Good Efficient Butchery

THE PREDATOR
(US - 2018)

Directed by Shane Black. Written by Fred Dekker and Shane Black. Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Keegan-Michael Key, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera, Jake Busey, Yvonne Strahovski, Brian Prince, Mike Dopud, Lochlyn Munro, Garry Chalk, Duncan Fraser, Francoise Yip. (R, 107 mins)

1987's classic PREDATOR hasn't had a lot of luck with sequels. 1990's PREDATOR 2 has its fans but it's always felt like a script for a post-LETHAL WEAPON/DIE HARD Joel Silver project that had the Predator shoehorned into it, and 2010's PREDATORS (headlined by action icons Adrien Brody and Topher Grace) was instantly and justly forgotten (and if we're counting offshoots, there's 2004's terrible ALIEN VS. PREDATOR and 2007's improved ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM, which isn't a great movie but I'm reasonably certain I'm the only person who didn't hate it). When it was announced that veteran screenwriter (LETHAL WEAPON, THE LAST BOY SCOUT, and THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT) and smartass auteur (KISS KISS, BANG BANG and THE NICE GUYS) Shane Black had a PREDATOR project in the works, hopes were high for what came to be rather unimaginatively titled THE PREDATOR. Principal photography wrapped well over a year ago, with a planned March 2018 release, but 20th Century Fox delayed it due to poor test screenings. Black was ordered to scrap the entire third act, with reshoots taking place in March, followed by another delay with still more reshoots being done in July, just two months before the new release date. The reshoots were extensive enough that a character played by Edward James Olmos ended up being eliminated completely, but even going in without that knowledge, you'll be able to spot the exact moment that THE PREDATOR stops being a Shane Black film and starts being a rushed, compromised franchise product with the requisite bush-league CGI (the CGI in the new finale is really bad and doesn't even look finished, because it probably isn't). At least when his buddy Robert Downey Jr got him his IRON MAN 3 comeback gig, Black was still able to make the film he wanted to make.

It's a shame because for about 2/3 of the way, THE PREDATOR is a blast, and a distinctly "Shane Black" throwback to the kinds of '80s and '90s action movies we don't see much of anymore. Co-written with Black's old buddy Fred Dekker (they wrote 1987's Dekker-directed cult classic THE MONSTER SQUAD), it's pretty much a feature-length trigger warning: it's profane and vulgar, filled with quippy banter, tasteless jokes with sexist and/or racially insensitive punchlines ("What's the difference between a joke and five black guys? Your mother can't take a joke"), politically incorrect insults ("Hey, Twitchy," one guy says to another with Tourette's), an autistic kid dropping F-bombs, gratuitous gore, graphic decapitations and disembowelings, and a callous, wanton disregard for human life. It's got everything that was great about big action movies of the era of the original PREDATOR (itself a troubled shoot that really didn't come together until very late in production), and of course, it's neutered by the reliance on focus groups and an unnecessary concern with setting up a new franchise. One can't really judge Black's original third act until we see it, presumably on the Blu-ray bonus features, but there's no denying that what's here doesn't really work either. But the first 2/3 is ridiculously enjoyable, filled with typically quotable Black dialogue, some inspired callbacks to earlier PREDATOR films ("Lawrence Gordon Middle School," Jake Busey as the son of his dad Gary's doomed PREDATOR 2 character, someone spotting a bunch of motorcycles and yelling "Get to the choppers!"), and some hilarious sight gags, sometimes buried in the background, sometimes front and center, including one involving a severed arm that had the entire audience rolling.

Military sniper Quinn McKenna (LOGAN's Boyd Holbrook) is on a covert mission to take out members of a Mexican drug cartel when the operation is botched by the appearance of spacecraft that crash lands in the jungle. A camouflaged Predator slaughters the rest of his team, but McKenna, realizing he's made contact with an alien life form, manages to get away with its protective helmet and arm gear and mails it to a PO box back home. The box ends up on the doorstep of McKenna's estranged wife Emily (Yvonne Strahovski), where their autistic, genius son Rory (ROOM's Jacob Tremblay) figures out how it operates, inadvertently sending a signal revealing its location to another, larger Predator (this one featuring a modified design that looks more like a Rastafarian Rawhead Rex), with two dreadlocked Predator tracking dogs (an interesting addition) in pursuit. Meanwhile, McKenna is being railroaded by his military superiors and a black-ops government outfit run by the snarling Traeger (a gum-and-scenery-chewing Sterling K. Brown of THIS IS US) and dumped on a military prison transport to keep quiet. Traeger's goons grab biologist Dr. Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) and take her to a secret installation where the crash-landing Predator is being kept under sedation. Of course, it escapes, and, with Traeger and dueling Predators in pursuit of young Rory, she eventually teams up with McKenna and "The Loonies," a Dirty Half-Dozen group of military malcontents who've taken over the prison transport: Nebraska Williams (MOONLIGHT's Trevante Rhodes), who shot his commanding officer because "he was an asshole;" joke-cracking troublemaker Coyle (Keegan-Michael Key); chatty Jesus freak Nettles (Augusta Aguilera); British card trickster Lynch (Alfie Allen); and Baxley (Thomas Jane), whose Tourette's leads to his blurting things like "F-f-f-fuck me in the face with an a-a-a-a-aardvark!" and "Eat your pussy!" the moment he makes eye contact with Bracket.

With the kind of one-liners that recall Bruce Willis barking "She's so fat, I had to roll her in flour and look for the wet spot" in THE LAST BOY SCOUT and its over-the-top splatter, THE PREDATOR wears its hard-R status with beaming pride, and those looking for something that's as much a PREDATOR sequel as it is a Shane Black joint won't be disappointed...for a while, at least. However, it's hard to imagine anyone being really satisfied with either of the film's endings, whether it's a shoddy-looking greenscreen battle atop a spaceship or an awkward, tension-deflating coda (complete with Holbrook's hair being a completely different color than it was in the rest of the movie) that seems more suited for a post-credits stinger that should've been cut. THE PREDATOR does a good job of juggling its many characters until the final act, when the film loses Black's style and becomes another rote, quick-cut blur of action and explosions that's completely at odds with the late '80s/early '90s aesthetic that dominated the preceding 75 or so minutes. Whether it's sloppy editing or a disgruntled Black reshaping the ending of the film with a gun pointed at his head, the film loses the thread, loses track of some its characters, and starts collapsing in the home stretch. Despite this, THE PREDATOR is 2/3 of a really fun movie with affectionate nods to PREDATOR and PREDATOR 2 (love that Alan Silvestri cue), and the bygone days of 30 years ago that feel akin to something an in-his-prime Joe Dante would've made if he was a misanthropic, sarcastic wiseass. In the end, the best comparison to make with this film is that it's the EXORCIST III of the PREDATOR franchise, a film where studio-mandated, third-act reshoots done by the director under duress are completely at odds with the tone and style of the rest of the movie, yet enough of its creator's voice remains in the first 2/3 that it's still worthwhile. Now that we've seen William Peter Blatty's intended ending of EXORCIST III, it's easy to see why the studio intervened. The end result is not a washout by any means, but time will tell if we ever get to see Black's initial cut of THE PREDATOR. As it is now and as a whole, it's a mild recommendation, but with some caveats.

MANDY
(US/UK/Belgium - 2018)

Directed by Panos Cosmatos. Written by Panos Cosmatos and Aaron Stewart-Ahn. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Bill Duke, Richard Brake, Ned Dennehy, Olwen Fouere, Lane Pillet, Clement Baronnet, Alexis Julemont, Stephan Fraser. (Unrated, 121 mins)

It's been six years since Panos Cosmatos' debut feature, the instant cult classic BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, a surreal mindfuck of a waking nightmare that felt like Stanley Kubrick, Dario Argento, David Cronenberg, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Andrei Tarkovsky secretly collaborated on a sci-fi film that aired once at 3:30 am on Civic TV in an alternate universe 1983 and no one who watched it lived to tell about it. My reaction to BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW was intense. It haunted me for days, even weeks after watching it. I kept going back to it, drawn to it. It still has this weird hold on me, like it was made for me. As bizarre as it sounds, I had an almost dizzying sense of deja vu the first time watching it--not in the sense that it reminded me of other movies, but rather, that I dreamt some of its striking imagery before. Cosmatos, the son of the late journeyman director George P. Cosmatos (THE CASSANDRA CROSSING, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, COBRA, TOMBSTONE), said that his inspiration for BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW came from browsing the horror sections of video stores as a kid and imagining how the movies--which his dad wouldn't let him watch at that point--would look based simply on the cover box art. BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW was met with significant acclaim, but even those who weren't captivated by it still generally conceded that Cosmatos was a promising filmmaker worth watching.

And then, his cult fan base waited. And waited. Six long years later (eight if you consider that BLACK RAINBOW was shot in 2010 but unreleased until 2012), Cosmatos has finally returned with the eagerly-anticipated MANDY. The hype has been building since it was screened at Sundance to almost unanimous accolades in January 2018. It also gives Cosmatos a chance to work with a name actor, in this case the one and only Nicolas Cage, in one of his periodic excursions into real filmmaking where he actually gives a shit and shows he's still got an A-game if the situation is warranted. If there's any concern that Cage's presence is making Cosmatos go mainstream, then let's dispel it here and now. If anything, MANDY--the title doesn't even appear onscreen until 75 minutes in--is somehow even more impenetrable than BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, even once it settles into a somewhat conventional, revenge saga groove in its second half. MANDY has notions of duality running throughout, from the way two of its main characters strongly resemble one another to the film being more or less split into two distinct halves that last roughly an hour each. Though he appears throughout, Cage is largely relegated to the sideline through much of MANDY's more defiantly audacious first hour. Like BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, it's set in 1983, but in the "Shadow Mountains" of a surrealistic, otherworldly, drenched-in-red Pacific Northwest, opening to the haunting strains of King Crimson's "Starless" as lumberjack Red Miller (Cage) lives a quiet life with his bookish, heavy-metal loving artist girlfriend Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough). Mandy catches the eye of Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache), a failed, one-and-done 1970s folk rocker-turned-hippie cult leader, who commands his Children of the New Dawn disciples to bring her to him. This involves conjuring the Black Skulls, a gang of LSD-addled demon bikers who appear in Red's house in a sequence that plays out as an episode of sleep paralysis and take Mandy away. As Jeremiah and his acolytes attempt to brainwash Mandy, things take a horrific turn. Red is left for dead and, after picking up some weapons from his buddy Caruthers (always a treat to see the great Bill Duke), goes on a nonstop, visceral, insanely bloody rampage of vengeance against the Black Skulls and Sand's cult. And yes...this leads to a chainsaw fight that takes its rightful place alongside standard-bearers like DARK OF THE SUN and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2.

MANDY may eventually have the plot of a standard revenge saga, but it never plays like one, instead opting for THE EXTERMINATOR rebooted in some distant, drug-soaked netherworld. Red and Mandy are real people in a Pacific Northwest as otherworldly stylized as the settings of the fantasy and horror paperbacks that Mandy reads so voraciously. Where BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW was born of a young Panos Cosmatos' imagination of what horror movies he couldn't see might look like, MANDY feels like it comes from deep inside the artwork of '70s and '80s album covers. Indeed, imagery and sounds (this gets a lot from SICARIO and ARRIVAL composer Johann Johannsson, who died last February; this was his final work) accompany events that could almost be the story behind a shelved concept album conceived in 1983 by a secret supergroup comprised of members of Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Rush, Pentagram, Venom, and the 1970s incarnation of King Crimson. The world of MANDY looks like it was designed by Roger Dean and Storm Thorgerson while in the throes of demonic possession. If BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW was a waking nightmare, MANDY is tripping balls in Hell. It's Cage's best work in years, even with an extremely Cage-esque bathroom freakout in tighty-whiteys that's certain to make his YouTube highlight reel. This is a bold, daring film that's like nothing else you're going to see in 2018, but having said that, its hold on me wasn't quite as strong as BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW's Its pace is much more languid and even glacial in the first hour, and at 121 minutes, it runs a little long and has a few tedious stretches. It's also worth mentioning that there are moments in this that seem a little reminiscent of what Rob Zombie was trying to do with his ambitious 2013 misfire THE LORDS OF SALEM. Still, all things considered, in a world where "cult classic" is now synonymous with Tommy Wiseau or SHARKNADO, Panos Cosmatos is the real deal, and he's making midnight movies that will stand the test of time. Given its limited multiplex appeal, MANDY is premiering on VOD with only a small theatrical rollout. I watched it on VOD, but I'm planning on making a trip out of town to see it in a theater in the coming days. It's probably the best way to experience the immersive intent of Cosmatos' vision.

FILMWORKER
(US - 2018)

Since his death in 1999, Stanley Kubrick's legend has only grown, especially with some once-verboten looks into his filmmaking methodology, which was largely shrouded in secrecy during his lifetime. Such projects include the documentary STANLEY KUBRICK: A LIFE IN PICTURES, by his producer and brother-in-law Jan Harlan, the archival making-of doc by Kubrick's daughter Vivian that's on the SHINING Blu-ray, and Matthew Modine's essential Full Metal Jacket Diary, a coffee table book compiling the actor's bluntly candid journal entries and behind-the-scenes photos he took from the audition process through the completion of 1987's FULL METAL JACKET. Kubrick's dual nature--a genius artist with a demonstrable capacity for warmth and humor and the mercurial, 100-plus-take perfectionist who thought nothing of mercilessly haranguing actors and colleagues to the point of tears and even nervous breakdowns in the pursuit of his art--is on display in all of these. But Tony Zierra's documentary FILMWORKER gets inside the head of a man who walked away from his acting career just as it was taking off to essentially serve at Kubrick's beck-and-call to this day, even though the director has been gone for nearly 20 years. Born in 1947, Leon Vitali was a jobbing young British actor in the late '60s and early '70s, landing gigs on stage, TV, and in a few movies, never really breaking out but never out of work. His big break came when he landed the pivotal supporting role of Lord Bullington in Kubrick's 1975 film BARRY LYNDON and immediately bonded with the director, who wrote additional scenes for Vitali, expanding his role to keep him on the production. Vitali was fascinated by Kubrick's attention to detail and intensive, obsessive management of every aspect of the gargantuan production and expressed an interest in working behind the scenes. After finishing BARRY LYNDON, Vitali had the title role in the 1977 Swedish/Irish co-production VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN and asked director Calvin Floyd if he could stick around after filming wrapped and observe him putting the movie together in the editing room. He reconnected with Kubrick, who gave him an assignment to read Stephen King's The Shining and before long, Vitali was pressed into service as the director's chief assistant and trusted confidante, abandoning his promising acting career and heading to America to both oversee auditions for the crucial role of Danny Torrance in THE SHINING as well as taking extensive photographs of lodges and hotel interiors across America in order to help Kubrick design the perfect Overlook Hotel interior to be constructed on sets at Elstree Studios in London.

BARRY LYNDON stars Ryan O'Neal and
Leon Vitali, reunited over 40 years later.

With his dark glasses, long hair, and hoarse voice ravaged by decades of chain smoking, the present-day Vitali looks like the kind of aging rocker that Bill Nighy played in STILL CRAZY. It was Vitali who discovered Danny Lloyd for THE SHINING and functioned as his guardian and protector through the shoot. It was Vitali who worked closely with R. Lee Ermey on FULL METAL JACKET and had to break the news to an already-cast Tim Colceri that Kubrick decided to replace him with Ermey in the key role of the merciless drill instructor. Colceri, who was given a consolation prize of playing a crazed door gunner ("Get some!") is interviewed, and still seems haunted by losing the role, and though he was kept in the movie, he remains resentful that Kubrick demoted him via a typewritten letter (Colceri still has the letter) and tasked Vitali with delivering it to him. Numerous talking heads appear with memories of Kubrick and the heavy workload dumped on Vitali: Modine, Colceri, the late Ermey, a grown-up Lloyd, BARRY LYNDON star Ryan O'Neal (Zierra arranges an affectionate reunion for Vitali and O'Neal), EYES WIDE SHUT's Marie Richardson, past Warner Bros. execs, film historian Nick Redman, and Vitali's adult children. In addition to his duties on Kubrick's films, Vitali was also responsible for cataloging negatives, color timing, lab and restoration work, cutting trailers for countries all over the world, overseeing and approving DVD and Blu-ray transfers according to Kubrick's strict specifications, and even, as shown by one handwritten note ("Leon, billiard room!"), tidying up rooms and offices at Kubrick's estate.

Vitali at the far left, with Joe Turkel, Stanley Kubrick,
and Jack Nicholson on the set of THE SHINING

Vitali with Kubrick on the
set of FULL METAL JACKET

A look back at Vitali's childhood reveals his stern, domineering father died when he was eight years old, and it's more or less inferred by three of his siblings that his need give over everything to Kubrick was a way of filling a paternal void that's existed since Vitali was a child (one Modine diary entry in his book reads "I feel sorry for Leon, but he's chosen this life," and in FILMWORKER, he calls Vitali's servile sacrifice "a crucifixion of himself for Kubrick"). Over old home movie footage of Vitali's young children playing around stacks of film cans in a cluttered office while Vitali slaves away at a desk, his now-grown son describes his dad's 24/7 work schedule for Kubrick as "Kafka-esque," recalling a childhood memory of Vitali working late one Christmas Eve, long after everyone else left the office. Kubrick gave him some gifts and wished him a Merry Christmas, but then, "Sure enough, around 1:00 in the afternoon on Christmas Day, the phone started ringing. It was Stanley." When Kubrick died just after finishing EYES WIDE SHUT, Vitali took it upon himself to act as the keeper of all things Kubrick, nearly wrecking his health with countless sleepless nights at the Warner offices in L.A. supervising a frame by frame restoration of all of the director's films, approaching it with his mentor's same obsessive quest for perfection, so much so that he proceeded to alienate the execs overseeing the project (this is the only point in the film where an upset Vitali cuts off Zierra and says "I don't want to talk about this anymore"). Vitali recognizes the dysfunction that existed in his relationship with Kubrick (he says his tirades were similar to those by chef Gordon Ramsey), but accepts it as his calling, has no regrets, and misses him dearly. FILMWORKER is a fascinating glimpse into one of the most enigmatic and unsung figures in the Kubrick universe, a man whose selfless devotion to the filmmaker and preserving the integrity of the presentation of his work almost seems to take precedence over every other aspect of his own life. (Unrated, 94 mins)

GHOST STORIES
(UK - 2018)

An earnest British horror film that plays like an old-school Amicus portmanteau for the BLACK MIRROR crowd, GHOST STORIES was written and directed by Jeremy Dyson and star Andy Nyman, based on their popular play that debuted in 2010. The change in medium doesn't always work in the film adaptation's favor in terms of telegraphing its plot turns on its way to a reveal that isn't as clever or as original as it thinks it is, but there's some nicely atmospheric chills along the way. Nyman stars as professional skeptic and paranormal debunker Prof. Philip Goodman, the host of a reality TV show called PSYCHIC CHEATS. He's contacted by Charles Cameron (Leonard Byrne), another celebrity debunker who went off the grid in the late '70s. An embittered Cameron is aged and sickly, and confesses that he feels like an arrogant fraud and excoriates Goodman likewise. Cameron now believes the supernatural is real, and with one directive ("Tell me I'm wrong...I need to know") hands Goodman a file with three cases that he's been unable to debunk. "Case 1" is Tony Matthews (Paul Whitehouse), a widower who encountered something evil as a nightwatchman at an abandoned asylum. "Case 2" is Simon Rifkind (Alex Lawther of Netflix's THE END OF THE F***ING WORLD and the great "Shut Up and Dance" episode of BLACK MIRROR), a teenager with cold, impossible-to-please parents who had an up-close-and-personal encounter with a goat-like creature that believes is the Devil when he hit it with his dad's car on a dark and lonely road. "Case 3" is Mike Priddle (Martin Freeman), a self-absorbed, asshole businessman who believes he was being targeted by a poltergeist while his wife was in the hospital about to deliver a baby that may or may not be human.

Dyson and Nyman utilize the anthology element as each case is shown as a flashback as they tell Goodman their tales, but it's Goodman's wraparound story that ultimately becomes the central focus. There's references throughout to his own miserable upbringing with a psychologically abusive, devoutly religious father and a mother who remained quiet and looked the other way. He was also bulled by other kids for being Jewish, and as Cameron suggests, his present career as a sarcastic debunker is his way of getting back at the world. Where GHOST STORIES--both the ghosts in the cases and the ghosts of Goodman's past--eventually goes won't really be surprising by the end, but it's an enjoyable ride for the most part. The filmmakers stage numerous shots where it looks like an ominous figure might be lurking in the background, the dysfunction in young Simon's house is suffocatingly uncomfortable (he has multiple locks on his bedroom door to keep his parents out, telling Goodman "They don't like me"), and Matthews wandering the long, underground corridors of of the abandoned asylum and encountering a roomful of mannequins is an unnerving enough image that it'll take you a few moments to question exactly why mannequins are being stored in an asylum. The inconsistencies (if Cameron is off-the-grid, how are people still sending him cases?) are such that it becomes clear that there's at least one unreliable narrator among these characters, the directors can't resist going for one hackneyed, INSIDIOUS-style jump scare (no doubt a necessary concession in the transition from stage to screen) and the payoff isn't quite worthy of the elaborate buildup (it's ripped off from a certain acclaimed TV drama from the 1980s), but GHOST STORIES has its heart in the right place. Not essential viewing, but worth a stream for sure. (Unrated, 98 mins)

DISTORTED
(Canada/US - 2018)

Right on the heels of his HUMANITY BUREAU triumph, Canadian director Rob King is back with the equally dismal techno-paranoia thriller DISTORTED. Lauren (Christina Ricci) and Russell (Brendan Fletcher of Uwe Boll's RAMPAGE trilogy) are a financially well-off but emotionally troubled couple who move into The Pinnacle, a high-tech, state-of-the-art "smart" building with around-the-clock security and surveillance. Prior to the move, Lauren is plagued by disturbing dreams and visions of a figure in their apartment, and despite The Pinnacle's sense of security, the nightmares increase in frequency and intensity. Lauren starts seeing subliminal words and images flash across their TV, is constantly being stared at by neighbors scratching the left side of their neck and humming "Beautiful Dreamer," and even watches one Pinnacle resident take a dive off the top of the building. After a cursory browse through a chat room and a conversation with a neighbor (Vicellous Shannon) whose father just so happens to be a pioneer in the world of subliminal advertising, Lauren becomes convinced that the building's owners are conducting secret experiments involving binaural sound waves and message transmissions on a higher-frequency level than the conscious brain--or Rob King--can process. She learns a lot of this from underground journalist and dark web hacker Vernon Sarsfield (John Cusack), who informs her of covert government projects to brainwash the public via subliminal transmissions in "smart" buildings.

One of the dumbest thrillers of 2018, DISTORTED could've been fun in a batshit way, but its story is so muddled and its twist ending so confusing that nothing in it makes much sense. Ricci freaks out a lot, but never really sells you on what Lauren is going through, and a past trauma from which the couple still hasn't recovered is so obviously and repetitively telegraphed from the get-go that when it's finally revealed, it's not even a surprise. The exterior shots of The Pinnacle are laughable--the building is a completely computer-generated visual effect, looking like something out of a shitty Pixar knockoff, and a typically sweaty, disheveled-looking Cusack turns up midway through for a few scenes and disappears from the movie during the climax. He's wearing his usual black ball cap (as seen in RECLAIM and DRIVE HARD) with an added hoodie, a cleverly-deployed accoutrement that frequently obscures Cusack's face and allows him to further embrace Cusackalypse Now by fully committing to the groundbreaking methods pioneered by Dr. Bruce Willis and Prof. Steven Seagal, whose collaborative tutorial "Fake Shemping in the Age of Redbox" takes what was once an unfortunate necessity in the event of an actor's unexpected death and has co-opted it to vigorously prepare any once-relevant and now-visibly inconvenienced actor in the fine art of just sticking around long enough for the close-ups and a quick raid of the craft services table before letting a stand-in handle the rest. (R, 86 mins)

WHITE BOY RICK
(US - 2018)

Directed by Yann Demange. Written by Andy Weiss, Logan Miller and Noah Miller. Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Richie Merritt, Bel Powley, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Piper Laurie, Bruce Dern, Brian Tyree Henry, Rory Cochrane, RJ Cyler, Jonathan Majors, Eddie Marsan, Taylour Paige, Raekwon Haynes, YG, Kyanna Simone Simpson. (R, 111 mins)

The story of teenage street hustler Ricky Wershe, Jr., aka "White Boy Rick," is known by anyone who lived in Detroit in the 1980s, but in bringing that story to the screen, WHITE BOY RICK comes up short. Part of the problem is that the film feels rushed at best and incomplete at worst as it tries to tell too much in under two hours. There's obviously pieces of the story either cut out for time or never shot at all, but the bigger issue is its insistence on shaping the events to engineer the maximum amount of sympathy for both Ricky Jr and his "broke-ass" criminal dad Richard. This is particularly egregious when it comes to the depiction of Richard, played here by Matthew McConaughey in a fine performance when judged solely on what the screenplay is asking him to do. It's not McConaughey's fault that Richard Wershe was, according to Detroit reporters and cops who worked the case, an unrepentant shitbag that the film feels the need to present as some pie-in-the-sky dreamer and single dad selling modified AK-47s out of the trunk of his car because he just wants a better life for his kids by using the profits to open his own video store, which we see exactly one time and where he never seems to be after that.

That's the kind of checklist storytelling WHITE BOY RICK devolves into in its messy second half after a reasonably compelling first hour. 17-year-old newcomer Richie Merritt brings a sort of mush-mouthed, streetwise grittiness to his portrayal of Ricky Jr, who's 14 as the film opens in 1984, unloading some modified guns and homemade silencers on a gang run by Johnny "Lil Man" Curry (Jonathan Majors), who's an underling to his older brother, high-powered Detroit crime lord Leo "Big Man" Curry (rapper YG). Dubbed "White Boy Rick," he ingratiates himself into Lil Man's all-black crew, where he manages to stick out like a sore thumb and immediately captures the attention of FBI agents Snyder (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Byrd (Rory Cochrane), and Detroit vice detective Jackson (Brian Tyree Henry). They're looking to bust up Lil Man's operation, which is being shepherded by corrupt cops and has tangential ties to Mayor Coleman Young, thanks to Lil Man being engaged to Young's niece Cathy (Taylour Paige). Deciding to use a little fish to catch a bigger one, they badger Ricky Jr into working as a paid informant by threatening to nail Richard on gun charges. White Boy Rick starts with small drug buys that escalate, and finally has to start dealing when Jackson and the Feds want him to get closer. It isn't long before Lil Man realizes there's a snitch in his crew, with White Boy Rick obviously drawing the most suspicion.

So far, so good. But director Yann Demange ('71) tries to juggle too much in the second half: Richard valiantly trying to keep his family together; White Boy Rick's crackhead older sister Dawn (Bel Powley); falling in love and having a baby with Brenda (Kyanna Simone Simpson); recovering from an attempt on his life; hooking up with Cathy, etc. Broke after barely surviving a gunshot wound to the gut, White Boy Rick voluntarily gets back in the crack dealing business, bringing in tons of cash and getting cocky and stupid, still living with his dad in the city's dangerous east-side with a Mercedes parked outside sporting a vanity plate that reads "SNOW MAN." WHITE BOY RICK makes a point of mentioning how the Feds' interest in him was a way of exposing a ring of police and municipal corruption in the city (there's a few passing mentions of famed Detroit homicide inspector Gil Hill, best known to moviegoers as Eddie Murphy's ass-chewing boss in BEVERLY HILLS COP, but he never figures into the narrative beyond that), but this is all glossed over, more or less an afterthought. Rushing through the story leaves several characters abandoned, such as Art Derrick (Eddie Marsan), a flashy Motor City drug kingpin, and Richard's crotchety parents (Bruce Dern and Detroit native Piper Laurie), who disapprove of all the crime shenanigans but passively enable whatever their son and grandson are up to. The period detail is hit or miss and not much attention is paid to pop culture timelines (Dawn is watching the legendary Luke and Laura wedding on GENERAL HOSPITAL in a scene set in 1986, five years after the episode aired), though some more rundown areas of Cleveland do a suitable job of playing mid '80s Detroit.

The things that work in WHITE BOY RICK do so largely because the actors are up to the task (and, for DAZED AND CONFUSED superfans, a 25th anniversary reunion of McConaughey and Cochrane). There isn't a weak performance to be found here, with Powley being a real standout, but the film seems hellbent on bending over backwards to make the Wershes as likable as possible. White Boy Rick got back into dealing on his own volition before being busted and was ultimately sentenced to life in prison without parole, even after being promised by the FBI that his sentence would be reduced if he cooperated. He did, and got the life sentence anyway. There's an injustice there, especially considering the cops and the other criminals (including Lil Man) nabbed in the resulting investigation have been out of prison for years (the real Lil Man actually attended the film's Detroit-area premiere). If the filmmakers wanted to make a statement about mandatory minimums for non-violent offenders, that's fine, but by this point, WHITE BOY RICK is just bum-rushing through plot points. None of this ever resonates because it never bothers to really explore how White Boy Rick's case tied to the police corruption scandal, other than a few comments about Cathy being the Mayor's niece. We never even see the corrupt cops in the context of the story. But the worst part of WHITE BOY RICK's fast and loose historical contortions comes at the end, when onscreen text says White Boy Rick was ultimately paroled in 2017. Yeah, for the drug dealing charges. There's even a recording played of the real Ricky Wershe Jr talking about how great it is to finally be released after all these years. But the film doesn't mention that he was paroled and immediately transferred to a Florida prison for his involvement in a stolen car ring while behind bars, instead giving WHITE BOY RICK the Hollywood happy ending that Detroit's Ricky Wershe, Jr didn't get. He's scheduled to be released from his current prison stay in 2021, but you'd never know that by watching the consistently misleading, cherry-picked WHITE BOY RICK.

The real Ricky Wershe, Jr upon entering prison in 1988.

BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB
(US/China/UK - 2018)

Have I seen this color/font combo before?

A chronicle of the early 1980s L.A. Ponzi scheme that led to lost fortunes and two murders, BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB had already logged significant time on the shelf long before it found itself tangled in the downfall of co-star Kevin Spacey. Shot in late 2015 and early 2016, the film was quietly released on VOD and on ten screens in the summer of 2018, with news outlets latching on to the film's pitiful $126 opening day gross as if audiences were staying away in protest because of Spacey, when in fact it had no publicity and was getting only one to two screenings a day at those ten theaters, none of which were located in major cities. It got all the exposure of a stealth test screening. Other sites expressed outrage that Spacey was still "getting work" after the scandal, again distorting the big picture and conveniently leaving out the crucial detail that the film was on the shelf for over two years, long before Spacey's (for now) career-ending sexual assault allegations made headlines. It would be nice if all of these articles provided the proper context for the movie's dismal box office take, and as far as releasing it is concerned, let's judge it on what it is rather than on a problematic actor who happens to be in it. Not even factoring whether the movie is good or bad, there's an entire cast and crew who worked on it and shouldn't have to see their efforts get locked away forever just because Kevin Spacey is a fucking creep on his own time. Let's just be glad the next film he and Ansel Elgort both happened to be in, BABY DRIVER, managed to hit theaters before Spacey took his rightful place among Hollywood's post-Weinstein pariahs.

Ah...yes, there it is.

But even factoring out the Spacey situation, BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB was probably going straight to VOD anyway. It's essentially a DTV-level WOLF OF WALL STREET, with director/co-writer James Cox (making only his second feature since 2003's Val Kilmer-as-John Holmes saga WONDERLAND...yeah, I forgot that movie existed, too) taking the easy Scorsese-worship route, right down to the sub-GOODFELLAS narration by Taron Egerton (the KINGSMAN movies) as Dean Karny. Dean is a fast-talking Beverly Hills mover and shaker who gets reacquainted with prep school buddy Joe Hunt (Elgort). Dean talks junior-level investment broker Joe, a kid from Van Nuys who got into prep school on a scholarship and never really fit in, into stepping up his game and before long, Joe is engineering an investment firm called BBC (which means nothing; they just like the initials but end up calling it "Billionaire Boys Club"), which is really an elaborate Ponzi scheme that allows them all to live large (cue montage of partying and coke, accompanied by Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax" and David Bowie's "Let's Dance"), but they're paper rich and cash poor. Egocentric, gay Wall Street con man Ron Levin (Spacey) is eventually brought into their circle, which marks the beginning of the end and the bottom falling out, leading to the separate murders of both Levin and a wealthy Iranian businessman (Waleed Zuaiter), on the run from his country's government and who allegedly has a safety deposit box filled with priceless diamonds the BBC wants to cover their losses. This story was already told in a more thorough 1987 NBC miniseries with Judd Nelson as Joe (Nelson plays Joe's dad here) and the sole reason for this shallow and superficial redux to exist is to let some NextGen Leo DiCaprios have some fun in a WOLF OF WALL STREET scenario. There's others in the BBC but we barely get to meet any of them (along with brief appearances by Rosanna Arquette, Bokeem Woodbine, Suki Waterhouse, and Carrie Fisher's daughter Billie Lourd), and Joe's romance with aspiring artist Sydney (Emma Roberts) is strictly by-the-numbers, serving only to try to make Joe a sensitive nice guy while he's ruining the lives of his investors but feeling really conflicted about it. Elgort and Egerton are alright, and Cary Elwes has an amusing cameo as Andy Warhol, but as much as no one wants to admit it, Spacey is the best thing about BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB. The film loses pretty much all of its spark once he's whacked with about 40 minutes to go, but if this does prove to be his last film (his completed Netflix biopic about Gore Vidal has been shelved, probably permanently), he goes out with an especially flamboyant take on his usual condescending asshole routine which, let's be honest, is something at which he excels. (R, 108 mins)

SIBERIA
(US/UK/Germany/Canada - 2018)

A film whose title may also be the only place in which it played theatrically, SIBERIA stars Keanu Reeves in a ponderous thriller that feels like JOHN WICK reimagined as a European art film. The closest comparison one can make in tone and intent might be 2010's THE AMERICAN, the austere Jean-Pierre Melville-inspired mood piece that found critical acclaim but failed to win over multiplex audiences who were misleadingly sold a George Clooney action thriller. SIBERIA was written by Scott B. Smith, who also scripted A SIMPLE PLAN and THE RUINS, both based on his own novels. Smith is having a really off day with SIBERIA, with Reeves as Lucas Hill, an American diamond smuggler summoned to Russia when his business partner Pyotr (Boris Gulyarin) vanishes along with some priceless diamonds they were supposed to deliver to Russian crime boss Boris Volkov (Pasha D. Lychnikoff). Hill's search for Pyotr leads him to a remote town in eastern Siberia where he falls into an intense fling with local bartender Katya (Ana Ularu, who was memorable as Almost Milla Jovovich in 2016's otherwise completely forgettable INFERNO), despite being generally content in his marriage to Gabby (a mostly Skyped-in appearance by Molly Ringwald). Volkov grows increasingly agitated about the diamonds, which leads to one well-handled bit of excruciating cringe tension a little past the one-hour mark, but nothing really works in SIBERIA, starting with a borderline somnambulant Reeves (one of 31 credited producers), who doesn't seem to fare well these days when he isn't playing John Wick. There's no reason to care about Hill, his situation, or his midlife-crisis acting out with Katya, regardless of how vigorously Reeves and Ularu dive into their numerous sex scenes. It seems odd for any movie to rip off THE AMERICAN at all, let alone eight years down the road, and it's not even a very well-done ripoff, blandly directed by Matthew Ross (FRANK & LOLA) from a script that's so uninspired that Smith couldn't even be engaged enough to come up with a better Russian bad guy name than "Boris Volkov."(R, 105 mins)

FAHRENHEIT 11/9
(US - 2018)

Written and directed by Michael Moore. (R, 128 mins)

"Was it all just a dream?"

That's the question asked by Michael Moore in the opening moments of FAHRENHEIT 11/9, a spiritual sequel of sorts to 2004's FAHRENHEIT 9/11. Thus begins a ten-minute recap of the days and hours leading up to Election Night 2016, thought by everyone to be a certain slam-dunk for Hillary Clinton. Champagne was already being uncorked. Cable news hosts and pundits were laughing out loud about the idea of a "President Trump." History was being made with a woman being elected President of the United States. Moore sets this montage to Rachel Platten's inspiring "Fight Song," though the context takes it from uplifting to excruciating, perhaps even cruel, in a matter of moments, countered with shots of Donald Trump's party at New York's Hilton Midtown accompanied by Jerry Goldsmith's iconic score for THE OMEN. By 2:00 am, it was clear that Trump was victorious. "At 2:29 am, on November 9, 2016, the image of the 45th President was projected onto the Empire State Building," Moore says. This PTSD-inducing flashback concludes with one question from the filmmaker: "How the fuck did this happen?"

Moore, the veteran agitprop provocateur who's been taking on the powers-that-be since 1989's landmark ROGER & ME, spends the next two hours examining not just Trump, but what led to Trump, and what's become the new normal in the Age of Trump. Perhaps more than any of Moore's past documentaries, there's a palpable urgency and a barely-contained rage permeating FAHRENHEIT 11/9. Like a lot of Moore's work, it's very of-its-moment and will have a shorter-than-usual shelf life given the daily chaos of Trump's America (unlike, say, ROGER & ME, which has a timeless David vs. Goliath feel to it), and if you're going in expecting a smoking gun revelation about Russian collusion, this isn't that movie. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is seen in a split-second clip near the end and is never even mentioned by name. Moore quips in passing that, yes, Russia helped get Trump elected, and also, in his vintage sardonic fashion, posits an interesting and not-incredible theory laying it all on the shoulders of Gwen Stefani, the VOICE star who was making more per episode than Trump was getting for THE APPRENTICE. Moore claims that Trump was trying to get more money out of NBC, so he staged a fake announcement that he was running for president (cue the clip of that ride down the escalator) that backfired when he gave an insane, almost stream-of-consciousness speech that included comments about Mexicans being drug dealers and rapists. NBC fired him, but he already had two rallies booked. That, Moore says, is when Trump had his epiphany, basking in the idolatry of the adoring crowds and concluding "This might not be so bad."

As usual, Moore goes off on tangents and FAHRENHEIT 11/9 has a structure that's loose and scattershot, even by his standards. But stick with him, because it all comes together. Moore can't tell the Trump story without first telling the Flint, MI story. Specifically, the election of Michigan's Gov. Rick Snyder, a rich businessman with no political experience who promised to run the state like a business. This led to cost-cutting maneuvers that resulted in the children of Flint suffering countless health problems from contaminated drinking water sourced from the filthy Flint River instead of the clean Lake Huron. Moore calls it "a slow ethnic cleansing," with Flint being one of the poorest cities in the state and with a largely African-American population. The Flint situation is a crime against humanity and its effects will be felt for generations (though Moore does lighten the mood a bit by staging a couple of his patented stunts, like showing up at the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing with handcuffs to make a citizen's arrest of Snyder, then driving a tanker labeled "Flint Water" to Snyder's mansion, unrolling a giant hose and dousing the governor's lawn over the locked front gate). Moore also touches upon the #MeToo movement, visits the teenage activists from Stoneman Douglas High School, and meets with numerous young, next-generation politicians (including Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez) inspired to enter the arena and walk the walk by running for office.

Michael Moore and Donald Trump on
Roseanne Barr's talk show in 1998.

It's the new sense of activism that dominates much of the film's second half, and it serves as an ingenious way to ward off bias allegations. Moore's left-leaning politics are no secret, but FAHRENHEIT 11/9 takes as much aim at passive Democrats as it does Trump and the Republicans. When Moore says "Trump didn't just fall from the sky," he traces the origin back over the last 30 years. Yes, there's Trump discriminating against black tenants or demanding the execution of the ultimately innocent Central Park Five, but he also shows us the slow-moving process of creating a state of things that enables a Trump to happen, with everything from Bill Clinton's NAFTA to George W. Bush's Patriot Act, with Democratic politicians often getting campaign contributions from the same people who give to Republicans. He blasts the media fixated on Hillary's e-mails, and who cheered Trump on and gave him endless hours of free publicity (just-ousted CBS head Les Moonves' infamous quote that Trump's ascent "may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS"), even holding himself culpable for the time he and Trump were guests on Roseanne Barr's talk show in 1998 and he agreed to play nice with Trump at the request of the producers (Trump expresses admiration for ROGER & ME and quips "I just hope he doesn't make one about me someday!"), or hanging out with future Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner at the premiere of Moore's 2007 film SICKO.

Moore takes Hillary Clinton to task for not paying enough attention to states like Michigan and Wisconsin (it's worth noting that in the weeks and months leading up to the election, Moore was one of the very few people going on TV and warning people that Trump had a very real chance of winning), and, in what might be the film's most damning condemnation of Democrats falling asleep on the job, President Obama's visit to Flint where he took a sip of water and declared everything OK. Moore doesn't let anyone off the hook, suggesting that incidents such as that led to the sense of apathy and outrage, and people feeling so disenfranchised, disregarded, and left behind that they didn't see any reason to vote. "Evil is a slow-moving machine," says one talking head, but it's gaining momentum. We're shown Trump's admiration for dictators and autocrats, how his rhetoric emboldens his supporters in a relentless stream of images showing violence at his rallies, racists caught on camera spewing hateful slurs, and the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. And while Moore remains hopeful in the youth of America making a change, he doesn't shy away from the potential results of things continuing on their current path, illustrated by a devastating sequence where we're shown the rise of Hitler and the numerous--and indisputable--parallels to the dawn of Trump (Moore goes there, Godwin's Law be damned), ending with footage from a Hitler rally and his fervently adoring, cult-like supporters overdubbed with the audio of a typically rambling Trump speech. Needless to say, it syncs up perfectly.

How the fuck did this happen?

BRAIN DEAD
(US - 1990)

Directed by Adam Simon. Written by Charles Beaumont and Adam Simon. Cast: Bill Pullman, Bill Paxton, George Kennedy, Bud Cort, Patricia Charbonneau, Nicholas Pryor, Brian Brophy, David Sinaiko, Andy Wood, Kyle Gass. (R, 84 mins)

One of the most ambitious and bizarre films to roll off of Roger Corman's Concorde Pictures assembly line, BRAIN DEAD began life as a Charles Beaumont script titled PARANOIA. Best known for his contributions to THE TWILIGHT ZONE (including classic episodes like "Perchance to Dream," and "Long Live Walter Jameson"), and his work scripting earlier Corman classics like THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963) and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964), Beaumont's life was cut tragically short when he died in 1967 at just 38 after being diagnosed with both early-onset Alzheimer's as well as Pick's Disease, the latter now known as frontotemporal dementia. Symptoms began appearing as early as 1963, but by 1965, his condition worsened to the point where he was no longer able to work. His decline was rapid, and friends and colleagues recalled him having the appearance of a frail, elderly man by the time he died. A cult following formed around Beaumont's work, both on the big screen (he also scripted the 1964 George Pal production 7 FACES OF DR. LAO) and on THE TWILIGHT ZONE and numerous other TV shows of the era. Beaumont's PARANOIA script dated back to around 1961 and was dusted off and assigned to writer/director Adam Simon, a Chicago native who arrived in Hollywood and started hanging around the famed Corman lumber yard headquarters.

Charles Beaumont (1929-1967)

Beaumont's core premise remained, but Simon largely rewrote the screenplay, updating it to the then-present 1990 and retitling it BRAIN DEAD. In a way, because it was shot very much in the late '80s/early '90s Concorde style and is clearly working with a low budget, BRAIN DEAD is, aesthetically speaking, very much a typical circa 1990 Corman product. But it's also immediately obvious that something's different about BRAIN DEAD. It's headlined by Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton, both of whom already past the point in their careers where they'd still be doing Roger Corman productions, and its plot is a jawdropping exercise in surreal, alternate-reality mindfuckery that's almost completely lacking the exploitation elements that Corman typically required from his directors. BRAIN DEAD isn't an undiscovered classic, but watching it almost 30 years on, it seems remarkably ahead of its time, and with some upgraded production design and a more stylish director at the helm, it could almost pass for an 84-minute BLACK MIRROR episode.

Dr. Rex Martin (Pullman) is an eccentric neurosurgeon conducting experimental brain tissue research. He's visited by Jim Reston (Paxton), an old college buddy who now works for a top-secret and vaguely sinister corporation called Eunice. Reston needs a favor: Dr. Jack Halsey (Bud Cort, who's really terrific here), a former mathematician and numbers cruncher for Eunice, has had a complete breakdown and is currently in a mental institution, accused of killing his wife, his children, and three research assistants, murders he blames on a mysterious "Man in White." He knows vital financial and research intel and Reston believes Martin has the ability to surgically extract it from the specific section of the brain that stores such memory. Martin agrees to help, much to the satisfaction of Eunice CEO Vance (George Kennedy), but after the procedure, he begins suffering from the same paranoid delusions as Halsey, including several run-ins with the blood-splattered Man in White (Nicholas Pryor).

At a certain point, the reality of Dr. Martin collapses altogether. He's convinced Reston is making a play for his wife Dana (Patricia Charbonneau), based on the fact that they competed for her attention back in college. He watches the Man in White gouge out the eyes of Reston and Dana after Martin walks in on them having sex, only to be thrown in a mental institution when he's accused of their murders and subsequently mistaken for Halsey by the entire staff. BRAIN DEAD continues on this path, as people thought dead are suddenly alive or start changing identities, and Martin can no longer recognize what's real or imagined. The film even finds time to reference the Daoist "Butterfly Dream" story by Zhuangzi dating back to 300 B.C., not the kind of subtext you'd typically see being explored in other Roger Corman productions from 1990, such as BLOODFIST II, WATCHERS II, and SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE III.

Just out on Blu-ray from Scream Factory (because physical media is dead), BRAIN DEAD was a video store staple in the 1990s but has become relatively obscure over time. It's probably been referenced for its movie trivia value more than it's actually been seen, thanks to it being the only time that Bills Pullman and Paxton--each confused for the other by many a '90s moviegoer--appeared in a movie together (additional trivia: production designer Catherine Hardwicke would go on to direct the first TWILIGHT; and future Tenacious D member Kyle Gass can be briefly spotted as an anesthesiologist). At the end of the day, it doesn't quite hang together and its ambitions and ideas are too far beyond what a 1990 Roger Corman budget could possibly accommodate, but along with Paul Mayersberg's NIGHTFALL, this remains one of the most unusual projects to be shepherded under the Corman/Concorde banner (Simon mentions on the commentary track that Corman disliked the finished film and wanted to drastically recut it, but ultimately didn't). BRAIN DEAD is a true oddity that manages to show proper respect and homage to Charles Beaumont and old-school TWILIGHT ZONE while simultaneously being ahead of its time in ways that would anticipate BLACK MIRROR as well as certain key elements of films like JACOB'S LADDER (which hit theaters ten months later), 12 MONKEYS and INCEPTION.

THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS
(US - 2018)

Directed by Eli Roth. Written by Eric Kripke. Cast: Jack Black, Cate Blanchett, Kyle MacLachlan, Owen Vaccaro, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Colleen Camp, Sunny Suljic, Lorenza Izzo, Braxton Bjerkin, Vanessa Anne Williams. (PG, 105 mins)

Based on the popular 1973 YA fantasy/mystery novel by John Bellairs and illustrated by Edward Gorey, THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS makes its nostalgic intent clear from the start with an old-school Universal logo. Produced by Amblin Entertainment, HOUSE has the retro look, feel, and charm of any number of Steven Spielberg productions of the 1980s, so much so that it almost feels like you've gone back to 1985 to see the latest Joe Dante, Robert Zemekis, or Richard Donner movie. But the film is directed by Eli Roth, best known for his more extreme horrors of the first two HOSTEL films and the Italian cannibal homage THE GREEN INFERNO, and who just had the remake of DEATH WISH in theaters six months ago. The notion of splatter and grindhouse superfan Roth directing a kid-friendly, PG-rated Spielberg throwback might've seemed unthinkable at one point, but he creates an effectively foreboding atmosphere in its old, dark house setting and doesn't skimp on age-appropriate scares and some comical but still disturbing imagery. It got a good reaction from the few kids at a sparsely-attended matinee. I don't often see kids movies in the theater, but judging from the fact that they kept quiet, paid attention, laughed at things that were funny, said "Ew, gross!" at things that were gross, and applauded at the end, it seems Roth's efforts connected with the target audience, though it's also nostalgic fun for children of the '80s as well.

In 1955, orphaned misfit Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro) is sent to the fictional Michigan town of New Zebedee to live with his eccentric uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) following his parents' tragic death in a car accident. Jonathan wears a fez and a kimono, allows Lewis all manner of freedoms (no bedtime, he can come and go as he pleases, and he can have cookies for dinner if he so chooses) and lives in a mysterious mansion referred to as "the slaughterhouse" by the kids at school. The only rule: there's a locked room from which Lewis is forbidden. The house and everything in it seem to be "alive," which Uncle Jonathan can't keep from Lewis for very long. He soon reveals that he's a "good" warlock, with a platonic, mutually chops-busting friendship with his neighbor and purple-loving fellow witch Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett), who feels a kinship to young Lewis as she also lost her family in a horrific way in Europe during WWII. Lewis expresses interest in learning his uncle's warlock ways, and in an effort to bond with his one friend, lets young jock Tarby Corrigan (Sunny Suljic of THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER) into the forbidden room where he removes a book of demonic spells from a locked cabinet. This resurrects Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan under extensive makeup that makes him look like a zombie David McCallum), a master warlock and Jonathan's former mentor who died under mysterious circumstances a year earlier, after which Jonathan moved into his house. For the subsequent year, Izard has been tormenting Jonathan from the grave with a powerful clock hidden somewhere in the walls of the house that he intended to use for a diabolical plot to align the "magical world" with the real world, and the only thing keeping that from happening was Jonathan ensuring that Izard's book remained under lock and key.

From the Norman Rockwell-esque period detail of New Zebedee to the obligatory grouchy, busybody neighbor Mrs. Hanchett (Colleen Camp, riffing on Polly Holliday's Mrs. Deagle from GREMLINS) to a roomful of extremely living dolls to its elaborately detailed production design, THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS is enjoyable fun from beginning to end, with Vaccaro, Black, and Blanchett making an immensely likable trio of evil-fighting oddballs. Blanchett in particular seems to be having a good time, and it's not every day that you see a two-time Oscar winner head-butting a vomiting, demonic pumpkin that's been brought to life by the diabolical Izard. The script by Eric Kripke (creator of SUPERNATURAL, which sits right alongside GREY'S ANATOMY as the TV series most likely to make you say "Huh? What? That's still on?!" whenever someone mentions it) goes for some cheap laughs on occasion--Jonathan's garden has a scene-stealing, living topiary griffin with a problem controlling its bowels, and when Izard casts a spell on Jonathan, the image of Jack Black's head on a peeing infant's body is one of 2018's most impossible to shake, and that's in the same year as things seen in ANNIHILATION and HEREDITARY--but it's a fun addition to what will certainly become a Halloween family favorite for years to come. The book was the first of a dozen Lewis Barnavelt novels so far, the first three written by Bellairs from 1973 to 1976, then by Brad Strickland, who rebooted the long-dormant series in 1993, two years after Bellairs' death.

SCREAM FOR HELP
(UK - 1984)

Directed by Michael Winner. Written by Tom Holland. Cast: Rachael Kelly, David Allen Brooks, Marie Masters, Rocco Sisto, Lolita Lorre, Sandra Clark, Corey Parker, Tony Sibbald, Stacey Hughes, David Baxt, Burnell Tucker, Bruce Boa. (R, 90 mins)

"I remember coming out of the screening at the old MGM building and standing there with the executives from Lorimar and nobody knew what to say to each other. Everybody was just standing there, dumbfounded." - SCREAM FOR HELP screenwriter Tom Holland

Though his place in horror history would soon be secured by writing and directing 1985's FRIGHT NIGHT and 1988's Chucky-spawning CHILD'S PLAY, Tom Holland already established his genre and cult movie bona fides by writing 1982's THE BEAST WITHIN, 1982's CLASS OF 1984, and 1983's PSYCHO II. Directed by Australian Hitchcock disciple Richard Franklin (PATRICK, ROAD GAMES), the excellent PSYCHO II surprised everyone, and the Franklin/Holland team reunited for 1984's generally well-received CLOAK AND DAGGER. Holland wanted Franklin to direct his script for SCREAM TO HELP, but it ended up in the hands of Michael Winner, the journeyman British director best known for his numerous collaborations with Charles Bronson, most notably 1974's landmark vigilante thriller DEATH WISH. Whether it's 1977's "gateway to Hell" horror film THE SENTINEL, with its use of circus freaks and a young Beverly D'Angelo introducing herself to heroine Cristina Raines by vigorously masturbating through her leotard, or 1982's DEATH WISH II, with an almost unbearably brutal gang-rape so over-the-top that some of the crew walked off the set in disgust when it was being filmed, Winner had a reputation as a button-pushing provocateur, though in the parlance of our times, one could also call him the directorial equivalent of an online troll. He was capable of making movies and behaving himself (1971's LAWMAN, 1972's THE MECHANIC, 1973's THE STONE KILLER), but the early '80s saw Winner going on a gonzo and often unbelievably nasty streak that more or less cemented his reputation through his retirement from filmmaking in the late '90s to begin a new career as the Sunday Times restaurant critic, to his death in 2013 at 77.

Just out on Blu-ray from Scream Factory (because physical media is dead), SCREAM FOR HELP was a fixture in every video store in America in the 1980s but never received much theatrical exposure aside from a few scattered test engagements in the summer of 1984. It was released by the prolific television production company Lorimar, who had a film division for a while but was just starting to branch out into distribution. After the test screenings tanked, they decided to make SCREAM FOR HELP one of the first releases under their Karl-Lorimar Home Video banner, a joint venture with Karl Home Video, the company behind the phenomenally successful Jane Fonda workout videos. After the VHS era, SCREAM FOR HELP fell into obscurity until a 2016 screening at the New Beverly in Los Angeles alerted cult movie scenesters and bad movie aficionados that a real doozy had fallen through the cracks. SCREAM FOR HELP certainly has its bad movie charms, but I don't find it nearly as bonkers as Winner's next film, 1985's insane DEATH WISH 3, and it's certainly not as egregiously awful as other trendy bad movie staples, like TROLL 2, MIAMI CONNECTION, or THE ROOM. Much of the laughs in SCREAM FOR HELP come from star Rachael Kelly's terrible line readings or Winner's sudden kamikaze dives into into shock value antics, whether it's an unexpected, explicit sex scene or Kelly forced to play an entire scene with her hand covered in blood from her virginal character's broken hymen. There's no need for the scene in question to go off on that tasteless tangent, but that's exactly why Winner did it.

The story, utilizing some of the clunkiest exposition imaginable, in many ways prefigures the 1987 sleeper hit THE STEPFATHER, as Christie Cromwell (Kelly), a 17-year-old in New Rochelle, NY, is convinced that her new stepfather Paul Fox (David Allen Brooks) is plotting to kill her mother Karen (Marie Masters). Wealthy Karen owns the local car dealership, and she recently dumped Christie's nice father (we never see him) for the younger, hunky Paul, her top salesman. Christie's been so adamant in her accusations that she even missed a stretch of school after her mother forced her to see a shrink. Still, she persists, especially after a handyman is electrocuted in the basement in an "accident" that she's convinced was set-up for her mother. She follows Paul around and discovers he's having an affair with trashy Brenda Bohle (Lolita Lorre), and the two are in cahoots with Brenda's psycho brother Lacey (Rocco Sisto) to get Karen's fortune. Soon, Christie's best friend Janey (Sandra Clark) is run over by a car in an "accident" meant for Christie, and Christie and Janey's stud boyfriend Josh Dealey (Corey Parker) borrow Karen's car only to have the brakes go out. Unable to convince anyone--her mother, Josh, or his police commissioner father (Tony Sibbald)--that Paul is trying to murder both her and her mother, Christie takes drastic measures--a Polaroid of Paul and Brenda getting it on--which is enough to convince Karen to kick him out of the house. Bad idea, since that only leads to the bickering trio of Paul, Brenda, and Lacey (who's not Brenda's brother but her husband, and he's not very happy about her enjoying so much of her time with Paul) staging a DESPERATE HOURS home invasion to do away with Christie and her mom--who's already in a wheelchair after breaking her leg in yet another botched attempt on her life--once and for all...if they don't kill each other first!

SCREAM FOR HELP's tone is all over the place. It revels in sleaze and nastiness, but it's shot almost like a TV-movie with Kelly's Christie being a haughty, plucky, self-assured Nancy Drew-type. She constantly addresses all the males in the movie by their full name, which quickly turns into a running gag."I was right about Paul Fox!" she says to Janey and Josh, both of whom know who Paul is, thus negating the need for her to specify "Paul Fox." This quirk continues with other statements, like "I'm telling the truth, Josh Dealey!" and, of course, "Fuck you, Josh Dealey!," all emphatically delivered by young Kelly, who logged some time in the late '70s as an orphan on AS THE WORLD TURNS, which may explain her acting style. Kelly quit acting after SCREAM FOR HELP, as did one-and-done co-stars Lorre and Clark, and of the surviving main cast members (Sibbald died in 2011), only Sisto and Parker are still active. But daytime soaps did provide a long career for Masters, a vet of both ONE LIFE TO LIVE and ANOTHER WORLD, but who's best known for spending 35 years on AS THE WORLD TURNS, split over two lengthy stints from 1968-1979 and then later returning in 1986 and staying until the show's end in 2010 (Brooks starred in the 1987 cult horror film THE KINDRED and eventually ended up on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS in the late '90s).

Michael Winner (1935-2013)

Though it wasn't what Holland had in mind, it's possible Winner was going for a overly melodramatic fusion of soap opera and sleazy slasher, so it's likely the humor is intentional and Winner is just having a laugh. The baffling, off-kilter aura extends to the strange soundtrack by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones (Winner was an apparent Zeppelin superfan, having had guitarist Jimmy Page do the music for DEATH WISH II and DEATH WISH 3), who contributes overwrought instrumental cues and a mix of programmed pop (the Jones-sung "Bad Child"), radio-ready rock (Jones teams with Page for "Crackback" and the pair are joined by Yes frontman Jon Anderson for "Silver Train"), and the schmaltzy ballad "Christie," sung by Anderson. The SCREAM FOR HELP soundtrack was released by Atlantic as Jones' debut solo album, but it ended up in cut-out bins as quickly as the movie was shipped off to video stores. The film's revival as a cult classic is a mystery to Holland, who was so perplexed by Winner's decisions and upset over how SCREAM FOR HELP turned out that he demanded to direct his FRIGHT NIGHT script himself.

HOLD THE DARK
(US/Switzerland - 2018)

Directed by Jeremy Saulnier. Written by Macon Blair. Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgard, James Badge Dale, Riley Keough, Julian Black Antelope, Peter McRobbie, Tantoo Cardinal, Macon Blair, Jonathan Whitesell, Savonna Spracklin, Maureen Thomas, Sean Hoy, Brian Martell, Beckam Crawford. (Unrated, 125 mins)

Adapted from William Giraldi's 2015 novel, the bitterly cold and endlessly snowy Netflix Original HOLD THE DARK is the latest bleak, grim thriller from BLUE RUIN and GREEN ROOM director Jeremy Saulnier. It's the filmmaker's most ambitious work yet, with some stunning cinematography by Magnus Nordenhof Jonck, jaw-dropping aerial shots that would look incredible on a big screen, and one of the most masterfully-staged and brilliantly-executed shootouts to come down the pike in quite some time. This long sequence, with its tension escalating to unrelenting terror and punctuated by bursts of shocking and extremely graphic violence, is the centerpiece of HOLD THE DARK and as a result, what follows can't help but pale in comparison, especially since Saulnier and screenwriter Macon Blair (the star of BLUE RUIN and the writer/director of I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE) jettison the more procedural, straightforward plotting of Giraldi's novel to go for something more allegorical and ambiguous. In a way, it's gussying up what could be a 90-minute commercial thriller and turning it into a somber slow-burner that runs just over two hours and veers toward the arthouse, giving it the distinct feel of something A24 would pick and open nationwide just to piss people off. It often doesn't feel too far removed from last year's sleeper hit WIND RIVER, and though it has that distinct sense of Saulnier dread and despair, it could also be seen as what might happen if Taylor Sheridan remade WOLFEN.

In the small village of Keelut in the northernmost reaches of Alaska, three children have been taken away by wolves and are presumed eaten. One grieving mother is Medora Slone (Riley Keough), whose six-year-old son Bailey (Beckam Crawford) is the latest victim. Shell-shocked and alone--her soldier husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgard) is in Fallujah and she hasn't yet notified him of Bailey's death--she sends a letter to renowned nature writer and wolf expert Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), imploring him to track down and kill the wolf who took Bailey. Core arrives in Keelut and is almost as much of a broken soul as Medora, estranged from his grown daughter and hoping to visit her in Anchorage, where she teaches. There's an interesting subtext to these early scenes that show man is the interloper and wasn't meant for these parts, and while he agrees to track the wolf pack, he reminds Medora that "the natural order of things doesn't warrant revenge." Meanwhile, in Fallujuh, Vernon--after doing something that's the first of the film's many jolting shocks--is sent home after taking a sniper's bullet in the neck, and...

Well, that's about all the plot that can be summarized without going into significant spoilers. In short, Core has been summoned to Keelut under misleading circumstances. There's also, in no particular order, a padlocked cellar housing something unexpected that sends the story in a completely different direction, Vernon's reaction to his son's death sending him on a quest for revenge with his friend and fellow grieving father Cheeon (Julian Black Antelope), the Eskimo locals deeming the "Nordic-looking" Medora possessed by a wolf-demon known as a "tourmaq," and a melancholy Core reluctantly finding himself teamed with Donald Marium (James Badge Dale), the weary sheriff of Emery, the nearest thing resembling a modern town, and under whose jurisdiction Keelut falls. HOLD THE DARK is a film that's not eager to wrap things up in a conventional way, and that sometimes works against it. The ending is ambiguous to the point of frustration, and Saulnier and Blair seem unsure of where to take the narrative after the truly harrowing shootout that rivals anything in GREEN ROOM and is easily the most impressive single sequence of the filmmaker's career thus far. It's admirable that they don't spell things out like the novel did, particularly when it comes to Vernon and Medora's marriage, but there's clearly something "off" from the start, and that's even before a sleeping Core is stirred awake by a nude Medora wearing nothing but a ceremonial wolf mask as she grabs his hand and forces him to choke her. HOLD THE DARK establishes a parallel with the Slones and the wolf pack, and it's interesting to look back at the film once it's over and see how Saulnier and Blair have laid the reveals in plain sight all along. While that makes for some clever twists, it also feels like HOLD THE DARK is trotting out too many enigmatic bells and whistles in an attempt to be more highbrow than it needs to be. That said, what's here is an impressive step up in scope for Saulnier and Blair, and the cast brings their A-game, particularly Wright (why doesn't he get more leads?) and Dale, who's never been better. Part mystery, part culture-clash drama (Cheeon has a serious beef with the Emery police after it took an entire day for them to investigate his daughter's disappearance), and part horror film, HOLD THE DARK sucks you in and keeps your attention, and its strong points far outweigh its occasional hiccups.

SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD
aka MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD
(Italy - 1978; US release 1979)

Directed by Sergio Martino. Written by Cesare Frugoni and Sergio Martino. Cast: Ursula Andress, Stacy Keach, Claudio Cassinelli, Antonio Marsina, Franco Fantasia, Lanfranco Spinola, Carlo Longhi, Luigina Rocchi, Akushla Sellajaah, T.M. Munna, M. Suki, Dudley Wanaguru, Gianfranco Coduti. (R, 85 mins/Unrated, 103 mins)

Not as consistently disgusting as some of its more notorious contemporaries in the Italian cannibal craze, Sergio Martino's 1978 contribution MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD is almost a mondo take on a traditional jungle adventure for most of its duration. That's especially the case in its significantly truncated US version, retitled SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD and released on the drive-in circuit by a relatively fledgling, pre-Freddy Krueger New Line Cinema in the spring and summer of 1979. Both versions--Martino's full-strength 103-minute director's cut and New Line's 85-minute US re-edit--are on Code Red's just-released SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD Blu-ray (because physical media is dead), and they offer a study in contrasts where each has its own unique strengths, the US cut in part because New Line saw fit to trim some of the fat. Indeed, the R-rated, 85-minute cut is better-paced and eliminates a talky early scene at the British consulate that ultimately makes no sense in the longer version. And while it retains a surprising amount of onscreen animal killing--always the major deterrent when it comes to one's ability to enjoy this type of tawdry exploitation fare--it suffers from almost complete lack of any graphic gut-munching, usually leaving the aftermath or reaction shots of other actors. In Martino's version, one major character is disemboweled and devoured, with a lingering shot of what feels like a mile of intestinal tract being yanked out of his gut, while in the US cut, it's reduced to one distant shot of the tribe chieftain holding up the victim's heart. Likewise, a graphic castration shown in Martino's version is merely implied in the US cut. The biggest difference in the uncut version is the inclusion of a CALIGULA-esque cannibal orgy, with some up-close and borderline pornographic footage of a young tribal woman masturbating along with some simulated bestiality involving a tribesman and a large pig. These shots were included in Martino's reconstructed version originally released by Anchor Bay back in the halcyon days of the Eurocult DVD explosion, and are understandably nowhere to be found in New Line's American cut. At the end of the day, regardless of which version of SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD you watch, both are trashy enough to make you wonder what the hell Stacy Keach and Ursula Andress are doing in it.

Andress is wealthy Susan Stevenson, who arrives in New Guinea with her younger brother Arthur (Antonio Marsina) in search of her missing explorer husband Henry (played in photos by perennial Eurocult bit player Tom Felleghy). They believe he was headed for the cursed mountain of Ra-Rami on the island of Roka, but the British consulate refuses to authorize a search and rescue mission. They instead direct her to Dr. Edward Foster (Keach), an anthropologist who happens to have been a close associate of Henry's (if you're wondering why she didn't just go to him in the first place, the US cut completely removes the ultimately pointless sequence at the British consulate) and is the only person who's been to Ra-Rami and made it back alive. Foster agrees to guide them on the treacherous trek to Roka, though tensions soon flare between him and the obnoxious Arthur and they're eventually joined by rugged adventurer Manolo (Martino regular Claudio Cassinelli). Foster confesses that he was captured by the Puka, a tribe on Roka, and was forced to partake in their cannibal rituals ("You never forget the taste of human flesh!" Foster cries in what's not one of Keach's most dignified moments), and is going along on the trek not to save Henry, but to wipe out the Puka once and for all. Susan and Arthur have their own secret, as she's not quite the probable grieving widow (she attempts to seduce Manolo), but is instead driven by TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE-esque greed and wiling to put Foster and Manolo at risk, knowing Henry was searching for a massive secret uranium deposit on Roka, and they want those riches for themselves.

The expedition is whittled down, from Foster's native guides getting killed along the way to Keach making an abrupt exit with about 35 minutes to go when an injured Foster falls down a waterfall in one of Eurotrash cinema's more hilarious dummy deaths. Susan, Arthur, and Manolo are captured by the Puka and are introduced to the decaying, oozing corpse of her husband, with a Geiger counter planted in his chest and worshiped like a god by the Puka. Then they're submitted to the usual cannibal ritual antics--Arthur is eaten, Manolo forced to watch, and Susan is stripped nude and given a long, lingering oil and body paint rubdown in a scene that would be repeated with Alexandra Delli Colli in DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. and with Bo Derek in TARZAN THE APE MAN, directed by her husband John Derek, who was once married to--wait for it--Ursula Andress. Martino's version comes to a screeching halt with the X-rated orgy, which really slows things down in a way that makes the third act of the US version move a lot faster, but it's also missing Arthur's disgusting demise, instead relying on Cassinelli reaction shots to convey the horrors taking place. It's worth noting that neither Andress nor Keach are around for the really gross stuff other than an early scene where Foster's guides capture a small crocodile and slice it open for food. Keach is killed off before they even encounter the cannibals, but up to that point, much of the big names' interactions with the horrific onscreen carnage was limited to the magic of the cutting room: the explorers are rowing along a river and someone says "Look!" as Martino cuts to footage of a giant lizard barfing up a snake (that one's not in the New Line version). Martino also gets a thumbs down for a morally bankrupt shot of a monkey being thrown by some rigged mechanism right into the waiting mouth of a large crocodile (that's in the New Line version), essentially negating the oft-repeated argument from directors of these cannibal films that these were examples of "survival of the fittest" caught on camera (some of SLAVE's animal killings were later recycled by Umberto Lenzi for 1980's EATEN ALIVE).

Martino's uncut version looks terrific on Code Red's Blu, and there's an HD transfer of the US cut that's not quite as good in quality but still looks better than it has in any home video incarnation. Keach is on hand for a new interview and expresses no regrets over appearing in the film (this was the same year that his uptight Sgt. Stedenko was a memorable foil to Cheech and Chong in UP IN SMOKE), saying it offered him a chance to work with Andress and to see Sri Lanka. where the exteriors were shot, and where Martino and Cassinelli would return for 1979's THE GREAT ALLIGATOR. He has some vivid memories of the shoot and shares stories about Andress and Cassinelli, and has a good laugh at his ridiculous death scene, but he still doesn't seem to be fully aware of just how foul SLAVE gets in the last third after he was no longer around. 1978 found Keach at the end of a brief sojourn into Eurocult, which included the 1976 gangster thriller STREET PEOPLE and Umberto Lenzi's cheap-looking 1978 WWII saga THE GREATEST BATTLE. But none of those were as dubious as SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, where the involvement of respectable actors like Keach and Andress is certainly on par with Henry Fonda in TENTACLES and Richard Harris in STRIKE COMMANDO 2 in the "How the fuck did this happen?" chronicles of Italian trash cinema.

GOTTI
(US/UK - 2018)

A longtime pet project of John Travolta's (and we know those always turn out great), the dismal GOTTI was set to be released directly to VOD in December 2017 until Lionsgate abruptly whacked it and sold it back to the producers, who were hoping for a wide release with another distributor. It didn't quite pan out that way, with Vertical Entertainment and MoviePass teaming up to get it on 500 screens, with 40% of the people who saw it theatrically being MoviePass subscribers. Couple that with some obvious juicing of the moviegoer ratings and reviews on Rotten Tomatoes (where a suspicious number of glowing GOTTI reviews were written by people who just joined the site and reviewed nothing but GOTTI), and one might assume GOTTI is not very good. And they'd be right. It's quite terrible, actually, and you know from the start that it'll be something special when two consecutively-placed credits read "Emmett Furla Oasis Films" and "Emmet (sic) Furla Oasis Films." Travolta, one of 57 (!) credited producers, spent years getting this project off the ground, but it looks just like any other straight-to-VOD, Redbox-ready clunker, with NYC mostly unconvincingly played by Cincinnati. GOTTI, a film that makes KILL THE IRISHMAN look like GOODFELLAS, isn't very interested in telling a story as much as it is fashioning a John Gotti hagiography, being quite open in its admiration of "The Teflon Don" and his family, as if they were just hardworking, everyday folks getting a bum rap from the government. It plays like a long "Previously on..." recap from a mercifully non-existent TV series, with no drive or momentum to its narrative and instead going for a Cliffs Notes recap of major events in Gotti's life, with constant mentions of rats, respect, and "fuckin' cocksuckas!" It actually opens with Travolta in full Gotti makeup, breaking the fourth wall, standing with his back to the NYC skyline and addressing the viewer from beyond the grave like he's hosting a TV special: "This is New York City...MY fuckin' city!"

Somehow, it gets worse. A framing device of a terminally ill Gotti (Travolta plays these scenes sans wig) being visited in prison by his son John A. Gotti, aka "Junior" (Spencer Lofranco) comes back around only sporadically. Gotti's rise in the ranks of the Gambino crime family, mentored by underboss Neil Dellacroce (Stacy Keach), is represented by one hit in an empty bar and Carlo Gambino (Michael Cipiti) is never seen or mentioned again; there's a lot of talk about dissension in the ranks that results in the infamous Gotti-ordered 1985 assassination of boss Paul Castellano (Donald Volpenhein) outside a Manhattan steakhouse, but Castellano is seen on one or two occasions and has no dialogue, so we're never really sure what the beef is. The relationship between Gotti and his right-hand man Sammy "The Bull" Gravano (William DeMeo) is so glossed over that when Gravano eventually rats on him, the dramatic tension fails to resonate in any way. Most of the scenes of Gotti's home life involve him yelling at wife Victoria (Travolta's wife Kelly Preston) to get out of bed, as she's fallen into a deep depression after the 1980 death of their son Frankie when a neighbor accidentally hit him with his car. Like the script for GOTTI, that neighbor soon vanished and was never seen again. Given the loss of their own son Jett in 2009, there is some undeniably raw emotion in the way Preston and Travolta play the initial reaction to Frankie Gotti's death, and it's maybe the only moment in GOTTI that comes across as genuine and real.

Years jump by and back again (yet through it all, Lofranco looks exactly the same, with no effort to make him look 15-20 years older in the later scenes), and as a result, director Kevin Connolly (best known from his days co-starring on ENTOURAGE) basically comes off as Dipshit Scorsese. He never gets any kind of pacing or rhythm going, and seems more interested in what songs he can get on the soundtrack, whether it's some incongruously contemporary songs by Pitbull, or ridiculously irrelevant needle-drops, like the theme from SHAFT when Gotti whacks someone in the early '70s, the Bangles'"Walk Like an Egyptian" when he's strutting out of the courthouse, the Pet Shop Boys'"West End Girls" when Gotti underling Frank DeCicco (Chris Mulkey) is blown up in his car (why is that song in that scene?), Duran Duran's "Come Undone" when Junior's house is raided and the Feds bring him in, or The Animals'"House of the Rising Sun" during archival footage of the real Gotti's funeral, as if Scorsese's CASINO never happened. The screenplay is credited to occasional Steven Soderbergh collaborator Lem Dobbs (KAFKA, THE LIMEY, HAYWIRE) and co-star Leo Rossi, though there's little evidence that any of it was used in the finished product. GOTTI doles out its exposition in casual asides (with no previous mention of the brain cancer that would ultimately kill him, Dellacroce stops in mid-sentence, rubs his forehead and mutters "Oh, this cancer!" and goes back to what he was saying) and info dumps treat both the characters and the audience like idiots. The worst example of this comes after Gotti tells Dellacroce of his planned power play to take control of the families, and Stacy Keach, a professional actor with over 50 years in the business, is actually required to say "But only if you have the support of the other Five Boroughs...Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, the Bronx." Are we really supposed to believe that middle-aged, lifelong New Yorker John Gotti doesn't know what the Five Boroughs are and needs to have them specifically spelled out for him? (R, 104 mins)

DEATH RACE: BEYOND ANARCHY
(US - 2018)

The long-delayed fourth entry in the DEATH RACE franchise was shot two years ago and shelved while Universal instead opted to first release the offshoot DEATH RACE 2050, a direct sequel to 1975's DEATH RACE 2000. Whether or not there's two competing DEATH RACE franchises remains to be seen, but Paul W.S. Anderson's big-screen DEATH RACE with Jason Statham in 2008 gave way to a surprisingly decent pair of DTV sequels, both well-directed by Roel Reine, who succeeded in accomplishing much with drastically reduced budgets and has consistently displayed a knack for making his DTV sequel assignments (he's also directed THE SCORPION KING 3, THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS 2, and HARD TARGET 2) look much more polished and professional than most of their ilk. Reine is out for DEATH RACE: BEYOND ANARCHY, and in his place is another DTV sequel specialist in Don Michael Paul, whose credits include JARHEAD 2, KINDERGARTEN COP 2, a fourth LAKE PLACID, a fifth and sixth TREMORS, and a fifth and sixth SNIPER. BEYOND ANARCHY is less a sequel to its three predecessors and more a response to MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, as the hero driver "Frankenstein" is now a faceless villain who hides behind a mask (played by stuntman Velislav Pavlov and voiced by Nolan North). He essentially serves as the film's Immortan Joe, a ruthless driver in the now-illegal Death Race, which is still held inside a walled city called The Sprawl that serves as America's prison, a concept in no way reminiscent of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. Frankenstein finds new competition in Snake Plis--er, I mean, Connor Gibson (Zach McGowan), a new convict who falls in with Baltimore Bob (Danny Glover) and the ubiquitous Lists (series mainstay Fred Koehler), who's basically the Joe Patroni of the DEATH RACE franchise. Bob and Lists are running Death Race, broadcasting to 54 million viewers on the dark web (some "dark web"), and after an hour of fight-to-the-death battles, Gibson passes his tests and gets in the final race, teamed with tough-as-nails navigator Bexie (Cassie Clare), and it's pretty much business as usual.

Shooting in Bulgaria, Paul makes effective use of abandoned warehouses and factories to help establish The Sprawl as an apocalyptic hellhole, but the action sequences are done in a headache-inducing, quick-cut, shaky-zoom style, there's too many annoying supporting characters (like Lucy Aarden's Carley, Frankenstein's porn star girlfriend and de facto Grace Pander by way of TMZ, a clever idea that falls flat), there's too much dated, blaring, aggro nu-metal (including too many appearances by what looks like a Bulgarian knockoff of Coal Chamber, obviously riffing on FURY ROAD's beloved Doof Warrior), and it's entirely too long at an exhausting 111 minutes. Danny Trejo returns from the second and third installments as Goldberg, who's now running a gambling den in Mexico and watching Death Race on TV, obviously knocking out his scenes in a day and never interacting with any of the other cast members. TV vet McGowan (THE 100, BLACK SAILS, AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D., THE WALKING DEAD) is a dull hero (he and Paul reteamed for the upcoming fifth SCORPION KING), Glover is collecting a paycheck, and Koehler is apparently waiting around in hopes that someone will write him a Lists origin story prequel. DEATH RACE: BEYOND ANARCHY is by far the goriest of the bunch and has a surprising amount of skin, but despite the set-up for yet another sequel, this series is starting to run on fumes. (Unrated, 111 mins)

TALES FROM THE HOOD 2
(US - 2018)

A belated DTV sequel to the 1995 cult horror anthology, TALES FROM THE HOOD 2 is occasionally heavy-handed, cheaply made, and could use some more polished actors, but it gets a big boost from the return of the core creative personnel--the writing/directing team of Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott, and producer Spike Lee--which helps make it more than a mere nostalgic, brand-name cash-in. With bona fides in horror (Scott produced 1987's THE OFFSPRING and 1989's STEPFATHER II) and as important black filmmakers in the early '90s (Scott produced The Hughes Brothers' MENACE II SOCIETY, while Cundieff was a protege of Lee's who co-starred in SCHOOL DAZE and wrote and directed the hip-hop mockumentary FEAR OF A BLACK HAT), Cundieff and Scott have picked the right time for a TALES FROM THE HOOD sequel, with at least two of the segments being overt responses to the Age of Trump, and another that couldn't possibly be any more timely, right down to a powerful conservative declaring "Boys will be boys" and sympathizing with a pair of male sexual predators after they're given a grisly comeuppance. A mix of humor and horror, TALES FROM THE HOOD 2 has some serious statements to make and there are times when it's a little too goofy and thus softens the blow somewhat, but it's better than it has any business being, closing big with a segment that's bold in concept and incendiary in execution.

The hokey wraparound segment, "Robo Hell" has storyteller Diomedes Simms (the great Keith David, stepping in for Clarence Williams III's Portifoy Simms) meeting with ultra-conservative weapons manufacturer, private prison magnate, and aspiring politico Dumass Beach (Bill Martin Williams as Robert John Burke as Mike Pence). Overtly racist ("Your brothers and sisters make up a lot of my profits," he sneers to Simms) and constantly groping his female assistant, Beach has overseen the development of a security robot called RoboPatriot, and needs to fill its database with stories and tales to aid in its ability to perceive and judge threats and criminal acts...from a black perspective because, of course, he thinks they're all criminals. The first segment is "Good Golly," where two clueless college girls visit a roadside "Museum of Negrosity" because one collects golliwogs and gets offended when the angry owner doesn't think they appreciate the gravity of the slave experience. The second and most comedic is "The Medium," where a reformed pimp-turned-community activist is confronted by former gang cohorts over the location of a stash of money. When he's accidentally killed before they get the information, they invade the home of a phony TV psychic (Bryan Batt) and force him to channel his spirit. "Date Night" doesn't really fit the "hood" motif, but is instead a Tinder hookup gone awry, as two dudebros meet a pair of sexy young ladies and decide to roofie their drinks and film their exploits once they're unconscious ("They probably like what we're about to do to them!" one says) only to get the tables turned on them in a way they never saw coming. The fourth and final segment, "The Sacrifice," is the standout and the only one that's played completely straight. Kendrick Cross stars as Henry Bradley, a black Republican who's the campaign manager for a white, race-baiting, "Take Mississippi back" far-right gubernatorial candidate. Henry's white, pregnant wife (Jillian Batherson) fears that some angry supernatural presence is affecting their unborn child. That presence soon reveals itself to be the ghost of 1950s teenage lynching victim Emmitt Till (Christopher Paul Horne), retconning Henry's life of oblivious privilege among wealthy white Southerners (he lives in a old, restored mansion that was once a notorious slave plantation) and making him experience the racism and violence that cost him his life and the lives of others like MLK, Medgar Evers, and the Four Little Girls. Horror anthologies have to end big, and "The Sacrifice," compared to the relative silliness of the rest, packs as sobering, audacious, and thought-provoking a punch as any top-tier BLACK MIRROR episode. Genre vet David (THE THING, THEY LIVE) has fun chewing the scenery, and Cross turns in a solid performance, and while TALES FROM THE HOOD 2 could use some better--or at least, better-known--actors, it's surprisingly decent as far as extremely tardy DTV sequels go. (R, 110 mins)

MALEVOLENT
(UK - 2018)

Directed by Olaf de Fleur. Written by Ben Ketai and Eva Konstantopoulos. Cast: Florence Pugh, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Celia Imrie, James Cosmo, Scott Chambers, Georgina Bevan, Niall Greig Fulton, Nicola Grier, Stephen McCole, Daisy Mathewson, Charlotte Allen, Shelley Conn, Ian Milne. (Unrated, 88 mins)

A British import acquired by Netflix, MALEVOLENT doesn't break any new ground as far as ghost stories go, but Icelandic director Olaf de Fleur and rising star Florence Pugh (who won significant acclaim with 2017's LADY MACBETH) make sure to hit all the right notes in a first hour that holds your attention and has a few effective jump scares. But then MALEVOLENT shits the bed in a way we haven't seen since DON'T BREATHE broke out the turkey baster, with a shift in style and tone that's so jarring that you might think the last 30 minutes came from a different movie that was just thawed after being frozen in ice since 2007. Co-written by Ben Ketai (THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT), and set in Glasgow (in 1986, for no particular reason), MALEVOLENT focuses on two American siblings--college student Angela Sayers (Pugh) and her older brother Jackson (Ben Lloyd-Holmes)--who run a ghostbusting con act with Jackson's girlfriend Beth (Georgina Bevan) and nerdy tech guy Elliott (Scott Chambers), who can barely conceal his unrequited crush on Angela. With prerecorded sound effects, they pretend Angela has an ability to communicate with ghosts left behind, convincing them to leave the house. It's a scam they learned from their late mother (Nicola Grier), an unstable sort who committed suicide after clawing her eyes out. With their American father out of the picture, the Sayers' only family is their irascible Scottish grandfather (the great James Cosmo), who knows Jackson is a fraud just like his mother. D-bag Jackson's also heavily in debt to ruthless loan shark Craig (Ian Milne) and needs a lucrative supernatural hustle to settle a debt.

He gets his wish when they're contacted by widowed Mrs. Green (Celia Imrie), who was once the headmistress at a foster home for orphaned girls until her maniac son Herman (Niall Greig Fulton) killed six of them after torturing them and sewing their mouths shut. Mrs. Green lives alone on the massive property in the middle of nowhere, and she insists it's haunted by the constant cries of her son's victims. Figuring she's a crazy old woman, Jackson sees some easy money and Angela reluctantly goes along. This immediately proves to be a different gig, as Angela actually sees one of the dead girls walking around, even leading her to a hidden basement room where tattered wallpaper covers up disturbing drawings and messages left by the girls before they were murdered. So far, so good. There's nothing here that's original (J.A. Bayona's THE ORPHANAGE comes to mind more than once), but an excellent performance from Pugh (though she and Lloyd-Holmes do both occasionally let their American accents slip) and de Fleur establishing an ominous, foreboding atmosphere--eerie, droning sounds, hissed whispers of "Angela!" and garbled voices heard on walkie-talkies--give it some unexpected cred. But then there's a twist and someone is revealed to not be what they claim to be, and what was a serious and reasonably compelling supernatural horror film turns into an over-the-top, blood-splattered torture-porn throwback, more or less kicking Pugh's performance to the curb and becoming the trashiest horror film to feature the distinguished BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL co-star Imrie since one of her earliest roles from the beginning of her career in Pete Walker's HOUSE OF WHIPCORD. For about an hour, MALEVOLENT seems well on its way to being not a classic, but a pretty good sleeper scare for the season. But when it abruptly crashes and burns in the last 30 minutes, it's haunted not by the vengeful spirits of the dead orphaned girls but by the long-forgotten ghosts of played-out horror subgenres still sticking around a decade past their sell-by date.

22 JULY
(US - 2018)

Written and directed by Paul Greengrass. Cast: Jonas Strand Gravli, Anders Danielsen Lie, Jon Oigarden, Maria Bock, Thorbjorn Harr, Seda Witt, Isak Bakli Aglen, Ola G. Furuseth, Monica Borg Fure, Matthias Eckhoff, Hilde Olausson, Lena Kristin Ellingsen, Tone Danielson, Tomas Gudbjartsson. (R, 143 mins)

After returning to the BOURNE franchise with 2016's decent but generally forgettable JASON BOURNE, British filmmaker Paul Greengrass revisits the harrowing, you-are-there immediacy of 2002's BLOODY SUNDAY, 2006's UNITED 93, and 2013's CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, with the Netflix Original film 22 JULY, chronicling the July 22, 2011 terror attacks in Oslo, Norway. Orchestrated by far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik (played here by Anders Danielsen Lie), the attacks began with an Oklahoma City-like truck bombing with fertilizer and aluminum nitrate in the Oslo business district near the office of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Ola G. Furuseth), and continued when a fleeing Breivik, wearing a police uniform, took a ferry to the island of Utoya and committed a mass shooting at a leadership camp for Norwegian teenagers. Between the Oslo bombing and the Utoya massacre, 77 were killed and 200 injured, the purpose of which is detailed in Breivik's 1500-page manifesto decrying what he sees as Norway's lenient immigration policies and the spread of Islam through Europe, with the Utoya camp being targeted to stop the next generation of "Marxists, liberals, and elites."

The opening 30 minutes are riveting, visceral, and horrifying. The cold, dead glare in Lie's eyes as Breivik methodically prepares to set the truck bomb and calmly talks his way onto the ferry to Utoya before mowing down scores of screaming teens is absolutely chilling and this extended sequence represents Greengrass at his strongest and most unflinching. But once Breivik is in custody, 22 JULY turns more formulaic, to its detriment. Greengrass cuts back and forth between Breivik and his reluctant defense attorney Geir Lippestad (Jon Oigarden, a dead ringer for Uwe Boll), chosen because he successfully defended a neo-Nazi in a case a decade earlier, and Utoya survivor Viljar Hanssen (Jonas Strand Gravli), who was shot five times, once in the head with an exploding bullet leaving fragments in his skull that surgeons were unable to completely remove. We're shown Hanssen's grueling road to recovery, which includes intense physical therapy and a significant case of PTSD. Gravli is fine in these scenes, but the more they go on, the more 22 JULY gets bogged down in melodrama, which doesn't play to Greengrass' strengths as a director. That's not to say Greengrass isn't capable of handling gut-wrenching drama (Tom Hanks does the best acting of his career in that final scene of CAPTAIN PHILLIPS) or that Hanssen's story isn't worth telling, but the arc he undergoes is something we've seen numerous times before, from the mood swings, to the self-destructive lashing out, to the simmering resentment of his younger brother (Isak Bakli Aglen), who made it off Utoya without being physically harmed, but whose own psychological trauma has become a distant second priority with their parents (Maria Bock, Thorbjorn Harr). That same predictable story arc goes for Oigarden's Lippestad as well. He's disgusted by Brievik and his reprehensible views, and doesn't want to defend him, but it's his job, and you know it's only a matter of time before he's getting late-night phone calls threatening his family.

Gravli delivers a committed performance, but one can't help noting Greengrass' missed opportunity in not focusing his attention on Brievik, terrifyingly underplayed by Lie with a narcissistic sociopath's level of non-emotion. When he's being interrogated, he's munching on pizza and asks to pause the questioning to get a Band-Aid for a small cut on his thumb that he got when it was scratched by a piece of someone's shattering skull ("I'm worried it might get infected," he says, barely stifling a smirk). There's a stomach-in-knots urgency to the early scenes of 22 JULY that dissipates after the attacks, leaving the remainder of the film a sometimes laborious slog clocking in at a bloated 143 minutes. Netflix obviously gave Greengrass the freedom to make the film he wanted to make, and it's helpful that the Norwegian cast (speaking English, which isn't a dealbreaker) is almost completely unknown to American audiences (though Kristen Stewart fans might recognize Lie from Olivier Assayas' acclaimed PERSONAL SHOPPER), but wouldn't it be a better film if it was a ZODIAC-like procedural or an almost real-time chronicle like UNITED 93? There's a couple of throwaway mentions of Norwegian authorities being lax in their duties and no one noticing any red flags when Breivik purchased a massive amount of fertilizer and other chemicals seven months before the attack. Wouldn't that have been a good starting point for an examination of this horrific event? It doesn't yet have a US distributor, but there's a competing Norwegian film that opened in Europe several months ago titled U - 22 JULY, depicting the 72-minute Utoya massacre and its immediate aftermath in real time. That's the kind of film you'd think Greengrass would've made. He did for the first 30 minutes, but the rest of the movie feels like it could've been made by anyone.

APOSTLE
(US/UK - 2018)

Written and directed by Gareth Evans. Cast: Dan Stevens, Michael Sheen, Lucy Boynton, Mark Lewis Jones, Bill Milner, Kristine Froseth, Paul Higgins, Elen Rhys, Sharon Morgan, Sebastian McCheyne, John Weldon, Richard Elfyn, Ross O'Hennessy. (Unrated, 129 mins)

Welsh-born writer/director Gareth Evans is best known for his Indonesian action extravaganzas with Iko Uwais (MERENTAU and the two RAID films), but he's explored the horror genre as well with his little-seen 2006 debut FOOTSTEPS and the "Safe Haven" segment of 2013's V/H/S/2. "Safe Haven" was set in the present-day and centered on an Indonesia-based religious cult, a topic Evans explores in a different time and place with his latest film, the Netflix Original APOSTLE. In the early 1900s, Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens), the black sheep of a wealthy British family, is summoned home after years away by his near-catatonic father's attorney. Presumed dead for reasons the film specifies later and looking perilously close to feral amidst his upper-class surroundings, Thomas' return is an absolute last resort: his younger sister Jennifer (Elen Rhys) has been abducted and whisked away to a distant island, where a religious cult led by the Prophet Malcolm (Michael Sheen) has fled England and established a community called Erisden. She didn't join the cult--she was taken for ransom and they want it delivered personally. Thomas must infiltrate Erisden, blend in, and bring Jennifer home. His doing so ends up costing an innocent man his life when Thomas switches out his marked invitation, indicating that Malcolm and his right-hand men Quinn (Mark Lewis Jones) and Frank (Paul Higgins) have no intention of letting Jennifer or her rescuer off the island alive.

The obvious point of comparison in the early going is the 1973 classic THE WICKER MAN, which was already ripped off by Ben Wheatley with 2011's wildly overpraised KILL LIST. But THE WICKER MAN is just a launch pad for APOSTLE, as Evans has more metaphorically loaded ideas in mind. He doles out just enough details--about Erisden, Malcolm, and especially Thomas--to methodically tighten the screws and drive up the tension (abetted significantly by a nerve-jangling soundtrack that vacillates between folkish instruments and screeching violins). As Malcolm's rebellious (conveyed in a rather facile fashion by her fiery red hair) daughter Andrea (Lucy Boynton) says to Thomas, "Your eyes...they've seen things." But she hasn't seen the scars and burns on his back, part of a backstory that will make things much clearer as the film goes on. Unlike most self-appointed prophets of this sort, Malcolm is initially practical, save for the requirement that the new arrivals on Erisden must leave a small jar of their blood outside their quarters every night. The crops have failed, but Jennifer hasn't been taken to Erisden as a sacrifice to their version of a wicker man, but rather, because they need money and goods brought from the mainland and kidnapping an heiress for a hefty ransom is a last-ditch act of desperation. Malcolm brought his flock to Erisden but reality seems to have given them a swift kick in the ass. This is also represented by the blossoming (and secret) relationship between Frank's son Jeremy (Bill Milner) and Quinn's daughter Ffion (Kristine Froseth), which sets off a chain reaction of tragedy and terror that takes APOSTLE into genuinely horrific, Stephen King-by-way-of-Neil Gaiman territory in the second hour.

To divulge more plot is difficult without going into spoilers, but while it only briefly detours into the bone-crushing action choreography that's synonymous with Evans, APOSTLE is his most conceptually ambitious work yet. That's not just in the unforeseen roads the story travels, but also in its multi-dimensional characters, even finding some sense of morality in the lunacy of Malcolm and his ideas. He's not even the most dangerous person--or thing--on Erisden, which becomes painfully clear to him when things spiral out of his control. There's also a harsh lesson to be learned for those on Erisden who commit heinous acts in the name of their god or their religion. When one character exacts his personal revenge on another, triumphantly declaring "I've wanted this," it's proof positive that Erisden has lost its way and its people are doing things not out of religious conviction but rather, control and power. There are those on Erisden who are complicit in the worst things happening and hide behind their religion, increasingly divorced from what they purport to stand for and believe, thereby offending a god who sees fit to poison the crops and make the land toxic. These notions make parts of APOSTLE a blistering indictment of rampant religious hypocrisy, but despite its grievances, the film is ultimately a spiritual one that falls on the side of faith. Evans also doesn't forget he's making a Gareth Evans joint, coming up with some innovative torture devices and increasingly painful ways for people to be killed, particularly one nightmarish mechanism that serves as a rustic tribute to the legendary drill scene in Lucio Fulci's CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. And don't be surprised when cosplay versions of "Her" and "The Grinder" start appearing at fan conventions.

BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE
(US - 2018)

Written and directed by Drew Goddard. Cast: Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Chris Hemsworth, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman, Nick Offerman, Xavier Dolan, Shea Whigham, Mark O'Brien, Jim O'Heir, Charles Halford, Manny Jacinto, Tally Rodin, William B. Davis, Katharine Isabelle. (R, 141 mins)

A cursory glance at the trailer for BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE would suggest a throwback to the kinds of winking, referential neo-noirs that were commonplace in the post-Tarantino craze of two decades ago (THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD, 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY, etc). It's actually more in line with the later phase of Tarantino's career that gave us a motor-mouthed chamber piece like THE HATEFUL EIGHT, but even that isn't a completely accurate assessment since it's not nearly as self-indulgent. Written and directed by J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon protege Drew Goddard (screenwriter of CLOVERFIELD and THE MARTIAN), EL ROYALE shares many themes and motifs as his previous directing effort, the meta genre deconstruction THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, so much so that as the story begins to play out and the sense of paranoia kicks in, you almost wouldn't be shocked to find Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford observing the goings-on from a secret installation at an undisclosed location and placing bets on who makes it to the end. Goddard also blatantly patterns the structure on vintage Tarantino by dividing the film into chapters and frequently going backwards in the narrative to fill in what was going in at the same time other events have happened, but for the most part, EL ROYALE manages to be its own unique work despite Tarantino's unavoidable influence. It's got a clever, twisty structure with a ton of genuine surprises, a dark sense of humor, shocking bursts of violence, and a game cast, but at nearly two and a half hours, it starts to run on fumes by the end, and the payoff ultimately isn't on the same level as the intricately constructed, densely-plotted build-up.

In a prologue, a man (Nick Offerman) rents a room, pries up the floorboards and stashes a bag full of money before being blown away by an unknown assailant. Cut ahead ten years and it's 1969, and a group of strangers arrive one by one at the El Royale, a dilapidated Lake Tahoe motor lodge that literally straddles the state line, its lobby split down the middle between California and Nevada. There's aspiring singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), who's on her way to Reno for a low-paying gig; aging priest Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), who says he's visiting his brother in Oakland; obnoxious, good ol' boy vacuum cleaner salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm); and Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson), a hippie with a bad attitude who signs the check-in registry with a "Fuck You." The El Royale has seen better days, having lost its gambling license a year earlier, and there only seems to be one employee running the place in frazzled desk clerk Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman), who frequently goes MIA and ignores the bell, leaving the guests to serve themselves coffee and drinks from the bar. Once in their rooms, it's clear that all of them have something to hide and aren't who they claim to be. Sullivan drops the overbaked Southern accent and makes a phone call before locating and dismantling dozens of bugging devices from everywhere in his room. He finds Miles passed out with a needle in his arm, and in a long, single-take sequence, ventures down a secret corridor behind the office, where he's able to see into each room through a one-way mirror. Darlene is singing, Father Flynn--clearly not a real priest--is tearing up the floorboards, and Emily is dragging a bound and gagged young woman (Cailee Spaeny) in from the trunk of her car. Sullivan goes to a nearby pay phone and calls the FBI. He mentions the apparent kidnapping and is told that "Mr. Hoover" wants him to disregard it, stick to his assignment, make sure no one leaves, and retrieve what he's there to find.

Shot on actual film and with a Michael Giacchino score that often sounds affectionately reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann, BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE is often just as indebted to Hitchcock as it is Tarantino, particularly PSYCHO with its motel setting and the character getting the most screen time in the early going being unexpectedly killed off before the midway point. Others will find the secret corridor and see things they aren't supposed to see, which seems to be the entire purpose of the El Royale's continued existence, a place where bad things go down and equipment is in place to record it all. A classic MacGuffin comes into play in the form of a stag film shot from behind the one-way-mirror looking into one of the rooms, dating back several years and featuring someone both prominent and dead. BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE keeps piling on the twists and turns and is an absolute blast until Goddard loses his way with the third-act, dark-and-stormy-night introduction of Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth), a charismatic, Manson-like cult leader who arrives with murderous goons in tow to find one of his flock who got away from him and is keen to stick around once he sees there's a bag of loot and a potential blackmail reel involved. It's no fault of Hemsworth, who attacks the role with amused gusto, but Billy Lee is a two-dimensional villain with too little screen time to make an impact. So instead of creating a fully-developed character like the ones we've been able to get to know, Goddard lets Hemsworth ham it up and show off by smirking and strutting to Deep Purple's "Hush," while he holds everyone captive and plays roulette with their lives as the film turns into a rote, generic "terrorizing the hostages" scenario.

It's a shame Goddard couldn't figure out a way to give keep the same level of intensity and bring the story to a conclusion worthy of its set-up, but the first 2/3 of the film is so good that the less-inspired and comparatively weak final third can't help but end with a fizzled shrug. It isn't a complete deal-breaker and it's still recommended, but part of the problem is that there's simply no reason for this film to be as long as it is. But it's beautifully shot, has some wonderful production design, and the cast is terrific, particularly Erivo (a Tony-winner for 2015's Broadway musical version of THE COLOR PURPLE) and national treasure Bridges, who lends a convincing weariness to a bad guy who maybe has some redeeming qualities after all. In the end, BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE averages out to a film that's quite good, but for an hour and a half, it flirts with being a great one.

UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB
(US - 2018)

2015's UNFRIENDED had some problems (like teenagers who looked to be in their mid-20s, and a late-film collapse into cheap jump scares and tilted BLAIR WITCH camera angles), but the real-time, Skype-set fright flick was more compelling than it had any business being. Unfolding entirely on a computer screen, the inevitable sequel UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB tells a different story with a similar set-up, jettisoning the supernatural angle of its predecessor to focus on an online game night that goes horrifically off the rails. Acquiring a laptop through the dubious means of grabbing it after it was left behind at a coffee shop, Matias (John Mayer lookalike Colin Woodell) plans on joining some college friends on Skype for Cards Against Humanity. At the same time, he's trying to smooth things over with his deaf girlfriend Amaya (Stephanie Nogueras), who's tired of his lax efforts in learning to sign. The laptop, which he tells everyone he got on Craigslist, repeatedly glitches out and messages keep coming through for its rightful owner. Things escalate in a gradual fashion, with Matias finding some truly disturbing videos on the laptop as he's getting some increasingly hostile instant messages from the laptop's owner, the apparent culprit behind an abduction seen in one of the videos of a missing girl who's currently all over the local news.

UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB is grounded in relative reality, even if it glosses over the more intricate aspects of its technological capabilities and doesn't really have anything to do with social media. Without divulging spoilers, Matias and his friends--paranoid conspiracy theorist AJ (Connor Del Rio), aspiring DJ Lexx (Savira Windyani), just-engaged couple Serena (Rebecca Rittenhouse) and Nari (Blumhouse regular Betty Gabriel), and London-based Damon (Andrew Lees)--soon get in way over their heads with a cabal of superhackers intent on making them--and Amaya--pay for Matias' bad judgment. There's some forced humor and a little of Del Rio's grating AJ goes a long way, but some sly jokes land, like writer and debuting director Stephen Susco (whose past scripts include THE GRUDGE, TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D, and BEYOND THE REACH) opening with a static shot of what we soon realize are Matias' failed login attempts to his ill-gotten gain, starting with passwords like "password" and "login," and ending with desperation Hail Marys like "FeelTheBern" and "Covfefe." Like a lot of films of this sort, UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB probably only works once, but it succeeds on a base, visceral level, especially once the stakes get serious and almost inconceivably cruel, leading to a late reveal reminiscent of a great late '90s paranoia thriller that's never really gotten the respect it deserves. Four endings were shot, and some different ones apparently played in various theaters around the country. Three are presented on the Blu-ray as alternate endings, and only one is even remotely uplifting. By no means is this some modern horror classic, but co-producer Timur Bekmambetov has a knack for shepherding these kinds of things where others (like Nacho Vigalondo's OPEN WINDOWS, which couldn't wait to ditch its core premise) have fallen short. Bekmambetov would finally perfect this online scare formula with the late summer sleeper hit SEARCHING, but like UNFRIENDED, this mean and uncompromising sequel surpasses expectations. (R, 92 mins)

DOWN A DARK HALL
(Spain/US - 2018)

Based on a 1974 YA novel by Lois Duncan (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Hotel for Dogs), DOWN A DARK HALL has some intriguing ideas but the story never comes together, getting bogged down in sentimentality and shot in such a murky, dimly-lit way that it's often impossible to tell what's going on. Updated to the present day with era-appropriate can't-even and "#whatever"'tude, troubled teen Katherine "Kit" Gordy (AnnaSophia Robb) has been suspended from school, had a misdemeanor arrest, is facing an arson charge, and, as the school psychologist points out, is so disengaged from school that she got an F in gym. Kit's never gotten over the death of her beloved father when she was nine, and her mom (Kirsty Mitchell) and stepdad (Jim Sturgeon) are at a loss as to what to do with her. Dr. Sinclair (Jodhi May) recommends she be sent to the remote, isolated, and ominously gothic-looking Blackwood Boarding School, run by Madame Duret (Uma Thurman, apparently entering the "sinister boarding school headmistress" phase of her career). There's only four other students--Izzy (ORPHAN's Isabelle Fuhrman), Sierra (Rosie Day), Ashley (Taylor Russell), and pyromaniac mean girl Veronica (Victoria Moroles)--all with behavioral and psychological issues, though Madame Duret is certain she can find the artistic, creative young women within. It isn't long before aspiring painter Sierra is crafting brilliant, ambitious canvases, brainy Izzy is solving impossible mathematical equations, and Kit, who long ago abandoned her interest in music, is playing emotionally-draining and difficult pieces on the piano, almost as if a spirit has possessed each of them them and is bleeding the art out of them. And of course, they start seeing ghosts in the hallways along with other supernatural happenings, all of which are written off by the clearly up-to-something Madame Duret.

Directed by Rodrigo Cortes (BURIED, RED LIGHTS) and co-written by Chris Sparling (BURIED, ATM, THE SEA OF TREES), DOWN A DARK HALL benefits from some well-crafted, Guillermo del Toro-esque production design in the long corridors of Blackwood, but once the horror kicks in, too much of the film is spent trying to watch Kit wander around in almost total darkness until an occasional spectral jump scare appears in the frame. Robb (SOUL SURFER) is convincingly angry without coming across as too obnoxiously bratty, and Thurman has some fun with a freewheeling, all-purpose Euro accent as Madame Duret, but DOWN A DARK HALL has too many tedious stretches, and once its ghostly goings-on are explained, it doesn't really hold up to much scrutiny even by horror genre standards, especially considering that the recruitment of these "gifted" girls has been going on undetected for quite some time. It looks great when you can see what's going on, and the setting, the characters, and the climax definitely have some enjoyable shout-outs to SUSPIRIA, but even with the easy box office of YA-based horror, it's not really a mystery why Summit and Lionsgate relegated this misfire to VOD this past summer with its 2016 copyright still displayed in the credits. (PG-13, 96 mins)

HALLOWEEN
(US - 2018)

Directed by David Gordon Green. Written by Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green. Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Haluk Bilginer, Rhian Rees, Jefferson Hall, James Jude Courtney, Nick Castle, Toby Huss, Virginia Gardner, Dylan Arnold, Miles Robbins, Drew Scheid, Jibrail Nantambu, Omar Dorsey, Christopher Nelson, Brien Gregorie, Vince Mattis. (R, 106 mins)

For the 40th anniversary of John Carpenter's iconic 1978 classic HALLOWEEN, the franchise retcons itself, wiping away everything that happened from 1981's HALLOWEEN II to 2002's HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION. It picks up in the present day, as Michael Myers (played by original "Shape" Nick Castle in fleeting glimpses before he dons the mask and James Jude Courtney takes over) is visited at an Illinois mental institution by Aaron Korey (Jefferson Hall) and Dana Haines (Rhian Rees), a pair of British podcasters specializing in famous killers and cold cases. Dr. Sartain (WINTER SLEEP's Haluk Bilginer, the Turkish Rade Szerbedzija), a protege of the late Dr. Loomis (played in the 1978 original by the great Donald Pleasence, who died in 1995) has taken over Michael's care and reminds them that he hasn't spoken a word in 40 years. They get no reaction out of Michael, even after showing him his old mask. They get a similar response when they visit a standoff-ish Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), a self-described "basket case" who's been hobbled by PTSD since that fateful Halloween night 40 years ago, leading to two failed marriages and a fractured relationship with her mostly estranged daughter Karen (Judy Greer), who was taken away at the age of 12 when the state deemed Laurie an unfit mother. Laurie lives in a gated compound on the outskirts of Haddonfield, in a house filled with alarms, locks, and booby-traps and with a heavily-fortified panic room in the basement, accessible by a secret passageway under a kitchen counter. Karen resents the doomsday-prepping memories of her childhood, but Laurie has never been able to shake the feeling that Michael would come for her again one day.

That day inevitably arrives following the most half-assed prison transport in recent memory, as Michael and some other psych patients are moved to another facility and the bus ends up crashing, because of course it does. You'd think with someone as dangerous as Michael Myers onboard, there'd be more than one officer on the bus, and maybe a couple of cruisers from the local sheriff's department might follow along as a precaution, and they might've picked a night other than the day before Halloween, which is the same night he escaped 40 years earlier, but hey, it is what it is. The bus crashes and Michael is loose once again, making his way to Haddonfield in time for Halloween, where he sees the podcasters visiting his sister's grave and then follows them to a gas station and kills them, reclaiming his mask in the process. Michael embarks on a murder spree across Haddonfield, a town where, depending on the scene, has either one cop on duty in Officer Hawkins (Will Patton), who was on duty the same night in 1978, or a ton of guys not really doing much of anything. Everyone is aware of the events of 40 years ago, yet no one really acts with much urgency considering the town's tragic history with this night. That is, other than Hawkins and Laurie, who's been following the calls on a police scanner and can't get in touch with her granddaughter, Karen's daughter Alyson (Andi Matichak), who just left a Halloween bash after dumping her boyfriend Cameron (Dylan Arnold), who threw her phone in a punch bowl. As Michael heads to a fateful meeting with Laurie that seems like destiny, she finally convinces Karen and her husband Ray (Toby Huss) of the danger and they all end up at her secured fortress and wait for Hawkins to track down Alyson.

Directed by indie darling-turned-journeyman David Gordon Green, who co-wrote the script with his buddies Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley (a writer on McBride's HBO series VICE PRINCIPALS), HALLOWEEN tries to position itself as both sequel and remake, with countless references and callbacks to other memorable scenes in the franchise, which reeks of trying to have it both ways by retroactively erasing all of the sequels but still re-staging well-known scenes from them. Remember when teenage Laurie looks out of her classroom window and sees Michael standing across the street looking at her? Green repeats that here with Alyson looking outside and seeing her grandmother. Remember when Loomis shoots Michael and he falls out of the window, landing on the ground and then they look down and he's gone? Repeat that here with Michael throwing Laurie out of a window, then looking down and seeing she's gone. Remember in HALLOWEEN II when Michael walks into a house and sneaks into the kitchen and steals Mrs. Elrod's butcher knife? That happens here, but in a way that emulates the re-edited TV version. Even a mid-film detour where Alyson's friend Vicky (Virginia Gardner) is babysitting a wisecracking kid (Jibrail Nantambu, who turns in the most entertaining performance) before her stoner boyfriend Dave (Miles Robbins) arrives only exists as a wink and a nod to a pair of murders from Carpenter's film. Once everyone ends up at Laurie's compound and she does a room-by-room search, we see she has a roomful of target-practice mannequins and dummies like the ones she's shown shooting out in the woods earlier. Why would she store these in a room in her house? A goddamn roomful of white-faced mannequins has no reason to exist in Laurie's house other than giving a masked Michael a way to camouflage himself among them in the darkness for a cheap, lazy jump scare. And why does she even leave the safety of the underground panic room in the first place? Oh, that's right. Because "I'm gonna finish this!"

Those are hardly the dumbest things in HALLOWEEN. You might ask "How does Michael even find Laurie's house?" and "How does he get past the gate?" and "What does Laurie do for a living, because this Batcave-like complex probably cost at least $1 million?" but nothing will prepare you for one ludicrous whopper of a third act plot twist which was when I just shook my head and muttered "Done" under my breath. For a film that sees fit to do away with the Laurie/Michael family connection established in HALLOWEEN II, which is a hokey development but it's still a movie that many people, myself included, really like, what arises with this reveal is right on par with all the Druid nonsense that came up in HALLOWEENs 5-6, which seemed at the time to be a backdoor way to somehow work in 1982's otherwise unrelated, Michael Myers-less HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (though Dr. Loomis used a story about Druids metaphorically in HALLOWEEN II). It's one thing to ask us to disregard everything that happened in all the sequels--including Laurie being killed off in a passing mention of a car accident in HALLOWEEN 4 and onscreen in HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION--but the big twist in HALLOWEEN from the masters of horror behind YOUR HIGHNESS and EASTBOUND & DOWN is so beyond the pale that it made me dismiss the entire project as egregiously ill-advised Michael Myers fan fiction on the part of Green, McBride, and horror assembly line production company Blumhouse.

That said, there's an undeniable sense of warm, nostalgic sentiment for fans to see Curtis in this role again, and she brings a credibly anguished weariness to a heroine who's been inextricably linked to an unstoppable madman and forever haunted by the events of 40 years ago. Matichak is appealing as her sympathetic granddaughter, though all the sequences with her obnoxious friends with "Dead Meat" stamped on their foreheads seem like superfluous padding (except for Cameron, who, like the kid Vicky's babysitting, just vanishes from the movie). The notion of three generations of Strode women teaming up to take on what's tantamount to a family curse is intriguing, but Green generates no scares, no suspense, and doesn't bring them together until very late in the game, and then blows it by giving the best moment not to Curtis, but to Greer. Don't get me wrong, it's a good moment, and Greer plays it perfectly, but shouldn't it have been Curtis'? After the two Rob Zombie hillbilly horror reboot debacles, I was willing to approach HALLOWEEN 2018 with an open mind, and it gets some things right--Michael's worn, weathered, and craggy-looking mask approximating the aging of a killer who's now 63 years old, John Carpenter returning to write an updated version of his instantly-recognizable theme, an audio recording of Dr. Loomis where the guy doing a dead-on Donald Pleasence impression just nails it, especially Pleasence's inimitable pronunciation of "evil"--but at the end of the day, this is just another HALLOWEEN sequel, and it's not even a very good one, with all the rave reviews and fanboy hype once again offering irrefutable proof that horror scenesters are the easiest lays in genre fandom. John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN is a landmark film that still terrifies and whose impact still resonates after 40 years. Will anyone in 2058 be looking back and wistfully reminiscing about the first time they saw David Gordon Green's HALLOWEEN 40 years ago? Will anyone even remember it 40 days from now?

THE NIGHT COMES FOR US
(US/Indonesia - 2018)

Written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto. Cast: Joe Taslim, Iko Uwais, Asha Kenyeri Bermudez, Sunny Pang, Salvita Decorte, Abimana Aryasatya, Zack Lee, Dimas Anggara, Julie Estelle, Dian Sastrowardoyo, Hannah Al Rashid, Shareefa Daanish Wibisana, Revaldo. (Unrated, 121 mins)

While writer/director Gareth Evans was busy making APOSTLE, several members of his Indonesian ensemble from the RAID films teamed with HEADSHOT co-director Timo Tjahjanto for THE NIGHT COMES FOR US, which could almost pass as THE RAID 3 if they wanted to try calling it that. Tjahjanto doesn't have quite the chops and the vision of Evans (the two worked together on V/H/S/2, co-directing the "Safe Haven" segment), and THE NIGHT COMES FOR US looks like a somewhat cruder and less polished work. Consequently, Tjahjanto compensates for these shortcomings by going absurdly overboard with a cartoonish level of gore and splatter that turns the film into the martial arts equivalent of a Cannibal Corpse greatest hits album. While the fight choreography is impressive, the endless mutilations, stabbings, slashed throats and carotid arteries, amputations, heads blown off or smashed, disembowelings, castrations, buzz-and/or-table sawings, burnings, box cutters through cheeks, and whatever other ways Tjahjanto devises to maim or kill someone do grow a bit exhausting after a while, no matter how remarkably ferocious it is at times. There's only so many times a bad guy's flunky can stick their arm out and have it snapped to a 90° angle before the novelty starts to wear off.

Indonesian action sensation and RAID franchise star Iko Uwais, recently seen tanking in America co-starring with Mark Wahlberg in the abysmal MILE 22, is onboard here in a key supporting role, but the real star is Joe Taslim, who was featured in the first RAID. Taslim is Ito, a member of Six Seas, a team of elite delegates in the employ of an Asian Triad that runs a drug smuggling and human trafficking operation in the Golden Triangle. When a small fishing village skims a little off the top of their latest payout to the Triad, Iko and his team are dispatched to wipe them out. He suddenly finds his conscience when he looks in the eyes of the lone survivor, a young girl named Reina (Asha Kenyeri Bermudez), and impulsively blows away all of his colleagues and takes a bullet in the process. Iko feels compelled to protect Reina MAN ON FIRE-style and takes her home, much to the shock and dismay of his wife Shinta (Salvita Decorte), who knows the Triad will be coming for them. Ito assembles some close cohorts to keep Reina safe while he tries to gauge how much trouble he's in. In short, it's a lot, as the word is already out that he's betrayed the Triad and he and everyone around him likely won't make it to daybreak alive (yes, this is one of those "survive the night" scenarios). Ito sends Shinta out of town and Triad boss Chien Wu (Sunny Pang) calls in Ito's estranged lifelong friend Arian (Uwais) to track him down and kill him. Chien Wu's Jakarta-wide dragnet gets numerous groups of Triad-hired killers in the mix, including Yohan the Butcher (Revaldo), kinky couple Alma (Dian Sastrowardoyo) and Elena (Hannah Al Rashid), and "The Operator" (Julie Estelle, best known as THE RAID 2's Hammer Girl), who's quickly persuaded to switch sides and help her target take on her bosses.

An early set piece in Yohan's butcher shop comes very close to reaching the levels of gonzo action ecstasy that THE RAID 2 sustained for two and a half hours. It's the best and most inventive sequence in the film, but Tjahjanto too often ditches that kind of creativity and imagination to go for the shock value gross-out. Some of the non-stop splatter is indeed impressive (like when one person calmly tears off what's left of their partially amputated finger and continues fighting) but some of it is so extreme that it takes you out of the moment. THE NIGHT COMES FOR US is a go-for-broke gorefest that's probably the bloodiest film of 2018, but Tjahjanto also spends some time somewhat successfully mimicking the style of Michael Mann in both the very Tangerine Dream-ish score by Fajar Yuskemal and Aria Prayogi and numerous shots of lit-up Asian cityscapes that recall some of the more hypnotic moments of Mann's tragically underappreciated BLACKHAT. Amidst the carnage, the film also displays some occasional humor, like Ito setting three guys on fire in front of a sign that reads "Safety starts with me." Tjahjanto isn't nearly as stylish or gifted a filmmaker as either Mann or Evans, but he does as good a B-grade Mann as he does a B-grade RAID. THE NIGHT COMES FOR US has its share of memorable scenes and offers not one or two, but three pretty badass female assassins (between her work here as The Operator and as the unforgettable Hammer Girl in THE RAID 2, it's time for Julie Estelle to get her own movie), but Tjahjanto could've benefited by taking it down a notch instead of making the DEAD ALIVE of Indonesian action epics.

HUNTER KILLER
(US - 2018)

Directed by Donovan Marsh. Written by Arne L. Schmidt and Jamie Moss. Cast: Gerard Butler, Gary Oldman, Common, Toby Stephens, Michael Nyqvist, Linda Cardellini, Caroline Goodall, David Gyasi, Alexander Diachenko, Michael Gor, Carter MacIntyre, Zane Holtz, Igor Jijikine, Michael Trucco, Ilia Volok, Ryan McPartlin, Gabriel Chavarria, Adam James, Colin Stinton, Taylor John Smith. (R, 122 mins)

A throwback to the prime of Tom Clancy geopolitics at the winding down of the Cold War, the relatively serious submarine thriller HUNTER KILLER isn't nearly as stupidly goofy as star Gerard Butler's earlier 2018 release DEN OF THIEVES, aka DIPSHIT HEAT (© David James Keaton). HUNTER KILLER is less DIPSHIT RED OCTOBER and more in line with Butler's (BLANK) HAS FALLEN series, though the star plays it completely straight here and never resorts to telling anyone to "Go back to Fuckheadistan." When the American sub USS Tampa Bay ventures into Russian waters and is sunk by an undetected Russian sub, Joint Chiefs chair Adm. Donnegan (a bloviating Gary Oldman, who looks like he went to Rand Paul's barber) asks Rear Adm. Fisk (Common) who he's got. The answer: no-nonsense Commander Joe Glass (Butler), a Navy outsider who does things his way and who "never went to Annapolis." Glass runs a tight ship and is put in charge of the USS Arkansas, currently off the coast of Scotland, and ordered to the location of the Tampa Bay sinking to see what happened. Meanwhile, Fisk and NSA analyst Jayne Norquist (Linda Cardellini as Bridget Moynahan), against the wishes of war-gunning Donnegan, get authorization from the President (Caroline Goodall, whose casting takes us way back to the age of innocence that was the summer of 2016, when HUNTER KILLER was shot and it was a certainty that the next US president would be a woman) to send in a black-ops SEAL team led by Beaman (Toby Stephens) to monitor activity at a nearby Russian military base where a live drone feed has confirmed the presence of Russian president Zakarin (Alexander Diachenko). Donnegan is convinced Zakarin is declaring war on the US, but the culprit is his rogue defense minister Durov (Michael Gor), who's orchestrated a coup and intends to take over Russia and make America look like the aggressor.

After blowing up the Russian sub that took out the Tampa Bay, Glass goes rogue himself when the Arkansas discovers the wreckage of a Russian sub as well, with visual evidence that it exploded from the inside. They manage to rescue a handful of survivors, including its commander, Andropov (the late Michael Nyqvist), and secures him as an unlikely ally once he shows him that his sub was sabotaged from within. Glass needs Andropov to guide him through mined waters surrounding the Russian military base, where Beaman and his three-man team have been ordered to extract Zakarin and get him aboard the Arkansas before Durov has him executed and the rest of the world thinks the US started a war with Russia.

Butler with Michael Nyqvist (1960-2017)

Except for a few dodgy greenscreen shots above water, HUNTER KILLER is surprisingly good-looking for a film produced by Cannon cover band Millennium and partially shot at their Bulgarian stomping grounds at Sofia's Nu Boyana Studios (some of it was also shot at the more upscale Pinewood Studios in the UK). There's a few dubious-looking CGI explosions, but some look quite believable, and are indicative of Millennium's Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX bringing their A-/B+ game. Things get refreshingly old-school with the use of sub models for the underwater shots, which are usually used fleetingly enough that the facade usually isn't broken, and when it is, it still looks better than a shoddy CGI effect. The plot is pure "America! Fuck Yeah!" hokum, but it's admirably restrained for this sort of thing, especially with its depiction of the mutual respect shown by Glass and Andropov. These two seen-it-all Navy heroes ("This is who we are...this is what we do!" Glass says at one point, because of course he does) are played with an initial mistrust and eventual warm rapport by both Butler (one of 29 credited producers) and the much-missed Swedish character actor Nyqvist (star of the original GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and memorable as the mob boss in JOHN WICK), who succumbed to lung cancer in June 2017 and looks gaunt and visibly ill in most of his scenes. The film is dedicated to both Nyqvist and co-producer John Thompson--a Millennium exec from the early NuImage days and the guy who ran Cannon's Italian branch in the mid '80s--who died in January 2018.

Other than Stephens, who seems to be rehashing a fictionalized version of the real-life SEAL he played in Michael Bay's 13 HOURS, none of the other big names get much of a chance to make an impression. Cardellini stares at a row of monitors in a Bourne-like command center and sees a live shot of Zakarin and wonders aloud, "What are you up to?" Common has little to do aside from looking concerned while getting chewed out by a ranting, overacting Oldman, who probably didn't spend more than a few days on the set for a glorified cameo prior to his Oscar-winning turn in DARKEST HOUR. Directed in a workmanlike fashion by South African journeyman Donovan Marsh, HUNTER KILLER is a fairly solid and undemanding nautical actioner, the kind of harmlessly watchable popcorn movie you'll probably end up stopping on and staying with to the end when you stumble upon it on cable from now until the end of time.

In Theaters: THE PREDATOR (2018)

In Theaters/On VOD: MANDY (2018)

On Blu-ray/DVD: FILMWORKER (2018), GHOST STORIES (2018), and DISTORTED (2018)

In Theaters: WHITE BOY RICK (2018)

On DVD/Blu-ray: BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB (2018) and SIBERIA (2018)

In Theaters: FAHRENHEIT 11/9 (2018)

Retro Review: BRAIN DEAD (1990)

In Theaters: THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS (2018)

Retro Review: SCREAM FOR HELP (1984)

On Netflix: HOLD THE DARK (2018)

Retro Review: SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD (1978)

On Blu-Ray/DVD: GOTTI (2018), DEATH RACE: BEYOND ANARCHY (2018) and TALES FROM THE HOOD 2 (2018)

On Netflix: MALEVOLENT (2018)

On Netflix: 22 JULY (2018)

On Netflix: APOSTLE (2018)

In Theaters: BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE (2018)

On Blu-ray/DVD: UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB (2018) and DOWN A DARK HALL (2018)

In Theaters: HALLOWEEN (2018)

On Netflix: THE NIGHT COMES FOR US (2018)

In Theaters: HUNTER KILLER (2018)