Green Lantern: First Flight

Of all the superheroes, the Hal Jordan Green Lantern is the most like Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun. Yet, Hollywood crashed and burned with the deservedly maligned 2011 Ryan Reynolds movie. As usual, DC animation far outshines their live-action colleague-rivals. The 2011 animated series was even better depicting Jordan’s ability to fly by the seat of his pants, as both a test pilot and a “maverick” member of the Lantern Corps. However, his first adventure after succeeding Abin Sur as our sector’s Green Lantern, which happened on this very day according to the DC calendar, gets a briskly energetic animated treatment in Lauren Montgomery’s Green Lantern: First Flight.

Jordan was minding his business testing experimental aircraft for his boss and Hepburn-and-Tracy-esque girlfriend Carrol Ferris when the Green Power of Abin Sur’s ring whisked him away to the dying Green Lantern’s fatal crash site. Soon, a Lantern honor guard comes looking for their comrade’s body and his successor, but they are shocked to discover he is a human earthling.

Jordan quickly learns there is a deep-seated prejudice against humans on Oa, the home of the Guardians of the Universe, who oversee the Lantern Corps. Perhaps the Trisolarans of The Three-Body Problem told them about the Cultural Revolution. Yet, there is no denying the ring chose Jordan, which theoretically is an ironclad testimonial to his virtue.

Consequently, the prestigious Lantern Sinestro offers to take the green Green Lantern under his wing, as he investigates Abin Sur’s murder. Of course, fans know Sinestro is an infamous Lantern turncoat and everyone else could probably guess as much, since his name sounds like “sinister.” Indeed, Sinestro quickly alarms Jordan’s “spider sense,” so to speak. However, none of the other Lanterns want to hear his reservations, because Jordan is only human—particularly not the hulking Kilowog, who has canine and hog-like features.

In general, Jordan is a roguishly relatable superhero and Kilowog is one of the most appealing characters who still largely flies under the radar of non-comics fans. First Flight does a nice job conveying their personality strengths and quirks, but it really excels portraying Sinestro’s devious cunning and duplicity. There is a lot of cataclysmic cosmic wrath in the climatic battle, involving an evil scheme to employ yellow power to nullify the Lanterns’ green, but the film really showcases the characters and the inner dynamics of the Lantern Corps.

Devil’s Domain: Going Offline with Satan

Apparently, even Satan thinks social media is evil, so take that Mark Zuckerberg. It turns out he is also a really hot she—or at least that is the form the Evil One will assume while tempting a bullied lesbian teen in Jared Cohn’s Devil’s Domain (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Ever since she misinterpreted the feelings of her former BFF, Lisa Pomson has been relentlessly bullied by the popular 90210 kids at school. Even her childhood sweetheart gets in on the attack capturing her binge-and-purge moments and autoerotic interludes on spy-cams. When the video goes viral, the only people who will still talk to her are Bill, her likable step-dad and the smoking hot Destiny, whom she meets online.

Of course, Destiny is really the Devil, who has already been stalking her tormentors, 1980s slasher movie style. You’d think when members of your social circle started dying grisly deaths that subsequently get posted to the internet, you would try to start leveling your karma, but not these kids. Regardless, Destiny easily exploits Pomson’s desire for revenge and her sexual attraction to lure the teen into a classic Faustian bargain.

So, Domain basically serves up some demonic horror mixed with teen melodrama and lesbian sex, all brought to you by the same distributor that released The Black Room. If that doesn’t inspire confidence, consider the fact it was helmed by Cohn, who previously directed the hugely satisfying The Horde (albeit in a meathead kind of way). Frankly, Domain is not nearly as sex-obsessed as Room (how could it be?), but Cohn still exploits Linda Bella’s pin-up model looks to the fullest. Not much chance of Hell freezing over with her steaming up the joint.

As Pomson, Madi Vodane is convincingly angsty and horny, which basically means she is a believable teenager. The rest of her fellow teens are sufficiently obnoxious, but that is about the only variety they come in. Michael Madsen basically just talks in a husky voice and looks concerned as Bill. Cohn never has him cut off an ear or anything like that. Without question, Dave Huber is the most interesting mortal adult, providing a thin tether to reality as the tough but fair teacher, Mr. Gretten.

Whatever you say about Domain, nobody can deny Bella makes an impression. It should definitely lead to more femme fatale temptress work for her. Cohn’s screenplay also genuinely taps into very legitimate fears about cyber-bullying and the erosion of privacy. Still, its nearly as fun as watching a former Navy SEAL chop through a clan of inbred hillbilly freaks. Fans of dark and heavy alternative rock will also appreciate the soundtrack, which includes Iggy and the Stooges. This film certainly delivers what it promises and it is never dull, so if you are in the mood for a midnight movie you could do far worse than Devil’s Domain when it opens tomorrow (5/19) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Death in the Desert: The Binion Case Thinly Fictionalized

Las Vegas casino heir Ted Binion once shaved all the hair off his body so the Nevada Gaming Commission would not be able to test it for drug use. Needless to say, they would have found plenty. Delicate viewers should not fret. We will be spared any potentially provocative scenes of that nature in Josh Evans’ Death in the Desert (trailer here), a needlessly fictionalized treatment of the Binion case, which releases today on VOD.

Binion’s Horseshoe was old school, downtown Las Vegas and Ted Binion was its public face. Cheetah’s is classic Vegas, having already gained infamy as the setting of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls. It was there the technically still married “Ray Easler” (as he is called in John Steppling’s scaredy-cat adaptation of Cathy Scott’s true crime book) meets Kim Davis (Sandra Murphy). She will go from stripper to mobster’s kept woman in about five minutes of screen time.

Of course, Easler is not supposed to associate with known racketeers if he wants to keep his gaming license. He is not supposed to do drugs either, but he regularly hoovers up coke, Xanax, and black tar. Davis tries to moderate his intake, but it is a hopeless battle. Easler’s addictions are too severe and his daddy issues are too deeply rooted. Easler simply isn’t half the man his cold-hearted mobster father was—and he will never let himself forget it. Despite her apparent affection for the wildly unstable Easler, Davis starts a furtive affair with his henchman, Matt Duvall (Rick Tabish). Ironically, it will be Duvall that Easler recruits to help hide his silver.

They call Nevada the Silver State, but Easler really took it to heart. He amassed an enormous cache of silver bullion and coins, which now must be hidden from his soon-to-be ex-wife and the dreaded Gaming Commission. Logically, he decides to bury them in the middle of the desert, because that is what you do in Nevada.

It is hard to fathom Desert’s reason for being, since there was already a made-for-Lifetime movie about the Binion affair that had sufficient guts to use the principals’ real names. However, the erratic, hard-drugging Binion/Easler does seem like a character more in the wheelhouse of Michael Madsen than Matthew Modine. There is no question Madsen is the show to see in Evans’ watered-down tabloid tale, but Roxy Saint adds a bit of goth spice singing and vampy as Cory, Davis’s alt-rocker colleague at the strip joint.

Shayla Beesley looks convincingly like a stripper, but Steppling does not give her any decent dialogue from which viewers could fairly base any further judgements. To further stack the deck against her, most of her scenes not including Madsen are opposite the alarmingly over-made-up Paz de la Huerta. Is she supposed to be related to Tammy Faye Bakker? At least she registers. John Palladino’s blow-dried Duvall has to be one of the flattest, most vapid performances you will ever immediately forget.

By far, the most entertaining aspect of Desert is Madsen’s if-I-had-only-known narration, recited from the perspective of the now deceased Easler. It is totally silly, yet it follows in the tradition of many infinitely superior film noirs. Frankly, Evans and Steppling do not even bother to tell us how it all worked out. You would never know from the film Murphy and Tabish were twice tried for Binion’s murder, first convicted and then acquitted. Some folks might consider that the stuff of high drama, but Desert just sort of peters out before any of that happens. Frankly, it is sort of amazing how many dubious decisions are strung together in Death in the Desert. Not recommended, it hits VOD platforms today.

Fantasia ’15: Lady Psycho Killer

This college coed’s pathological aversion to men is not the product of freshmen indoctrination programs (although that probably did not help matters). She is quite literally insane, but do not judge her too harshly. Maniacal killing runs in her family. Montreal’s loutish frat boys are in for the slice & dice treatment in Nathan Oliver’s satirical Lady Psycho Killer (trailer here), which screens today during the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in that very same Montreal.

Ella is suspiciously naïve and socially stunted. It is not just because she was home-schooled by her clingy mother. There is something off about her that her “edgy” psych professor will inadvertently turn loose. The only assignment of Prof. Douglas’s introductory class is to do something outside your normal bounds of behavior and write a paper about it. Ella decides to go to a strip club. Good choice.

Of course, when the manager inevitably starts sleazing on her, Ella ends up offing the creep. There is a lot of blood, but she likes it. Soon, she starts prosecuting her private war on the sexes, one sexually overbearing scumbag at a time, or in some cases, two at a time. However, she is not sure what to do with Daniel, the lacrosse-playing frat boy. He seems to genuinely like her—and he might be even shier than her. Eventually, her mother realizes what Ella is up to, but she understands. Her long absent father was the exact same way.

Somehow Oliver and co-screenwriter Albert I Melamed pull off quite a nifty trick in LPK. They have written a film all about gender politics that touches on just about every hot button social issue you can think of, yet it never comes across as didactic or hackneyed. The gory humor undoubtedly helps a lot. The crazy casting is also sure to please genre fans. If you have Michael Madsen, Malcolm McDowell, Daniel Baldwin, and Ron Jeremy on your Rotisserie B-movie team, than LPK will score you a lot of points, including a bonus for McDowell serving as executive producer.

The idea of Michael Madsen as an aging hipster freshman psych professor should unnerve any parent. Even though he tries to play it straight, it is hard not to laugh during his scenes. Be that as it may, nobody can top Kate Daly’s big screen debut as Ella. She is over-the-top nuts, but still projects a sense of pathos, while also nailing some wickedly droll narration. It is sort of like Reese Witherspoon’s arrival in Legally Blonde, but with buckets of blood.

To its credit, the humor in LPK is consistent funny and it flows organically from the dramatic situations, reflecting a fan’s appreciation of the slasher genre. Despite its themes and motifs, it never feels like a Ms. Magazine article grafted onto a psycho killer story. It gets everything right that a film like Girls Against Boys gets wrong. In fact, it is quite a bit of fun in a grisly, blood-splattered kind of way. Recommended for fans of sardonic horror films, Lady Psycho Killer premieres this evening (8/2), after services, at this year’s Fantasia.