Self-Quarantine Viewing: Foxtrot Six

Angga is a former commando now serving in Congress. He is sort of like an Indonesian Dan Crenshaw, except the Jakartan has made some ethical compromises along the way. Angga has a plan to wipe out a troublesome guerilla outfit, but he changes his mind when he realizes his long-lost love is their leader. He and his old comrades fight hard to undo the machinations he sets in motion in Randy Korompis’s English-language Indonesian action movie, Foxtrot Six, executive-produced by Mario Kassar (T2 & Rambo of fame), which is now available on VOD platforms.

Once a hero, Angga has been co-opted and corrupted by the Piranha Party, the political wing of the powerful “Piranhas Corporation.” They were going to call themselves the Evil Predators Inc., but the public relations department convinced the top execs to tone it down. Angga successfully pitches them a scheme to distract the populace and discredit the rebels known as “The Reform,” (again, so subtle these names), but he has to take on his old nemesis Wisnu as his chief enforcer.

Unbeknownst to Angga, Piranhas and Wisnu have hatched a much bigger and bloodier false flag operation. They intend to “martyr” seven of their own unsuspecting congressmen, including Angga’s closest ally. Of course, the Reform will be scapegoated. It turns out that includes Sari Nirmala, Angga’s great love and the mother of the daughter he never knew he had. Suddenly it is up to Angga, four of his former fellow commandos, and Nirmala’s taciturn lieutenant known as Spec to save the country and vindicate the Reform.

Frankly, none of the conspiracy stuff makes much sense and the Angga-Nirmala subplots are eye-rollingly melodramatic. What is most frustrating is that Julie Estelle, probably still best known as “Hammer Girl” in The Raid 2, really does not have any real action to perform in Foxtrot.

Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears

Miss Phryne Fisher is a semi-professional detective, very much in the tradition of the Thin Man, except she has always claimed to be a confirmed bachelorette. That is why the romantically-interested but often exasperated Detective Inspector Jack Robinson was so surprised when she married a maharajah for political reasons. He was even more shocked by the reports of her death, but those turn out to be assuredly premature in Tony Tilse’s Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, the first Phryne Fisher feature film, which premieres this coming Monday on Acorn TV.

Much to the despair of the Home Office, Miss Fisher (formerly a British expat resident of Australia) breaks the daughter of a Bedouin woman out of prison in the British Mandate. Supposedly, she lost her life during the escape, but of course she is alive and well and quite pleased to crash her own funeral. At this point, DI Robinson resolves to finally get off the Phryne Fisher emotional roller coaster. However, when Fisher starts investigating a murder that took place at the estate of her host, Lord Lofthouse, he reluctantly agrees to help, as usual.

Rather inconveniently, Lord Lofthouse has been framed for the crime. Presumably, the murder was related to Middle East intrigue, since the victim was a sheikh, who was backing out of a deal with the Lofthouses. In what might come as a bit of a surprise to Miss Fisher fans, the case also involves supernatural elements, including a giant cursed emerald.

When it comes to traditional British mysteries with uncanny overtones, The Pale Horse is much more intriguing and suspenseful. Even though Crypt of Tears released in Australian theaters, it still very much looks and feels like a TV production. There is plenty of fan-service for the faithful, but viewers who are not already on-board with the franchise are unlikely to be won over by Crypt of Tears.

Glenn Danzig’s Verotika

There have been a few films based on Glenn Danzig’s ultra-mature horror comic, Verotik, including the adults-only Grub Girl. That would be the higher quality, more socially redeeming movie. This is the other one. Danzig himself helms an anthology of three “greatest hits” stories and does quite a job of it with the already notorious Verotika, which is now available on VOD.

At least the explicit naughty bits in Grub presumably served the purpose for which they were intended. Just what Danzig was going for is beyond mortal understanding. The sleazy bafflement starts with “The Albino Spider of Dajette.” Poor Dajette is a fetish model with eyeballs on her breasts, who develops a nightmarish psychic connection with a pale spider monster.  Supposedly, it is set in Paris, but the city never looked so cheap and dingy. Honestly, you will hear better fake French accents in a Le Pain Quotidien in Paramus, New Jersey.

The worst part of “Albino Spider” is it is probably the best story of Verotika, but it won’t feel that way at the time, because it comes first. Next, Danzig uncorks “Change of Face,” his ambitious but smarmy homage to Georges Franju’s Eyes without a Face. A serial killer stalks beautiful women to physically steal their faces. Naturally, she is a stripper, so Danzig can incorporate stripteases into the film, but if that is what you are looking for, an average episode of The Sopranos would be sexier.

For the third and mercifully final installment, Danzig rips off the Elizabeth Bathory legend with “Drukija Countess of Blood,” who does indeed bathe in the blood of virgins to retain her youthful appearance. Considering Danzig and his design team cannot realize a convincing strip club locale, it should come as no surprise the period setting is well beyond their grasp. Yet, “Drukija’s” greatest problem in on the printed pages of the script. Danzig doesn’t even give us a structured narrative here. He just forces us to watch endless examples of the Countess’s brutality.

Self-Quarantine Viewing: Trauma Center

Calling it “Die Hard in a hospital” gives it too much credit, but at least it stars Bruce Willis. That means the super-prolific star of almost-straight-to-DVD thrillers is now starting to rip himself off. However, his character will spend most of the film on the streets, doing police stuff. That leaves an injured witness to fend for herself when crooked cops come to kill her in Matt Eskandari’s Trauma Center, now available on DVD and VOD, the kind of film that could have self-quarantiners asking: “what the heck was that?”

San Juan Police Det. Wakes’ snitch has just been killed by the ring of dirty cops he was about to expose. His moronic partner soon follows him into permanent early retirement. However, there is a witness, Madison Taylor, whose rebellious sister Emily has also been admitted, following a nasty asthma attack (potential hostage alert). Shock has obscured Taylor’s memory of the attack, but the shooters will still come after her, because meat-headed Det. Pierce lodged a traceable bullet in her leg. (They also pumped several rounds into Wakes’ partner, but supposedly those were carefully fired to obliterate against hard surfaces—or something like that.

Wakes moves Taylor to the infectious disease floor for safe keeping (that will be a red herring for hyper-conscious viewers mindful of the Wuhan virus—which did indeed originate in Wuhan). Unfortunately, Pierce and the slightly smarter Sgt. Tull flash their badges and lock down the floor. The cat-and-mouse business proceeds from there.

The weird thing about these slapped-together films is how good Willis is in them. Maybe it helps that his screen-time is comparatively limited, but he is still the only one who really shows any star power. Regardless, everyone would surely agree nobody better represents Puerto Rico than Bruce Willis and Nicky Whelan. They must have some boffo film production tax incentives there.

Superman: Red Son

Lord Acton’s famous dictum has been confirmed over and over throughout history: “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Yet, it has never been applied to Superman—until now. Fortunately, the baby Kal-El landed in Middle America, a devout land governed by Constitutional principles. Suppose he landed in Soviet Russia instead. That is the what-if alternate timeline scenario explored in Sam Liu’s animated feature Superman: Red Son, which releases today on DVD/BluRay.

Svetlana is amazed by young Mishka’s powers, so she convinces the naïve boy to put himself at the service of the Soviet state. Alas, no good deed goes unpunished in Stalin’s regime, because the innocent woman will be condemned to a gulag for knowing Superman before he was a symbol of Communist power. Initially, the costumed hero follows Stalin loyally, but a challenging interview with tough-talking American journalist Lois Lane prompts him to discover the truth—including poor emaciated Svetlana’s fate.

Unfortunately, Superman is not ready to embrace freedom. Instead, he stages a coup d’état, replacing Stalin as General Secretary. With Superman literally leading the Red Army, America is suddenly at a distinct disadvantage in the (not-so) Cold War. However, Eisenhower has a key ally: Lane’s husband, the genius inventor and industrialist Alexander “Lex” Luthor.

There is a lot in J.M. DeMatteis’s adaptation of the Red Son graphic novel that is smart and insightful. Stalin is definitely depicted as the monster that he was, but Superman’s supposedly benign dictatorship is not much different. Lord Acton’s warning regarding absolute power is absolutely spot-on here. The roles played by Brainiac and Wonder Woman are also quite clever, with the former becoming the allegedly perfect Socialist administrator and the former representing the Amazons, who like the so-called “Non-Aligned” nations of the Cold War era, protest their neutrality while favoring Superman’s USSR, until they can no longer ignore the truth of the despotic regime.

Self-Quarantine Viewing: In Search of Last Action Heroes

In times like these, we could use some heroes. It makes us nostalgic for the 1980s, the golden age of action heroes. That was the decade action really came into its own as a distinct genre. Back then, even our president, Ronald Reagan, was an action hero. At a time when we’re self-quarantining and social-distancing, we will try catch up on some DVD/VOD releases we missed when they released earlier in the year. Oliver Harper’s In Search of Last Action Heroes, (co-produced by David A. Weiner, director of In Search of Darkness) is a particularly good viewing choice, because as an entertaining documentary survey of 80’s action, it also gives viewers plenty of good ideas for subsequent films to watch—and it is indeed available on DVD and VOD.

Of course, it is hard to chronicle 80s films without referencing some films of the 70s that they built on. This is particularly true of Death Wish and Alien, whose sequel Aliens is considered an action film rather than horror movie (that is a debatable but defensible position). Two stars come to define the era for Harper and co-writer Timon Singh: Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, which makes sense.

As was the case for In Search of Darkness, Harper follows the development of 80s action in roughly chronological order. Along the way, he and his many talking heads cover the rise of Cannon Films and the influence of Hong Kong action auteurs. Fans will be thrilled to hear director Sam Firstenberg look back on the American Ninja franchise, but they will be disappointed the late great Steve James is overlooked during the discussion. (Honestly, I would argue James is sufficiently significance to warrant his own documentary. Email me if you agree.)

None of the really big stars like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, or even Michael Dudikoff (the American Ninja) appear in Last Action as interview subjects, but Harper talks to some really cool character actors and bad guy specialists, like Al Leong (Lethal Weapon), Bill Duke (Predator), Ronny Cox (Robocop), Vernon Wells (Commando), and Jenette Goldstein (Aliens), as well as Eric Roberts, who is in a class of his own. However, he gets a good deal of commentary from two contemporary action stars: Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White.

The Grizzlies: Discovering Canada’s Other Game

The best lacrosse players tend to fall into two demographics: prep school elites and First Nations descendants of the original inventors of the game. The struggling Inuit students of a remote arctic Canadian town would identify with the latter. A new high school teacher introduces them to the game, but of course, he will learn just as much as his students in Miranda de Pencier’s The Grizzlies, which opens this Friday in New York, at least as of the last we heard.

Russ Sheppard accepted a temporary teaching position at Kugluktuk High School in Nunavut (Canada’s northernmost territory, which split off from the Northwest Territories in 1999), hoping it would bolster his wait-listed employment application at an elite prep school. Basically, he is like Dr. Joel Fleischman with a lacrosse stick, but Cicely, Alaska was considerably more prosperous than the community he finds himself in. In fact, Sheppard is so concerned by the high rate of teen suicide, he tries to form a lacrosse team, just to give the kids something to do.

Outsiders cannot get anymore outside than Sheppard, so he constantly commits cultural gaffes. Nevertheless, the power of the game starts to reach many of the kids—and they grudgingly start giving him credit for giving a darn. Unfortunately, the school principle remains skeptical and his best players will be constantly distracted by family issues.

One way or another, you know adversity will be triumphed over in a film like this. However, de Pencier sidesteps the most obvious sports underdog clichés, making their based-on-a-true-story victories modest and believable. Still, she leaves some rather glaring loose ends conspicuously hanging.

There is no denying The Grizzlies follows a time-honored formula, but de Pencier largely avoids cliched fish-out-of-water humor, in favor of well-intentioned social drama. Frankly, it is a baffling shame the film is rated R, because there is nothing here you couldn’t see in an after-school special. De Pencier just presents it all with brutal honesty.

Niall Ferguson’s Networld

Things happen for a reason. That even includes the internet—especially the disappointing and dangerous parts. Hoover Institution scholar Niall Ferguson’s traces the disruptive rise of online social networks and draws historical parallels in the three-part Niall Ferguson’s Networld, produced and directed by Adrian Pennick, which premieres back-to-back-to-back this coming Tuesday on most PBS stations.

If you want to understand how the modern world got to be the way that it is, Niall Ferguson is indispensable reading and viewing. Ferguson’s Civilization: The West and the Rest is the most cogent and persuasive explanation of why Western nations have economically outperformed the rest of the world since the Marxian-influenced Ferdinand Braudel wrote Capitalism and Civilization. Arguably, the PBS documentary series based on Ferguson’s book is even more timely now than when it originally in 2012, so self-quarantiners should binge it first.

Although there are not as many epiphany moments in Networld, but there are still plenty of insights. Using his book The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook as a roadmap, Ferguson directly challenges the notion the internet revolution was supposedly unprecedented, drawing direct parallels with the development of Gutenberg’s printing press and the transcontinental telegraph. He also directly compares social media influencers with the social authority granted to Free Masons like Paul Revere during the American Revolution.

The Hunt: Forget Your Preconceptions

This might shock some people, but Donald Trump is a terrible film critic, especially when he hasn’t even seen the film in question. He pilloried this much maligned satire about liberal elites hunting red state conservatives, but it never really made sense how that premise could be a good look for the left. We could only wonder when the film’s release was postponed out of sensitivity to tragic news events. Ironically, those who retweeted Trump’s thinly veiled comments could be the ones who most enjoy Craig Zobel’s Blumhouse-produced The Hunt when it opens today nationwide—at least wherever theaters are still open. Seriously, this film cannot buy a break.

A group of snide leftwingers has abducted a group of “deplorables” (that would be there word for them), who will come to in a remote clearing wearing ball gags. As the bullets whiz by their heads, they figure out they are being hunted, but it will take them a bit of time to understand why. Supposedly to be sporting, the hunters also left them a crate of firearms, but the initial culling will be brutal.

Crystal, an Afghanistan veteran currently working a dead-end car rental job, is one of the few to survive the first ten minutes. Her survival skills are still finely honed and she has razor-sharp tactical judgment. As she navigates her way through the trap-laden countryside (that turns out to be somewhere in the Balkans), she steadily evens up the score. Of course, we can safely assume she will eventually face-off against Athena, the shadowy leader of “The Hunt.”

Again, who in their right mind would consider the concept of “The Hunt” good propaganda for the hard-left cause? Obviously, the participating hunters are profoundly intolerant of diverse opinions and show a fundamental disregard for the sanctity of life. Screenwriters Nick Cuse & Damon Lindelof also skewer the absurdity of their identity politics and the utter hypocrisy their “limousine liberal” snobbery and contempt for average working-class people. Really, the only thing the rightwing prey gets tagged with is a propensity to retweet fake news, but even that takes on rather complex and ironic dimensions.

The Postcard Killings: Oscar-Winning Danis Tanovic Takes on James Patterson

They carefully select their victims, but they still manage to pick the daughter of an experienced serial killer hunting police detective. Unfortunately, it takes forever for the kneejerk anti-American Euro cops to take his advice seriously. People will die in the interim, but dogged Jacob Kanon will never stop hunting his daughters’ murderers in Danis Tanovic’s The Postcard Killings, based on the co-authored James Patterson novel, which opens tomorrow in New York.

It was Det. Kanon who bought the London honeymoon for his daughter and her newlywed husband, so he takes the grotesque circumstances of their murder especially hard. Some unknown perpetrator posed them in a grisly manner that resembles a famous painting. Actually, identifying the artistic sources of their inspiration will be one of the insights Kanon brings to the investigation.

Of course, the British copper in charge of the case initially tries to keep him at arm’s length, but the particularly public nature of the border-crossing killing spree makes it increasingly difficult for the multi-nation task force to refuse his specialized expertise. Before each killing, a local journalist is sent a cryptic postcard and afterwards they receive a horrific photo of the crime scene. It is unclear how the journalists are selected. None of them regularly cover the crime beat, but expat human interest-writer Dessie Leonard would like to transfer to harder news, so she agrees to work with Kanon to get the inside track on the story.

It might surprise some film snobs that Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanovic, who won the best Foreign Language Oscar (as it was then called) for No Man’s Land, would helm a straight-up serial killer thriller. Yet, this is the same Tanovic who directed the Pakistan-set whistleblower expose Tigers, so he clearly has an affinity for transnational drama. In fact, he executes the lurid crimes with operatic flair.

However, the story itself is rather standard issue stuff. Generally speaking, Patterson’s collaborations features two types of co-authors, up-and-coming crime novelists, which should include Swedish Postcard co-author Liza Marklund (who co-adapted their novel with Andrew Stern), and inconsequential hacks (like a nobody named Bill Clinton, whoever that might be). Maybe something was lost in the page-to-screen transfer, but we have seen everything here many times before.

Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse, on Prime Video

Agatha Christie’s name is synonymous with mystery, but dabbled enough in supernatural fiction to fill a recent anthology, The Last Séance. Some of the stories are arguably shoe-horned in, like “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb,” wherein Hercule Poirot provides the Scooby-Doo explanation for an ancient curse. Probably the best story, “S.O.S” involves intuition and sensitivity more than the outright uncanny, but the title story would definitely work as a Twilight Zone episode. It is therefore maybe not so strange Sarah Phelps emphasizes the supernatural elements of Christie’s source novel in her two-part adaptation of The Pale Horse, directed by Leonora Lonsdale, which premieres this Friday on Prime Video.

Mark Easterbrook still loves his first wife Delphine, but she is dead and his second marriage to Hermia practically is too. He was seeing the young and tarty Thomasina Tuckerton on the side, until she died rather suddenly—so suddenly, he had to make a stealthy exit from her flat. It turns out, her name was on a list that turned up in the shoe of a dead woman. Most those names correspond to a recently deceased body. Rather ominously, Easterbrook’s name is also on the list, but his is followed by a question mark.

To figure out if his life really is in danger, Easterbrook follows a trail of clues to the quaint village of Much Deeping, where a trio of fortune tellers have set up shop in a former pub still known as “The Pale Horse.” They do not look so intimidating, but there are rumors they wield dark magic to make their clients’ enemies disappear—for a price, of course.

It is weird how the BBC keeps taking wild liberties with this Christie novel. A few years ago, the Miss Marple franchise drained out most of the occult elements and added Jane Marple to what was a rare stand-alone non-series mystery from Dame Agatha. Now, Phelps swings the pendulum all the way back, pumping up the paranormal and a devising a head-trippily ambiguous but most likely supernatural conclusion.

Rewriting Agatha Christie is risky business that doesn’t always work in Pale Horse, but the sheer boldness of the final twist earns grudging respect for Chutzpah. Yet, Phelps’ Pale Horse really works as well as it does mostly because of Rufus Sewell’s brooding, tightly-wound performance as Easterbrook. Sewell’s specialty is portraying compromised characters with corrupting secrets, so he really is perfectly cast, in a darkly dapper kind of way. (Sewell was absolutely terrific in Rock & Roll on Broadway and the short-lived Zen. He really ought to be a much bigger star, but he is always reliable.)

Opening in Korea: Fukuoka

Cynical critics might label So-dam a “manic pixie dream girl” (its one of their cliched  terms), but she is way too laidback for the manic part. Nevertheless, she seems to have extraordinary powers of communication and strange things just happen around her. Regardless, she is determined to help two middle-aged man-children mature and move on with their lives in screenwriter-director Zhang Lu’s Fukuoka, which opens tomorrow in Korea.

Grouchy Je-moon thinks the twenty-one-year-old So-dam is a nut, because she constantly hangs out in his dark used bookstore and always wants to talk to him. He might have a point about that, even though he is the one hearing voices during the opening scene. Weirdly, she wants to travel with him to Fukuoka on Kyushu Island, but since he has a former friend there, Je-moon agrees to the suggestion.

He and Hae-hyo used to be close, but they had a falling out when they both fell in love with the same woman. Instead of choosing, she dropped out of college and disappeared from both their lives. It is twenty-eight years later, but neither has gotten over it. Initially, Hae-hyo resents their visit, but So-dam is a positive influence on them. They keep arguing like cats and dogs, but that is clearly what they like to do. Meanwhile, So-dam successfully draws out many of the neighborhood locals, conversing in Korean to native Japanese and expat Chinese speakers, with perfect comprehension (it is sort of like the linguistic mash-up in El Hipnotizador, but the characters recognize it happening and think it is odd).

The fantastical elements of Fukuoka are so light and understated, it is unclear whether they really are fantastical. Still, So-dam clearly has powers of universal translation and Hae-hyo believes he recently talked to a dead man, so maybe there is something a little out there going on.

Yet, it doesn’t matter all that much, because Zhang’s film is so wry and intriguing. He really out Hong Sang-soos Hong Sang-soo, while adding delicately subtle supernatural elements. By rejecting conventional scoring, Zhang evokes a vivid sense of place solely through ambient noise. Few filmmakers have a better sense of when to step back and let their films breath organically.

The Witch: Subversion—Always Beware of Movie Orphans

There is no gifted & talented program sufficient for Koo Ja-yoon’s remarkable abilities. She can sing, dance, and get top grades without studying. She is also an adopted orphan, so you know what that means. Unfortunately, Young’s creators are out to bring her back into their shadowy fold in screenwriter-director Park Hoon-jung’s The Witch: Subversion (originally, there was a “Part 1” in there), which releases today on DVD.

Koo came along at a fortuitous time for an older couple still mourning their son and grandson. Technically, she escaped from the Skinner-Box-ish lab, where she was conditioned and enhanced. It was some sort of government-corporate co-venture that was forced to liquidate when the bosses got wind of how dangerous she is. If there was any question on that score, her relentlessly violent escape should put all doubts to rest.

For years, Ja-yoon grows up happily with the Koos, with all her traumatic memories apparently buried by her subconscious. Unfortunately, her mini-seizures are gaining in intensity, but the real trouble comes when she successfully auditions for an Idol-style talent contest, where naturally she becomes an overnight favorite. She also attracts the attention of the re-constituted cabal.

Honestly, at this point, the murky conspiracy stuff is dull and derivative. We’ve seen it all before, and it is usually easier to distinguish the faceless co-conspirators and their competing factions. Likewise, there is a long stretch between Koo’s initial escape and the inevitable fateful confrontation that drags interminably. Still, Park springs a few third act revelations on viewers that are clever and really pretty shocking.

Rendez-Vous ‘20: Burning Ghost

Love is the most persistent ghost, because it can haunt you forever. A twentysomething man and a thirtysomething woman will prove just how true that is. Technically, he died about ten years ago, but they still have powerful romantic chemistry in Stephane Batut’s Burning Ghost, which screens during the 2020 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Juste died through some sort of misadventure, but Kramarz, the gatekeeper to whatever comes next, allows him to stay in the realm of mortals, to guide recently deceased souls to her. He lives with a foot in both planes of existence. He can interact with mortals, as long as he never gets too involved. However, caution goes out the window when he crosses paths with Agathe.

She knew him when he used a different name, but he still looks exactly the same. Juste initially tries to deny it, but their passion for each other has also remained unchanged. Soon, he tries to pick up where they left-off, but that will somehow upset the cosmic balance of his supernatural existence.

Burrning Ghost could be the best ghost movie since Personal Shopper. Fans of Assayas’s foray into the supernatural should also appreciate the elegant tone Batut achieves, even though his film is not the slightest bit horror, while also being far less ambiguous. Instead, it is an exquisitely melancholy meditation on love and death, the two most fundamental themes art can address.

The Original Most Dangerous Game

Richard Connell’s frequently anthologized short story finally went into the public domain this year, but it has been ripped off for decades. Tell me if you have heard this one before: there is a bad guy who enjoys hunting people for sport. It is not just Bacurau that just opened or The Hunt due to be released this week that “borrowed” this idea. There has also been Hard Target, Surviving the Game, 31, Preservation, Black Rock, Carnage Park, Turkey Shoot (and its remake, Elimination Game), The Tenth Victim, and The Prey that basically riffed on the same people-hunting-people gimmick. That makes this an opportune time to revisit the film that (officially) adapted Connell first, way back in 1932: Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack’s The Most Dangerous Game, which airs tomorrow on TCM, for those of you in quarantine.

Dashing young celebrity big-game hunter Robert Rainsford was enjoying a cruise with friends until their yacht foundered on the reef surrounding a remote island. It turns out the captain was correct to suspect the safety buoys had been moved. Alas, that would be the late captain. Only Rainsford eludes the sharks swarming their wreck, making it to shore, where he stumbles into the gothic fortress of Count Zaroff.

At dinner, he meets Eve Trowbridge, another shipwreck survivor, who took refuge with the Count, along with her drunkard brother Martin and two sailors that are now suspiciously missing. Since the Count recognizes the famous Rainsford, he invites him to join him hunting “the most dangerous game.” Of course, that would be man. When the horrified Rainsford refuses, he is forced to become the prey instead. The stakes will be particularly high for this hunt. If Rainsford survives until sunrise, he wins his life and the right to leave with Trowbridge.

Dangerous Game was produced “pre-Code,” but it is still pretty cagey when it implies what Zaroff intends to do to the lovelly Trowbridge once he bags Rainsford’s head, but it is pretty easy for modern audiences to infer. However, the film’s pre-Codeness is vividly clear in the early grisly engine room deaths we see when Rainsford’s ship goes down, as well as the trophy heads Zaroff keeps in bell jars. This is an old movie, but for genre fans, it is surprisingly cool.

Frankly, Joel McCrea should be better remembered than he is. In his day, he was a big movie star, whose charisma could carry a film. He also had sufficient comedic timing to hang with Robert Benchley in the criminally under-appreciated Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent. Being the leading man is rather thankless business in a film like this, but McCrae is admirably energetic as Rainsford. He also has some decent screen chemistry with Faye Wray.

Cinequest ’20: Survival Skills

The 1980s were a golden age for cop movies and TV shows. Dirty Harry Callahan, Axel Foley, Crocket & Tubbs, Hunter, and Sledgehammer were on the streets, protecting and serving the public, despite the hand-wringing of politicians and their bureaucratic superiors. Jim Williams joins the force as a fresh-faced idealist, but a nasty domestic violence case shakes his faith in the justice system. Rather awkwardly, it unfolds as part of a vintage 1980s VHS industrial training tape for new police recruits in screenwriter-director Quinn Armstrong’s meta-fourth-wall-breaking Survival Skills, which premiered at the 2020 Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival (still proceeding as planned, at least at the time this was written).

New recruits are supposed to learn along with Williams as the unnamed “Narrator” leads him through his first days on the force. His jaded partner Allison Lohmann is not thrilled to be saddled with such a naïve rookie, but even she dreads a call like the Jenning family’s domestic disturbance. Clearly, Mark Jenning has been beating his wife Leah and daughter Lauren for quite a while, but they dutifully cover for him when Williams and Lohmann arrive on the scene.

However, Williams is not ready to let it go. Despite attempts to narrate him into different scenes, he keeps working the case and reaching out to Jenning’s wife and daughter. It really annoys the Narrator, but it starts to impress the cynical Lohmann. Nevertheless, she still suspects it will all end in tears.

It is incredibly gutsy of Armstrong to use a quirky device in the tradition of larky self-referential films like Rubber, Stranger than Fiction, and Adaptation to address a topic as serious as domestic violence, but he pulls it off. In fact, he manages to depict the challenges to prosecuting domestic abuse in ways that surprisingly resonate and infuriate.

The earnestness of Vayu O’Donnell’s lead performance as Williams is a major reason why the film works as well as it does. He starts out almost impossibly chipper and gung-ho, which makes his steady disillusionment quite distressing to watch. Ericka Kreutz plays Lohmann with cutting sarcasm and grim fatalism. They are definitely not your garden variety good cop-bad cop, that’s for sure. Plus, Stacy Keach is perfectly cast as the blustering narrator.

Cinequest ’20: Homewrecker

Fortysomething Linda is the sort of person who can even make 1980’s nostalgia creepy. It is because she is completely unhinged, in jealous and possessive ways. She has decided to befriend Michelle, a not particularly social interior designer in her early thirties, even if it kills the younger woman. It does not pay to be nice in Zach Gayne’s Homewrecker, which screens during this year’s Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival.

Linda just happened to join Michelle’s workout class and coincidentally stopped by her favorite coffee shop, where she introduces herself. She is unusually forward and more than a little bit annoying, but Michelle does not want to seem rude, so she humors the woman. Reluctantly, she agrees to give Linda’s home a professional look-over, but that will be a mistake. Once she is inside, Linda will not let her go. At first, she uses techniques of guilt and manipulation to convince her to stay, but eventually she resorts to more violent methods.

Frankly, Linda is not so very different from Annie Wilkes in Misery, but Michelle is a much more resourceful captive. Ironically, the early scenes of social awkwardness are much more uncomfortable to watch than the subsequent brawls and beatdowns. Gayne unleashes some brutal mayhem, but it steeped in bracing dark humor, very much in the Tarantino tradition.

There is also some brilliant art design work from Andrew Barr & Tim Reid, who crafted the look of “Party Hunks,” a retro-80’s Sweet Valley High-esque VHS-boardgame Linda makes Michelle play. It is the sort of memorable in-film game that ranks with the ones seen in Beyond the Gates and Into the Dark: Uncanny Annie.

Run This Town: The Rob Ford Scandal

Rob Ford, the late former mayor of Toronto was like the Chris Farley of Canadian politics. He was big, rambunctious, often embarrassing, but broadly popular. In many respects, he could be seen as an early populist forerunner to Trump, BoJo, and Bolsonaro. Not surprisingly, the Canadian media hated him—and the feeling was mutual. An under-achieving millennial journalist pursues the crack-smoking scandal that eventually ended Ford’s mayoralty, while his conflicted special assistant scrambles to bury it in Ricky Tollman’s Run This Town, which opens today in New York.

Mopey Bram Shriver is constantly depressed by his overbearing parents’ lack of respect for his journalistic ambitions and his boss’s lack of confidence in his journalistic abilities. After a year at the paper, he still primarily writes listicals (ironically, that means he is probably the most widely read staffer). After a veteran journalist is laid-off, Shriver happens to field an anonymous call placed to her promising something big. After a few awkward meetings, Shriver discovers the Macguffin is a video of Ford smoking crack at a party.

Kamal Arafa’s primary responsibility is keeping the mayor out of trouble. It is a full-time job. Arafa can rarely control his boss, but he is largely successful neutralizing the media. He will have some help from the new press assistant Ashley Pollock, but her commitment to the administration plummets after a drunken sexual harassment incident. Although he is increasingly uncomfortable with Ford’s behavior, Arafa loyally pursues the crack video, which seems to be for sale to the highest bidder.

Tollman’s script does its best to try, convict, and permanently close the books on the now deceased Ford. Yet, despite the film’s obvious bias, it (perhaps inadvertently) humanizes the flamboyant mayor to a surprising extent. In between drunken outbursts, we can see why Toronto voters supported Ford and why Arafa agreed to work for him in the first place. He really was a man of the people, who followed-up on citizen feedback and complaints personally. Yes, he drank like a fish, smoked crack at least once, and often conducted himself in a ragingly inappropriate manner, but he was still probably fitter for office than our current president or the presumptive Democratic front-runner.

That said, it is painfully clear dramatizing Ford’s loutishness is the whole point of this film. Mild spoilers below the fold.

Go Back to China (But Not Now)

Actually, this wouldn’t be such a great week for Sasha Li’s titular travel plans. However, her father’s toy factory would probably be reopened in accordance with Xi “Winnie the Flu” Jinping’s orders—public safety be damned, for the sake of his economic goals. It is during a much less contagious time, not so long ago in Shenzhen that Li reluctantly journeys to the Chinese home she hardly knows in Emily Ting’s Go Back to China, which opens tomorrow in New York.

The entitled Li has been blowing through her trust fund while waiting to magically land her perfect job in the fashion industry, despite her lack of work experience, until her wealthy father Teddy abruptly cuts her off. She has lived in America since her parents’ divorce, but now he wants her to come work in his tacky toy family and become part of his Chinese family. That involves getting to know her half-sisters: Carol who came before her and young Dior, who was the product of his third failed marriage (along with her brother, Christian).

Actually, Li rather likes getting to know her step-siblings better. She also gets used to doing the work thing. She even makes the best of provincial Shenzhen. It is her father’s arrogance and refusal to accept parental responsibility that keep fueling her resentment. However, she is not alone on that score.

Surprisingly, Ting presents a rather likable story of culture clash and family dysfunction that never peddles cheap “China is awesome” propaganda. She clearly critiques China’s vast economic disparities and the ostentatious consumption of its oligarchic class. In fact, it even shows signs the mighty Chinese economy is slowing down, pre-Coronavirus era.

Bacurau: Não indicado pelo Brasil

If only this film were as good as Angelica Sakurada’s translation. Once again, she has volunteered a Portuguese translation of my Bacurau review as a service to expats and Brazilian readers (original here).

O nordeste brasileiro é uma região sofrida, com uma história de insurreição armada. Se um grupo de elite de caçadores do estilo “Zaroff, O Caçador de Vidas” (Most Dangerous Game) estiver vasculhando o território, eles provavelmente passariam direto por essa região equatorial selvagem. Claro, que o conceito integral de pessoas caçando pessoas já é um clichê barato que vem sendo reciclado constantemente, embora o filme O Alvo (Hard Target) já tenha estabelecido o padrão do conceito no início dos anos 90. Deste vez, os co-diretores-roteiristas Kleber Mendonça Filho e Juliano Dornelles tentam reinventar o artifício para retratar ângulos políticos e ideológicos em Bacurau, que estreia nesta sexta-feira em Nova Iorque.

Theresa regressou à Bacurau para o enterro de sua avó, mas decide ficar mais alguns dias para se reconectar com uma antiga paixão, Pacote, uma ex-atirador conhecido, com toda uma fama no YouTube contando as mortes atribuídas a ele. Sinceramente, não é ele que os gringos invasores deveriam temer no local.

Liderado por um misterioso alemão conhecido como Michael, os caçadores gringos (e seus dois cúmplices de São Paulo) conseguiram bloquear todo o sinal GPS e remover a cidadezinha do mapa do Google. A ideia é lentamente ir eliminando os locais um a um. Entretanto, como bons descendentes de rebeldes da tradição de Lampião, os residentes de Bacurau tem habilidades de sobrevivência no seu DNA.

Bacurau é um pecado da junção do cinema arte e filme de exploração que falha em satisfazer ambos públicos. O filme demora para engrenar, mas pelo menos as belas cenas do enterro ajudam a apresentar a comunidade local e seu lugar no ecossistema brasileiro. Entretanto, quando os gringos aparecem, o filme se reduz a um aspirante a suspense-retrô sórdido, mas os forasteiros são tão dramaticamente ultrapassado, que não existe nenhum suspense sobre os acontecimentos. Ao invés disso, o público vai ficar olhando o celular, esperando pelo final inevitável para finalmente concluir.

Into the Dark: Crawlers

Forget about killer leprechauns. Body-snatcher aliens are the real St. Patrick’s Day horror. Cleverly, they will invade a college town on the night of St. Patrick’s. It is because of the drinking and the poor judgement, unreliable witnesses, and highly vulnerable victims that results. However, the townie drug dealer is an alien conspiracy buff, so she is surprisingly prepared. She will explain to her online followers how it all went down in Brandon Zuck’s Crawlers, the latest installment in the Blumhouse-produced Into the Dark, which premieres this Friday on Hulu.

Misty thought Chloe was her BFF, but they have been on the outs, ever since the latter failed to offer adequate support after the former was roofied in a frat house. Instead of being there, Chloe has flitted off to a new bestie, the snarky New Yorker (is there any other kind?), Yuejin. However, Misty still charges after her shallow pal when she drunkenly leaves with another predatory brother from the fateful fraternity. Fortunately, Shauna, Chloe’s drug dealer reluctantly agrees to accompany Misty. However, inside the house they find evidence of sinister alien skullduggery instead of Chloe.

Eventually, Misty and Aaron, a bro who was apparently doppelgangered by the aliens, will come to believe Shauna is right about the body-doubling invaders. Being believed is important in this film, whether it be Misty’s presumed assault or Shauna’s mother, who witnessed an earlier alien landing on an earlier St. Patrick’s night, decades ago.

Wow, Blumhouse really has it info fraternities, judging from this film and last year’s Black Christmas remake. At least Crawlers still manages to be fun. Basically, it is nostalgic, like-you-know trip down dead teenager memory lane. It is easy to think of it as an updated riff on Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps, but it isn’t as wildly madcap as that would sound. Instead, it fits somewhere in between the Syfy original movie Killer High and last year’s back-to-school edition of Into the Dark, School Spirit (which was directed by Mike Gan, who co-scripted Crawlers).

The Dark Red: Psychic or Psycho

It’s generally a bad thing when a patient hears voices. It’s even worse when they are real. The slightly agitated Sybil Warren will try convince her highly skeptical shrink such is true for her. To be fair, she is entitled to be in-treatment given the trauma she has suffered, but it is a matter of legal commitment in Warren’s case. Dr. Deluce is in for some tense sessions during Dan Bush’s The Dark Red, which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Warren’s adopted mother recently died, her husband disappeared, and her baby was taken from her (by a secret society, she claims). That is a lot for one person to bear, but she is not a normal person. According to Warren, she has special psychic powers related to her rare blood type. Calling it “Type X” would probably be too on the nose, but that is the general idea. She can often hear people’s thoughts, but instead of a blessing, it has led to life-long issues of mental stability. Frankly, it is reasonable for Dr. Deluce to assume she is delusional. Given her twitchiness, viewers might start to suspect the same, but since this is a horror movie, we can guess there is more than a kernel of truth to what she says.

In terms of genre elements, Dark Red is very much X-Men mixed with Scanners, but the narrative takes a turn that is very much like Get Out without the racial dynamics. There is definitely a fair amount of horrifying mayhem, yet it is a surprisingly quiet film. Even though there are a number of familiar motifs, Bush and co-screenwriter (and co-star) Conal Byrne recombine them in intriguing ways.

Lançamento no Brasil: A Hora da Sua Morte [Countdown]

I’m thrilled the wonderful Angelica Sakurada volunteered to translate my review of Countdown (original here), as a public service, while it is in Brazilian theaters. Brazilian horror fans, we have you covered:

Sim, o aplicativo amaldiçoado é o trabalho de forças demoníacas, mas ainda assim não é tão maléfico quanto a empresa Huawei. O aplicativo prevê a hora da morte de quem baixa o aplicativo, mas qualquer tentativa de alterar as profecias torna o aplicativo extremamente raivoso. Aqueles com um pressentimento e que tentam trapacear o destino estão sujeitos a um tormento perturbador no filme A Hora da Sua Morte [Countdown] de Justin Dec, que lançou na semana passada no Brasil (lançado recentemente em DVD aqui nos Estados Unidos).

A vítima inicial reluta em baixar o aplicativo após sucumbir a pressão dos amigos bêbados. Isso nunca é uma boa ideia em filmes de terror. Embora ela recuse a oferta do seu namorado bêbado de uma carona pra casa, ela mesmo assim morre em um acidente esquisito. Esse fato acaba fazendo ele acreditar na sina, porque ele realmente socou o carro na árvore. A enfermeira Quinn Harris tenta conversar com ele racionalmente, mas ele inevitavelmente morre no exato segundo também. Isso acaba a perturbando, porque ela também tem o aplicativo do inferno nesse momento, e que mostra que ela tem somente alguns dias de vida.

Claro que todo mundo está baixando o aplicativo de contagem regressiva, então ela acaba encontrando logo uma pessoa também com pouco tempo para se juntar. Ela e Matt Monroe procuram a salvação em lojas de celulares e na igreja católica. Neste caso, a igreja é de melhor ajuda, mas somente após eles conhecerem um padre fã de cultura pop que aprendeu sozinho tradições demoníacas.

De fato, quando o padre John finalmente aparece é que o filme começa a ficar interessante. Questionável, a primeira parte deriva da franquia Premonição (Final Destination). Entretanto, o a abordagem maluca de P.J. Byrne do personagem do bom padre e suas técnicas intrigantes de exorcismo que elevam o nível do filme e tocam em temas profundos estilo Blatty do bom versus mal.

Diao Yinan’s Wild Goose Lake

Zhou Zenong is in trouble. The mainland cops are after him and there is nothing too ruthless or too unscrupulous they won’t do to capture (or better yet kill) the small-time gangster. Remember, they are the ones who taught police brutality to their Hong Kong colleagues. Nevertheless, Zhou realizes it is entirely his own fault, because he very definitely killed a cop in Diao Yinan’s ultra-noir Wild Goose Lake, which opens this Friday in New York.

Zhou is the kind of world-weary hoodlum who prefers to keep things low key. Unfortunately, the local Jiang Hu (underworld) boss forces Zhou’s motorcycle-stealing ring to compete for their choice turf against a group of young punky upstarts. Unfortunately, the larceny “Olympics” turn violent to such an extent, Zhou kills a cop by mistake.

At this point, the die is cast. Zhou knows only too well no fugitive can elude capture in the People’s Republic for long. At least he will try to engineer a more favorable endgame. His original idea is to have his semi-estranged wife Yang Shujun turn him in so she can claim the reward money. Sadly, that scheme becomes untenable due to the police surveillance and harassment focused on Yang.

Liu Aiai is plan B. She is a so-called “bathing beauty” who works for Zhou’s pimp friend Hua Hua around the rather hedonistic Wild Goose Lake. Liu is supposed to drop a dime on Zhou and then turn the reward money over to Yang after taking her cut. Of course, Zhou is not sure he can trust Liu or Hua Hua, or any of his old associates—with good reason. Plus, the rival gang is still out to get him. It all contributes to the sort of long night of the soul Diao specializes in.

Wild Goose is not as twisty or suspenseful as Diao’s contemporary classic, Black Coal Thin Ice, but it is still superior film noir. While his plot is more straightforward and almost pre-determined right from the start (indeed, that is sort of the whole point), he and cinematographer Dong Jingsun craft a look and mood worthy of vintage Edward Hopper paintings and Ida Lupino films.

Diao also reunites with the co-leads of Black Coal, but Liao Fan takes a more secondary role as the relentless, Javert-like Captain Liu, but he is quite convincing as the cynical, maybe even soulless copper. Gwei Lun Mei is absolutely arresting and heartbreaking as Liu Aiai, the exploited “bathing beauty.” Frankly, it is sometimes difficult to watch what her character must so realistically endure, but that is why it is such a brave performance.

Extra Ordinary: Ghost-Talking in Ireland

Rose Dooley has the Irish equivalent of the Shine. Her father Vincent called it “The Talents” on his low-budget 1980s In Search of-style television show, until she accidently killed him with her powers. She now works as a driving instructor, constantly turning away ghost-hunting customers. However, a desperate father with a bewitched teenaged daughter will convince Dooley to return to her paranormal calling in Mike Ahern & Enda Loughman’s gentle (but still kind of sinister) supernatural comedy, Extra Ordinary, which opens this Friday in New York.

Despite the encouragement of her single but mega-pregnant sister Sailor, Dooley is rather sad and lonely. When the eligible looking widower Martin Martin books a driving lesson, she is immediately interested. Yet, when he admits it was all just a ruse to get her to talk to the ghost of his henpecking late wife, she still initially refuses. However, when Martin’s daughter Sarah mysteriously falls into a supernatural coma, Dooley comes around.

The culprit is Christian Winter, a notorious one-hit-wonder, who intends to sacrifice a virgin to Satan, in exchange for a comeback. Sarah Martin would be the virgin. Dooley manages to cast a holding spell to keep her from floating away, but she and Martinx2 must hustle to complete some crazy supernatural business to break the spell. You should really just see it for yourself.

In terms of tone, Extra Ordinary is not so different from audience-pleasing Irish comedies like Waking Ned Devine¸ but it also cheerfully sprays around a fair amount of goo and a little bit of gore. Somehow, Ahern & Loughman make it work. Without a doubt, a lot of the credit goes to the rapport of their co-leads Maeve Higgins and Barry Ward. They play off each other well and their halting, goofball romantic chemistry is sweetly appealing.

Yet, perhaps the best parts are the perfectly recreated VHS playback scenes from her father’s old television show, featuring the pitch-perfect scenery-chewing Risteard Cooper as the turtleneck wearing Dooley. The humor of these sequences is totally nutty, but they still manage to establish the supernatural rules that the film plays by.

Bacurau, Not Submitted by Brazil

The Northeast of Brazil is hardscrabble country, with a history of armed insurrection. If a wealthy group of “Most Dangerous Game” style hunters were scouting territory, they would probably skip this unruly equatorial region. Of course, the entire notion of people hunting people is a shopworn cliché that keeps getting recycled over and over, even though John Woo’s Hard Target set the standard in the early 1990s. This time, co-director-screenwriters Kleber Mendonca Filho & Juliano Dornelles try to repurpose the gimmick to score political and ideological points in Bacurau, which opens this Friday in New York.

Theresa has returned to Bacurau for her grandmother’s funeral, but decides to stays a few days to reconnect with an old flame, Pacote (“the Package”), a former reputed hired gun, with a whole YouTube highlight reel of hits attributed to him. Frankly, he isn’t even the local the invading gringos should be worried about.

Led by the mysterious German known as Michael, the gringo hunters (and their Sao Paulo accomplices) have successful blocked all GPS and removed the town from Google maps. The idea is to slowly pick off the locals one by one. However, as the descendants of rebels in the Zapatista tradition, the residents of Bacurau have survival skills in their DNA.

Bacurau is an unholy merger of art cinema and exploitation movies that fails to satisfy either audience. The film is slow to get started, but at least the leisurely funeral scenes help establish the local characters. However, once the gringos show up, the film down-shifts into a wannabe sleazy retro-thriller, but the outsiders are so dramatically outclassed, there is never any suspense regarding the outcome. Instead, viewers will just be watching their cellphones, waiting for the obvious inevitable conclusion to finally wrap itself up.