Magnum P.I.: The Passenger & The Breaking Point

NBC just saved Hawaii’s state economy. Since Hawaii Five-0 ended, CBS’s surprise cancelation of the Magnum P.I. reboot came as a particularly hard blow to the local film industry. However, the ratings were good and the show definitely fits with NBC’s new strategy of mining 80’s gold, fitting in nicely with their new Night Court and Quantum Leap shows. Magnum works two new cases with some reluctant help from his friends in “The Passenger” and “The Breaking Point,” the first two episodes of NBC’s first new season of Magnum P.I., premiering tomorrow night.

As the opening narration makes clear, the “new” Rick and TC are basically the same as the old ones. The “new” Higgins is Juliet Higgins, a former MI6 agent, who was first Magnum’s Tracy-and-Hepburn-style foil on the Robin Masters estate, then his Moonlighting-style partner in detective work, and as of the prior series finale, his Thin Man-esque romantic partner. They are trying to keep their new relationship on the downlow, but a good deal of “The Passenger” focuses on how they adjust professionally, or not, to their new personal arrangement.

The story itself, investigating a doctor’s suspicious accident is mostly routine, but instead of going in a cynical direction, the truth turns out to be rather edifying. It also teases a brief appearance from the great James Remar, as Magnum’s disgraced mentor, Captain Buck Greene, whose troubles appear likely to dominate the coming season.

One of the best aspects of the Magnum reboot comes out clearly in “The Breaking Point.” Jay Fernandez might not have Tom Selleck’s megawatt screen presence, but the new show is still one of the more veteran-friendly series on television (along with Blue Bloods, as it happens). While Magnum and Higgins go undercover as lifeguards (which is always a solid option for a Hawaiian based TV-show), TC and his annoying small-time operator friend Jin Jeong win an auction for an abandoned storage locker holding a prolific but freshly incarcerated burglar’s stash. Among the loot is a Purple Heart that TC, the former Marine insists they return to its rightful owner.

Bobby Lee is like fingernails on a blackboard as Jeong, but this subplot pays off in a big way, connecting with some very important Hawaiian history. The camaraderie of Magnum and his friends is also rooted in their service, and it definitely elevates the show.

Dead Reckoning, Co-Starring Scott Adkins & James Remar

Nantucket holds great cultural significance. The entire island is a designated a National Landmark District and it appears in classics like Melville’s Moby-Dick and Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Strategically, it is not so important, but it is the summer home to many rich people, like Tillie Gardner’s father and mother. Tragically, her parents were murdered by a terrorist angered by her dad’s work as FBI spokesman. Now his killer is coming for her in Andrzej Bartkowiak’s Dead Reckoning, which releases Tuesday on DVD.

Technically, Agent Cantrell did not want to kill Marco’s father, because he wanted to interrogate the terrorist about his big plans, but the bust got violent, so he did what he had to do. Gardner’s dad spinned the incident as best he could on TV, angering the terrorist’s son Marco well past reason. He sabotaged the Gardners’ plane and intends to execute the rest of the family and then place a bomb on the beach to massacre Nantucket’s rich and idle revelers on the 4^th of July.

However, he will take a short timeout to reconnect with his younger brother Niko, who happens to be on the island working a summer job to make money for college. Rather awkwardly, Niko also happens to be Gardner’s new boyfriend. He seems a lot more substantial than her shallow party-preppy crowd and they are both orphans. At least Gardner still has her protective aunt Jennifer Crane and her partner, as well as her godfather, Agent Cantrell. Niko just has Marco, but probably not for long.

Any film co-starring both Scott Adkins and James Remar ought to beyond awesome, but sadly, Bartkowiak did not come close to fully exploiting their potential. Nevertheless, there is no question their brutal fight scene is the film’s far-and-away best scene. Seeing Adkins flexing his villainous muscles again reminds us how good he is as dark, brooding bad guys. Likewise, Remar is gritty and appealingly gristly as Agent Cantrell.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Cotton Club Encore

When it was originally released, it nearly killed Francis Ford Coppola’s career—yet again, even though it was sufficiently well-received in the jazz world to win a Grammy for its soundtrack. Most frustratingly, the filmmaker knew it could have been great if the studio and producer Robert Evans hadn’t done so much to kill. Like the opposite of George Lucas, Coppola went back and fixed a lot of the problems (much like he recently did with The Godfather III), resulting in the director’s cut known as The Cotton Club Encore, which airs on Bounce TV.

In the late 1920s, Harlem’s Cotton Club featured African American talent on stage, but they are not allowed to enter the club as paying guests. This fact comes through loud and clear in the Encore cut. Delbert “Sandman” Owens and his brother Clay (clearly inspired by the Nicholas Brothers) have just been hired there as featured tap-dancers. Recently back in town, the scuffling white cornet player Michael “Dixie” Dwyer is naturally drawn there, but he will wish he had steered clear.

Dwyer has the questionable fortune of saving Dutch Schultz’s life. Regrettably, the gangster’s subsequent patronage quickly becomes controlling and emasculating. It is especially awkward when he orders the musician to accompany Vera Cicero, his not-so-secret mistress. The sexual tension between them is obvious and therefore quite dangerous. Meanwhile, Sandman Owens’ attempts to romance vocalist Lila Rose Oliver have been nearly as rocky. As a source of tension, the Cotton Club performer has been trying to pass for white, so she can accept more profitable work in downtown clubs.

Evans should have been ashamed of himself, because Coppola’s recut Cotton Club is a great film. It definitely provides more balance to both sides of the Club’s color line, which is clearly significant. It also fully restores entire musical numbers, which are terrific. (If you don’t see Lonette McKee’s rendition of “Stormy Weather,” as Oliver, you’re watching the wrong cut.) Their inclusion makes Encore a musical in the fullest sense. A number like Ellington’s “Creole Love Call,” performed by Priscilla Baskerville, expresses so much about the club’s place in Harlem. Likewise, McKee’s “Ill Wind” and “Stormy Weather” establish Oliver’s character far more than any dialogue.

Anyone who isn’t grinning from ear to ear after watching Gregory Hines lead a one-upping tap contest at the Hoofer’s Club needs serious anti-depressants. The closing fantasia of “Daybreak Express” is also a nifty piece of throwback movie musical magic. Perhaps the exception that proves the rule is the dramatic cross-cutting between Hines’ solo tap “improvography” [as the credits refer to it] and a climatic gangland hit.

Gregory and Maurice Hines were always the show-stoppers on-stage, but now their conflicted sibling relationship comes to satisfying fruition in Encore. In a deliberate irony, Dixie Dwyer and his wannabe gangster brother Vincent are denied that opportunity by their underworld entanglements. Yet, it is a lot of fun to see the crazy Nic Cage we know so well bubbling out of the manic Vincent (we can imagine his Uncle Francis begging him not to yell “top of the world, Mom!”). It is also good to see Richard Gere in the sort of matinee idol role he was meant to play, since his support for Tibet and the Dalai Lama has gotten him blacklisted from studio tent-poles (seriously Hollywood, he was in Chicago, Pretty Woman, and An Officer and a Gentleman). It should also be noted Larry Marshall is an absolutely spooky dead-ringer for Cab Calloway.

Speed Kills (And So Does the Mob)

Don’t let the “off” fool you. Ben Aronoff is transparently modeled on speed boat designer and manufacturer Donald Aronow. In fact, this film is explicitly based on Arthur Jay Harris’s non-fiction account of Aronow’s rise, fall, and murder, so why bother with such a minor name change? Aronoff/now sold boats to the US Customs Service and plenty of drug runners, but his old associate Meyer Lansky insisted he chose a side: his. At least that is the version of events presented in Jodi Scurfield’s Speed Kills (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Think of this as Casino in the ocean. ‘Noff/Now was a contractor in Jersey who made a fortune building projects “referred” his way by Lansky’s outfit, but things got too hot in 1959, so he skedaddled down to Miami with his family. Initially, he wanted to keep his old mob associates at arm’s length. Right, good luck with that. Soon after arriving, he got an eyeful of boat-racing and was immediately hooked. Soon, he was designing and marketing his own line of cigarette boats. He made a splash by racing his designs to victory in a number of high-profile races, but fielding and supporting a full-time racing team would greatly sap the company’s resources. Hmm, what other markets for power boats could you tap into in the Miami area?

In a way, Noff/Now is also presented as the DeLorean of boats, but screenwriters David Aaron Cohen & John Luessenhop suggest he really wanted to divorce himself from the mob. However, he is still a complete jerk, who cheats on first wife, played by Jennifer Esposito, and steals away his super-model second wife from King Hussein of Jordan (seriously, he does). In between getting whacked in medea res and his tom-catting, Noff/Now participates in a number of predictable races and several staring contests with Lansky’s thuggish, drug-running nephew, Robbie Reemer. Plus, he sells a few boats to Vice Pres. George H.W. Bush and future Treasury Sec. Nicholas Brady.

As Noffsky, John Travolta never ages a day over the film’s nearly thirty-year span, probably because he already looks far too old and creaky to be playing the boat kingpin in his early 1960s racing prime. However, James Remar nearly saves the day as the hardboiled, bourbon-hardened Lansky. Matthew Modine is also surprisingly on-target with his more-or-less respectful cameo as Bush Senior. Tom Sizemore adds some random edginess as the hitman seen in the wrap-around segments. Unfortunately, Katheryn Winnick and Esposito are grossly under-employed as Noffy’s wives, but it is downright embarrassing to watch Kellan Lutz as Reemer, probably the dullest, dreariest, most unsightly mulleted villain to ever barge across a movie screen.

Miami Vice probably would not have been the same without Aronow, but his case is probably better suited to a series of magazine article or a true crime paperback than a full-length feature. Scurfield never elevates the predictable material and the flashback structure largely scuttles any possible suspense right from the start. Not recommended, Speed Kills opens tomorrow (11/16) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter: February Chills Your Soul

What school has its semester break in February? It sounds like particularly poor planning for a boarding school in the snowy Northeast. Indeed, the staff assumes two of their students’ parents have been waylaid by the weather, but we suspect something much more sinister is afoot in Osgood Perkin’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter (a.k.a. February, trailer here), which A24 and DirecTV will release in theaters and On-Demand March 31, 2017.

Lucy the upperclassman deliberately gave her parents incorrect information to allow herself more time to deal with what she suspects is an unwanted pregnancy. In contrast, young Kat was eagerly anticipating the arrival of her parents, but she fears her nightmarish visions of an icy car crash have come true. Something very bad will happen during their long lonely night at Bramford, which will continue to reverberate nine years later.

In that later timeline, Joan Marsh is trying to reach Bramford as quickly as possible, even though she is conspicuously unprepared for the harsh winter weather. Presumably, she is quite fortunate to get picked up by Bill and Linda, but they too have a troubling backstory. Apparently, she reminds him of their late daughter, a Bramford student who was brutally murdered. Obviously, the trauma left them permanently damaged, but they might also be somewhat cracked. Eventually, all the relationships become clear as Perkins cuts between storylines.

Perkins is the son of Anthony Perkins, the original Norman Bates, and he definitely upholds the standards of the family business. Blackcoat is an extraordinarily disciplined horror film that cranks up the tension through the power of suggestion and uncertainty rather than messy special effects. In a more just world, Blackcoat would be a shoe-in for an Academy Award for its profoundly unsettling ambient sound design and that ghostly “Deedle, deedle, Blackcoat’s daughter, what was in the holy water” song would at least be one of the ceremony’s musical numbers, regardless whether it is Oscar-eligible. The spartan deserted prep school setting is also eerie as all get out.

Kiernan Shipka and Emma Roberts are creepy as heck as Kat and Marsh. However, it is James Remar and Lauren Holly who really kick the film up several notches as Bill and Linda. We’re talking about some stinging, push-you-into-the-back-of-your-seat work here. They also provide some helpful misdirection for a twist that really isn’t that hard to anticipate—however, its implications are deeply disturbing.

There is no doubt Perkins has a keen grasp of what makes the demonic so profoundly terrifying. He also has a practical understanding of horror movie mechanics. This is a scary movie, precisely because of its subtlety and exacting mise-en-scène. Highly recommended for smart horror fans, The Blackcoat’s Daughter opens this Friday (3/31) in New York, at the Village East.