Good Efficient Butchery

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
(US - 2013)

Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Terence Winter. Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Jean Dujardin, Rob Reiner, Jon Bernthal, Jon Favreau, Cristin Milioti, Shea Whigham, Joanna Lumley, Ethan Suplee, P.J. Byrne, Kenneth Choi, Brian Sacca, Henry Zabrowski, Robert Clohessy, Christine Ebersole, Fran Lebowitz, Bo Dietl. (R, 180 mins)

Right on the heels of David O. Russell's de facto Martin Scorsese tribute AMERICAN HUSTLE comes the real thing, and while Scorsese, arguably American cinema's greatest living filmmaker, doesn't break any new ground here, there's nothing quite like watching a master do what he does best. Yes, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET finds Scorsese going back to the GOODFELLAS and CASINO well with his trademark relentless pacing, the precision editing skills of the great Thelma Schoonmaker (who hasn't worked on every Scorsese film but has been his partner-in-crime for the better part of 45 years, going back to his 1968 feature debut WHO'S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR?), the breaking of the fourth wall with the protagonist directly addressing the audience, and a killer song selection propelling the action. In telling the story of convicted Wall Street investment broker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the same manner he did with Ray Liotta's Henry Hill in GOODFELLAS and Robert De Niro's Sam "Ace" Rothstein in CASINO, Scorsese is squarely in "give the fans what they want" mode. Yes, it's familiar, but nobody does it like Scorsese and there's something about this particular manner of storytelling and the way he manages it that makes it pure, unabashed cinema at its most electrifying. There's a palpable, kinetic energy to this film and in its expert assembly that makes three hours fly by and a convoluted storyline coherent. Jaded cynics might accuse Scorsese of spinning his wheels, but he's 71 and has nothing left to prove. He's earned it. You won't find a bolder, more free-wheelingly insane, and just flat-out entertaining film in theaters right now. There's only one Scorsese, even he's said he might only have one, maybe two films left in him. So just enjoy it. We'll lose something irreplaceable when he's gone.

On the day he's hired at a prestigious Wall Street firm in 1987, Belfort is advised by his boss Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey) to jerk off at least twice a day and do plenty of coke if he wants to make it in the stock market. Recently married to Teresa (Cristin Milioti) and coming from a strong blue-collar background, Belfort makes some headway but the firm goes under in the Black Monday crash. Starting over at a cut-rate penny stock outfit in a strip mall, Belfort quickly establishes himself and with some guys from his neighborhood--whose sales experience is mainly confined to weed--creates a new firm called Stratton Oakmont. Belfort's right hand is the odd Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), a socially inept, frequently boorish individual who married his cousin and quits his job to join Belfort after seeing his car and a $72,000 pay stub. Roping in investors with blue-chip stocks and then conning them on the bullshit penny stocks which provide 50% commission, Belfort and his Stratton Oakmont underlings rapidly grow obscenely wealthy and prone to every over-the-top indulgence imaginable: a day at the office is tantamount to an id-driven bacchanal, with booze, cocaine, Quaaludes, prostitution, public sex, orgies, etc. By now a hopeless drug and sex addict, Belfort leaves the plain Teresa for the stunning Naomi (Margot Robbie), but his hunger for excess only grows, including S&M sessions with a dominatrix who inserts a lit candle up his ass. As the money keeps rolling in, Stratton Oakmont catches the attention of FBI agent Denham (Kyle Chandler) as Scorsese takes the film into an extended "last half hour of GOODFELLAS" territory when Belfort has to come up with convoluted schemes to get his money into a Swiss bank and keep the Feds off his back.

Anyone who knows Belfort's story (which inspired the 2000 film BOILER ROOM) is already aware that he was ultimately convicted of fraud and stock market manipulation and got a reduced sentence after he turned informant on his co-conspirators. He's since become an infomercial guru and motivational speaker. Even with the structural familiarity, Scorsese takes somewhat of a different approach to THE WOLF OF WALL STREET. Until Belfort's irrational behavior becomes violent near the end and the film turns deadly serious, the first 150 or so minutes are primarily conceived as a broad comedy. The sexual escapades of Belfort and his crew are almost CALIGULA-esque in their excess and depravity (Scorsese had to make some cuts to avoid an NC-17), and the drug episodes--the Lemmon 714 sequence is one of the most hilarious set pieces of 2013--almost take the film into the grotesquely comic territory of FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, with some marvelously-executed physical acting by DiCaprio and Hill. In his fifth film with Scorsese, DiCaprio has never been better. While a good chunk of the film is played for often uncomfortable laughs in situations that are prone to going overboard, DiCaprio is given space to show the charisma that Belfort possessed amid his frequent atrocities. Belfort is an asshole and Scorsese shows that, but he's an asshole that people are drawn to, and even though success unleashes a monster, sometimes that decent blue collar kid shows up. DiCaprio explores this dichotomy in a terrific scene where he's about to leave the film as part of his plea deal and he singles out one broker--a single mom who was behind on her rent when she was hired--and speaks from the heart about how he gave her a salary advance because he believed in her.

But those meaningful, pensive moments are few and far between. Like its subject, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is all about unabashed debauchery. It's profane, outrageous, raunchy, and gloriously offensive, whether Donnie's talking about the possibility of mentally-challenged children with his cousin/wife, saying if they had a "retard," he'd just take the child for a drive to the woods and just "set it free," or one stockbroker's inappropriate reaction to seeing Naomi for the first time ("I'd let her give me AIDS"). Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter (BOARDWALK EMPIRE) give the story space to develop and do a great job of keeping it contained even as its absurdity goes off the charts. Most other filmmakers would've had to whittle it down and still would've lost control, and a director with less clout would've been told to trim the Lemmon 714 section and probably the airplane orgy and probably the scene of DiCaprio and Hill double-teaming a hooker and definitely the scene of a prosthetic-penis-sporting Hill masturbating in a Quaalude-induced stupor. It's the kind of film where you're laughing even though you're appalled. Anchored by a career-best DiCaprio performance and a stellar supporting cast where everyone gets at least one memorable moment to shine (Rob Reiner, as Jordan's dad, losing his shit over getting a phone call during THE EQUALIZER; every time you see P.J. Byrne as Belfort's buddy Rugrat, with his "piece of shit hairpiece"; and a meeting between Belfort and Denham on Belfort's obnoxiously large yacht with its own helipad, where DiCaprio and Chandler do a brilliant job of showing both men psychologically wearing on one another), THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is almost like comfort food for Scorsese-philes. You've seen a lot of it before, but Scorsese is smart enough to not mess with success and doesn't fix what isn't broken. This is just great showmanship by a legend who may no longer have the drive and hunger of his MEAN STREETS youth, but he's still at the top of his game.

THE BEST OFFER
(Italy - 2013/US release: 2014)

Written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess, Donald Sutherland, Sylvia Hoeks, Philip Jackson, Dermot Crowley, Kiruna Stammel, Liya Kebede. (R, 131 mins)

There's a strong Hitchcockian influence on the first half of the Best Film winner at the 2013 David di Donatello Awards, the Italian equivalent of the Oscar. The latest film from CINEMA PARADISO director Giuseppe Tornatore is equal parts psychological thriller and sometimes corny love story, the pieces of the puzzle eventually fitting if you heed the advice of one character who states "If you're patient, everything falls into place." In one of his best performances, Geoffrey Rush is Virgil Oldman, an abrasive, erudite auctioneer and art appraiser who lives in such a bubble that he even has his own dinnerware (complete with his own "V.O." crest on the glassware) set aside for him at the posh restaurants he frequents. A germphobe, Virgil resists all human contact that isn't necessary, and only interacts with his staff on a need-to basis. He's been running a scam for years with his accomplice Billy (Donald Sutherland), a failed artist who places the winning bids on the high-quality forgeries that Virgil auctions off at events--their scam is that the paintings are the real deal and Virgil tells no one, paying Billy to bid on the priceless art at much cheaper forgery prices for Virgil to acquire and horde in a secret room in his house. Soon, Virgil is contacted by Claire Ibbitsen (Sylvia Hoeks), a 27-year-old agoraphobic heiress and shut-in who hasn't left her bedroom in 12 years. Her parents died a year earlier and the family villa has fallen into a dilapidated state. Through a series of phone calls that grow increasingly testy due to Virgil's impatience and snobbery, Claire reveals that she wants her parents' extensive art and furniture collection to be catalogued, appraised, and sold at auction.

Virgil's huffy exasperation changes to genuine intrigue when he keeps finding discarded pieces of a machine scattered about the premises. Consulting Robert (Jim Sturgess), a fix-it associate of his, Virgil deduces that it's an automaton of some sort, but can't figure out why stray pieces are in the basement of Claire's villa. He later sees the gears of the mystery device turn up in a painting he's asked to evaluate. As time goes on, dealing with Claire from outside her locked room, the prickly Virgil begins to develop genuine feelings for the young woman, eventually drawing her out of her shell--and out of her room--with romantic advice from the affable Robert. The more mechanical pieces Virgil finds, the more Robert is able to reassemble the automaton, during which time the more empathetically human Virgil becomes. But, as one might say in the trailer if this was a dumbed-down American thriller, in a world of forgery where nothing is as it seems...

Tornatore's set-up is tricky and requires some patience and an exercise of good faith from the viewer. It's not a slowly-paced film--indeed, it would probably be a moderately popular thriller if it was widely released--but it starts to stumble and bumble midway through until you realize that it's by design. As Virgil loosens up from his usual uptight, asshole self (Rush sinks his teeth into Virgil's sneering pomposity--just listen to the way he snaps "Alright...put her through!" when he's told Claire is on the line), he starts to sound and act like a lovestruck puppy, from his getting romantic tips from Robert to the repetitive, foot-stomping arguments he and Claire have from opposite sides of a door ("I think you're more interested in my furniture and paintings than me!" she exclaims) to a groaner of a conversation Virgil has with his assistant (Dermot Crowley), who tells him "Women are like taking part in an auction...you never know if yours will be the best offer" to Virgil standing in the middle of the villa courtyard and screaming "Claire!" at the top of his lungs. This also holds in the advice he gets from Billy: "Human emotions are like works of art...they can be forged." It doesn't take a film historian to see that someone is playing Virgil and that he's either too dense or too in love to realize it. Tornatore also throws in some obvious symbolism with mirrors and you just know that an autistic, physically-disabled young woman (Kiruna Stammel) who's always observing everything from the bar down the street from Claire's villa will somehow prominently figure into the plot.

That the wrap-up is a bit on the predictable side doesn't make it any less effective, thanks to Rush's outstanding performance. He carries the entire film on his shoulders even when it occasionally threatens to drag him down. You'll probably figure out what is going to happen long before Virgil does, but the how is very well-handled by Tornatore, who doesn't lay everything out and expects you to have paid attention because small details matter with THE BEST OFFER. Without going too deep into spoiler territory, for such a smart man, it is admittedly hard to buy Virgil not figuring out that something else is amiss--even after he's told not to trust someone, he continues to trust them implicitly, and can never seem to notice the machinations taking place around him. Whether it's that he's too blinded by his infatuation with Claire or that we as viewers have been trained to expect the unexpected to the point that the unexpected is now an expectation is up for debate. Still, with Rush's stellar performance, the cinematography by Fabio Zamarion, who captures the stunning beauty of the mostly ornate settings as well as the depressing ruins of the Ibbitsen villa (if you like vintage Italian films set in decayed mansions, this will be pure eye candy), and the majestic score by the maestro Ennio Morricone (complete with operatically haunting Edda Dell'Orso vocals), THE BEST OFFER is a lot better than its release in the early January dumping ground would lead you to believe.

NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR
(US - 2013)

After the release of 2010's NINJA, a formulaic throwback to the likes of ENTER THE NINJA and AMERICAN NINJA, director and DTV action auteur Isaac Florentine and star Scott Adkins both expressed disappointment at the outcome, with Florentine saying the film relied too much on CGI and wirework. For the sequel, both he and Adkins wanted to make a back-to-basics martial-arts movie, essentially crafting it as a do-over to function as both a sequel and a reboot. Well, they got it right this time. NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR is maybe the best movie Golan & Globus never made. The CGI is very conservatively used, mainly on greenscreen work and background visuals, and even the Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX seems to have brought their A-game for this one. Adkins, who starred in Florentine's two excellent sequels to Walter Hill's UNDISPUTED, has been slowly making a name for himself in the cult action scene, with increasing visibility in films like THE EXPENDABLES 2 (as Jean-Claude Van Damme's chief henchman) and John Hyams' amazing UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING, as well as a brief supporting role in the Oscar-nominated ZERO DARK THIRTY. And Florentine really needed to get back on the horse after the disappointment of NINJA and the disastrous ASSASSIN'S BULLET, easily his worst film. NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR is a ninja film in the classic tradition, and looks much more expensive than it really is. It's a shame that it, and Florentine for that matter, are confined to the world of DTV. 30 years ago, this would've been released in theaters and it would've been a hit.

Picking up where NINJA left off, Casey Bowman (Adkins) is living in Japan with his pregnant wife Namiko (Mika Hijii), the daughter of his late sensei. When Namiko is brutally killed, an enraged, grieving Casey goes to Thailand to visit the dojo of her family friend Nakabara (Kane Kosugi, son of ninja genre legend Sho Kosugi). Unable to contain his anger and prone to violent outbursts that bring shame to Nakabara's dojo, Casey decides to avenge Namiko's death after Nakabara tells him of a longstanding grudge held against his and Namiko's family by Myanmar drug cartel lord Goro (Shun Sugata). Of course, Casey journeys to Myanmar and proceeds to ninja the living shit out Goro's organization and anyone who gets in his way. David White's script won't win any awards for originality and, based on the fact that a prominently billed genre figure has very little to do, you'll probably figure out the twist long before Casey does, but with its jaw-dropping fight choreography, NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR is one of the top action films of 2013, and further proof that Florentine and Adkins are ready for bigger and better things. There's absolutely no reason--other than the big-name actors' inability to keep up with his requirements--that Florentine shouldn't be helming something like THE EXPENDABLES 3. There's always the possibility that he enjoys the relative autonomy he's granted working for Avi Lerner's Millennium/NuImage and is happy with the niche he's carved for himself. After all, his experiences away from the company were unpleasant for him (I liked Florentine's 2008 Van Damme film THE SHEPHERD, though Stage 6 Films took it away from him in post-production) and/or his fans (the less said about ASSASSIN'S BULLET, the better), but even with a fervent cult following, Florentine is the best-kept secret in action filmmaking, and NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR is the real deal. (R, 95 mins, also streaming on Netflix)

SWEETWATER
(US/UK/Germany/Canada - 2013)

With the ever-changing world of film distribution, good films inevitably get lost in the shuffle, often getting dumped in a just a few theaters and quietly turning up on DVD or on streaming services. The $7 million-budgeted SWEETWATER, which grossed a paltry $6000 during its very limited US theatrical release, isn't necessarily a "good" movie by the classic definition, but it's entertaining to an almost absurd degree, a frequently audacious and gleefully nasty little gem that comes very close to being the PUNISHER: WAR ZONE of westerns. The Prophet Josiah (Jason Isaacs) is an insane minister/cult leader in the small, middle-of-nowhere Sweetwater, New Mexico. After a property dispute involving his sheep grazing on the land of struggling--and unwelcome--immigrant farmer Miguel Ramirez (Eduardo Noriega) escalates, Josiah brutally kills Ramirez and has his underling Daniel (country music star Jason Aldean) bury the body. Ramirez's pregnant, ex-prostitute wife Sarah (January Jones) awaits his return, miscarries, and is then abducted and raped by Josiah (who calls the vile act "purification"), who already has two wives and a daughter he intends to make his third (at one point, regarding his young daughter, he suggests the experienced Sarah "teach her how to fuck"), in addition to his fanatically-devoted flock, which seems to constitute the entire racist population of Sweetwater. Meanwhile, eccentric lawman Cornelius Jackson (Ed Harris) arrives in town and immediately declares himself sheriff. He ends up in Sweetwater while on the trail of two missing brothers (played by director/co-writer Logan Miller and his twin brother, co-writer Noah) who never turned up at their sister's ranch. They were killed by Josiah for trespassing on the outskirts of his property, where they built a camp after a series of unfortunate travel mishaps, like a busted wagon wheel and a dead horse. With Sweetwater being the place directly in the middle of where they came from and where they were headed, it doesn't take long for Jackson to zero in on Josiah.

SWEETWATER actually has enough space to accommodate two thoroughly demented performances: Isaacs is great in a fire-and-brimstone way as the homicidal Prophet Josiah, while Harris, who's never cut this loose onscreen before, enthusiastically hams it up as the not-quite-all-there Jackson. Introduced screaming into a canyon, Harris just gets crazier from there, dancing his way into Sweetwater as he beats the shit out of the useless sheriff, exhumes the corpses of the two brothers and leaves them in Josiah's dining room, and later recites Lord Byron as Josiah crucifies him upside-down. Jones underplays it as Sarah, which is fitting since the Millers basically turn her into a frontier Terminator once she escapes from Josiah's stronghold and goes on a vengeance-fueled killing spree throughout Sweetwater. Let's just say SWEETWATER is the kind of movie where a masturbating, pantsless Peeping Tom gets a gun shoved up his ass and the trigger pulled. It's the kind of movie where Harris' Jackson is attending a formal dinner at Josiah's and asks "You ever fuck a sheep?" before taking a knife and carving a map into the Prophet's cherished oak table. Mean, misanthropic, hilarious, and often in questionable taste, the tragically under-the-radar, hard-R SWEETWATER is a film that should be embraced with open arms by connoisseurs of Batshit Cinema. You know who you are. (R, 94 mins)

LAST LOVE
(Germany/Belgium/US/France - 2013)

It's easy to imagine the meeting where the producers of LAST LOVE approached Michael Caine and told him something along the lines of "It's like VENUS with Peter O'Toole, but with you!" The film ultimately goes in a bit of a different direction, but the comparison is still appropriate. Caine is Matthew Morgan, a retired American philosophy professor living in Paris, still coping with the death of his wife Joan (Jane Alexander) three years earlier. He still sees her and talks to her, and more or less goes about his days detached and biding his time until it's his turn to go. Matthew befriends Pauline (Clemence Poesy), a young dance instructor he repeatedly sees on the bus. The two become close friends, with Matthew being a father figure for her. Matthew may or may not develop romantic feelings for her, but whatever he feels prompts him to (perhaps half-heartedly) attempt suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Enter Matthew's estranged children, Miles (Justin Kirk) and Karen (Gillian Anderson), who come over from the States to convince him to move back home. He refuses to leave Paris, where he's stayed since Joan's cancer diagnosis, at which time she decided to live out her last days there. They're also suspicious of what's going on with "the French bimbo" who's entered their father's life. When the self-absorbed Karen heads home, Miles, whose own wife just left him, decides to stick around as Pauline attempts to heal the rift between father and son.

This is one of those films where there's inevitable Big Revelations and the expected airing of long-dormant grievances. Working from Francoise Dorner's novel La Douceur Assassine (translated: "Murderous Sweetness"), writer/director Sandra Nettelbeck (MOSTLY MARTHA)goes into areas that a mainstream American film wouldn't, chiefly that Matthew is kind of a prick to his kids. And not in an amusing curmudgeonly way, either. He tells Pauline that he never really wanted to have children but only did so to make Joan happy, and despite his expectations that he would, he never warmed up to the idea. Once Joan passed on, it seems both Matthew and his children realized they had nothing more holding them together. What Pauline provides for Matthew is that fatherly bond that he never felt with his own children. In that sense, it's almost a European art film take on GRAN TORINO if you consider the way Clint Eastwood feels a kinship with his Hmong neighbors that he never felt with his own family, in similar tatters after the matriarch's passing. LAST LOVE provides a nice showcase for 80-year-old Caine, though his attempt at an American accent is inconsistent, to put it mildly. He slips into his usual Michael Caine voice a lot, but his idea of sounding American is mainly to talk deeper and slower. You wouldn't even know he's supposed to be playing an American if it wasn't mentioned in every other scene. But, living legend that he is, he still maintains the screen presence. His scenes with Poesy are sensitively and believably conveyed by the actors. US distributor Image Entertainment didn't even try to do anything with this, dropping half of the title (it was released overseas as MR. MORGAN'S LAST LOVE) and giving it a one-screen US release a few weeks before its DVD/Blu-ray debut. The film and its star deserved a little more effort than that. By no means a great film, but it's a nice, low-key one that Caine fans will want to seek out. (Unrated, 116 mins)

HANDS OF STEEL
(Italy - 1986)

Directed by Martin Dolman (Sergio Martino). Written by Elisabeth Parker, Jr., (Elisa Livia Briganti), Martin Dolman (Sergio Martino), Saul Saska (Dardano Sacchetti), John Crowther, Lewis E. Ciannelli. Cast: Daniel Greene, Janet Agren, John Saxon, Claudio Cassinelli, George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori), Amy Werba, Darwyn Swalve, Robert Ben (Roberto Bisucci), Pat Monti, Donald O'Brien, Frank Walden (Franco Fantasia), Sergio Testori, Bruno Bilotta, Alex Vitale. (R, 93 mins)

Arguably the silver screen's ultimate arm-wrestling cyborg movie, Sergio Martino's HANDS OF STEEL is a desert-set Italian TERMINATOR ripoff with elements of BLADE RUNNER and the yet-to-be-released OVER THE TOP. It was released in Europe in early 1986 and was acquired for US distribution by '80s exploitation outfit Almi Pictures (INVASION OF THE FLESH HUNTERS, THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY), by then running on fumes with HANDS OF STEEL its only 1986 theatrical release and also its penultimate one: Almi folded after 1987's Richard Ramirez-inspired slasher film THE NIGHT STALKER. Despite its severe budgetary limitations, troubled production, and spotty release by a company that was on life support, HANDS OF STEEL found an audience during the VHS glory days to become one of the more revered Italian exploitation films of the era, and one of its last highlights as the golden era of Eurotrash was beginning to wind down.

In the future of 1997, America is a polluted, destitute, overpopulated wasteland with dangerous acid rain zones. Blind politician Rev. Arthur Mosley (Franco Fantasia) has a plan to revitalize the country and turn its fortunes around, so of course, there's an attempt on his life by assassin Paco Queruak (Daniel Greene). Paco merely ruptures the Reverend's spleen and makes an escape through an underground "electrical conduit," with Inspector Banky (the actor is uncredited, and he's terrible) and FBI psychologist Dr. Peckinpah (Amy Werba) in pursuit that could charitably be called "barely lukewarm." Paco makes his way to a middle-of-nowhere town on the outskirts of Page, AZ (actually Arcosanti, just outside of Page), the location of choice for numerous mid '80s Italian productions, where he takes a handyman job at a bar/truck-stop/no-tell-motel run by Linda (Janet Agren). For a while, Paco manages to keep his true nature a secret: he's 70% cyborg, reconstructed and programmed by a nefarious, big-money organization called the Turner Foundation, run by Francis Turner (John Saxon), a ruthless one-percenter who doesn't have time for Mosley's altruistic bullshit. The human Paco was "a veteran of the 1987 Guatemala Conflict," who was killed in an accident before being rebuilt by Prof. Olster (Donald O'Brien), who was employed by the Turner Foundation until he realized the extent of his boss' unscrupulousness. Paco was programmed by Turner hatchet man Cooper (Roberto Bisucci) but emotions still linger in the 30% of him that's still human (and Linda gets part of that 30%, if you catch my drift), which is why he couldn't bring himself to kill Mosley. Fearing his robo-experiment will get out of control, Turner has anyone with knowledge of Paco killed and hires "infallible European hit man" Peter Hallow (Claudio Cassinelli) to track him down.

Meanwhile, back near Page, Paco makes a name for himself at Linda's place by dealing with asshole trucker Raoul (Luigi Montefiori/"George Eastman") and his posse of sub-literate rednecks, and taking the crown from local arm-wrestling champ Blanco (Darwyn Swalve), but earning his gratitude by saving him from a lethal snake. With Hallow and another Turner flunky (Sergio Testori) unable to pin down the head-crushing Paco, an impatient Turner sends in a female cyborg in no way modeled on Daryl Hannah's Pris from BLADE RUNNER and then decides to take matters into his own hands, and if loving the idea of John Saxon hoisting an over-the-shoulder laser bazooka is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

HANDS OF STEEL is ludicrous and often unintentionally hilarious, from the cheap sets and special effects (Cooper starts destroying Olster's lab--which consists of randomly-placed aluminum dryer tubing--as Olster yells "Stop! You'll ruin everything!"; an FBI press conference updating Mosley's condition looks like it's taking place in a high-school classroom with about ten reporters in attendance; and yes, there's the obligatory scene with Paco tweaking his mechanized arm) to the stilted dialogue (Paco to Raoul: "You're a loser!"), but once you get past the clunky exposition and the action shifts to the desert town, it picks up quite a bit. As long as Martino (using his American-sounding "Martin Dolman" pseudonym) and his committee of screenwriters, including Italian genre vets Dardano Sacchetti (as "Saul Saska") and Elisa Livia Briganti (as "Elizabeth Parker, Jr") and an uncredited Ernesto Gastaldi, plus Lewis E. Ciannelli and American John Crowther (who also wrote such actioners as KILL AND KILL AGAIN, THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, and MISSING IN ACTION) stay focused on Paco and the yahoos at Linda's house of ill repute and Hallow's perpetually one-step-behind pursuit, HANDS OF STEEL is highly entertaining. The scenes with Werba and the guy playing the detective (who, again, is a terrible actor) are filled with clumsy dialogue that explains the obvious ("It's possible that Turner developed a bionic killer to get to Mosley!") and only serves to slow down the action. Most of the interiors were probably shot in Rome, though Martino does make use of some Arcosanti locals in some scenes and most of the exteriors are definitely shot in the Colorado River area, with a climactic action sequence taking place on the Navajo Bridge over Marble Canyon, which marks the beginning of the Grand Canyon.

Claudio Cassinelli (1938-1985)

As fun as HANDS OF STEEL is, it's impossible to discuss without mentioning the dark cloud that understandably still looms over the whole project: veteran Italian actor Cassinelli and a pilot were killed in a helicopter crash during production on July 12, 1985. Don Nasca, a local pilot hired by the producers, was flying the chopper as Cassinelli was being filmed firing out of the side at some actors on the Navajo Bridge. Nasca flew under the bridge, lost control of the helicopter, and crashed into the steel arch underneath. The chopper was destroyed on impact, killing both men instantly, with the pieces falling 470 feet into the Colorado River below. Nasca's body washed away and was never recovered and the current was so strong that it took rescue workers two days to find Cassinelli, whose body was still strapped to his seat. The actor was 46 years old, and left behind a wife and three children.

Martino and the cast decided to finish the movie, but it took some extensive rewriting to get Cassinelli's character out of the film. For most of the film, Saxon's Turner is seated at his desk barking "Find Paco Queruak!" into his phone and interacting with his co-stars as little as possible. But he eventually joins the pursuit of Paco and Linda when he grows frustrated with Hallow's lack of progress. Turner shows up with some goons and one of them shoots "Cassinelli" and kills him (there's a cloud of smoke and you can't see his face), and all we see is Hallow lying face down in the dirt. Obviously, this was shot after Cassinelli's death to give his character a hasty exit. Considering that the film seems to be building up to a Paco/Hallow showdown, it seems odd--if you don't know the circumstances--why Turner would suddenly show up when he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who wants to get his hands dirty. It's entirely plausible that Saxon's guest appearance was expanded after Cassinelli's death, since Cassinelli was obviously intended to be part of the climax on the Navajo Bridge. Now there's a sequence with Linda escaping with Blanco intercut with close-ups of Saxon firing at them before he gets off the helicopter and has the laser bazooka showdown with Paco at the same abandoned Rome factory that's in nearly everyone of these Italian post-apocalypse dystopia movies, resulting in Turner learning one of life's harshest lessons as Paco informs him "You don't own a man until you control his heart."

Knowing that one of the stars was killed during filming, the seams are very apparent but HANDS OF STEEL makes a valiant effort to hide the stitching, even with the cumbersome way Cassinelli's character is taken out of the film. Cassinelli and Martino were long-time friends and colleagues--Martino directed him in several films, including 1975's THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF A MINOR, 1978's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, 1979's ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN and THE GREAT ALLIGATOR, and 1982's THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS, and to the best of my knowledge, Martino hasn't discussed this tragedy in any interviews I've seen or read. Perhaps it's not a custom in Italian cinema the way it is in Hollywood movies, but considering their long working relationship and that he died making the film, the absence of a dedication to Cassinelli in the closing credits feels odd.

Agren, Eastman, O'Brien, and Fantasia are no strangers to Eurocult fanatics, plus Bruno Bilotta/"Karl Landgren" and STRIKE COMMANDO's immortal Alex Vitale can be seen as Mosley security guards. The voices of dubbing regulars Ted Rusoff, Ed Mannix, Susan Spafford, and Frank Von Kuegelgen can be heard, and Claudio Simonetti composes a catchy score that recycles at least one major cue from his soundtrack for Ruggero Deodato's CUT AND RUN (1985). This was the first in a string of Italian B-movies for American TV actor Greene, a GENERAL HOSPITAL vet who had appeared in T&A comedies like THE ROSEBUD BEACH HOTEL (1984), STITCHES (1985), and WEEKEND WARRIORS (1986) and was just coming off a two-year run on the CBS series FALCON CREST (oddly, a show in which Saxon was just beginning a two-year stint around this time). After HANDS OF STEEL, Greene would go on to star in four more Martino films: THE OPPONENT (1987), AMERICAN TIGER (1990), BEYOND KILIMANJARO (1990), and AFTER THE CONDOR (1991), as well as Enzo G. Castellari's HAMMERHEAD (1987) and Pierluigi Ciriaci's SOLDIER OF FORTUNE (1990), in addition to playing Elvira's love interest in 1988's ELVIRA: MISTRESS OF THE DARK. After his sojourn in Italy, Greene continued in TV and various bit parts but acts very sparingly these days, usually only in Farrelly Brothers comedies. The Farrellys--perhaps closet HANDS OF STEEL superfans?--have cast Greene in small parts in KINGPIN (1996), where he appeared as Woody Harrelson's dad, ME, MYSELF & IRENE (2000), SHALLOW HAL (2001), STUCK ON YOU (2003), FEVER PITCH (2005), and HALL PASS (2011). By no means an actor who had an Oscar in his future, Greene was beefy enough that he made a competent action hero, and even if tiny roles in Farrelly Brothers movies are what's keeping a roof over his head, he'll always be Paco Queruak for HANDS OF STEEL fans and disciples of classic '80s Italian Eurotrash ripoffs.

THE ACT OF KILLING
(Denmark/Norway/UK/Finland/Germany/Sweden/Poland - 2013)

One of the best films of 2013, the stunning documentary THE ACT OF KILLING is a classic of its kind, a horrifying examination of the death squads that helped overthrow the Indonesian government and secure a military dictatorship in 1965 by murdering over one million people. Primary director Joshua Oppenheimer, with co-directors Christine Cynn and one credited as, along with numerous hands-on technical crew and production assistants who still fear retribution for their participation, simply "Anonymous," approach the story from a unique perspective that Oppenheimer has called "a documentary of the imagination." Shot between 2005 and 2011, Oppenheimer established contact with the now-aged Anwar Congo, one of the primary figures in the genocide and, like many of his colleagues and co-conspirators, still a revered celebrity, and talks him into making a film that re-enacts the various torture and killing techniques used by the death squads, but done in a way that emulates Hollywood films. Congo and his cohorts were gangsters and killers hired by the military to exterminate all who weren't onboard with the new regime. They previously dealt in a black market operation to bring forbidden and popular Hollywood cinema to Indonesia, and as such, became obsessed with the gangster films of Humphrey Bogart and the westerns of John Wayne. They based their actions on what they learned in these movies, even though their brutality towards dissenters--given the blanket term "communists"--was far more barbaric than anything seen in a classic movie. Under the direction of Oppenheimer, Congo and his associates restage their atrocities in the guise of film noir, westerns, musicals, and horror set pieces. At first, Congo and the others gleefully recount their horrific acts ("This is who we are...people need to know the story") and enthusiastically partake in everything from auditioning to acting to the collaborative filmmaking process. Congo even gets a makeover with a dye job and dentures. But as the set pieces go further off the rails (Congo is playing a character tortured by associate Herman Koto, who's dressed up in a Carmen Miranda costume, trying to feed Congo his liver), some of the men start to express concern that the film will make them look bad. This ultimately takes its toll on Congo, whose exuberance begins to diminish to the point where he plays the victim in a torture scene and tells Oppenheimer "I don't want to do that again."

Oppenheimer isn't asking the audience to sympathize with Congo as he has this change of heart, but watching it happen is a sight to behold. The last 20 or so minutes of THE ACT OF KILLING contain some unforgettable images as Congo, haunted by the faces of his countless victims of atrocity and murder for which he's lauded as a hero, is overcome with emotion, directly addressing Oppenheimer ("Josh..."), and pitifully announcing "I never expected it would look this awful." He wonders about the children who witnessed his heinous acts. As the other "actors" burn a village, he looks on in shock, finally realizing the extent of his crimes. In a finale that's hard to watch, Congo takes Oppenheimer to the top of a building (now a purse store) where much of the torture took place. Looking around, picturing his victims, Congo becomes ill and can't stop dry-heaving. Oppenheimer just keeps filming. It's a stark contrast to the strutting audacity that Congo and his cronies displayed earlier. It's also fascinating watching the celebrity culture around them, including the media. Your jaw will hit the floor watching newspaper editor Ibrahim Sinik triumphantly crowing along with Congo, who says "We gangsters keep him well protected." Werner Herzog and Errol Morris are among the executive producers. THE ACT OF KILLING is a staggering achievement and a genuinely disturbing, unique film. (Unrated, 122 mins; review pertains to 122-minute theatrical version; Oppenheimer's 165-minute director's cut is also available)

WE ARE WHAT WE ARE
(US/France - 2013)

This remake of Jorge Michel Grau's grisly and terrific 2010 Mexican horror film WE ARE WHAT WE ARE has been described by director/co-writer Jim Mickle (STAKE LAND) as more of a companion piece to its source as opposed to a straight-up remake. It retains the core of the plot--a family of cannibals--but changes just about everything else. Instead of the patriarch dying and the mother carrying on with her two sons and a daughter, we now have the sudden death of the mom (Kassie DePaiva), with dad Frank (Bill Sage) left to care for his two daughters--18-year-old Iris (Ambyr Childers) and 14-year-old Rose (Julia Garner), plus six-year-old son Rory (Jack Gore). Set in rural Delaware County, New York as opposed to a seedy Mexican slum, Mickle's WE ARE WHAT WE ARE immediately establishes a conflict in the aftermath of the mom's death in the way the daughters recognize that there's something seriously fucked-up with their family. Rose is fiercely protective of Rory and wants nothing more than to get him away from their father. Iris more or less agrees, but can't escape her sense of responsibility and the idea that family is family. Meanwhile, since this is one of those films where there's numerous disappearances in the town and its vicinity over the years and the local law can't seem to do the math, we have a missing teenage girl who's probably been killed and possibly eaten by Frank, and of course, folksy Doc Barrow (Michael Parks) just happens to have a daughter who went missing years earlier and takes charge of the latest investigation in the stead of one of recent horror cinema's more useless sheriffs (co-writer and STAKE LAND star Nick Damici, who continues to morph into the second coming of William Smith). There's also a sensitive deputy (Wyatt Russell) who tries to woo Iris with expectedly tragic results.

Mickle lets the tension and dread build to an admirably suffocating level, and setting the film in the middle of a days-long torrential downpour with extensive flooding and a power outage is a nice touch that adds to the gloomy despair, but he and Damici just throw it all away for a pointlessly transgressive finale that's probably meant to be a darkly funny but just comes off as gratuitous, silly, and completely at odds with what's preceded it, as the payoff for 95 or so minutes of ominous buildup seems to be nothing more than cheap shock value. It's too bad, because WE ARE WHAT WE ARE '13 is driven by some strong performances from Sage (a veteran of several early Hal Hartley films) and especially Parks, who checks his shopworn, twitchy Earl McGraw schtick at the door and gives us a quintessential Michael Parks characterization. Always underrated, Parks is one of those actors who can speak volumes with just a facial expression or even a look in his eyes and he's marvelous here, especially once Doc Barrow pieces everything together and does what he has to do. Also with Kelly McGillis in a useless supporting role as a neighbor--she only seems to be here because roles in STAKE LAND and THE INNKEEPERS have made the TOP GUN star an indie cult horror figure in recent years--and a mandatory cameo by Larry Fessenden, as required by cult hipster horror law. Until it shits the bed in its closing minutes, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE '13 is a worthy reimagining of a film that not many people saw. It is an interesting companion piece and a must-see if you're a Michael Parks fan, but Grau's original film is the one you need to seek out. (R, 105 mins)

LONE SURVIVOR
(US - 2013)

Written and directed by Peter Berg. Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, Eric Bana, Yousuf Azami, Ali Suliman, Alexander Ludwig, Jerry Ferrara, Sammy Sheik, Rich Ting, Dan Bilzerian, Rohan Chand. (R, 121 mins)

LONE SURVIVOR is an often visceral and unflinchingly brutal adaptation of Marcus Luttrell's 2005 chronicle of his time as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan. Played in the film by Mark Wahlberg, Luttrell was involved Operation Red Wings, a four-man operation to take out Ahmad Shah (Yousuf Azami), a major Taliban figure. As the title hardly warrants a spoiler alert, things didn't go as planned. Making their way into the remote Kunar Province mountains, Luttrell, Lt. Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch), and Matt "Axe" Axelson (Ben Foster) find themselves outnumbered and unable to contact the military base, and opt to secure positions higher in the mountains but they're stumbled upon by three goat herders. After deciding to cut them loose--the film presents it as a debate, but Luttrell has said Murphy made the call as per rules of engagement--the four SEALs make a run for it to wait for extraction but are soon overwhelmed by Shah's forces, who outnumber them 4-to-1.

Writer/director Peter Berg (THE RUNDOWN, THE KINGDOM, BATTLESHIP) handles this extended firefight sequence--which takes up about a third of the running time--quite well aside from an occasional over-reliance on shaky-cam. Berg takes the time to lay out the positions of the principles to give the audience the lay of the land and to watch the methodology at work. You'll be thoroughly convinced these four actors have been to hell and back, from the utterly convincing makeup work to the sounds of bullets tearing through flesh and bones slamming into rocks as the SEALs roll down a mountainside. Luttrell served as a technical advisor and Berg spent time with US forces in Iraq to observe them in action and make the depiction of the Red Wings ordeal as ultra-realistic as possible. He even included little details to honor the memories of those involved, like a shot of Lt. Cmdr. Erik Cristensen (Eric Bana) wearing Birkenstocks at the base. Cristensen was killed during an attempted rescue of Luttrell and a look at his Wikipedia page reveals that his mother requested he be buried wearing his ubiquitous Birkenstocks. It mostly works--there's a level of raw, take-no-prisoners ferocity here that doesn't approach SAVING PRIVATE RYAN levels but is easily in the same class as BLACK HAWK DOWN.

But to get there, you have to endure some frequently tiresome military clichés. Berg wants to honor these fallen heroes, and he succeeds, but the opening and closing narration by Wahlberg-as-Luttrell sounds like a bad high-school essay, especially when he's talking about a "fire within." The same goes for sniper Axe positioning himself and grunting "I am the reaper" or "You can die for your country, but I'm gonna live for mine!" or Luttrell's "I'm about to punch their time card." Of course, this is probably an accurate depiction but it comes off as tired, macho warrior chest-thumping more akin to a RAMBO movie. Fortunately, Berg keeps the jingoism to a minimum, especially in the last third when Luttrell is found and given shelter by Muhammad Gulab (Ali Suliman) and the members of a peaceful Afghani village who lay their own lives on the line, knowing the Taliban are after the American. These anti-Taliban Afghanis, living by a 2000-year-old code of honor, were instrumental in saving Luttrell's life and let's be honest, a lot of Hollywood depictions of Luttrell's experiences would've eliminated them entirely in order to spend more time waving the flag. Berg's script doesn't allow for much in the way of character development other than Murphy planning a wedding, Dietz trying to pick some interior design colors for his girlfriend back home, and Axe being married. Oddly enough, it's Luttrell who gets the least amount of character sketching. But it works--it's a BAND OF BROTHERS/"fuckin' A, bro!" film first and foremost, but knowing these men a little more might've given it greater emotional weight. While Wahlberg is fine, his breakdown in the climax feels, through no fault of his, like a lightweight revamp of a similar scene at the end of CAPTAIN PHILLIPS which represented arguably the best acting of Tom Hanks' career. Aided by an effectively minimalist score by post-rock outfit Explosions in the Sky, LONE SURVIVOR isn't a war movie classic, but it's good, accomplishing what it sets out to do, and does so in a way that honors the heroes--American and Afghani--of Operation Red Wings and its aftermath.

SHORT TERM 12
(US - 2013)

One of the most acclaimed indie films of 2013, SHORT TERM 12 is a feature-length expansion of writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton's 2008 short film of the same name, set in a foster-care facility where youths with problems ranging from psychological to legal await placement. Most are there for a year tops, but some of the older kids usually remain longer, instead waiting for their 18th birthday when they're free to go. Cretton worked at such a facility and there's little doubting the raw, natural feeling of the interaction between the kids and the counselors, and how they go about the day-to-day routine, from group sessions to emotional outbursts to half-hearted escape attempts, and the bureaucratic bullshit from the office-bound psychologists who don't spend time in the trenches. Grace (Brie Larson) is a mid-20s supervisor who has a good rapport with the kids, though they know she's no-nonsense in the way she handles them and the staff working under her, which includes boyfriend Mason (John Gallagher, Jr). Grace is shaken up with the arrival of Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), a morose, sarcastic cutter who reminds her far too much of herself at that age. Grace is vague about her own past--most of the counselors are former foster kids themselves--so much so that even Mason isn't fully aware of the personal demons she's battling, and Jayden's problems with her abusive father and the absence of a mother eerily mirror Grace's teenage years, affecting her in a way that jeopardizes her job and her relationship with Mason.

For most of its running time, SHORT TERM 12 works so well and earns its emotions so honestly that you almost forget you're watching actors. The cast does some remarkable work, particularly Larson, Dever, and Keith Stanfield as Marcus, who's about to turn 18 and doesn't want to leave. They inhabit these characters so thoroughly--and you probably know people like them--and the story feels so credibly real that it's crushing when Cretton briefly skids with a frankly absurd third-act plot development involving Grace that feels like focus-group pandering instead of something she would actually do, no matter how frustrated and enraged she is at the time. Cretton steers it back on course, mainly just by having Jayden quip "That's a little extreme, don't you think?" but it's such a ludicrous turn of events that the film never really recovers, though fortunately it's close enough to the end that it doesn't end up a deal-breaker. For about 80 of its 97 minutes, SHORT TERM 12 is an absolutely terrific piece of work that perfectly balances emotionally-draining drama and dark comedy. It's hard to forget Marcus' devastating, autobiographical rap, the sisterly bond that forms between Grace and Jayden, and Mason's heartfelt toast to his own foster parents on their 30th wedding anniversary, in a house filled with love, surrounded by adults who were once troubled children with nowhere to turn. It's just one of many beautiful scenes throughout this often brutally honest, and mostly uncompromising film with what should be a star-making performance by Larson. It's just a pity about that brief shark-jump in the third act. (R, 97 mins)

BLUE CAPRICE
(US - 2013)

A loose chronicle of the October 2002 Beltway sniper attacks, BLUE CAPRICE seems to adamantly refuse to get too specific about anything. There's a methodical, riveting ZODIAC-esque thriller that could've been made about this subject, but that's not the film that director Alexandre Moors and writer R.F.I. Porto chose to make. One's reaction to BLUE CAPRICE is largely predicated on accepting that it's a thriller second and an oblique, sometimes esoteric mood piece first. The filmmakers stick close to the facts, but this is the kind of film where you almost need to study up on the subject or risk being lost at some points. John Mohammed and Lee Malvo were the perpetrators of these killings--Mohammed was executed by lethal injection in 2009 and Malvo is serving multiple life sentences with no possibility of parole. You won't learn that by watching BLUE CAPRICE. You don't even get last names. In Antigua, 17-year-old Lee (Tequan Richmond) is abandoned by his mother and attempts suicide by drowning when he's rescued by John (GREY'S ANATOMY pariah Isaiah Washington in his first noteworthy gig since getting fired from the show for homophobic slurs directed at openly gay co-star T.R. Knight), an American on vacation with his three kids--he's actually got a restraining order forbidding him to see his kids and his ex-wife and he took them without authorization. John brings Lee back to his hometown of Tacoma, WA, where the pair move in with John's girlfriend (Cassandra Freeman). John's temper and paranoia get them booted out and the pair shack up with his gun-nut buddy Ray (Tim Blake Nelson) and his wife Jamie (Joey Lauren Adams). A twisted father/son bond develops between John and Lee, more akin to brainwashing on Lee's part, as he absorbs all of John's bitterness and rage about his ex-wife and not knowing the whereabouts of his children. Once it's discovered that Lee is a natural with firearms, John decides that it's time to make everyone pay. Their killing spree--first in Tacoma, then going cross-country--ultimately lands them in the D.C. area, where John drives and Lee picks off random people with a rifle aimed through a small hole cut in the trunk of a beat-up Caprice.

The pair don't even make it to the Beltway until nearly 70 minutes into the film. Until then, we witness John's manipulative and codependent relationship with his surrogate son as well as the manipulation and intimidation of those around him--it's strongly implied that he's sleeping with Jamie and even Ray eventually gets a bad vibe from his increasingly unhinged friend. Washington, now 50 and pretty much persona non grata since the GREY'S controversy, is very good throughout and shows why he was once such a promising young actor. The main problem with BLUE CAPRICE is that it never really comes together as a psychological character study and definitely not as a thriller, which is unfortunate because Moors' handling of the spree itself is both unique and unsettling: rarely showing an actual shooting but instead showing the aftermath, intercut with the Caprice ominously and anonymously cruising down the expressway, accompanied by an unnerving reeds/string score by Arcade Fire side members Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld. It's in these moments that the film really excels and you see the potential, but up to that point, it's too often plodding, mumbling, and deliberately, maddeningly vague. We don't even see John again after the pair are arrested at a rest stop. BLUE CAPRICE is well-made and the actors are fine, but this just could've--and should've--been something a bit more memorable and substantive. (R, 93 mins)

+1
(US - 2013)

Busy VFX siblings and occasional directing team The Brothers Strause (ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM and the awful SKYLINE) produced this would-be mindfuck that irritates more than it entertains. Melding elements of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS with a circa 2000 teen party comedy, +1 doesn't have nearly enough substance to last 90 minutes and feels like something more akin to a TWILIGHT ZONE episode and even then it would need some work to get to 30 minutes. Sensitive nice-guy David (Rhys Wakefield, the grinning home-invasion leader in THE PURGE) has just had an ugly breakup with his away-at-college girlfriend Jill (Ashley Hinshaw) when she catches him kissing her fencing rival. While everyone else went away to college a year earlier, David, his best friend Teddy (Logan Miller), and loner Allison (uncredited twins Suzanne and Colleen Dengel) stayed at home, and now everyone's back for an epic bash at Angad's (Rohan Kymal) parents' house. At the same time, an object crashes in someone's backyard and a kind-of lifeforce melds with the power lines, spreading throughout the town and causing periodic brief blackouts. During the first of these blackouts, a doppelganger is generated for everyone at the party, and it takes a while for David to notice, but once he does, he sees that they're repeating what the actual people did a short time earlier (as shown by, among other things, David seeing himself walking through the party looking for Jill). With each short power blackout, the doubles get closer and closer in time, to the point where paranoia takes over and partygoers are soon duking it out with their identical doubles.

It's an admittedly clever concept, but that's ultimately all it is. Director Dennis Iliadis (who helmed 2009's surprisingly OK remake of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT) and writer Bill Gullo seriously belabor the point--how many times do we need to see David or Teddy or Jill watching themselves in events from 45 or 30 or 15 minutes earlier before they realize we get the gimmick? Before long, the whole thing is just a way for David to win Jill back by pulling some GROUNDHOG DAY shenanigans, which makes no sense since he isn't sure which Jill he's winning (Teddy even brings this up when he yells "Do you even care which one?"). David means well, but he's kind of an immature creep, and his actions throughout the film reflect that. It's a risk to make this guy the hero and if +1 had any point, it's a ballsy move that might've worked. But there's nothing here other than the initial hook. The main characters--David, Jill, Teddy, and Allison--are fleshed-out a bit, Miller provides some likable comic relief as the tries-too-hard Teddy who can't believe he gets to hook up with the impossibly hot Melanie (Natalie Hall), and Iliadis deserves some props for choosing to go for some good ol' gratuitous nudity that you don't generally see in these types of movies, but +1 never kicks into gear. It's derivative, dull, and there's no way in hell a group of one-year-out-of-high-school kids this diverse would ever be at the same party. Wallflower Allison is routinely bullied by these people--why would she even go to their party? In fact, when someone references the Book of Talmud and a Woody Allen-ish Jewish kid pops up out of nowhere to provide expository info and is promptly never seen again, I started to wonder if Iliadis and Gullo were just punking the audience. Then I thought "What audience?" (Unrated, 96 mins)

TOAD ROAD
(US - 2013)

Centered on the urban legend of an abandoned asylum on Toad Road in York, PA and the surrounding wooded area that's allegedly home to the seven gateways to Hell, the micro-budgeted, cinema verite-styled TOAD ROAD isn't really a horror film. It's not really much of any film as director/writer/cinematographer Jason Banker has his cast seemingly riff and improv what's largely a look at privileged, drug-abusing slackers smoking, snorting, and inhaling anything that will get them high and through the day. Feeling like what might happen if Harmony Korine directed a mumblecore Lucio Fulci tribute to REQUIEM FOR A DREAM by way of JACKASS, the Elijah Wood-produced TOAD ROAD focuses on James (James Davidson), who's introduced high as shit, dragged down a hallway with his pants around his ankles. This is every day for James and his buddies--whether they're dropping acid, blowing Vicks inhalers in each others' eyes, or setting one another's pubes on fire, they only exist to see how fucked-up they can get. James somehow attracts the attention of college freshman Sara (Sara Anne Jones), who's experiencing freedom from her parents for the first time and wants to explore the hedonistic lifestyle of James and his friends. For James, whose dad still pays his rent, developing feelings for Sara has convinced him that maybe it's time to quit dicking around and grow up. But Sara is intent on dropping acid and venturing to Toad Road and attempting to pass the seven gates.

Banker is obviously going for a heavy-handed addiction metaphor with the "gateways to Hell" stuff, but it takes about 55 of the film's 76 minutes to even get there. There's some intriguing elements, especially with James waking up in the woods on Toad Road and being told six months have passed and he's a suspect in Sara's disappearance. But Banker has no interest whatsoever in conventional narrative, and that would be fine if there was anything else here. Considering they aren't professional actors, Davidson and Jones aren't bad, and if TOAD ROAD acquires any cult following at all, it'll be due to 24-year-old Jones' death from a heroin overdose just as the film was making the festival rounds in 2012. There's an undeniably queasy feeling watching her character hell-bent on immersing herself in the culture of addiction "for the experience" and knowing she'd die that way before anybody saw the movie. Jones was an aspiring model and this was her only film (she also appeared in a Death Cab for Cutie video). She had an appealing presence and even when TOAD ROAD is going nowhere--which is to say, essentially its entire running time--the camera seems to love her. What a waste. (Unrated, 76 mins)

BLINDSIDED
(US/Canada - 2014)

Shot two years ago under the title PENTHOUSE NORTH, the ludicrous home invasion thriller BLINDSIDED was set to be released theatrically by Dimension Films in 2013, but executive producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein obviously had a change of heart. They didn't even give it a courtesy DVD dumping, instead selling it to Lifetime, who ran it the first weekend of 2014 as a "Lifetime Original Movie" before it turned up on Netflix Instant a few days later. Those are some pretty major red flags, and coupled with the fact that it stars the great Michael Keaton and the charming Michelle Monaghan, and is the first film in a decade directed by Joseph Ruben, a veteran pro who knows how to make commercial, crowd-pleasing suspense thrillers (he's best-known for 1987's THE STEPFATHER, 1991's SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY and 1993's THE GOOD SON), the initial assumption you might have about Dimension's treatment of this film is that it must be terrible. And you'd be right.

It's one thing to be awful but it's also utterly generic. Ruben and frequent screenwriting collaborator David Loughery (they previously worked together on 1984's DREAMSCAPE and 1995's MONEY TRAIN, and Loughery also scripted such films as 1992's PASSENGER 57 and 2008's LAKEVIEW TERRACE) are both uncharacteristically asleep-at-the-wheel here and seemed to prep for this by rewatching WAIT UNTIL DARK, telling Keaton to do some Michael Keaton stuff, giving Monaghan a white cane, and hoping other minor details like a plausible plot and competent filmmaking would just work themselves out. Ruben's no Hitchcock, but he's made some very good movies and one legitimately great one with THE STEPFATHER. BLINDSIDED, on the other hand, is easily his worst thriller (I'd say it's his worst film overall, but not with the 1980 comedy GORP on his resume). Monaghan is Sara, a combat photographer who loses her sight in an Afghanistan suicide bombing. Three years later, she lives with her boyfriend Ryan (Andrew Walker), who owns a posh penthouse apartment in Manhattan and "has some money." It's New Year's Eve, and after buying some wine for a quiet night in, Sara returns home and, until she slips in a pool of blood, is unaware that Ryan is lying dead in the kitchen. Sara is then terrorized by Chad (REVENGE's Barry Sloane), a psycho who insists Ryan has some money hidden in the penthouse. Eventually, they're joined by Chad's boss, the matter-of-fact Hollander (Keaton), who then tells Sara that Ryan has made off with his diamonds and he thinks they're stashed somewhere in the apartment. You can predict the rest: they play cat-and-mouse games, yell a lot, Sara gets tortured via waterboarding, and of course, she tries to play the bickering criminals against each other. The underemployed Keaton, kicking off his 2014 "Fuck It, Just Pay Me" tour that includes the ROBOCOP remake and NEED FOR SPEED, has some enjoyably snarky moments in the way he condescendingly addresses Chad's frequent bouts of incompetence, but there isn't a single thing in BLINDSIDED that you haven't seen before, unless you count greenscreen work and CGI that can best be described as "unfinished." The unbelievably shoddy look of BLINDSIDED--the NYC skyline in the background is hilariously unconvincing, as is the CGI breath as characters stand out on the terrace in freezing temps (when the filmmakers remember to use it, that is) and one character's cartoonish fall from the terrace--is the likely reason the Weinsteins dropped this like a bad habit, pawning it off on presumably less-demanding TV viewers who might be more inclined to forgive crummy visuals at home than they would be laughing it off the screen at the multiplex. BLINDSIDED just looks like a movie that everyone involved simply walked away from during post-production. There's probably a story to tell with what went wrong here. I hate to think Ruben returned from a decade-long sabbatical to make something this uninspired, amateurishly sloppy, and riddled with plot holes. (Unrated, 85 mins; currently only available on Netflix Instant)

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT
(US - 2014)

Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Written by Adam Cozad and David Koepp. Cast: Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Kenneth Branagh, Keira Knightley, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Colm Feore, Lenn Kudrjawizki, Peter Andersson, Alec Utgoff, Nonso Anozie, Elena Velikanova, Gemma Chan, David Paymer, David Hayman, Kieron Jecchinis. (PG-13, 105 mins)

Bounced from the busy Christmas 2013 schedule and dumped in January, JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT is the second reboot of Tom Clancy's "Jack Ryan" series, and the first since 2002's THE SUM OF ALL FEARS. In that film, Ben Affleck played a younger version of the CIA analyst previously portrayed by Alec Baldwin in THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (1990) and, in the best Ryan incarnation, Harrison Ford in PATRIOT GAMES (1992) and CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER (1995). Now, in SHADOW RECRUIT, essentially a re-reboot, Chris Pine is introduced as a collegiate Jack Ryan, who enlists in the Marines after 9/11. When he's shot down over Afghanistan and heroically saves two soldiers even with a broken back, he's visited at Walter Reed by CIA official Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner), who presents an offer: go back to school to get his doctorate in economics and work for the CIA as a covert agent on Wall Street, where his job will be to monitor global financial accounts to search for transactions that may be tied to terrorist activity and the funding of sleeper cells in the US.

Cut to a decade later, as Ryan spends his days at a desk analyzing market trends, financial algorithms, and bank accounts, but still isn't allowed to divulge his CIA status to fiancée Dr. Cathy Muller (Keira Knightley). The pair met when she was a med student working in physical therapy during his post-Afghanistan recovery. Their relationship and Ryan's need for secrecy get even more complicated when he has to go to Russia on a CIA job to audit the accounts of investment broker Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh) after noticing some inexplicable inconsistencies in their market performance. Cherevin has stockpiled billions of dollars in a series of secret accounts at the behest of a group of old-school Russian politicos led by Sorokin (Mikhail Baryshnikov). Their plan is to launch a terrorist attack as a distraction while using these secret accounts to bankrupt the United States. What was supposed to be a simple audit turns into a major situation when Ryan is nearly killed by Embee (Nonso Anozie), sent by Cherevin to ostensibly serve as Ryan's driver and bodyguard but instead given instructions to eliminate him. Ryan gets the upper hand and kills Embee and is met by Harper, who's been nearby the whole time. "You're operational now," his mentor informs him as he hands him a gun. There's another problem: Cathy has decided to show up in Moscow on a hunch that Ryan is having an affair.

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT is the first film in the Ryan franchise that isn't based on a novel by Clancy, who died in 2013. It's an original screenplay by David Koepp and Adam Cozad, and it's pretty clear that it's heavily influenced by the BOURNE series and Daniel Craig-era 007. As directed by Branagh, who seems to have taken a respite from Shakespeare adaptations to reinvent himself as a genre gun-for-hire after 2011's THOR, SHADOW RECRUIT is brisk popcorn entertainment that moves along at such a relentless clip that it's easy to overlook its many derivative and frequently ludicrous elements. There's nothing here you haven't seen before--from the shaky-cam (but still watchable) action sequences to Ryan's improbable metamorphosis from desk-jockeying numbers nerd to Indestructible Action Daredevil to the rapid-fire brainstorming of the analysts as they pinball ideas around to figure out the location of the terrorist attack and have all the info they need instantly available on their laptops (of course, Cathy's the one who figures it out) to Ryan's sweat-on-the-brow high-tech break-in at an impregnable fortress of an office to steal computer files as Harper is observing from a nearby building to gravely intone "Five minutes, Jack," and "He's on the move...two minutes, Jack." It's almost as if the filmmakers are working from a checklist instead of an actual script. They also don't seem to trust the audience with too much in-depth information: this is one of those films that opens with a shot of Big Ben, the Palace of Westminster, the Westminster Bridge, and the London Eye ferris wheel, yet still feels the need to include the caption "London." Of course, soon after that, there's an aerial shot of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline accompanied by a helpful "New York City."

Nonetheless, JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT still works even as it becomes increasingly ridiculous and predictable in its second half. As shown in UNSTOPPABLE and the new STAR TREK films (even the terrible INTO DARKNESS), Pine has a genuinely engaging screen presence that works in his favor, especially in his scenes with Costner, who seems ready to gradually settle into elder statesman-type roles with grace and class as he approaches 60. Costner is still youthful enough that he probably could've almost played Jack Ryan had they kept the character in the Baldwin/Ford age bracket of the 1990s Ryan films, but he and Pine have a credible teacher/student chemistry that's very likable, especially with Harper's occasional good-natured griping to Ryan ("Any way you can wipe that boy-scout-on-a-field-trip look off your face?"). Knightley doesn't have much to do other than nag and get kidnapped, which you'll see coming (and speaking of nothing to do, what's with 1993 MR. SATURDAY NIGHT Oscar-nominee David Paymer buried in the credits with a ten-second, two-line walk-on as a Wall Street analyst?). Branagh the director could've done a better job of keeping Branagh the actor from hamming it up. He doesn't go overboard but the Russian accent is laid on a little thick at times and the character is handled with clichés (of course, he's introduced listening to opera and beating the shit out of an underling), and he occasionally comes off as more of a psychotic Bond villain than a genius financier and international criminal.

THE CASSANDRA CROSSING

(UK/Italy/West Germany - 1977)

Directed by George Pan Cosmatos. Written by Tom Mankiewicz, Robert Katz, George Pan Cosmatos. Cast: Sophia Loren, Richard Harris, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Martin Sheen, O.J. Simpson, Ingrid Thulin, Lee Strasberg, Lionel Stander, Ann Turkel, Lou Castel, John Phillip Law, Ray Lovelock, Alida Valli, Tom Hunter, Stefano Patrizi, Carlo De Mejo, Fausta Avelli, Angela Goodwin, Renzo Palmer, John P. Dulaney. (R, 129 mins)

SPOILERS DISCUSSED THROUGHOUT

Disaster movies were one of the signature genres of 1970s cinema. Though the concept wasn't new and dated back to the early days of the movies to SAN FRANCISCO (1936) and 1950s hits like THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY (1954) and ZERO HOUR! (1957), and would continue later with the likes of ARMAGEDDON (1998), THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004) and 2012 (2008), the subgenre really exploded in the 1970s. Starting with box-office blockbusters like AIRPORT (1970), THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) and THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974) to less-popular but still entertaining later offerings like the sniper-in-a-football-stadium TWO-MINUTE WARNING (1976), the Goodyear Blimp-blowing-up-the-Super Bowl BLACK SUNDAY (1977), and the mad-bomber-terrorizing-amusement-parks ROLLERCOASTER (1977), disaster films showcased then-state-of-the-art special effects depicting catastrophes both natural and man-made, and a large cast of stars both current and from Hollywood's golden age. The incredible success of these films spawned countless imitations, from exclamatory made-for-TV disaster movies like HEAT WAVE! (1974), FLOOD! (1976), and FIRE! (1977) to drive-in exploitation like THE BEES (1978) and AVALANCHE (1978) to the inevitable foreign-made ripoffs with films like TIDAL WAVE (1975), which inserted new footage of Lorne Greene into a Japanese disaster movie; the Italian oil fire thriller OIL (1977); the Canadian city-on-fire thriller CITY ON FIRE (1979); and the Italian/Brazilian co-production KILLER FISH (1979), which involved an emerald heist, a laughable tornado, and a river filled with hungry piranha. It's unfortunate that most of these films lacked the hyperbolic punctuation that the TV movies used--think how much better KILLER FISH would be if it was called KILLER FISH!

In addition to the mandatory "faces in boxes" poster design, disaster movies frequently featured supporting roles for an off-season or retired sports star, usually from the NFL, such as Rosey Grier in SKYJACKED (1972), O.J. Simpson in THE TOWERING INFERNO, Alex Karras in WHEN TIME RAN OUT (1980), and then-Houston Oilers quarterback Dan Pastorini in the aforementioned KILLER FISH, as well as college football star Mark Harmon in BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1979). Other such stunt casting included the likes of fake evangelist-turned-actor Marjoe Gortner in EARTHQUAKE (1974), singer Helen Reddy in AIRPORT 1975 (1974), and game-show host and frequent TONIGHT SHOW guest host John Davidson--the Ryan Seacrest of the 1970s--in THE CONCORDE: AIRPORT '79 (1979). Audiences grew tired of the increasingly silly and often shoddy spectacles (how can we forget 1978's THE SWARM or 1979's METEOR?) and the demand for these things vanished. Kinji Fukasaku's mega-budget Japanese epic VIRUS (1980), featuring such stars as Glenn Ford, George Kennedy, Henry Silva, Sonny Chiba, and Robert Vaughn, was perhaps the most ambitious disaster film of them all, but couldn't find a US distributor even with a sappy Janis Ian theme song, and was cut by nearly an hour and drastically re-edited before going straight-to-video in 1984 (Fukasaku's complete 155-minute version is a masterpiece). By the time so-called "Master of Disaster" Irwin Allen, the man behind THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, THE TOWERING INFERNO, and THE SWARM, unveiled the volcano epic WHEN TIME RAN OUT, the title could've applied to the genre itself, especially when it was expertly parodied that same year by AIRPLANE!, from the gathering of stoical, serious actors known for their stern gravitas (Peter Graves, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack), right down to the casting of NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as himself, moonlighting as a pilot named "Roger Murdock." Disaster movies, at least in their 1970s incarnation, were done.

These films always had eclectic casts populated by actors you'd never expect to find working together (THE CONCORDE: AIRPORT '79 managed to get Alain Delon, Charo, Jimmie Walker, and Sylvia Kristel in the same movie), but the British/Italian/West German co-production THE CASSANDRA CROSSING provides a bizarre mix of international A-list, Hollywood old guard, Eurocult regulars, and one vacationing football star nearing the end of his playing days. It's not often you see people like O.J. Simpson and Martin Sheen mixing it up with the likes of THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE's Ray Lovelock and FISTS IN THE POCKET's Lou Castel. Like many of its genre brethren, THE CASSANDRA CROSSING offers multiple problems for its heroes to conquer and is actually two disaster movies in one: first a terrorist exposed to a deadly plague stows away on a Geneva-to-Stockholm train, then the US military tries to contain the disease by intentionally diverting the train to an unsafe bridge in the hopes that it will collapse, killing all the passengers and making for a nice, convenient cover-up. There's a level of cynicism in THE CASSANDRA CROSSING that doesn't exist in other disaster movies. The US government is the villain here, and it's interesting that it's represented by Burt Lancaster, who starred in the same year's TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING, a bile-soaked screed of a conspiracy thriller that depicted the US President's own cabinet members sending the newly-elected and earnestly naïve Commander-in-Chief (Charles Durning) to his own execution when he decides to go public with his predecessors' classified memos that will expose the truth about America's Vietnam policies. He's advised against it by those in his inner circle, old men who tell him "This is just how it's always been," and he pays the price for breaking tradition.

In CASSANDRA, Lancaster's Col. Mackenzie is dispatched to the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva after three Swedish terrorists (Castel, Stefano Patrizi, and Carlo De Mejo) infiltrate the building and the resulting shootout ends up exposing them to a strain of pneumonic plague that's been developed--illegally and in secret--by the US government and stored in a lab on the premises. De Mejo is killed by a guard, Patrizi is wounded and captured, and Castel escapes. Mackenzie, his aid Major Stack (John Phillip Law), and WHO-based Dr. Stradner (Ingrid Thulin) get no information out of Patrizi before he dies, and Mackenzie orders the body burned. Castel, the lead terrorist, makes his way to a nearby train station and sneaks aboard the express going to Stockholm. It's here where CASSANDRA, for a while at least plays out as your standard issue '70s disaster epic. The major players onboard are renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Jonathan Chamberlain (Richard Harris); his romance novelist ex-wife Jennifer (Sophia Loren); requisite elderly con man Herman Kaplan (Lee Strasberg); hippie lovebirds Tom (Lovelock) and Susan (Ann Turkel); a grandmother (Alida Valli) and her granddaughter Katerina (Fausta Avelli); wealthy Nicole Dressler (Ava Gardner, also in EARTHQUAKE and CITY ON FIRE), wife of a German arms magnate, along with her heroin-addicted, drug-dealing boy-toy Robby Navarro (Sheen); and Haley (Simpson), an incognito-as-a-priest Interpol agent tailing Navarro. The script by Tom Mankiewicz, Robert Katz, and director George P. Cosmatos (who would go on to Hollywood blockbusters like 1985's RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II and 1993's TOMBSTONE) spends a little too much time on the soapier elements of Jonathan and Jennifer's inevitable rekindling of their romance (they've already been divorced twice), but once the terrorist makes his way through the train, quickly infecting many of the passengers, things pick up considerably.

Oddly, the plague part of the film is resolved rather quickly. Chamberlain, in conference with Dr. Stradner, concludes that in a highly-oxygenated environment like a train, the disease will eventually run its course and people will recover unless, like the terrorist, it was directly absorbed into the bloodstream. The terrorist eventually dies, but those onboard who are afflicted soon find themselves on the mend. That's not good enough for Mackenzie, who orders the train to be diverted to a quarantined area--a former concentration camp--that will require it to cross a condemned bridge that hasn't been used since WWII. Of course, his intention--his orders--are to bury this incident by any means necessary, as the US was illegally developing deadly germ warfare in Geneva and keeping it secret. Mackenzie has the train met in Nuremberg by a team of 40 Army officers in HazMat suits led by Col. Scott (Tom Hunter). Scott's job is to keep everyone onboard and kill anyone who tries to get off the train. So, about midway through the film, with the plague story wrapped up, the action now centers on Chamberlain leading a passenger revolt against Scott and his goons and stop the train before it reaches the Cassandra Crossing.

Make no mistake, the bulk of THE CASSANDRA CROSSING is, like most of its disaster contemporaries, silly and illogical. Many of the actors on the train don't seem to be on the same page as far as what kind of movie they're in: Harris, Sheen, and Simpson play it straight and serious (as seriously as O.J. dressed as a priest can be taken), while Gardner, perhaps still amused by being cast as Lorne Greene's daughter in EARTHQUAKE, is glib and snarky at all the wrong times. Loren doesn't really have much to do other than look glamorous in soft focus, which Cosmatos ensures since her husband Carlo Ponti was the producer (Loren's introduction, where she's given numerous close-ups from various angles, is a bit excessive and obviously done to please Ponti). Strasberg's con man character keeps trying to sell phony watches, while you could make a drinking game out of how many times Valli helplessly says "Katerina!" to no one in particular after she gets separated from the little girl. And my God, I haven't even gotten to the song.

Any self-respecting '70s disaster movie had the mandatory maudlin theme song, like "The Morning After" from THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and "We May Never Love Like This Again" from THE TOWERING INFERNO. Both of those songs were sung by Maureen McGovern and both won Oscars for Best Original Song. THE CASSANDRA CROSSING gives us a fine Ennio Morricone-esque score by Jerry Goldsmith, but also offered co-star Turkel--who was married to Harris at the time--singing something called "I'm Still on My Way," and she sings it early in the film, as she and Lovelock and some other hippie pals are jamming in one of the train cars. And just when you think it can't get any sillier, train conductor Max (Lionel Stander) takes a break from his duties to just hang out with them. It seems unnecessary to mention that their efforts were not rewarded with a Best Original Song Oscar. It's easily the worst scene in the film, and one that completely stops it cold and one that I never knew existed until I saw it on Turner Classic Movies some years back. For decades, I only knew the version that aired on NBC and in syndication, which mercifully cut that scene out entirely. Also absent from the television version are some gory bits from the finale, as the train indeed crashes and a good chunk of the passengers die horribly violent deaths: watch for the train rail cutting through a car and impaling a passenger right through his gut, yet another example of this film's unrepentant mean streak.

THE CASSANDRA CROSSING isn't the best of its type, but it's maintained a well-deserved cult-following over the decades, primarily for its unusual international cast and because it works very well as an entertaining thriller. But if you approach it from the angle of Lancaster's Mackenzie, there's some unexpected depth to the film. Of course, an old pro like Lancaster knows just how to play the various subtleties and nuances, and perhaps there wasn't anything in the script and he simply took it upon himself as an experienced actor to make something out of nothing. At the conclusion of the film, after telling Dr. Stradner "I know you see me as some kind of monster," and essentially saying he did what he had to do, you can see the sadness in Lancaster's eyes and it's the first moment in the film that Mackenzie seems remotely human. And in that moment, Lancaster makes us see that, like Stack and Scott and those under him, he's just a part of the machine. Lancaster nails it when he's about to leave the building. Stack offers to take him to a nearby bar and buy him a drink. Mackenzie says nothing, putting on his coat and unconsciously reaching for his uniform service cap, stopping himself, and going for his fedora instead. It's not that he isn't worthy of wearing it. No, he was a good soldier who followed orders. He's just too sickened by those orders to wear it, and by rejecting it, he retains some semblance of humanity. And as Mackenzie leaves the room without saying a word and heads down a long hallway to the exit, Stack can be heard on the phone with an unknown superior: "He's leaving right now. Yes, he and the doctor are both under surveillance." Mackenzie is as expendable as the people killed in the bridge collapse and he likely isn't making it to his next destination. In that closing scene, using no dialogue, Lancaster's aging face perfectly illustrates a career military man who served his country only to be made a fall guy who knows shit rolls downhill and it's coming straight for him. In that respect, THE CASSANDRA CROSSING--or, more accurately, Lancaster's sequences in it--makes for a fascinating companion piece to TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING, where he played another soldier who just followed orders issued down a corrupt chain of command until his conscience could no longer allow it.

IN A WORLD...
(US - 2013)

One of the most acclaimed films at Sundance in 2013, IN A WORLD... is exactly the kind of movie that plays better at film festivals than in commercial release. It's pleasant, occasionally amusing, and it's made with the best intentions. There's nothing egregiously wrong with it, but it doesn't really do anything with its ideas and is rather slight and forgettable by the end. CHILDREN HOSPITAL's Lake Bell, a proven comic and dramatic performer who rarely gets the attention she deserves, writes, directs, and stars in this labor of love as Carol, a Los Angeles-based vocal coach who specializes in helping actors nail accents (she's introduced getting a voice mail from a sound mixer who needs her to work with Eva Longoria on a period film, as her Cockney accent "sounds like a retarded pirate"). She's successful in her field, but lives in the shadow of her legendary father Sam (Fred Melamud), a famed movie trailer voice who had a mentor in the late, great Don LaFontaine (Bell opens the film with a nice tribute to that great "In a world..." voice). She lives with Sam, a widower who promptly kicks her out so his one-year-younger-than-Carol girlfriend Jamie (Alexandra Holden) can move in. While working with Longoria in the studio where the actress has to re-loop her entire performance, Carol narrates a trailer as a goof, and she nails it so well that she finds herself in the running to voice the trailer for the Cameron Diaz blockbuster "AMAZON GAMES quadrilogy," which puts her in conflict with her dad and Gustav (Ken Marino), the other main voice in the trailer business.

Movie buffs will appreciate the occasional glimpses at the inner workings of the voiceover industry, but too much of IN A WORLD... is devoted to standard-issue rom-com stuff, with Carol falling for sound mixer Louis (Demetri Martin) and trying to patch things up between her sister Dani (Michaela Watkins) and her husband Moe (Rob Corddry) when concierge Dani fools around with AMAZON GAMES director and hotel guest Terence Pouncer (Jason O'Mara), plus some easy jabs at THE HUNGER GAMES and L.A. women with "sexy baby voices" who talk like every sentence ends with a question mark? Bell and Watkins have a nice sibling chemistry, Holden's Jamie is unpredictably handled in the way she legitimately loves Sam and is not just drawn by his fame, and Melamud has a voice that was made for trailers (Marino, however, does not), but the whole "female empowerment" message that Bell is going for is too heavy-handed by the end, and she can't resist the indie hipster crutch of using '70s and '80s hits ironically (Dani and Moe reconcile to the tune of Gerry Rafferty's "Right Down the Line," and Carol and Louis' night out is a montage set to Tears for Fears'"Everybody Wants to Rule the World," for some reason). In the end, there's a few chuckles for film dorks, but that's ultimately the biggest problem. Bell got all of her cult comedy friends together (there's also supporting turns by Nick Offerman, Stephanie Allynne, Tig Notaro, and Jeff Garlin, plus Geena Davis as a ballbusting movie exec), and it grossed $3 million on 144 screens against a $1 million budget, but its appeal is too narrow. It feels like the kind of movie Tom Dicillo made in the '90s that nobody outside the industry gave a shit about. Bell is a charming and immensely likable actress, but IN A WORLD... too often comes off like little more than a rejected IFC pilot. (R, 93 mins)

SUNLIGHT JR.
(US/UK - 2013)

Here's another example of a well-intentioned film that just has no chance once it's away from the secure and loving embrace of the film festival circuit. It was a major title at last year's Tribeca fest, and it's the kind of offering that the indie and the festival scene just eats up: gritty subject matter, socially and culturally relevant themes, name actors working for scale or less and getting their hands dirty on a pack-your-own-lunch labor of love that shows how serious they are about their craft...and it was ultimately given a zero-publicity VOD dumping while only playing on a few screens nationally. Written and directed by SHERRYBABY's Laurie Collyer, SUNLIGHT JR. stars Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon as Melissa and Richie, a severely down-on-their-luck Florida couple who've been beaten to shit by life: he's a hard-drinking paraplegic living disability check to disability check, fixing VCRs and siphoning gas from cars, and she's supporting them by scrambling for shifts at a rundown convenience store called Sunlight Jr., where she's routinely hassled by her stalker ex Justin (Norman Reedus), who demonstrated his love by routinely beating her and getting her hooked on prescription painkillers. They live in a fleabag motel but they're happy together, and that happiness intensifies when she discovers she's pregnant. But, since this is a depressing indie drama that could almost be called BLUE VALENTINE: THE LATER YEARS, that joy is short-lived as her asshole boss (Antoni Corone) threatens her job and Justin's behavior grows more menacing now that his restraining order's been lifted.

Watts, Dillon, and the film are moving along just fine until the pregnancy, when Collyer just starts piling on one misfortune after another in a way that crosses the line from realism into deck-stacking misery porn. The problems with her boss exist only to make the story take a more miserable turn. It's a corporate chain--as evidenced by a company HR rep visiting to administer drug tests--so there's no reason Melissa can't tell someone higher-up that she's being sexually harassed by her boss ("Are those pants wet because of me?" he asks Melissa after she walks to work in the rain), and his other managerial practices are flat-out abusive and intimidating. And given Justin's behavior, there's no valid reason for the restraining order to be lifted other than Collyer needs him to show up at Sunlight Jr to cause dramatic conflict and offer Melissa some painkillers. And later, when they're kicked out of the motel and have to move in with her alcoholic mother (Tess Harper) and her brood of unruly foster kids that she lets run wild so she can keep the foster care checks coming in, there's not only Richie's ramped-up boozing and the foster kids being bitten by bedbugs, but also the mom's asshole landlord--who else?--JUSTIN! To Collyer's credit, she doesn't turn Melissa and Richie into martyrs or succumb to white trash caricaturing, and she does a commendable job of capturing the atmosphere of crippling economic depression, shooting in locations that look like a desolate wasteland of homeless people, closed-down strip malls with weeds growing through the concrete, pawn shops, flea markets, and dive bars. Watts and Dillon are excellent until the plot developments start threatening to turn the characters into cardboard cutouts; Watts perseveres but Dillon can't do much with the clichéd arc undergone by Richie. SUNLIGHT JR sometimes falls victim to ham-fisted melodrama, but there's a lot of positives to be found with the performances, a very Ry Cooder-ish score by J. Mascis, and Collyer's compassionate depiction of a struggling underclass. (Unrated, 95 mins)

ENEMIES CLOSER
(US/UK - 2014)

Directed by Peter Hyams. Written by Eric Bromberg & James Bromberg. Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Tom Everett Scott, Orlando Jones, Linzey Cocker, Christopher Robbie, Kris Van Damme, Zahari Baharov, Dimo Alexiev, Vladimir Mihaylov, Teodor Tzolov. (R, 85 mins)

Back in the late '80s, Jean-Claude Van Damme built his fan base and became a star the old-fashioned way: by working his ass off. As he graduated from low-budget B-movies that became surprise box-office hits (1988's BLOODSPORT, 1989's CYBORG) to bigger-budgeted A-list fare (1992's UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, 1993's HARD TARGET, 1994's TIMECOP), he became a proven player with a solid track record. By 1996, he had enough clout that Universal let him star in and direct his pet project THE QUEST, and then it all started to implode. THE QUEST bombed, followed by tabloid fodder like multiple marriages, stories of drug abuse and being labeled "difficult." In his memoir My Word is My Bond, THE QUEST villain Roger Moore offered this observation on being asked what it was like working with Van Damme: "I've always believed that if you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all. So I'll say nothing at all." The movies kept tanking (1997's DOUBLE TEAM, 1998's KNOCK OFF), LEGIONNAIRE (1998) went straight to video, and the "Muscles from Brussels" was becoming something between an industry pariah and punchline. After 1999's last-ditch, desperation Hail Mary UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: THE RETURN, Van Damme's movies started bypassing theaters altogether. But then a funny thing happened: he straightened up his act, settled down, and focused on his work, and the movies were often shockingly good. Much like his earlier days, Van Damme was once more building his career by word-of-mouth: low-budget B-movies like the gritty IN HELL (2003), WAKE OF DEATH (2004), UNTIL DEATH (2007), and THE SHEPHERD (2008) are as good as, if not better, than many of the films from his theatrical heyday. The 2008 meta/mockumentary/confessional JCVD got some acclaim but didn't open any serious doors for him, and after a few more quality DTV outings like UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION (2009) and ASSASSINATION GAMES (2011), Van Damme was invited back to the big screen to play the villain in THE EXPENDABLES 2 (2012), and the Van Dammessaince was on. The brilliant UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (2012) managed to get raves from serious cineastes, and a recent Volvo commercial became a viral sensation. Everyone loves an underdog, and once more, after years of hard work and rebuilding his reputation, the 53-year-old Van Damme has engineered the quietest comeback in recent memory, even if some are approaching it ironically. He never went away--it's just that he managed to accomplish some of his best work when the industry dismissed him and no one was paying attention.

I've been saying for years that Van Damme would make a great Bond villain, and THE EXPENDABLES 2 did a nice job of demonstrating that. His latest film, ENEMIES CLOSER, again finds JCVD in bad-guy mode, with the initial focus on Henry Taylor (Tom Everett Scott), a ranger at a park near the US/Canada border. He's the only employee and lives in the ranger station, with only one other resident--cranky old Mr. Sanderson (Christopher Robbie)--living on the other end of the park. Taylor prefers the solitude after dealing with the emotional and physical scars of time spent in the military, serving in Afghanistan. After helping stranded hiker Kayla (Linzey Cocker), the two make a dinner date, but it's put on the backburner when Taylor is approached at gunpoint at the ranger station by Clay (Orlando Jones). Clay has a personal beef with Taylor: his younger brother was killed in Afghanistan and Taylor was his commanding officer. Taylor tries to explain that Clay's brother got separated from their group and he was given orders to leave him behind. Taylor had a breakdown and spent years blaming himself and the ranger job was as far as he could run from the world. Clay doesn't buy any of it and takes him out to the deep woods to execute him.

Meanwhile, a plane filled with a large heroin shipment has crashed in the lake surrounding the island park. Just as the skeleton crew of border patrol officers ("It's just us...they only care about the Mexican border!" one officer laments) goes to investigate, they're massacred by Xander (Van Damme), the eccentric, environmentally-conscious, vegan cartel boss who's introduced talking about his refusal to wear leather shoes and the methane in cow farts. Xander and his crew encounter Taylor and Clay just as Clay's about to kill Taylor. Shots are fired, and the hunt is on as Xander and his crew start pursuing Taylor and Clay through the massive park, forcing the two men to set aside their differences and work together...

...if they don't kill each other first!

The script by Eric and James Bromberg has a lot in the way of logic lapses--why would Taylor and Clay leave Xander's last remaining henchman merely knocked out instead of killing him like they did all the others? (this flunky is played by JCVD's son Kristopher Van Varenberg, who's now just cutting the shit and going by "Kris Van Damme"; Van Damme keeps putting his kids in his movies, and it needs to stop, though Kris is a marginally better actor than his sister Bianca Bree). Why, you ask? Well, so he can pull a surprise appearance just when he needs to, and prompt Clay to grumble "I shoulda killed you when I had the chance." YES, YOU SHOULD HAVE! The Sanderson character is absolutely pointless and there's no shortage of trite dialogue when Van Damme is offscreen (at one point, Clay says "I didn't prepare for a war," to which Taylor actually replies "This war came to us"). There's a third-act twist that you'll see coming long before Taylor and Clay do, but for all its predictability and occasional stupidity, ENEMIES CLOSER is entertaining thanks to a completely unhinged performance by Van Damme. Sporting a bizarre hairstyle that looks like Christopher Walken in a high humidity climate, mugging shamelessly, complaining that Taylor's coffee isn't fair trade, and prone to waxing rhapsodic about a childhood that included a pet goose named Edith Piaf, Van Damme sinks his teeth into this thing, devouring every bit of scenery that he can. It's a thoroughly cartoonish performance that's engineered to go over the top, and seeing Van Damme do his best "Gary Oldman-in-THE PROFESSIONAL" is impossible to resist.

This is the star's third collaboration with veteran director Peter Hyams (TIMECOP, SUDDEN DEATH), a past master of commercial genre fare, with BUSTING (1974), CAPRICORN ONE (1978), OUTLAND (1981), and RUNNING SCARED (1986) to his name. Now 70, Hyams was once respected enough in the industry to be entrusted with helming 2010, the surprisingly solid 1984 sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), but he's been skidding for well over a decade, hitting bottom with A SOUND OF THUNDER (2005), a complete disaster that was abandoned by its producers and actually released with unfinished special effects after three years on the shelf. ENEMIES CLOSER is no Hyams classic, but it's his best film since 1997's THE RELIC. He doesn't really bring any distinct touches (Hyams in his 1974-1986 prime, when he was scripting his own films, had a distinct "Hyams" feel--just check out Hal Holbrook's incredible CAPRICORN ONE monologue), other than having one character named "Spota," a name that turns up in many of his films (it's his wife's maiden name). Van Damme and Hyams obviously like one another and enjoy working together, and Van Damme has also starred in three films directed by Hyams' son John, including the instant cult classic UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING. John Hyams served as editor on ENEMIES CLOSER, and the film, shot in Bulgaria and Louisiana, feels more in line with the current crop of high-end DTV fare cranked out by the likes of John Hyams and Isaac Florentine. It's probably a good bet that a lot of that was achieved in the editing stages with John helping his old man out. Peter Hyams is more than capable of pulling off a high-intensity action flick, but in the many fight scenes, the influence of John Hyams, who's becoming a genuine action auteur in his own right, is very obvious.

It's too bad Lionsgate and After Dark Films aren't capitalizing on the Van Dammessaince and giving this a bigger rollout than a handful of theaters and VOD, but given the tepid commercial response to the recent string of quality aging action star vehicles that don't feature the word "expendables" in the title, you can't really be surprised. Sure, Van Damme doesn't have--and probably never will have--the box office pull that he once did, and nobody in 2014 is going to the multiplex to see Tom Everett Scott or Orlando Jones, but it's just a bit disheartening to see the company dump this one off but put I, FRANKENSTEIN on 3000 screens.

JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA
(US - 2013)

BAD GRANDPA is a departure film for the JACKASS team as Johnny Knoxville goes solo in the franchise's first narrative feature. Of course, the plot isn't the focal point of this ramshackle affair as Knoxville, under heavy makeup as lecherous 86-year-old widower Irving Zisman, who goes on a road trip to throw his wife's body off of a bridge (per her final wishes) and turn his eight-year-old grandson Billy (Jackson Nicoll) over to his shitbag father (Greg Harris) when Irving's daughter (Georgina Cates) has to go to jail. The hook here is that other than the primary actors, no other onscreen players are in on what Knoxville and a show-stealing Nicoll are up to as they go on a series of outrageous misadventures that owe more than a slight debt to Sacha Baron Cohen's BORAT and BRUNO. There are quite a few screamingly funny scenes--Irving in an African-American male strip club; Irving sharting in a diner; Irving bringing a margarita blender to a bingo hall; Billy in drag at a beauty pageant, dancing to Warrant's "Cherry Pie"--and quotable dialogue ("They used to call me Jizzy Gillespie in my younger days"), but the whole narrative element is unnecessary and not that interesting. It works best when focused on the shocked reactions of those around them, caught by numerous concealed cameras as shown during the closing credits (usually the owners of the establishments were in on it, but not the patrons). Knoxville has a great rapport with a game Nicoll, a brave and fearless young actor who's so good at staying in character and keeping a straight face that you can see genuine affection and admiration even through the old-man latex on Knoxville's face. It's ragged and inconsistently-paced, but an outrageous, offensive blast all the same. (R, 92 mins; 102-minute unrated version also available)

DON JON
(US - 2013)

In films both small (MYSTERIOUS SKIN, THE LOOKOUT) and huge (INCEPTION, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES), Joseph Gordon-Levitt has built a solid reputation as one of the most gifted, natural actors of his generation. He's also an immensely likable guy, though he does seem to occasionally try a little too hard to please, so it's nice to see that his debut as a filmmaker--directing, writing, and starring in DON JON--is indicative of a confidant and assured talent behind the camera as well, the work of someone who's clearly spent a lot of time on movie sets observing and learning from others. It's to Gordon-Levitt's credit that DON JON isn't the vanity project that it could've been, though it's not quite as deep and meaningful as its creator intended. In a role originally planned for Channing Tatum but taken over by Gordon-Levitt himself, the actor plays Jersey meathead Jon, a cartoonish pussy hound who enjoys the simple things in life: working out, clubbing with his bros (Rob Brown, Jeremy Luke), and getting laid. He also has a serious pornography addiction that's rendered real sex with real women unsatisfying, and he goes to church every Sunday to confess his sins, which are usually limited to out-of-wedlock sex and how many times he masturbated to online porn. Thinking a meaningful relationship will make the sex more fulfilling, Jon pursues Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson), a gum-smacking Jersey goddess who tries to mold him into her image of the perfect guy, including making him watch insipid romantic comedies and badgering him into taking night classes to better himself. While the sex is OK--he laments that she won't do anything but missionary and refuses to give him blowjobs--he genuinely loves her but can't resist the temptations of the anything-goes, money-shot netherworld that awaits him on his laptop.

Gordon-Levitt is good as the conflicted Jon, who's not quite as dumb as he tries to make himself look. He and Barbara exists in one of those Italian-American Jersey enclaves firmly devoted to tradition and remaining largely unchanged over the decades: other than the HDTV and Jon's morose sister (SHORT TERM 12's Brie Larson) silently texting, Jon's parents (screeching Glenne Headly and a bloviating Tony Danza) live in a house that looks like it's frozen in 1980, with Jon Sr. generally wearing a wifebeater with a football game blaring in the background and Mom wanting nothing more than grandchildren (the first thing out of Jon Sr.'s mouth when he hears the name "Barbara Sugarman" is "She a Jew? She sure as hell ain't Italian"). Though very light on explicitness, there's a hard-R boldness to DON JON in its dialogue and in Gordon-Levitt's decision to play a character that constantly straddles the line between likable mook and a lunkheaded Neanderthal. A late-film subplot involving Julianne Moore as a middle-aged classmate is well-played by Moore but its transformative effect on Jon doesn't really ring true, nor does his falling head over heels for Barbara, who almost immediately comes off as a manipulative, ballbusting cliché. DON JON is a credible directing debut for its talented star, but it plays a lot like the kind of diverting but generally forgettable indie that Miramax would've bought at Sundance in the '90s. (R, 90 mins)

DARK TOUCH
(France/Ireland/Sweden - 2013)

Since working for her mentor Francois Ozon as an actress (1997's SEE THE SEA, 1998's SITCOM) or as a writer (2002's 8 WOMEN), Marina de Van has demonstrated a no-holds-barred penchant for in-your-face provocation. 2002's IN MY SKIN, her profoundly disturbing directing debut, found the writer/star crafting an almost Cronenbergian take on self-harm and body image, with de Van casting herself as a young woman whose leg injury leads to self-mutilation and eventually graduating to consuming her own flesh. 2009's double-identity head-games thriller DON'T LOOK BACK was purported to be her "maturing" work, though it comes off as a bit too ponderous and gimmicky despite strong performances from Monica Bellucci and Sophie Marceau. Apparently staying behind-the-camera full-time now (she hasn't acted since 2007), de Van returns with DARK TOUCH, which has an almost mainstream air about it (it's also her first English-language film) while still dealing with sensitive and uncomfortable issues. Opening in a disorienting, in medias res cacophony of confusion, 11-year-old Niamh (Missy Keating) flees her house and takes refuge with neighbors/family friends Nat (Marcella Plunkett) and Lucas (Padraic Delaney). Niamh's tongue is cut and she's covered in bruises, which are explained away by her parents Maud (Catherine Walker) and Henry (Richard Dormer) when they arrive to pick her up. The next night, a supernatural force invades Niamh's house, destroying the interior and brutally killing her parents. Her infant brother, also seen covered in bruises, dies as a result of Niamh clutching him too tightly while escaping the destruction. The local Garda attribute it to a home invasion, but nobody seems to do much investigating as Niamh temporarily moves in with Nat and Lucas, who have two children of their own and recently lost their oldest daughter--around Niamh's age--to cancer. Niamh remains unreceptive to any kind of affection and soon demonstrates a telekinetic, CARRIE-like ability to move objects as well as possessing a strange, psychic hold over other children when she feels threatened by them.

Young Keating is very impressive in a demanding, difficult role, and de Van succeeds in weaving a difficult subtext into what plays very much like a commercial horror film. The abuse Niamh endures at the hands of her parents has generated an uncontrollable telekinetic ability born of sheer rage, and it's an anger she uses to take on the adults in her town, even ones like Nat and Lucas, who are trying to help her but don't really know how. Feeling almost like it could've been a British or Italian fright film made in the 1970s, DARK TOUCH uses the classic tropes of the "evil children" subgenre--in addition to CARRIE, you'll spot elements of ORPHAN (2009), Tom Shankland's little-seen gem THE CHILDREN (2009), the OMEN-inspired British cult favorite THE GODSEND (1980), and Narciso Ibanez Serrador's WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? (1976)--to show the horrific effects of child abuse on the victims and those around them. It works merely on a surface level, but de Van is digging for something more and doesn't always find it. Some plot threads are underexplored, perhaps intentionally, and some may find the loose ends frustrating. It's not the confrontational galvanizer that IN MY SKIN was, but de Van continues to be a bold, ballsy voice in European cinema. (Unrated, 92 mins)

BANSHEE CHAPTER
(Germany/US - 2013)

There's some intriguing ideas in this occasionally effective but more often muddled horror film that has a hard time deciding what it wants to be. Debuting writer/director Blair Erickson shows some promising technique, knows how to use darkness to his advantage and has a clear knack for delaying reveals to the point of nail-biting agony--plus I'm always a sucker for the inherent unease of instantly disturbing garbled radio transmissions--but the movie's a bit of a mess and once everything is laid out, the finale is too predictable to be the shocking twist that Erickson wants it to be. Predominantly straight narrative but mixing in bits of faux doc and found-footage (ugh...I know), BANSHEE CHAPTER focuses on Anne (Katia Winter of DEXTER and SLEEPY HOLLOW), a reporter investigating the disappearance of her friend James (Michael McMillian of TRUE BLOOD). She has some footage of James ingesting a dose of a liquid drug supposedly used in the US government's top-secret MK Ultra mind control experiments of the 1960s. He got the drug from a source in Colorado and upon ingesting it, immediately senses that "they're coming," and a shadowy figure appears by the window as James' face distorts and his eyes bleed and turn black. Anne's investigation leads her to Colorado where she meets James' source: washed-up '60s counterculture hero and gonzo writer/conspiracy theorist Thomas Blackburn (Ted Levine). Blackburn informs her that the drug doesn't cause hallucinations, but rather, allows the user to become a receiver to see our "alternate reality." All clues point to an abandoned military research station, so the pair hit the road, all the while seeing visions of monstrous figures and hearing a nursery rhyme and gibberish coming from a short-wave numbers station.

Playing a lot like a shaky-cam, road-movie version of Stuart Gordon's FROM BEYOND with the Soy Sauce element of Don Coscarelli's JOHN DIES AT THE END, BANSHEE CHAPTER suffers from a clunky, lugubriously-paced first half that takes forever to get going in a typical post-Ti West slow-burn fashion, and the early found-footage sequences just feel like desperate pandering to make sure the film would be able to find a distributor (Anne even starts out filming her trip in faux-doc style, but Erickson abandons that rather quickly). The film gets a lot of mileage out of a strong performance by Winter and a gregarious one by Levine, playing a character clearly based on Hunter S. Thompson. There are some undeniably chilling moments scattered about, especially the long sequence where Anne is in a lab at the abandoned military facility and looks back eight minutes on the security footage and sees that something has entered the room and must still be in there with her. But too much of BANSHEE CHAPTER is derivative and filled with ostensibly smart characters doing dumb things. While his script could've used another polish or two, Erickson demonstrates enough skill behind the camera that I'm intrigued to see what he does next. Zachary Quinto was one of the producers. (R, 87 mins)

RUNNER RUNNER
(US - 2013)

Justin Timberlake's status as an iconic pop music figure and his comedic skills on SNL are without question, but he hasn't had a lot of luck on the big screen other than supporting roles in acclaimed films like THE SOCIAL NETWORK and INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS. Duds like IN TIME haven't done much to establish him as a box office draw and that trend continues with RUNNER RUNNER, a bland, boring thriller that audiences pretty much avoided during its theatrical run last fall. It had potential, considering the script was written by ROUNDERS scribes David Levien and Brian Koppelman, but it seems like all they did was rewrite that script and move it to the world of online gambling while half-assedly peppering it with references to the financial meltdown of several years ago. Timberlake is Richie Furst, a former Wall Street hot shot who lost everything in the collapse and is now struggling to pay his way through Princeton, largely through bookmaking and with commission earned by luring profs and fellow students to an online poker site. When he's ordered by the dean (Bob Gunton!) to shut down his operation, Richie gambles his entire savings on a poker site and loses. Sensing something fishy about the algorithms, Richie learns he was scammed and does what any struggling, broke college student would do: flies to Costa Rica to personally confront online gambling magnate Ivan Block (Ben Affleck), who's able to operate unencumbered by US federal laws. He manages a brief meet with Block, who's impressed enough to hire Richie to work for his operation. Now with money beyond his wildest dreams--and getting to sleep with Ivan's sultry assistant/lover (Gemma Arterton)--Richie is living the life. That is, until he's shaken down by overzealous FBI agent Shavers (Anthony Mackie), who's obsessed with bringing down Block and will do anything to nab him, even planting drugs in Richie's luggage to ensure his cooperation.

Unlike ROUNDERS, which felt gritty and real, RUNNER RUNNER is cartoonish and absurd from the start, following a template very much like the structurally similar and equally forgettable financial thriller PARANOIA, right down to the villain threatening the protagonist's father (John Heard shows up for a couple of scenes). RUNNER RUNNER is filled with lazy writing to explain away its endless contrivances (Richie's roommate: "You're about to jet off to a country you've never been to, with a language you don't speak, bluff your way into Ivan Block's posse and expect him to just give your money back?"...next shot, Richie's landing in Costa Rica), and characters who say things like "You know who Meyer Lansky is?" and "You know what Napoleon said?" Even Ivan Block is prefaced by someone saying "He's like the Wizard of fucking Oz...no one gets behind the curtain!" He could've been a fun nemesis along the lines of ROUNDERS'Teddy KGB, so brilliantly played by John Malkovich in that film, but Affleck seems so bored that his performance--essentially a Bond villain version of his BOILER ROOM character--never really comes to life, even when he's dumping liquid chicken fat on some guys and threatening to feed them to his crocodiles (Affleck does get one great line, telling Timberlake's Richie "That's the problem with your generation...you sat around with your vintage T-shirts and your participation medals, but you never did anything"). By the time Richie inevitably devises an elaborate scheme to turn the tables on his mentor, the clichés and trite dialogue are simply out of control: "This isn't poker. This is my life...and I've got one play left." Levien and Koppelman are accomplished writers, but are they even trying here? Lifelessly directed by Brad Furman (THE LINCOLN LAWYER), RUNNER RUNNER is the kind of predictable, paint-by-numbers product that can't even mask how utterly bored it is with itself. (R, 91 mins)

A FIELD IN ENGLAND
(UK - 2013/US release 2014)

Directed by Ben Wheatley. Written by Amy Jump. Cast: Reece Shearsmith, Michael Smiley, Peter Ferdinando, Richard Glover, Ryan Pope, Julian Barratt. (Unrated, 90 mins)

With his working-class, financially-strapped characters and his "kitchen sink" aesthetics, British filmmaker Ben Wheatley is frequently described as the Ken Loach or Mike Leigh of horror cinema. Wheatley established a name for himself with his second feature, KILL LIST (2011), which found much praise in cult horror circles but suffered from a young filmmaker too eager to show his hand, thus dampening what he thought was a shocker of a twist ending when in fact, any horror fan worth their salt should've seen it coming 20 minutes into the movie. While KILL LIST could've used some work on the writing end, it was extremely well-made, and Wheatley's next film, SIGHTSEERS (2012), a deadpan black comedy about the world's dullest couple on a serial-killing road trip, was a significant improvement, though some of that may be due to it being written by others. Wheatley's usual writing collaborator is his wife Amy Jump, and she gets sole writing credit for Wheatley's latest film, A FIELD IN ENGLAND, released in the UK last summer but just now arriving in the US, complete with a glowing recommendation from none other than Martin Scorsese.

The kind of film for people who found Nicolas Winding Refn's VALHALLA RISING a little too mainstream, fast-paced, and audience-friendly, A FIELD IN ENGLAND is a departure from Wheatley's usual downtrodden killers and miscreants in bleak surroundings, a psychedelic, mind-altering period piece set in 1648 at the time of the English Civil War--Cromwell is invoked at one point--that could almost be titled VALHALLA TRIPPING. Opening at the conclusion of an offscreen battle, alchemist's assistant Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith) meets a trio of deserters--Jacob (Peter Ferdinando of the Brit cult film TONY), Friend (Richard Glover), and Cutler (Ryan Pope)--and the four make camp in a field as Cutler prepares soup with some mushrooms found in the vicinity. From that moment on, nothing is as it seems as a rope appears as the men seem to engage in a one-sided game of tug-of-war. Materializing at the end of the rope is O'Neil (Michael Smiley, looking like Vincent Price in WITCHFINDER GENERAL), a renegade alchemist who was being hunted by Whitehead. O'Neil has other plans, turning the tables on the four men and forcing them to dig in the field for an alleged buried treasure. Before long, the men are turning on each other, Friend is killed but resurrected, and all are haunted by visions of a black, pulsating sun--even Whitehead, who didn't even eat any of Cutler's soup.

The film opens with a warning that it contains flashing images and stroboscopic sequences, and that's when all hell breaks loose near the finale as O'Neil's psychological grip on the men reaches its apex. It's basically the kind of trippy visuals where any random shot could be freeze-framed and used as a '70s prog rock album cover. Wheatley and Jump are never explicitly clear on anything, but there's obviously some other world/other dimension stuff going on, and classical "death/rebirth" mythic elements. Witness the fact that O'Neil doesn't appear until they've ingested the mushrooms, but it almost feels as if they're "pulling" him from another place during the tug-of-war sequence--or perhaps he's pulling them. Either way, A FIELD IN ENGLAND has "midnight movie" written all over it, like it's gunning to be the EL TOPO of the streaming generation (there's some pretty clear Jodorowsky worship going on in the closing scenes). Shot in black and white, there's no shortage of visually stunning moments, with Wheatley and usual cinematographer Laurie Rose using every bit of the 2.35 frame to maximize the vastness of the field and its simultaneous feeling of trapped claustrophobia. Some of the character arcs are interesting, especially the spineless, cowardly Whitehead's transformation into a badass, earning the respect of the initially dismissive Jacob. Shearsmith runs the gamut of emotions here, the high point being a scene of sustained offscreen screaming followed by a "rebirth" of sorts, emerging from a tent with the most disturbing, almost demonic facial expression you'll ever see. It's a long shot that Wheatley lets play out in slow motion, and it's unforgettable.

There's a whole subgenre of films whose biggest fans insist "You gotta be stoned to get it," and A FIELD IN ENGLAND falls into that...not that I agree with that assessment, but this is that kind of movie. Like VALHALLA RISING, it's an acquired taste (and VALHALLA really is an accessible crowd-pleaser compared to this), and for every person who loves it, there'll be one who loathes it. I wouldn't call it a great film, but I admire its audacity and its individuality. It refuses to be labeled and with every shot, you can tell Wheatley is making the film he wanted to make. By design, it doesn't fully come together on a narrative level (though this is probably a case where layers reveal themselves on repeat viewings), and even with a pace that makes you feel like you took some Slo-Mo from DREDD, Wheatley's enthusiasm and stylish direction shine through. I'm still not ready to anoint him a master of horror, primarily because I'm just not sold on all the KILL LIST love. I still think SIGHTSEERS is his best work thus far, but there's a bold ambition to A FIELD IN ENGLAND that can't be ignored, regardless of your feelings about it. It's such a radical change in style and tone from his past work that I'm wondering if even Ben Wheatley is sick of the Ben Wheatley hype (though it did get him the sweet gig of helming the first two episodes of the Peter Capaldi incarnation of DOCTOR WHO and he's doing the upcoming HBO series SILK ROAD). With shout-outs to the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Ingmar Bergman, and Bela Tarr, A FIELD IN ENGLAND is bound to be a divisive film that provokes as many declarations of brilliance as it does sighs of "What a pretentious asshole," but that's likely the intent.

THE MONUMENTS MEN
(US/UK/Germany - 2014)

Directed by George Clooney. Written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov. Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, Dimitri Leonidas, Justus von Dohnanyi, Holger Handtke, Zahary Baharov, Sam Hazeldine. (PG-13, 118 mins)

For all of George Clooney's fame and tabloid ubiquity over the last 20 years, he hasn't been in a lot of box office blockbusters other than the THE PERFECT STORM, OCEAN'S ELEVEN films and GRAVITY. He's largely chosen quality scripts over easy star vehicles (OUT OF SIGHT, SYRIANA, MICHAEL CLAYTON, UP IN THE AIR), isn't afraid to go for non-commercial material (SOLARIS, THE GOOD GERMAN, THE AMERICAN) and with his matinee idol looks, he's often described as a throwback to the Hollywood of old, a sort-of Cary Grant for today's cinema. For the most part, his directorial career also seems rooted in the past: CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND (2002) was an adaptation of GONG SHOW host Chuck Barris' improbable memoirs, GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK (2005) chronicled CBS News icon Edward R. Murrow and his battle against the McCarthy hearings, LEATHERHEADS (2008) was a screwball romantic comedy set in the world of 1920s football, and THE IDES OF MARCH (2011) was a thriller set in the scheming world of present-day politics but nevertheless felt like the kind of movie Alan J. Pakula, Sidney Lumet, or Sydney Pollack would've made in the 1970s. Clooney has more than established his bona fides as an actor and director, and the WWII epic THE MONUMENTS MEN, with its motley crew of unlikely heroes going into battle, is cut from the same cloth as the grand, large-scale men-on-a-mission classics of the 1960s, like THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (1961), THE TRAIN (1964), THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967), and KELLY'S HEROES (1970) to name just four.

The difference here is that those films didn't have a soapbox to stand on, and if Clooney has a weakness as a filmmaker, it's the need to endlessly speechify with issues of Grand Importance. I enjoyed the relatively light LEATHERHEADS and the conspiratorial suspense of THE IDES OF MARCH, but I found GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK a little too smug and self-satisfied, regardless of how remarkable David Strathairn was as Murrow. Every scene seemed to have someone stopping to mention how what they were doing was Changing the World, and some of that comes into play with THE MONUMENTS MEN. There seems to be no momentum that Clooney the director won't halt in order to allow Clooney the actor one more chance to deliver a windy treatise on The Importance of Art and how they're Preserving History. The constant invocations start to grow wearying after a while and it doesn't help that Clooney can't seem to settle on what kind of WWII movie he wanted to make. Is it lighthearted? Is it a serious memorial to the Greatest Generation? Is it a comedy? Is it transparent Oscar bait? Yes. It's all of those.

Inspired by a true story, THE MONUMENTS MEN is set in the final months of Hitler's reign before Germany's surrender. With word that Der Fuhrer has gathered and stored massive art collections pilfered during the Nazi takeover of Europe, renowned art professor Frank Stokes (Clooney) pleads with FDR to put together a team of art experts and historians to go through the war-torn areas of Europe to salvage and protect the remaining art and recover what's gone missing. This means putting together the usual ragtag group of Unlikely Heroes: Stokes' old friend James Granger (Matt Damon), architect Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), sculptor Walter Garfield (John Goodman), art experts Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville) and Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban), and Frenchman Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin), plus a bonus recruit in German-speaking Jersey-based private Epstein (Dimitri Leonidas). Damon's Granger spends most of the film on his own separate mission, investigating some missing French art with curator Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett), who's been keeping a log of art stolen by her scheming, Nazi-aligned boss (Justus von Dohnanyi). For about 40 minutes or so, THE MONUMENTS MEN is moving along nicely enough, coasting on the screen presence of its stars and the no-expense-spared production design, but there's a scene with Damon and Blanchett that's so tone-deaf and wrong-headed that you can actually see the film fall on its face and consequently spend the remainder of its running time trying to regain its footing.

Claire takes Granger to a vast and seemingly endless warehouse packed with paintings, furniture, glasses, dishes, books, etc. Granger looks around in wide-eyed wonder.

Granger: "What is all of this?"
Claire: "People's lives."
Granger: "What people?"
Claire: "Jews."

At that moment, Alexandre Desplat's maudlin, manipulative score swells and Granger's sense of wonder sinks with the saddened realization that...the Holocaust was happening? What does he mean "What people?" Where does he think all this stuff came from? How pie-in-the-sky naïve can he be? There had to be a more effective way to convey the horror of concentration camps than making Damon's character look like an idiot.

There's also little sense of camaraderie between the Monuments Men. Clooney and Damon get the bulk of the screen time, with the rest relegated to the sidelines. Sure, Murray, Goodman, and the others are onscreen a lot, but they're just there, and not really given characters to play. Campbell playfully busts Savitz's chops throughout, but they have no other defining characteristics that necessitated them being played by distinctive actors like Murray and Balaban. It's nice to see all these actors working together and there's no doubt they had a good time, but why put Murray, Balaban, and John Goodman together to have them play cardboard characters that anybody could've played? Murray's big scene involves playing a record sent from home with his granddaughter singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as tears well in his eyes. Given the context, it's not a revealing character moment but instead comes off as the kind of cheap, heavy-handed melodrama that someone as sharp as Murray can't possibly be taking seriously.

THE MONUMENTS MEN is passable and it's never boring, but it just misses the mark. Films of this sort had a sense of fun and adventure that this is sorely lacking. They can make big statements without advertising that they're Big Statements. Clooney and writing partner Grant Heslov seem to be in such a mad rush to get to the lecturing and the pontificating that they don't bother establishing anything with the characters. Other than a scene where Campbell and Savitz get the edge on a Nazi art thief, there's rarely a sense of danger or even where they're really at. There's a lot of looking at maps and saying "We have to go here," but it never really registers. They just go from one place to another, Stokes says something like "We're Doing Something Important!" and they find some stashed art, stare at it as Desplat's score tells us to how to feel, and they move on. It looks like a classic WWII movie that belongs on TCM, but in the end, it's just pretending to be one. This was originally scheduled to be released in December 2013, but was abruptly yanked to "finish the visual effects," with the date bounced to the barren wasteland of February. That may be the case, as the film looks superb, but it's hard to ignore the sneaking suspicion that this wasn't the automatic Oscar magnet that Sony and Clooney were hoping it would be.

ROBOCOP
(US - 2014)

Directed by Jose Padilha. Written by Joshua Zetumer, Edward Neumeier, and Michael Miner. Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael K. Williams, Jennifer Ehle, Jay Baruchel, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Patrick Garrow, John Paul Ruttan, Aimee Garcia, Zach Grenier, K.C. Collins, Daniel Kash, Douglas Urbanski. (PG-13, 117 mins)

With its perfect mix of action, over-the-top violence and sly, subversive wit, Paul Verhoeven's 1987 classic ROBOCOP still stands as one of the most inspired and original commercial sci-fi films of its decade. The only surprise with the 2014 remake is that it took this long to happen. Like the original film, ROBOCOP '14 has an acclaimed foreign filmmaker trying to make his mark in mainstream Hollywood. In this case, it's Brazilian director Jose Padilha, whose intense, nail-biting, politically-charged thrillers ELITE SQUAD (2007) and ELITE SQUAD: THE ENEMY WITHIN (2011) have earned him significant accolades worldwide. Padilha is an interesting choice to helm a ROBOCOP remake with the obvious idea of spawning a new franchise, but ultimately, starting with its PG-13 rating, ROBOCOP '14 is only as good as it has as to be, and even with Padilha's usual concerns of politics and corruption, it stands as yet another cautionary tale of a promising foreign director seduced by Hollywood and likely forced to compromise and acquiesce until the resulting film effectively eliminates all traces of the innovation, vision, and personality that got him the job in the first place.

Having just revisited ROBOCOP '87 in its pristine new Blu-ray edition a couple of nights before seeing the remake, it's fascinating to note how prophetic many of its satirical elements became. From the Halliburton-like OCP Corporation ("Who cares if it worked?") with its profits-before-people priorities ("I'm very disappointed" says the CEO when the demo ED-209 kills a staffer but also threatens to delay the rollout) and the privatization of the police to the Greek chorus of bubbleheaded newscasters Casey Wong and Jessie Perkins--whose utter vacuousness was even funnier considering they were played by actual media personalities Mario Machado and Leeza Gibbons--Verhoeven and writers Edward Neumeier (who would collaborate again on STARSHIP TROOPERS) and Michael Miner created what may stand today as the NETWORK of 1980s sci-fi action movies. Much like the news-as-entertainment doomsday scenario of the 1976 Sidney Lumet/Paddy Chayefsky classic, the satirical elements of Verhoeven's film are the commonplace norm today. With that in mind, there's really no angle for ROBOCOP '14 to tackle from than one of dour, thudding seriousness. When it tries to be funny, all it's doing is pointing out obvious references to our current world, from US military occupation in the Middle East to the bloviating Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson), the right-wing, Bill O'Reilly/Glenn Beck-like host of THE NOVAK ELEMENT, a guy prone to cutting off guests who disagree with him. That might've been hilarious 30 years ago, but not so much now when it happens daily on cable news. Padilha and screenwriter Joshua Zetumer (Neumeier and Miner retain presumably WGA-mandated co-writing credits) follow the basic template of Verhoeven's film but to what end? With the possible exception of the 2014 ED-209s moving a little more smoothly than their stop-motion 1987 counterparts, what improvements are made? What insightful reflections are to be found? None. I'm not against remakes if they have something new to bring to the table. Is it a bad movie? No, not at all. But with Verhoeven's film aging like fine wine, there's no reason for Padilha's film to exist. If Verhoeven's film was a satirical reflection of the Reagan era, then what is Padilha's other than a reflection of 2014 mainstream Hollywood as obvious, coasting, and completely out of fresh ideas? It's not "Gus Van Sant's PSYCHO" bad, but it's easily "CARRIE 2013" pointless.

The kind of film that shows an aerial shot of the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument yet still feels the need to include the caption "Washington, D.C.," ROBOCOP '14 presents Alex Murphy (THE KILLING's Joel Kinnaman) as an impulsive Detroit detective after Motor City crime lord Antoine Vallon (Patrick Garrow), who consistently manages to operate unencumbered thanks to numerous Detroit cops on his payroll. When Murphy and partner Lewis (BOARDWALK EMPIRE's Michael K. Williams) go after Vallon on their own, Lewis is shot and a fed-up Vallon has a bomb planted under Murphy's car. Of course it blows up, burning over 80% of his body, shattering his spine, blinding him in one eye, and costing him an arm and a leg. As Murphy barely clings to life, OmniCorp CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton), who's made billions putting peacekeeping robots and drones in war-ravaged Middle East, finally sees a loophole for his ambition to put mechanized drones on the streets to replace law enforcement. America has a ban on drone officers because they lack the "human" element, but with Murphy's brain still functioning, Sellars sees a way to keep the human element inside the robotic shell, thus skirting the "robophobic" federal ban. Overseeing Murphy's transformation into RoboCop is sympathetic Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman), who insists that the human element can't be completely eliminated, at least until Sellars orders him to make it happen as Norton essentially rewires Murphy's brain to diminish the emotional receptors. While this makes him a fearless killing machine who's able to apprehend any Detroit bad guy thanks to the entire department database downloaded into his brain, it also makes him unable to relate to or eventually acknowledge his wife (Abbie Cornish) and young son (John Paul Ruttan) as he pursues his single-minded goal of nabbing Vallon and any corrupt cops on the take who had a hand in his attempted murder.

A lot of ROBOCOP '14 focuses on elements that were glossed over by Verhoeven. It's over an hour before Murphy/RoboCop is even out of the lab and on the streets. Verhoeven had Peter Weller's Murphy killed and simply waking up as RoboCop. Padilha gives us all that time in between--the shock of waking up with most of his body gone, the adjustment, the training, etc.--with more of a focus on Murphy's family. Sure, it's a different approach, but was anyone clamoring for that in 1987? Is anyone clamoring for it now? Kinnaman is fine as the sleeker, black-suited RoboCop, with a helmet that makes him look like a third member of Daft Punk, an excellent Oldman is trying much harder than he needs to, and while Keaton's "Michael Keaton" persona is always welcome, he seems a little bored here. And Jackson just registers zero in his scenes as Novak, which of course culminates in him letting loose with a bleeped "motherfucker" on the air, not because he's doing an astute satirical interpretation of a cable news host with an agenda, but because he's Samuel L. Jackson in a movie. Nobody says "motherfucker" like Jackson, but it's a joke that lost its novelty around the time SNAKES ON A PLANE took a 60% drop in its second weekend. As far as villains go, Keaton's Sellars is no Ronny Cox-as-Dick Jones, and Garrow's Vallon isn't given much of a chance to match Kurtwood Smith's Clarence Boddiker, though Sellars hatchet man Mattox (Jackie Earle Haley) arguably shares that function. Padilha and Zetumer spend so much time on Murphy's Robo-angst that they have to rush through the action part of the story, which frequently and predictably resembles a video game with Murphy leaping around and inevitably landing in the three-point, bent-knee hero stance, and the heavily CGI'd scenes of Murphy out of the Robo-suit--essentially reduced to a head, a set of lungs, and a right arm, are unconvincing and a little silly in a BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE way. Nothing about ROBOCOP '14 is terrible, but there's nothing in it to get excited about, either. Verhoeven's film is now 27 years old and people are still talking about it. Will people even be talking about Padilha's version 27 days from now?

HAUNTER
(Canada/France - 2013)

Detroit-born, Canada-based filmmaker Vincenzo Natali's place in the cult movie pantheon was established with his 1997 debut CUBE, but he's largely maintained a low-profile since. CUBE spawned two inferior follow-ups sans Natali, who instead when on to the mandatory unpleasant Miramax experience with the long-shelved CYPHER (dumped on DVD in the US in 2005, four years after it was shot), and then the quirky character piece NOTHING (2003), and a segment in 2006's PARIS, JE T'AIME. He returned to big-screen sci-fi with 2009's bonkers SPLICE, which proved a little too odd for the summer multiplex crowd, which brings us to his latest film, the ghost story HAUNTER. It's refreshingly old-school in its restrained approach, but it has some genuine scares, a sense of unease throughout, and a strong lead performance from LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE Oscar-nominee Abigail Breslin. Breslin is Lisa, a gothy teen in 1985 who seems condemned to live the same GROUNDHOG DAY-type scenario every single day. She lives with her parents (Peter Outerbridge, Michelle Nolden) and little brother (Peter DaCunha), and every day begins the same way, as they eat the same meals, do the same chores, and have the same arguments as Mom asks the same questions and Dad perpetually works on a car that just won't start. The phone is dead and the house is surrounded by thick fog. Only Lisa seems to realize that they're all dead and stuck in some sort of purgatory. Lisa uncovers clues in hidden doors and in the attic, and is visited by an ominously spectral "Pale Man" (a terrifying Stephen McHattie) who warns her to accept that she's dead and to stop trying to contact the living. Lisa has been somehow been summoned by the one of the house's present-day occupants, a teenage girl (Eleanor Zichy) whose father (David Hewlett) is seemingly possessed by the Pale Man, a serial killer who lived in the house prior to Lisa's family moving in. His victims' souls are trapped in the house, kept from rest by the vengeful Pale Man, but Lisa must find a way to cross over into the real world to prevent history from repeating itself with the family now occupying the house.

Natali and screenwriter Brian King (the pair previously collaborated on CYPHER) are wearing a lot of influences on their sleeves here. Not just GROUNDHOG DAY and THE OTHERS, but THE AMITYVILLE HORROR and THE SHINING, and a little of the 1988 cult classic LADY IN WHITE, and a lot of Lucio Fulci's THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETARY with its children reaching out to the living in a cursed house inhabited by a murderer who wreaks supernatural havoc on each new set of tenants. With its foggy surroundings, Natali blankets the film in an almost Euro-horror sheen with some unabashed Spielbergian sentimentality. Other than some cheap, TV-movie-looking visual effects, HAUNTER comes across like the kind of film that could've been made in the 1980s. While the effects are disappointingly-executed at times and Natali goes for some tired RINGU-type ghost action in the finale, HAUNTER succeeds on style and atmosphere and some solid acting all around, particularly Breslin and McHattie. It's not quite THE HAUNTING or THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, but for the most part, it's a nicely low-key and pleasantly surprising little throwback horror film that just fell through the cracks and deserves to find an audience. (Unrated, 97 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)

ENOUGH SAID
(US/UK - 2013)

Since her 1996 breakthrough WALKING AND TALKING was released during the height of Miramax's indie heyday, writer/director Nicole Holofcener has been a distinctive voice with smart, insightful movies about women that don't resort to "chick flick" clichés. Her latest, ENOUGH SAID, relies a little more on dumb contrivance than her earlier films, and right down to its title, frequently feels like the kind of pleasant-but-middling effort her one-time mentor Woody Allen (Holofcener was a production assistant on Allen's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY and HANNAH AND HER SISTERS) might crank out between genuinely great films. That's not to say it isn't enjoyable, but were it not for a dumb decision by its main character, there probably wouldn't be a movie. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is excellent as divorced, middle-aged masseuse Eva, stuck in a rut and fearing the empty nest once daughter Ellen (Tracey Fairaway) goes off to college. Dragged to a party by her friend Sarah (Toni Collette), she meets Albert (James Gandolfini), an affable, schlubby sort of guy, and they immediately hit it off. Meanwhile, Eva has a new client in poet Marianne (Holofcener regular Catherine Keener), who does little but trash-talk her ex-husband. Eventually, Eva figures out that Marianne's ex is Albert, and can't stop herself from projecting Marianne's issues back on to him, jeopardizing the relationship (at one point, after an uncomfortable dinner with friends, Albert says "Why do I feel like I just spent the evening with my ex-wife?"). Here's why this whole conceit doesn't work: Marianne is a bitter, pretentious, unlikable bitch, which goes without saying as she's portrayed by Catherine Keener, who, with rare exception, more or less has a lock on this type of character. Eva doesn't seem desperate enough for a friend that she'd latch on to Marianne the way she does, or be so inclined to nitpick to such a level that she'd fatalistically torpedo her relationship with Albert. Yeah, it's a romantic comedy, but real characters in real life--or, at least, characters in earlier Holofcener films, would've resolved this situation in a matter of minutes.

But ENOUGH SAID excels in other areas: Louis-Dreyfus is very good and Eva's parental panic over her baby venturing into the real world is handled in a believable and sympathetic fashion. She's also very funny, especially in a scene late in the film where she's insulted by someone and lets loose with a laugh that displays outrage, dismissal, and hurt all in a matter of seconds, and it's a vintage Louis-Dreyfus moment. And then there's Gandolfini in his penultimate role (his last film, the crime thriller THE DROP, is due out later this year). Released four months after his death, ENOUGH SAID lets the actor show a vulnerable side of himself rarely seen before. You've always heard women say "he just had something about him," but he never really got to play a romantic lead until this and it's a stellar performance. ENOUGH SAID is likable if a little too slight and predictable, but it's a must-see for fans of Louis-Dreyfus, who's really flourished post-SEINFELD (her HBO series VEEP is one of the funniest things on TV), and especially the much-missed Gandolfini. (PG-13, 93 mins)

HOW I LIVE NOW
(UK - 2013)

This dumb, drab adaptation of Meg Rosoff's 2004 YA novel about a American teenager's survival in England after the country is leveled by a nuclear attack only made it to 68 screens during its US release. Pick a reason why: is it that it centers on the most abrasive and coarsely unlikable heroine in recent memory? Is it that the target audience is too young to get into R-rated movies? Is it that the central romance in the film is between cousins? Coming off like a TWILIGHT-ized CHILDREN OF MEN and showcasing all the depth of a Taylor Swift song, HOW I LIVE NOW manages to defeat the gifted Saoirse Ronan, who's never turned in a bad performance but can't do much with the bitchy and complaining Daisy, a standard-issue Ugly American spending the summer--against her will, it seems--with some cousins who live in the English countryside. While she churlishly resists any attempts to bond with them until they playfully throw her in a river and goo-goo eyes with the oldest, Eddie (George Mackay), quickly escalates to all-out cousin-fucking, London is nuked, Aunt Penn (Anna Chancellor) disappears, and the military comes through to round up the survivors. The kids--there's also 14-year-old Isaac (Tom Holland, so good in THE IMPOSSIBLE), and nine-year-old Piper (Harley Bird)--are split up, with Daisy and Piper forced to fend for themselves. It's amazing how quickly Daisy goes from spoiled bitch to hard-nosed survivalist almost instantaneously. Even in the context of a fantastical film, it's too much of a stretch and even an actress as good as Ronan can't sell it. There's no suspense, the pace is deadeningly dull, and while it might be aimed at sullen teens, it feels like it's made by them as well, which is quite shocking considering that director Kevin Macdonald (ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER, TOUCHING THE VOID, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND) and co-writer Tony Grisoni (the RED RIDING trilogy) have made very good films before (Macdonald is also the grandson of legendary British filmmaker Emeric Pressburger). A meandering misfire from the start, you can probably live the rest of your life without subjecting yourself to HOW I LIVE NOW. (R, 101 mins)

THE COUNSELOR: UNRATED EXTENDED CUT
(US/UK - 2013)

Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Cormac McCarthy. Cast: Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Bruno Ganz, Rosie Perez, Ruben Blades, Sam Spruell, Dean Norris, John Leguizamo, Edgar Ramirez, Toby Kebbell, Goran Visnjic, Natalie Dormer, Richard Cabral, Richard Brake, Andrea Deck, Giannina Facio. (Unrated, 138 mins)

Over the course of his lengthy career, Ridley Scott has been one of the key figures in the advent of the "director's cut," largely from his experiences with 1982's BLADE RUNNER. Scott famously clashed with the producers and for a decade, the version of the film that everyone knew was despised by both Scott and star Harrison Ford. Then, in 1992, the Director's Cut was released, only it wasn't a true "director's cut" in the sense that Scott, then busy filming 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE, wasn't directly involved in the project, which was assembled based on his notes and what was known to be his original ending. It was close, but not quite a director's cut, though it went a long way in establishing the film as the classic we know today and prompted many critics who dismissed the film in 1982 to reconsider it. In 2007, Scott was able to make subtle changes and "The Final Cut" finally provided fans with the BLADE RUNNER its maker always intended. Scott had similar, though much less drawn-out, experiences with Universal over the 1985 fantasy epic LEGEND. The studio sat on the film for a year and finally released it in 1986 with a different score and 30 minutes cut out.

Years later, DVD and Blu-ray editions of LEGEND featured both the uncut European version (Scott's cut) and the butchered US version, and the 2007 BLADE RUNNER set featured four (!) versions, with a deluxe box set containing a fifth, the pre-release workprint version. These two films are the prime examples of Scott's director's cuts being used to right what he considered a wrong. After the 2003 "Director's Cut" of his 1979 classic ALIEN, Scott refrained from using the term "director's cut" because he felt it implies that the director is unhappy with the previously released version. Scott still considers the 1979 ALIEN the definitive version, but only offered the "director's cut" because fans wanted to see the legendary cut footage of the cocooned Dallas (Tom Skerritt) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) being used as food for the alien. Both characters were simply killed off in the '79 version after Scott opted to ditch the "cocoon" feeding angle. On the DVD, Scott explains that both versions are being offered and people don't have to worry that their preferred cut is being "replaced." He basically says "They're both here...watch the one you want to watch." That's been Scott's philosophy with the DVD and eventual Blu-ray presentations of most of his work after that. GLADIATOR (2000), BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001), KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (2005), AMERICAN GANGSTER (2007), and ROBIN HOOD (2010) all have "extended versions" included alongside the standard editions. Sometimes, the changes help--KINGDOM OF HEAVEN's extended version adds 45 minutes that really do enhance and enrich the film--while other times, it's inessential. The 19 minutes added to AMERICAN GANGSTER add little to the film other than superfluous bloat. Scott doesn't offer these alternate cuts to illustrate dissatisfaction but rather, just as a bonus for fans. They're scenes or plot threads he decided not to use, but if you're so inclined, here's what the film looked like at one point. In most cases, Scott's extended versions serve as the cut before the final cut. Oddly, the one recent film of Scott's that feels compromised in its released version and really does warrant a director's cut is 2012's PROMETHEUS, and it has yet to materialize other than a handful of deleted scenes on the Blu-ray.

Scott's 2013 film THE COUNSELOR was just released on Blu-ray with both the 117-minute theatrical version (reviewed here) and a 138-minute "unrated extended cut." The film opened to some of the most toxic reviews of the year in what quickly became a ludicrous pile-on, culminating in numerous blurbs that it was the worst movie of the year, with Salon's Andrew O'Hehir going even further than that by declaring, in a stunning example of over-the-top hyperbole that should effectively prevent him from ever being taken seriously again, "Meet the new worst movie ever made." Audiences despised it and the film scored a D on the witless CinemaScore. But then, something odd happened, and it happened quickly. Buzz started spreading around the internet that THE COUNSELOR wasn't nearly as bad as the reviews suggested and that, if approached with an open mind and an appreciation for the work of novelist Cormac McCarthy, making his screenwriting debut, it proved a rewarding experience. By the end of its second, and in most of the country, last week of release, it had already transformed from much-maligned box-office bomb to a genuine cult film that didn't get a fair shake from critics. I was discussing THE COUNSELOR with a friend on Facebook recently and someone commented "Were the critics watching the movie or were they watching each other?"

As I stated in my original review from October 2013, THE COUNSELOR is a mess but it's a fascinating mess. If you didn't like the theatrical version, then there's little chance that the extended cut will change your feelings. Given the verbose nature of what we've already seen, the bulk of the additional 21 minutes primarily consist of dialogue, something which the theatrical cut of THE COUNSELOR certainly wasn't lacking (some of the scenes in the late-going occur in a slightly different order as well). There's some additional dirty talk during the opening with Michael Fassbender and Penelope Cruz in bed. There's a long monologue for Bruno Ganz as the Amsterdam diamond dealer. There's a new intro for drug-running motorcyclist The Green Hornet (Richard Cabral), who tells a joke about dog food and "licking your balls." The already-infamous "Cameron Diaz fucks a car" sequence is augmented by some additional graphic details from Javier Bardem. The death of one major character is much gorier in the extended version. None of these scenes really add any depth to the film, and though Ganz is terrific in his additional footage, you can see it's one of those scenes that an experienced director of Scott's caliber could see wasn't really essential. The same goes for a comical throwaway scene of one of Bardem's cheetahs crashing a neighbor's backyard barbecue.

Aside from the additional 21 minutes (the extended cut is only available on the two-disc Blu-ray set, with the theatrical version on the other disc), the highlight of the second disc is the documentary/visual essay "Truth of the Situation: Making THE COUNSELOR." Described as an "immersive experience" and running a whopping 216 minutes, "Truth" covers just about anything a fan of THE COUNSELOR would want to know. It's part audio commentary with Scott, with the extended version of the film frequently intercut with corresponding behind-the-scenes footage and cast & crew interviews. Scott is blunt about what works and what doesn't (the extended cut contains a gratuitous and unconvincing shot of one character's severed head and Scott says "I think I'm glad I cut that"), and it's the kind of extra usually reserved for something along the lines of a Criterion release, a fascinating journey inside a film whose tattered reputation was already on the mend before it even left theaters.

Scott seems to be of the opinion that he's happy with the theatrical version, and I'd probably go that route on future viewings. It's a film of odd rhythms and heavy dialogue that requires patience, and with the 21 minutes added to the extended cut, things do get occasionally tedious. Admirers of THE COUNSELOR--a continually growing lot--will want to check out the extended cut and the absolutely essential "Truth of the Matter," which will only expand their appreciation of one of 2013's strangest and most misunderstood major-studio releases. And, like Scott has said in the past: both versions are here...choose the one you prefer.

3 DAYS TO KILL
(France/US - 2014)

Directed by McG. Written by Adi Hasak and Luc Besson. Cast: Kevin Costner, Amber Heard, Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen, Tomas Lemarquis, Richard Sammel, Eriq Ebouaney, Raymond J. Barry, Marc Andreoni, Bruno Ricci. (PG-13, 115 mins)

Luc Besson didn't put forth much effort in the construction of his latest Paris-based actioner 3 DAYS TO KILL. The whole thing feels like a cut-and-paste job comprised of elements pilfered from past Besson projects like THE PROFESSIONAL (1994), TRANSPORTER 2 (2005), TAKEN (2009), and FROM PARIS WITH LOVE (2010). Just a month after we saw him playing the mentor role to the inexperienced titular hero in JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT, 59-year-old Kevin Costner tries to horn in on Liam Neeson's aging action hero turf but it doesn't work nearly as well. TAKEN was a lightning-in-a-bottle phenomenon, a surprise blockbuster that was almost sent straight-to-DVD before Fox decided to dump it in US theaters a year after its European release. Neeson's career was in a commercial slump and nobody expected much from it. Instead, it became a genuine word-of-mouth hit--something we don't see much of anymore--and it revitalized Neeson's career, making him more popular than ever and now, at 61, he can still be counted on for a TAKEN knockoff almost annually (NON-STOP, aka TAKEN ON A PLANE, is out next week). With his "very particular set of skills," everything just fell into place for Neeson with TAKEN. Costner tries, but doesn't quite pull off the "dangerous badass" bit, though with his character's gravelly voice and his grumpy, sardonic demeanor throughout, he almost approximates what might've happened if the Clint Eastwood of 20 years ago ended up in a Luc Besson joint.

But Costner's not the problem with 3 DAYS TO KILL. With the possible exception of WATERWORLD, he's never really done the "indestructible action hero" thing and seems to be enjoying himself and his paid Paris vacation. Costner is Ethan Renner, a covert CIA operative with a nagging cough who lets a pair of targets--Eurotrash terrorist The Wolf (Richard Sammel) and his right-hand man The Albino (Tomas Lemarquis)--slip away during a botched assignment in Belgrade. While hospitalized, tests show that Ethan is terminally ill with brain cancer that's spread to his lungs. Given three months to live, he decides to quit the business and spend what little time he has left reconnecting with his estranged wife Tina (Connie Nielsen), who works in Paris, and teenage daughter Zooey (Hailee Steinfeld, from the TRUE GRIT remake). It's easier said than done, since they're not pleased that he essentially abandoned them for his job five years earlier (Zooey thinks he's a salesman), but especially when he's hounded by sultry CIA assassin Vivi Delay (Amber Heard), who demands that he finish the job. She even offers him an experimental cancer treatment that might extend his life. The Wolf and The Albino tried to set off a dirty bomb in Belgrade and Vivi has tracked them to Paris, conveniently enough. But when Tina goes away on business for the weekend, Ethan is left to take care of Zooey for three days, which really interferes with his ability to knock off this One Last Job.

Brainless action flicks can be a blast when done right and for a while, under the direction of CHARLIE'S ANGELS hack McG, 3 DAYS TO KILL zips along just fine. But then it starts exhibiting some of the same problems that plague many recent Besson works (especially last year's THE FAMILY) in that he can't settle on a tone or style and the whole thing ends up feeling like a patched-together jumble. 3 DAYS TO KILL is an action thriller, a slapstick comedy, disease-of-the-week melodrama, and sappy daddy/daughter weepie all awkwardly crammed into one. Costner's crankiness provides some amusement (when confronted with one intentionally trite bit of dialogue, he growls "Did you really just say that to me?"), but his scenes with Steinfeld feel forced and never ring true. Sloppy editing doesn't help--after they have a huge blow-up, there's a cut to him showing her how to ride a bike like nothing ever happened. A lot of time is devoted to Ethan shaking down a pair of Wolf flunkies--driver Mitat (Marc Andreoni) and accountant Guido (Bruno Ricci)--with ripped-off armpit hair and car battery-cables-on-the ears torture scenes played for laughs. There's also a "heartwarming" subplot that has Ethan bonding with a family of squatters led by wise patriarch Jules (Eriq Ebouaney, best known as the killer Black Tie in De Palma's FEMME FATALE) who have taken up residence in his Paris apartment. There's also time for Ethan rescuing Zooey from an attempted gang rape at a rave where McG winkingly restages a famous image from THE BODYGUARD, plus a strange scene where Ethan teaches Zooey how to slow dance to Bread's "Make it With You" in a moment that invokes the kind of squirming discomfort not seen since Michael Bluth and Maeby Fünke sang "Afternoon Delight" on ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.

All of this could be entertaining if Besson could settle on what movie he was telling McG to make. The film often feels like it's been edited at random and may very well have been victimized by post-production reshoots and restructuring. There's a few scenes where the pitch of actors' voices change and the dialogue doesn't match their lip movements. Heard sounds dubbed in a lot of her scenes. She's pretty terrible here in the latest failed attempt to make Amber Heard happen. It doesn't help that Besson and McG have no idea what to do with her, so they just let her periodically drop in, preen, and strut in a variety of wigs and provocative outfits and flirt with Costner. She's basically another incarnation of Kate Nauta's memorably lethal killer in TRANSPORTER 2, but Heard isn't believably intimidating, has no screen presence, and is all vamping and smirks. She looks stunning but there's nothing else there (imagine how much fun someone like Besson's ex-wife Milla Jovovich would've been in this role). You could argue that she doesn't feel like she belongs in the film, but you could say that about every subplot that's randomly inserted by the filmmakers. McG also gets careless when it comes to covering Costner's stunt double, including one badly-blocked fight scene where "Costner" is only shown from the shoulders down with occasional cuts to close-ups of his face in what feels like an homage to the last decade of Steven Seagal's career.

Despite some good work by Costner, it's doubtful 3 DAYS TO KILL will lead to future endeavors for him as a Neeson-esque asskicker for the Social Security set. He's credible in the part and looks much younger than a guy pushing 60, but Costner is an actor whose heroic characters have always been more the pensive, earnest, introspective sort. 3 DAYS TO KILL gives him a nice change of pace but it fails to play to his strengths (though, to its credit, an establishing shot of the Eiffel Tower isn't accompanied by the caption "Paris"). Of course, Neeson wasn't an action guy either until TAKEN happened to make him one, but by this point in time, it's a formula that's getting too predictable to even function as time-killing comfort food. From the moment 3 DAYS TO KILL's trailer bowed a few months back, it was obvious that this was "Kevin Costner's TAKEN." The busy actor (who was also very good in last year's disappointing MAN OF STEEL) will next be seen as the beleaguered general manager of the Cleveland Browns in Ivan Reitman's football saga DRAFT DAY, due out in April, putting Costner back in his familiar BULL DURHAM/TIN CUP/FOR LOVE OF THE GAME sports stomping ground that's always been a proven winner with his fans. But second-rate action movies with Amber Heard? He's getting too old for this shit.

In Theaters: THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013)

In Theaters/On VOD: THE BEST OFFER (2014)

On DVD/Blu-ray: NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR (2013); SWEETWATER (2013); and LAST LOVE (2013)

Cult Classics Revisited: HANDS OF STEEL (1986)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE ACT OF KILLING (2013) and WE ARE WHAT WE ARE (2013)

In Theaters: LONE SURVIVOR (2013)

On DVD/Blu-ray: SHORT TERM 12 (2013) and BLUE CAPRICE (2013)

On DVD/Blu-ray/Netflix streaming: +1 (2013); TOAD ROAD (2013); and BLINDSIDED (2014)

In Theaters: JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT (2014)

Cult Classics Revisited: THE CASSANDRA CROSSING (1977)

On DVD/Blu-ray: IN A WORLD... (2013) and SUNLIGHT JR. (2013)

In Theaters/On VOD: ENEMIES CLOSER (2014)

On DVD/Blu-ray: JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA (2013); DON JON (2013); and DARK TOUCH (2013)

On DVD/Blu-ray: BANSHEE CHAPTER (2013) and RUNNER RUNNER (2013)

In Theaters/On VOD: A FIELD IN ENGLAND (2014)

In Theaters: THE MONUMENTS MEN (2014)

In Theaters: ROBOCOP (2014)

On DVD/Blu-ray: HAUNTER (2013); ENOUGH SAID (2013); and HOW I LIVE NOW (2013)

On Blu-ray: THE COUNSELOR: UNRATED EXTENDED CUT (2013)

In Theaters: 3 DAYS TO KILL (2014)