Good Efficient Butchery

WITCHBOARD
(US - 1986)

Written and directed by Kevin S. Tenney. Cast: Todd Allen, Tawny Kitaen, Stephen Nichols, Rose Marie, Kathleen Wilhoite, Burke Byrnes, J.P. Luebsen, James W. Quinn, Judy Tatum. (R, 98 mins)

With countless iconic slasher films and monster movies with then-state of the art makeup effects to cut their teeth on, horror fans who came of age in the '80s are perhaps the most sentimental about their movies. But with that comes the risk of being sentimental for the era rather than the movies themselves. There's no doubt that the '80s were a great time to be a horror fan, but--and we're all guilty of it--sometimes we champion films today that play a lot better in our memories than they do in present-day reality. Sometimes this nostalgia backfires and you find something you held dear really isn't all that good. Do you leave it alone or do you risk taking another look? I hadn't seen 1986's WITCHBOARD since perhaps 1990. I had no strong affinity for it but recall it being a competently-done B-movie from back in the day. It was recently released on Blu-ray by Shout! Factory and I decided to give it another look after approximately 25 years.

Shot in the summer of 1985 and given a limited release at the end of 1986 (I assume to build word-of-mouth momentum and not to qualify for the Oscars) before expanding nationwide in March 1987, WITCHBOARD, written and directed by a debuting Kevin S. Tenney, became a surprise hit in theaters and was an even bigger success in video stores. Children of the '80s have held it near and dear to their hearts and it's become a genuine cult classic over the years. Of course, this is due not just to the film itself but also the short-lived pop culture phenomenon that was Tawny Kitaen. The sexy redhead had a few films under her belt, most notably playing Tom Hanks' fiancée in BACHELOR PARTY (1984) and starring in the softcore cable favorite THE PERILS OF GWENDOLINE IN THE LAND OF YIK YAK (also 1984). She was also a noted "video vixen" of the hair metal era, appearing on the cover of Ratt's 1984 album Out of the Cellar, as well as a couple of their videos, in addition to dating Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby. But it was 1987 that proved to be Kitaen's breakout year with both WITCHBOARD and her involvement with Whitesnake frontman David Coverdale. The pair became an item after Kitaen appeared in several of the band's videos and were married from 1989 to 1991. Kitaen's fame was fleeting, and by the early '90s and onward, her acting gigs were sporadic while her tabloid notoriety increased due to a drug bust, a DUI, later accusations of spousal abuse by her second husband, major league baseball pitcher Chuck Finley, and, perhaps most cringe-inducing, a several-year fling with O.J. Simpson that apparently dated back to her WITCHBOARD days (on the bonus features, crew members recall Simpson's frequent calls to the production office and visits to Kitaen's trailer) and through her marriage to Coverdale. All things considered, it was inevitable that Kitaen would end up on trashy reality shows like THE SURREAL LIFE and CELEBRITY REHAB, but looking back, she does an alright job in WITCHBOARD. She's no great actress by any stretch, but she's got a presence that's both seductive and wholesomely appealing in equal measures. She clearly got sucked into the L.A. fast lane, though let's place the blame where it probably lies: O.J. Simpson.

Anyway, how does WITCHBOARD hold up? Fairly well. Some of it is obviously dated (check out Steel Breeze's closing credits tune "Bump in the Night"), some of the smartass quips Tenney supplies his actors with are real groaners (when told he's rude, the hero huffs "I got a D in manners!"), some attempts at humor fall embarrassingly flat (what's with Burke Byrnes' detective teaching himself to juggle?), and the "falling" effect used in the climax (hooking star Todd Allen up to a rig and slowly pushing him out of a second story window and lowering him onto a car) is laughable. But Tenney does a commendable job with cheap jump scares and building suspense. There's always an inherent unease in any situation where people are communicating with spirits and Tenney handles these elements like an experienced pro. All hell breaks loose when Linda (Kitaen) starts putzing around with a Ouija board left at her house after a party by her ex-boyfriend Brandon (Stephen Nichols, then a popular star of DAYS OF OUR LIVES). Brandon and Linda were communicating with David, the spirit of a murdered eight-year-old boy, much to the dismissive derision of her boyfriend Jim (Allen) and his blue collar buddies. Using the Ouija board on her own, Linda thinks she's communicating with David, thus ignoring Brandon's warnings to never do the Ouija alone and that spirits often lie. It turns out she's communicating with the spirit of axe murderer Malfeitor (J.P. Luebsen), who then uses Linda as a portal to re-enter the world and off those closest to her.

One thing that's legitimately surprising in WITCHBOARD (other than the presence of '60s TV star Rose Marie as Linda's landlady) is the little bait-and-switch Tenney pulls with the two male leads. It's established that the two were once best friends who became bitter enemies when Linda started dating Jim. When introduced as "Brandon Sinclair of the Sinclair Vineyards," there's practically a flashing neon sign that Nichols' character is going to be a stuffy, condescending asshole and a sort-of James Spader prototype, if you will. But as the film proceeds, Brandon emerges as the sympathetic voice of reason who's acting in Linda's best interests while Jim comes off as an increasingly abrasive prick. I'm even willing to entertain the possibility that the dismal one-liners that Tenney gives to Allen's Jim are intentionally so, as if to illustrate that Jim is a smug dick who isn't nearly as funny as he thinks he is (Tenney has said that he based Jim on his own personality, so interpret that how you will). Additionally, once Linda starts showing signs of possession--what Brandon calls "progressive entrapment"--Kitaen is essentially relegated to the background while Jim and Brandon set aside their differences to find out what's happening to her. Another big surprise is how little screen time Luebsen has as Malfeitor. In the two and a half decades since I last watched this, his grinning, axe-wielding visage is really the only thing I recalled, with the possible exception of Kathleen Wilhoite (who had just teamed up with Charles Bronson in MURPHY'S LAW) totally Wilhoiting it up as a medium with her "psychic humor." What a shock to see that he's onscreen for a total of maybe five seconds in a dream sequence where Linda sees herself being decapitated. It's such an effective shock, and Luebsen is made up in such a memorably creepy fashion that his appearance, however brief, really sticks with you.

WITCHBOARD isn't as stylish as a lot of its contemporaries but it works well within the confines of its budget. It often looks like a TV-movie, but the score by Dennis Michael Tenney (the director's brother) has a nice Italian horror feel to it that lends the film some big-screen personality. Of course, the murder scenes are nicely splattery but not too over-the-top. As far as '80s horror classics go, it's no FRIDAY THE 13TH or A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, but WITCHBOARD proves to be a case where, other than the hair and the fashions, time has generally been kind. It's harmless, cheesy fun that never takes itself too seriously but is refreshingly lacking the sense of ironic self-consciousness that would permeate it if it were made (or, God forbid, remade) today. That sense of fun is infectious on the Blu-ray's newly-recorded commentary track with Tenney, Nichols, Wilhoite, and co-star James D. Quinn (who plays Jim's buddy, an early Malfeitor victim). They share a lot of production memories and get a lot of laughs out of the big cordless phones, the big answering machines, and Kitaen's big hair ("She looks like a lion!"), but they do have a tendency to have so much fun that they're sometimes reduced to just giggling. There's quite a bit of vintage on-set interviews and a making-of, plus a commentary track with Tenney and the producers that was ported over from Anchor Bay's DVD from a decade ago. There's also a newly-filmed, 45-minute retrospective titled "Progressive Entrapment" that features all the main players, including Allen reminiscing about Kitaen's "great bod and great boobs," Luebsen, who now actually looks like Malfeitor, and likably self-deprecating comments by Nichols, Wilhoite ("I was gonna be a rock star, I was gonna win Academy Awards!"), and Quinn ("Looking back twenty-some years...long hair, sunglasses on all the time...what was I thinking?"). Kitaen, who's had some cosmetic work done, also appears through the Barbara Walters/Diane Sawyer lens filter. The extras on this release are seemingly bottomless, and with the HD transfer making it look as good as it possibly can, this is as close as WITCHBOARD fans will get to a Criterion-level package.

"This Time, It's Not a Sequel"

WITCHBOARD was successful enough that it made Tenney a "name" B-lister for several years. His 1988 film NIGHT OF THE DEMONS has enjoyed a similar cult following, and he directed the Robert Forster/Robert Davi sci-fi outing PEACEMAKER in 1990. In 1989, Tenney made WITCHTRAP, which featured Luebsen, Quinn, and others who had smaller bits in WITCHBOARD, plus cult horror favorite Linnea Quigley. It wasn't a sequel to WITCHBOARD but everyone did their damnedest to make it appear so. Magnum Entertainment's VHS box boasted artwork that blatantly imitated WITCHBOARD's but also contained a stipulation that "This film is not a sequel to WITCHBOARD." Tenney delivered a belated official sequel with 1993's WITCHBOARD 2: THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY, which featured no returning cast members. Tenney scripted 1995's WITCHBOARD: THE POSSESSION, but handed directing chores off to Peter Svatek. Tenney's career seems to be more or less on hiatus as his last film of note--and dubious note at that--is the straight-to-video, Charlie Sheen-less sequel ARRIVAL II (1998). He hasn't made a film since the PG-rated, family-friendly teen movie BIGFOOT (2009), where the title creature appears to be the tattered remains of a HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS costume that Tenney found in a dumpster on the Universal backlot.

ICE SOLDIERS
(Canada - 2014)

If you can imagine SHOCK WAVES caught in the Polar Vortex and paired with UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, but brought down by sluggish pacing and lackluster greenscreen and CGI, then you've got a pretty good idea of how ICE SOLDIERS plays out. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, while America is focused on Cuba, the Russians have deployed three genetically-engineered super soldiers to launch a terrorist attack on NYC. But their plane crashes in the barren tundra of northernmost Canada and they're discovered by some scientists at a nearby military base, who are promptly killed as the "Ice Soldiers" vanish in the endless, frozen wilderness. 50 years later, scientists Malraux (Dominic Purcell) and Lobokoff (Nicu Branzea) get funding from an oil company to ostensibly drill for crude but really to search for the Ice Soldiers, who Malraux believes are still at large. Also along are micro-managing oil company ballbuster Frazer (Camille Sullivan), who hired a crew of money-hungry crew of mercenaries led by Col. Trump (the great Michael Ironside). With a blizzard on the way, Frazer and Trump call an early end to the expedition until Malraux discovers the frozen bodies of the three Ice Soldiers who, miraculously, still show faint signs of life. Frazer and Trump see endless riches but Malraux has a change of heart and tries to terminate the life support for the Ice Soldiers, who proceed to kill everyone but Malraux and again escape. On his own in the middle of nowhere, Malraux encounters Native American TC Cardinal (Adam Beach) and hires him to help track the Ice Soldiers, who have retained their intelligence and still plan to go forth with their half-century-old plan of attacking NYC.

Directed by Sturla Gunnarsson (BEOWOLF & GRENDEL) and written by Jonathan Tydor (I COME IN PEACE), ICE SOLDIERS gets off to a decent start and gets a lift from an enjoyably growly Ironside in vintage "Michael Ironside" mode. Even Purcell is better than usual and the film has some amusingly goofy asides, like the Ice Soldiers commandeering an SUV and discovering their affinity for rap music and trashy women. But with 90% of the cast killed off by the midway point, the pace slows significantly and Gunnarsson and Tydor fall victim to clichés and plot convenience. Of course Cardinal has a drinking problem. And when the trail of the Ice Soldiers leads Malraux and Cardinal to the nearest town, they're immediately arrested for no reason other than increasing the body count when the dumb--and soon-to-be dead--cops don't buy their story. By the time Malraux brawls it out with the lead Ice Soldier (Gabriel Hogan), it's very likely that you'll be as checked out of this as its makers. (R, 95 mins)

RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE
(US - 2014)

There's a sharp satirical bite to the concept behind this faux-documentary from NYC-based British indie filmmaker Ashley Cahill. Filmed in 2010 under the title CHARM and shown on the festival circuit under that title as well as MALCOLM before its current rechristening, RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE stars writer/director/producer/editor Cahill as Malcolm, a seemingly affable Manhattan doorman who moonlights as a serial killer whose exploits are being chronicled by documentary filmmaker Bob (Dominic Ciccodicola). Citing Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and Scorsese's MEAN STREETS and TAXI DRIVER as influences (and dedicating the film to Samuel Fuller), Cahill's biggest debt is probably owed to Remy Belvaux's MAN BITES DOG as Malcolm sets out to avenge the gentrification of NYC and return it to its sleazy and dangerous glory days of the '70s and '80s. AMERICAN PSYCHO-as-a-mockumentary wears a little thin after a while and Cahill falls victim to intermittent self-indulgence, but there's a lot of genuinely sick laughs throughout, whether Malcolm is confronted with such offenses as homeless people asking for his pizza but complaining because it's not vegetarian ("You're a bum, you're begging for food and you won't eat meat? What happened to this city?"), vacuous poseurs who wear homemade Truffaut and Godard tees but don't appreciate Clint Eastwood and HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER ("Is that the one with the monkey?" someone asks), vegans, thumb rings, movie theater texters ("Do you know how difficult it is to get a film released? Have some respect for the cinema!"), and trendy bands ("If I could kill any band in the world, it would be Kings of Leon"). There's also some hints at sly meta commentary on battles between producers and directors when Malcolm starts clashing with Bob over the goals of the documentary and the direction in which it's heading. Cahill doesn't really explore the ramifications of his actions until an admittedly inspired finale that feels like TAXI DRIVER if rewritten by Larry David. Not everything in RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE works and it ultimately feels like a drawn-out MAN BITES DOG tribute as seen through the lens of a trust-fund Abel Ferrara, but when it works--which is more often than not--it works well, and I liked the vibe that Cahill captures amidst the jarring mix of laugh-out-loud humor and shocking violence. As an actor, he comes off as an odd and funny combination of Stephen Merchant and William Fichtner. Also with Dustin Hoffman's dead ringer son Jake as a gun dealer and a cameo by Cahill pal Kirsten Dunst as herself. Co-produced by Wes Craven's son Jon. (Unrated, 87 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)

Note: though in English, this is the French trailer for the film, hence the "Un Film de Ashley Cahill," which is not some pretentiously douchey stab at humor on his part.

POMPEII
(Canada/Germany - 2014)

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Written by Janet Scott Batchler, Lee Batchler, and Michael Robert Johnson. Cast: Kit Harington, Carrie-Anne Moss, Kiefer Sutherland, Emily Browning, Jared Harris, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jessica Lucas, Joe Pingue, Sasha Roiz, Currie Graham. (PG-13, 105 mins)

In the 20 years since his 1994 debut SHOPPING, Paul W.S. Anderson has been an unabashedly style-over-substance filmmaker both reviled as a hack and a charlatan and praised as an unsung visionary. He first gained attention for 1995's video-game adaptation MORTAL KOMBAT, which led to SHOPPING getting a belated US release in 1996 courtesy of Roger Corman. EVENT HORIZON (1997) and SOLDIER (1998) quickly followed, but it was 2002's RESIDENT EVIL that seems to have set the course for his career. A hit worldwide, RESIDENT EVIL spawned its own sequel (2004's RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE) that Anderson handed off to the hapless Alexander Witt so he could instead focus on 2004's AVP: ALIEN VS. PREDATOR, a botched misfire that proved to the nadir of two legendary franchises, with one of the most tragically prophetic tag lines ("Whoever wins, we lose") ever plastered on a one-sheet. The miserable AVP essentially killed any momentum Anderson might've had going, and he's been fighting against the backlash since. Even as the terrifying EVENT HORIZON has found a significant cult following after being met with shrugs 17 years ago, and SOLDIER seems a bit better now than it did then, there hasn't been and likely will not be a reassessment of AVP. It's a terrible movie with almost no redeeming qualities, but it's well past the time to stop making it Anderson's albatross.

To his credit, Anderson soldiered on with the entertaining DEATH RACE 2000 reboot DEATH RACE (2008). He stayed peripherally involved with the RESIDENT EVIL films, with Russell Mulcahy (HIGHLANDER) helming 2007's RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION, but returned to direct 2010's brilliant RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE, a visual stunner in 3-D on the big screen, with an outstanding Tomandandy score. Anderson's been working exclusively in 3-D since, and he's proven to be one of the few directors to consistently use the frequently superfluous gimmick effectively. Anderson's 2011 reimagining of THE THREE MUSKETEERS boasted some astonishing production design but no one really needed a PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN-inspired take on Dumas, and 2012's RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION was OK but felt like AFTERLIFE leftovers. Anderson's had moments of greatness in his career but I don't know that I'd go so far as to call him a "visionary." One term that's often used to describe many of his films is "guilty pleasure," and I've even described them that way myself, as if it's necessary to justify enjoying an entertaining movie. But it begs the question: how many guilty pleasures does the guy have to make before he finally gets credit as a capable genre craftsman?

Anderson is back with POMPEII, a spectacular epic that opens in 62 AD with Roman general Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland) ordering the massacre of an entire Celtic settlement in Britannia. One boy, Milo, survives and is immediately abducted by slave dealers. 17 years later, the grown Milo (GAME OF THRONES' Kit Harington) is sold to gluttonous, Nero-like slave owner Graeceus (Joe Pingue) and sent with others to the majestic Pompeii, a city near the base of the mighty Mount Vesuvius. Milo immediately proves his worth by being a Horse Whisperer of sorts for the kindly Cassia (SUCKER PUNCH's Emily Browning), daughter of spineless Pompeii leader Severus (Jared Harris) and his wife Aurelia (Carrie-Anne Moss). He's also pitted against the champion slave warrior Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who's--wait for it--one victory away from winning his freedom (is there any chance they won't set aside their differences and form an unlikely alliance?). Meanwhile, Severus is dealing with a visit from now-Senator Corvus, who makes it quite clear that he intends to make Cassia his bride despite her obvious feelings for Milo, and all the while, like a giant symbol of the treachery and smoldering passion in the city below, Vesuvius churns, gurgles and burps, the hellfire within ready to boil over and explode, unleashing hell.

POMPEII is a silly and formulaic movie, but it's a lot of fun. Anderson is a director who uses extensive CGI but he puts care into it, ensuring that it doesn't look cartoonish like, say, Renny Harlin's recent THE LEGEND OF HERCULES. POMPEII boasts a $100 million budget, and it's pretty much all up there on the screen. While the CGI is unavoidable, there's also elaborate sets that really lend legitimate atmosphere and help convey the feeling of an ancient era. It still doesn't look as good as THE TEN COMMANDMENTS or SPARTACUS, but this is another time and for better or worse, CGI is just how it's done now, and to Anderson's credit, he doesn't cut corners in the visual presentation. The storyline and character arcs offer little in the way of surprises, but true to his style-over-substance methods, Anderson makes sure the audience gets what it came for: action, fight scenes, romance, outstanding visual effects, and even some humor (watch one particularly loathsome character get hit with a fireball that Vesuvius seems to be aiming right at him). Harington and Browning aren't the most dynamic leads and Moss has almost nothing to do, but veteran character actor Akinnuoye-Agbaje steals every scene he's in and he and Harington convincingly convey the camaraderie and mutual respect in their newly-formed alliance. They aren't quite Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode in SPARTACUS, but they do a nice job. The biggest misstep POMPEII makes is the horrible miscasting of Sutherland as Corvus. Given the pulpy nature of the project, Corvus is a character that doesn't demand full-blown self-parody but really needs some over-the-top scenery-chewing. Sutherland seems torn between playing it straight and hamming it up and ends up somewhere in an inert middle that never really works. If you're going to play a preening, pompous Roman senator and you opt to use a lisp and a vaguely Irish brogue, then you may as well just completely throw yourself into it. Ultimately, Sutherland never looks comfortable and his stilted performance--a Razzie nomination is inevitable--comes off like he's doing a restrained, monotone impression of Dr. Evil's ancient Roman ancestor. Not since Jason Robards' deer-in-the-headlights portrayal of Brutus in 1970's JULIUS CAESAR has a good actor come off so badly in this type of setting.

If you aren't a fan of Anderson's past work, this isn't likely to change your opinion, but if you can take his films at face value and just appreciate his newest effort for the commercial genre fare that it is, POMPEII makes for a good guilty ple...uh, I mean, entertaining popcorn movie that you shouldn't have to concoct excuses for enjoying.

NON-STOP
(US/France/UK - 2014)

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Written by John W. Richardson, Chris Roach, and Ryan Engle. Cast: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Michelle Dockery, Scoot McNairy, Nate Parker, Corey Stoll, Linus Roache, Anson Mount, Shea Whigham, Lupita Nyong'o, Omar Metwally, Jason Butler Harner, Frank Deal, Corey Hawkins, Jon Abrahams. (PG-13, 106 mins)

No one expected 2009's TAKEN to turn the now-61-year-old Liam Neeson into the modern-day Charles Bronson and an icon of AARP asskickers (how is he not in EXPENDABLES 3?), but he's carved a niche for himself at a time when most actors his age are settling into character parts and elder statesman roles. Sometimes, as in the case of Neeson and Kevin Costner, star of last week's 3 DAYS TO KILL, which looks and feels like it was written for Neeson, a good actor can dabble in both. Neeson's latest is NON-STOP, and a cursory glance at the poster art and the trailer might suggest it's TAKEN ON A PLANE but that's an incorrect assumption. True, it probably wouldn't exist had TAKEN never happened, but in the hands of underrated director Jaume Collet-Serra, it plays a lot like a Hitchcockian "wrong man" situation in the era of post-9/11 security and technology. Collet-Serra, a former music video director, has turned into a solid suspense craftsman after an inauspicious debut with the 2005 remake of HOUSE OF WAX, where he was saddled with the then-ubiquitous Paris Hilton in co-starring role. But even in retrospect, HOUSE OF WAX shows a method to Collet-Serra's madness: as a filmmaker, he's rooted in the classics, even if HOUSE OF WAX was a dumb remake of a beloved horror film (1953's HOUSE OF WAX, itself a remake of 1933's THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM). After the barely-seen soccer sequel GOAL II: LIVING THE DREAM (2007), Collet-Serra established his bona fides with 2009's ORPHAN, a BAD SEED-inspired thriller with a deliriously gonzo plot twist that has to be seen to be believed, and 2011's UNKNOWN, his first teaming with Neeson, where the star found himself in the middle of another classic old-school suspense thriller standard: a man waking up from an accident to find that those closest to him have no idea who he is and that he's being pursued by killers for reasons he doesn't know or can't remember.

NEESON!

Like TAKEN's absent-dad-trying-to-make-good Bryan Mills and THE GREY's suicidal John Ottway, NON-STOP's Bill Marks is another flawed Neeson hero with a certain amount of baggage. Marks is a Federal Air Marshal with alcohol and money problems. Of course, his wife and kid are out of the picture and all he's got is his job and he's barely holding on to that. Haggard and bleary-eyed, Marks boards his latest assignment, a flight from New York to London that's so routine that he thinks nothing of downing a shot beforehand, keeping a flask in his jacket pocket, attempting to order a gin & tonic from flight attendant Nancy (DOWNTON ABBEY's Michelle Dockery), who knows he's on the job and brings him water instead, and occasionally heading to the restroom to smoke. It's business as usual until Marks gets a text from someone onboard the plane demanding $150 million or a passenger will be killed every 20 minutes. The spoilers start pretty quickly, so to recount any more of the plot would do a disservice, but with each new development and each new corpse, it becomes clear to Marks--and only Marks--that someone among the passengers is trying to frame him and orchestrate this elaborate scenario as a hijacking by an angry, bitter, paranoid alcoholic who can't be trusted with the lives of innocent people.

NEESON!

There's little new or innovative here, but for a good chunk of its duration, NON-STOP is exactly that in terms of nail-biting suspense. It's great fun watching an appropriately disheveled-looking Neeson grow increasingly desperate and angry when everyone--the pilot (Linus Roache), a second marshal (Anson Mount), his TSA boss on the ground (Shea Whigham), Jen (Julianne Moore), the woman sitting next to him, and even the sympathetic Nancy--dismisses the situation as Marks' imagination run wild or just presuming he's on yet another bender ("Really, Bill? How many have you had today?"). When Collet-Serra focuses on these interactions--Marks' frazzled paranoia as he looks more guilty by the minute and loses the confidence of the flight crew (he's eventually denied access to the cockpit after the pilot demands his badge and gun), the increasingly irate passengers plotting to subdue Marks and take over the plane--NON-STOP is tremendously entertaining. Of course, numerous passengers--a hot-headed, homophobic NYC cop (Corey Stoll), a software programmer (Nate Parker), a nerdy schoolteacher on his way to Amsterdam (Scoot McNairy), a Muslim doctor (Omar Metwally), Jen, who was peculiarly adamant about getting a window seat and was hesitant to discuss her career with Marks, and even the co-pilot (Jason Butler Harner), seen by Marks shiftily whispering to his secret girlfriend Nancy--are presented as possible villains, but all the evidence seems to point to Marks. Things do grow more implausible, but when done right, that can be part of the fun.

NEESON!

The plot turns and plot holes that abound late in NON-STOP are a bit too silly and nonsensical to overcome, but what really dampens the finale is the usual shitty CGI. Again, it's difficult to discuss without spoiling the plot, but it's another case where something that should look spectacular looks like it was taken from a video game on short notice. Admittedly, my complaining about cut-rate CGI is pretty much beating a dead horse at this point, but there's no reason for AIRPLANE! to have more convincing visual effects in 1980 than NON-STOP does today. Even a scene on the runway is obviously done with a greenscreen. Really? You can't even drag the actors out to a runway and shoot it for real anymore? Some say it doesn't matter, but when the artifice sticks out like a sore thumb in 2014, it does matter. Or, if you can't do it for real, can you at least make it look convincing? It can be done. You'd be surprised how many streets and backgrounds and buildings in movies and TV are CGI or greenscreen effects. But when time and care are put into it, you can't tell. The best CGI doesn't draw attention to itself. I get that CGI is here to stay, but quit half-assing it. When it stops taking me out of the movie, I'll stop bitching. Until Collet-Serra basically steps aside to let the CGI team take over, NON-STOP is quintessential post-TAKEN Neeson, right down to the usual "particular set of skills" gravitas inherent in selling-point lines like "I'm not hijacking this plane...I'm trying to save it!" that sound awesome when said by Liam Neeson. It's not perfect, but it's Neeson, he's bellowing, and he's kicking the shit out of people. Not even some subpar CGI can ruin that.

NEESON!

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR
(France/Belgium/Spain - 2013)

The Palme d'Or winner at last year's Cannes Film Festival has stirred controversy for a number of reasons, from its explicit NC-17 sex scenes to director Abdellatif Kechiche's post-release war of words with stars Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos. The actresses said in interviews that, while they respected the filmmaker, his methods and treatment of the cast and crew (there were also allegations of Kechiche violating French labor practices on set) made for a highly unpleasant atmosphere and they'd probably never work with him again. Kechiche repeatedly lashed out at a lot of people but reserved most of his rage for Seydoux, accusing her of coming to the set unprepared and claiming he unsuccessfully tried to have her replaced. Regardless of whatever turmoil took place, BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is a remarkable achievement, a raw, honest, unflinching look at first love, sexual awakening, and the entire cycle of the relationship between young, inexperienced Adele (Exarchopoulos) and the few years older, free-spirited artist Emma (Seydoux). With the focus on Adele, Kechiche takes his time building the characters and the world in which they live. We see Adele's interactions with her family, her circle of friends, and losing her virginity to nice-guy Thomas (Jeremie Laheurte), who's devastated when she breaks up with him not long after. Adele's journey of self-discovery leads her to Emma, who she originally passed in a crosswalk weeks earlier where the two shared a glance that was enough to tell Adele that Thomas might not be who she wants. Adele accompanies her gay friend Valentin (Sandor Funtek) to a gay/lesbian bar and runs into Emma. The two strike up a flirtation that leads to an all-consuming passion, and Kechiche shows the audience everything: the intimacy, the dynamics, the reactions of friends and family. Anchored by a pair of fearless performances, there are no corners cut, no clichés, and no plot turns that transpire because of convenience.

The sex scenes in BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR caused quite a sensation and make no mistake, the NC-17 rating is earned. But there's nothing trashy or exploitative about them and they aren't what the film is about. They match the intensity of the performances of the two stars, who shared the Best Actress award at Cannes. Seydoux has been seen in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and had a small but memorable role as an assassin in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL, but Exarchopoulos is new to me. It's an astonishing performance and an egregious oversight that she wasn't nominated for an Oscar. Often, Kechiche will just leave the camera lingering on Exarchopoulos' expressive face, and with the film taking place over several years, even her physical transformation from confused and sometimes awkward 17-year-old to a grade-school teacher in her mid 20s feels extensive even though she doesn't pull some De Niro/Christian Bale tricks. The film doesn't feel three hours long, and Kechiche makes every moment and every shot count. Funny, emotional, exhilarating, exhausting and devastating in equal measure (their late-film meet in a coffee shop is just heartbreaking), BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is like an absorbing novel played out on the screen, rich with characterization and detail, and an extraordinary work that will stay with you long after it's over. (NC-17, 180 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)

MR. NOBODY
(France/Germany/Canada/Belgium - 2010/US release 2013)

When Jared Leto started getting accolades for his performance in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, he kept saying it was the first movie he made in six years, even though MR. NOBODY was in limited release just a few weeks prior. He wasn't lying or pretending it didn't exist: MR. NOBODY was filmed in 2007, premiered at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals in 2009 and was released in Europe in 2010 where it's developed a significant cult following. It finally received a very belated US release in the fall of 2013. Leto took a sabbatical from acting after MR. NOBODY, focusing on his band Thirty Seconds to Mars and, under the pseudonym "Bartholomew Cubbins," directing the music industry documentary ARTIFACT, which played the 2012 Toronto Film Festival but still hasn't been picked up for distribution. Leto probably needed a break after the workout he got in MR. NOBODY, an often astonishingly ambitious mind-bender from Belgian filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael (best known for 1991's TOTO THE HERO). Exploring the idea of alternate universes, the Butterfly Effect, and theories of parallel and diverging timelines, MR. NOBODY opens in 2092 and tells the story of 118-year-old Nemo Nobody (Leto), the world's oldest man and also the last mortal on Earth. Some years earlier, humanity was able to achieve "quasi-immortality" via cell regeneration courtesy of pigs. Now, no one ages, no one is born, and no one dies, but it's a rigid, sexless, clean, overly-safe utopia--regarding the Earth of his youth, the aged Mr. Nobody says "There were cars that polluted. We smoked cigarettes. We ate meat. We did everything we can't do in this dump and it was wonderful! Most of the time nothing happened... like a French movie." The world is now how it shall always be, with Mr. Nobody the final relic of a mortal, flawed era. Reflecting on his life to a journalist (Daniel Mays), Mr. Nobody's memories seem inconsistent and incoherent. He tells of multiple lives, wives, children he did or didn't have, jobs he worked, how he had two distinctly different childhoods when his parents (Rhys Ifans, Natasha Little) split up. As nine-year-old Nemo's mother boards a train, Nemo tries to jump on the train--in one memory, he makes it and in the other, he doesn't. But he's lived both existences. The argument is that if one happenstance doesn't occur in one reality, it happens in another simultaneous one. He has multiple lives with three different wives--Anna (Diane Kruger), Elise (Sarah Polley), and Jean (Linh-Dan Pham)--and the circumstances (and the wife) might change several times in a scene.

It's an impressive feat that Van Dormael and his editors manage to keep the potentially unwieldy plot and its endless possible directions on task and coherent. The only recent film that occurs to me that juggles this many complex narratives without dropping the balls is 2012's CLOUD ATLAS. MR. NOBODY has a lot of obvious influences but still manages to be its own film, even if it sometimes feels like Benjamin Button has become unstuck in time and dropped into a precious reimagining of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE directed by Wes Anderson. There's a lot to absorb, though Van Dormael sometimes belabors the point--in one life, Elise is suffering from crippling depression, and around the sixth or seventh Polley crying breakdown, you almost want to tell Van Dormael "OK, we get it"--and he lets the film go on forever (the DVD and the Blu-ray contain his 156-minute unrated director's cut, which runs 18 minutes longer than the barely-released R-rated US theatrical cut). But with its incredible fusion of romance, tragedy, and sci-fi epic, incorporating stylistic and thematic elements of other films as diverse as THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976), DEATH WATCH (1980), SOLARIS (1972), and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) and even taking a version of Mr. Nobody into Neanderthal times as well as a future incarnation living on Mars, MR. NOBODY is quite possibly the most batshit insane, yet oddly touching and sentimental, big-budget epic sci-fi art film that you haven't seen. Also with Juno Temple (unknown when the film was made), Allen Corduner, and an impressive Toby Regbo as the teenage Nemo. (Unrated, 156 mins)

THE LAST DAYS ON MARS
(UK/Ireland - 2013)

Not as good as EUROPA REPORT but still far better than STRANDED, THE LAST DAYS ON MARS is, like those films, another throwback ,'80s-inspired outer space horror outing that only managed the get the slightest of theatrical releases. This one tries to be a thinking person's sci-fi film along the lines of EUROPA REPORT, MOON, and SUNSHINE, but it works best when it's content to be a straight-up B-horror movie. Indeed, MARS gets off to an extremely brisk start for these kinds of things, barely establishing most of the characters before they start getting offed one by one. Then, faced with a lot of time and too few people left to kill, things slow down to the point where it becomes a crushing bore. It almost feels like director Ruairi Robinson and screenwriter Clive Dawson have more highbrow things in mind but decided to get the commercial obligations out of the way first and finding nothing else on their plate to fill the second half of the movie. They should've slowed down and paced themselves for the long haul. And have fun with it--this should've been titled SPACE ZOMBIES or even MARS NEEDS ZOMBIES and just rolled with it.

On the last day of a six-month international mission to the red planet, crew member Marko (Goran Kostic) is investigating trace evidences of life when a crater opens up and sucks him under the Martian surface. Captain Brunel (Elias Koteas) leads some of the crew on a search, and they lose Dalby (Yusra Warsama) in the process. While Brunel and a few others are still out, a zombified Marko and Dalby turn up at the ship and try to kill the others. As the infection spreads and the dead crew members revive to attack, second-in-command Campbell (Liev Schreiber) is forced to find his inner Ripley and take control. LAST DAYS works best in the early going, and it starts so well that it just barrels through its limited number of actors and grinds to a halt right when it should be gaining momentum. It's a backwards approach that might've worked if the filmmakers had anything significant to say, but this isn't exactly hard sci-fi we're dealing with here. It's zombies in space but somehow finds a way to screw it up. With location shooting in the vast deserts of Jordan, LAST DAYS looks terrific, the interiors on the ship have an effectively claustrophobic atmosphere, and the cast (Schreiber and Koteas are good, and there's also Olivia Williams, Romola Garai, and Johnny Harris) is unusually credible for such standard genre fare. It's suspenseful and engrossing for about 50 minutes before its slow, shambling stagger to an unsatisfying conclusion. Universal put up some of the budget, but must not have seen much potential, opting to hand the US distribution rights over to Magnet, who dumped it on 13 screens for a $24,000 gross. (R, 98 mins)

COLD COMES THE NIGHT
(US - 2014)

The late, great Anthony Perkins' son Osgood Perkins co-wrote this drab, tired would-be film noir that offers no suspense and no surprises other than a shockingly bad performance by the usually infallible Bryan Cranston. Using the dual crutches of fading eyesight and a garbled Russian accent, Cranston is Topo, a money mule on a delivery with his dumbass nephew/driver Quincy (Robin Lord Taylor). They stop for a few hours' sleep at a shitty motel run by widowed Chloe (Alice Eve), who lives on the property with her daughter Sophia (Ursula Parker of LOUIE). The motel primarily functions as a brothel for the local hookers and a safe haven for drug dealers, overseen by corrupt cop Billy (Logan Marshall-Green), an ex of Chloe's who gives her a cut of his proceeds (Chloe, of course, has a heart of gold and the illegal activities are just a way to make ends meet). When Quincy attacks a hooker and both are killed in the melee, his Jeep--with the money Topo was supposed to deliver--is impounded by the cops, led by (who else?) Billy, who searches the vehicle and makes off with the loot he finds inside. Desperately needing his money and helpless with his poor eyesight, Topo kidnaps Chloe and forces her to help him recover what belongs to his employers.

COLD COMES THE NIGHT just never works, whether it's the inconsistency of Topo's eyesight (he can't drive, he can't count money and can't see to write anything on a piece of paper in front of his face, but he's a point-blank crack shot and can get the edge on several people who can actually see), the cartoonish ludicrousness of Cranston's accent, which is less like a BREAKING BAD badass and more like Evil Yakov Smirnoff (at one point, he pulls a gun and orders someone to "Shut fuck up"), or the complete lack of urgency in the slumbering direction of co-writer Tze Chun, who never gives this any sense of pacing, energy, or logic. Watch the scene where Billy pulls Chloe and Topo over for a traffic stop, swearing at them over his PA speaker in the middle of town, in no way behaving like a dirty cop who knows how to keep a secret. There's ultimately no reason for Topo to be blind or Russian other than to indulge Cranston with a character who comes off more like an SNL parody than a credible, threatening villain. There's so little here that the film actually ends at around the 78-minute mark, but there's an absurdly slow-moving, 12-minute (!) closing credits crawl to pad this thing out to 90 minutes. Cranston is uncharacteristically off his game here, but Marshall-Green (PROMETHEUS) is worse, and KIDS star Leo Fitzpatrick is wasted in a nothing role as a second driver who taxis Topo around. A bland misfire, the thoroughly forgettable COLD COMES THE NIGHT opened on just 16 screens in January 2014, pulling in a paltry $17,000. (R, 90 mins)

THE VISITOR
(Italy - 1979)

Directed by Michael J. Paradise (Giulio Paradisi). Written by Lou Comici and Robert Mundy. Cast: Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, John Huston, Joanne Nail, Franco Nero, Sam Peckinpah, Shelley Winters, Paige Conner, Wallace Wilkinson, Elizabeth Turner. (Unrated, 109 mins)

(Note: for a more in-depth review of the film, click here; this is a follow-up piece specifically covering the 2013 re-release by Drafthouse Films and the just-released Blu-ray)

A couple of years back, Drafthouse Films, the distribution offshoot of cinehipster mecca The Alamo Drafthouse, managed to create a legitimate cult movie sensation out of the delirious 1988 martial arts actioner MIAMI CONNECTION (and lest you think they're only showcasing "bad" movies, they also did a fine job of resurrecting the legendary, semi-lost 1971 Outback nightmare WAKE IN FRIGHT). Late last year, they tried to go for another MIAMI CONNECTION with the original 109-minute uncut version of the insane 1979 Italian horror film THE VISITOR. While the re-release wasn't greeted with the same level of enthusiasm as MIAMI CONNECTION, it did bring some increased notoriety to an utterly batshit, singularly unique film that's been patiently awaiting its day in the sun. Released on the drive-in and grindhouse circuit in America in a truncated 90-minute version in 1980, THE VISITOR was quickly consigned to late-night TV and video stores to be discovered by cult movie aficionados, Eurotrash addicts, and insomniacs who, for the most part, kept it to themselves for the next 30 or so years. With its perfect storm of past-their-prime actors, an incoherent script, and Italian filmmakers ripping off blockbuster American hits like THE OMEN and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, it's the kind of B-movie that only could've happened in the late 1970s. Perhaps one reason that the re-release of THE VISITOR didn't catch on like MIAMI CONNECTION did was that, while completely bonkers, it's not as MST3K hilarious as MIAMI CONNECTION, and also because it wasn't quite as obscure. Code Red released a fine DVD special edition of the uncut version (1.85:1 anamorphic) in 2010, with a great transfer and a wealth of extras, including two commentary tracks--one with star Paige Conner, moderated by filmmakers and VISITOR superfans Scott Spiegel (co-writer of EVIL DEAD II) and Jeff Burr (director of LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III), and another with star Joanne Nail, moderated by cult movie expert Marc Edward Heuck.

None of those Code Red-produced extras (which included interviews with Conner, Nail, producer Ovidio Assonitis, and Atlanta location manager and future John Carpenter associate Stratton Leopold) are carried over to the new Drafthouse Blu-ray, so if you bought that DVD in 2010, you better hang on to it. The Conner and Nail commentaries are essential listening for VISITOR nerds, even if Conner has to repeatedly tell Spiegel and Burr that the movie was shot over the summer and she didn't need permission to be out of school, that Spiegel is incredulous over "no writers being credited," despite a "Written by Lou Comici and Robert Mundy" credit at the beginning of the film, and, in a real whopper, Spiegel declaring "Mel Ferrer and Jose Ferrer are brothers." Burr: "Are they?" Spiegel: "They're at least first cousins." No. Wrong and wrong. No relation. Drafthouse's Blu-ray (again framed at 1.85:1) may not have the extensive bonus features that Code Red offered but it does make itself unique with a great Lance Henriksen interview. A relative unknown at the time with small roles in DOG DAY AFTERNOON, NETWORK, and DAMIEN: OMEN II under his belt, Henriksen recalls the film as a "hodgepodge...with space babies, birds, and Jesus Christ," and often asked himself "What were they thinking? Where was the narrative in this thing? I had no idea what I was doing." He says that shooting was sometimes problematic because director Giulio Paradisi refused to speak English and the dialogue sometimes felt like it hadn't been translated accurately. He doesn't think very highly of the film itself but has fond memories of working with the veteran actors and thought it unusual that Assonitis actually showed up at his agent's office and told him "You're going to sign this contract and you're going to Rome, and you're going have a good time." Henriksen also recalls dragging a group of his friends to Times Square to see the movie in a 42nd Street grindhouse, where someone in the balcony yelled "I want my money back!" (Henriksen: "There were 30 people in the audience, and 15 of them were my friends").

In addition to a short segment with cinematographer Ennio Guarnieri, where he discusses some locations and visual effects, co-writer Comici is also interviewed and has some even more wild stories. Initially hired because he spoke both English and Italian, Comici's main responsibility was taking Paradisi's ideas and forming them into a story ("Giulio didn't have a story, he just had scenes"). Paradisi, a former assistant to Federico Fellini who primarily worked in TV commercials and nature documentaries, had some insane ideas (Comici: "He wanted elephants in one scene because he thought people liked elephants..." and "He was always trying to work in scenes of people on the toilet") and was even fired at one point during pre-production before (and Comici stresses that he heard this second-hand) "one of Giulio's relatives put a gun to the producer's head and told him to hire Giulio back." Comici's involvement in the film ended when he showed up at Assonitis' office with a complete script and handed it to Paradisi who, without even looking at a single page, dismissed it and threw it out of the fourth-story window.

If Comici's memories seem slightly embellished, then wait until you read the Blu-ray's accompanying booklet, written by Zack Carlson, featuring an interview with Assonitis. Assonitis has been prone to hard-to-swallow statements in the past, like saying he never saw THE EXORCIST before making the blatant EXORCIST ripoff BEYOND THE DOOR, and while it's not impossible to believe that other writers--including Oscar-nominated SERPICO and SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER screenwriter Norman Wexler--made some uncredited script contributions, you can't help but question the producer's claim that, upon visiting an ill John Huston a week before his death in 1987, he noticed a VHS copy of THE VISITOR on a table near the cinema icon's sickbed. Carlson's essay is nicely-done and he obviously displays a great affinity for the film, which he describes as a "distinctly European skull-wrecker," and "disorienting, uncomfortable, misanthropic, and a genuine masterpiece." Code Red's DVD looked superb and they deserve a significant amount of credit for making this available before the hipsters had the chance to embrace it. But Drafthouse's Blu-ray, an HD upgrade from the same materials provided by Assonitis, takes it a slight step further, and I'm in favor of anything that makes this one-of-a-kind, looney-tunes mindfuck as accessible as possible, and I have no doubt that anyone who's cherished THE VISITOR for as long as I have finds the idea of this being on Blu-ray almost as nuts as the film itself.

300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE
(US - 2014)

Directed by Noam Murro. Written by Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad. Cast: Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Lena Headey, Rodrigo Santoro, David Wenham, Hans Matheson, Callan Mulvey, Jack O'Connell, Andrew Tiernan, Igal Naor, Andrew Pleavin, Ben Turner, Ashraf Barham, Christopher Sciueref, Peter Ferdinando. (R, 103 mins)

Zack Snyder's 300 became an unexpected blockbuster in early 2007, earning the director the clout to make the long-planned big-screen version of WATCHMEN and giving Gerard Butler what will likely go down as the role of his career. A hyper-stylized, CGI-heavy depiction of King Leonidas (Butler) of Sparta leading 300 brave Spartans on what amounts to a suicide mission against the Persian army of god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), 300 has inspired countless parodies and quotes and its digital splatter, slo-mo, and speed-ramping have become, for better or worse, standards of modern action cinema from sword & sandal epics of this sort to martial-arts to sci-fi, though you could argue that THE MATRIX really got the ball rolling; 300 wasn't the first to use these techniques, but it was the biggest factor in its current ubiquity. The biggest surprise with 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE is that it took seven years to happen. 300's story was self-contained but it seemed like a DTV franchise or cable-TV series would be inevitable (you can probably file the Starz' SPARTACUS under the "inspired by 300" category). Presumably so he could focus his attention on incurring the hyperventilating wrath of fanboys the world over, Snyder only produced and co-wrote here, opting instead to hand directing duties off to the unlikely Noam Murro, whose only previous feature is the 2008 comedy-drama SMART PEOPLE, RISE OF AN EMPIRE isn't exactly a sequel but rather, a spinoff that--courtesy of flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks--takes place before, during, and after the events of the first film.

Opening after the death of King Leonidas and his fallen warriors (Butler is seen fleetingly in footage taken from 300), RISE begins with Leonidas' widow Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) recounting the story of famed Athenian general Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton of Cinemax's STRIKE BACK), his legend cemented upon killing Persian King Darius (Igal Naor), naturally prompting Darius' son Xerxes (Santoro again) to vow revenge upon making himself a god. Themistokles leads his ships against the Persian naval forces of Xerxes, led by the ferocious Artemisia (Eva Green), a former Greek slave who has pledged allegiance to Persia. Themistokles unsuccessfully lobbies for help from the Spartans, who end up in their own battle. Though the Spartans are defeated, it inspires Themistokles and his men as Stapleton gets his own "We are Sparta!" catchphrases to bellow ("Let it be known...we chose to die on our feet rather than live on our knees!"). Murro wisely opts against fixing what isn't broken, instead taking the action set pieces and violence to extremes, making this even more of a hard-R, CGI bloodbath than its predecessor, and in 3-D on top of that. Given its graphic novel roots (RISE is based on Xerxes, a yet-to-be-published Frank Miller work), the artifice is essential to the experience and for the most part, RISE looks magnificent on the big screen (one shot of Xerxes looking down upon his kingdom is dizzyingly breathtaking), though there is some occasional murkiness and one sequence where Themistokles rides a horse onto Artemisia's ship that's distractingly video-gamey in its execution.

The idea with RISE is that everything's bigger and bloodier. It avoids the jingoistic subtext of the first film, instead zeroing in on the carnage, the action, and the sex. If anything, it's even more of an adolescent pulp fantasy than Snyder's film. While Stapleton is competent if unspectacular as Themistokles (he looks like he's readying himself to be the second-string Michael Fassbender), RISE gets its biggest oomph from a gloriously over-the-top nemesis in Green's Artemisia. Best known for Bernardo Bertolucci's THE DREAMERS (2003) and as Vesper Lynd in CASINO ROYALE (2006), Green has spent recent years exploring her inner psycho-bitch. With her wicked snarl and her wild-eyed yet piercing glare showing no limit to the potential for crazy, Green writhed and vamped across the screen as Angelique Bouchard and was the best thing about Tim Burton's otherwise ho-hum DARK SHADOWS (2012). Here, she goes even further but never turns Artemisia into a cartoon. Whether she's kissing a severed head or seductively cooing to Themistokles about "the ecstasy of flesh and steel" like a Greco-Persian-era femme fatale before a vigorous round of mutual hate-fucking, Green absolutely owns this film from the moment she first appears (Green fans should also check out her work in the unsettling cloning/incest drama WOMB). When Artemisia defies Xerxes' orders to stand down by snapping "Just sit on your golden throne in the safety that I provide," even the ruthless god-king is left speechless and intimidated. If they choose to make another 300 offshoot, they shouldn't even bother unless it's focused squarely on Green's Artemisia.

300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE isn't a lesson in historical accuracy, but it succeeds as thoroughly enjoyable trash. I wasn't as enamored of Snyder's film as many were, mainly because it seemed to take itself a little too seriously (for what it's worth, I stand by WATCHMEN and consider SUCKER PUNCH to be Snyder's masterpiece). RISE, on the other hand, feels looser and is a lot more fun. It's a big-budget B-movie that embraces its exploitative elements, knows exactly what it is, and makes no apologies for it.

GRAND PIANO
(Spain/US - 2013; US release 2014)

Directed by Eugenio Mira. Written by Damian Chazelle. Cast: Elijah Wood, John Cusack, Kerry Bishe, Tamsin Egerton, Alex Winter, Don McManus, Allen Leach, Dee Wallace, Jack Taylor. (R, 90 mins).

Damian Chazelle's drama WHIPLASH earned some significant buzz and the audience and jury awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival, just in time for the US release of the Chazelle-scripted high-concept thriller GRAND PIANO, several months after it debuted in Europe. Both films--WHIPLASH was acquired by Sony and will be released later this year--deal with psychological pressures on a music prodigy, though GRAND PIANO takes a decidedly different approach in the hands of director Eugenio Mira. The term "Hitchcockian" has been bandied about for decades, but it applies here. Unfortunately, the longer GRAND PIANO goes on, the more silly and nonsensical it gets, and despite his background in music, Chazelle seems to have no idea how classical and orchestral performances go down. Do conductors kibitz with the audience in between movements? Does the featured pianist get up and wander around for long stretches of time while the rest of the orchestra carries on? As a suspense piece, GRAND PIANO has a doozy of an idea that ultimately collapses once the villain's motivations are revealed. It's fun while it's happening, but even before the movie's over, you'll be scratching your head and listing all the ludicrous lapses in logic. If you want to make it Hitchcockian, then go for it. Sure, not every Hitchcock thriller is airtight, but Chazelle and Mira are pretty much jamming a funnel down your throat to make you swallow the absurdities that they keep piling on.

Five years after suffering a breakdown in mid-performance and becoming a recluse, stage-fright-prone classical pianist Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) is set to make his comeback appearance. He's not eager to do so, but his glamorous movie-star wife Emma (Kerry Bishe) insists he re-enter public life. He's set to play the priceless grand piano that belonged to his late mentor Patrick Godureaux (played in photos and lobby posters by American expat Spanish exploitation icon Jack Taylor), and is visibly nervous about his return to live performance but, as the gregarious conductor (Don McManus) reassures him, "You play music this dense, you're gonna hit a wrong note. The audience never knows." Things quickly head south when Tom sits at the piano and notices some writing in his score: "Play one wrong note and you and your wife die." There's a laser pointed at Emma and at Tom's hand. He turns the page: "During the next break, go back to your dressing room."

OK, how many breaks does a star pianist get? It's his comeback performance and he's chosen a composition that seemingly involves as little piano as possible? Tom makes his way to his dressing room and finds an earpiece radio transmitter waiting for him. "Get back on stage!" orders the unseen sniper with the voice of John Cusack, perhaps calling from the set of one of the other two new movies he's had dumped on VOD in the last two weeks. "Call for help and I will hear it. Get a guard involved and I will know it. Play a wrong note, you will die." What does the sniper--named "Clem"--want? "I don't want your money. I want you to play the most flawless concert of your life." And what's the concluding piece for this comeback concert? An extraordinarily complex original composition by Godureaux known ominously in the world of classical music as "The Unplayable Piece"...the very piece that caused Tom's public meltdown five years earlier.

This should be a can't-miss nail-biter, and sometimes, it is. It's hard to get around the gaping breakdowns in logic in Chazelle's script (WHIPLASH may be great, but it's worth noting that he also wrote THE LAST EXORCISM PART II). and as the plot gets dumber and the motivations of Clem and his accomplice (Alex Winter--yes, that Alex Winter), who's posing as a stage assistant, are spelled out, you start thinking "There has to be an easier way." Where is the stage manager? Why does Tom just arrive at the hall to play a highly-publicized concert on a piano he's never used with an orchestra with whom he's never played...and no practice, nothing. Five years since he's played and he's just winging it? Mira's direction is so stylish, enthusiastic, and brimming with a love of cinema that GRAND PIANO almost pulls it off. Aside from the Hitchcock influences--particularly the Royal Albert Hall sequence in 1956's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH--there's the constant classical music, the rich, lush colors, the long tracking shots and widescreen shot compositions of cinematographer Unax Mendia (who did similarly memorable work on Kolda Serra's little-seen 2006 film THE BACKWOODS), and the sweeping camera in constant motion, telling us Mira has obviously spent a lot of time watching Brian De Palma and Dario Argento movies. There's even a vintage De Palma split screen at one point, and parts of "The Unplayable Piece" sound like something Claudio Simonetti would've written for an Italian horror film. There's also one brilliant bit where Mira pulls a 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY "bone to spaceship" match cut with a glass shard about to slit a throat seamlessly becoming a bow sliding across the strings of a cello. Stuff like that will put a smile on the face of anyone who loves cinema. What Chazelle doesn't seem to understand, and what Mira is forced to work around, is that with high-concept thrillers of this sort--be it Keanu Reeves on a speeding bus in SPEED or Colin Farrell trapped in a phone booth in PHONE BOOTH--the key is to keep them in that spot to maximize the suspense. PHONE BOOTH is by no means a great movie but it understands why it's called PHONE BOOTH. GRAND PIANO works best when Tom is at the grand piano being harangued by an endlessly taunting Clem. It's too much that he's constantly getting up from the piano, is having loud conversations with Clem while playing, and is actually texting for help at one point...all the while never flubbing a single note.

Wood turns in a credibly frazzled performance when he's at the piano, and though he's mostly heard and only briefly seen, Cusack is a formidably intimidating bad guy. But Clem's ultimate motivation is hardly worth the effort, the climax is weak, and the film ends with an abrupt whimper. There's hints that there's more going on between Clem and Godureaux and Taylor's presence in the closing credits without actually acting in the movie might be an indication that he shot some scenes that were cut, even though the film doesn't run long (this is the second movie I've seen this week where the closing credits sloooowly crawl over ten minutes to pad the film to 90). Still, there's no denying GRAND PIANO has its moments. Mira's made a few films prior to this, none very noteworthy (he did serve as second unit director on THE IMPOSSIBLE), and he sported a fake mole and mugged shamelessly as the young version of Robert De Niro's character in the forgettable RED LIGHTS. But GRAND PIANO is irrefutable proof that the guy's got something...and just needs a better script to take it to the next level.

THE FROZEN DEAD
(UK - 1966; US release 1967)

Written and directed by Herbert J. Leder. Cast: Dana Andrews, Anna Palk, Philip Gilbert, Kathleen Breck, Karel Stepanek, Basil Henson, Alan Tilvern, Edward Fox, Oliver MacGreevy, Ann Tirard, Tom Chatto. (Unrated, 95 mins)

A longtime late-night TV favorite of horror fans back in the '70s and '80s, THE FROZEN DEAD boasts a memorably catchy title that only partially applies to the horrors contained in the entertainingly disjointed film. Boasting more ideas than it can handle, THE FROZEN DEAD would seem to have arrived at the Nazisploitation party about a decade early, with Nazi zombie films like Ken Wiederhorn's SHOCK WAVES (1977), Jean Rollin's ZOMBIE LAKE (1980), and Jess Franco's OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES (1981), to the post-SALON KITTY (1976) wave of Italian scuzz that became popular around the same time. The trend even included the prestigious THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978), which gave us Gregory Peck as a crazed Josef Mengele trying to create clones of Hitler (as much as we should, we also can't forget a bottom-scraping Veronica Lake trying to resurrect Hitler with flesh-eating maggots in 1970's FLESH FEAST, which proved to be the star's swan song). For the most part, however, despite its Nazi angle, THE FROZEN DEAD is more in line with the severed-headsploitation subgenre that became a strange Z-movie phenomenon in the 1960s. The 1959 German film THE HEAD was released in the US in 1961 and soon we had THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1963) and THE MADMEN OF MANDORAS (1963), better known under its 1968 TV re-edit THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN. Written and directed by American Herbert J. Leder (who scripted 1958's FIEND WITHOUT A FACE), the British-made THE FROZEN DEAD is still B-movie trash, but it's glossier and better-made than others of the severed head/Nazi undead ilk and boasts several iconic images that have stuck with fans for nearly 50 years.

Twenty years after Germany's defeat in WWII, Nazi Dr. Norberg (Dana Andrews) is living in London, still under the employ of what's left of the Third Reich, represented by the demanding General Lubeck (Karel Stepanek) and Dr. Tirpitz (Basil Henson). Along with his well-meaning but oafish assistant Karl Essen (Alan Tilvern), Norberg is working on reanimating SS officers who have been kept in a state of frozen suspension in Germany, France, and Egypt since the end of the war, including his brother (a young Edward Fox, paying his dues before working his way up to classier fare like THE DAY OF THE JACKAL). Thus far, he's been unsuccessful in regenerating brain activity and has only succeeded in creating a few slobbering brutes that he keeps in a dungeon in his laboratory. Things get complicated with the unexpected arrival of Norberg's niece Jean (Anna Palk) and her friend Elsa (Kathleen Breck). Of course, Jean has no idea what her uncle is up to or that he's a Nazi-in-hiding, and the same goes for American Dr. Roberts (Philip Gilbert), who arrives to help Norberg with his research. When Norberg tells his benefactors that he needs a living head to conduct experiments in brain activity, the hapless Karl Essen takes matters into his own hands and kills Elsa, prompting Norberg to tell his niece that her friend just left unexpectedly. Jean isn't buying it and has a hard time convincing Roberts that something weird is going on as Lubeck and Tirpitz get increasingly antsy about the snooping interlopers. All the while, Elsa's still-living head starts exhibiting more capabilities than Norberg thought possible.

Despite a sluggish, talky middle, THE FROZEN DEAD still holds up as enjoyable trash. This was the first of back-to-back horror films that Leder made in the UK, the other being the universally-derided golem outing IT! (1967), and it does a nice job of mimicking the look and feel of a Hammer film. Both films were released on a double bill in the US in late 1967, though for some reason, Warner Bros-Seven Arts released THE FROZEN DEAD in black & white, even though it was shot in color and shown that way to British audiences a year earlier. The color version is what appeared on TV and on the remastered Warner Archive DVD released last fall, and with its vibrant colors, the cold, icy look of the dead SS officers, and the eerie blue on Elsa's face, it's really hard to picture much of this in black & white. Leder's script is prone to clumsy exposition and lunkheaded visual foreshadowing--why else would Norberg have a wall lined with severed arms connected to electrodes if they weren't there specifically to strangle him at the end?--but the arms, the image of three SS officers hanging frozen, and especially Elsa's blue-lit face with her mouth gasping "Bury me!" are things not easily forgotten, and on that level, THE FROZEN DEAD scores.

Andrews (1909-1992) was a very popular headliner in his 1940s/1950s prime, but is rarely discussed these days other than by devout viewers of Turner Classic Movies. He was never nominated for any Oscars, Emmys, or Golden Globes, though he had a good reputation in Hollywood, as evidenced by his 1946 Golden Apple Award for "Most Cooperative Actor." Best known for classics like LAURA (1944), A WALK IN THE SUN (1945), THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), BOOMERANG! (1947), and WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956), Andrews hadn't quite fallen on hard times by 1966 but he'd hit some rough patches along the way. He was still very much in-demand and turning up in occasional noteworthy films like Jacques Tourneur's NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957), but his alcoholism was causing some problems and ultimately got him bounced from the A-list. That, coupled with the sin of getting older, relegated him to supporting roles in big movies and starring roles in smaller ones. In 1964, Andrews' 29-year-old son died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage, after which the veteran actor threw himself into his work, starring or co-starring in no less than eight films just in 1965, including the military epics IN HARM'S WAY and BATTLE OF THE BULGE, the low-budget old-timer western TOWN TAMER, the sci-fi outing CRACK IN THE WORLD, the germ-warfare cult classic THE SATAN BUG, the absurdist comedy THE LOVED ONE, and the Italian 007 ripoff SPY IN YOUR EYE. Like many aging leading men making the transition to character actor, Andrews went where the work was, whether he was playing a Nazi mad scientist in THE FROZEN DEAD or a square family man terrorized by some crazed kids looking for kicks in HOT RODS TO HELL (1967). He quit drinking by the early 1970s and kept busy playing old ranch owners in westerns, old generals in war movies, and on TV shows and made-for-TV movies, not to mention inevitable appearances in a 1970s disaster movie (AIRPORT 1975), on THE LOVE BOAT, guesting on various talk shows, and even popping up in GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK (1978), an early Chuck Norris vehicle. Andrews retired from acting after a supporting role in 1985's little-seen JFK drama PRINCE JACK and was soon diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He spent his remaining years in a Los Angeles-area nursing home where he was frequently visited by old Hollywood friends, including Burt Lancaster, who was visiting Andrews at the facility in 1990 when he suffered a massive stroke from which he never fully recovered.

Andrews lends a considerable amount of credibility to THE FROZEN DEAD, playing the kind of Bela Lugosi "mad scientist" role that most actors would mercilessly ham their way through. He doesn't even overdo the German accent, instead playing Norberg as a guy who isn't even that enthused about what he's doing. It's worth pondering that the reason Norberg's been unsuccessful is because he doesn't want to succeed. While some of it may be an inherent lack of interest on Andrews' part, it's actually a refreshing alternative to the usual overacting histrionics you'd expect an actor to give to such a character. Through Andrews' portrayal, you almost get the sense that Norberg is rightfully ashamed of his past and wouldn't mind getting himself and his niece away from Lubeck, Tirpitz, and Karl Essen if he could. Of course, Leder isn't interested in exploring the psychological elements because it distracts from Elsa, who is quite possibly horror cinema's most memorably melancholy talking head, a feat that's hard to pull off, considering it's almost always hilarious, either intentionally (RE-ANIMATOR) or unintentionally (pretty much everything else). Leder seems easily distracted throughout, with the abrupt dropping of the Nazi zombie plot angle and the introduction of an interesting psychic subplot involving Elsa somehow sending messages to Jean via dreams that's never really explored. Still, flaws and all, THE FROZEN DEAD earns its place in the cult movie pantheon and the Warner Archive DVD is a must-own for fans, even with no bonus features. It looks better than ever, especially considering it's in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, was never in color for its US theatrical run and, was cropped to 1.33:1 for TV broadcasts.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
(US/France/UK - 2013)

Short on plot-driven momentum and long on atmosphere and richly-textured characterization, one's gut reaction to INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS may be that it isn't top-tier Coen Bros., but it's still very good. Though written and directed by the Coens, the film belongs just as much to cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, whose contributions earned one of the film's two Oscar nominations (the other was for sound mixing). The Coens and Delbonnel use a muted color palette to bring a snowy, slushy 1961 Greenwich Village to vivid life. Inspired by the real-life Greenwich Village folk fixture Dave Van Ronk, folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is dealing with the suicide of his performing partner and the tanking of his subsequent solo album. He's homeless, crashing on the couches of area friends, including Jean (Carey Mulligan), who's part of a duo with Llewyn's friend Jim (Justin Timberlake) and is carrying a child that might be Llewyn's or Jim's. Through a series of mishaps, Llewyn's also taking care of a cat that belongs to his academic friends Mitch and Lillian Gorfein (Ethan Phillips, Robin Bartlett). Llewyn's a bit on the misanthropic side and doesn't always set out to be a jerk, but that's usually how he comes off, and the film basically follows him through one week of hassles, arguments, and letdowns, whether it's turning down royalties on a song in favor of the quick payday he needs to pay for Jean's abortion or having to carpool with two other musicians (John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund) to a gig in Chicago that goes horribly awry. In terms of story, it's one of the Coens' slighter efforts, but where it really stands out is capturing the look and feel of a unique place and time, from the work of Delbonnel to the production design to the songwriting (Isaac, in what should've been a star-making performance, performs original songs by T-Bone Burnett and Marcus Mumford). I also liked the recurring visual motif of narrow, claustrophobic hallways and the stunning interior of a massive Fred Harvey restaurant that's almost Kubrickian in its presentation. While not on the level of a FARGO, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, or NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, nor the Oscar magnet that many predicted, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS feels like one of those films that isn't initially powerful but sticks with you and quietly works on you over time. (R, 105 mins)

BEYOND OUTRAGE
(Japan/France - 2012; US release 2013)

After leaving yakuza films behind following his underrated US crossover attempt BROTHER (2001), Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano (VIOLENT COP, SONATINE) spent most of the next decade--except for his 2003 ZATOICHI reboot--in personal art-house projects, most of which didn't connect with his audience. 2010's blood-splattered OUTRAGE was his "give the fans what they want" return to the yakuza genre, and while it possessed an extremely complicated plot that wasn't always easy to follow, it was enormously entertaining in the almost comedic way it kept presenting the same set pieces. You could probably stage a drinking game over how many times a bunch of pissed-off Japanese gangsters would congregate in a room, hurl insults at each other until brawling and gunfire erupted, culminating in someone being obligated to slice off their pinky to atone for their disrespect. The film was such a success in Japan that Kitano has returned with the sequel BEYOND OUTRAGE (or, as the onscreen title reads, OUTRAGE BEYOND). Kitano again stars, under his usual acting alias "Beat Takeshi," as steely, ruthless gangster Otomo, believed dead by his former yakuza associates but actually incarcerated. When a police official and a nightclub hostess are found murdered in a car dragged from the bottom of a river, the police decide they've had enough of the yakuza families overstepping the established boundaries of their cop/criminal arrangement. Going against the wishes of his superiors and colleagues, Detective Kataoka (Fumiyo Kohinata) poses as a dirty cop to get on the good sides of both warring organizations--the Sanno and the Hanabishi. The Sanno are ruled by Kato (Tomokazu Miura), who concedes most of his decision-making to his ambitious young right-hand man Ishihara (Ryo Kase), much to the resentment of the embittered old guard yakuza who don't like that it's all about pressure to meet the bottom line and long for a return to the glory of the good old days ("Fuck hedge funding!" one grumbles). Sensing some discord in the ranks, Kataoka decides to spring Otomo from prison--he's there in part because his former underling Ishihara sold him out--and pull a vintage YOJIMBO by starting a war between the two yakuza clans. Needless to say, much arguing, insults, brawling, and impromptu pinky amputation ensue.

BEYOND OUTRAGE has its moments but it feels too much like a stale retread not just of OUTRAGE, but of other, better Kitano yakuza films in general. As a director, it seems like Kitano's just punching a clock on this one and as an actor, Beat Takeshi is offscreen far too much for what's ostensibly a Beat Takeshi vehicle (he doesn't even appear until 25 minutes in). Most of the violence is confined to the last half hour and it's noticeably more restrained than some of the things seen in the first film. There's so many double and triple crosses and conflicting loyalties that I doubt even Kitano can keep it all straight. Still, when he's the center of attention, he's as much of a badass as ever at 65 (no one twitches more intimidatingly than Beat Takeshi), and it's great fun watching him fearlessly mouth off to powerful crime bosses. But too much of BEYOND OUTRAGE feels like obligation and filler. It's relentlessly talky and it could've easily lost 20-25 minutes and been a much tighter, more exciting thriller instead of the overlong, draggy one it is. There's enough here for die-hard Kitano completists to enjoy and it's not a waste of time by any means (Kitano is smart enough to end it with a great final shot), but ultimately, one OUTRAGE was probably enough. (R, 112 mins)

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF
(UK - 2012; US release 2014)

Anybody remember Mike Figgis? With his melancholy, jazz-and-rain-soaked British noir STORMY MONDAY (1988) to his Hollywood debut INTERNAL AFFAIRS (1990), and the devastating LEAVING LAS VEGAS (1995), which earned Nicolas Cage an Oscar, 1990s Figgis was poised to become one of the decade's top filmmakers. Around the time of 1999's THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE, Figgis seemed to grow bored with conventional storytelling, and 2000's TIMECODE caused a bit of a stir at the time of its release for its unique four-frame split-screen, real-time structure. TIMECODE is the kind of intriguing creative experiment that really only works once, but Figgis beat it to death in the redundant and borderline-unwatchable semi-sequel HOTEL (2002), which no one saw. Figgis has always marched to the beat of his own drum, but since the forgettable Dennis Quaid/Sharon Stone thriller COLD CREEK MANOR--clearly a paycheck gig for the director--bombed in 2003, he's almost completely gone off the mainstream cinema grid, focusing on experimental short films, music videos, and opera documentaries, though he did contribute to the 2003 PBS series THE BLUES and directed one episode of THE SOPRANOS in 2004. Now 66, Figgis has only made two narrative features since COLD CREEK MANOR: 2008's virtually unseen LOVE LIVE LONG, which still hasn't been released in the US, and SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF, which was released in Europe to mostly dismissive reviews two years ago and has only now turned up in the US as a Netflix Instant exclusive. It's a terrible film, insufferably pretentious and unfathomably dull, with a noir-based premise that might've been fun and entertaining in the hands of say, an in-his-prime Brian De Palma, but Figgis is so lost up his own ass that the film is doomed from the very start, opening with a crawl about Karl Marx's "Participation Mystique" and the blurred lines between fact and fiction. Before four minutes even pass, Figgis is already breaking out the BRADY BUNCH squares and a douchebag filmmaker (Eoin Macken) is blathering on about his "film within a film within a film."

Figgis abandons the TIMECODE quadrants around the same time he decides to ditch the notion of a coherent story, as German-born, London-based screenwriter Martin (Sebastian Koch of THE LIVES OF OTHERS) sees his latest script, an erotic thriller, put in the hands of arrogant director Greg (Macken), who casts Martin's daughter Sarah (Rebecca Night) in the lead role. Sarah still lives with her father, who hosts a birthday party for her where he's approached by a French mystery woman named Angelique (Lotte Verbeek of the Showtime series THE BORGIAS), who offers him a joint and disappears. When she's found floating dead in a nearby canal, Martin is a suspect since it also coincides with the 15th anniversary of his actress wife's (Emilia Fox) still-unsolved disappearance. Martin is half-heartedly questioned by rumpled, wheezing detective Bullock (Kenneth Cranham), who seems more interested in getting feedback on his own cop screenplay. Enter Therese (also Verbeek), Angelique's twin sister, who arrives in London to identify the body. Therese stays with Martin and Sarah, leading to dark secrets, sexual tension and still, nothing much happens. Lots of long scenes play out only to be revealed as scenes in Martin's script being filmed by Greg or as re-enactments with different actors in one of the films within the film or as a staging of one of Martin's lectures to his screenwriting class. Professor Figgis frequently halts the action to flash things like "Character Is Plot" and the Webster's definition of "twin" on the screen. At one point, Therese sits down to read Martin's latest script and on the page, it describes her sitting down and reading Martin's latest script. SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF gets so bogged down in endless academic, deconstructionist, meta bullshit that it forgets everything else. There's no mystery, there's no suspense, there's no eroticism, there's no character development...it's just a smug, meandering film-school exercise in anti-cinema that wastes Koch and a very good one-scene performance by Figgis regular Julian Sands as a sarcastically incredulous detective who takes over the case after Martin's criticisms of Bullock's script induce a heart attack in the aging, out-of-shape cop. With cheap production values making it look like a 3:00 am Skinemax offering with less skin and, somehow, even less story, SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF shows the once-relevant Figgis light years removed from the triumph of LEAVING LAS VEGAS and strictly focused on pleasing what's since become his primary audience: Mike Figgis. (Unrated, 107 mins)

SONNY BOY
(US/Italy - 1990)

Directed by Robert Martin Carroll. Written by Graeme Whifler and Peter Desberg, Ph.D. Cast: David Carradine, Paul L. Smith, Brad Dourif, Conrad Janis, Sydney Lassick, Savina Gersak, Alexandra Powers, Michael Griffin, Steve Carlisle, Steve Ingrassia, Robert Broyles, Jeff Bergquist. (R, 97 mins)

There's genuine heart and a feeling of twisted love deep within the sick horrors contained in SONNY BOY, a one-of-a-kind exploitation film whose cult status seems to be gaining momentum with each passing year and each subsequent late-night "TCM Underground" airing on Turner Classic Movies. Alternately grim, horrifying, and hilarious, SONNY BOY is indebted to the '70s drive-in horrors of Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven and along with those films, probably influenced the hillbilly horror of Rob Zombie's HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES (2003) and THE DEVIL'S REJECTS (2005). SONNY BOY just came out at the wrong time--a decade earlier or later and it probably would've gotten more attention from fans. Filmed in 1987 but--for a variety of reasons--unreleased until 1990, the film had an extremely troubled production that seems to be the norm with Egyptian-born, Italy-based producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (BEYOND THE DOOR, TENTACLES, THE VISITOR). In the late '80s, Assonitis had a co-production deal with Trans-World Entertainment that produced films like David Keith's THE CURSE (1987), Alfonso Brescia's fake-ATOR entry IRON WARRIOR (1987), Ruggero Deodato's LONE RUNNER (1988), and Federico Prosperi's THE BITE (1989), rechristened CURSE II: THE BITE though it's completely unrelated to THE CURSE but is likely the only film that will ever contain both radioactive snakes and Jamie Farr getting laid. SONNY BOY was part of that same deal, but proved a much bigger headache than the others, most of which got small releases on their way to video stores, except for THE CURSE, which actually made some money thanks to a post-STAND BY ME Wil Wheaton, who has blogged about what a terrible experience he had making it (from wilwheaton.net):

"Well, at the time, your Uncle Willie was just a young'un, and some really evil producers from a scary foreign country came to him and said, 'We have this movie for you to be in, and we want to give you lots of money to be in it.' And Uncle Willie didn't have the best advisors at the time, and nobody told him that this big pile of shit would be around forever. Consider it the very expensive lesson. At least I didn't get a tattoo."

Equal parts Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, Sam Peckinpah, and John Waters, with bonus Christ and Frankenstein metaphors, SONNY BOY opens in Harmony, New Mexico in 1970, with Weasel (Brad Dourif) killing a couple outside a cheap motel and making off with their car and the TV from the motel room. Weasel delivers the goods to his boss Slue (Paul L. Smith), a hulking, intimidating brute who lords over the town from his desert junkyard base which also includes a bargain-basement recreation of the Louvre. Slue isn't happy with Weasel's take, especially since he had to kill the couple and that he took the TV (Slue: "What the fuck am I supposed to watch on black & white? DRAGNET?" Weasel: "OK, I'll take it back to the motel!" Slue: "I own the fucking motel!") Slue really loses his shit when he finds a baby in the backseat, which Weasel somehow missed. Wanting no evidence of his crimes, Slue makes a quick decision to feed the baby to some wild hogs, but that plan is thwarted by his lover Pearl, played by David Carradine in drag. Pearl wants to keep the baby and raise him as her own, and Slue agrees under duress. Years pass--at age 6, Sonny Boy is given "the gift of silence" by Slue, who removes the boy's tongue. Sonny Boy is kept locked in a shed and fed live chickens. By 17 (now played by Michael Griffin), he's a feral beast despite the unconditional love of Pearl, and he's only brought out to off Slue's enemies or clean up the messes left by the incompetence of Slue's flunkies Weasel and Charlie P. (Sydney Lassick). Eventually, Sonny Boy manages to escape and finds caring souls in Rose (Alexandra Powers, who went on to DEAD POETS SOCIETY) and disgraced, drunken local doc Bender (Conrad Janis of MORK & MINDY), who lost his medical license in a scandal involving transplanted monkey organs. But the folks of Harmony, egged on by white-trash barfly Sandy (Assonitis' then-girlfriend Savina Gersak, a regular in his late '80 productions, here sporting teeth that look like she just re-enacted a pivotal moment in SALO) are turning on Slue and all but break out the torches and pitchforks in pursuit of Sonny Boy, leading to an explosive, Peckinpah/WILD BUNCH-style showdown at Slue's desert fortress.

SONNY BOY was written by music-video director Graeme Whifler, who went on to script DR. GIGGLES (1992) and direct segments of the 2000-2002 Dean Cain-hosted revival of RIPLEY'S BELIEVE IT OR NOT. Whifler was hoping to direct SONNY BOY but was ousted from the project right after selling the script to Assonitis. The producer instead went with Robert Martin Carroll, whose only prior credit was a 1980 short film (there was a rumor that "Robert Martin Carroll" was a pseudonym for CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and Assonitis' LONE RUNNER director Deodato, but Carroll is indeed a real person; his only other credit is the 2005 indie BABIES FOR SALE, which was shot five years earlier as BABY LUV). Much of Whifler's script was altered by Assonitis and Carroll (Sonny Boy was originally written as a disfigured monstrosity instead of an animalistic teenage boy), and someone going by "Peter Desberg, Ph.D" is credited with "additional dialogue" (Carroll has said that Whifler's original script was even more extreme and bizarre than what was filmed). Whifler remained bitter about SONNY BOY and for a long time, there was no love lost between him and Carroll, though in recent years as the film's cult has slowly grown, they've made peace with one another and, in a classic "enemy of my enemy is my friend" development, seem to have come together and found some common ground in their mutual loathing of Assonitis. Assonitis has long had a reputation as a meddling producer who hires rookie directors just to fire them--most infamously, he gave James Cameron his first directing gig on 1982's PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING and butted heads with the future King of the World throughout the production, kicking him out of the editing room and eventually firing him altogether, infuriating the young Cameron enough that he was finally inspired to devote all of his energies to finishing his script for THE TERMINATOR (cue the PRICE IS RIGHT losing horn for Assonitis). Carroll got a taste of the Cameron experience during SONNY BOY's post-production in Rome as Assonitis--I hope you're sitting down for this--locked him out of the editing room and fired him.

SONNY BOY had to undergo a few cuts in the US to secure an R rating and the choppiness shows, especially in a scene where Sonny Boy is confronted by an angry mob and somehow escapes. The escape is never shown in the US cut, but in the version released overseas, which runs about seven minutes longer, he's shown clawing and biting his way through the crowd, with blood and flesh dripping from his mouth. In the US cut, someone runs into the bar and simply tells the sheriff that Sonny Boy escaped. Another pivotal moment cut from the US release is a shot of milk dripping from Pearl's breast as Slue walks in on her feeding an infant Sonny Boy. This would seem to solve SONNY BOY's biggest mystery. In the US cut, it's never clear whether Carradine is playing Pearl as a man in drag or as a woman. It's a bit of inspired and jaw-dropping stunt casting that, for some reason, the filmmakers never really exploit, at least not in the truncated American cut. Despite being granted a grand entrance and with top and above-the-title billing, Carradine is a supporting actor in SONNY BOY and absent for long stretches (presumably, they only had him for a limited time), though he was involved enough to sing the theme song "Maybe It Ain't." The central characters in SONNY BOY are Sonny Boy and Slue, and the film gives the great character actor Paul L. Smith perhaps the showiest role of his career. Dourif has said in interviews and at conventions that Smith and Carroll didn't get along at all, so perhaps some of that frustration helped fuel his performance. The Massachusetts-born Smith (1936-2012) was a former bouncer and bodyguard with a degree in Philosophy who got his start as the Bud Spencer fill-in in a series of low-grade Italian buddy movies with Terence Hill wannabe "Michael Coby" (actually Italian actor Antonio Cantafora) in the mid '70s. He's best known for his burly, leering, sneering presence in films like 1978's MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (as the brutal head prison guard Hamidou), 1980's POPEYE (as Bluto), 1983's chainsaw classic PIECES (as the stink-eyed, red herring handyman Willard), and 1984's DUNE (as The Beast Rabban). SONNY BOY gave Smith a rare starring role and he runs with it, glowering, glaring, and sweating through the entire film with a masterful slow burn. Smith retired from acting in the late 1990s and left Hollywood to recommit to his Jewish faith, changing his name to Adam Eden and relocating with his wife to Israel where he spent his last years. The folks at Grindhouse Releasing tracked him down and visited him at his home in Ra'anana for a candid and gregarious career-spanning interview on their PIECES DVD in 2008.

Griffin, who soon started going by Michael Boston, but has done nothing of note in the years since SONNY BOY, turns in a very credible and often haunting performance as the tortured Sonny Boy, and what's most interesting about the characters in SONNY BOY is how the actors don't ham it up and go over the top. Sure, Smith glares and yells, Dourif acts twitchy and sketchy, and Lassick does his patented Cheswick whining (this is probably not the ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST reunion either envisioned in 1975), but there's an oddly natural and lived-in feeling to their performances that makes the film that much more unsettling. No one is outraged by anything that goes on. No one seems to notice that Pearl is hideous and has chest hair. And even the townspeople are bunch of hatemongering yahoos. The straight performances of the cast--even Carradine is restrained, despite his garb--heighten the outrage factor when something completely batshit happens, whether Sonny Boy bites off Weasel's thumb or an irate Slue fires a cannon and blows up a snooping deputy sheriff who's not on board with how things operate in Harmony. Even Janis' quack doctor is portrayed as a noble guy who was just trying to do the right thing with what he had available, even if it invites endless derision from the residents (after he tells Weasel to get his severed thumb looked at, Weasel scoffs "What? And let you put a monkey dick on it?"). The film has a surprising conflict and depth to it in terms of its depiction of abuse and Sonny Boy's continued love of Slue despite everything he's put him through. Though it never justifies Slue's despicable actions, the film makes it clear that in his own way, he loves Sonny Boy. Yes, it's an often nightmarish freakshow, but it touches upon some difficult and complex topics and what's most surprising is that it retained these elements even with all the behind-the-scenes battles and Assonitis pulling rank and commandeering the editing process.

SONNY BOY languished on the shelf for a couple of years before Trans-World's financial issues--no doubt brought on by their expansion from home video into mostly unsuccessful theatrical exhibition--resulted in it being handed off to Triumph Releasing, a small Sony subsidiary. Triumph obviously didn't have much faith in the box office potential and only released it to a handful of theaters and it vanished after a week. It was released on VHS by Media Home Entertainment, and that's the blurry source of the print that TCM runs--they even forgot to remove the pre-film FBI and Interpol warnings. SONNY BOY was shot by Assonitis' usual cinematographer Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli in 2.35 widescreen, which is extremely compromised on the cropped 1.33 VHS print. The film has never been released on R1 DVD or on Blu-ray and is largely a forgotten obscurity, though it has had a few scattered midnight movie showings in recent years. For the most part, SONNY BOY's cult is a quiet one. It's growing thanks to the TCM exposure, but this is a film that demands a proper restoration to both its uncensored European version and to its proper aspect ratio. Somebody needs to make this happen, preferably with a commentary track that gets Assonitis, Carroll, and Whifler in the same room together. It manages to find an ideal balance, walking the line between gloriously unrepentant, offensive trash and surprisingly heartfelt drama with real, albeit twisted, emotion. Often sloppy and haphazardly-assembled, especially in the last half hour, SONNY BOY is nevertheless the kind of film that will have you laughing and cringing in equal measures, one where even the most jaded cult-movie cineastes who think they've seen it all will have to admire its audacity and forgive its flaws. There's never been anything else quite like it.

HERE COMES THE DEVIL
(US/Mexico - 2013)

You'll pick up on the PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK vibe in this occasionally unsettling demonic possession film from Mexico long before writer/director Adrian Garcia Bogliano gives it a specific shout-out in the closing credits. Shot with a zoom-heavy, '70s grindhouse aesthetic, HERE COMES THE DEVIL is an art-house horror film that gets under your skin but ultimately suffers from a big reveal and subsequent conclusion that are just too predictable. It's one of those horror films that's working just fine in its ambiguity but starts stumbling when it feels the need to explain everything. After a prologue where a lesbian couple is attacked by a crazed home intruder, we're introduced to a typical family on a day trip--dad Felix (Francisco Barreiro of the original WE ARE WHAT WE ARE), mom Sol (Laura Caro), teenage daughter Sara (Michele Garcia), and younger son Adolfo (Alan Martinez). Sara gets her first period during the outing, but Sol comforts her and gets her through it. They're about to call it a day when the kids ask to go exploring in a nearby cave. Sol tells them to come back in an hour and a half, but she and Felix fall asleep after fooling around in the parked car. Several hours later, the kids still haven't returned and the local cops tell the distraught parents to get some sleep in the motel, where the stress of the situation causes some long-withheld resentment and grudges to boil over (an interesting parallel to Lars von Trier's ANTICHRIST). The kids reappear the next day and for a while, everyone is happy. But the kids aren't acting like themselves and are behaving rather VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED-y, and Sol finds out they're regularly skipping school to catch a bus to the cave, located in a mountain that's reputed by the locals to be the center of some supernatural activity. Back at home, the family is haunted by strange noises at night, a visit to the doctor reveals Sara's hymen is no longer intact, and Felix and Sol sneak back to the mountain area to deal with a man (David Arturo Cabezud) they believe molested their daughter, but obviously there's something much more sinister in store for them.

Refreshingly light on CGI histrionics and far from the EXORCIST-style depiction you might expect, HERE COMES THE DEVIL's subtext addresses the transition to adulthood, the trauma of child abuse, incest, and sexuality in a frank fashion (yeah, the title has a dual meaning), but elsewhere, its horrors are just a bit rote. Rooms shake, the kids levitate, and a family friend has a nightmarish experience while sitting them. And the whole nature of the mountain's true evil just feels too hackneyed to be really scary. Bogliano's direction is very stylish and he utilizes some inventive camera angles (and a De Palma split diopter in one scene!) even if he's a bit too enamored of the kind of aggressively exaggerated zooms that other modern directors use for ironic laughs. One shot of the kids lying in bed grinning at something hovering above their beds (we don't see it) is very chilling. The film has its moments and is intriguing to a point as a different kind of demonic possession film but once you see its destination, it just loses some of its intrigue. Bogliano (PENUMBRA) is obviously a talented filmmaker and HERE COMES THE DEVIL doesn't suffer from a lack of trying, but he just doesn't bring this one all the way home. Maybe next time. (Unrated, 98 mins)

REASONABLE DOUBT
(Canada/Germany - 2014)

Feeling like a by-the-numbers courtroom/suspense thriller frozen in 1994 and only recently thawed for release, REASONABLE DOUBT is every bit as generic as its title suggests. 20 years ago, this is the kind of PRESUMED INNOCENT, DISCLOSURE, FINAL ANALYSIS or THE FIRM entertainment that would've easily boasted a Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas, Richard Gere, or Tom Cruise in the lead, and likely would've topped the box office for a month. But times have changed, and now it stars the elfin Dominic Cooper and was dumped in a few theaters and on VOD two months before hitting Blu-ray. Sporting an unconvincing Chicaaahgo accent and the kind of character name that only exists in terrible thrillers, the British Cooper is arrogant ("I never lose"), hot-shot Windy City assistant D.A. Mitch Brockden, and Mitch has it all: loving wife (Erin Karpluk), newborn daughter, successful career. He's also drunk behind the wheel when he plows over a pedestrian after a night out with some guys at the office. Not wanting to risk losing everything on a DUI and vehicular manslaughter, Mitch calls 911 from a pay phone (yes, there's one right there on a dark side street) and flees the scene, leaving the man fighting for his life. The next day, the cops arrest Clinton Davis (a coasting Samuel L. Jackson, visibly irritated that he's been talked into second-billing in a Dominic Cooper movie), who was pulled over with Mitch's now-dead hit-and-run victim in his car. Davis insists he was taking the man to the hospital but hard-nosed detective Blake Kanon (Gloria Reuben) thinks some injuries on the victim are consistent with those of recent murder victims in the area and that Davis might be a serial killer. And guess who gets assigned to prosecute him?

Mitch might be the dumbest lawyer in the history of courtroom thrillers. He all but advertises his involvement in the accident with the way he openly throws the case to get Davis acquitted. But then he stupidly starts looking into Kanon's theory and finds that the hit-and-run victim was a just-paroled sex offender, as are a lot of recent murder victims in the area. Davis lost his family in a home invasion and is exacting his revenge by taking out ex-cons. So now Mitch tries to gather evidence to put away Davis who, of course, has Mitch's business card, which fell out of his coat pocket at the scene of the accident, and has the victim's blood on it (Butterfingers Brockden is constantly dropping things that later put him somewhere he shouldn't be). Screenwriter Peter A. Dowling (FLIGHTPLAN) also crams in a subplot about Mitch's secret ex-con stepbrother (Ryan Robbins), who took the fall for a crime that a pre-law school Mitch was accessory to so as not to ruin his future, and there's a ridiculous scene where Mitch breaks into Kanon's office in the middle of a workday and rifles through her desk and accesses her computer files. And would it be a cat-and-mouse thriller if Davis' over-the-phone taunting didn't prompt Mitch to frantically yell "Is this a fucking game to you?" Director Peter Howitt (SLIDING DOORS, JOHNNY ENGLISH), rightfully cowering under the pseudonym "Peter P. Croudins," might've salvaged things if he had Cooper's Mitch Brockden and Reuben's Blake Kanon debate which of them has the more ridiculous name, but no such luck. This is another 80-minute movie padded out with ludicrously slow-moving credits, almost always a sure sign that everyone involved is doing the bare minimum, and the big-screen equivalent of using large print and triple-spacing on a book report to get it to the required length. (R, 91 mins)

CONTRACTED
(US - 2013)

Or, SERVES YOU RIGHT, YOU WHORE. One of the most egregiously tone-deaf, idiotic, and offensive films in recent memory, CONTRACTED tries to be too many things--Cronenberg "body horror," viral outbreak paranoia film, stalker thriller, drug addiction drama, critique of L.A. vapidity--even before its rampant stupidity causes it to collapse in on itself. Samantha (Najarra Townsend) goes to a party at the home of her friend Alice (Alice Macdonald), who prods her into having too much to drink. She's eventually drugged by a stranger named BJ (YOU'RE NEXT writer Simon Barrett) and the two have a sexual encounter in her car that the filmmakers and the advertising call a one-night stand but it sure plays out like a roofie-abetted acquaintance-rape. The next day, she feels ill and has a persistent bloody discharge from her vagina, but tries to keep it a secret from her mother (Caroline Williams, aka "Stretch" from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2) as well as her on/off girlfriend Nikki (Katie Stegeman). A visit to what might be cinema's most useless doctor concludes that Samantha may have a head cold or some kind of STD and her physical condition deteriorates over the next two days--dizziness, vertigo, her eyes turn blood red, the vaginal discharge gets thicker, fingernails fall off, her skin becomes gangrenous, gums bleed, teeth fall out or blacken, she pulls out clumps of hair, starts gasping and wheezing--and Alice tells her that the police are looking for "some guy named BJ" who was at her party and they need to speak with anyone with whom he came into contact.

I'm not sure what writer/director Eric England (MADISON COUNTY) was going for with CONTRACTED. It's not a badly-made film (he also includes a couple of visual cues from CARRIE), but the script is awful, and England's deliberately evasive approach to the what's and why's (BJ is introduced in a lab, screwing a barely-conscious woman with a biohazard tag on her toe) are infuriating. Also, are Samantha's friends blind or just a product of L.A. self-absorption? They see her looking emaciated, purple, veiny, vomiting blood, flesh slowly eating itself away, and all they can say is "Are you OK?" And if Samantha is a recovering addict, what kind of best friend is Alice to pressure her into getting drunk when she repeatedly says no? No one in this film behaves like a real person. Samantha is a server at a restaurant and her boss makes her work looking the way she does. Everyone is an asshole or a moron. What to make of concerned nice-guy Riley (Matt Mercer)--who's been carrying a torch for Samantha--when he finally gets a chance to get her into bed? He seems like he might be a little clingy but he cares about her--does he not see that she's basically a rotting corpse by this point? Does he not...smell her? England wants this to be the seminal "maggots pouring out of a vagina" movie, but it's at the expense of any semblance of logic. Imagine if Geena Davis kept sleeping with Jeff Goldblum 3/4 of the way through his metamorphosis in Cronenberg's THE FLY and you'll have an idea of how badly this scene plays out. Townsend is alright in a second-string Rooney Mara kind of way, but even taken metaphorically as a depiction of AIDS or someone falling off the wagon or their emotional and psychological scars made physical (though that might be giving it too much credit--the implications of the abrupt finale point to the film being nothing more than a back door entry to a very stale subgenre), CONTRACTED is too overwrought and scattershot to work, and the punishment Samantha endures for her transgression (actually, victimization) is appalling. This isn't a horror film--it's heavy-handed slut-shaming. (Unrated, 84 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)

BLOOD TIES
(France/US - 2013; US release 2014)

Directed by Guillaume Canet. Written by Guillaume Canet and James Gray. Cast: Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, James Caan, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana, Matthias Schoenaerts, Lili Taylor, Noah Emmerich, John Ventimiglia, Domenick Lombardozzi, Yul Vazquez, Richard Petrocelli, Jamie Hector, Eve Hewson, Griffin Dunne, Olek Krupa. (R, 129 mins)

Since his 1994 debut LITTLE ODESSA, writer/director James Gray's films have always felt out of place with contemporary cinema. Initially lumped in with the post-RESERVOIR DOGS, Tarantino indie scene, the not-prolific Gray has established himself as more of a Sidney Lumet disciple with his gritty, character-driven, low-key NYC period pieces that frequently involve cops, criminals, and the blurred lines that separate them (most notably his underrated 2007 gem WE OWN THE NIGHT, set in the late '80s with connected club owner Joaquin Phoenix taking on his Russian mob friends after they shoot his cop brother Mark Wahlberg). BLOOD TIES seems like the movie Gray's wanted to make for the last 20 years, but alas, he only co-wrote it, as TELL NO ONE director Guillaume Canet fashions this French production as a loving throwback to the tough, hard-edged NYC cinema of the 1970s. It's a triumph of production design and visual detail as Canet and the crew flawlessly recreate 1970s Brooklyn, augmented by subtle examples of seamless, non-intrusive CGI done right. If only as much attention had been paid to the script.

A remake of Jacques Maillot's 2008 film LES LIENS DU SANG (RIVALS), which was set in 1979 Paris, BLOOD TIES opens in 1974 Brooklyn (with a bloody, brain-splattering shootout accompanied by the Ace Frehley version of "New York Groove," which wasn't recorded until 1978 but let's not nitpick because it's a terrific scene) and offers the old standby of the just-paroled con (Clive Owen as Chris) trying to stay straight. He's constantly butting heads with his resentful brother, NYPD cop Frank (Billy Crudup in the role Canet himself played in RIVALS), who gets him a job at a garage where he meets and falls for cashier Natalie (Mila Kunis), while trying to connect with his two kids and dealing with his bitter, hooker ex Monica (Marion Cotillard). Meanwhile, Frank has arrested low-level mook Scarfo (BULLHEAD's Matthias Schoenaerts), who owns a van that's been tied to a rash of robberies. Scarfo claims he's innocent and the whole thing is a set-up by a vengeful Frank, who used to be involved with his wife Vanessa (Zoe Saldana). As Chris struggles to stay afloat after a potential deal to open a snack stand with his ex-con buddy Mike (Domenick Lombardozzi) falls apart, he eventually accepts a job from mob-connected bar owner Fabio (Yul Vazquez) to rub out three rivals with the Famous Last Words caveat "I just wanna get back on my feet...I'm not gonna make a habit of this." Of course, one job leads to another and as the cops continue to keep an eye on Chris, who buys Natalie a beautiful engagement ring and is suddenly able to afford an expensive new TV for their ailing father (James Caan), Frank starts getting heat from his boss (Noah Emmerich) and the NYPD brass starts questioning his loyalty.

Released in Europe last year at 144 minutes, BLOOD TIES has been cut by 15 minutes for its dump-job of a US release (28 screens and VOD). Whether distributor Lionsgate made these edits with or without Canet's involvement is unknown, but at least in this incarnation, it feels rushed and incomplete. It aspires to be an epic, sprawling crime saga, but it suffers from an awfully choppy opening half-hour and a finale that feels too abrupt, and as a result, the film jumps all over the place and feels like a series of vignettes rather than a cohesive whole. What exactly is Chris? It's explained that he was in prison for a revenge killing when his girlfriend--presumably Monica--was raped and he offed the attacker. But once out, he becomes a hit man and later, out of nowhere, he's suddenly a pimp. The film takes place over a few months from late 1974 into early 1975 but the time element never feels right. Too much goes down in such a short amount of time. Also, there's numerous instances where people are congregated in a scene and behaving as if their last scene together didn't happen. There's one glaring instance of two scenes that seem to be out of order when Frank kicks temporary roommate Chris out of his apartment, and in the very next scene, Frank is outraged and storms out of the room when he's told by an NYPD honcho that unless he tells Chris to move out, he'll have to turn in his gun and badge. The large supporting cast gets little to do: Caan has a big, emotional speech that feels shoehorned in, and Cotillard and Schoenaerts finally get their own plot threads going around 100 minutes into the movie, as if the filmmakers suddenly remembered they were in it.

Is this something unique to the US cut or was this a problem in the European version as well? Even if the flow and the rhythm of the story are improved by those missing 15 minutes, it won't eliminate the predictable story elements and the cliched execution. How many times have we seen the ex-con sucked back into "the life"? How many times have we seen brothers on opposite sides of the law clash only to have the familial bonds reunite them? It's a great song, but at what point do we stage an intervention for a filmmaker who makes the conscious, straight-faced decision to use the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" for a scene where a junkie falls off the wagon and hits bottom? Canet indulges in some heavy Scorsese worship throughout BLOOD TIES, and it's fun early on when he shows Chris watching Monica walk away in slo-mo to Lee Moses'"Bad Girl" or late in the film when he's fleeing the cops and speeding from place to place like Ray Liotta's coke-addled Henry Hill in GOODFELLAS. Scorsese-worship can be a blast--David O. Russell's AMERICAN HUSTLE is recent proof of that--but someone needs to tell Canet that you can't have the camera slowly move in on the pensive visage of Clive Owen to the opening guitar riff of Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" nearly 25 years after GOODFELLAS and expect to be taken seriously.

BLOOD TIES is a mess, but it's a beautiful mess, and the performances of Owen and Crudup (looking a lot like a younger Harvey Keitel here) are top-notch. Canet aims high and sometimes hits the mark (there's a kinetic energy to the opening shootout, and one late phone call between Chris and Frank has a gut-wrenching moment of clarity for both of them), and even with its copious cliches, there's a very good film trying to break out of the merely OK one in which it's trapped. It's pretty obvious that Gray was a gun-for-hire on this one, probably brought on to ensure that the dialogue had a genuine NYC feel to it instead of sounding awkwardly translated from French. Gray's films don't lean this heavily on cliches and convention, whereas Canet is a movie buff with an obvious affinity for 1970s crime flicks and wanted to make one of his own. That's great, and he certainly succeeded on a visual level and got the right attitude from his actors--this is a rare-for-these-days example of a 1970s-set film not looking like a bunch of out-of-their element, in-over-their-heads actors playing ironic hipster dress-up against a gaudy digital greenscreen--but the script just doesn't hold up its end of the deal.

MEET HIM AND DIE
(Italy/West Germany - 1976)

Directed by Franco Prosperi. Written by Peter Berling, Antonio Cucca, Claudio Fragasso, Alberto Marras. Cast: Ray Lovelock, Martin Balsam, Elke Sommer, Riccardo Cucciolla, Ettore Manni, Heinz Domez, Ernesto Colli, Peter Berling. (Unrated, 94 mins)

Raro USA has done a fine job bringing cult classic 1970s poliziotteschi and other Eurocult gems to DVD and Blu-ray over the last few years, frequently in comprehensive, near Criterion-level packaging (their first box set of Fernando Di Leo crime films, featuring CALIBER 9, THE ITALIAN CONNECTION, THE BOSS, and RULERS OF THE CITY is absolutely essential). There have been stumbles along the way: a pressing error caused the entire run of Massimo Dallamano's THE SECRET OF DORIAN GRAY (1969) to be recalled, the DVD release of Di Leo's TO BE TWENTY (1978) had a glitch that causes it to skip the last chapter of the film, forcing you to go to the chapter selections to see the end of the movie, and their recent Blu-ray release of Umberto Lenzi's NIGHTMARE CITY (1980) has been knocked for its subpar transfer that doesn't even look as good as the decade-plus-old Anchor Bay DVD. You can't knock them all out of of the park, but their edition of MEET HIM AND DIE is an unmitigated disaster of shit-the-bed proportions.

The movie itself is fine--it's not the best polizia and it's not where one should start when exploring the subgenre, but it's an entertaining action thriller. The plot is filled with shootouts, double-crosses, and some nicely-done chase sequences. Massimo (Ray Lovelock of LIVE LIKE A COP, DIE LIKE A MAN) is busted for holding up a jewelry store and sent to prison. It's revealed very early that he's actually an undercover cop, ostensibly working undercover to help orchestrate an escape for incarcerated mob boss Giulianelli (Martin Balsam), who's still overseeing his smuggling operation from the inside and the cops know there's bigger fish to catch. But Massimo's ultimate goal is to use Giulianelli to get to Perrone (Ettore Manni), who employs the two goons who shot and paralyzed his mother. From the action to the memorable score by Ubaldo Continiello to--if you watch the English track--the appearances of all the usual suspects in the dubbing world (Balsam--the same year he co-starred in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN--dubs himself, while Lovelock is voiced by Ted Rusoff, and Elke Sommer turns up about an hour in and is dubbed by Pat Starke), MEET HIM AND DIE is a perfectly serviceable polizia. There's nothing new here, but fans will find a lot to enjoy.

That is, if they can get past the botched transfer. Whether it was Raro's doing or them just working with what they had, the DNR (digital noise reduction) here is off-the-charts. It's as bad as the infamous PREDATOR Blu-ray. In the long shots, it actually looks sort-of OK, but close-ups of the actors--and director Franco Prosperi (more on him in a bit) uses a lot of close-ups--look like they're coated in a waxy glaze, all lines and definition completely removed as everyone just has a smooth, lifeless appearance, surrounded by garish, overly-bright colors. All the grain has been removed, with a fake grain sort-of "hovering" over the image (Blue Underground's Blu-ray release of Dario Argento's THE CAT O'NINE TAILS is a horrific example of this), and it's most noticeable whenever Riccardo Cucciolla (as Massimo's boss) is on screen--watch how the designs on his loud sport jackets sort of move. Sure, there are some moments where it's not awful-looking, but for the most part, this is a horribly ugly transfer and indicative of everything people misunderstand about the concept of high-definition. This is not how movies should look. This is not how film looks, especially when it's one from the mid-1970s. It's anti-HD.

As if the transfer and the absurd levels of DNR weren't bad enough, Raro completely embarrasses itself with the accompanying booklet. There's an essay about the film by polizia expert Mike Malloy, who recently directed the documentary EUROCRIME, which looks at the genre and interviews virtually every still-living actor who appeared in them. Malloy obviously knows his shit, and his essay, as well as a video segment in the bonus features where he talks about the movie, the actors, and the subgenre itself, are nicely-done (I liked his description of the Italians latching on to what was popular--peplum, spaghetti westerns, crime movies--and "strip-mining" it until everyone was completely exhausted with it). But there's also a two-page bio of Prosperi and an accompanying filmography, and here lies the problem: as strange as it seems, there were two Franco Prosperi's working in Italian cinema from the 1960s to the 1980s. The MEET HIM AND DIE Prosperi was a genre and exploitation journeyman who dabbled in a little of everything over his mostly unexceptional career (007 ripoffs in the '60s, horror films in the '70s, and CONAN ripoffs in the '80s). The two-page bio is for the other Franco Prosperi, best known for co-directing, with Gualtiero Jacopetti, the MONDO CANE documentaries. The filmography listed after the bio? That's for the correct (MEET HIM AND DIE) Franco Prosperi. Now, I don't expect the general public to know (or care) that there are two very different Franco Prosperi's--I didn't know until a few years ago and even the most hardcore Eurotrash disciple has gotten them confused at some point in their travels. But shouldn't someone at Raro maybe not fallen asleep at the wheel? Was anyone paying attention? Was anyone in charge of proofreading or fact-checking? Did they even watch the video that Malloy shot for them? Because he specifically mentions the "two different Franco Prosperi's" phenomenon and he specifically says "The director of MEET HIM AND DIE is not the guy who made MONDO CANE." Can you imagine Criterion ever making a gaffe that egregious? Did anyone not find it odd that the bio of Prosperi made no mention of the film in which it's packaged? Malloy is the only credited author of the booklet, but it's obvious from his video segment that he didn't write the bio, since he knows it's not the correct Prosperi. So, between the shitty picture quality and the careless packaging, is there any reason at all to get behind this tire fire of a Blu-ray release? The relatively obscure MEET HIM AND DIE (which may have had some brief US exposure under the title RISKING) is far from essential, but even the worst polizia deserves better than what it gets here: a release that does nothing for the film, the genre, either Franco Prosperi, or Raro USA's sinking reputation. This whole package is riddled with the kind of bush-league fuck-ups that make you hesitant to purchase anything else they release in the future. Get it together, guys.

THE GREAT BEAUTY

(Italy/France - 2013)

The recent Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film is equal parts majestic and ponderous, profound and obvious. It's often stunningly beautiful, and purposefully reminiscent of the legendary likes of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. Like its characters, THE GREAT BEAUTY overstays its welcome and probably would've been more effective had there been maybe 20-30 minutes less of it, but the things in it that work, work extremely well. Directed and co-written by acclaimed Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino (IL DIVO), coming off his little-seen, Weinstein-buried English-language debut THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, which featured Sean Penn in probably the strangest role of his career, THE GREAT BEAUTY could almost be seen as the later years of Marcello Mastroianni's LA DOLCE VITA character. Sorrentino's favorite actor, the chameleon-like Toni Servillo (think of him as Italy's Daniel Day-Lewis), stars as Jep Gambardella, a 65-year-old journalist who's always seen where it's important for society's elite to be seen, where people are famous for being famous. Jep wrote a legendary novel 40 years ago and never wrote another, instead choosing to pen puff pieces and live the celebrity life ("I wrote one book 40 years ago and no bookstore carries it!"). He's no longer able to mask his contempt for his assignments, openly mocking interview subjects like pretentious performance artist Talia Concept (Anita Kravos), whose entire schtick is stripping nude and head-butting a concrete wall. He's grown increasingly misanthropic with age and can always be counted on to deliver a scorched-earth screed if he's prodded enough (his dressing down of a friend who chastises his "novellette" over drinks at a party provides some unforgettable cringe). When he's informed by the devastated husband (Massimo De Francovich) of his teenage first love that she's recently passed and her diary reveals she carried a torch for him for nearly 50 years, it forces Jep to re-evaluate his life and what's he's done with it. He feels emotion where a sardonic crack once sufficed. He considers writing that second novel and trying to find the promise that once was, saying "I'm at the age where I can't waste any more time doing the things I don't want to do."

As a basic point-A to point-B plot, THE GREAT BEAUTY is hardly innovative. Where Sorrentino succeeds is with the incredibly poetic way that the film plays out. Showcasing marvelous tracking shots, sweeping crane shots, and Kubrickian framing, it's LA DOLCE VITA with the hypnotic look of Alain Resnais' LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD and the sense of melancholy for the gone forever past of Visconti's THE LEOPARD. It's a film that mourns the past, lost youth, lost time, missed opportunities, and fading memories, as Jep, from his spacious penthouse apartment overlooking the Coliseum, surrounds himself with the frustrating vapidity of a modern Rome that doesn't understand the beauty it once was. When we first meet Jep, it's at his birthday party, a garish rave populated by the vulgar, the cretinous, and the insufferable: Eurocult icon Serena Grandi appears as a bloated, haggard, coke-snorting ex-reality TV star, now reduced to jumping out of Jep's cake, and one pompous woman huffs "I wouldn't know her...I've never owned a TV," to which her sighing friend replies "You remind me of that at least once a day." Sorrentino gives the film a freeform structure that sometimes causes it to drag, especially in the second half, but the cinematography is gorgeous and the great Servillo is outstanding as always. (Unrated, 141 mins)

THE PAST
(France/Italy - 2013)

Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi ventures to Europe for this searing drama that functions as somewhat of a French-language companion piece to his 2011 Best Foreign Film Oscar-winner A SEPARATION. Like that film, THE PAST has lives intersecting in unforeseen ways with consequences the players never see coming. Farhadi has demonstrated his ability at building strong, believable, and very human characters in situations where all of the details are distributed in a deliberate but never hokey fashion. There are surprises and shocking revelations in THE PAST, but it's very organic in its construction and Farhadi avoids the easy pitfall of hackneyed melodrama. THE PAST is an excellent film but, through no fault of its own, it can't help but feel like a bit of a retread after A SEPARATION, even though its characters aren't in exactly the same scenario. Ali Mosaffa stars as Ahmad, an Iranian man who, in the midst of a severe depression, left Paris, his French wife Marie (Berenice Bejo of THE ARTIST) and her two daughters from a previous relationship, Lucie (Pauline Burlet) and Lea (Jeanne Jestin). Four years later, he returns from Iran at Marie's request to finalize their divorce. She's now involved with Samir (Tahar Rahim), who's moved in with his five-year-old son Fouad (Elyes Aguis). Ahmad doesn't expect to walk into a quietly dysfunctional powderkeg of tension, resentment, and other unresolved issues as he's drawn into the various conflicts existing in the household. Lucie is now a rebellious teenager who regards Ahmad like a father and objects to Samir being in their lives as another of her mother's men who will "just go away after a few years." Samir's wife has been in a coma for eight months for reasons that may or may not involve Samir and Marie having an affair. Fouad has a playmate in young Lea but is angry that he isn't living at his own house and that he has to share a bunk bed with Ahmad.

As with A SEPARATION, Farhadi slowly reveals layers of the story, methodically filling in the audience on the history of the characters and refusing to paint things in mere black and white. Almost everyone--Ahmad, Marie, Samir, and Lucie--provoke shifting alliances with the viewer. Is Marie a homewrecker? Does Ahmad relish the turmoil in which he finds himself? Though you may question the decisions they make, no one is completely right and no one is completely wrong, but they're unmistakably human and deeply flawed. It's hard to not compare THE PAST to the masterpiece that was A SEPARATION, but it's filled with powerful moments, committed performances (as he did with little Kimia Hosseini in A SEPARATION, Farhadi gets a movie-stealing performance out of a child actor, in this case the amazing young Aguis) , and Farhadi isn't afraid to let takes linger to the point where you're as uncomfortable as the characters. Witness the scene where Ahmad and Samir find themselves left alone at the kitchen table and just sit there, not with animosity--they aren't by any means chummy but they seem to realize they have no reason to dislike one another--but with the shrugging realization that they don't really have anything to say. (PG-13, 130 mins)

THE GRANDMASTER
(US/Hong Kong/China/France/Netherlands - 2013)

Legendary Wing Chun martial-artist and Bruce Lee mentor Ip Man (1893-1972) has been the subject of numerous films and a TV series in the last several years, virtually saturating the Asian market to become their version of Italian DJANGO westerns and French films about Coco Chanel. Donnie Yen starred in two hugely popular but highly fictionalized accounts, IP MAN (2008) and IP MAN 2 (2010) before declaring he was done because the Ip Mania was getting out of hand (he seems to have had a change of heart since he recently signed on for a third IP MAN, due out in 2015). There were also the competing IP MAN films THE LEGEND IS BORN: IP MAN (2010) with Dennis To, and IP MAN: THE FINAL FIGHT (2013) with Anthony Wong (because of its title, this is often mistaken as a sequel to the two Yen films), as well as the Chinese TV series IP MAN, which premiered in 2013 and starred Kevin Cheng in the title role. 2013 also saw the release of the most ambitious IP MAN project: Wong Kar Wai's THE GRANDMASTER, a more arthouse take on the legendary figure that was nonetheless controversially recut by US distributor Harvey Weinstein and sold as an action-centered kung-fu epic. Wong (CHUNGKING EXPRESS, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE) had already released two versions, running 130 minutes and 123 minutes. Weinstein--allegedly with Wong's involvement--overhauled the film to 108 minutes for the US, adding some English captions to give a sense of perspective and exposition to American audiences not necessarily familiar with the Sino-Japanese conflicts that impacted Ip Man's life in the 1930s, and while that's helpful, the US release also makes further edits and rearranges some sequences. Wong wrote that it was a chance to "re-shape it" for a different audience while at the same time admitting that his 130-minute cut is his preferred version prepared with "precision and perfect balance."

Precision and perfect balance are not among the feelings you get watching the American cut of THE GRANDMASTER. It's a dazzling, sweeping epic (Philippe Le Sourd's cinematography got a well-deserved Oscar nomination), but its storytelling is muddled and confusing, even with the addition of English expository text and additional voiceover from Tony Leung's Ip Man. The purpose of Weinstein ordering the re-edit was to make Wong's film more linear, but the timeframe still jumps all over the place and there's still enough flashbacks and side stories that you're frequently unaware what year certain parts of the story are taking place. Covering Ip Man's life from 1936 to the early 1950s, Ip Man establishes himself as a great martial arts philosopher and practitioner and Grandmaster and is forced to leave Foshan after the Japanese invasion in 1938. The unwieldy plot also involves disputes between northern and southern China, traitorous Chinese martial artists selling out to the Japanese invaders, Ip Man's competitive rivalry/unrequited love with Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang), the daughter of Master Gong Yutian (Wang Quigxiang), and how the Gong legacy is defamed and usurped by the treacherous Ma San (Zhang Jin) before Ip Man is forced to relocate to Hong Kong in 1950, where the film even tangentially involves Pu Yi, the subject of Bernardo Bertolucci's Oscar-winning THE LAST EMPEROR (1987). What's odd--at least in the US cut--is how the last third of the film has Ip Man essentially step aside as a peripheral character in his own story. Zhang's Gong Er becomes the center of the plot in an extended flashback that details her reclaiming of the Gong dynasty in a brilliantly-shot fight sequence with Ma San, as Wong even works in an opium den sequence that's a straight-up homage to Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984), right down to the use of Ennio Morricone's famed "Deborah's Theme." Even in this truncated form, THE GRANDMASTER looks incredible--Wong really loves shooting epic fights in wind, rain, and snow--and the performances of Leung and Zhang are excellent, but there was enough of a cineaste backlash over this recut version that a domestic special edition Blu-ray release of Wong's 130-minute version is inevitable, so why not wait for that? (PG-13, 108 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)

SABOTAGE
(US - 2014)

Directed by David Ayer. Written by Skip Woods and David Ayer. Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Worthington, Olivia Williams, Mireille Enos, Terrence Howard, Harold Perrineau, Joe Manganiello, Josh Holloway, Max Martini, Martin Donovan, Troy Garity, Maurice Compte, Kevin Vance, Michael Monks, Gary Grubbs, Mark Schlegel. (R, 109 mins)

Arnold Schwarzenegger's return to movies after a decade in politics has largely found the action icon in self-deprecation mode, poking fun at his age in the sadly neglected THE LAST STAND and cutting loose while Sylvester Stallone played his straight man in ESCAPE PLAN. Those two films, along with his appearances in the EXPENDABLES outings, showed a fully self-aware Schwarzenegger who seemed to be happy just making formula action movies again. Unfortunately, if the word "expendables" isn't in the title, formula action movies with '80s action stars aren't doing very well in the 2010s, so Schwarzenegger tries something different with SABOTAGE, teaming with writer/director David Ayer, who's made a name for himself with tough, gritty L.A. cop thrillers--he scripted the great TRAINING DAY (2001) and the underrated DARK BLUE (2002), directed the frequently absurd STREET KINGS (2008), and both wrote and directed END OF WATCH (2012). Ayer's had some stumbles--his 2006 directing debut HARSH TIMES features what's thus far the only bad Christian Bale performance--but the idea of collaborating with Schwarzenegger had some interesting potential. Unfortunately, SABOTAGE is an almost total bust with only the hints of a better film occasionally peaking through the rubble. I like the idea of an aged Schwarzenegger exploring the dark side of a character who's spent his life in law enforcement and has seen far too much horrible shit, and that comes through in a powerfully effective closing shot that strongly suggests Ayer might've been going for something meaningful, but until then, SABOTAGE is filled with tired cliches, obnoxiously cartoonish heroes, and illogical plotting. It seems torn between being a Schwarzenegger vehicle and an Ayer film, clumsily reaching a happy medium that comes off as an awkward, compromised attempt at the most mediocre of both worlds.

Schwarzenegger is John "Breacher" Wharton, a veteran Atlanta-based DEA badass who runs a crew of hardcore, hypermacho, undercover dude-bros who play by their own rules and look like the types of guys who go to metal shows just to beat the shit out of people in the mosh pit. They fuckin' live on the edge 24/7, motherfucker. They fuckin' work hard and they fuckin' play harder. They make SONS OF ANARCHY look like fuckin' pussies and they've always got each others' backs, bro, because that's all fuckin' matters in this world. It's not just a fuckin' job...they fuckin' live it, man. It's what they fuckin' do. They fuckin' crush fuckin' cartels, they fuckin' get shit done, and they fuckin' answer to fuckin' no one. Then they fuckin' go to fuckin' titty bars and they fuckin' make it rain, slammin' fuckin' shots, fuckin' smashin' bottles, and kickin' the fuckin' shit outta some fuckin' pussy bouncers, just because they fuckin' can. They're the fuckin' best at what they do. They got fuckin' names like Breacher, Monster (Sam Worthington), Sugar (Terrence Howard), Grinder (Joe Manganiello), Neck (Josh Holloway), Pyro (Max Martini), Tripod (Kevin Vance), and Smoke (Mark Schlegel). But the fuckin' sickest of all is Monster's old lady Lizzy (Mireille Enos), who's like, just totally fuckin' off the chain, bro.

"Get up, come on, get down with the sickness!"

Breacher's still getting over his wife and son being murdered by a Guatemalan cartel boss when he and his crew orchestrate a $10 million heist of drug money to set themselves up for life. The money goes missing and the Feds are on to them, but after laying low for six months, they get nothing and have no choice but to send Breacher and his team back in the field. Shortly after, members of the crew start getting offed one by one in assorted gruesome ways that mimic the revenge tactics of the cartel: one is smashed to pieces by a train, another is disemboweled, gutted, and nailed to the ceiling. Hard-nosed Atlanta homicide detective Brentwood (Olivia Williams) and her partner Jackson (Harold Perrineau) are in charge of the investigation and get no cooperation from the crew (who, naturally, want to fuckin' deal with this in their own fuckin' way, telling Brentwood--what else--"Welcome to our world"), though a reluctant Breacher slowly begins to warm up to her. As the body count rises and a drug raid reveals they aren't being targeted, Breacher and the team lose trust in one another with the pending exposure of their corruption and the increasing likelihood that the killer is one of their fuckin' own.

Ayer doesn't shy away from graphically gory carnage, making SABOTAGE an unusually grim Schwarzenegger film. But Ayer and co-writer/screenwriting pariah Skip Woods (A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD) never really establish a consistency between a brutal DEA thriller and an Arnold actioner. Schwarzenegger seems up to the challenge of playing a morally-conflicted, burned-out DEA field op whose years on the job mixed with unspeakable tragedy have prompted him to go rogue, but Breacher and his colleagues are some of the most absurdly posturing, gratingly repulsive heroes to hit screens in ages. They act like the kind of roid-raging, fart-obsessed Beavis & Butt-heads who go to public places just to yell, start fights and break shit. They're the kind of no-rules renegades who leave a trail of dead bodies and just strut away from the scene of a meth-stronghold massacre, telling the cops "Cleanup, aisle 3." It's hard to care about Monster and Lizzy's imploding marriage, since it's obvious these two sacks of shit were made for each other. Enos is a fine actress, but she's completely over-the-top here, and not in a good way (see Eva Green in 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE). You can tell Ayer handled the writing in the scenes with Williams and Perrineau, because their rapport and ribbing with one another expertly conveys the kind of lived-in comfort and trust of two veteran cops who've worked together for some time. The scenes with these two are far more interesting than anything involving Breacher and his crew of goonish idiots (Williams also gets the film's best line, telling a posturing Grinder "I hate to interrupt your bro-down, but..."). I also liked some amusing asides here and there, like Breacher being under constant surveillance during his suspension, bringing Pop Tarts to the Feds parked outside his house and sharing his Netflix DVDs with them.

As an actor, Schwarzenegger has overcome the obstacle of his thick Austrian accent with his larger-than-life screen presence and sheer charisma--when he plays a Texas sheriff in RAW DEAL or a US Special Forces vet in COMMANDO or a big-city cop or even a KINDERGARTEN COP, he's Arnold and you just roll with it, no matter how inherently absurd his casting may be. That's why he's awesome. But with SABOTAGE, it's the first time it feels like Schwarzenegger is out of place. Maybe it's the conflicted script, maybe it's the ill-fitting suits he wears in the DEA offices, or maybe it's his age, but for whatever reason, it's hard to buy the Breacher that he's selling here. He doesn't look comfortable in the action scenes, and while it's commendable that he isn't going full Seagal and checking out entirely while his stuntman does the heavy lifting, Arnold just doesn't move like he used to. He looks oddly slumped when he's carrying a shotgun and barging through doors. It's perfectly understandable--no matter how great of shape he's in, he's still 66 years old and it's not 1990 anymore. There's no mention made of his character's age, but maybe it would've been smart to work it in, especially given the implications of the closing scene. But as it is, for the first time since his post-Governator comeback, he actually comes across as too old for this shit. Perhaps if SABOTAGE were as relatively lighthearted as THE LAST STAND or ESCAPE PLAN, the miscasting wouldn't come off as so glaring. But that again speaks to how SABOTAGE is constantly working at cross purposes. It's Schwarzenegger taking on dark, serious material, but it's at least a decade too late, and the filmmakers feel too much of an obligation to make it an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, and as a result, it's a complete mess that unfortunately feels like it should've gone straight to DVD. Ultimately, the basic center of the film--the mystery of who's offing the crew and why--doesn't really hold up to any serious scrutiny. Also, SABOTAGE can't even follow the advice of its own one-sheet ("Leave no loose ends"): what was the point of introducing Troy Garity's bitter, whistleblowing Fed only to drop him completely after two scenes? And if Breacher's crew followed their directive to blow up all the money in their initial raid, then how did the DEA suits know $10 million was missing? That's got "Skip Woods" written all over it.

OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO)
(Spain/France - 1982)

Written and directed by Max H. Boulois. Cast: Tony Curtis, Joanna Pettet, Max H. Boulois, Ramiro Oliveros, Nadiuska, Gerard Barray, Fernando Sancho, Aldo Sambrell, Sara Mora, Tom Hernandez. (Unrated, 86 mins)

Martinique-born jack-of-all-trades Max-Henri Boulois has dabbled in a bit of everything over his career: he was some sort of "French athletics prodigy" in the early 1960s before embarking on his career as an author and political commentator. He also found time in the 1970s to record some albums under the name "Max B," parlaying whatever notoriety that brought into a few supporting roles under his "Max B" moniker, which led to a three-film run as independent auteur Max H. Boulois, self-financing, writing, directing, and starring in films under his Spain-based "M.B. Diffusion S.A." production banner. Boulois' filmmaking efforts are little more than clumsy, Martinique-shot vanity projects that are among the most obscure in all of exploitation cinema: 1980's BIG GAME, aka MAD MEX: THE BLACKFIGHTER and the 1981 casino heist thriller BLACK JACK never scored a US release, though by the time of BLACK JACK, Boulois was able to afford real actors like the legendary Peter Cushing and former THUNDERBALL Bond girl Claudine Auger. But Boulois' magnum opus is his ill-conceived, budget-starved 1982 effort OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO), a modern updating that turns the Shakespeare tragedy into an action film set in an unnamed African country, with Boulois' General Othello leading a band of guerrila fighters against the rule of a tyrannical despot. Shakespeare updates are nothing new in movies, but you know you're in for something special when the opening credits misspell Shakespeare's name.

Like his previous films, OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) is pretty much a Boulois home movie, with barely-audible dialogue often drowned-out by the overbearing use of Beethoven selections on the soundtrack. The only real reason to sit through it is to check out a hammy Tony Curtis booze-and-coke-sweating his way through his performance as the duplicitous Col. Iago, Othello's racist second-in-command who plots his superior's downfall. Resentful of Othello and his marriage to humanitarian aid worker Desdemona "DeDe" Fergusson (Joanna Pettet), the daughter of a powerful US senator (Tom Hernandez), Iago sets in motion a complex plan to destroy Othello and Major Cassius (Ramiro Oliveros), and usurp control of the guerilla fighters himself. Curtis sports a ten-gallon hat in a couple of scenes for no reason, and elsewhere rants and raves, likely ad-libbing lines where he expresses his disgust at Othello's "chimpanzee hands, those thick lips, and that smell" all over the privileged, white Desdemona (almost every white male is a vile racist, right down to Sen. Fergusson, outraged over his daughter's marriage, complaining that Othello practices witchcraft and probably "cast a spell" on Desdemona). Boulois doesn't use much of the Bard's actual writing, but when he does, as in one scene where Curtis delivers an Iago soliloquy, it comes off as hokey and awkward amidst the modern vernacular. OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) came at a time in Curtis' career when his substance abuse problems essentially made him an unemployable pariah in Hollywood, resulting in appearances in some truly dreadful films like Ulli Lommel's BRAIN WAVES (1983) and the Alexander Salkind fiasco WHERE IS PARSIFAL? (1984). As far as he could be from the likes of SOME LIKE IT HOT and SPARTACUS, desperate for work and probably figuring he could score some primo blow in Martinique, Curtis appears to be invested in this and even showed up at Cannes in 1982 to shill for it, going so far as to sit down with Roger Ebert to discuss it. Cannon chief Menaham Golan acquired the distribution rights to Boulois' film, but didn't do much with it other than dump it in a few foreign territories under their "Cannon International" banner. They never released it in US theaters and it never turned up on video, though it can be found on the bootleg and torrent circuit.

OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO)'s cult status is minor, due largely to the depressing presence of a slumming Curtis, reduced to appearing in a Eurocine co-production that looks like the typically slipshod Jess Franco films that the French company was financing around the same time. In keeping with the Eurocine tradition, shots vacillate from night to day in the same scenes, while other scenes end abruptly, sometimes in mid-sentence, there's little continuity, and the dialogue--Curtis and Pettet appear to be speaking on-set; Boulois and the others sound dubbed--often ranges from garbled to completely inaudible. There's little sense of pacing, and even with spaghetti western stalwarts Fernando Sancho and Aldo Sambrell in supporting roles, the whole thing is a real snooze when Curtis is offscreen. But such is the life of the cult film enthusiast. Bad-movie fanatics and connoisseurs of trashy cinema are always willing to explore films of the "Does this piece of shit really exist?!" variety, and on that front, OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) doesn't disappoint. What can I say? This is the life we've chosen.

Joanna Pettet during her 1970s heyday

Pettet, whose career got off to promising start in the late 1960s with Sidney Lumet's THE GROUP, the 007 spoof CASINO ROYALE, and Peter Yates' ROBBERY, doesn't embarrass herself, though it's hard to believe she wasn't entertaining better offers than this or another vanity project around the same time, co-starring in the drive-in thriller DOUBLE EXPOSURE, where producer Michael Callan cast schlubby character actor Michael Callan as a fashion photographer surrounded by a bunch of models who can't wait to sleep with Michael Callan. The beautiful, British-born Pettet was a constant presence on American TV in the 1970s but for some reason, she never made it big. Not long after her OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) triumph, she had a short but acclaimed run on KNOTS LANDING, followed by a few other appearances of no significance. Pettet quit acting after a harrowing experience in late 1989, when she was among the hostages held by Filipino rebels plotting a coup against then-President Corazon Aquino. She was in Manila shooting the low-budget Roger Corman/Cirio H. Santiago production TERROR IN PARADISE and the insurgents took over the hotel where she was staying and the area around it as they closed in on the Presidential residence at the Malacanan Palace. Pettet managed to escape and decided that easy money in shit movies wasn't worth it anymore. The film was unreleased until 1995, the same year Pettet and ex-husband Alex Cord (AIRWOLF's "Archangel") lost their 26-year-old son to a heroin overdose. She was a companion to the great British actor Alan Bates in the final days before his 2003 death from pancreatic cancer, but beyond that, the now-71-year-old Pettet has completely retired from public life. She deserves to be better-known.

The hulking Boulois has a bit of screen presence but isn't much of an actor, though as far as self-financed, would-be auteurs go, he's not as bad as, say, John De Hart in GETEVEN, Tommy Wiseau in THE ROOM, or Phil Pitzer in EASY RIDER: THE RIDE BACK. Despite all the ingredients for some outstanding Cinema du Batshit, OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) is a pretty dry and tedious affair, very rarely going as bonkers as its misbegotten concept and incompetent execution would imply. After the world failed to embrace his "Sheakespeare" interpretation, Boulois abandoned movies and music and returned to journalism, writing several non-fiction books and being a regular French TV presence in the coverage of European and Middle East politics. His website hasn't been updated since 2011.

(special thanks to Marty McKee for sending me his copy of this--you sure you don't want it back, Marty?)

NOAH
(US - 2014)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Written by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel. Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth, Leo McHugh Carroll, Marton Csokas, Madison Davenport, voices of Nick Nolte, Frank Langella, Kevin Durand, Mark Margolis. (PG-13, 138 mins)

Biblical purists aren't going to go for Darren Aronofsky's revisionist take on Noah's Ark, which is faithful to the point of including Noah and an ark. At times seeming like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Bible, Aronofsky's NOAH succeeds as epic cinema and as part of the bigger picture of the filmmaker's work as a whole. One of Aronofsky's recurrent themes, from PI (1998), REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000), THE FOUNTAIN (2006), THE WRESTLER (2008) all the way to BLACK SWAN (2010), is the obsessive, frequently maniacal, and all-consuming nature of their protagonists. In that respect, Russell Crowe's Noah is cut from the same cloth as Ellen Burstyn's Sara Goldfarb and her diet pills in REQUIEM, Mickey Rourke's Randy "The Ram" Robinson in THE WRESTLER or Natalie Portman's Nina Sayers in BLACK SWAN. To some degree, Aronofsky's characters are perpetually in a head-on descent into self-destructive madness.

Such is the case with Noah, a descendant of Adam & Eve's third son Seth. Though "God" is never invoked, "The Creator" supplies Noah with a vision of the world's flooded end as punishment for man's sins. Noah is entrusted to build an ark, to which The Creator will direct all of the world's animals to begin life anew after its watery destruction. Noah spends ten years building the massive ark with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), their sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman), and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll), and adopted daughter and Shem's love interest Ila (Emma Watson), left barren from injuries sustained in a massacre of her people and rescued by Noah and Naameh years earlier. He also gets assistance from a group of fallen angels known as The Watchers, stone giants who resemble ancient Transformers with the voices of Nick Nolte and Frank Langella. As the animals make their way to the under-construction ark (and a steam potion puts them in a state of hibernation), warrior-king and Cain descendant Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone) decides to kill distant relative Noah and orders his army to take control of the ark in an attempt to survive The Creator's extermination of mankind.

Winstone!

But the massive flood is just the beginning, as middle child Ham is resentful of his brother's love of Ila and angry enough to be privy to the manipulation of Tubal-Cain. And as the situation grows more dire, Naameh's request of a gift from Noah's grandfather Methusaleh (Anthony Hopkins) disrupts Noah's single-minded drive and pushes him to the point of homicidal mania. So yes, to say Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel take some liberties with the source material is an understatement. But a straight Biblical adaptation was never in the cards anyway, even before Paramount added disclaimers to the advertising that stated as much. Obviously, one's devotion and attachment to the story will likely dictate the response, but personally, as someone who has no commitment to the Bible and whose church of choice is the big screen, I found NOAH to be exciting, ambitious filmmaking. With THE WRESTLER and BLACK SWAN, Aronofsky kept things relatively low-budget after the brilliant THE FOUNTAIN proved to be a costly (and mismarketed) flop for Warner Bros. Given the power granted to bottom-line-obsessed execs and focus-group mouth-breathers, the fact that Paramount gave Aronofsky $125 million to make NOAH and largely left him alone to make the film he wanted to make and disregarded the test audience feedback and released the director's preferred cut is a major miracle itself. Aronofsky had been toying with the idea of helming a mega-budget epic, but turned down MAN OF STEEL and left THE WOLVERINE during pre-production, opting instead to wait until the time was right for NOAH.

"What a fool belieeeeeeves...."

Aronofsky takes a huge gamble in making Noah extraordinarily unlikable and practically deranged in the second half as he'll stop at nothing to follow through with The Creator's request (as the years go on, Noah's hair grays and at times, Crowe resembles a feral Michael McDonald). Utilizing CGI and some of the same sort of minimalist visual trickery seen in THE FOUNTAIN, Aronofsky creates a visually stunning world in NOAH. The sequence detailing the onset of the flood while the ark is under attack by Tubal-Cain's men is terrifying to watch and jaw-dropping in its scope and a must-see on a large screen. Some of the stuff involving The Watchers is a little goofy (but I'm always up for some Nick Nolte grumbling) and sometimes, it feels a little too derivative of the LORD OF THE RINGS, but in an era when most multiplex movies are bland, uninspired, and interchangeable, NOAH is unique even when it's borrowing an occasional element here and there. It's the strangest Biblical epic in years and so much of it could've gone so horribly awry, that even on those rare instances where something doesn't work, you're still admiring the chutzpah of the whole endeavor. Even if you vehemently disagree with the out-of-the-box approach Aronofsky takes--and nothing's going to change your mind--the fact that NOAH even exists is proof that Hollywood might still give a shit about artistic vision.

THE BAG MAN
(Bahamas - 2014)

This low-budget, Bahamas-financed thriller was shot in Louisiana in 2012 and released on 15 screens a month ago. It plays like one of those forgettable post-PULP FICTION Tarantino knockoffs that flooded video stores well into the late 1990s. There's an added bit of THE USUAL SUSPECTS tossed in, along with some occasional would-be David Lynch eccentricity that provides a few fleeting amusing moments but mostly just feels rote and tired, with cinematography so dark and murky that it's often hard to tell what's going on. Based on an unfilmed screenplay titled MOTEL (the film's original title) penned by veteran actor James Russo, THE BAG MAN is the debut of writer/director David Grovic, who manages to corral a pair of slumming big names like John Cusack and Robert De Niro for a sort-of THINGS TO DO IN NEW ORLEANS WHEN YOU'RE COASTING. By now, it's no surprise to see Cusack or De Niro in this kind of Redbox-ready clunker that keeps a roof over the heads of guys like Michael Madsen or Tom Sizemore or Val Kilmer or Christian Slater, but not that long ago, this would've been a major release in theaters nationwide. De Niro's been taking mercenary jobs for a few years now (you think he even remembers making RED LIGHTS?), and once in a while, a SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK might accidentally happen, but Cusack's fall from the A-list has been shocking in its suddenness because nothing really brought it on. It's not like he got old or was involved in a scandal or had a string of bombs or a reputation for being unusually difficult. What gives? Who did he piss off? What the hell happened to John Cusack?

Here, Cusack is Jack, a flunky for Dragna (De Niro), a powerful New York mobster prone to windy, overly-scripted speeches that reference the likes of Herman Hesse and Sun Tzu. Dragna gives Jack an easy, quick-money assignment: retrieve a bag, don't look inside, drive it to no-tell motel in an off-the-beaten-path podunk town, and wait for him to arrive. Jack arrives at the motel with complications already in tow--a guy who tried to get the bag from him is now a corpse in his trunk. The situation doesn't improve once he goes through the hassle of checking in (Crispin Glover is the twitchy, wheelchair-bound desk clerk): Jack shoots some mystery men waiting for him in the next room, then finds himself paired up with Israeli hooker Rivka (Rebecca Da Costa), who's being hassled by a pair of vicious pimps, one an eye-patched Nick Fury lookalike (Sticky Fingaz), the other a bad-tempered Serbian dwarf (Martin Klebba). Bodies start piling up and the sheriff (Dominic Purcell, who's actually good here) keeps nosing around before Dragna makes his explosive reappearance to inform Jack why he was selected for this job, and it's a front-runner for 2014's dumbest plot twist. There's lots of would-be Tarantino dialogue ("If you could fuck any woman from history, who would it be?") and quirky touches (Glover sternly telling Cusack "Don't touch my wheelchair...it belonged to my dead mother!" gets a big laugh), and De Niro, hamming it up and sporting near-George Romero-eyeglass frames and a big silver pompadour in a role that seems like it was written with Christopher Walken in mind, has a long monologue that centers on an episode of FULL HOUSE, but those moments are disbursed in a stingy fashion throughout a drab, dull, stagy noir that's going nowhere fast, much like Cusack's career if he doesn't stop seemingly choosing his scripts at random. (R, 109 mins)

AT MIDDLETON
(US - 2014)

If you happen upon AT MIDDLETON in its last five minutes, you might think you missed a powerful, heartfelt look at two people who make a connection over the course of a day and are forced by the circumstances and the realities of their lives to part ways and return to their respective spouses. But if you watch the rest of the film leading up to that finale, you'll get a grating, phony, and pandering middle-aged rom-com filled with obvious jokes, cliched plot turns, cardboard characters, and some frequently atrocious acting, the kind of fawned-over festival favorite that ultimately gets dumped on 20 screens with little fanfare. There's a good film to be made--one that could deftly balance drama and comedy--about parents of an only child facing an empty nest when that kid goes off to college, but until its surprisingly poignant ending, AT MIDDLETON takes the easy route to stale laughs and even staler drama nearly every time and has almost nothing substantive to offer. Taking place over one day at the mid-level, mostly average Middleton College, the type of place no one really wants to go but they just sort-of end up there, AT MIDDLETON finds heart surgeon George Hartman (Andy Garcia) and his son Conrad (Spencer Lofranco) arriving for a campus tour when George has a meet-cute with Edith Martin (Vera Farmiga), when she steals his parking spot. Edith is there with her ferociouly ambitious daughter Audrey (Farmiga's little sister Taissa of AMERICAN HORROR STORY; there's a 21-year age difference but they look so much alike that the initiallly odd casting works). George is a milquetoast sort who wears a bow tie, while Edith is brash, loud, and free-spirited and prone to embarrassing Audrey. Gee, is there any way opposites won't attract and that dweeby bow tie won't be undone before the end of the movie?

George and Edith get separated from the tour group and spend the afternoon on their own, stealing a couple of bikes, crashing a drama class, going into the music building and playing "Chopsticks," climbing the campus bell tower, watching THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, watching a young couple have public sex, running through a fountain, and generally making nuisances of themselves campus-wide. In the film's worst stretch, George and Edith blaze up with a couple of stoner pre-med students. Can you do anything new with the concept of square parents getting high? As evidenced by a baked Garcia rapping "I'm a cardiac surgeon!" over some background reggae beats, the answer is a resounding "no." It just gets worse when one of the stoner dudes starts talking about a diseased dog's distended ballsack, which leads to the mantra "The ballsack is life," which is at least a brief respite from the film busting its ass to make "feckless" a punchline. A mannered Vera Farmiga, who appears to have prepped for the role by visualizing the worst of Diane Keaton and running with it, is really hard to take at times, and in the most unintentionally telling shot, she actually grabs a crutch and starts using it for no reason. The younger actors don't fare much better, though they aren't required to embarrass themselves quite as much. Still, Taissa Farmiga gets one of the worst lines after a spat with Conrad--when he puts his earbuds back in and walks away, she yells "Confusion has a lot of great soundtracks!" What? What does that even mean? Peter Riegert appears briefly as a cynical DJ named Boneyard Sims, who gives communications major Conrad some pointers. The best performance is a two-scene bit from Tom Skerritt as a famed linguistics professor who advises the driven Audrey to slow down and use college to explore her options when she melts down after he declines her request to be her mentor. Skerritt brings a quiet, scholarly dignity to the role that's completely at odds with the cookie-cutter histrionics going on almost everywhere else, and with about four minutes of screen time, he succeeds in making you wish this was a film about his character. As George and Edith grow closer over the day, they question the decisions they've made and the complacency that's set in, but AT MIDDLETON isn't interested in that. It's the kind of movie where a staid, uptight guy loosening his bow tie and rapping after a couple of bong hits is supposed to be instantly hysterical. And there's the moment when Edith starts crying because the day's coming to an end, and she looks at George with tears streaming down her face and says "I thought you fixed hearts!" Really? Pros like Garcia and Vera Farmiga read that line in director Adam Rodgers' script and said "Yep...sounds good! Let's do this!"? But then at the end, something happens. It gets serious, and the final moments are genuinely emotional as the two parties go to their respective vehicles and get on the road home, presumably never to see each other again. The expressions on Garcia's and Farmiga's faces convey the pain, the missed opportunities, the uncertainty over the future. They're exhibiting the best acting they've done in the whole film and then you realize why: because they aren't talking. (R, 100 mins)

Cult Classics Revisited: WITCHBOARD (1986)

On DVD/Blu-ray: ICE SOLDIERS (2014) and RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE (2014)

In Theaters: POMPEII (2014)

In Theaters: NON-STOP (2014)

On DVD/Blu-ray: BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (2013) and MR. NOBODY (2013)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE LAST DAYS ON MARS (2013) and COLD COMES THE NIGHT (2014)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE VISITOR (1979)

In Theaters: 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE (2014)

In Theaters/On VOD: GRAND PIANO (2014)

Cult Classics Revisited: THE FROZEN DEAD (1966)

On DVD/Blu-ray: INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (2013) and BEYOND OUTRAGE (2013); plus bonus Netflix Instant exclusive SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF (2014)

Cult Classics Revisited: SONNY BOY (1990)

On DVD/Blu-ray: HERE COMES THE DEVIL (2013); REASONABLE DOUBT (2014); and CONTRACTED (2013)

In Theaters/On VOD: BLOOD TIES (2014)

On DVD/Blu-ray: MEET HIM AND DIE (1976)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE GREAT BEAUTY (2013); THE PAST (2013); and THE GRANDMASTER (2013)

In Theaters: SABOTAGE (2014)

Cult Classics Revisited: OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) (1982)

In Theaters: NOAH (2014)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE BAG MAN (2014) and AT MIDDLETON (2014)