Good Efficient Butchery

SERENITY
(US/UK - 2019)

Written and directed by Steven Knight. Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jason Clarke, Diane Lane, Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Strong, Rafael Sayegh, David Butler, Charlotte Butler, Garion Dowds. (R, 106 mins).

Steven Knight got an Oscar nomination for scripting 2003's DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, and his many other writing credits include the 2007 David Cronenberg film EASTERN PROMISES. He also earned significant acclaim for 2014's LOCKE, which he also directed. In addition, he's the co-creator of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? and the creator of the Netflix series PEAKY BLINDERS. He's done hired gun writing gigs on commercial fare like 2015's SEVENTH SON, 2016's ALLIED, and 2018's THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB, but SERENITY, his latest auteur effort, is the kind of shit-the-bed clusterfuck that can completely derail an otherwise successful career. Just ask Martin Brest, the director of BEVERLY HILLS COP and MIDNIGHT RUN whose final film to date is GIGLI. Shot in 2017, SERENITY's release date was bumped a couple of times in the fall of 2018 until upstart Aviron Pictures yanked it from the schedule and saved it for January, an almost certain indicator that something was amiss. Trailers made it look like a BODY HEAT-type noir throwback, which unquestionably would've been preferable to the bait-and-switch that Knight haplessly tries to pull off. The end result feels like an homage to the heyday of the erotic thriller borne of a doomed alliance between James M. Cain, Joe Eszterhas, M. Night Shyamalan, Charlie Brooker, and Jack Daniels, populated by an overqualified cast clearly more intrigued by a paid vacation to scenic Mauritius and South Africa than containing whatever the dumpster fire was that Knight cobbled together on the page.

On Plymouth Island, a tiny, off-the-grid fishing island presumably somewhere in the Caribbean, local fisherman Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) is obsessed with catching a legendary giant tuna that he's named "Justice." When he isn't on his boat with his long-suffering first mate Duke (Djimon Hounsou), he's downing shots at Plymouth's one dive bar and having sweaty afternoon hookups with wealthy divorcee Constance (Diane Lane), who pays him for his services since he's perpetually short on cash. Plymouth is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone's business, and it isn't long before they've all noticed a well-dressed mystery woman who's arrived to meet Baker. She's Karen Zariakis (Anne Hathaway), his high-school sweetheart and ex-wife who knew "Baker Dill" when he went by his real name, John Marsh. She left him when he was serving in Iraq a decade earlier, taking their now-13-year-old son Patrick (Rafael Sayegh) with her. She married the shady and obscenely wealthy Frank Zariakis (Jason Clarke), a violent, vulgar lout who regularly beats and forces himself on her and demands she call him "Daddy." Haunted by PTSD and still bitter that gold-digging Karen abandoned him when he needed her most, Baker, who was so desperate to run from something in his past that he fled to an island in the middle of nowhere and adopted an alias, isn't interested in his ex's sob stories and wants no part of her very lucrative offer: $10 million if she takes Frank out on a fishing excursion and throws him into the shark-infested waters. He declines--for a while, at least-- even after she informs him that Franks's abuse is so relentless that Patrick, a savant-like genius, has locked himself in his room and spends all of his waking hours immersed in a computer game.

In any other movie, the notion of Diane Lane playing a woman who has to pay a man to sleep with her would easily be the most absurdly implausible plot detail. Or that McConaughey (born in 1969) and Hathaway (born in 1982) are supposed to be high-school sweethearts. But Knight is just getting started. What's with the weird, eccentric, persistent salesman (Jeremy Strong) who keeps anxiously running around Plymouth looking for Baker, even turning up outside his shack at 2:30 am in a torrential downpour to sell him fishing equipment? How does Baker have a telepathic communication with Patrick ("He hears you through his computer!" Karen tells him)? How does everyone know Frank is a wife-beater before he even gets to Plymouth? Why is everyone's chief reason for being seemingly to remind Baker "You gotta catch that tuna that's in your head?" You could actually make a drinking game out of every time someone says "Catch that tuna!" which actually might've made a better title than SERENITY (it's the name of Baker's boat). Hathaway makes a convincingly breathless, cooing femme fatale, even with the insipid dialogue Knight's written for her ("We're both the same," she purrs as she seduces Baker, "...damaged but in different ways," as if Knight doesn't trust the audience to draw the same conclusion). All of this is merely foreplay for what's almost certain to go down as the dumbest plot twist of 2019 or possibly even the history of narrative cinema. It might've worked if Knight hadn't telegraphed it so clumsily so early on, but anyone paying attention will figure it out long before Baker does, even if you initially dismiss your gut feeling, thinking "There's absolutely no fucking way an Oscar-nominated writer like Steven Knight is gonna pull something that stupid out of his ass." Oh, but he does! With its gaping plot holes, its jaw-dropping resolution guaranteed to leave you somewhere between thoroughly dumbfounded and utterly enraged, its idiotic dialogue, its squandering of Lane in a frivolous supporting role that's far beneath her, and the ludicrous amounts of self-indulgent McConaughey nudity and his third-act, Nic Cage-channeling histrionics, SERENITY is so bad that it almost demands to be seen with a large and increasingly hostile audience collectively losing its patience. I didn't get to experience that, as I had the entire theater to myself for a Monday matinee screening. Apparently, the word's gotten out.

DEADLY FORCE
(US - 1983)

Directed by Paul Aaron. Written by Ken Barnett, Barry Schneider and Robert Vincent O'Neil. Cast: Wings Hauser, Joyce Ingalls, Paul Shenar, Al Ruscio, Arlen Dean Snyder, Lincoln Kilpatrick, Bud Ekins, J. Victor Lopez, Hector Elias, Ramon Franco, Gina Gallego, Paul Benjamin, Big Yank, Estelle Getty, Victoria Vanderkloot, Richard Beauchamp, Ned Eisenberg, Frank Ronzio. (R, 96 mins)

Wings Hauser made such a memorable impression as psycho pimp Ramrod in the grimy 1982 sleeper hit and cable cult favorite VICE SQUAD (he even sang the theme song) that producer Sandy Howard rewarded him with the hero lead in the next year's DEADLY FORCE. Born in 1947, Hauser began his career in the late 1960s with small roles in movies, TV, and on daytime soaps, making his first big impression on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS in 1977. He even tried to start a music career, releasing an album on RCA in 1975 titled Your Love Keeps Me Off the Streets, recorded under the name "Wings Livinryte." Though he would occasionally land supporting roles in prestigious projects both award-winning (1984's A SOLDIER'S STORY, 1999's THE INSIDER) and woefully misbegotten (1987's TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE), Hauser is best known for his many B-movies in the '80s and '90s, including 1984's MUTANT, 1989's THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA, and 1990's STREET ASYLUM, which paired him with the unlikely G. Gordon Liddy. The now-71-year-old Hauser's output has slowed in recent years (he had guest spots on episodes of CASTLE and RIZZOLI & ISLES in 2016), but his actor son Cole Hauser seems poised to follow in his dad's footsteps in B-movies and on TV, most recently as Kevin Costner's right-hand man in the Paramount Network series YELLOWSTONE). But Wings Hauser was definitely having a moment in the early '80s thanks to his unforgettable performance in VICE SQUAD, and it was enough to make him a reliable presence as plays-by-his-own-rules cops and vicious killers for years to come.

Wings Hauser IS Stoney Cooper!

DEADLY FORCE failed to capitalize on Hauser's VICE SQUAD momentum and was quickly in and out of theaters in the summer of 1983. Like VICE SQUAD, it ended up in constant cable rotation for a few years after but where VICE SQUAD's cult following has endured, DEADLY FORCE more or less fell into relative obscurity, never even getting a DVD release. That's changed now that Shout! Factory has granted it a Blu-ray resurrection, despite the fact that we've all been told time and again that physical media is dead. Hauser is disgraced, alcoholic, ex-L.A. cop Stoney Cooper, who's now scraping by as a NYC street hustler and freelance strong-arm problem-solver. He's summoned back to L.A. by his fatherly old partner Sam Goodwin (Al Ruscio), whose granddaughter Beverly (Victoria Vanderkloot) was just thrown off the balcony of her high-rise apartment, the latest victim in a wave of killings with no apparent motive or connection. Nobody's happy to see Stoney back in the City of Angels, starting with his old boss Capt. Hoxley (Lincoln Kilpatrick), who warns him "You get involved in this investigation, I'll put you so far away they'll have to air-mail in light!" Also furious about his return is crime boss Ashley Maynard (Arlen Dean Snyder), who just served two years after being busted by Stoney, presumably for passing himself off as a feared criminal despite being named "Ashley Maynard." Most annoyed of all is Stoney's estranged wife Eddie (Joyce Ingalls, who left the business after this aside from a bit part as a nurse in 1998's LETHAL WEAPON 4, with her only other significant role being in 1978's PARADISE ALLEY, during which she and director/star Sylvester Stallone briefly became an item), a TV news reporter who's working the case and doesn't want Stoney meddling.

Of course, since he's a no-rules cop-turned-no-rules ex-cop, Stoney meddles and ruffles feathers everywhere he goes, even forming an unholy alliance with the nefarious Ashley Maynard, who agrees to leave Stoney alone and call his dogs off for two weeks in exchange for half of the reward money when Stoney nabs the killer, a mystery man played by Bud Ekins, who spent a lot of time in the '60s and '70s as Steve McQueen's regular stunt double. The body count rises and both Stoney and Eddie find their lives in danger while rekindling their romance (cue gratuitous Wings man-ass in a sequence where he's shot at while in a bathtub and then with Eddie in a ridiculous sex-in-a-living-room-hammock scene), and the key to the cracking the case may be wealthy and powerful self-help magnate Joshua Adams (Paul Shenar), a mysterious figure whose villainy is obvious the moment one sees he's played by Paul Shenar.

Also featuring a bit part by a pre-GOLDEN GIRLS Estelle Getty as a lead-footed NYC cabbie named "Gussie," DEADLY FORCE was directed by Paul Aaron, perhaps best known for the early Chuck Norris vehicle A FORCE OF ONE and the TV-movie remake of THE MIRACLE WORKER, both from 1979. Among the screenwriters was VICE SQUAD co-writer Robert Vincent O'Neil (THE BALTIMORE BULLET), who really carved a niche for himself during this period with time-capsule snapshots of early '80s L.A. sleaze, following DEADLY FORCE by writing and directing 1984's surprise "high school honor student by day, Hollywood hooker by night" hit ANGEL and its 1985 sequel AVENGING ANGEL. Despite adhering to every genre trope imaginable, DEADLY FORCE failed to establish Wings Hauser as a mainstream, multiplex action star, though he was never out of work thanks to the forthcoming straight-to-video explosion that would keep him busy through the 1990s. Looking at it now, DEADLY FORCE prefigures LETHAL WEAPON in a number of ways, starting with both films opening with a beautiful young woman taking an unwilling dive off of a high balcony. But with his disdain for department policy, his goofy, smart-ass eccentricities (he breaks into Maynard's house, makes small-talk with his senile mother, and eats popcorn and watches porn with Maynard's girlfriend before sarcastically tucking an irate Maynard into bed), his penchant for taking insane risks (there's some impressive stunt work here, with one wild car chase where Hauser and Snyder are, in most shots, right there in the vehicles), and the manic, hair-trigger intensity brought to the table by Hauser, Stoney Cooper is an obvious precursor to Mel Gibson's Martin Riggs. I somehow missed DEADLY FORCE back in the day, but I thoroughly enjoyed discovering it now, so even though the Blu-ray has no extras, props to Shout! Factory for making this forgotten, Cannon-esque gem available once again. It's just a shame that we were deprived of further Stoney Cooper adventures, a gift that would've never stopped giving.

DEADLY FORCE belatedly opening in Toledo, OH on 1/27/1984,
over six months after it began its theatrical rollout.

VELVET BUZZSAW
(US - 2019)

Written and directed by Dan Gilroy. Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Toni Collette, John Malkovich, Zawe Ashton, Tom Sturridge, Natalia Dyer, Daveed Diggs, Billy Magnussen, Marco Rodriguez, Mark Steger, Steven Williams, Alan Mandell, Pat Healy, Nitya Vidyasagar, Mig Macario, Sedale Threatt Jr, Andrea Marcovicci, Christopher Darga, Ian Alda. (R, 112 mins)

Since shifting to directing with 2014's acclaimed NIGHTCRAWLER, veteran journeyman screenwriter Dan Gilroy (FREEJACK, CHASERS) has demonstrated a knack for getting top-shelf performances from his actors. Jake Gyllenhaal's work in NIGHTCRAWLER remains his career-best and one of the most egregious Oscar snubs in recent memory. Gilroy guided Denzel Washington to yet another Academy Award nomination for 2017's legal thriller ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ, and while those two films share common themes, they also share similar flaws. Gyllenhaal is so great in NIGHTCRAWLER that he single-handedly allows you to overlook the borderline naivete of the film's core observation that--SPOILER--people in the news media often resort to dubious tactics for a scoop and even--find the nearest fainting couch--sensationalize stories for ratings, something that wasn't even a shocking notion when NETWORK came out in 1976. Likewise, ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ is carried by the exemplary work of Washington in service of a story that blows the doors off the idea that lawyers might become cynical and greedy after years on the job and may make decisions that aren't in the best interest of their clients. There's nothing wrong with the stories of NIGHTCRAWLER and ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ in and of themselves, but while watching them, one gets the feeling that Gilroy thinks he's really on to something that no one's ever considered before. His two directorial efforts up to now are pretty good movies blessed by stars who heroically carry them on their shoulders and take them to the next level.

Gilroy's luck runs out with his latest, the Netflix Original VELVET BUZZSAW. More of an ensemble piece--he's likened it to Robert Altman's THE PLAYER, which is hubristically wishful thinking--VELVET BUZZSAW can't rely on just one actor to carry it, which only magnifies the weaknesses and, again, the obviousness of the points he's attempting to make. A bit outside Gilroy's comfort zone, VELVET BUZZSAW is a supernatural horror film set in the pretentious, self-important L.A. art world, centered mostly on snooty critic Morf Vandewalt (Gyllenhaal), a powerful mover-and-shaker in the scene who enjoys the constant sycophantic ass-kissing he gets from gallery owners, artists, and agents all looking for a good review. Just out of a relationship with Ed (Sedale Threatt, Jr), Morf falls hard for Josephina (Zawe Ashton), an ambitious assistant to top gallery owner and one-time '80s punk rocker Rhodora Haze (Gilroy's wife Rene Russo). Leaving for work one morning, Josephina discovers the dead body of a neighbor (Alan Mandell) in the hallway. The neighbor turns to be an enigmatic mystery man named Vetril Dease, a janitor who left behind well over a thousand sketches and canvases in his HOARDERS-esque apartment, with specific instructions that they be destroyed upon his death. No one in the art scene has any info on Dease, but Josephina sees something in his work, steals it all from his apartment, and through shady legal machinations, ends up bringing them to Rhodora, who, along with rave blurbs from Morf, turns the late Vetril Dease into the scene's newest star. But those who come into contact with Dease's work start having bizarre hallucinations. Before long, there's a body count as everyone around Morf and Josephina start dying in inexplicable accidents involving Dease's work coming to life, almost as if part of his soul remains trapped in all of the art he's left behind.

Playing like an ill-advised collaboration between Clive Barker and Banksy, VELVET BUZZSAW (the name of Rhodora's old band, with their logo tattooed on the back of her shoulder--a cool title but it has virtually nothing to do with anything that happens) manages some occasionally decent satirical digs at L.A. art scenesters--like Morf showing up at one Dease victim's funeral and harshly critiquing the casket--but when almost every character is either an over-the-top caricature or a ruthless, self-serving asshole, it's kinda like shooting fish in a barrel. Gyllenhaal doesn't recapture his NIGHTCRAWLER mojo here, operating in two modes: incredulously condescending or Nic Cage freakout. Ashton's Josephina goes from the sympathetic moral center to heartlessly cruel viper out of nowhere, while Russo more or less plays her NIGHTCRAWLER character transferred to an art gallery. Gilroy doesn't really know what to do with either Toni Collette, as an art museum director turned buyer for Rhodora's chief rival Jon Dondon (Tom Sturridge), or John Malkovich, cast radically against type as "John Malkovich," playing a cynical recovering alcoholic and L.A. art legend who realizes right away that something is very wrong about Dease's work. There was some potential here, but Gilroy doesn't seem aware of the horror genre's cliches--paintings and art coming to life, Dease's work being painted with his own blood, a robotic exhibit called "Hoboman" (Mark Steger) that's an obvious attempt at creating a new Pinhead-type horror icon--and one attempted jump scare involving a roll of film on a projector might've worked if movies like SINISTER and IT didn't already exist (also, nothing here is as creepy or as unsettling as any random moment Gyllenhaal is onscreen in NIGHTCRAWLER). There's a valid point to VELVET BUZZSAW--that commerce trumps art and all anyone cares about is how much money they can make from it--but in criticizing this world in such a smug and pompous way, whether it's silly character names or a demonstrable lack of familiarity with horror in general (and the CGI splatter is really terrible), VELVET BUZZSAW is ultimately just as empty and vacuous as what it purports to be skewering. Just don't be surprised when "Hoboman" gets his own spinoff franchise.

THE SISTERS BROTHERS
(US/France/Germany/Spain/Romania/Belgium - 2018)

The $40 million revisionist western THE SISTERS BROTHERS was an expensive flop when it opened in theaters in the fall of 2018 and grossed just $3 million. An unmarketable art-house offering that had no business being sold as commercial multplex fare, it's the English-language debut of acclaimed French filmmaker Jacques Audiard (THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED, A PROPHET, RUST AND BONE) and is based on a 2011 novel by Patrick deWitt. It was a long-gestating pet project for star John C. Reilly, who acquired the movie rights immediately after the book was published. It took Reilly six years and funding from six countries to finally get the film made, and with picturesque exteriors shot in Romania and the old spaghetti western stomping grounds of Almeria, Spain, cinematography by the great Benoit Debie, a score by Alexandre Desplat, and costume design by the legendary Milena Canonero, the money and the prestige are certainly up there on the screen. But the story is so sluggish and its intent so indecisive that the film never quite catches fire despite some excellent work by Reilly and his co-stars. Opening in 1851 Oregon during the Gold Rush, the story has sibling gunslingers Eli (Reilly) and Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix) assigned by their powerful robber baron boss The Commodore (Rutger Hauer, wasted in a silent cameo and seen only briefly through a window) to track down Kermit Herman Warm (Riz Ahmed), a chemist he claims has stolen something valuable from him. The Commodore already has another regulator, John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal), on Warm's trail, but the Sisters brothers are perpetually several days behind, due in large part to Charlie's heavy drinking. Eli is skeptical of the work they do for The Commodore, not really buying that so many people steal from someone so feared. Indeed, Warm has stolen nothing from The Commodore: he's invented a formula for a chemical that illuminates gold deposits when poured into a body of water, and he's got an investor in California ready to buy it from him, while The Commodore simply wants to steal it--and eliminate Warm altogether--for his own plentiful financial gain. The Sisters brothers eventually catch up with Morris and Warm, forming an uneasy alliance brought about largely by their collective loathing of The Commodore, but in particular, it's Eli who wants something different, even suggesting to Charlie that they ditch their outlaw life and "maybe open a store" (Charlie: "A store? What fucking store?!"). The good-hearted Eli longs to better himself, and Reilly really captures that sentiment in a wonderful little moment when he sees that the more sophisticated and erudite Morris also uses a toothbrush, a new and rare commodity in these environs that Eli just acquired but hasn't quite mastered.

THE SISTERS BROTHERS looks great and it's obvious that Reilly put his heart and soul into it, but maybe Audiard just wasn't the right guy for the job. He's made some terrific films, but this one can't really commit to being anything. It's too slow and dour to be a comedy, but it's also too offbeat and quirky with their bickering and brawling to be a serious western, trying to have it both ways and succeeding at neither. Both stars have worked multiple times with Paul Thomas Anderson (Reilly in HARD EIGHT, BOOGIE NIGHTS, and MAGNOLIA, and Phoenix in THE MASTER and INHERENT VICE), and I kept thinking that Anderson might've been more suited to what this seems to be going after as an introspective character piece about brotherly bonds and family trauma that stems from their abusive father. In the end, it's a noble, well-intentioned misfire that never really pulls itself together, and they seriously could've used a cardboard cutout of Rutger Hauer for as little as he's required to do in his scant seconds of screen time. (R, 121 mins)

THE GUILTY
(Denmark - 2018)

Thrillers set in one location are always tricky to pull off, largely because the filmmakers often can't wait to get away from that specific location. It's hard to not recall the acclaimed Tom Hardy-in-a-car film LOCKE while watching the Danish thriller THE GUILTY. It's also reminiscent of the Halle Berry 911 thriller THE CALL, but with the patience and the discipline to stay in one place and, more importantly, with one person. Jakob Cedergren is on camera from the beginning to the end as Asger Holm, who's working as an emergency services dispatcher. Debuting director and co-writer Gustav Moller very deliberately fills in the pieces of Asger's back story as the film proceeds, but what we know up front is that he's a Copenhagen cop and he's been temporarily busted down to emergency dispatch for undisclosed disciplinary reasons. He's nearing the end of his shift, and he displays a visible impatience bordering on contempt--for the callers, his colleagues, and generally everything. He scoffs at a guy needing an ambulance because he's tripping on speed, and almost openly mocks a caller who was mugged by a hooker in the red light district. But then a call comes from a woman that caller ID lists as Iben Ostergard (voice of Jessica Dinnage). She's talking to Asger but pretending to talk to her daughter. Asger quickly deduces that she's been abducted and she's in a moving vehicle. He notifies the nearest precinct of her approximate location, then calls her home number to talk to her young daughter Mathilde (voice of Katinka Evers-Jahnsen). She's home alone with her infant brother and tells Asger that her parents had a fight and that Mommy (Iben) left with Daddy. Checking the records of Iben's estranged husband Michael, Asger discovers he's a convicted felon with a history of assault. Despite everyone--from his supervisor to the dispatchers at various precincts--telling him that he's done his job and they'll take it from here, the detective in Asger can't let it go. He calls his partner Rashid (voice of Omar Shargawi) and has him go to Michael's address to look for clues. Cops think they found the vehicle Iben is in, but it's a false alarm. The another team of cops arrive at Iben's house and are met with a shocking discovery. And all of this plays out with Asger listening in on a headset and staying on the line.

About 30 minutes in, Asger moves from his work station into a private office, which allows other developments to come to light. Why is he taking such an intense interest in this? Is he just that dedicated to his job? Will it get him out of the doghouse with his bosses? Is it a distraction from an oft-mentioned court appearance scheduled for the next morning? Why is a reporter calling him on his phone? Moller does an exemplary job with what essentially unfolds in real time, though specific time is never referenced nor a clock ever shown. It just feels like real time without the gimmick of drawing attention to itself. THE GUILTY is the kind of film that you find yourself watching with palpable tension and baited breath to the point where even the sound of vibrating phone is enough to put you on edge. It's like an 85-minute anxiety attack, especially when everything Asger does to help the situation in his take-charge fashion inevitably ends up making it worse. This wouldn't be nearly as effective as it is if not for the sure-handed vision of Moller and the riveting performance of Cedergren, who's logged a lot of time on Scandinavian TV (he co-starred in the original Danish version of the series THE KILLING) and is probably best known to foreign film enthusiasts for the 2008 black comedy TERRIBLY HAPPY. THE GUILTY got a good amount of acclaim during its limited US theatrical run, but nobody saw it. It's waiting to be discovered on Blu-ray and eventually streaming, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if it got a neutered Hollywood remake--which would likely have Asger ditching the dispatch center 15 minutes in and going on a city-wide rampage himself to find Iben--but this under-the-radar gem is a tightly-wound, expertly-constructed, and extremely well-played exercise in stomach-knotting tension. (R, 88 mins)

THE PRODIGY
(US - 2019)

Directed by Nicholas McCarthy. Written by Jeff Buhler. Cast: Taylor Schilling, Jackson Robert Scott, Colm Feore, Peter Mooney, Paul Fauteux, Brittany Allen, Paula Boudreau, Olunike Adeyili, Elisa Moolecherry, Michael Dyson. (R, 92 mins)

From 1956's THE BAD SEED and 1960's VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED to 1976's THE OMEN, 1984's CHILDREN OF THE CORN and 1993's THE GOOD SON to the modern era with 2009's ORPHAN to name just a select few, the "creepy kid" has been one of horror's more durable subgenres throughout the decades. Mario Bava's final film, 1977's SHOCK, released in the US in 1979 as BEYOND THE DOOR II, also had a memorable creepy kid in Marco (David Colin, Jr.), who's become possessed by the spirit of his dead father. SHOCK had an unforgettably effective jump scare in a hallway involving a practical effect pulled off simply by smart camera placement, and that moment is replicated by director Nicholas McCarthy in his latest film THE PRODIGY, the newest addition to the creepy kid pantheon. It's clearly meant as an affectionate homage, as McCarthy knows his horror history and has obviously seen SHOCK. He's also seen THE EXORCIST and THE EXORCIST III, both of which are invoked to various degrees in THE PRODIGY, but McCarthy knows better than to take the film down those familiar and over-traveled roads. Jeff Buhler (THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN) is the credited screenwriter (he also wrote the upcoming remakes of PET SEMATARY, JACOB'S LADDER and THE GRUDGE), but I'm curious how much of this was rewritten by McCarthy. Discounting his hired gun gig helming the 2017 Investigation Discovery docu-drama FINAL VISION, McCarthy's films thus far--2012's THE PACT, 2014's AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR, and "Easter," his segment of the 2016 horror anthology HOLIDAYS--all share common themes of strong women, usually mothers or someone (an aunt, an older sister) put in the position of being responsible for children, perhaps going to great lengths to protect them, and some level of dysfunction or trauma that haunts a family over generations, a curse often passed down like a genetic flaw. These recurring themes turn up throughout THE PRODIGY, which takes the "creepy kid" trope and incorporates it into what must be considered McCarthy's obsession. THE PACT is one of the best horror films of the last ten years, and while AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR and "Easter" weren't bad, they didn't live up to the potential McCarthy showed with his debut. The uncompromising and unpredictable THE PRODIGY feels, seven years later, like the logical follow-up to THE PACT.

It's easy to fall into a trap of thinking THE PRODIGY is showing its cards too early, but it's obviously misdirection by design on the part of the filmmakers. A cross-cutting prologue depicts a young woman (Brittany Allen) escaping from the farmhouse of a rural Ohio serial killer (Paul Fauteux) who amputates the right hands of his female victims. At the same time she leads authorities to his middle-of-nowhere home and he's killed in a blast of gunfire by the cops, a baby boy named Miles is born in Pennsylvania to Sarah (Taylor Schilling) and John Blume (Peter Mooney). Even before he's a year old, Miles is saying "Da-Da," and his cognitive abilities are accelerated well beyond his age as he enters his toddler and pre-school years. By the age of eight, Miles (Jackson Robert Scott, best known as the doomed Georgie in 2017's IT) is a genius requiring a special school, though Sarah is concerned that his development is behind in other areas, such as his inability to adapt in social situations with other children. Miles has moments where he isn't himself, and when a babysitter (Elisa Moolecherry) is seriously injured in a basement trap clearly set by Miles, he says he has no recollection of anything. He starts having bad dreams and Sarah records him talking in his sleep in what she initially assumes is gibberish but what's later revealed to be a form of Hungarian but in a rarely-used and archaic dialect. As his actions grow more sinister, he tries to explain to his parents that he sometimes doesn't feel like he's in his own body, to the point where Sarah and John can no longer ignore that something is very wrong with Miles.

Based on that synopsis, you're probably assuming this is another rote possession film but that's just the set-up. It's not a spoiler to say that Miles' body is inhabited by the spirit of the serial killer, as it's plainly spelled out in the opening sequence. But McCarthy's interests lie elsewhere, whether it's the escalating tension of the situation and the various stylistic ways that it's conveyed (great use of mirrors, windows, and shadows),or how Sarah's distrust of her own son grows stronger and more panicked with each passing scene (John, still silently haunted by the abuse he suffered at the hands of his own father, is largely ineffectual when it comes to handling Miles; it's also John who serves as the requisite idiot, picking the worst possible time to tell Miles that they're taking him to a mental institution). As THE PRODIGY goes on, it ventures into some places that are pretty dark and disturbing for a commercial horror outing, particularly in one sequence--a one-on-one "regression" therapy session with Miles and a psychiatrist (Colm Feore)--that provoked audible gasps from the audience (trust me, you'll never be able to predict where their conversation ends up going, and both Scott and Feore play it perfectly), and in a shocking final act where Sarah resorts to extreme methods to help her son.

If you've seen McCarthy's past films, all of those concerns reappear here--dark family secrets, abuse and trauma, the notion of a spirit overtaking a body and "wearing it like a costume," as memorably stated in AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR, and a strong, determined mother who will stop at nothing to save her child--with the "creepy kid" tropes coming into play in unexpectedly subversive ways. THE PRODIGY also benefits from a strong and believable performance by Schilling and a remarkable one from young Scott, who fearlessly dives into this, getting to say and do things that earn the R rating, and he has a penetrating glare that isn't easily shaken, more than earning his rightful place among the horror genre's great creepy kids. McCarthy is one of horror's most promising filmmakers, and while THE PRODIGY is his first effort to get a nationwide rollout, he remains a figure that serious students of horror have largely kept to themselves, And to that end, I'm glad he hasn't quite broken out into the mainstream, opting (thus far) to create a body of work that chances playing the long game instead of directing something that will be forgotten two weeks after it's released. Like, say, the upcoming remakes of PET SEMATARY and CHILD'S PLAY, two trailers that preceded THE PRODIGY.

COLD PURSUIT
(France/UK - 2019)

Directed by Hans Petter Moland. Written by Frank Baldwin. Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Tom Bateman, Tom Jackson, Emmy Rossum, Domenick Lombardozzi, Julia Jones, John Doman, William Forsythe, David O'Hara, Nicholas Holmes, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Michael Eklund, Raoul Trujillo, Michael Richardson, Gus Halper, Arnold Pinnock, Bradley Stryker, Wesley MacInnes, Elizabeth Thai, Aleks Paunovic, Glen Gould, Michael Adamthwaite, Kyle Nobess, Nels Lennarson. (R, 118 mins)

An almost scene-for-scene English-language remake of the 2014 Norwegian film IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE by the same director (Hans Petter Moland, who also helmed DEPARTMENT Q: A CONSPIRACY OF FAITH), COLD PURSUIT is perfectly-tailored for the now-decade-long "revenge thriller" phase of Liam Neeson's career (the actor has said this might be his last film of this type). Its opening hijacked by the fallout of an honest but ill-advised Neeson revelation on the press junket--and really, who better to judge a reactionary, knee-jerk response to a violent incident involving a close friend from over 40 years ago by a young man who came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the sociopolitical upheaval of The Troubles in Northern Ireland than uber-woke and perpetually-offended Vulture and AV Club contributors in their mid-twenties who may not even be aware of Neeson's career before TAKEN?--COLD PURSUIT would, at first glance, appear to be the now-customary winter Neeson revenge offering. But if you've seen IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE or are at least familiar with its black comedy elements, it's something else entirely. Thanks to the genre expectations that come from Neeson rather than the original film's Stellan Skarsgard, COLD PURSUIT is an irreverent, witty, and frequently laugh-out-loud absurdist revenge thriller that feels like an in-his-prime Charles Bronson starring in a Coen Bros. movie. It works at its own pace and on its own wavelength, and everything about it just feels wonderfully offbeat and a bit off-kilter. It's a risky gamble for those expecting another TAKEN and it won't appeal to everyone, but once you're in sync with its oddball stylings and rhythms--it takes some time before it's clear that you're supposed to be laughing at most of this--it's an inspired blast filled with clever callbacks to earlier incidents and numerous visual gags, and it's vividly brought to life by Neeson and a terrific ensemble cast.

In the remote Colorado skiing town of Kehoe, local snowplow driver and man-of-few-words Nels Coxman (Neeson) barely has time to celebrate being named Kehoe's Citizen of the Year for his tireless efforts at keeping the main road clear before he and his wife Grace (Laura Dern) are dealt a tragic blow: their only son Kyle (Michael Richardson, Neeson's eldest son with late wife Natasha Richardson), a baggage handler at the local airport, is found dead from a heroin overdose. Insisting his son wasn't a junkie and that there must be some explanation for his death, Coxman embarks on what's initially the usual Neeson path of vengeance but one that's quickly defined by numerous unpredictable twists and turns. He offs a couple of low-level guys who turn out to be flunkies of Denver-based drug lord Trevor Calcote, aka "Viking" (Tom Bateman). When three of his guys turn up missing (Coxman has wrapped them in chicken wire and tossed them off a gorge into the ice-cold rapids on the outskirts of Kehoe), Viking is certain it's the beginning of a turf war with White Bull (Tom Jackson, presumably because Wes Studi and Graham Greene were busy), a Native American crime boss based in Kehoe who clashed with Viking's late father decades earlier (the cultural aspects and the oft-mentioned legality of weed in Colorado are the major structural diversions from the Norwegian original). At this point unaware of Coxman, Viking has White Bull's adult, first-born son killed and strung up on a road sign outside Kehoe, an unprovoked attack that breaks decades of peace and leads to White Bull planning the retaliatory kidnapping of Viking's eight-year-old, classical-music loving son Ryan (Nicholas Holmes), much to the chagrin of Viking's soon-to-be-ex-wife Aya (Julia Jones). All the while, Coxman keeps upping the body count, whacking guys with names like "Speedo" and "Limbo," and even getting advice from his retired and estranged criminal brother Brock, aka "Wingman" (William Forsythe), who recommends hiring a hit man known as "The Eskimo" (Arnold Pinnock).

Coxman's killing spree mines humor from its over-the-top violence (and, yes, also his name--Skarsgard plays "Nels Dickman" in the original film), with the laughs often coming in the repetition, whether it's the soon-to-be-customary chicken-wire-wrapped corpse being thrown off the gorge ("Why chicken wire?" Brock asks his brother. "So the fish can eat enough of the body to keep it from bloating with gas and rising to the surface...I read it in a crime novel") to the names of the deceased being displayed onscreen in order of disappearance, to the point where we don't even see them being killed (maybe just a curtain being drawn or a polite request to step off an expensive rug), but the inevitability is such that it becomes a clever running gag. Other delightfully dark-humored bits range from Viking telling his bullied son to read Lord of the Flies to learn how to handle himself; local cops Gip (John Doman) and Dash (Emmy Rossum) having conflicting views on how to deal with the expanding turf war; sex-crazed Viking goon Bone (Gus Halper) endlessly crowing about the "31% success rate" of his $20 trick with motel cleaning ladies, which of course results in a great sight gag later on; young Ryan helping his father's chief henchman Mustang (Domenick Lombardozzi) with his hapless fantasy football team and pointing out that he's losing because he's starting four Cleveland Browns; and some of White Bull's crew threatening a hotel desk clerk with a bad Yelp review. Neeson is the nominal star, but he's more than willing to let almost every member of the large supporting cast get a memorable turn in the spotlight. Nels Coxman doesn't seem like he'd be a man especially adept at violence, but a throwaway line about his and Brock's father being a criminal is enough to justify his ability to navigate through this world, even though he seems to have distanced himself from it when he met Grace (the film's biggest flaw is that it gives Dern almost nothing to do). COLD PURSUIT handles its laughs without crossing the line into parody, which would've been the easy route to take for a standard-issue remake. Thankfully, this takes a more droll, tongue-in-cheek approach. Indeed, the audience seemed hesitant to laugh along at first, like they weren't sure what to make of it, but once it gets rolling and establishes itself, COLD PURSUIT won them over. Now if only people could forgive Neeson for some irrational, impulsive thoughts borne of misdirected rage that he quickly abandoned after coming to his senses decades ago.

AT ETERNITY'S GATE
(UK/Switzerland/Ireland/US/France - 2018)

Beautiful and ponderous in equal measures, AT ETERNITY'S GATE does have an Oscar-nominated performance by Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh to carry it most of the way. Dafoe is so good--here and in general--that he successfully manages to overcome the major obstacle of being a 62-year-old actor playing someone who died at the age of 38. Directed by artist-turned-filmmaker Julian Schnabel (BASQUIAT, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY), AT ETERNITY'S GATE focuses on the last few months of Van Gogh's life and his artistic obsession, with a lot of time devoted to his almost sycophantic clinging to his successful contemporary Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac). Financially supported by his younger brother Theo (Rupert Friend), Van Gogh and his work would never be recognized in his lifetime, and while Gauguin sees potential, he feels Van Gogh is too erratic and psychologically unstable to focus and think his painting through ("You're changing things so fast that you can't even see what you've done"). It's at Gauguin's suggestion that Van Gogh leaves Paris to find inspiration in Arles in the south of France, and when Gauguin visits him and has to leave to attend to some sales of paintings back home, a devastated Van Gogh melts down and cuts off his left ear to show his devotion. After a stint in a mental hospital, Van Gogh spends his final days on a furious tear of productivity in Auvers-sur-Oise before meeting a tragic end.

Working from a script co-written with 87-year-old Jean-Claude Carriere, a frequent Luis Bunuel collaborator (DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID, BELLE DE JOUR, THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE) still going strong as he approaches the seventh decade of his screenwriting career, Schnabel often stages his scenes as painterly images, where the screen starts to take on the look and texture of a Van Gogh work, a technique that's reminiscent of but not quite as immersive as Lech Majewski's 2011 film THE MILL AND THE CROSS. Elsewhere, Van Gogh's increasingly fragile mental state is conveyed by the intentional repetition of many lines of dialogue just seconds apart and in a series of distorted camera angles, blurred images, extreme close-ups, and shaky-cam that wouldn't be out of place in a found-footage horror film. Falling on the side of esoteric in comparison to the 1956 Hollywood biopic LUST FOR LIFE, with Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh, James Donald as Theo, and an Oscar-winning Anthony Quinn as Gauguin (or even Robert Altman's pre-comeback 1990 film VINCENT & THEO, with Tim Roth as Van Gogh, Paul Rhys as Theo, and Wladimir Yordanoff as Gauguin), but AT ETERNITY'S GATE is sometimes standoffish to a fault, with Schnabel's techniques growing self-indulgent and tedious after a while. Not surprisingly, it works best when he takes a break from the directorial wankery and lets Dafoe work his magic, whether it's a long monologue or in scenes with Isaac, Friend, Mads Mikkelsen as a priest counseling Van Gogh at the mental hospital, and Emmanuelle Seigner as Madame Ginoux, the "Woman from Arles" who inspired Van Gogh's famed series of "L'Arlesienne" paintings. (PG-13, 111 mins)

THE FRONT RUNNER
(US/Canada - 2018)

Hitting a handful of theaters on Election Day 2018, THE FRONT RUNNER didn't really catch on and only got a half-hearted, 800-screen rollout from Sony over the next couple of weeks, its gross stalling at $2 million and the film completely forgotten by December. A chronicle of the three weeks leading up to Colorado senator Gary Hart's withdrawal from the 1988 Presidential campaign over allegations of an affair with Donna Rice, THE FRONT RUNNER isn't very subtle about making connections to present-day issues, particularly in an embarrassingly heavy-handed scene late in the film between two Washington Post reporters. Hart, played here by Hugh Jackman, doesn't think the public cares about allegations and politicians' private lives, but as his campaign manager Bill Dixon (J.K. Simmons, cast radically against type as "J.K. Simmons") tells him, "It's not '72." In the Senate for 15 years and losing the 1984 Democratic nomination to Walter Mondale, Hart's political star was on the rise, and going into 1988, he was posited as the front runner until a Washington Post reporter (Mamoudou Athie) brings up a brief separation from his wife Lee (Vera Farmiga) several years earlier. Already whispered about in political circles as a womanizer, Hart doesn't even mask his indignation and invites the press to "follow me around, put a tail on me...they'll be very bored." Following an anonymous tip, a pair of Miami Herald reporters, Tom Fiedler (Steve Zissis) and Jim Savage (BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD creator Mike Judge) do just that and see Rice (Sara Paxton) visiting Hart at his D.C. townhouse. The senator insists she was there for a job interview, though it soon surfaces that they met a short time earlier in Miami on a crowded booze cruise arranged by Hart's lobbyist friend Billy Broadhurst (Toby Huss), on a yacht prophetically christened "Monkey Business."

A relatively tame preview of the media circus that was the Clinton era, the Gary Hart scandal is generally considered ground zero of tabloid journalism working its way into present-day politics. Director/co-writer Jason Reitman (JUNO, UP IN THE AIR) wants to fashion THE FRONT RUNNER as a rallying cry against the 24/7 cable news coverage that was on the horizon, but the end result is superficial and strangely aloof. It takes neither a methodical, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN approach nor one of satire along the lines of VICE. It's just...there. It gets off to a clunky, plodding start and takes a while to recover and find its footing (it doesn't help that every other character seems to be named "Bill" or "Bob"), and keeps everyone at a distance, never really getting into the heads of Hart or his family, with everything reduced to melodramatic proclamations like "The public doesn't care about this!" from Hart and "I told you to never embarrass me!" from Lee. Jackman does what he can with the shallow script (he's very good in a scene where Hart talks a nervous young journalist through some mid-flight turbulence), Alfred Molina is badly miscast as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, and Paxton has some good moments with Hart's sympathetic top female campaign staffer (Molly Ephraim) who's quietly resentful that Hart is abandoning her to a media that paints her as a bimbo. But much of this ultimately rings hollow if you're aware that Ephraim's character, like the Post reporter played by Athie along with several others, is a composite or an outright fictional creation. There's a few worthwhile bits early on, like Hart and Rice's first meeting during the loud and rambunctious booze cruise, with their conversation barely audible and being drowned out by Boston's "Long Time" (watch Jackson's face when Hart first sees her and immediately turns on the charm), but THE FRONT RUNNER plays like a forgettable HBO biopic, offering about as much insight into the scandal and its impact on future political news coverage as Gary Hart's Wikipedia entry. (R, 113 mins)

THE BOUNCER
(France/Belgium - 2018; US release 2019)

Released in Europe last summer as LUKAS, THE BOUNCER finds Jean-Claude Van Damme in the kind of serious actor mode he's generally avoided since his 2008 meta arthouse confessional JCVD. It comes at the right time, as he's really been skidding in his headlining action vehicles of late, littered with forgettable duds like POUND OF FLESH, KILL 'EM ALL and BLACK WATER in between the rebooted KICKBOXER nostalgia trips. Dumped on US VOD in early January, the French-Belgian co-production THE BOUNCER is a bit different from the film's LUKAS cut in that it's shortened by several minutes and all of the characters have been dubbed into English, where LUKAS had a mix of English, French, and Flemish. Van Damme is speaking both English and French in the overseas LUKAS trailer, but it's all English in THE BOUNCER, and while he's dubbing himself, the obvious revoicing of the French-speaking actors does this version a bit of a disservice. That hiccup aside, THE BOUNCER is Van Damme's best film in years, a surprising departure in a grim, gritty, somber character piece with shocking bursts of violence and some Alfonso Cuaron-inspired tracking shots and unbroken takes by director Julian Leclercq (CHRYSALIS). In Brussels, Lukas (Van Damme) is a bouncer in a club that looks like a Gaspar Noe wet dream. He's tossing out an unruly patron for roughing up a waitress, and a scuffle ensues when the kid plays the "Do you know who I am?" card, ending up with a serious head injury after taking a swing at Lukas, and even though he was defending himself, Lukas still gets fired. He's a widower and single dad with a vague past as a bodyguard in South Africa, struggling to get by and raise his eight-year-old daughter Sarah (Alice Verset). Though he's a loving and doting father, he has no job skills other than beating the shit out of people, and as a result, he ends up looking for work as a bouncer at a strip joint where the job interview consists of six guys locked in a dimly-lit, Tyler Durden-esque basement and the last man standing gets the job. Of course, Lukas gets the job.

The club is owned by Jan Dekkers (Sam Louwyck of EX-DRUMMER), who's known in the Brussels underworld as "The Dutchman" and is running a counterfeiting ring. This puts Lukas in the sights of ambitious cop Maxim Zeroual (Sami Bouajila), who offers to take care of the pending assault charges from his last job if he works as an informant supplying information about The Dutchman and his chief henchman Geert (Kevin Janssens of REVENGE). Story-wise, THE BOUNCER doesn't really bring anything new to the table, but director Leclercq succeeds in creating a bleak and oppressive atmosphere as Lukas gets in too deep, with Van Damme turning in an effective and very internalized performance and using every line and wrinkle in his aged, weathered face to convey just how weary and tired and beaten-down-by-life Lukas has become. During the '00s when he was cranking out some quality DTV actioners and nobody was paying any attention, Van Damme very quietly became a character actor disguised as an action star. Lately, he's been coasting, but THE BOUNCER is a welcome look at the direction his career should've taken after JCVD. That's why it's too bad the only version that's available stateside has all of his scenes with Bouajila and young Verset dubbed into English (quite badly in Bouajila's case) when they were in French in the LUKAS cut. Still, THE BOUNCER is a must-see for JCVD fans interested in seeing him stretch beyond the confines of his usual Redbox fare. He's a much better actor than he's ever gotten credit for being. (R, 87 mins)

PARTY LINE
(US - 1988)

Directed by William Webb. Written by Richard Brandes. Cast: Richard Hatch, Shawn Weatherly, Leif Garrett, Greta Blackburn, Richard Roundtree, James O'Sullivan, Terrence McGovern, Shelli Place, Patricia Patts, Tara Hutchins, Marty Dudek, Karen Mayo Chandler, James Paradise, Angela Gibbs, Ed Corbett, West Buchanan. (R, 90 mins)

An obscurity from the VHS glory days just resurrected on a surprisingly terrific-looking Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome (because physical media is dead), PARTY LINE isn't about to be branded a lost classic, but it's not without its bizarre charms. Released in the fall of 1988 by the short-lived Sony B-movie wing SVS Films (the 1989 Eric Roberts kickboxing actioner BEST OF THE BEST was the closest thing they had to a hit), PARTY LINE arrived at a transitional time as the '80s slasher craze was largely over and the advent of the '90s sax-and-smooth jazz-driven Skinemax unrated erotic thriller era was on the horizon, and it's not lost on Vinegar Syndrome's marketing department that PARTY LINE straddles--no pun intended--both of these iconic exploitation genres. Centered on a Los Angeles-based chat line for phone sex and hookups, this pre-internet, pre-Tinder time capsule has two psycho siblings--Seth Benson (former '70s teen idol Leif Garrett) and his older sister Angelina (Greta Blackburn of 48 HRS and CHAINED HEAT)--luring horny, married men to bed with Angelina, resulting in Seth slashing their throats as part of an ongoing, codependent revenge ritual against their dead movie producer father. Dad was sexually molesting Angelina for years when she was growing up, prompting their actress mother to commit suicide and Seth, already stunted by severe Oedipal issues as a child, to kill their father and stage it as an accident. As the body count rises, disgraced cop Dan Bridges (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA's Richard Hatch), busted down to vice after repeated allegations of police brutality, illegal searches, and harassing suspects, is kicked back up to homicide by the always-ballbusting Capt. Barnes (Richard Roundtree), and ordered to work the case with D.A. special investigator Stacy Sloan (1980 Miss Universe Shawn Weatherly, a year away from BAYWATCH during its one season on NBC, prior to its pop culture explosion in syndication once Pamela Anderson joined the cast).

PARTY LINE works in a surplus of extraneous subplots, including teenager Jennifer (Patricia Patts), who dials into the party line when she's babysitting for the Simmons family and develops a crush on Seth, while at the same time being consistently made a pre-#MeToo example by Mr. Simmons (Terrence McGovern), who's always pawing at her and trying to seduce her when he drives her home. After checking his phone bill, Simmons discovers the party line and uses it to attempt a hook-up with Jennifer, which sets him up as the perfect Seth/Angelina target. Stacy is constantly being propositioned by the lecherous D.A. (James O'Sullivan), who eventually takes her off the case when she won't sleep with him (in another example of PARTY LINE being a doomsday scenario for the easily outraged, one of Bridges' female colleagues in vice scores some great seats for a Lakers game and makes a soon-to-be cringe-worthy crack about sleeping with Magic Johnson to get them). And Bridges has a casual fling with self-effacing, sexy motorcycle cop Butch (Marty Dudek), who makes the mistake of pulling over a speeding Seth in his red Ferrari and gets her throat slashed in the process, which makes this--you guessed it--personal for Bridges.

Hatch isn't the most convincing plays-by-his-own-rules cop, getting little residual cred from SUDDEN IMPACT poster on his living room wall (though he does dunk a dude's head in a clogged trough urinal at one point), and his Bridges is so perpetually one-step behind that it's surprising he wasn't given the usual movie cop indignity of being busted down to records. One almost wishes Dudek was given more to do, since her brief portrayal of the funny and chipper Butch ("Butch?" Stacy asks. "Yeah, we're old fishing buddies," quips Bridges) supplies PARTY LINE with its one legitimately charming and likable character. The entire detour with Jennifer is mostly fumbled comic relief, especially since she looks all of 14 and still manages to get into a trendy nightclub and send a drink over to an undercover Bridges (again, he's not the smartest cop). The biggest reason PARTY LINE might find a cult 30 years on is for the utterly batshit antics of Seth and Angelina, vividly brought to trashy life by Garrett and Blackburn in a pair of wildly over-the-top performances.

There's some clever misdirection on the part of director William Webb (who helmed other video store staples of the day like 1987's DIRTY LAUNDRY and 1989's THE BANKER) and screenwriter Richard Brandes (the early '90s Cynthia Rothrock actioners MARTIAL LAW and MARTIAL LAW II: UNDERCOVER and the 1998 Rose McGowan thriller DEVIL IN THE FLESH) in the way you assume early on the Seth is the driving force behind the mayhem. But it's Seth who's totally under the thumb of the domineering and nasty Angelina, who routinely mocks him by calling him a mama's boy and laughing at him when he indulges in his favorite pastime (other than slashing the throats of married men) of putting on his dead mother's wedding dress and crying uncontrollably. Garrett appeared in several Webb films and without a doubt recognizes PARTY LINE for what it is, and his third-string Norman Bates-as-DRESSED TO KILL L.A.-douchebag-with-a-mullet act (Seth's personalized vanity plate reads "TEMT ME") has some undeniable panache in its execution. Likewise, Blackburn takes this rare almost-lead role and runs with it. With its endless cliches (of course, Bridges is forced to turn in his badge after disobeying an order one too many times, and of course, like any no-rules movie cop, he solves the case while on suspension) and almost soap-opera level acting and production values, PARTY LINE is not a good movie, but it's an entertaining one. You get some gratuitous nudity, a loose cannon cop, Jack Nicholson's then-girlfriend Karen Mayo Chandler as a topless murder victim named "Sugar Lips,", a coasting Richard Roundtree acting like a sedated Frank McRae, no shortage of neck-slashing splatter, late '80s L.A. sleaze, and a cross-dressing Leif Garrett. If that sounds appealing, then check out PARTY LINE. You know you want to.

PARTY LINE opening in Toledo, OH on 10/28/1988

BETWEEN WORLDS
(US/Spain - 2018)

By now, it's pointless to find any rhyme or reason when it comes to Nicolas Cage's career choices. These days, his only A-list gigs come from voice work in animated films like SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, and every once in a while, he'll luck into a FROZEN GROUND, JOE, THE TRUST, or MOM AND DAD among his plethora of VOD clunkers. But 2018 was the year of MANDY, Panos Cosmatos' gonzo mindfuck of a midnight movie that got a lot of festival buzz and was an instant, legit cult classic right out of the gate. It immediately became an essential entry in the Cage canon and got him the most acclaim and attention he'd received in years. But any hopes that MANDY would herald a Cageassaince are dashed with BETWEEN WORLDS, a moronic and amateurish supernatural thriller that hit VOD at the tail end of last year. With enough strange ideas and Cage once again cast as a blue collar loner who finds himself caught up in all sorts of inexplicable mayhem, BETWEEN WORLDS could almost pass itself off as a distant cousin to MANDY, but it's filmed in such a basic, rudimentary fashion so devoid of style and a sense of professionalism that it actually looks, at best, like a student film that accidentally got a distribution deal. It seems the only trick that co-producer/writer/director Maria Pulera has in her arsenal--aside from somehow cajoling the great Angelo Badalamenti into composing the main theme, which I guess is there to give the film a Dipshit David Lynch vibe--is the repetitious and pointlessly wanky reliance on low-angle close-ups of everything from a coffee carafe to a bottle of beer to the hairy ass crack of an overweight convenience store clerk. That, and the ability to get real and long-established actors like Cage and Franka Potente (RUN LOLA RUN, THE BOURNE IDENTITY) to embarrass themselves in a project that's far beneath them.

In an opening filled with one of the most laboriously clumsy exposition dumps I've ever seen, Alabama trucker Joe Majors (Cage, wearing what looks like the tattered remains of his CON AIR mullet), still grieving the loss of his wife and young daughter in a recent house fire, is using the men's room at a gas station when he walks in on a burly guy strangling a woman. The woman is Julie (Potente), and Joe thinks he saved her life, but it's something else entirely: since a near-drowning experience as a child, she's had the ability to cross "between worlds," with a psychic ability to rescue those near death. She uses it sparingly, but needs it now because her grown daughter Billie (Penelope Mitchell) is in a coma after a motorcycle accident that morning. In order to go between worlds, she has to be taken to the brink of death herself, with strangling being the most convenient way, and she paid the guy to choke her. Since he ruined the connection, Joe feels obligated to choke Julie himself in order for her to save a non-responsive Billie at the hospital, and it works. Before long, Joe and Julie are a thing but something isn't right with Billie. She's soon leering at Joe, tempting him in various states of undress when Julie isn't around, and giving him under-the-blanket handjobs on the couch while they watch TV and Julie's in the kitchen making dinner. Yep, you guessed it: when Julie went between worlds, Billie's soul was switched out with that of Joe's late wife, who's now inside Billie's body, ready for action, and not at all pleased that he's hooked up with Julie.

BETWEEN WORLDS doesn't even follow its own barely-there logic, and its primary justification is simply for Cage to channel his inner Talk Show Robin Williams, with Pulera apparently so grateful that he said yes that she does nothing to rein him in. In a performance that makes his work in the long-forgotten early '90s erotic potboiler ZANDALEE seem disciplined, Cage has several absurdly over-the-top sex scenes with both Potente and Mitchell, sometimes amusing himself while thrusting away by randomly quoting and pantomiming the crucifix masturbation scene in THE EXORCIST or reading aloud from a book of erotic poetry with a cover that reads "Memories by Nicolas Cage." He ad-libs endlessly (Potente: "Want a beer?" Cage: "Does the Tin Man have a sheet-metal cock?"), and totally loses it in the finale, which has him sobbing uncontrollably and cradling his dead daughter's Jack-in-the-Box while pouring gasoline on himself to the tune of The Shangri-Las'"Leader of the Pack." Mind you, as on-brand as this is for Nic Cage--who wouldn't wanna see the movie I just described?--none of it is ever as entertaining as it sounds. Similar to his disastrous performance in the unwatchable ARMY OF ONE, Cage's histrionics come off as exhausted and overly affected, because there's no movie here--it's just him goofing off for 90 minutes. Something more polished and professional might've made Cage's antics more palatable, but BETWEEN WORLDS is a film that displays all the production value of a high-end sex tape or hostage video, magnifying the fact that Cage has nothing to work with and really begging the question of what even attracted him and Potente to this thing in the first place. (R, 91 mins)

A PRIVATE WAR
(US/UK/Germany - 2018)

One of the most overlooked films of the 2018 awards season, at least by the general moviegoing public, A PRIVATE WAR is a harrowing chronicle of Marie Colvin, an American expat and war correspondent who spent nearly 30 years covering the most dangerous areas of the world for the UK's Sunday Times. The film covers the post-9/11 era, where Colvin, portrayed here in a remarkable performance by Rosamund Pike, spent most of her time embedded in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, venturing into places and situations that most journalists would consider too dangerous (when asked if she's afraid, she replies "You're never gonna get to where you're going if you acknowledge fear...fear comes later"). She lost the sight in her left eye after catching shrapnel in a bomb blast in Sri Lanka in 2001--with an eye-patch subsequently providing her signature look--and after two miscarriages, two failed marriages to journalist/novelist David Irens (Greg Wise), and now too old to have children, she threw herself into her work and grew even more ambitious and addicted to the danger. After befriending photographer Paul Conroy (Jamie Dornan) in Iraq, she convinces him to tag along with her and a translator, breaking the rules and moving ahead of US troops to corroborate rumors of a Saddam Hussein-ordered mass grave in Fallujah. Her actions both earn the respect and test the patience of everyone in her life, from Conley to her editor (Tom Hollander), her best friend (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and a sympathetic potential love interest (Stanley Tucci). Colvin extensively covered the Syrian civil war, and her life came to an end in the city of Homs, where she, Conroy, and journalist Remi Ochlik (Jeremie Laheurte) would be trapped in a building receiving heavy artillery fire trying to evacuate residents from the area. Only a seriously-injured Conroy survived, with Colvin and Ochlik succumbing to injuries sustained from a bomb blast. Only hours before her death, Colvin was interviewed by Anderson Cooper in prime time on CNN.

Originally intended as a project for Charlize Theron (who remained onboard as one of 34 credited producers), A PRIVATE WAR marks the narrative directing debut of acclaimed documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman (CARTEL LAND, CITY OF GHOSTS), who really nails the details when it comes to embedded journalists covering war zones. He stages one nerve-wracking sequence after another where a determined Colvin might be killed at any moment. Years of witnessing atrocities and death have taken their toll--she drinks too much, she grows more abrasive, she's diagnosed with PTSD and is briefly committed to a hospital--but it's all she knows and she can't cover the mundane assignments her editor half-heartedly suggests as alternatives ("the gardening section?"). It would've been easy to lapse into cliched melodrama and there are some times during the boozy, chain-smoking sections where it almost does, but Pike fearlessly inhabits Marie Colvin, warts and all. She keeps A PRIVATE WAR from turning into the cliched hagiography that might've resulted had a more "Hollywood" director than Heineman been handed the screenplay written by Arash Amel, whose credits include the instantly-forgotten Aaron Eckhart TAKEN knockoff ERASED and the little-loved Nicole Kidman dud GRACE OF MONACO. The last of three Pike political thrillers that bombed in theaters in 2018 (after the inexplicably dance-crazed 7 DAYS IN ENTEBBE and the solid throwback BEIRUT), A PRIVATE WAR is further evidence of the actress becoming a top Flop Indicator (© Bob Cashill), but like BEIRUT, this one deserved a better reception than it got, and in a perfect world, Pike would've been nominated for an Oscar along with the similarly snubbed Toni Collette for HEREDITARY. (R, 110 mins)

GRETA
(US/South Korea/China/Ireland - 2019)

Directed by Neil Jordan. Written by Ray Wright and Neil Jordan. Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Chloe Grace Moretz, Maika Monroe, Stephen Rea, Colm Feore, Zawe Ashton, Jeff Hiller, Jessica Preddy, Thaddeus Daniels. (R, 98 mins)

Best known for 1986's MONA LISA, 1992's THE CRYING GAME, and 1994's INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan has all the cache that comes with being a respected, Oscar-nominated director, but his career as a whole has been pretty hit-or-miss. Sure, he's also made fine films like 1996's MICHAEL COLLINS, 1997's THE BUTCHER BOY, 2002's THE GOOD THIEF, and 2010's little-seen ONDINE, and he created the acclaimed 2011-2013 Showtime series THE BORGIAS, but he's also got plenty of clunkers taking up space on his IMDb page, among them 1988's HIGH SPIRITS, one of the worst comedies of its decade, 1989's WE'RE NO ANGELS, a justifiably forgotten exercise in shameless mugging for Robert De Niro and Sean Penn, 1999's IN DREAMS, and 2007's embarrassingly bad Jodie Foster vigilante thriller THE BRAVE ONE. The box office success of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE aside, Jordan typically doesn't fare well when he's in genre journeyman mode. With that in mind, one might approach GRETA, his first big-screen effort since his intermittently interesting 2013 vampire film BYZANTIUM, with some trepidation. A throwback to the sort of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE-esque, "(blank)-from-Hell" psycho-thrillers that were epidemic in the 1990s, GRETA is fun in a check-your-brain-at-the-door kind of way. To its credit, it isn't delusional enough to take itself too seriously, but at the same time, it can't just do some of the stupid shit it does and let Jordan off the hook just because he's a respected filmmaker slumming in a lurid B thriller that's significantly gussied-up by an overqualified star.

Frances McCullen (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a quiet old soul from Boston living in NYC with her bratty, spoiled friend Erica (Maika Monroe of IT FOLLOWS) in a spacious Tribeca loft given to Erica as a graduation gift by her wealthy father. A recent Smith College graduate working as a server in an upscale restaurant, Frances keeps her distance from her workaholic dad back home (Colm Feore) and is still processing her grief following her mom's death from cancer a year earlier. After work one evening, Frances spots an abandoned handbag on the subway and takes it home. Refusing to indulge Erica's suggestion that they keep the wad of cash that's inside and toss the bag, Frances checks an ID in the purse and the next morning, does the right thing and returns it to its owner in Brooklyn. That owner is Greta Hadig (Isabelle Huppert), a retired piano teacher. She's grateful for Frances' act of kindness, invites her in for coffee, and the pair quickly form a surrogate mother-daughter relationship when Frances, still missing her beloved mother, learns that Greta is a lonely widow whose estranged daughter is at a music conservatory in Greta's native France. Ditching a night of clubbing with an incredulous and seemingly insensitive Erica to have a quiet dinner with Greta, things come to a screeching halt when Greta has Frances grab some candles in the other room and she opens the wrong cabinet, finding over a dozen identical handbags with Post-It notes with the names of who found them, including one that reads "Frances McCullen."

Quickly realizing it's a sick scam and understandably creeped out, Frances feigns a sudden illness and leaves, immediately deciding that Greta is bad news. But Greta wants a friend and won't be ignored. She texts Frances hundreds of times, leaves a ton of messages on their home phone (call it nitpicking, but nothing says "directed and co-written by a 69-year-old" like a Tribeca twenty-something with a landline), and starts showing up at Frances' job, both inside and standing outside, motionless, intimidatingly staring at the restaurant for the entire duration of Frances' shift. She shows up outside the apartment, then texts Frances a series of pics that show she's following Erica and intending to harm her. Frances also discovers some secrets about Greta's family, starting with the fact that she's Hungarian and pretending to be French (which doesn't really have any bearing on anything). Of course, there isn't enough evidence for the cops to do anything, though Greta eventually causes a scene at the restaurant and gets arrested. She's promptly released, and the pair reach a tentative truce until Greta goes further off the deep end, hellbent on ensuring she has Frances all to herself.

The kind of film that probably would've been the #1 movie in America for three weeks if this was March of 1999 instead of 2019, GRETA is dumber than a box of rocks, but there's no denying that it's entertaining. Sure, one can complain about the rampant stupidity of the characters. Once Erica figures out Greta is stalking her and confronts her on a crowded bus, what does she then do? Of course, she gets off the bus packed to the gills with potential witnesses and heads straight down the nearest dark alley alone. And when a psycho is holding you captive in a hidden room in their house and you manage to briefly get the upper hand via an impromptu finger amputation-by-cookie cutter, where do you run? Where else? The dark, cobweb-filled basement with no exit! Moretz isn't really required to do much more than be distraught and frazzled, while Monroe doesn't have a whole lot to do but the arc of her character is probably the most legitimately unpredictable element (frequent Jordan star Stephen Rea also turns up in the third act as a private eye hired by Frances' father). But GRETA wouldn't be much without the heroic efforts of the great Huppert, the iconic French legend with a record 16 Cesar Award nominations over a career dating back to 1971, and who's no stranger to throwing herself into a character, as anyone who's seen Michael Haneke's THE PIANO TEACHER and her Oscar-nominated performance in Paul Verhoeven's ELLE can attest. Taking what's a spiritual successor to the kind of "horror hag" roles that gave a major second wind to the careers of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Olivia de Havilland and others in the 1960s when they began aging out of traditional leading lady gigs and running with it, Huppert is off the chain throughout GRETA. Initially coming off as vulnerable yet vaguely sinister (you know something's up when she's having coffee with Frances and they're interrupted by a pounding that she blames on "the neighbors"), Huppert goes from zero-to-batshit pretty quickly, refusing to take no for an answer ("Everybody needs a friend!"), poisoning an elderly dog, furiously spitting gum in Frances' hair, flipping tables over in a posh restaurant while ranting in Hungarian, and pirouetting around her house while she disposes of an unwanted intruder. It's a role that's mostly beneath someone of Huppert's esteemed caliber, but she doesn't treat it as such, knowing exactly what kind of movie she's in and classing it up simply by probably relishing the opportunity to go over-the-top as the villain in a commercial thriller. GRETA doesn't hold up under much scrutiny, but it moves briskly and has a game star carrying it on her shoulders. Who ever thought we'd get to see Isabelle Huppert headlining a wide release in 2019?

NEXT OF KIN
(Australia - 1982; US release 1985)

Directed by Tony Williams. Written by Michael Heath and Tony Williams. Cast: Jackie Kerin, John Jarratt, Alex Scott, Gerda Nicolson, Charles McCallum, Bernadette Gibson, Robert Ratti, Vince Deltito, Tommy Dysart, Debra Lawrance, Matt Burns. (Unrated, 89 mins)

A genuinely unsettling gem from Australia that fans of cult horror and Ozploitation have largely kept to themselves, 1982's NEXT OF KIN is a textbook example of the "slow burn" approach that many indie horror films have taken in recent years. Of course, Quentin Tarantino has gone on the record as being one of its biggest fans, but it's almost certain that filmmakers like Ti West (THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, THE INNKEEPERS) and Oz Perkins (I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE, THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER) have seen it and studied it. Made during an era when the horror genre was dominated by both slasher movies and trailblazing special effects makeup and creature FX, NEXT OF KIN is almost a film out of its time, and one that spends its first 2/3 being deliberately coy about exactly what it's up to. In the end, its reveals don't offer much in the way of surprises and twists, but that's really not important. Throughout the film's duration, New Zealand-born director Tony Williams and his co-writer Michael Heath conduct such a master class in slowly-escalating dread and screw-tightening tension, pulling it off with such confidence, style, and panache that NEXT OF KIN's biggest mystery is ultimately why neither of their careers really went anywhere in the ensuing years.

Returning to her isolated rural Australian hometown after years away upon receiving word that her estranged mother has died, Linda (Jackie Kerin) isn't really enthused about being left in charge of Montclare, the family estate that now doubles as a nursing home. On the outskirts of a podunk town where nothing much goes on ("Well, there's a new public toilet!" boasts the gruff owner of the local greasy spoon), Montclare is in dire financial straits and has seen better days, and despite the hopes of administrative nurse Connie (Gerda Nicolson) and Dr. Barton (Alex Scott) that the facility be kept open, with Connie even admitting a new resident, Mrs. Ryan (Bernadette Gibson), against her wishes, Linda is exploring all of her options with what to do with the place and its dwindling number of residents. That number only keeps dwindling as a string of Montclare's elderly are found dead, with evasive Dr. Barton declaring one a drowning in a bathtub despite Linda seeing what appear to be deep bruises on the corpse's neck that would indicate strangulation. All the while, Linda is haunted by nightmares of a long-suppressed, traumatic incident that took place at Montclare when she was a child, eventually finding corroboration in her mother's hidden diaries that detail an extensive history of madness and murder at the house over 20 years earlier. The events taking place now and manifesting in Linda's nightmares seem to mirror those documented in the tattered pages of her mother's journals, with include a foreboding warning that "There is something evil in this house." Naturally, her concerns are mostly disregarded by Dr. Barton, Connie, and hunky local firefighter Barney (John Jarratt), with whom she cautiously rekindles a romance that began back when they were teenagers.

Williams and Heath take an inordinate amount of time letting NEXT OF KIN simmer to a raging boil. It flirts with being everything from a then-trendy slasher film, a haunted house ghost story, and an Australian giallo (one brief shot on a TV screen at a diner has echoes of Dario Argento briefly flashing a huge reveal early in DEEP RED that no first-time viewer ever catches but is plain as day on subsequent watches) before it finally shows its cards in its audacious third act that culminates in an almost apocalyptic finale straight out of MAD MAX. But before that, the filmmakers establish a sense of unease with unnerving images like Linda repeatedly spotting a figure watching her from a distance or pulling into the long driveway at Montclare and catching a fleeting glimpse of someone in a red coat standing in her bedroom window. This almost glacial buildup lasts for an hour before it suddenly explodes, almost out of nowhere, when the killer pursues Linda through a mostly unoccupied wing of Montclare as she runs from room to room to hide as the pounding footsteps of the sprinting, hammer-wielding murderer could be coming from any direction. The long corridors of the home allow HARLEQUIN and WE OF THE NEVER NEVER cinematographer Gary Hansen (who would be tragically killed in a helicopter crash while filming a TV commercial later in 1982) and Steadicam operator Toby Phillips (a protege of Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown, who used it to much notoriety in ROCKY and THE SHINING, the latter a clear stylistic influence on NEXT OF KIN) to prowl the ominous halls of Montclare--which also showcases of the genre's great spiral staircases--and indulge in some breathtaking flourishes when the camera shifts and swings in unexpected directions, whether it's some overhead shots or the startling way Williams has one of the villains suddenly bolt into the frame like a wild animal about to pounce. Also greatly contributing to the atmosphere is a moody and effective score by German electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze (an early member of Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel), which lends a bit of a SUSPIRIA vibe and really gets under your skin.

At the time, the cast was unknown outside of Australia, though Jarratt would find some notoriety among horror and cult movie fans many years later thanks to his dark-side-of-Crocodile Dundee performance as an affable Outback serial killer in the controversial WOLF CREEK and Jarratt superfan Tarantino giving him a brief role near the end of DJANGO UNCHAINED. The very appealing Kerin, who has a striking resemblance to Nastassja Kinski, had some TV credits to her name and appeared in a few episodes of PRISONER: CELL BLOCK H, a late '70s Australian women-in-prison series that aired in syndication in the States. NEXT OF KIN remains her only feature film to date, and while she acted sporadically on Australian TV over the next couple of decades, she's better known in her homeland these days as a children's book author and storyteller. Just out in an extras-packed Blu-ray from Severin (because physical media is dead), NEXT OF KIN didn't find any attention from American distributors at the time, taking three years to get a straight-to-video release in 1985 courtesy of Media Home Entertainment offshoot VCL Communications, and then getting relaunched again in 1988 through Virgin Vision. Heath went on to write the 1984 New Zealand-made video store fixture DEATH WARMED UP and the 1992 Al Lewis comedy MY GRANDPA IS A VAMPIRE. Born in 1944, Williams had the little-seen 1978 Australian drama SOLO under his belt, as well as a handful of gigs as an editor and a cinematographer, but he followed NEXT OF KIN with 31 years of off-the-radar silence. Since 2013, he's directed three documentaries that likely haven't been seen outside of either Australia or New Zealand. Looking at it now, NEXT OF KIN should've established Tony Williams as a major new figure in horror, but he seemingly walked away, leaving his legacy in the genre to stand with one small masterpiece of its kind.

Director/co-writer Tony Williams, star Jackie Kerin, and
cinematographer Gary Hansen on the set of NEXT OF KIN.

THE VANISHING
(US/UK - 2019)

After the perfectly acceptable HUNTER KILLER tanked in theaters last fall, I said to a friend "Other than the next entry in the HAS FALLEN series, Gerard Butler's probably headed to VOD going forward." Cut to a little over two months later, and not only was Butler's next movie bowing on VOD, but it was also given an ignominious first-weekend-of-January dumping on top of it. Shot in 2017 as KEEPERS, THE VANISHING (not to be confused with two previous George Sluizer thrillers with the same title) isn't one of Butler's formulaic action vehicles, but it does find the star (and one of 28 credited producers) in Serious Actor mode in the vein of the underseen MACHINE GUN PREACHER. Inspired by the 1900 "Flannan Isle Mystery," where three lighthouse keepers disappeared without a trace from a distant island off the coast of Scotland, THE VANISHING moves the setting to the 1930s and proceeds on pure speculation. The film could've gone in any number of directions--theories of the disappearance range from one of the three men going insane and killing the other two; a sea serpent; and an even an alien abduction--but it opts for a character-driven mash-up of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE and Danny Boyle's breakthrough SHALLOW GRAVE with a bit of a John Carpenter siege scenario for a little while.

Arriving on Flannan Isle for a six-week stint of running the lighthouse and other various maintenance duties, boss Thomas Marshall (Peter Mullan), James Ducat (Butler), and young apprentice/good-natured hazing target Donald McArthur (newcomer Connor Swindells, currently on Netflix's SEX EDUCATION) find their dull routine broken up one morning by the appearance a crashed boat and a body washed ashore on the rocks below. Donald is lowered down to check him and even though he says the man (Gary Kane) isn't breathing, he comes to and attacks Donald, who then bashes his head in with a rock in self-defense. In the crashed boat is a locked trunk that Thomas opens to discover it's filled with an untold fortune in gold bars. James and Donald think they've struck it rich, but Thomas urges caution, reminding them "Somebody's gonna come looking for this guy." Sure enough, two men, Locke (Soren Malling) and Boor (GAME OF THRONES' Olafur Darri Olafsson), show up on the island and start asking questions. It isn't long before there's two more dead bodies and increasing paranoia over more people coming and a growing mistrust of one another over concerns about making off with the gold and who'll keep their mouth shut about it. Given the speculation about what could've gone down on Flannan Isle in 1900--and to this day, no one knows for sure--THE VANISHING certainly takes an unexpected approach when it could've been just as easy to get a movie about a sea monster or aliens made. It benefits from three strong performances by its stars, particularly Mullan as the conflicted Thomas--considered the likely killer by historians who support the "one man went insane killed the other two" theory--still grieving over the deaths of his wife and daughters (and he won't say how they died). But in the context of the film, it's Butler's James who really cracks up and folds under pressure, which allows the actor to stretch a bit when he's usually the hero. THE VANISHING is worth a look for fans of Butler and the great character actor Mullan (SESSION 9), but the pace is a bit too slow (probably why Lionsgate relegated it to VOD), and it starts stumbling in the home stretch when it really matters most, leading to an abrupt and not-very-satisfying conclusion. (R, 107 mins)

VOX LUX
(US - 2018)

If Lars von Trier attempted to make his own warped version of A STAR IS BORN and was completely in over his head and absolutely terrible at his job, it would probably come out looking a lot like VOX LUX, the latest from actor-turned-filmmaker Brady Corbet. In his acting days, Corbet paid his dues with stints on 24 and with guest spots in the LAW & ORDER universe, but instead of going the mainstream route, he was driven to take roles in films by provocateurs like von Trier (MELANCHOLIA), Gregg Araki (MYSTERIOUS SKIN), Michael Haneke (the remake of FUNNY GAMES), and Olivier Assayas (CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA). I've not seen Corbet's 2016 directing debut THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER, but VOX LUX is a film that thinks it's deep and meaningful, but is really just shallow, exploitative, self-indulgent drivel that feels like the kind of nonsense that VELVET BUZZSAW was trying to lampoon. Corbet may have spent time observing and picking the brains of his auteur heroes, but he doesn't seem to have learned anything from them beyond surface imitation. You know you know you're in for an ordeal when the film opens with von Trier-esque title cards like "Prelude: 1999" followed by "Act I: Genesis (2000-01)." There's also wry and sardonic narration by frequent von Trier star Willem Dafoe, just like the kind John Hurt provided in von Trier's DOGVILLE and MANDERLAY. In an effectively harrowing opening sequence set in 1999, Staten Island teenager Celeste Montgomery (Raffey Cassidy of THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER) gets a bullet lodged in her spine when she's the sole survivor of a shooting rampage by troubled outcast and character-name-that-could-only-exist-in-a-shitty-movie-like-this, Cullen Active (Logan Riley Bruner), who mows down her entire classroom, and it's all downhill from there. During her long recovery, after which she's still able to walk as long as the bullet doesn't dislodge, she attends a candlelight vigil and performs a song written by her older sister Ellie (Stacy Martin, who played the young Charlotte Gainsbourg in von Trier's NYMPHOMANIAC) that captures the nation's attention and draws interest from various record companies. She gets a manager (Jude Law), a publicist (Jennifer Ehle), and a choreographer, and soon enough, she's about to become teen pop sensation "Celeste," recording songs in NYC and Europe, and then the sisters are partying hard and hooking up with guys in L.A. in the early morning hours of 9/11, when narrator Dafoe gravely intones "Celeste's loss of innocence curiously mirrored that of the nation."

I would pay to see the look on Willem Dafoe's face when he was standing in the recording booth and was handed that line. It's impossible to take anything VOX LUX offers seriously after that, but at about the midway point, there's a 16-year time jump or, as Corbet (who probably now pronounces it "Cor-bay") puts it, "Act II: Regenesis 2017," where we're introduced to 31-year-old Celeste, and the film achieves the unthinkable and somehow gets even worse. Much of that is due to a career-worst performance by Natalie Portman, who takes over the role while Cassidy now plays her teenage daughter Albertine. Adult Celeste is now a Madonna/Lady Gaga-esque pop culture icon, constantly stalked by the tabloids and addled by booze, drugs, public meltdowns, and other scandals. As she prepares for a sold-out comeback concert at a Staten Island arena, her always-enabling manager (still played by Law, who's pretty much Alan Bates in THE ROSE) informs her that terrorists dressed as the dancers in the music video of one of her early hits have just committed a horrific mass shooting on a beach in Croatia. She has nothing but resentment and scorn for the long-suffering Ellie, who's done most of the heavy lifting both writing her songs for her and raising Albertine. It all culminates in a triumphant performance by Celeste in front of her hometown "angels" in an interminable finale featuring songs by Sia that sound like they came from the bottom of her slush pile. Corbet's ham-fisted, would-be commentary on everything from school shootings to 9/11 to the Price of Fame while feebly trying to emulate von Trier and others borders on outright poseurdom, and while Martin and Cassidy manage to emerge generally unscathed (though Cassidy's British accent slips through quite a bit in the first half), a shrill and over-the-top Portman, stuck playing one of the most grating, off-putting, and aggressively unlikable characters in any movie from last year, is just embarrassingly bad. Check out her overly-affected Noo Yawk screech when she's ranting at Ellie or at restaurant managers or at a journalist (Christopher Abbott), or waxing philosophic over society's ills and "ultra mega triple hi-def TVs" and "our intimate knowledge of the commitment to the lowest common denominator." Barely released by Neon and grossing just $730,000, VOX LUX isn't a serious artistic statement by a bold new voice in filmmaking. It's smug, self-impressed, vacuous bullshit. Can someone tell Brady Corbet that masturbation is usually something done in private? (R, 114 mins)

CURSE III: BLOOD SACRIFICE
aka PANGA
(UK/South Africa - 1991)

Directed by Sean Barton. Written by John Hunt and Sean Barton. Cast: Christopher Lee, Jenilee Harrison, Henry Cele, Andre Jacobs, Zoe Randall, Olivia Dyer, Gavin Hood, Jennifer Steyn, Dumi Shongwe. (R, 91 mins)

Based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space, the 1987 horror film THE CURSE was produced by Italian schlock king Ovidio G. Assonitis, best known as a purveyor of spaghetti knockoffs of THE EXORCIST (1974's BEYOND THE DOOR) and JAWS (1977's TENTACLES) as well as other general insanity along the lines of 1979's THE VISITOR and 1990's SONNY BOY. It was a minor hit in theaters and was popular enough on home video to warrant Assonitis taking another one of his productions, 1989's spectacularly gross THE BITE, and rechristening it CURSE II: THE BITE. Aside from featuring the admittedly unexpected sight of Jamie Farr getting laid in an Italian horror movie, CURSE II: THE BITE is arguably the finest man-turning-into-a-snake saga this side of 1973's SSSSSSS, though it has absolutely nothing to do with THE CURSE other than the involvement of Assonitis and distributor Trans World Entertainment. So began the one of the most dubious of horror franchises in the VHS era, and the chicanery dates back to BEYOND THE DOOR distributor Film Ventures International taking Mario Bava's 1977 swan song SHOCK and retitling it BEYOND THE DOOR II for its 1979 release, largely because both films shared the same creepy little boy (David Colin, Jr). The BEYOND THE DOOR brand was still strong enough with cult horror audiences that the 1989 Assonitis-produced haunted train outing AMOK TRAIN--which didn't involve David Colin, Jr. in any way--was retitled BEYOND THE DOOR III for its straight-to-video 1991 US release.

Assonitis had nothing to do with PANGA, a UK/South African co-production vaguely inspired by Wes Craven's 1988 hit THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW. The film was acquired by Epic Productions, a partnership between Eduard Sarlui and Trans World honcho Moshe Diamant, and, inspired by the video store success of CURSE II: THE BITE and claiming the "CURSE" moniker as their own, they decided to rebrand PANGA as the luridly exploitative CURSE III: BLOOD SACRIFICE when it hit American video stores in May of 1991. A period piece set in 1950 East Africa, CURSE III focuses an all manner of ritual mayhem taking place around a sugar cane plantation where American Elizabeth Armstrong (Jenilee Harrison, best known as the first of two Suzanne Somers replacements during THREE'S COMPANY's run a decade earlier) has moved to be with her wealthy husband Geoff (Andre Jacobs), whose family has owned the plantation for generations. To ease the culture shock and homesickness, pregnant Elizabeth has also brought along her free-spirited younger sister Cindy (Jennifer Steyn), who's quickly taken up with Geoff's friend Robert (Gavin Hood, the future director of TSOTSI, X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, ENDER'S GAME, and EYE IN THE SKY). Ignoring the warnings of Geoff's chief foreman Mletch (SHAKA ZULU's Henry Cele), Cindy pisses off a feared area "inyanga" witch doctor (Dumi Shongwe) by intervening in a ceremonial goat sacrifice during which Elizabeth doesn't help matters by going full MAGA white privilege, shouting "America!: and "American!" to the scoffing derision of the inyanga, who directly threatens her unborn baby. Keeping the goat and taking it back to the plantation, Elizabeth almost immediately develops unbearable pain in her stomach, prompting Geoff to summon superstitious village physician Dr. Pearson (Christopher Lee), who remedies her malady but remains curiously distracted and evasive about his method of treatment. Of course, the outraged inyanga has unleashed a supernatural evil in response to the American interlopers, and before long, the body count rises as a good chunk of the cast if offed by a killer using a "panga," a sort-of ceremonial African machete.

Just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), CURSE III: BLOOD SACRIFICE is watchable but ploddingly-paced, indifferently acted by most of the cast, and doesn't really come alive until the appearance of a Chris Walas-designed sea creature in the last ten minutes. Summoned from the depths of the ocean by and acting at the behest of the inyanga, the creature tracks down and panga-hacks those close to Elizabeth one by one, and with its gasping and gurgling, it looks and sounds like a cross between a more chaste Humanoid from the Deep and one of the creatures Walas crafted for the hastily-shot US inserts of Sergio Martino's SCREAMERS. It doesn't get nearly enough screen time, as much of the second half is spent on Harrison (who gets a brief topless shot if any THREE'S COMPANY superfans care) running around for a ludicrous amount of time in a sugar cane field and eventually taking refuge in the home of an elderly British woman (Zoe Randall) and her precocious young granddaughter (Olivia Dyer), who improbably seems to know more about East African mythology than the rest of the adults.

Lee pretty much does a walk-through in a fashion that was often too familiar and customary throughout his storied career: he shows up a few times in the first hour and then has a big scene near the end. His appearances are sporadic but he's in it enough to warrant his top billing even though he probably didn't spend more than three or four days working on this. He's mainly there for name recognition and to function as a suspicious red herring. He's also coughing, wheezing, and clearing his throat throughout, which establishes a potential link between him and the creature. There's a brief mention of his character having asthma, but Lee appears to be legitimately under the weather here, sounding hoarse and quite congested, almost like he arrived on the set in South Africa with a bad cold or some bronchial issues, and it was written into the script at the last minute. He's also visibly perspiring in scenes where the other actors aren't, and it would certainly explain why he looks like he really wanted to call in sick but probably had other commitments immediately following, and just plowed through and got it done. Often streaming and occasionally airing on Comet under its original PANGA title (which is what's on the print used for Scorpion's Blu-ray), CURSE III: BLOOD SACRIFICE was a one-and-done directing effort for veteran editor Sean Barton (EYE OF THE NEEDLE, RETURN OF THE JEDI, JAGGED EDGE), who quickly returned to his day job with Franc Roddam's mountain-climbing saga K2. The CURSE series carried on with another unrelated sequel in 1993's CURSE IV: THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE, which was actually a retitled CATACOMBS, a long-shelved and unbelievably dull 1988 casualty of the bankruptcy of Charles Band's Empire Pictures that's since been released on DVD and Blu-ray by Scream Factory under that original title.

TRIPLE FRONTIER
(US - 2019)

Directed by J.C. Chandor. Written by Mark Boal and J.C. Chandor. Cast: Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal, Adria Arjona, Rey Gallegos, Louis Jeovanny, Juan Camilo Castillo, Sheila Vand, Madeline "Maddy" Wary. (R, 125 mins)

In various stages of development since 2010, Netflix's drug cartel heist thriller TRIPLE FRONTIER was originally set to be director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's follow-up to their Oscar-winning THE HURT LOCKER, with stars like Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Channing Tatum, Tom Hardy, Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, and Mark Wahlberg all in talks or attached to make up the ensemble cast at different points along the way. By the time the film went into production in early 2018, only Ben Affleck remained as Bigelow and Boal were out, though both are listed as co-producers, and Boal shares screenwriting credit with eventual director J.C. Chandor, who established himself as a promising new filmmaker with the riveting financial crisis autopsy MARGIN CALL, the Robert Redford-starring ALL IS LOST, and the throwback Sidney Lumet-style NYC crime and corruption of A MOST VIOLENT YEAR. Chandor seems an odd choice for a big-budget actioner like this (and seeing the finished product, it's a little difficult to picture Tom Hanks starring), but it finds its bearings after a shaky opening act that, with dialogue like "That's the price of being a warrior" and needle-drops by Metallica and Pantera, seems dangerously close to venturing down the same path as the meat-headed, barbed-wire-tatted bicep brosploitation of 2014's mouth-breathing SABOTAGE, a fuckin' wicked sick fuckin' work-hard/play-hard fuckin' X-Treme energy drink disguised as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

Pope (Oscar Isaac) is ex-Special Forces now earning a living as a military contractor. He's been after South American drug lord Lorea (Rey Gallegos) for several years and has an inside informant with his lover Yovanna (Adria Arjona), who handles Lorea's books. Pope wants to nail Lorea but he has other plans, namely getting his hands on his money, which Lorea keeps at his heavily-guarded Brazilian fortress. Hatching a plan that's dangerous and very off-the-books, Pope recruits four of his former Special Forces badass buddies to go along on a fact-finding recon mission to hopefully talk them into raiding the compound, wiping out Lorea and his army, and making off with his estimated $75 million fortune that's kept somewhere on the premises. There's Redfly (Ben Affleck), now a divorced dad and unsuccessful real estate agent; disgraced pilot Catfish (Pedro Pascal), who's been making ends meet as a coke trafficker; Ironhead (Charlie Hunnam), who's taken his PTSD anger-management issues and found work as a motivational speaker for the newly-enlisted; and Ironhead's nickname-less little brother Ben (Garrett Hedlund), now an MMA fighter with a losing record. None of these guys are happy with the current state of their lives and only feel at home in combat, so of course they'll hesitate at first but eventually agree. Before you know it, they're crossing the border into Brazil to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through the Jungle," without question the most overused classic rock song in commercial cinema today. I don't have scientific evidence, but I watch a shit-ton of movies and I see a lot of montages with a lot of familiar needle-drops, and I can say with certainty that I didn't hear the Fabulous Thunderbirds'"Tuff Enuff" in the mid-1980s as much as I've heard goddamn "Run Through the Jungle" in the latter half of the 2010s.

That's about 30 minutes in, and honestly, I was getting a little irritated with TRIPLE FRONTIER. Fortunately, it improves quite a bit, particularly with the botched escape from Lorea's fortress, where the money is hidden in the walls, and the eventual issues they have transporting it to their rendezvous point, which requires them to fly over the Andes in a military chopper that can't handle the weight of the cargo since the presumed $75 million is actually closer to $250 million. This forces them to resort to drastic measures--from ditching some of the money to finding alternate modes of transport--that turn TRIPLE FRONTIER into a sort-of FITZCARRALDO reimagined as a heist/survivalist adventure. The characters themselves are rather two-dimensional, though it does go for an unpredictable choice as to who the hair-trigger fuck-up among them will be that causes an already dangerous situation to get exponentially worse. Aside from a dodgy-looking CGI chopper crash, TRIPLE FRONTIER, shot on Oahu and in Colombia, is fairly suspenseful and solid entertainment that's certainly worth a stream, even if runs a tad longish at just past two hours.

LONDON FIELDS
(US/UK - 2018)

Based on the acclaimed 1989 novel by Martin Amis, LONDON FIELDS' arduous journey to the screen has already taken its rightful place among cinema's most calamitous dumpster fires, while also confirming every suspicion that the book was unfilmable. David Cronenberg was originally attached to direct all the way back in 2001 before things fell apart in pre-production, with Michael Winterbottom (24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE) and David Mackenzie (HELL OR HIGH WATER) also in the mix over the next several years. It wasn't until 2013 that filming actually commenced, with music video vet Mathew Cullen at the helm, making his feature directing debut, from a script initially written by Amis (his first screenplay since 1980's SATURN 3) and reworked by Roberta Hanley (VERONIKA DECIDES TO DIE). After a private press screening at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival, where the film was acquired by Lionsgate, the planned public festival screening was abruptly canceled due to various lawsuits being amidst a very public spat between Cullen and the producers. These included: several of the producers suing Cullen after he missed two deadlines for turning in the finished film and they found out he was off shooting a Katy Perry video instead of completing post-production; Cullen countersuing when producers took the film away from him and recut it themselves; the producers suing star Amber Heard for breach of contract after she refused to record some required voiceovers after production wrapped and badmouthed the film to the media; and Heard countersuing, claiming the producers violated her no-nudity clause by hiring a double to shoot explicit sex scenes involving her character after she left. Deciding they wanted no part of the rapidly escalating shitshow, Lionsgate dropped the film, which remained shelved until the fall of 2018 when settlements were reached with all parties and a compromised version--assembled by some of the producers and disowned by Cullen--was picked up by, of all distributors, GVN Releasing, a small company specializing in faith-based, evangelical, and conservative-leaning fare, which the very R-rated LONDON FIELDS is decidedly not.

A movie about the making of LONDON FIELDS would be more interesting than watching LONDON FIELDS, an incoherent mess that looks like it was desperately cobbled together using any available footage, with little sense of pacing or narrative flow. Seeking any spark of inspiration, blocked American writer Samson Young (Billy Bob Thornton) answers an ad to swap apartments with famed British crime novelist Mark Asprey (Jason Isaacs). While Asprey writes his latest bestseller in Young's shithole Hell's Kitchen hovel, Young works in Asprey's posh London pad and finds his muse in upstairs neighbor Nicola Six (Heard). A beguiling and clairvoyant femme fatale, Nicola wanders into the neighborhood pub wearing a black veil and mourning her own death, having a premonition of her inevitable murder--on her 30th birthday on the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes Day--at the hands of one of the three men she encounters: the dour and jaded Young; upwardly mobile investment broker Guy Clinch (Theo James, at the beginning of the apparently perpetual attempt to make Theo James happen); and skeezy, lowlife, would-be darts champ and Guy Ritchie caricature Keith Talent (Jim Sturgess), who owes a ton of money to scar-faced, bowler-hatted Cockney gangster and chief darts rival Chick Purchase (an uncredited Johnny Depp, long before his and Heard's very acrimonious split, which should give you an idea of how old this thing is). Observing near and from afar how Nicola manipulates the men in her life, the dying Young weaves a complex tale that becomes the great novel he's always had in him. It seems like there's some kind of twist near the end, but it's hard telling with what's here.

Cullen put together his own director's cut that got into a few theaters for some select special engagements. It runs 11 minutes longer and with many scenes in different order (for instance, Depp appears seven minutes into this version but not until 35 minutes into Cullen's cut), but the only version currently on home video is the shorter "producer's cut" that GVN released on 600 screens to the tune of just $433,000. It's doubtful, but there's perhaps a good--or at least better--film buried somewhere in the rubble, and there's some enjoyment to be had from the scenery-chewing contest going on between Depp and Sturgess, who gets a ridiculous scene where he's dancing in a torrential downpour to Dire Straits'"Money for Nothing." It's an amusingly silly sequence but therein lies the conundrum of LONDON FIELDS: it hasn't the slightest idea what it's doing or what it wants to be. Is it a romantic murder mystery? A drama about manipulation and obsession? A grotesque black comedy? The climactic tournament showdown with Keith and Chick gets perilously close to turning into a darts version of KINGPIN, with both Sturgess and Depp fighting over who gets to be Bill Murray's Big Ernie McCracken. It's easy to see why there were so many conflicting intentions on LONDON FIELDS: there's a ludicrous 12 production companies, 46 credited producers, four credited editors, and even three guys credited with doubling Thornton. Heard seems game to play a seductive and dangerous femme fatale in a twisty noir thriller, but LONDON FIELDS is not that movie. Or any kind of movie, for that matter. (R, 107 mins)

THE LAST MAN
(Argentina/Canada - 2019)

The first narrative feature from Argentine documentary filmmaker Rodrigo H. Vila is a resounding failure on almost every front, save for some occasionally atmospheric location work in what appear to be some dangerous parts of Buenos Aires. A dreary, dipshit dystopian hodgepodge of THE MACHINIST, JACOB'S LADDER, and BLADE RUNNER, the long-shelved THE LAST MAN (shot in 2016 as NUMB, AT THE EDGE OF THE END, with a trailer under that title appearing online two years ago) is set in a constantly dark, rainy, and vaguely post-apocalyptic near-future in ruins from environmental disasters and global economic fallout. Combat vet Kurt Matheson (Hayden Christensen) is haunted by PTSD-related nightmares and hallucinations, usually in the form of a little boy who seems to know an awful lot about him, plus his dead war buddy Johnny (Justin Kelly) who may have been accidentally killed by Kurt in a friendly fire incident. Kurt also falls under the spell of messianic street preacher Noe (Harvey Keitel, looking like Vila caught him indulging in some C. Everett Koop cosplay), who tells his flock that "We are the cancer!" and that they must be prepared for a coming electrical storm that will bring about the end of civilization (or, on the bright side, the end of this movie). Kurt gets a job at a shady security firm in order to pay for the fortified bunker he becomes obsessed with building, and is framed for internal theft and targeted by his boss Antonio (LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE's Marco Leonardi as Almost Benicio Del Toro), while at the same time having a clandestine fling with the boss' ex-model daughter (Liz Solari).

Oppressively dull, THE LAST MAN is an incoherent jumble of dystopia and apocalypse cliches, dragged down by Christensen, who still can't act (2003's terrific SHATTERED GLASS remains the only film where his limitations have worked in his favor), and is saddled with trite, sub-Rick Deckard narration on top of that (at one point, he's actually required to gravely mumble "If you look into darkness, the darkness looks into you"). Vila's idea of humor is to drop classic rock references into the dialogue, with Kurt admonishing "Johnny! Be good!" to the dead friend only he can see, and apparent Pink Floyd fan Johnny retorting with "Shine on, you crazy diamond!" and "You're trading your heroes for ghosts!" And just because a seriously slumming Keitel is in the cast, Vila throws in a RESERVOIR DOGS standoff near the end between Kurt, Antonio, and Antonio's duplicitous right-hand man Gomez (Rafael Spregelburd). The gloomy and foreboding atmosphere Vila achieves with the Buenos Aires cityscapes is really the only point of interest here and is a strong indicator that he should stick to documentaries, because THE LAST MAN is otherwise unwatchable. (R, 104 mins)

TYREL
(US - 2018)

It's hard to not think of GET OUT while watching TYREL, and that's even before Caleb Landry Jones appears, once again cast radically against type as "Caleb Landry Jones." The latest from provocative Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva (NASTY BABY), TYREL is a slow-burning cringe comedy that takes a sometimes frustratingly ambiguous look at casual racism in today's society. With his girlfriend's family taking over their apartment for the weekend, Tyler (Jason Mitchell, best known from MUDBOUND and as Eazy-E in STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON), who runs the kitchen in an upscale BBQ restaurant, accompanies his friend Johnny (Christopher Abbott) to a remote cabin for a reunion of Johnny's buddies, who are gathering to celebrate Pete's (Jones) birthday. The cabin is owned by Nico (Nicolas Arze), and it's an eclectic mix of rowdy dudebros that even includes openly gay Roddy (Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum). Tyler is already somewhat nervous as the outsider of the group and he's the only black man present, and things get off to a slightly awkward start when one of them thinks his name is "Tyrel," and Pete seemingly takes offense that Tyler doesn't remember meeting him on a prior occasion. The first night is mostly ballbusting (including casually throwing around the word "faggot" as a playful insult) and their usual drinking games that an uncomfortable Tyler doesn't feel like playing. He ducks out and pretends to go to sleep, which only earns Johnny's derision the next morning, so to put himself at ease, Tyler starts overdoing it, getting far too intoxicated over the course of the day, especially once a second group of guys, including rich, eccentric Alan (Michael Cera), show up.

Almost every comment is loaded with a potential misread, from questioning chef Tyler whether grits should be eaten with sugar or salt to someone asking "Is this a Rachel Dolezal thing...am I allowed to do this?" All of these guys are liberal and affluent to some degree, and TYREL speaks to how words and actions can be interpreted even if the intent isn't there, making the point that assumptions and belief systems are ingrained into one's psyche. No one says or does anything that's intended to be overtly offensive (Roddy brushes off the homophobic slur directed at another, because it's just guys being guys) or blatantly racist, but Tyler has been on the receiving end of it enough that his guard is always up. He frequently exacerbates the situation by overreacting in an irrational way, especially on the second day when he gets far more intoxicated than anyone else, even drunkenly helping himself to an expensive bottle of whiskey that was a gift for Pete, as Silva starts using subtly disorienting camera angles to convey Tyler's--and the audience's--increasing discomfort. TYREL is mainly about creating a mood of one unintentional microaggression after another, but Silva somewhat overstates the point by setting the getaway bash on the same weekend as President Trump's inauguration, a ham-fisted move that puts a challenging character piece squarely into "MESSAGE!" territory, especially when Alan breaks out a Trump pinata and smirks to Tyler, "Oh, you'll love this!" TYREL moves past that heavy-handed stumble, and ultimately, there's no big message to be had here, but while it seems slight on a first glance, much it will nevertheless stick with you. It's anchored by a perceptive performance by Mitchell, supported by an ensemble that's strong across the board, with a nice late-film turn by the late, great character actor Reg E. Cathey--in his last film before his February 2018 death from lung cancer--as one of Nico's neighbors. (Unrated, 87 mins)

CAPTIVE STATE
(US - 2019)

Directed by Rupert Wyatt. Written by Erica Beeney and Rupert Wyatt. Cast: John Goodman, Ashton Sanders, Vera Farmiga, Jonathan Majors, Kevin Dunn, James Ransone, Alan Ruck, Kevin J. O'Connor, Colson Baker, Madeline Brewer, Ben Daniels, D.B. Sweeney, Caitlin Ewald, KiKi Layne, Lawrence Grimm, Guy Van Swearingen, Rene Moreno, Michael Collins, Marc Grapey. (PG-13, 109 mins)

Sometimes, flawed films that don't quite knock it out of the park end up being more interesting and more worthy of study than those we deem "great." CAPTIVE STATE is the kind of film that--let's just be honest here--is gonna tank in theaters. It's gonna tank hard. It's not what the ads make it look like, it's messy, it's a little disorienting in the way it throws out a lot of exposition in the early going, and it bites off a lot more than it can chew. But there's something here--it's politically and sociologically-loaded with historical metaphors, and takes a unique approach to its subject matter that almost guarantee it'll be the kind of film that has a serious cult following before it even leaves multiplexes in, well, probably a week. Shot two years ago, CAPTIVE STATE's release date was shuffled around multiple times--originally due out in summer 2018--as distributor Focus Features clearly had no idea what to do with it (I mean, what is that poster selling? The other one isn't any better). As a result, they're taking the easiest route possible and pushing it as a rote, run-of-the-mill alien invasion sci-fi actioner like it's another SKYLINE, and that does it a major disservice. Given the state of distribution today, it's a small victory that something like this even got made at all, let alone dumped on 2500 screens to certain doom. It's directed and co-written by Rupert Wyatt, best known for 2011's terrific RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. He directed 2014's THE GAMBLER in the interim, and while it looks like he had to make a few compromises, one can sense that CAPTIVE STATE is a pet project and something he's been ruminating on for quite some time.

In a prologue set in 2019, Earth is the target of an alien invasion. All of the world's major cities are seized by what are initially termed "roaches," alien beings of fluctuating, shape-shifting structure with a porcupine-like exterior. A cop and his wife are killed trying to flee Chicago, making orphans of their two young sons Rafael and Gabriel. Cut to a decade later, and the world remains under control of the "roaches," now known as their preferred title, "The Legislators." All of the governments of the planet acquiesced and ceded control to The Legislators. Everyone is tracked via implant, their actions monitored. Crime has gone down and jobs have increased. Income inequality is greater than ever--the rich have never been richer and the living conditions of the poor are atrocious. Criminals and non-conformists are taken "off-planet," and forced into slave labor, never given any thought by a population that, overall, has it pretty good since the takeover. The Legislators have stuck around and remain underground in major cities beneath "Closed Zones" off limits to humans without special access, usually limited to high-ranking government or police officials who are periodically summoned by The Legislators to receive their marching orders.

Gabriel (Ashton Sanders of MOONLIGHT) lives in the slums of Pilsen and scrapes by working in a factory downloading and cataloging the SIM cards of confiscated cell phones and mobile devices for inspection by The Legislators. He lives in the shadow cast by his big brother Rafael, a legendary resistance leader who was killed a few years earlier when he helped orchestrate a failed uprising that resulted in the complete destruction of Wicker Park at the hands of the outraged Legislators. There's a new insurgent group calling themselves Phoenix, and Chicago cop William Mulligan (John Goodman, in his second teaming with Wyatt after THE GAMBLER) is convinced they're about to strike and further incur the wrath of their extraterrestrial rulers, who have established a near-totalitarian society but remain generally hands-off as long as the ostensible leaders do what they're told and the population behaves itself. He's also watchful of Gabriel, whose father was his old partner back in the day. Sensing that Gabriel has something to do with Phoenix, he monitors his activities and finds out shortly after Gabriel does that Rafael (Jonathan Majors is alive in the ruins of Wicker Park, having successfully faked his death, removed his tracking device and gone completely off the grid to regroup and lead another revolt to take back the planet. There's a planned 10th anniversary "Unity Rally" celebration for The Legislators at Soldier Field, and Rafael and the members of Phoenix plot an elaborate infiltration of the event that could mean the end of Chicago--and other cities if The Legislators are angry enough--if they fail.

Wyatt and his wife/co-writer Erica Beeney (THE BATTLE OF SHAKER HEIGHTS) aren't really interested in a standard-issue alien invasion chronicle. We've seen INDEPENDENCE DAY and a hundred other movies of that sort, so they take it from a different angle, instead focusing on the insurgency and the dogged attempts of the weary Mulligan--who has conflicts of interest, to put it mildly--to stop it. The best stretch of CAPTIVE STATE is the riveting middle, which deals with Phoenix's planning and executing the Soldier Field "Unity Rally" plot. It's got an almost MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE quality to it, but taken as a whole, the entire film feels like DISTRICT 9 if written by John Le Carre. This is an alien invasion story told in the style of classic nuts-and-bolts espionage. Phoenix uses the personals of the newspaper to communicate to its members; a radio DJ relays coded messages over the air; resistance members have clandestine conversations on still-functioning pay phones; walls barricading Chicago neighborhoods from Closed Zones have a very distinct Cold War-era Berlin look to them; debriefing rooms at the Legislator compounds are filled with interpreters on headsets and look like the drab, chilly offices of the spymasters in TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY; and Goodman even gets to monitor some activities in what looks like a low-tech version of a Bourne crisis suite. There's other, more contemporary jabs at the world's uncomfortable willingness to cave to autocratic rule without question, and the Chicago P.D. engaging in what looks very similar to all manner of "enhanced interrogation" in the style of Gitmo.

Propelled by a killer electronic score by Rob Simonsen, CAPTIVE STATE balances a large number of characters and their locations and unfolds like a compelling page-turner of a novel. It's admirable in its ambition, but yeah, it's not perfect. It doesn't handle Vera Farmiga's character very well, barely utilizing her in what seems to be a nothing role, virtually guaranteeing to the seasoned moviegoer that she'll be the center of any any third act "surprise." And what is intended as a twist ending doesn't play out as well as Wyatt planned, with a reveal that ends up feeling like an unsatisfying deus ex machina that might negate much of what came before. It may not follow through 100%, and it wouldn't be incorrect to say that it collapses when it matters most, but there's a lot of good stuff here that's smart, densely-plotted, thoughtfully-constructed, politically-charged with historical and literary inspiration (Gabriel's oppressive workplace is positively Kafka-esque). You can nit-pick why so many pay phones still exist in 2029 or why The Legislators still allow newspapers, but goddamn, this thing aims for the fences and goes for broke, and there's something to be said for that. It succeeds a lot more often that it fails, and in an era of endless sequels, franchises, remakes, reboots, and soulless, assembly-line, focus-grouped product, something this brazenly original and ambitious deserves to be recognized even if, in the big picture with all things considered, it maybe only rates a "B" instead of an "A+." Shortcomings and stumbles be damned, if a fervent cult following forms around CAPTIVE STATE, count me in.

US
(US - 2019)

Written and directed by Jordan Peele. Cast: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon, Madison Curry, Ashley McKoy, Alan Frazier. (R, 116 mins)

2017's GET OUT came along at the perfect moment in time to serve as zeitgeist-capturing, sociopolitical snapshot of American culture. It also earned a Best Screenplay Oscar for writer/director Jordan Peele, then best known for the sketch comedy stylings of KEY & PEELE and on nobody's radar to be named the next major player in the horror genre. But with GET OUT, Peele found his true calling and horror the most effective way to explore his concerns, and US, his follow-up effort, is even more conceptually ambitious if at times muddled in execution. Even before a late-film split-diopter shot, I was continually reminded of Brian De Palma while watching US--not because of its subject or its style, but in its methodical and precise construction. Every shot, every plot detail, and every visual element is there for a reason, so much so that it'll take multiple viewings to pick up everything. Peele is making much grander thematic overtures with US compared to GET OUT, and it gets away from him a bit in the home stretch in a way that shows his intentions are clear in his own head but they're maybe too unwieldy to communicate in the most succinct fashion. To that end, US is a film that works terrifically as a visceral horror experience, and its greater concerns give it some timely resonance and much for an attentive and engaged audience to discuss and debate when it's over.

In a bygone era of exploitation hucksterism, this could've easily been called THE STRANGERS 3, but the home invasion angle played up in the trailer and TV spots constitutes a surprisingly little amount of screen time. In an extended prologue set in 1986, a young girl (Madison Curry) is with her bickering parents at an amusement park on the Santa Cruz boardwalk. She wanders off into a funhouse with a hall of mirrors and encounters her exact double. Cut to the present day and the girl has grown up to be Adelaide Wilson (12 YEARS A SLAVE Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o), married to Gabe (Winston Duke), and with two children: teenager Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and young son Jason (Even Alex). Still quietly traumatized by the 1986 funhouse incident though she's never told Gabe about it, Adelaide can barely hide her discomfort at the idea of spending a family vacation in Santa Cruz with everyone insisting they go to that very beach on the boardwalk. A very brief Jason disappearance when he wanders away to use a restroom is enough for a frazzled Adelaide to insist they go home, but that plan is put on the backburner with the sudden appearance of a family dressed in red jumpsuits appearing in the driveway of their beach house. This mystery family eventually gets into the house and are revealed to be haggard and almost feral doppelgangers of the Wilsons, all armed with large scissors and wearing one leather driving glove on their right hand: kids Umbrae (Zora) and Pluto (Jason), dad Abraham (Gabe) and mom Red (Adelaide), who speaks in a gasping, guttural wheeze and is the only one with any verbal communication skills. "It's us," Jason says. "We're Americans," Red replies.

That line from Red is a little too on-the-nose and on the heavy-handed side as far as being a somewhat cloddish harbinger of where Peele is about to take things. The home invasion soon leads to a subsequent escape and the film is only about 1/3 over as Peele steers things into a number of unexpected directions that won't be revealed here. It's probably no accident that Peele is hosting the upcoming CBS All Access reboot of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, as much of US plays like a feature-length episode of that very show. But there's a lot--maybe too much, even--to chew on here, not only with Peele wearing his influences on his sleeve, but with insightful, razor-sharp commentary on income inequality, the American underclass, and the good fortune to be blessed with health, success, and taking for granted the ability to attain the American Dream. The Wilsons don't appear to be rich, but they're very comfortable, though Gabe buys a cheap secondhand boat and is clearly a little jealous that it's not as nice as the one that his buddy Josh (Tim Heidecker) and his wife Kitty (Elisabeth Moss) have. The doppelgangers and the hall of mirrors are just the beginning when it comes to the recurring examples of duality (even the film's title can be read in two different ways), and it's likely the only film you'll ever see where the 1986 "Hands Across America" event takes on a completely sinister new incarnation. Peele is juggling a lot of ideas here and he can be forgiven if he doesn't quite follow through on all of them. There's a laborious exposition dump that slows down the third act and frankly, doesn't really hold up under any serious scrutiny (though I guess it doesn't really have to), and most people will see the final twist coming long before it occurs, but the film succeeds in establishing and maintaining a profound sense of unease and menace throughout and the performances by the cast, most of whom are required to play two distinctly different characters, are excellent across the board. That's particularly true of Nyong'o, who not only fashions Adelaide as a furious protector of her family but also creates a memorably terrifying figure in Red. With all its serious, heady ideas and effective jump scares (Peele is great at using every bit of the frame), US is also very funny at times, both with its snappy dialogue and a few inspired gags (like one character telling an Alexa knockoff called "Ophelia" to "call the police" only to have it play N.W.A.'s "Fuck tha Police" instead). You'll also never be able to hear The Beach Boys'"Good Vibrations" the same way again.

DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE
(US/Canada/UK - 2019)

Written and directed by S. Craig Zahler. Cast: Mel Gibson, Vince Vaughn, Tory Kittles, Don Johnson, Thomas Kretschmann, Michael Jai White, Jennifer Carpenter, Laurie Holden, Fred Melamed, Udo Kier, Tattiawna Jones, Justine Warrington, Jordyn Ashley Olson, Myles Truitt, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Noel G, Primo Allon, Matthew Maccaull, Richard Newman, Liannet Borrego. (R, 158 mins)

"I'm a month away from my 60th. I'm still the same rank I was at 27. I don't politic and I don't change with the times and it turns out that shit's more important than good honest work."

With his 2015 cannibal horror/western BONE TOMAHAWK and his 2017 grindhouse B-movie prison face-smasher BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99, musician and author-turned-filmmaker S. Craig Zahler established himself as a bold new voice in cult cinema (presumably as a goof, he also scripted 2018's PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH). Can one appropriately follow up a film where Vince Vaughn tears a car to pieces with his bare hands? Well, the gritty and amazingly-titled cop thriller DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE is Zahler's most ambitious provocation yet, weaving complex characterizations, multiple storylines, bursts of truly shocking violence and splatter and several startling plot turns into a compelling crime saga that runs a sprawling 158 minutes. Zahler's cache in genre circles hasn't come without controversy, with detractors hurling accusations of racism and branding his films as right-wing fodder for the Trump crowd. Cop, and by association, vigilante movies, have been labeled fascist fantasies for decades, going back decades to Clint Eastwood in DIRTY HARRY, Gene Hackman in THE FRENCH CONNECTION, and Charles Bronson in DEATH WISH. Zahler's characters do and say despicable things I don't see him defending or excusing their actions. Understanding the mindset of a political viewpoint doesn't necessarily mean tacit endorsement or justification. Perhaps it complicates things by showing that these characters have a human side and might be doing very wrong things for what they perceive to be right reasons, but Zahler isn't being overtly political here. It's more likely a sign of the times and the cultural environment where the younger generation of film critics have focused less on writing about the films and more about "hot takes," expressing themselves, airing their own grievances, looking for things to be offended by, and making a huge production out of how woke they are. That's really no way to watch movies, people.

He's obviously aware of the criticisms of his work, and even before watching DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE, one has to marvel at how well Zahler has his trolling game down: how much sheer chutzpah and raw balls does it take to make a movie about corrupt, racist cops in 2019 and cast Mel Gibson in the leading role? Few things piss off woke pop culture publications more than Gibson finding gainful employment, and his presence here can be seen as a test of separating the art from the artist or at least exposing the film's pre-release detractors for doing exactly what they're doing: passive-aggressively rehashing and reviewing Gibson's past transgressions instead of reviewing the movie. Gibson has lost none of his power to command the screen, turning in his best work in years as Detective Brett Ridgeman, a veteran cop in Bulwark, a fictional, good-sized lower-to-middle class city that's seen better days. Partnered with the younger Anthony Lurasetti (Hollywood conservative Vaughn, in his second Zahler film), Ridgeman is hardened, cynical, embittered, and a ticking time bomb. He does his job and refuses to play nice, and while his and Lurasetti's arrest records are exemplary ("Two wings of the penitentiary are filled with our collars...maybe three"), they're suspended for six weeks without pay when someone records Ridgeman using excessive force during an arrest, dragging a suspect (Noel G) out of the window on a fire escape and forcefully pressing his boot down on his head. The cell phone footage makes the local news, and while Ridgeman blames it on a society gone soft (sounding like a Fox News host when he barks "We get suspended because it wasn't done politely...the entertainment industry, formerly known as the news, needs villains" like a talking point), his former partner and current boss Lt. Calvert (Don Johnson) uses the opportunity to remind him "There's a reason I'm behind this desk running things and you're still out there on the streets."

Neither Ridgeman nor Lurasetti are in positions to go six weeks without pay. Lurasetti is about to splurge on an engagement ring for his girlfriend Denise (Tattiawna Jones), and Ridgeman is feeling pressure from multiple directions. His wife Melanie (Laurie Holden) is a former cop who was forced into early retirement when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and with the reduced income, they had to move to a crummy neighborhood where their teenage daughter Sara (Jordyn Ashley Olson) is regularly menaced by a group of black kids ("I was never a racist until we lived in this neighborhood," Melanie laments). Pissed that he's got over 30 years on the force with nothing to show for it and refusing to take a temporary security gig, Ridgeman calls in a favor from posh clothier and connected criminal Friedrich (Udo Kier), who tells him about a vaguely-defined job being orchestrated by associate Lorentz Vogelman (Thomas Kretschmann). With a reluctant Lurasetti onboard ("This is bad...like lasagna in a can"), the pair stake out Vogelman's apartment building for several days before piecing together some semblance of what he might be up to. Meanwhile, in a parallel storyline, just-paroled ex-con Henry Johns (Tory Kittles) arrives home to find his junkie mother (Vanessa Bell Calloway) working as a prostitute. Forced to grow up early after his closeted gay father abandoned the family ("Pops is a yesterday who ain't worth words") and wanting a better life for his mother and his wheelchair-bound little brother (Myles Truitt), Henry teams up with old buddy Biscuit (Michael Jai White), who gets wind of a job offer for a getaway driver.

Despite its gargantuan length, DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE is never dull and never crosses the line into self-indulgence. Like BONE TOMAHAWK and BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99, it unfolds like a novel, drawing you in and letting the story and the characters breathe and take form and find their voice at its own leisurely pace. It's a good 100 or more minutes before all the plot lines converge (Jennifer Carpenter also figures in with a small but pivotal role as a nervous first-time mom having severe separation anxiety on her first day back to work after having a baby three months earlier), and Zahler is in no rush to get anywhere. Its twists, turns, and detours recall JACKIE BROWN-era Quentin Tarantino, and while Zahler may lack QT's signature pop culture, "Royale with cheese" pizazz, the novelist in him has a way with words that is uniquely his own and fits perfectly with the bleak, abrasive, nihilistic vision of DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE's world. Zahler stops short of rooting for Ridgeman and Lurasetti, but he manages to humanize them in the antihero cop tradition of DIRTY HARRY's Harry Callahan and THE FRENCH CONNECTION's Popeye Doyle (speaking of Doyle, there's a character who would never fly in woke 2019). DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE is an equal opportunity offender, whether Ridgeman and Lurasetti are pretending they can't understand a hearing-impaired female perp speaking clear English (Lurasetti: "Sounds like a dolphin voice") or one of Vogelman's goons needing to cut open a corpse (it's a long story) and being reminded "Careful you don't open the liver...it's the worst smell in the world, especially with a black guy," or the numerous bits of overt homophobia. DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE takes place in an ugly and dangerous world filled with ugly and dangerous people. Though it has its share of humor (watch Gibson's seething slow burn on the stakeout as Ridgeman clocks Lurasetti--it's also a vintage Vaughn moment--at 98 minutes to finish an egg salad sandwich, finally snapping "A single red ant could've eaten it faster"), it's a furious, ferocious, and fearlessly uncompromising gut punch of a film that isn't pretty, doesn't play nice, and isn't easily shaken.

THE DIRT
(US - 2019)

Directed by Jeff Tremaine. Written by Rich Wilkes and Amanda Adelson. Cast: Douglas Booth, Iwan Rheon, Colson Baker, Daniel Webber, David Costabile, Pete Davidson, Levin Rambin, Kathryn Morris, Rebekah Graf, Max Milner, Joe Chrest, Tony Cavalero, Christian Gehring, Elena Evangelo, Kamryn Ragsdale, Anthony Vincent Valbiro. (Unrated, 107 mins)

In various stages of development for over a decade, the Netflix adaptation of Motley Crue's 2001 tell-all The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band still can't help but feel a little like BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY II: THE CRUE. One can imagine this becoming a burgeoning subgenre with any major, influential figure or band (there's already an Elton John biopic on the way with Taron Egerton), and like the extremely popular Queen/Freddie Mercury chronicle, THE DIRT glosses over details and fudges some facts. It also omits some of the more vile, salacious, X-rated material while still managing to leave in a visual presentation of drummer Tommy Lee's cunnilingual ability to bring a woman to a geyser-like orgasm in a room full of people. Approved and co-produced by the band, THE DIRT doesn't shy away from showing them at their worst, from letting fame go to their heads, sleeping with each others' girlfriends, vehicular manslaughter, and the deepest pits of smack addiction. It also shows them as human beings with plenty of baggage, from bassist/leader Nikki Sixx's horrible childhood to guitarist Mick Mars' quiet battle with a degenerative bone disease to frontman Vince Neil losing his four-year-old daughter Skylar to cancer. The bit with the phone? Yeah, that got lost in the transition from page to screen.

THE DIRT kicks off at the dawn of the 1980s on L.A.'s famed Sunset Strip, as bassist Sixx (British actor Douglas Booth of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES and THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM) looks to start a new band after the implosion of his last one, Strip fixture London. He's approached by London superfan and amiable goofball Lee (Colson Baker, aka rapper Machine Gun Kelly) and they decide to start a band and begin auditioning guitar players. Enter the jaded, cynical Mars (GAME OF THRONES' Iwan Rheon), who's several years older and with a rare disease that will slowly affect his spine and bones over time. He feels that the clock is ticking and only wants to be in a serious band, and even he's won over when Lee introduces them to Neil (Australian actor Daniel Webber, who played Lee Harvey Oswald on the Hulu miniseries 11.22.63), a buddy from high school who's currently in a cover band called Rock Candy. The magic happens almost immediately when Sixx writes "Live Wire," and after settling on Mars' suggested name (rejected ones included Sixx's "XMass" and Lee's "The Fourskins," so-called because "we fuck the audience in the face every night!"), Motley Crue quickly become the hottest band on the Strip. They're courted and signed by Elektra A&R guy Tom Zutaut (Pete Davidson) and managed by the legendary Doc McGhee (David Costabile), but it's not long before it's all about the groupies, the booze, and every debauched indulgence imaginable (cue Neil screwing Zutaut's girlfriend, Sixx snorting coke out of Lee's girlfriend's ass crack). With the release of the debut album, they land the opening spot on an Ozzy Osbourne tour, and they're warned by Ozzy (Tony Cavalero, doing what's basically an SNL impression) to control themselves and their excesses as he himself snorts a line of live ants and laps up his own piss.

All of the well-known Crue highs and lows are here to a point: a drunk Neil behind the wheel of a car crash that takes the life of passenger and Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle Dingley (Max Milner); Lee's romance and wedding to TV star Heather Locklear (Rebekah Graf); Sixx's worsening heroin addiction where he actually flatlines in the ambulance before being brought back to life; a newly-sober Crue's 1989 Dr. Feelgood triumph followed by Neil's acrimonious departure two years later, during which time his daughter is diagnosed with stomach cancer while the band carries on with new singer John Corabi (Anthony Vincent Valbiro), playing half-filled venues before Elektra eventually drops them; and their inevitable reunion with the caption "The band played for another 20 years" that demonstrates a brusqueness usually reserved for Poochie dying on the way back to his home planet. Yeah, "another 20 years," give or take. Lee's one-album departure and replacement by ex-Ozzy drummer Randy Castillo is never mentioned, nor is (thankfully) his ludicrous side project Methods of Mayhem. Likewise, Lee's marriage to and much-publicized sex tape with Pamela Anderson never comes up, nor does any mention of domestic violence or the time Lee spent in jail because of it.

Taken on its own terms for the somewhat fictionalized '80s nostalgia that it is, THE DIRT is entertaining, never dull, and the four leads do some convincing cosplay (particularly Baker as Lee), though it never goes beyond the superficial and in one case, is utterly cringe-worthy (as Sixx, Booth is actually required to say the line "I fell in love...her name was Heroin"). Each band member (and McGhee and Zutaut) get their turns narrating, with sometimes amusing results, whether it's Zutaut's "Don't leave your girlfriend alone with Motley Crue, because they will fuck her," or Mars breaking the fourth wall with "What you just saw...that never happened" and Sixx introducing a nameless character who literally fades from the screen with the explanation "We cut him from this movie." Like any biopic there's some degree of whitewashing and selective revisionist history, but for the most part, THE DIRT is basically a re-enactment of a BEHIND THE MUSIC episode mixed with JACKASS-like antics (like running through hotels naked and setting Mars' room on fire while he's sleeping), not surprising given that director Jeff Tremaine's resume includes co-creating JACKASS and directing the three JACKASS movies and the JACKASS spinoff BAD GRANDPA. At any rate, any 2019 depiction of the halcyon days of the early '80s Sunset Strip that manages to namecheck Y&T deserves some points for cred.

LAND OF DOOM
(US - 1986)

Directed by Peter Maris. Written by Craig Land. Cast: Deborah Rennard, Garrick Dowhen, Daniel Radell, Frank Garret, Akut Duz, Richard Allen, Bruno Chambon. (Unrated, 87 mins)

We're really diving into the deep cuts of the '80s post-nuke craze if LAND OF DOOM and ROBOT HOLOCAUST have made it to Blu-ray, both courtesy of Scorpion (because physical media is dead). LAND OF DOOM was directed by Peter Maris, who had a somewhat prolific run as a C-list action guy in the late '80s into the early '90s, with video store staples like TERROR SQUAD, VIPER, and DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY. An American production shot in the Cappadocia region of Turkey, LAND OF DOOM gets some mileage out of the location work that lends some effective atmosphere, and it looks like it might've been filmed in some of the same spots as YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE. Otherwise, it's really just a Nick Nicholson or Henry Strzalkowski away from being a Cirio H. Santiago joint of the period, with the nominal "big" name being Deborah Rennard, then in the middle of a decade-long run as J.R. Ewing's secretary on DALLAS. Rennard, who would go on to be married to CRASH writer/director Paul Haggis from 1997 to 2015, stars as Harmony, a Mad Maxine-type badass fighting to survive in a desolate, dangerous, polluted wasteland ruled by the Raiders, a marauding, plague-infected band of goons led by burn-scarred Slater (Daniel Radell), a bellowing villain who looks like Ric Flair auditioning for Manowar. The fiercely-independent Harmony reluctantly hits the road with Anderson (Garrick Dowhen), who's on the run from the Raiders since he's the one who scarred Slater, and, seemingly immune to the plague, they head in the direction of a reported "safe zone" called Blue Lake.

That's pretty much it for the plot, which is largely an excuse for tons of explosions and a parade of subhuman bad guys, each one more repugnant than the last, including a French-accented creep (Bruno Chambon) who tries to rape Harmony before almost feeding them human flesh, as well as Demister (Radell, in a pointless dual role), a cackling Slater flunky who also attempts to rape Harmony and promptly gets his head bashed in for his trouble. The only other likable character is Orland (Akut Duz), an eccentric guy with a bicycle and a pack of friendly dogs who shows up in third act and helps Harmony and Anderson take on Slater in a climax that introduces some robed, chattering dwarves and has a score that sounds like it's on loan from a SCARECROW AND MRS. KING chase scene. Boasting the most cumbersomely-designed motorcycles in all of post-nuke, LAND OF DOOM is by no means an essential entry in the subgenre and is largely for die-hard completists only, though it certainly could've benefited from having some known B-movie people in support of Rennard instead of never-weres like Dowhen and Radell. It is interesting to note that both of the secretaries of DALLAS' Ewing brothers--Rennard as J.R.'s and Deborah Tranelli as Bobby's--went halfway around the world at roughly the same time for starring roles in low-budget exploitation grinders, with Tranelli headlining Cirio H. Santiago's Filipino-shot vigilante scuzzfest NAKED VENGEANCE.

ROBOT HOLOCAUST
(US - 1987)

Written and directed by Tim Kincaid. Cast: Norris Culf, Nadine Hart, Joel Von Ornsteiner, Jennifer Delora, Andrew Howarth, Angelika Jager, Michael Downend, Rick Gianisi, George Gray, Nicholas Reiner, Michael Azzolina, John Blaylock, Amy Brentano. (Unrated, 79 mins)

Terrible in an endearing way, the micro-budget post-nuke ROBOT HOLOCAUST makes effective use of basically two locations--the abandoned Brooklyn Navy Yard and some dirt trails on Roosevelt Island--with some cheap Ed French creature effects and sub-porn-level acting. That's oddly appropriate considering that writer/directer Tim Kincaid is better known as gay porn auteur "Joe Gage." As Gage (and "Mac Larson"), Kincaid has been an influential figure in gay porn since the late '70s, but for a few years in the mid-to-late '80s, he gave D-list, straight-to-video horror movies a shot with BREEDERS, MUTANT HUNT, and ROBOT HOLOCAUST, all three ghost-produced by Empire Pictures, apparently using some loose change from the cup holders in Charles Band's car. ROBOT HOLOCAUST looks surprisingly good on Scorpion's new Blu-ray and is even framed at 1:85:1 despite its 1.33:1 home video roots, and if nothing else, Kincaid's intentions seem earnest. Set in an post-apocalyptic NYC now known as "New Terra," the film deals with the after-effects of a robot uprising at the command of The Dark One, who now controls the atmosphere and enslaves humanity in a plot element that sounds suspiciously Cohaagen-esque for any TOTAL RECALL fans. Scientist Jorn (Michael Downend) creates a device that blocks out The Dark One's atmosphere control and is quickly taken prisoner by The Dark One's chief enforcer, a tentacle/Davy Jones-mouthed robot named Torque (Rick Gianisi). Jorn's daughter Deeja (Nadine Hart) assembles a motley crew to venture into the wasteland--South Point Park on Roosevelt Island--with nomadic warrior Neo (Norris Culf) and his robot sidekick Klyton (Joel Von Ornsteiner) on loan from the Rebel Society to lead the group and reclaim control of The Power Station, the stronghold of The Dark One.

Angelika Jager as Valaria. Somehow, Olympia Dukakis
took home the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year.

Skewered on MST3K all the way back in the show's first season in 1990, ROBOT HOLOCAUST is all kinds of awful but there's an infectiously goofy DIY quality to a lot of it, whether it's the rampant continuity errors, the iconic NYC skyline still intact and seemingly unaffected by the robot uprising, and the terrible performances from everyone, none more so than German actress Angelika Jager, who's astoundingly bad as Valaria, The Dark One's femme fatale second-in-command who keeps her job despite fucking everything up. God love her, Jager is beautiful and enthusiastic, but she makes everyone else in the cast look like Actors Studio alumni. Of course, it doesn't help that her grasp of English seems tenuous at best, but the ridiculous dialogue doesn't do her any favors ("Torque! Take him to the Room of Questions!"). Jager, Culf, Hart and several others were out of movies after ROBOT HOLOCAUST, but among the supporting players, Gianisi went on to star in Kincaid's MUTANT HUNT and later earned his place in cult movie history with the title role in Troma's SGT. KABUKIMAN NYPD. The biggest surprise career path for the ROBOT HOLOCAUST cast has to be Von Ornsteiner, now known as "J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner," or "Dr. Buzz," a forensic psychologist who hosts the reality show COPYCAT KILLERS and is a semi-regular talking head when murder cases dominate the cable news cycle. Buried in the closing credits with the art department was Gary Winick, who would later direct popular '00s chick flicks like 13 GOING ON 30 and BRIDE WARS. Kincaid went as far into mainstream circles as helming Vestron's barely-released 1989 Carrie Fisher comedy SHE'S BACK before a decade-long filmmaking sabbatical, after which he returned to his "Joe Gage" roots, where he's been busy since, his most recent credit being JOE GAGE SEX FILES VOL. 23: JACK'S NEW JOB.

In Theaters: SERENITY (2019)

Retro Review: DEADLY FORCE (1983)

On Netflix: VELVET BUZZSAW (2019)

On Blu-ray/DVD: THE SISTERS BROTHERS (2018) and THE GUILTY (2018)

In Theaters: THE PRODIGY (2019)

In Theaters: COLD PURSUIT (2019)

On Blu-ray/DVD: AT ETERNITY'S GATE (2018), THE FRONT RUNNER (2018) and THE BOUNCER (2019)

Retro Review: PARTY LINE (1988)

On Blu-ray/DVD: BETWEEN WORLDS (2018) and A PRIVATE WAR (2018)

In Theaters: GRETA (2019)

Retro Review: NEXT OF KIN (1982)

On Blu-ray/DVD: THE VANISHING (2019) and VOX LUX (2018)

Retro Review: CURSE III: BLOOD SACRIFICE (1991)

On Netflix: TRIPLE FRONTIER (2019)

On Blu-ray/DVD: LONDON FIELDS (2018), THE LAST MAN (2019) and TYREL (2018)

In Theaters: CAPTIVE STATE (2019)

In Theaters: US (2019)

In Theaters/On VOD: DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE (2019)

On Netflix: THE DIRT (2019)

Retro Review: LAND OF DOOM (1986) and ROBOT HOLOCAUST (1987)