in the house and he can't sleep in his bed. Neither can Tom at first, but she quickly grows acclimated to a "normal" life, which makes it even more heartbreaking when Will can't bring himself to recognize that and drags her away in an effort to slow down her sense of experience and independence, and hold off, even for a little while, the inevitability of losing the only stabilizing thing in his life.

If there's one thing for which Granik has come to be known, it's breakout performances by her female leads. 2004's little-seen DOWN TO THE BONE didn't make it far beyond the festival circuit, but still helped establish Vera Farmiga, and most famously, WINTER'S BONE was the film that put Jennifer Lawrence on the map and earned the then-20-year-old actress her first Oscar nomination. That trend continues with the remarkable performance of 17-year-old McKenzie, best known in her native New Zealand for the popular web series LUCY LEWIS CAN'T LOSE. As terrific as Foster is, it's McKenzie's Tom who's the heart and soul of LEAVE NO TRACE. Often speaking volumes with just a facial expression and saying nothing at all, McKenzie absolutely inhabits this character. Though their circumstances and surroundings differ, Lawrence's Ree Dolly in WINTER'S BONE and McKenzie's Tom are cut from the same cloth: wise beyond their years, an unconventional upbringing that seems perfectly normal to them, cautiously venturing into worlds they don't quite understand, and ultimately forced to be the grown-up when their parents can't or won't hold up their end of the bargain. This comes to a head in a confrontational but still-loving way in LEAVE NO TRACE's moving and emotionally devastating finale. The film takes a refreshing approach in that it presents Will as a flawed and damaged man with noble intentions, but it never judges him. Nowhere is this more poignantly expressed than in a subtle, almost throwaway moment when a social worker (Michael Prosser) comforts a discouraged Will over his giving up on a 435-question psych eval, pats him on the shoulder, and compliments him on the job he's done raising Tom and what a great kid she is. Beautifully shot by cinematographer Michael McDonough in Clackamas County's Eagle Fern Park in Oregon, and featuring an effectively minimalist score by Dickon Hinchliffe (OUT OF THE FURNACE, another film with a deft sense of location and local color), LEAVE NO TRACE looks to be this summer's indie sleeper alternative to the predictable blockbuster scene. Let's just hope it's not forgotten come awards season. It's the best film of 2018 so far.

HOW IT ENDS
(US - 2018)

Directed by David M. Rosenthal. Written by Brooks McLaren. Cast: Theo James, Forest Whitaker, Kat Graham, Kerry Bishe, Mark O'Brien, Nicole Ari Parker, Grace Dove. (Unrated, 113 mins)

Another dud from Netflix's increasingly irrelevant movie division, HOW IT ENDS might be more accurately titled WILL IT END?, an apocalyptic slog that drags on for a long two hours before an infuriating non-ending that makes the entire endeavor look like a busted series pilot. The project was in gestation for several years, with Blake McLaren's script making the fabled "Black List" of buzzed-about but unproduced screenplays way back in 2010. Director David M. Rosenthal has a couple of acclaimed indies under his belt with JANIE JONES and A SINGLE SHOT, and he's got the remake of Adrian Lyne's JACOB'S LADDER already in the can for 2019, but HOW IT ENDS has nothing to say and offers nothing new to the end-of-the-world canon. Will (Theo James of the DIVERGENT films) is a Seattle lawyer and expectant father with his longtime girlfriend Sam (Kat Graham of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES). He's got business in Chicago and plans on staying an extra night to have dinner with Sam's parents and formally ask her stern, ex-Marine father Tom (Forest Whitaker) for his daughter's hand in marriage. Tom is a humorless, passive-aggressive asshole who still holds a grudge against Will for causing his boat to sink five years ago. As a result, dinner goes about as well as expected, with Tom instantly lashing out at Will even with his patient wife Paula (Nicole Ari Parker) telling him to lay off, with Will leaving before he even gets around to the whole marriage thing. The next morning, Will is on the phone with Sam and it cuts out, and when he's at O'Hare, the power goes out, phones are dead, and all flights are cancelled when the entire US power grid shuts down just after breaking news reports of a "seismic event" off the coast of California.

Will makes his way back to his future in-laws, where Tom is sending Paula to stay with their son before driving to Seattle to find Sam, telling Will "The only question is...are you going with me?" While not quite GUESS WHO'S COMING TO THE APOCALYPSE, it promises to be a tense road trip, especially since society has devolved into a hellscape of complete chaos and anarchy in a matter of hours (sort of like CELL, another, even worse end-of-days tale). Danger lurks at every mile marker as America suddenly makes Bartertown look like a vacation resort. They pick up a passenger with Native American mechanic Ricki (Grace Dove, who played Leonardo DiCaprio's doomed wife in THE REVENANT), but face constant obstacles, usually from assorted grizzled, DELIVERANCE-esque miscreants looking to steal gas and guns. Strange weather develops, from powerful storms to unbearable heat, with random earthquakes and birds migrating in strange formations. They're forced off of the cross-country I-90 and onto endless and ominous country roads with a dark, cloudy horizon that makes the apocalypse look like the old Simpson/Bruckheimer Films logo.

A few weeks ago, I reviewed IN DARKNESS and prematurely concluded that it would have the dumbest movie ending of 2018. I was wrong.
HOW IT ENDS doesn't explain the "how" of anything, not the least of which is how are they still trying to make Theo James happen? It just becomes a series of set pieces with rote apocalypse tropes in search of a point. It's like THE WALKING DEAD without the zombies and with...weather? Who knows? There's no hook here. Will eventually ends up making his way to the ruins of Seattle alone, and in the last 15 minutes, the filmmakers introduce Jeremiah (Mark O'Brien), a new major character who seems abruptly wedged in to serve as a third-act antagonist, apparently seeing the end of civilization as we know it as an opportunity to catch Sam on the rebound based on the assumption that Will was dead in Chicago. This is where they're taking the story? This is what it's all leading up to? A creep with a crush on the hero's girlfriend? "We have a bond! We thought you were dead!" Jeremiah sneers, searching for a mustache to twirl. Dude, it's been six days. Which is about how long HOW IT ENDS feels, as the drive from Chicago to Seattle seems to play out in real time. Character behavior and situations are idiotic--after some guys ambush them and steal their gas cans, Will, Tom, and Ricki speed up and follow them through a raging wildfire, firing a gun at the car that's filled with the combustible gasoline they need. And marvel at how easily Tom manages to talk his way through a military roadblock just by saying "I was in the Marine Corps." Their arcs are equally ludicrous--Will has never touched a gun and is appalled by the very idea that they exist, but the next day, he's a crack shot firing out of a speeding car. Whitaker has little to do other than look pissed-off, and it comes as no surprise when he finally comes to respect Will and stop being such a hardass with him. The only remotely interesting character is Dove's Ricki, so of course, the filmmakers just have her wander off, never to be seen again. Much like HOW IT ENDS after its first weekend streaming on its way to the ever-growing scrap heap of forgettable Netflix Original films.

IF YOU MEET SARTANA...PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH
(Italy/West Germany - 1968)

Directed by Frank Kramer (Gianfranco Parolini). Written by Renato Izzo, Gianfranco Parolini and Werner Hauff. Cast: John Garko (Gianni Garko), William Berger, Sydney Chaplin, Klaus Kinski, Fernando Sancho, Gianni Rizzo, Andrew Scott (Andrea Scotti), Carlo Tamberlani, Franco Pesce, Heidi Fisher, Maria Pia Conte, Sal Borgese. (Unrated, 96 mins)

In the wake of Sergio Leone's groundbreaking trilogy of spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood, the copycats came so fast and furious that it had to be impossible for audiences to keep up. Giuliano Gemma starred in a pair of RINGO films, Franco Nero had the title role in Sergio Corbucci's DJANGO (1966), Tony Anthony played "The Stranger" in three films beginning in 1968, and Gianni Garko staked his claim to spaghetti fame as Sartana in a series that also kicked off in 1968. These official films spawned countless imitation Django, Ringo, and Sartana films, often with the characters crossing paths, but the five "official" SARTANA films have just been restored and released in a deluxe, extras-packed Blu-ray set from Arrow, because physical media is dead.

Never given theatrical releases in America, the Sartana films had some of the more playfully humorous titles in the genre, and things kick off with IF YOU MEET SARTANA...PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH. It's an incredibly convoluted but always enjoyable series of double-crosses and shifting alliances, as Garko's Sartana, who's more of a debonair wiseass than most of his genre brethren (Arrow's accompanying booklet with an essay by Roberto Curti likens Sartana to a western 007, and it's an apt comparison), involves himself in a mishap-filled pursuit of a chest of gold that no less than four separate sets of bad guys are attempting to obtain. There's outlaw Lasky (William Berger), a duplicitous bastard who mows down his own gang with a Gatling gun in order to keep it all to himself, only to find that the chest is filled with rocks; bandit and self-appointed "general" Mendoza, aka "Tampico" (Fernando Sancho, the genre's erstwhile "Frito Bandito," again cast radically against type as "Fernando Sancho"); corrupt bankers Stewall (Sydney Chaplin, son of Charlie) and Hallman (Gianni Rizzo), who hired Mendoza to steal the gold in the first place while they stashed it away in the casket of the recently-deceased mayor as part of an insurance scam; and Morgan (Klaus Kinski), another outlaw who's unconnected to the gold until an impromptu and ill-fated partnership with Lasky pulls him in.

The familiar spaghetti tropes are all over the place and would establish the SARTANA formula seen in the four sequels: a shipment of gold buried in casket (THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY), Sartana finding an unlikely ally in Dusty (Franco Pesce), the town's elderly, cantankerous undertaker (A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS), and Sartana's calling card of a chiming pocket watch (FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE), just to name a few. Sartana also relies on some gadgety weapons that director/co-writer Gianfranco Parolini (aka "Frank Kramer") would use in his soon-to-come SABATA trilogy with Lee Van Cleef (in the first and third films) and Yul Brynner (in the second). The more political "Zapata" spaghetti westerns were starting to gain traction in Italy, and by 1968, the first SARTANA came too far into the craze to really do anything new. Still, Garko is a pretty badass hero and the film benefits from its many colorful--and frequently stupid--villains, though Kinski fans may be disappointed in his relatively restrained performance and limited screen time, as he's offed about 40 minutes in.

I AM SARTANA, YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH
(Italy - 1969)

Directed by Anthony Ascott (Giuliano Carnimeo). Written by Tito Carpi and Enzo Dell'Aquila. Cast: John Garko (Gianni Garko), Frank Wolff, Klaus Kinski, Ettore Manni, Gordon Mitchell, Sal Borgese, Renato Baldini, Jose M. Torres, Rick Boyd (Federico Boido), John Bartha, Franco Pesce, Franco Ukmar, Samson Burke. (Unrated, 103 mins)

Gianfranco Parolini went on to make SABATA in 1969, prompting the hiring of Giuliano Carnimeo, who would direct the remainder of the SARTANA series under variants of his most frequent Americanized pseudonym "Anthony Ascott" (he'd go by "Jules Harrison" for his 1983 post-nuke EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000). I AM SARTANA, YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH is sort-of a hybrid western/detective story, with a Sartana impostor orchestrating an elaborate, Joker-esque bank robbery involving a fake corpse and several henchmen wearing uniforms identical to those of bank security.The word is out that Sartana (Gianni Garko) is a wanted man and he's soon pursued by law enforcement as well as various bounty hunters, including a wily poker shark named Hot Dead (Klaus Kinski, having a little more to do than in the previous film but still underutilized). Sartana teams up with grubby sidekick Buddy Ben (Frank Wolff) to clear his name, find the fake Sartana, and figure out why his estranged friend and wanted outlaw Bill Cochran (Federico Boido) was posing as the corpse, and the trail leads quick-draw gunman and milk-drinking casino proprietor Baxter Red (Ettore Manni). Given his name, it should come as no surprise that Baxter Red is a red herring, but there's quite a few over the course of the film, with so many characters--including Sal Borgese as an on-the-take sheriff, Renato Baldini as a corrupt judge, and Gordon Mitchell as another bounty hunter--seeming to have it in for Sartana. Things pick up in time for its SCOOBY-DOO-meets-CLUE ending, but I AM SARTANA, YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH is a sluggishly-paced sequel that's not nearly as enjoyable as IF YOU MEET SARTANA...PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH. Garko is still fun in the lead, Wolff has some amusing moments as Almost Tuco, and Carnimeo carries on the motif of Sartana being seemingly impervious to bullets, but the story just dawdles and takes forever to get to where it's going, and some of the music cues (a recurring harpsichord riff on "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," a doofus being introduced to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel") only contribute to the uneven tone of the film.

SARTANA'S HERE...TRADE YOUR PISTOL FOR A COFFIN
(Italy - 1970)

Directed by Antony Ascot (Giuliano Carnimeo). Written by Tito Carpi. Cast: George Hilton, Charles Southwood, Erika Blanc, Piero Lulli, Linda Sini, Nello Pazzafini, Carlo Gaddi, Aldo Barberito, Marco Zuanelli, Lou Kamante (Luciano Rossi), Rick Boyd (Federico Boido), Gigi Bonos, John Bartha, Antonio Casale, Furio Meniconi (Unrated, 92 mins)

The next three SARTANA sequels came in rapid succession, so rapid in fact that there's some dispute over their proper order. Based on its release date in its native Italy, the third in the series (and the third in the Arrow set) is SARTANA'S HERE...TRADE YOUR PISTOL FOR A COFFIN. These final three films hit Italian theaters over a four-month period from September to December 1970. Giuliano Carnimeo directed all three back-to-back, though Gianni Garko would sit out SARTANA'S HERE. His one-and-done replacement and the George Lazenby of the official SARTANA series was George Hilton, who would soon become a regular presence in the gialli of Sergio Martino, often teaming with the stunning Edwige Fenech. Hilton is a fine Sartana, though to use another Bond comparison, his Sartana could be deemed the Roger Moore-ish interpretation compared to Garko's Sean Connery. Hilton almost seems to be winking and smirking at times, especially when he's introduced throwing a canteen in the air and shooting it so it rains down and douses a lit fuse that's about to blow up some dynamite. The story is yet another baffling series of scheming double-crosses and backstabbing involving gold, this time from the mine of Appaloosa town boss Spencer (Piero Lulli), who's paying a group of Mexican bandits led by Mantas (Nello Pazzafini in the Fernando Sancho role) to rob his own shipments so he can horde the gold for himself. It's never quite clear what Spencer's ultimate plan is, but it doesn't really matter. SARTANA'S HERE...TRADE YOUR PISTOL FOR A COFFIN is fast-moving and Hilton fits in nicely with the slightly lighter but still generally serious tone, with an added quirk in that Sartana seems to have an obsession with boiled eggs. He ends up disguising himself as a Mexican peasant (a tactic used by Giuliano Gemma's Ringo in THE RETURN OF RINGO) to blend in Appaloosa and figure out how to play the sides against one another. Things are complicated even more with the arrival of dapper, white-suited, poetry-reading gunslinger Sabbath (Charles Southwood, best known as Winchester Jack in Mario Bava's spaghetti western ROY COLT AND WINCHESTER JACK), with whom Sartana may or may not form a Leone-esque unholy alliance. A big improvement over the lackluster I AM SARTANA, YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH, but Hilton moved on and Garko returned for the next film, which was in Italian theaters just two months later.

HAVE A GOOD FUNERAL, MY FRIEND...SARTANA WILL PAY
(Italy - 1970)

Directed by Anthony Ascott (Giuliano Carnimeo). Written by Giovanni Simonelli and Roberto Gianviti. Cast: Gianni Garko, Antonio Vilar, Daniela Giordano, Ivano Staccioli, Franco Ressel, George Wang, Helga Line, Luis Induni, Franco Pesce, Rick Boyd (Federico Boido), Jean Pierre Clarain, Roberto Dell'Acqua, Rocco Lerro, Aldo Berti, Attilio Dottesio. (Unrated, 93 mins)

After a brief sabbatical during which he starred as a gunslinger named "Santana" in a spaghetti western that was magically transformed into SARTANA KILLS THEM ALL thanks to dubbing, Gianni Garko returns to the SARTANA series with HAVE A GOOD FUNERAL, MY FRIEND...SARTANA WILL PAY, and it looks like he had some time embrace his inner EASY RIDER by letting his hair grow and sprouting a porn stache and sideburns. Storywise, this is more of the same, with Sartana getting involved in some shady real estate and property disputes, starting when Joe Benson (Attilio Dottesio) is killed by hired guns (who are in turn killed by Sartana, who pays for their funerals, hence the title), with the assumption that his land will be taken over by town banker Hoffmann (Antonio Vilar), whose mustache-twirling villainy should be obvious the moment he introduces himself as a banker. Hoffman is in cahoots with the sheriff (Luis Induni) and saloon girl Mary (Helga Line) to make a killing on Benson's land with the rumors that there's a secret stash of gold (of course), but they didn't realize he left everything to his niece Abigail (Daniela Giordano). Sartana teams up with Abigail--for revenge and romantic purposes--and engineers the requisite series of double crosses, which also involve Chinese gambling house owner and problematic 2018 trending Vulture piece waiting to happen Lee Tse Tung (George Wang), who's introduced being pulled through town in a rickshaw by bowler-hatted manservant, frequently bangs a gong, and never misses an opportunity to drop a "Confucius say..." bon mot. Once Hoffmann realizes Sartana is on to his scheme, he starts a rumor that cheating gambling house dealer Piggot (Franco Ressel) was killed by Sartana, which leads to the dead man's four vengeful outlaw brothers coming to town.

As usual, there's generous helpings of the kind of goofy humor and occasional sight gags that portend the Terence Hill/Bud Spencer westerns that would be shortly coming down the pike, and three films into his SARTANA stretch, director Giuliano Carnimeo finds his groove, and in collaboration with cinematographer Stelvio Massi, really step up his game when it comes to Leone-esque frame compositions and a few split diopter shots of the sort that would become synonymous with Brian De Palma a few years down the road. It's also got a rousing score by frequent Ennio Morricone collaborator Bruno Nicolai, and this, following the direction that George Hilton took the character, probably represents Garko's loosest portrayal of Sartana yet, especially when he pulls an ace out of his pocket and flings it across the room to extinguish a candle during his seduction of Abigail, a move that's pure 007 in spirit. But the story is still confusing as hell, which seems to be the norm for the SARTANA westerns, so you more or less have to just roll with it and assume everyone you see onscreen has ulterior motives that will become more preposterous as the film proceeds.

LIGHT THE FUSE...SARTANA IS COMING
(Italy/Spain - 1970)

Directed by Anthony Ascot (Giuliano Carnimeo). Written by Eduardo M. Brochero, Tito Carpi and Ernesto Gastaldi. Cast: Gianni Garko, Susan Scott (Nieves Navarro), Massimo Serato, Piero Lulli, Jose Jaspe, Bruno Corazzari, Clay Slegger, Frank Brana, Franco Pesce, Sal Borgese, Giuseppe Castellano, Lino Coletta, Raffaele Di Mario, Fernando Bilbao, Beatrice Pellegrino, Gennarino Pappagali, Luis Induni, Renato Baldini, Mara Krupp, Dan van Husen. (Unrated, 100 mins)

By the end of 1970, the SARTANA sequels were coming so fast and furious that it probably would've grown difficult to tell them apart if LIGHT THE FUSE...SARTANA IS COMING didn't mark the end of the official series. Though they continued working together in other westerns, it's a shame that star Gianni Garko and director Giuliano Carnimeo stopped here, as LIGHT THE FUSE is the best of the pentalogy. In a shocking turn of events, the story deals with endless double crosses and the pursuit of a stash of gold, this time with Garko's Sartana getting himself thrown into a prison overseen by corrupt marshal Manassas Jim (Massimo Serato) in order to orchestrate a jailbreak with inmate Grand Full (Piero Lulli), who Manassas Jim believes killed his younger brother and made off with the gold. Also killed that skirmish--recounted RASHOMON-style by numerous characters throughout--was a friend of Sartana's. Shifting alliances abound, as Sartana cuts deals at various points with Grand Full, Manassas Jim, Gen. Monk (Jose Jaspe in the Fernando Sancho "Frito Bandito" role), and femme fatale Belle (Nieves Navarro), while trusting only elderly Plon Plon (Franco Pesce), who of course is killed, making Sartana's pursuit of the gold personal. Not quite as difficult to follow in its labyrinthine plot construction as its predecessors, LIGHT THE FUSE earns its status as the best SARTANA late in the game when Sartana single-handedly mows down Monk's army by MacGyvering a church pipe organ into a giant Gatling gun and multi-purpose firearm and "playing" it in a showdown in the middle of the dusty town in a display of grandiosity that would make Rick Wakeman jealous. It's one of the most insane and inspired moments in the entire spaghetti canon, and helps close out the SARTANA series on a high note.

THE EQUALIZER 2
(US - 2018)

Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Richard Wenk. Cast: Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Melissa Leo, Bill Pullman, Ashton Sanders, Orson Bean, Jonathan Scarfe, Sakina Jaffrey, Kazy Tauginas, Garrett A. Golden. (R, 122 mins)

In the first sequel of his nearly 40-year career, the great Denzel Washington again demonstrates enough intensity and steely gravitas to elevate a routine and generic revenge actioner to slightly above average entertainment. Loosely based on the fondly-remembered 1985-89 CBS series THE EQUALIZER, the big-screen franchise--please don't call the next one THE 3QUALIZER--is the fourth teaming of Washington with his TRAINING DAY director Antoine Fuqua, and only slightly retains the premise of retired CIA agent Robert McCall (played by Edward Woodward in the series) offering his services to those in trouble and with nowhere else to turn. With Washington's interpretation of the character already established, the sequel is really just a high-end version of the kind of vigilante movies Charles Bronson would crank out for Cannon in the 1980s. Globetrotting from Istanbul to Brussels to D.C. to Boston, it does give Washington's McCall, a widower who leads a solitary existence and drives a Lyft part-time (he was apparently let go from his Home Depot job after the last film's in-store nail-gun and powertool bloodbath), a chance to help a few people in need: a young girl taken from her mother to her Turkish father's homeland; artistically-gifted teen Miles (MOONLIGHT's Ashton Sanders), who lives in his Boston apartment complex and is tempted by gang life; and elderly Holocaust survivor Sam Rubinstein (Orson Bean sighting!), who's spent his life unsuccessfully searching for both a stolen painting and his younger sister after they were separated as kids and sent to different concentration camps.

Of course, these subplots that most resemble the Woodward series are secondary to the crux of THE EQUALIZER 2, which has McCall investigating the murder of his former CIA boss Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo) in Brussels where she was working with Interpol on a husband/wife murder-suicide that looks staged (because it was) and may have agency ties (SPOILER: it does). McCall seeks out the help of his former partner Dave York (Pedro Pascal), who's understandably shocked to learn that he faked his own death years earlier with the assistance of Plummer. McCall does some snooping on his own, which leads to an attempt on his life by a hired killer under the guise of a Lyft passenger in a nicely-done action sequence. Plummer was obviously about to blow the doors off of something big, and the truth could be--wait for it--close than McCall realizes.

There's very little in the way of surprises in the cookie-cutter script by mercenary screenwriter Richard Wenk (THE MECHANIC, THE EXPENDABLES 2, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN), and even less in logic in some spots, especially with a climax that's essentially HIGH NOON in a hurricane in an evacuated seaside town. McCall's superhero-like Spidey Sense is one thing, but it's truly amazing how he arrived just as the storm was reaching peak strength with the bad guys very close behind, yet he still had time to plaster a stack of Melissa Leo headshots all over the place with which to taunt the killers as they search for him (also, on the way there, he had Brennan's husband, played by Bill Pullman, riding shotgun but lost him somewhere because he just disappears from both McCall's car and the movie). Like its predecessor, THE EQUALIZER 2 is harmless, brainless action fare, though it tones down the over-the-top gore until the climax, when McCall commences the throat slashings, disembowelings, and eye-gougings. It exists for no other reason than to solidify 63-year-old Washington's place in the post-TAKEN geriatric action scene (though Washington looks younger than his age, it's interesting to note how much older Woodward seemed on the TV series, which ended when the veteran British actor was just 59) and to serve as content on streaming and cable in perpetuity by this time next year. Even when he makes a bad movie--VIRTUOSITY and the terrible remake of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123--Washington is incapable of phoning it in and going through the motions. He has some good moments here and seems to be enjoying himself, even showing some of the TRAINING DAY edginess in a few spots and putting forth more effort than you'd see from a lot of his contemporaries. It's dumb, it's reasonably entertaining, and you won't remember any of it by the time you get to the parking lot. It's a summer movie.

YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE
(UK/France - 2018)

Offscreen since Woody Allen's lackluster 2015 dud IRRATIONAL MAN, Joaquin Phoenix won the Best Actor award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival for his mesmerizing performance in the hellishly brutal YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE. Adapted from Jonathan Ames' 2013 novel by writer/director Lynne Ramsay (WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN), YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE is, for all its arthouse bells and whistles, a genre revenge thriller at its core, so much so that I'm shocked it was given a limited release by Amazon instead of a nationwide rollout from A24. It's a generally "commercial" story, but told in an elliptical, minimalist way, with particular attention to sound and background detail, and with some precise and tension-cranking editing techniques that make it more substantive than the kind of mainstream studio fare that it could very easily be with a little tweaking. Phoenix is Joe, an enigmatic mystery man whose backstory is slowly revealed over the course of the film in subtle cutaways and recurring images in his dreams. Haunted by his past--abused by his father as a child, suffers from PTSD from his time in the military, and may be a former FBI agent--Joe lives in Yonkers with his elderly, ailing mother (Judith Roberts, best known as The Beautiful Girl Across the Hall in David Lynch's ERASERHEAD) and earns a living by tracking down abducted or trafficked children. After rescuing a young girl in Cincinnati, Joe is informed by his handler McCleary (John Doman) that his services are requested by State Senator Albert Vatto (Alex Manette), a widower whose young daughter Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov) has been taken and forced into sexual slavery at a brothel catering to pedophiles being run out of a nondescript NYC residence. Armed with his weapon of choice--a hammer--Joe manages to infiltrate the house, kill several people, and whisk Nina to safety at a motel while he awaits word from McCleary. But that's where everything goes off the rails: a breaking news report reveals that Vatto took a plunge off the roof of his apartment building in what's being called a "suicide." Three cops followed Joe and Nina to the motel, where they enter the room and take the girl, with one staying behind to kill Joe, who turns the tables on him but takes a bullet through the cheek in the process. It soon becomes clear to Joe that there are powerful forces pulling the strings and that he's been drawn into a situation even more dangerous than he presumed.

A lot of the buzz around YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE likened it to a modern-day TAXI DRIVER, and it's not an inaccurate take. Like Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle, Joe is a troubled combat vet who finds a purpose in rescuing a young girl from a life of a forced underage prostitution. Joe is just as shell-shocked as Travis Bickle, though he acts out even more dangerously. He routinely engages in suicidal games like sticking a knife in his mouth or wrapping a plastic bag around his head. But where Travis tries to fit into society, Joe has long since abandoned any pretense of wanting to be a part of anything. With his slumped shoulders, ratty beard, and his long hair tucked into a ponytail and hiding under a hoodie, Phoenix lumbers through this film like a wounded animal paralyzed by internalized rage. Though the circumstances and motivations are different, Phoenix's work here is reminiscent of both the raw fearlessness demonstrated by Harvey Keitel in BAD LIEUTENANT and the driving obsession of Terence Stamp in THE LIMEY, combined with the similar sense of a ticking time bomb that Phoenix displayed in Paul Thomas Anderson's impenetrable THE MASTER and James Gray's little-seen TWO LOVERS. It's an absolutely riveting, hypnotic performance--you can't take your eyes off of him--and it's a key component that helps elevate YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE beyond its rather standard, DEATH WISH-esque foundation (plus bonus points for the unexpectedly haunting use of one-hit wonder Charlene's "I've Never Been To Me."). Notoriously difficult, prickly, and unpredictable, Phoenix has been very quietly compiling an impressive body of work as he's gotten older, and with the retirement of Daniel Day-Lewis apparently still a thing, YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE is the latest film to make a credible argument that he's a legitimate contender to inherit the title of our current Greatest Living Actor. (R, 90 mins)

SWEET COUNTRY
(Australia/France - 2018)

It falls a little short of being the next PROPOSITION, but the Australian western SWEET COUNTRY is a powerful saga of frayed race relations in the 1920s Outback whose story and blistering social commentary still remain relevant today. In a desolate stretch of land in the Northern Territory, devoutly religious preacher Fred Smith (Sam Neill) allows his middle-aged Aboriginal farmhand Sam Kelly (non-professional Hamilton Morris, in a quietly powerful big-screen debut) and his wife Lizzie (Natassia Gorey Furber) to share his land and home. Preacher Fred is approached by abrasive, shell-shocked Boer War vet Harry March (Ewen Leslie) to borrow his "black stock" to help him build a fence on a nearby swath of property he's purchased. He hesitates, not really liking March's demeanor and informing him "We're all equal in the eyes of the Lord," to which March bullies him into loaning out Sam and Lizzie because "It's the Christian thing to do." Accompanied by their visiting teenage niece Lucy (Shanika Cole), Sam and Lizzie travel to March's, where the women help get his home in order while Sam endures all manner of verbal abuse while doing most of the work putting up the fence. With Lucy outside and Sam tending to some horses, a drunken March corners Lizzie and rapes her, telling her "I wanted the other one, but you'll do." Lizzie keeps the incident to herself, but March was belligerently asking enough questions about Lucy that upon returning home, Sam asks Preacher Fred to take her back to her parents on his journey into town for supplies, which leaves Sam and Lizzie to watch the ranch for several days. March ends up using another Aboriginal boy named Philomac (twins Tremayne and Trevon Doolan), who may or may not be the son of white landowner Kennedy (Thomas M. Wright), and the boy manages to escape March's property after being beaten and shackled as elderly, Uncle Tom-ish Archie (Gibson John) looks on. March heads to Preacher Fred's ranch, incorrectly assuming he's harboring the boy, and when he fires multiple shots through the doors and windows, Sam shoots him dead in self-defense.

Knowing he'll be hunted down and killed for murdering a white man, Sam takes Lizzie and heads to the even more desolate regions of the Outback, with ex-military sergeant and ruthless regional lawman Fletcher (Bryan Brown) forming a posse consisting of a deputy, plus Kennedy, the duplicitous Archie, and Preacher Fred, who insists on tagging along to negotiate Sam's surrender if necessary and to ensure he isn't shot dead on sight. Sam and Lizzie venture deep into still-unexplored areas inhabited by indigenous natives who have never seen white men, in territory so treacherous that Archie won't even lead Fletcher through it ("This ain't my country," Archie shrugs, adding "Never been here before"). Director Warwick Thornton, who won some acclaim for his 2009 aboriginal coming-of-age drama SAMSON AND DELILAH, fashions SWEET COUNTRY as a revisionist slow-burner, often effectively using almost subliminal-quick flashbacks and flash-forwards to create a sense of unease and ominous foreshadowing of tragedies to come (though his opening shot of a close-up of a pot of water heating to a boil as we hear two men arguing offscreen screams "SYMBOLISM!" a little too loudly). Rarely saying much and letting his sad eyes speak volumes, Morris is tasked with carrying much of the film and does a fine job, and Leslie is a memorably despicable villain. It's also great seeing old pros Neill and Brown in the kind of meaty roles that most veteran actors don't often get as they approach the emeritus years of their careers (71-year-old Brown is in terrific shape, looking at least a decade younger than his age, and even indulging in some unexpected Harvey Keitel exhibitionism at one point). The story does drag a bit once it hits its "courtroom drama" turn (the courtroom being outside, in the center of town), but it regains its momentum for a heartbreaking revelation and a downbeat finale that shows its characters and the audience no mercy. Barely released in US theaters, SWEET COUNTRY is a sleeper gem that deserves to find an audience on Blu-ray and streaming. (R, 113 mins)

In Theaters: HEREDITARY (2018)

On Blu-ray/DVD: THOROUGHBREDS (2018); DELIRIUM (2018); and I KILL GIANTS (2018)

In Theaters: HOTEL ARTEMIS (2018)

On Blu-ray/DVD: THE DEBT COLLECTOR (2018) and INCOMING (2018)

On Blu-ray/DVD: AN ORDINARY MAN (2018) and FIRST WE TAKE BROOKLYN (2018)

On Blu-ray/DVD: IN DARKNESS (2018) and FLOWER (2018)

Retro Review: ALIEN PREDATORS (1987)

In Theaters: JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM (2018)

Retro Review: HUMAN EXPERIMENTS (1979)

On Blu-ray/DVD: SPINNING MAN (2018) and TERMINAL (2018)

On Blu-ray/DVD: ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES (2018); CHINA SALESMAN (2018); and THE ESCAPE OF PRISONER 614 (2018)

In Theaters: SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO (2018)

On Netflix: TAU (2018)

Retro Review: DEVILFISH (1984)

On Blu-ray/DVD: 211 (2018); THE LEISURE SEEKER (2018); and BORG VS. MCENROE (2018)

In Theaters: LEAVE NO TRACE (2018)

On Netflix: HOW IT ENDS (2018)

Retro Review: THE COMPLETE SARTANA (1968-1970)

In Theaters: THE EQUALIZER 2 (2018)

On Blu-ray/DVD: YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE (2018) and SWEET COUNTRY (2018)