The Ritual: Based on the “Real-Life” Story of Emma Schmidt

Father Carl Vogl’s book, Begone Satan was like the 1930’s equivalent of Jay Anson’s Amityville Horror. It convinced a lot of otherwise skeptical readers that Satanic supernatural horror might really be real. Anson’s book had multiple movie treatments, of radically varying quality. Now the case Father Vogl (and also Time magazine) documented has inspired David Midell’s The Ritual, which opens today in theaters.

Father Joseph Steiger is a man of the cloth, but he also considers himself a modern man of reason, so he is stunned and confused when his Monsignor orders him to host the exorcism of Emma Schmidt. The exorcist will be Father Theophilus Riesinger, a Capuchin priest with a history of battling demonic possession. In fact, he already attempted a previous exorcism of Schmidt several years prior.

However, Father Steiger is skeptical, He frequently suggests Schmidt would be better off with a psychiatrist rather than an exorcist. Unfortunately, she and Riesinger arrived while he was amidst a full-blown crisis of faith, precipitated by his brother’s shocking suicide. Frankly, viewers might think the chaos unlashed during Riesinger’s exorcism sessions, which injures several attending nuns, should convince the good Father (and he is a good Father) that something uncanny and evil plagues Schmidt. However, doubt is powerful and it undermines faith, making men vulnerable to evil.

Indeed, doubt is a very human weakness, which is really the film’s bedrock theme. It is Father Steiger’s doubt and Father Riesinger’s guilt that the Evil One exploits. Yet, their weaknesses also make the priests ever so human.

Arguably, Dan Stevens might just deliver his best performance since Downton Abbey portraying the very American looking and sounding Father Steiger. He is keenly sympathetic, even when he chastely flirts with Sister Rose (his “work wife”). Similarly, Al Pacino does his best work in years as Father Riesinger. Admittedly, his accent is highly dubious, but at least it is consistent. More to the point, he forgoes all his usual tics, mannerisms, and Hoo-ah’s, disappearing into the character instead.

American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally

Among the two propaganda broadcasters referred to as “Axis Sally,” Rita Zucca maybe said worse things than Mildred Gillars, but she got off far easier. Those are the breaks for people who renounce their American citizenship and openly side with our enemies. Unlike Zucca, Gillars would face the music in an American court. That complex case unfolds in Michael Polish’s American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on-demand.

When the American G.I’s arrived in Berlin, Gillars tried to disappear into the woodwork, but she was way to infamous.  For years, she had frustrated American listeners, who sat through her mocking songs and odes to German military superiority, hoping to hear reports of their captured loved ones. Her scripts were written by Goebbels himself, who insisted she deliver them word-for-word, or else.

Even though she had sworn allegiance to the National Socialist regime, the Federal government prosecuted her for treason in a civilian criminal court. Naturally, she will be represented by James Laughlin, whom Polish and co-screenwriters Vance Owens and Darryl Hicks present as the William Kunstler of the 1940s, except Laughlin seems pretty contemptuous of his own client. His new associate Billy Owen, a recently discharged GI, is more sympathetic—maybe even in ways that aren’t so professional.

Arguably, Gillars was twentysome years ahead of her time. Had she been broadcasting anti-American propaganda in the 1960s, she would have been the subject of glowing documentaries like FTA. Maybe she didn’t deserve a fate so much worse than Zucca’s—really, it might be more accurate to say Zucca deserved far worse than she got. Regardless, Polish and company are too partisan in the way they present Gillars. The witnesses they dramatize in the film never represent the damning testimony of former POWs like Michael Evaneck and Eugene McCarthy, which clearly implied she was more personally invested in her propaganda than the film suggests.

Hunters on Amazon

In 1977, thriller fans were primed to look for fugitive National Socialists under every bed. Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil had been one of the biggest bestsellers of the previous year, following in the footsteps of Robert Ludlum’s Osterman Weekend and Frederick Forsythe’s Odessa File. Plus, in real life, Simon Wiesenthal’s heroic hunt for war criminals was reasonably well-reported. Meyer Offerman has recruited a team to do similar work, but their methods are more hardcore in the first season of Hunters, created by David Weil and executive produced by Jordan Peele, which premieres tomorrow on Amazon Prime.

Jonah Heidelbaum knew his grandmother Ruth survived a concentration camp, but she never talked about the Holocaust. Yet, he suspects her murder was somehow related to her status as a survivor, based on what he heard while cowering around the corner. Offerman definitely agrees.

Offerman met and fell in love with Heidelbaum’s grandmother while they were both held captive in the camps. Over time, their relationship became rather complicated, but she was still his primary researcher, who compiled the files and testimony that now supports the group’s Nazi-hunting. Naturally, Heidelbaum wants in, but the rest of the Hunters are skeptical, especially the not very merciful Sister Harriet. Martial arts expert Joe Torrance and the Pam Grier-inspired Roxy Jones are nearly as unwelcoming. However, Murray and Mindy Markowitz, an old married couple who happen to be crack weaponsmiths, and Lonnie Flash, a Jewish exploitation movie star (sort of a forerunner to the Hebrew Hammer) are more sympathetic.

Even before her murder, Offerman’s group detected signs of increased activity on behalf of the secretive Odessa-esque organization. Viewers know they have Biff Simpson, a highly placed mole in the State Department, who has convinced Jimmy Carter to lift trade sanctions on Latin America. Apparently, they have big plans that require a mystery import from the southern hemisphere.

Hunters is peppered with many amusing faux-grindhouse visual gags in the Tarantino-Machete tradition, but it still has a very incomplete understanding of the era it is trying to recreate. Sometimes it is small details, like a reference to Kramer vs. Kramer, which was released two years later (in 1979). However, some errors reflect a more fundamental cluelessness regarding the greater social trends of the era. For instance, in one scene, naïve Heidelbaum goes undercover as Young Republican canvasser, hoping to score a signature from a suspected war criminal in Huntville, Alabama. However, a YR would be almost unheard of in the solid democratic South of the 1970s. (Alabama voted squarely for Carter and the Huntsville district elected Dems until 2010.) Even more to the point, the rampant crime and fiscal collapse that defined Abe Beame’s mayoralty in New York are largely, if not entirely ignored.

Nevertheless, given the alarming increase in anti-Semitic violence, here and abroad, it is definitely satisfying to see some old school retribution. The shadowy conspirators and the German fugitives hiding in plain sight totally have it coming—and the Hunters frequently give it to them, in graphically poetic terms.

The Pirates of Somalia: Go to Somalia, Write a Book

Evidently, Somalis are irked by the fact none of their countrymen play the Somali characters in Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. Of course, many Americans are still slightly disappointed that the bodies of U.S. military casualties were dragged through the streets after the Battle of Mogadishu, so maybe they should just call it even. Regardless, real Somalis are just misunderstood by the western media, because no reporter had the guts to embed there. That was Jay Bahadur’s contention. He sets out to prove it and to make his name as a foreign correspondent in Bryan Buckley’s The Pirates of Somalia (a.k.a. Dabka, trailer here), which releases today on DVD.

Canadian slacker Bahadur is a recent college graduate, who is bitterly disappointed to learn he might actually have to work for a living. He lives in his parents’ basement and obsesses over his ex-girlfriend, while remaining convinced he is God’s gift to journalism. However, the mentorship of crusty retired journalist Seymour Tolbin inspires him to formulate a plan so crazy it just might work: go to a country no western journalist is willing to report from and offer his services as a stringer. He should also make a big deal about writing a book. (Annoyingly, the film seems to have little idea how publishing really works. Trade houses do not hire stringers and news service are rarely involved in the publication of books, but we see general purpose media figure head Avril Benoît turn down the increasingly desperate Bahadur for both.)

Lo and behold, the Somali president and the largest news service are eager to have someone come tell their nation’s story, particularly with respect to the government’s attempt to crack down on the pirates. They provide him a fixer-translator, Abdi, and a security detail, but Bahadur’s clumsy naivete will make each interview more dangerous than it needed to be.

Not surprisingly, the Oscar nominated Barkhad Abdi appears as his fixer namesake. Frankly, he really is a very good actor, who is starting to break out of his typecast-mold. Nonetheless, a film like this is still his bread-and-butter—and he is indeed quite good pranking and then watching Bahadur’s back. On the other hand, it is hard to take Evan Peters seriously as our rookie reporter, especially considering how awkward he sounds when pronouncing the name Bahadur.

At least, Al Pacino is relatively amusing, swaggering about as Tolbin. However, the instantly recognizable voice of Melanie Griffith is totally distracting in the nothing-throwaway role of Bahadur’s mom. Yet, it should be readily stipulated the cast of Somali refugees is consistently impressive (and logically quite believable), especially Mohamed Barre as the relatively benign pirate Boyah, and Mohamed Osmail Ibrahim as the stone cold evil pirate Garaad.

Buckley’s adaptation of Bahadur’s book desperately wants us to believe the piracy problem would go away if we just showered foreign aid and good vibrations on Somalia, but that is hard to do when pirates like Garaad are attacking shipments of food aid. Yet, no matter how much we might sympathize with the Somali people, the obnoxiously whiny portrayal of Bahadur sabotages all the film’s earnest intentions. The large ensemble of non-professional actors raises the level of interest and authenticity, but the oh-so-self-aware narration induces nausea. Not recommended, Pirates of Somalia is now available on DVD. Check out A Hijacking instead.

Hangman: It’s a Puzzler

So, there’s another serial killer gimmick taken. You’d think the cops would actually try to solve the puzzle, because that word could possibly be one of those clue thingies, like “Rosebud,” but these cops couldn’t be bothered. They are too busy spinning their wheels in Johnny Martin’s Hangman (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

This was a terrible week for Det. Will Ruiney to get stuck chaperoning Christi Davies, a hack journalist. As fate would have it, he draws a serial killer case during her first ride-along. This will be a gruesome one. The killer slices the letters of his hangman game into each victim’s chest while they are still living. It turns out this case is also personal. In addition to the signature gallows template left at the first crime scene, the perp also carved the badge numbers of Det. Ruiney and his retired ex-partner, Det. Ray Archer into a desk. However, this might not technically be the first victim, considering the killer is already on his second letter.

The good news is the reporter is surprisingly helpful and team-oriented. The bad news is Ruiney might be even more closely connected to the case than he realized. Regardless, the unlikely trio will begin a nightly race against the clock when they determine the killer executes his victims at 11:00 PM, precisely on the dot.

Frankly, Hangman is nicely pacey and surprisingly effective during the 24-hour countdowns to murder, but the film craters down the stretch. Suddenly, people are acting weird and twitchy for no reason, but it is the final twist the really brings on the face-palms. Seriously, did screenwriters Charles Huttinger and Michael Caissie deliberately set out to undermine whatever good will the film might have accrued?

On the plus side, Al Pacino mostly reins himself in as Det. Archer, at least until the third act, when all bets are off. Karl Urban and Brittany Snow are respectably intense as Ruiney and Davies. The three form a decent combo when they get into their groove, plus Sarah Shahi gives the film some edge as the no-nonsense, wheelchair-bound Capt. Lisa Watson. Unfortunately, the Hangman winds up being an underwhelming, non-entity, which is obviously a severe drawback for a serial killer movie.

Hangman evaporates from memory pretty quickly, but it is still a better vehicle for Pacino (whose work has been hit-or-miss in the extreme over the last ten years) than the erratic Son of No One or the lame Misconduct. We’ve seen worse, but that’s our job. It’s the kind of movie that holds your attention just well enough when you get home late at night from a gig or a company holiday party, but you would never actually buy a ticket to see it in a theater. Nevertheless, it duly opens this Friday (12/22) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Misconduct: The Whole Film is Out of Order

Two profoundly unpopular professions are about to be pitted against each other. It will be arrogant Big Pharma exec versus corner-cutting ambulance chaser. They should also throw in some biased journalists and crooked politicians. Do gold-diggers and assassins count? In any case, there will be scandal and litigation aplenty in Shintaro Shimosawa’s Misconduct (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Arthur Denning is fabulous rich, but he has his hands full. In addition to managing the fallout from a disaster experimental drug trial, his trophy lover Emily Hynes has been kidnapped for ransom. Denning genuinely seems to be interested in getting her back, so he hires a pair of hostage recovery specialists. However, there is something funny about Hynes’ abduction, as we learn when the film rewinds a month or so.

Don’t you just love jumbled in media res openings? In this case, it is especially confused, because it sends decidedly mixed signals with respect to Denning’s character. Apparently, the real protagonist is Ben Cahill, a blow-dried mouthpiece, who has thrown himself into his work instead of properly dealing with his wife’s miscarriage. Cahill will file a class action suit against Denning based on information illegally obtained from his old flame, Emily Hynes. Yes, she is definitely up to something. We soon learn Hynes is planning to fake her own abduction. It is a convoluted scheme that somehow involves a mysterious Korean assassin-enforcer known as “The Account,” which has to be the saddest criminal nickname ever.

Misconduct is an absolute narrative mess, which is too bad, because there are a few workable bits and pieces in there. If Shimosawa had openly invited viewers to sympathize with Denning, much like Freddy Heineken in Kidnapping Mr. Heineken or Kingo Gondo in High and Low, the film might have gotten some place. Julia Stiles’ foul mouthed kidnapping specialist also has potential, but she disappears for most of the film. Instead, we largely have to watch the pseudo-triangle of Josh Duhamel, Alice Eve, and Malin Akerman, three actors who seem to work a lot, but nobody really understands why. At least Akerman helps her case with a wonderfully vampy femme fatale turn as Hynes.

Sir Anthony Hopkins shows flashes of the old brilliance as Denning, but there is only so much he can do with the underwritten, contradictory role. Sadly, Al Pacino continues his slow decline, going down shouting as Cahill’s sleazy senior partner, Charles Abams. International superstar Lee Byung-hun looks utterly bored in his scenes as The Accountant, for good reason. To his credit, Glen Powell brings more dignity than the film deserves as Cahill’s unheeded voice-of-reason office mate, Doug Fields, whereas Duhamel and Eve are so dull and plastic-looking, they sort of make a fitting couple as the Cahills.

Misconduct could have just been a cheesy B-movie. There is plenty of room in the world for another, especially since Akerman gives it some kick. However, screenwriters Simon Boyes & Adam Mason rip-off (and water-down) the twist ending that really launched the legal thriller craze in 1987, pre-Grisham. That’s just lame. Not recommended, Misconduct opens tomorrow (2/5) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

The Humbling: Don’t Call it a Comeback

With a name like Pegeen Mike Stapleford, it is not surprising this grown daughter might still want to get back at her parents. Taking up with a friend of the family in his late sixties making headlines for erratic behavior ought to do the trick—that is, if the lesbian Stapleford really has started a serious relationship with Simon Axler. He certainly thinks they have, but his perception of reality is not exactly super reliable. There will be plenty of angst regardless in Barry Levinson’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s The Humbling (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

When Axler gets the sense the audience is not paying sufficient attention to his production of As You Like It, he does the only sensible an actor might do in such a situation, nose-diving into the orchestra seats. It sort of works, in so far as he becomes the leading topic of theater gossip. After a period of mental observation, including some awkward group therapy, Axler returns to his Connecticut home to ponder his comeback options: a hair restoration commercial or King Lear on Broadway. Seriously, it has to be either or?

Much to his surprise, Pegeen Stapleford interrupts his solitary recuperation, announcing her longstanding attraction to the slightly distressed thespian, despite her professed lesbian history. Suddenly, she is spending more and more time with the increasingly dependent Axler, serving as nurse maid, surrogate daughter, reclusion facilitator, and lover—or so Axler believes. Clearly, he is prone to flights of fancy, some of which both he and the audience recognize are not really reality, whereas others are not so easy to determine.

It definitely seems like there is a thin line between method acting and insanity in Humbling. Even though it is based on Roth’s novel, it is perilously easy to conflate Al Pacino with Axler. They seem to have all the same excesses, yet Levinson gets him to dial down the hoo-ah shtick.

Frankly, were it not for this film, Humbling would probably only be remembered as the book that guaranteed Roth never won the Nobel Prize. However, screenwriters Buck Henry, Michal Zebede, and Levinson (not formerly credited for screenwriting due to a dubious WGA arbitration) make the story of dirty old man wish fulfillment more of a hallucinatory meditation on what it costs to stay faithful to one’s craft.

All the is-it-or-isn’t game-playing can get tiresome, but it is worth wading through to see Pacino’s triumphant return to form. Arguably, he has been better than reported in middling flops like Son of No One, but this a big, full-bodied, surprisingly vulnerable, and presumably self-revealing performance. He has okay chemistry with Greta Gerwig’s Stapleford, who is a bit of cold fish (but that is a rather welcomed change from her typical quirky indie princesses). Yet, true to form, Charles Grodin, the master of more-is-less manages to steal all his scenes as Axler’s agent.

Without question, the best sequences in Humbling happen either on-stage or backstage as Axler prepares to make his entrances. Levinson and cinematographer Adam Jandrup convey a sense of the theater as a darkly magical and dangerous place, altogether fitting for an actor like Axler, who is so committed, he maybe should be. Levinson’s hand might have rested a bit heavier on the rudder, but he keeps the subjective bedlam from spinning too far out of control. It is just worth seeing if you would like to watch Pacino pull one out of the vault. Recommended accordingly, The Humbling opens this Friday (1/23) in New York, at the Quad Cinema.

Cops in Queens: The Son of No One

The scariest architecture in the world has been reserved for public housing projects. It is not called Brutalism for nothing. A thirty year-old rookie cop understands that only too well, when he finds himself policing the projects he once lived in. Unfortunately, a secret from the past threatens to derail his life and career in Dito Montiel’s crooked cop drama The Son of No One (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

A Staten Island family man, Jonathan White is not crazy about his new posting. For some reason, he has been transferred to the neighborhood he grew up in. As the audiences sees in flashbacks, he does not have a lot of happy memories from that time. Known as “Milk” because he was the whitest kid in the projects, White largely fended for himself after his police officer father was killed in the line of duty. Det. Charles Stanford tries to look out for him, but he does not do a very good job of it.

As a result, White can only really rely on his friend Vinny Carter, who will eventually help him dispose of a considerable mess. They do not do a very good job of that either, but they figure considering how cheap life is in the projects, no one will care all that much. Indeed, this turns out to be the case, for about two decades. Then suddenly, anonymous letters written to the local Queens paper about murders and cover-ups start rattling the brass, including Stanford, now a deputy commissioner.

Frankly, Son is really two films in one. The film telling young White and Carter’s story in flashbacks is compellingly gritty and tragic, whereas the contemporary Serpico-lite narrative makes almost no sense whatsoever. As near as the audience can tell, White is forced to revisit the old murder inquiry by the very same people trying to keep it a secret. Good strategy there.

In contrast, everything that goes down in 1986 is wretchedly logical. Montiel instills these sequences with a visceral sense of the fear and anxiety experienced by the young kids growing up in the housing complex. Yet, it is the unusually fine work of the young cast, most notably Jake Cherry and Brian Gilbert as White and Carter, respectively, that really distinguishes the 1986 narrative arc.

The only cast member appearing in both time periods, Al Pacino gives his best screen performance in years, perfectly world weary as Stanford. In contrast, Channing Tatum looks rather listless as the thirty-year old White, while the great Juliette Binoche is criminally wasted as the local muckraker, Loren Bridges. Surprisingly, alleged comedian Tracy Morgan is not bad as the adult Carter, though it is by design a rather one-note performance.

When watching Son, one cannot help but wonder if Montiel suffers from some sort of bipolar disorder. Half the film packs a major punch, but the other half is a real head-scratcher. Regardless, all his young actors can take justifiable pride in their work here. It opens tomorrow (11/4) in New York at the Village East.