The Clean Up Crew, with Antonio Banderas

Gabriel the crime boss likes quoting Machiavelli and forcing his prisoners to play Russian roulette, because he thinks they are both intimidating. At least once, someone should tell him: “go stuff your Machiavelli, I read Sun Tzu.” He is less than thrilled about paying-off the anti-crime task force, but he accepts it as a cost of doing business. When a group of crime-scene cleaners find their overdue payoff stashed up the chimney, both the gangsters and the crooked cops will come looking for them in Jon Keeyes’ The Clean Up Crew, which releases tomorrow on-demand.

Gabriel might possibly have been dragging his heels a little too long with their latest payment, so when two rogue thugs temporally intercept the bribe money, the cops threaten to expose Gabriel’s operation. With full-scale war on the horizon, maybe he really should be reading The Art of War.

It is quite a mess by the time the cleaners got there. Nobody escaped the Mexican standoff cleanly, but one of the injured thugs survived to return to the scene of the crime just as Alex and his co-workers were leaving with the money. Somehow, the cops missed it, but in their defense, they were probably just incompetent.

Alex’s boss, Siobhan just wants to turn it over to the cops, but his fiancée Meagan convinces him to take the money, for the sake of their future. Fortunately, the drug-addicted former-something-military Chuck can handle Gabriel’s wounded enforcer. In fact, they decide to take him with them. Soon, Gabriel returns the favor, kidnapping Meagan, which enrages Alex, making him much more amenable to Chuck’s methods.

Throughout it all, Antonio Banderas is highly entertaining preening and gorging on scenery as Gabriel, the pretentious crime boss. He elevates the character above his literary quirks, raising the level of the film with him. Derek Carroll and Conor Mullen also add some nice gritty energy as Gabriel’s police contacts.

Cult Killer: Antonio Banderas Dies Early

Mikael Tallini is a detective with a Scandinavian sounding first-name and an Italian sounding surname, who is working in Ireland and is portrayed by a Spanish actor. He will also die early, but he frequently returns in flashbacks when his protégé draws on his sage advice in Jon Keeyes’s Cult Killer, which opens Friday in theaters.

Tallini regularly told his apprentice, employee, and AA sponsee Cassie Holt that their work as private detectives would almost always be boring. This case will be the exception. Local copper Rory McMahon hires Tallini to investigate a politically sensitive murder, hoping he can circumvent the obstacles erected by the powerful suspects. Shortly thereafter, Tallini is fatally stabbed by a mystery woman.

Of course, Holt inherits the case along with the business. Technically, she solves the murder almost immediately, but that only complicates matters. The killer is the unstable Jamie Douglas, an adult survivor of a nasty sex slavery club. They really are not a “cult” per se. In fact, the well-healed members are quite snobby. Obviously, that means they have clout, which is why Douglas has taken the law into her own hands.

Ordinarily, Holt would be rather ticked off at Douglas. Yet, as an abuse survivor herself, she somewhat emphasizes with her. Regardless, the sex ring, led by the vicious old Evans couple, is absolutely awful, so they need to be taken down.

As you might imagine, Holt’s alliance with Douglas presents a credibility challenge screenwriter Charles Burnley never manages to surmount. In fact, the nice master-and-student chemistry Antonio Banderas and Alice Eve share in flashbacks only accentuates the issue. They are quite good together and Eve also has some nice dramatic moments of her own, as Holt’s struggles with her own demons.

The Music of Silence: The Andrea Bocelli Story, Sort of

For his novelish memoiry thing, pop-tenor Andrea Bocelli chose not to write about himself, but his alter-analog, Amos Bardi. Based on the subsequent film adaptation, we can readily see why he would want to maintain a layer of separation between himself and the treacly story. It is especially trying to spend so much time with Bardi as a sickly child, seeing precious little of the opera world most fans presumably came for. Indeed, the balance is all off throughout Michael Radford’s The Music of Silence (trailer here), which is now playing in New York.

Cheers to Bocelli (and Bardi, whoever he might be) for overcoming adversity to become one of the most successful tenors in the world. Granted, he has cut some purist-rankling pop sessions, but he can still land “Nessun Dorma” as well as anyone. Unfortunately, we only hear it over the closing credits of Silence. Instead, we sit through two full acts of Bardi’s childhood surgeries and years spent in a boarding school for the blind.

Music really isn’t in the picture until Bardi’s bachelor uncle takes him to a talent contest, which he nails. Yet, just as young Bardi develops a reputation, his voice changes, prompting years of silence. However, under the tough but protective tutelage of “The Maestro,” twenty-something Bardi once again finds his voice, but can he find fame too?

Frankly, it is hard to care about the wooden Bardi and his by-the-numbers success story. If anything, this portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man is bizarrely passive, largely revolving around whether or not Italian rock star Zucchero would ever call him for a vaguely promised joint-performance. Right, so let’s just keep watching the phone.

Most of the cast is blandly boring, in a TV movie kind of way, including Toby Sebastian as the Bardi fellow. However, Antonio Banderas brings a bit of flair to the film as the unnamed “Maestro.” He has definitely been scuffling the last few years, but his work ethic has not flagged (apparently, quite the contrary) and he has livened up a number of almost direct-to-DVD movies (but honestly, Bullet Head and Acts of Vengeance are really good). Alas, there is not much that he can do here.

The blandness of Silence is a bit surprisingly, considering it was helmed by a refined craftsman like Michael Radford, who directed Il Postino, 1984, White Mischief, and a documentary about the late, great Michel Petrucciani. Maybe he just wanted a holiday in Tuscany. At least there is nothing really terrible or otherwise objectionable about the film. It is just boring. Not recommended, The Music of Silence is now playing in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Bullet Head: Dogs and Robbers

This dog definitely has a purpose—to bite your face off. He was trained to be a killer, but he exceeded his handler’s expectations. Now he is roaming the decrepit warehouse where a trio of hard luck thieves hope to regroup and lay low after pulling their latest job. Good luck with that. The killer dog movie gets a gangster twist in Paul Solet’s Bullet Head (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

We can have confidence in a jaded old crook played by John Malkovich. That is less true for his younger but nearly as jaded associate portrayed by Adrien Brody, but we can give him the benefit of the doubt. However, we assume the worst about their junky accomplice, with good reason—he is played by Rory Culkin. They have holed up in a squalid former warehouse, waiting for their getaway ride, but they are not alone. Cujo is also roaming the halls, but he was known as DeNiro during his dog-fighting days. His trained assumed those days were over after a particularly nasty battle royale, but he assumed wrong—fatally wrong.

The larcenous trio mostly concentrate on eluding the homicidal pooch, which does indeed require their full efforts. However, they eventually come to realize he is part of a particularly evil criminal enterprise, whose mastermind will most likely be returning sometime soon, to look for his now dead accomplice and the bag full of money from the last fight.

Solet’s feature debut Grace was weirdly over-hyped, but his follow-up release Dark Summer and his contribution to the anthology film Tales of Halloween were quite sly and pleasingly sinister. He shows even greater range this time around, mashing up horror and Elmore Leonard-esque crime elements into a hybrid that defies all expectations.

Of course, Solet has Malkovich doing Malkovich, which is a rock-solid foundation to build on. This is a weirdly discursive film, featuring several stories within the main narrative, but that definitely plays to Malkovich’s let-me-tell-you-a-thing-or-two strengths. Brody’s hound dog face also works well in the context of the film. In contrast, we just want to give Culkin a good slapping, but that is how we are supposed to feel about him. Plus, Antonio Banderas is absolutely not fooling around as the all-business, seriously malevolent dog-fighting gangster. He is hardcore, for real.

At this point, the combination of Banderas and Brody might suggest straight-to-DVD retro cash-ins, but Bullet Head is a straight-up good movie. It also suggests Banderas is a dog who can learn new tricks, while Malkovich’s old tricks are still just as entertaining as they have always been. Highly recommended for fans of heart-warming dog movies, like The Pack and White Dog, Bullet Head opens this Friday (12/8) in New York, at the Village East.

Isaac Florentine’s Acts of Vengeance

Stoics never lose their cool. The pursuit of vengeance taking would therefore seem at odds with practice of stoicism, but anyone who can roughly merge them together will be one dangerous customer. A grieving father inspired by Marcus Aurelius will try to do exactly that in Isaac Florentine’s Acts of Vengeance (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Presumably Frank Valera’s voice-overs are an interior monologue, because he has taken a secular vow of silence after the murder of his wife and young daughter. He ruefully admits he used to talk quite a bit as a slimy defense attorney. No, the irony that he used to defend criminals possibly like the ones who killed Sue and Olivia Valera is not lost on him. For a while, he tortures himself by acting as a human punching bag in underground steel cage fights. However, a chance encounter with the Emperor’s Meditations changes his perspective. It says: “Punish only those who are guilty of the crime.” Right, sounds like a plan.

Valera starts snooping around the post-industrial crime scene neighborhood, drawing the attention of the Russian mob. He will take out some frustration on their enforcers, becoming the protector of a nurse at a low-income clinic, who had been forced to supply them traffickable prescription drugs. However, the true identity of his wife’s killer will be a third act revelation most viewers will guess, simply due to the limited cast of characters.

Despite the unsurprising surprise, Acts is suitably lean and agile payback thriller. Florentine is one of the best in the business at rendering street-level action (frankly, he is overdue for a New York retrospective). Once again, his fight scenes are cleanly legible (no shaky cam here), but Florentine adds a further personal stamp by also appearing on-screen as Valera’s hard-nosed sensei.

The whole stoicism thing probably helps (no teary outbursts wanted or required), but Antonio Banderas still gives one of his best performances since at least The Skin I Live In (another revenge drama) and maybe going all the way back to Philadelphia. We definitely believe he is deeply wounded and extremely ticked off. He also shows some convincing moves in the fight scenes. That is all to the good, because Banderas is on screen nearly every second. Still, even in limited screen time, Robert Forster leaves his mark as Valera’s slightly disappointed father-in-law.

Viewers like us may well be of two minds with respect to the film’s ironic twist, but there is no denying its grit. Florentine does this kind of film better than anyone and he brought out Banderas’s A-game. It is also pretty darn literate for the genre. Acts of Vengeance is definitely worth seeing eventually, but whether you should wait for VOD or catch it in theaters depends on how enthusiastic you are about Banderas or Florentine and action payback cinema. It opens tomorrow (10/27) in New York, at the Village East.

Hugh Hudson’s Finding Altamira

It sure was convenient when amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola discovered the Altamira cave paintings on his considerable Cantabria property. However, it would be far from lucky. He expected the Spanish Catholic Church to resist the implications of the finding, but when leading European archaeologists refused to even consider his evidence for parochial and dogmatic reasons, he felt betrayed by science. Humanity appears to devolve before his eyes in Hugh Hudson’s Finding Altamira (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Narrating from the vantage point of adulthood, María Sautuola recalls being there with her father to see it al. Technically, it was rustic hunter Modesto Peres (a bit player) who found the cave and María who first noticed the ceiling paintings, but it was Señor Sautuola who immediately grasped their significance. Based on the rock formations surrounding the cave, the paintings would have to be 10,000 old—and they were far more sophisticated than anything previously attributed to the primitives.

Obviously, the 10,000-year-old business could cause conflict with the Church and Sautuola’s devout wife Conchita (played by the Iranian Golshifteh Farahani), with whom he has essentially agreed to disagree with on the subject of evolution. However, his proper academic friend Prof. Juan Villanova y Piera (portrayed by the English Nicholas Farrell, with his usual earnest dignity) immediately supports his findings. To paint high quality reproductions, Sautuola will hire his wife’s art restoration expert and not so secret admirer Paul Ratier (Frenchman Pierre Ninay), while the local Monseñor spreads malicious slander. That would be Englishman Rupert Everett in his shtickiest performance since hamming it up as headmistress Camille Fritton in the St. Trinian’s franchise. However, the elitist dismissal of the leading experts in the field will profoundly demoralize Sautuola (that would be Antonio Banderas, an actual Spaniard).

Altamira is Hudson’s first full narrative feature since I Dreamed of Africa in 2000, but it veers even further from the heft and scope of Chariots of Fire and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, which are still the primary films he is known for. Obviously, Altamira was conceived as a Euro analog of Inherit the Wind, because screenwriters Olivia Hetreed & José Luis López-Linares belabor the reason-versus-faith well past the breaking point of viewers’ patience. We just so get it already.

Perhaps not so shockingly, it is the accomplished Farahani who scores the only surprises as the forceful Señora Sautuola. Banderas is solidly upright and convincingly Spanish as the Señor. However, given Everett’s widely reported choice words for his former Catholic faith, casting him as the Monseñor seems like an ill-advised stunt that openly invites tittering.

Altamira takes itself so seriously, it just begs for some deflating mockery. Frankly, its ever so well-intentioned pronouncements in drawing rooms and lecture halls would play better on the small screen, perhaps on the PBS stations that programmed The Man Who Lost His Head. It is the sort of awkwardly fervent misfire one can safely disregard. For the record, it opens this Friday (9/16) in New York, at the Village East.

Malick’s Knight of Cups

If you always suspected Hollywood was a den of vice and degradation, you are about to be vindicated by no less an auteur than Terrence Malick. His everyman screenwriter has been led astray by the hedonism Tinsel Town offers. Malick riffs on Pilgrim’s Progress, The Hymn of the Pearl, and Fellini’s 8½ while searching for higher meaning in Knight of Cups (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

The screenwriter’s name is “Rick,” but we only know that from the closing credits. Not a lot of names get bandied about in Cups and dialogue is rather sparse in general. Instead, we watch Rick’s life flash by in snippets better measured in seconds than minutes. He is the Pilgrim or the “Son of the King of Kings,” who found worldly success, but lost sight of his values. However, he has not forgotten his family. In fact, they are another cross to bear. His relationship with his devout but guilt-wracked father is strained, but reparable. Unfortunately, his unstable brother Barry is apparently a lost soul. He will also have relationships with a number of attractive women, but it is often hard to tell when he moves onto someone new, because of Malick’s insistence on filming the backs of characters’ heads.

Aesthetically, Cups might just be Malick’s most maddening film yet—and that is quite a heavy statement. Yet, what is really frustrating is the extent to which he undermines his own challenging ideas. This is not a sterile exercise in style at the expense of substance. Malick is one of the very few filmmakers working today who seriously grapples with issues of faith and an ostensibly disinterested God in a serious, mature, and non-kneejerk manner. He most definitely does so again in Cups.

In fact, the very best moments directly explore man’s spiritual yearning. Making the most of his fleeting screen time, Armin Mueller-Stahl delivers a shockingly powerful Christian apologia as Father Zeitlinger. Likewise, the late Peter Matthiesson (essentially playing himself) delivers a potent lesson in Zen Buddhism. “I can only teach you one thing: this moment,” he tells Rick. Yet, instead of letting these significant moments breathe, so we can properly digest them, Malick continues his MTV-style rapid editing, moving to the next stage of Rick’s life, practically at the speed of light.

Even though he is in most of the scenes, Christian Bale perversely hardly gets a chance to do any acting. Malick’s actors really have to make an impression quickly if they stand any chance of standing out. In addition to the wonderful Mueller-Stahl and sage-like Matthiesson, Brian Dennehy projects appropriate gravitas and poignant humility as Rick’s father, Joseph (remember, that’s a Biblical name). It is also amusing to watch Antonio Banderas essentially reprise his role from Nine under the persona of Tonio, the Hollywood playboy (he even looks like he is wearing the same suit). Problematically, the women in Rick’s life are almost used like props, but Cate Blanchett shows some forcefulness and gumption as his ER doctor ex-wife, Nancy. Presumably, that is why it did not work out between the two of them.

Cups could have possibly been a truly great film, but Malick’s approach is way too unfettered in its Malickness. Even as its wise men explicitly tell us to more fully live in the present, it hurtles ahead, like a cheetah suffering from ADD. This is a shame, because there is wisdom within its frames. Still, this is not a film that can be easily dismissed. Indeed, it is quite an important work when viewed in dialogue with Malick’s prior films, but as a discrete screening experience, it is bizarrely agitated and off-putting. Viewers who really want to wrestle with a film will find their match in Knight of Cups, but the more conventional should probably take a pass. Still, even now it defies any clear-cut rendering of judgment. For the auteur’s adventurous admirers, Knight of Cups opens this Friday (3/4) in New York, at the Landmark Sunshine and AMC Loews Lincoln Square.

Automata, for the People

Ever thought Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics were too complicated? Happily, the ROC robotics corporation has distilled them down two prime directives. Essentially, all robots are hardwired to cause no harm and never alter themselves in any way. However, there seem to be a handful of rogue ‘bots, self-repairing and maybe even self-upgrading. An insurance investigator slowly starts to suspect singularity may really be nigh in Gabe Ibáñez’s Automata (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

By the year 2044, an environmental catastrophe and its radioactive aftermath have killed over ninety-nine percent of the earth’s population. Yet, enough people are still paying premiums without filing claims to keep Jacq Vaucan’s insurance company in business. ROC is their bread and butter client, so every nocturnal day, Vaucan goes out to debunk claims of robot wrong-doings. Frankly, it is easy work, because the First Protocol is ironclad (and people are idiots). Supposedly, the same is true of the Second Protocol, but Vaucan’s investigation turns up a maintenance robot that was reportedly healing itself before the crookedest cop in Oceania blew it away.

Before long, the trail of self-aware robots leads Vaucan to a “clockmaker” in the forbidden zone, who inadvertently awakens a sexbot, before company goons crash the party. Not exactly the sharpest sonic-screwdriver in the Tardis, Vaucan does not realize his own people are out to get him, but since the First Protocol is still in force, the newly sentient robots drag him through the desert to temporary safety in a ridiculously overlong sequence that cries out for the MST3K treatment (think “rock-climbing” in Lost Continent).

Sure, one might say Automata “owes a debt” to Bladerunner, but it still has the palpable feel of a lived in world teetering on the brink of anarchy. Yet, it is also happens to be one of those strangely contradictory genre films that uses the specter of A.I. run amok to scare the willies out viewers during the set-up, but lectures us in the third act that we have had this coming all along for our environmental naughtiness and should therefore willingly resign ourselves to extinction and just toss the keys to the planet to our stoner roommate’s Xbox. Perhaps, I am paraphrasing a little, but the point is it gets preachy, in an apocalyptic way.

Nevertheless, Antonio Banderas does his moody hardboiled thing with authority as a Vaucan. Likewise, the Robert Forster is reliably flinty as Vaucan boss, Bob Bold. Melanie Griffith is not wildly convincing as the underground robot tinkerer, but hats off for the professionalism she and Banderas show in their scenes together, considering recent events. The rest of the ensemble looks like they wandered in from the Network 23 boardroom in the old Max Headroom show.

While Automata’s robot design is not wildly dissimilar from scores of films, Ibáñez and production designer Patrick Salvador fully realize the grungy dystopian world, presumably on a limited budget. Too bad they are so determined to end it all. Ambitious but too self-important to fully deliver the genre goods, Automata opens this Friday (10/10) in New York.