Honestly, it is far better when a film calls that mythical snow-beast a yeti rather
than an “abominable snowman.” The former is much quicker to type and easier to
pronounce, so this film already has points in its favor. In the late 1940s,
Alaska wasn’t even a state yet. Largely seen as a wild and snowy frontier,
there could have been anything up there, as far as most Americans were concerned—and
in this film, they weren’t wrong. Oil man Merriell Sunday Sr. went there looking
for oil, but he found something else instead. Cartographer Ellie Bannister
agrees to guide the search party looking for him and her explorer father,
Hollis Bannister, in director-screenwriters Gene Gallerano & William
Pisciotta’s The Yeti, which releases this coming Tuesday on DVD and
BluRay.
Supposedly
old man Sunday was scouting for oil, but Bannister knows her eccentric old man
wouldn’t waste his time on that, no matter how much money the tycoon offered. Nevertheless,
they have been out of contact for far too long, so she agrees to join the rescue
operation organized by Merriell Sunday Jr. (who definitely displays deep-seated
father issues).
Somehow,
they land in the middle of a massive storm that even interferes with Bannister’s
compass. Consequntly, they get lost, quickly and badly. Viewers definitely
wouldn’t enjoy getting lost with the entitled Junior Sunday or the abrasive good
old boy demolition specialist Daniel “Dynamite” Hewitt—and neither does
Bannister. However, comms specialist Booker (who was the Enola Gay’s radio man)
is a good guy and scarred war hero Leander Coates has her back too, despite his
mildly psychotic tendencies. Of course, when the yeti (or yetis) attack, all
bets are off.
Gallerano
& Pisciotta serve up several hat-tips to the Indiana Jones movies that are
rather endearing. However, some of the deliberately retro practical effects are
a little too successful, looking more like genuine cheesiness rather than loving
homages. Frankly, the film shows symptoms of an identity crisis, because the
blood-spurting gore clashes with the nostalgia.
However,
the two old pros, William Sadler and Corbin Bernsen, elevate all their scenes as
Hollis Bannister and Sunday Senior, respectively. They are both entertainingly
flinty and grizzled. Playing against his usual over-the-top type, Jim Cummings
is a surprisingly steadying presence as salt-of-the-earth Booker. Plus, Linc
Hand delivers truly withering death stares as brooding Coates.
If you grew up in the 1970s, you might remember a time when gas stations
ran out of gas. With all the talk about reviving various price controls, we
might just bring those bad old days back. For one “last chance” gas station,
that reality is already here. Their re-supply track is running late, unnerving
several dodgy characters who need to get out of town fast in Francis Galluppi’s
The Last Stop in Yuma County, which releases today on BluRay.
This
is a thriller in the tradition of The Petrified Forest, but the
characters probably feel like they are stuck in Sartre play. Vernon’s filling
station is out of gas, so his potential customers must wait for the truck to
arrive in Charlotte’s diner, where the air-conditioning is on the fritz. The
nebbish traveling salesman hawking knock-off Ginsu knives recognizes Travis and
Beau match the description of wanted bank-robbers, which is no coincidence.
Essentially,
the two fugitives hold them hostage, but they all try to act normal for all the
other customers coming into the diner, including Deputy Gavin. Charlotte tries
to send a warning through him to the Sheriff, her husband Charlie, but poor
Gavin is an exceedingly dim bulb.
Yuma
County is
a reasonably successful desert noir, mainly due to its colorful characters and the
experienced ensemble of genre-friendly thesps portraying them. On the other
hand, the execution and pacing are somewhat uneven. After fifty-some-minutes of
ever-so deliberately slow-building, Galluppi seems to say the heck with it and
unleashes total bedlam.
Regardless,
Richard Brake is appropriately sinister as Beau, the brains of the two-armed
robber-operation. Sometimes, Jim Cummings takes over-the-top a bit too far, but
he finds the right level of twitchiness for the knife salesman. The great
Barbara Crampton also gets a lot of laughs in her slightly larger-than-cameo
appearances as the Sheriff’s receptionist, Virginia.
It's like Fatal Attraction, except it was anonymous. Jordan Hines is soon to
be married, but he accepted an invitation for a masked sexual rendezvous, no
names attached. By the way, he is a Hollywood talent agent. If, as the
flim-flam man says, you can’t cheat an honest man, he is probably doomed. He
certainly has a lot coming, so his implosion is well-deserved in Jim Cummings
& PJ McCabe’s Beta Test, which is now available on VOD from IFC
Films.
Hines
is a big talker, but it is his friend and co-worker PJ who is the closer. That
means his position at his agency is a little shaky, but it doesn’t stop him
from inappropriately treating his assistant Jaclyn. (He is still a far cry from
Kevin Spacey in Swimming with Sharks, but HR should still have a talk
with him.) When he gets a purple envelope inviting him to a night of
debauchery, complete with a check-off list of kinks, he makes an attempt to
resist, but he can’t.
In
the days following, he cannot stop thinking about the encounter with the
mystery woman, who also happened to be masked. He snuck a peak, but he can’t be
sure who she was. Growing increasingly preoccupied, he starts a bull-in-a-china-shop
investigation of the purple envelopes, potentially linking them to the murder
from the prologue. Hines was already difficult to work with, but he becomes
increasingly erratic and even delusional as his obsession mounts.
It
is hard to say what Beta Test is, but if Eyes Wide Shut represents
a genre than it would be part of it. Cummings (part of the screenwriter-director
tandem) gives an amazingly committed and unhinged performance, but Hines is
such a loathsome person, most viewers will start rooting for the mysterious
unseen cabal pulling the string behind the scenes.
