Freedom Hair, in The Epoch Times

Based on a true story, FREEDOM HAIR chronicles a hair-braider's underdog struggle against arbitrary and unfair state regulations. It is a scrappy and sensitive faith-friendly film. EPOCH TIMES review up here.

Reagan, in Cinema Daily US

The Gipper would be happy to know his latest movie treatment definitely entertains. Kevin McNamara's REAGAN also presents a great deal of accurate Cold War history and a touching depiction of the First Cople's lifelong romance. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Fly, BASE Jumping in IMAX

BASE jumping (off buildings, antennas, spans, and earth) is a sport that makes lawn darts look safe—almost. Everyone in this documentary remembers a fellow jumper who did not make it. Unfortunately, at least one of the featured athletes also dies during a jump. The stakes are high, but that is how the BASE jumpers say they like it in Christina Clusiau & Shaul Schwarz’s Fly, a National Geographic documentary, which has special IMAX screenings this Monday and Tuesday.

Apparently, couples that jump together stay together. Jimmy Pouchert and Marta Empinotti are sort of the First Couple of BASE jumping, who have taught scores of student jumpers, many of whom regularly return for their events, including an annual Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Norwegian Espen Fadnes and British Amber Fortes found each other through the sport and started competing as a couple, sort of like figure skaters in the year, as they explain. Scotty Bob Morgan started jumping when he believed he had nothing to lose. Eventually, he meets and marries Julia Botelho. When she gets pregnant, Morgan realizes he suddenly has a great deal to lose.

Two of these jumpers will have gravely serious mishaps, but not the pregnant Botelho Morgan. Things get heavy, but not that horribly heavy. However, there is real tragedy, which the jumpers address before-the-fact, thanks to some pertinent questioning from Clusiau and Schwarz.

Clearly, this is a dangerous sport, but the stunning footage—shot via drones, helicopters, and go-pros—shows viewers why they keep doing it. The more conservate BASE jumpers simply jump into the void, using larger chutes than skydivers. However, the younger, more daring jumpers prefer to glide close to the ground, wearing their Batman-like wingsuits, before releasing their chute. Wingsuit jumping is considerably riskier, but the videos sure can pull in the likes on YouTube.

Merchant Ivory: The Documentary

They made the classy commercial, until they got a little too commercial. Nevertheless, their names remain synonymous with upscale literary costume dramas, produced by their eponymous production company. Yet, behind the scenes, there was a lot of flying by the seat of their pants, as filmmaker James Ivory vividly remembers in Stephen Soucy’s documentary, Merchant Ivory, which opens today in New York.

It was their mutual love of Indian cinema and culture that first brought James Ivory and Ismail Merchant together. After their initial encounters in New York, they met up again in India, where they began their first of many collaborations. Their early works, like Shakespeare Wallah were literary, but also cross cultural. Of course, they gained international fame and acclaim with their adaptations of E.M. Forster and Henry James.

Classic Merchant Ivory films were directed by Ivory, produced by Merchant, written (or rather adapted) by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and scored by Richard Robbins, all of whom lived together, in an almost communal relationship. It was widely known, even at the time, Ivory and Merchant were partners creatively, commercially, and personally. Yet, there was also something going on between Merchant and Robbins in later years, but it did not particularly bother Ivory—or so he says. Regardless, their closest friends and co-workers admit they are still not sure what the heck was going on there.

Sadly, only Ivory remains of the four, but he happily reminisces for Soucy’s behalf. The film also features commentary from many prominent thesps who appeared in their films, including Emma Thompson (Howard’s End, Remains of the Day), Hugh Grant (Maurice), Helena Carter Bonham (Room with a View), Greta Scacchi (Heat and Dust), and Felicity Kendal (Shakespeare Wallah). Unfortunately, Sir Anthony Hopkins never appears, perhaps because he sued for his unpaid salary due from The City of Your Final Destination.

Frankly, some of the best stories in Merchant Ivory describe how Merchant managed to wheel and deal and somehow finagle funding at the very last minute, for productions well underway. Merchant Ivory films were classy and literate, but as a producer, Merchant evidently shared a kinship with Cannon’s Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Apparently, his knack for scrounging money was sorely missed on Final Destination, the only Merchant Ivory film produced after his Merchant’s death.

Terminator Zero, in Cinema Daily US

In the franchise's anime debut, TERMINATOR ZERO shrewdly taps into the growing anxiety surrounding AI, as well as nostalgia for the original 1980s films (which largely sowed the seeds of our collective unease, in the first place), for some smart and action-packed science fiction. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Abel & Gordon’s The Falling Star

Lima Syndrome is the opposite of Stockholm Syndrome, but can the phenomenon really happen if the abductee does not know he has been kidnapped? That question will be debated in this French caper, but can it really be considered a thriller when it features so many visual gags and dancing numbers? Dominique Abel & Fiona Gordon apply their singular Jacques Tati-inspired style to film noir genre in The Falling Star, which opens this Friday in New York.

Years ago, Boris called in a bomb-threat on behalf of one of his leftwing causes, but the ensuing mayhem turned ugly. Since then, he has laid low, working as the bartender at the neighborhood dive, the Falling Star, while reliving the carnage every night in his dreams. Then one day, the one-armed Georges walks into the bar seeking revenge, but he is forced to retreat when his first shot dislodges his prosthetic.

Fearing Georges (or someone more competent) will soon return, Boris’s wife Kayoko and their loyal bouncer Tim hatch a scheme to find a double for the domestic terrorist, who will die in his place. Initially, it seems like Dom perfectly fits the bill. However, they do not realize the morose loner has a wife, Fiona the private detective, who soon starts looking for her missing husband. To really complicate matters, Kayoko falls in love with her husband’s sacrificial doppelganger. Of course, Georges is still out there, having survived several of Kayoko’s attempts to induce massive heart failure. Naturally, it all culminates in an extended dance number.

Abel & Gordon, the duo that produced the wonderfully gentle Lost in Paris and The Fairy, are incredibly bold filmmakers. Nobody else would dare make a slapstick musical comedy featuring domestic terrorists and a couple grieving their tragically deceased child as the main characters. Potentially, it is a tonal minefield, but they charge right in, trusting their aesthetic instincts. The results are poignantly bittersweet and deeply humanistic. Yet, the crazy part is, all the mysterious intrigue still works on a genre level.

Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames, on PBS

Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews were the great Hollywood love story, second only to Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Yet, they were also considered an odd couple: Mary Poppins and the director of some of the most slapstick physical comedies ever. Nevertheless, they did some of their most enduring work together. Andrews looks back on Edwards’ entire career and their lives together in Danny Gold’s Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames, which airs tonight on PBS, as part of the current season of American Masters.

Not surprisingly, Gold’s film largely concentrates on the films Edwards made with Andrews, who serves as narrator when not appearing directly on camera, as well as his collaborations with Peter Sellars. Happily, she still rewinds all the way back to his breakout success as the creator of Peter Gunn. Andrews even identifies the jazz club setting as a key to the show’s success.

However, Andrews (quite credibly) suggests the most important takeaway from Peter Gunn was Edwards’ introduction to Henry Mancini, whose immediately identifiable scores for his subsequent films are discussed at length. Of course, we hear his classic Pink Panther theme, but Plas Johnson should have been acknowledged for his tenor solo. Naturally, we also hear “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which is a true American standard.

Unfortunately, we also hear plenty of hand-wringing over Mickey Rooney’s “yellowface” supporting role from the likes of Leonard Maltin, giving one relatively minor part of an otherwise beloved film disproportionate attention that would have been better spent on unmentioned films like Sunset, Micki & Maude, The Carey Treatment, and Gunn, the movie version of Peter Gunn.

Regardless, Gold talks to all the appropriate surviving people (since, depressingly, so many of Edwards’ regular thesps are no longer with us), including Lesley Ann Warren (Victor/Victoria), Robert Wagner (Pink Panther), Bo Derek (10), Rob Marshall (choreographer of the Broadway Victor/Victoria), his daughter Jennifer Edwards (who appeared in That’s Life, S.O.B., Sunset, and Th Man Who Loved Women, etc.) and Henry Mancini’s vocalist daughter Monica.

Horror’s Greatest, on Shudder

Simple genres like horror and science fiction are not good enough for real genre fans. We’re all about sub-genres and sub-sub-genres. For instance, who amongst us is not a huge fan of science fiction time travel anime or folk-body-horror? Fans prone to classifying and categorizing will be particularly drawn to Shudder’s latest series repackaging classic horror clips. They brought back a lot of the usual suspects, but at least they freshened up the mix a little bit in the first four episodes of Horror’s Greatest, which starts streaming today on Shudder.

Frankly, the first episode is the weakest and most annoying, “Tropes and Cliches.” Anyone who ever uses the junky term “tropey” deserves a good slap. At least the talking heads recognize most horror fans enjoy their tropes—and without them, a lot of films would be over before they start.

The second episode, “Giant Monsters” celebrates kaiju, which are always fun. It is cool to see Beast from 20,000 Fathoms get its due as one of the kaiju sub-genre’s influential god-fathers. Of course, Godzilla and King Kong tower above all others. However, the kneejerk praise for Bong Joon-ho’s didactic anti-American The Host quickly grows tiresome. It is also disappointing they overlook the Daimajin franchise, which are like folk kaiju movies, driven by the literal wrath of a god.

However, the third episode, “Japanese Horror” consciously avoids the mistakes of Blumhouse Compendium of Horror, which never really ranged too far from the most obvious choices. Instead, this installment of Greatest takes a legit deep dive into classic Japanese cinema, including Kwaidan, Kuroneko, Ugetsu, and Onibaba. On the other hand, it classifies Battle Royale as horror, which seems debatable, despite its graphic dystopian violence.

Frankly, horror comedies get a bad rap, so it is refreshing to see Greatest champion the genre. Yet, after watching their analysis, you could argue this is one of the most commercial sub-genres if you agree with their reasonable cataloguing of such hits like Ghostbusters, Gremlins, An American Werewolf in London, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Fright Night, and The Adams Family, as well as cult favorites like Re-Animator and Evil Dead 2.

This is the only segment that offers anything remotely sounding like dissenting voice, when Dana Gould admits he considers he largely considers the Adams Family one one-gag franchise. Yet, he immediately follows-up by pointing out ways Adams Family Values transcends the formula.

Lore, an Anthology “Hosted” by Richard Brake

A truly memorable anthology needs a good host. It is impossible to overstate what Rod Serling and the Crypt Keeper brought to The Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt. For this film, Richard Brake is quite inhospitable, but in the right way. It would be a really bad idea to go camping with him, but people do it anyway in James Bushe & Patrick Ryder’s Lore (with an installment from Greig Johnson), which releases today on the Icon Film Channel in the UK.

At the start of the wrap-around segments, “The Campfire” written by Patrick Ryder & Christine Barber-Ryder and directed by Ryder & James Bushe, four not especially bright friends meet-up for Darwin’s immersive horror outing. Everything about that screams “bad idea,” right? There they are regardless, so on the first night, he challenges them to throw a totem in the fire and tell a story that is not merely scary, but profoundly disturbing to them.

The cocky guy starts with “Shadows” written and directed by Bushe. Frankly, it is strange that this yarn, in which gangsters chase a two-bit hood into an empty warehouse, only to find a possibly greater monster inside, would make such impression on the teller. This is the weakest constituent tale, but the execution is still tautly effective.

“The Hidden Woman” written by Ryder & Barber-Ryder, but solely helmed by Ryder is also somewhat familiar in terms of themes and premise, but it is very creepy. A single mother and her young son have inherited a house that is almost certainly haunted. The apparition in question has a strong attachment to an antique phonograph, which is nifty horror prop.

The ringer in the bunch, “Cross Your Heart” comes from screenwriter-director Greig Johnson, but he is probably the most successful evoking ironic Tales from the Crypt vibes (both in the spirit of the comic, but particularly the TV series). Poor long-suffering and sometimes abused Cath has reluctantly agreed to humor her cad husband Steve, by participating in a swinger-swap. However, he is too horny and drug-addled to see the seductive Donna has some much nastier (and largely deserved) in store for him.

Katie Sheridan, Rufus Hound, and Alana Wallace are all terrific in the three featured roles. It is all mordantly funny, but then later disturbing to think you of the potential implication of what viewers most likely cheered on.

Ride, on DVD

The Hawkins are no Ewings. Their ranching and cowboying way of life was under stress, even before they had to face childhood cancer. Having their son Peter behind bars is not much help either. At least his mother Monica stays plenty busy as the sheriff, but the pay cannot cover new uninsured treatments. Of course, Peter knows all about the outlaw way to raise money in Jake Allyn’s Ride, which releases this Tuesday on DVD and BluRay.

Peter Hawkins was originally sentenced to less than two years in prison, but somehow it was extended to a full four. His father John instructed the family to sever all contact, which they mostly did, because they were so preoccupied with his younger preteen sister Virginia’s cancer diagnosis. Just when they thought she was coming home, new cancer cells emerge.

Grandpa is still there for him, ready to coach Peter when he returns to competitive bull-riding. His old cell-mate is also ready and willing, whenever he needs to buy self-medication. However, Hawkins also happens to notice where his dealer stashes all his illicit cash, which could be handy information to know.

Allyn, who directs himself, really understands the small-town western setting and he depicts their family and cowboy values in a respectful manner. Unfortunately, some viewers will be frustrated Allyn refuses to choose either hardscrabble family drama or gritty crime lane, basically straddling the center line instead. However, that makes Ride quite a distinctive film. Indeed, the former creates such high stakes in the latter.

C. Thomas Howell might just deliver the screen performance of his career as vinegary John Hawkins (or it is a close second to his work in The Outsiders). It is an incredibly complex and intense performance. Frankly, he looks even craggier than Forrie J. Smith portraying his father Al, but that just adds further poignancy to his performance.

Although Annabeth Gish has less screentime, she serves up some powerful moments in the third act. Again, Ride deserves some consideration if anyone programs a Gish retrospective. Allyn also does right by himself playing Peter Hawkins. He brings out the full tragedy of his circumstances, without wallowing in fake pity. In fact, in some ways the film is very much about his character learning to take responsibility.

The Crow, in Cinema Daily US

Rupert Sanders and the screenwriters understand the dark archetypal appeal of THE CROW franchise and the action sequences are well-executed, but some  of the key casting is questionable. CINEMA DAILY US REVIEW up here.

H.P. Mendoza’s The Secret Art of Human Flight

Obviously, you should steer well clear of any New Age tract hawked on the dark web. Unfortunately, Ben Grady is not in a proper state of mind, for understandable reasons. Devastated by the loss of his wife and resenting the investigating detective’s intrusive suspicions, Grady needs something to get him out of his own head. He finds a strange guru who claims he can teach the widower to fly, not as a pilot, but like Superman, in H.P. Mendoza’s The Secret Art of Human Flight, which just released on VOD.

Ben and Sarah Grady worked together self-publishing children’s books, but she was considered the talented one. Det. Reyes only sees her $750K life insurance policy, but his sister Gloria worries her brother is spiraling into a deep depression.

Following a random social media comment to the dark web, Grady ill-advisedly buys a truly self-published—as in handwritten—tome purportedly explaining how humans can fly. It also comes with benefit of the hippy dippy guru’s personal coaching sessions. Initially, Grady is still sufficiently grounded to be suspicious of “Mealworm,” but his bizarre training regime starts satisfying something inside him.

Weirdly, it also sort of fits the advice offered by Wendy, a widow herself and the only member of Sarah’s writing’s circle who keeps checking in. She says find something crazy and stick to it. His flying ambitions certainly qualify.

This film probably would have been a disaster in any hands other than that of Mendoza. As a filmmaker, he has a record of versatility, having helmed the musical Fruit Fly and the disturbingly surreal horror film, I Am a Ghost. He also has a talent for handling heightened emotional content with a deft touch, which serves Human Flight well.

In fact, it was rather required, because Jesse Orenshein’s screenplay has considerable emotional and eccentric excesses. There are times when it tries to be either too whimsical or too sentimental, but Mendoza always brings it back to the emotional center. Indeed, the relationships between the Gradys and the widow and the widower are incredibly resonant—and ultimately much more interesting than whether or not Mealworm will get his padawan airborne.

Pilgrims, on OVID.tv

This provincial Lithuanian town might be the only place where the idea of collective guilt might be valid. At least that is what a grieving man and woman start to suspect. They came to town to retrace the final steps of the late Matas, but the truth hurts even more than they expected in Laurynas Bareisa’s Pilgrims, which premieres today on OVID.tv.

Somehow, both Paulius and Indre were very close to Matas. We quickly figure out Paulius was Matas’s brother, but Indre’s relationship will be revealed over time. That is clearly Bareisa’s M.O., slowly unveiling little tidbits of information, until a full mosaic suddenly forms.

It is also pretty clear who killed Matas—a notoriously thuggish local—but, again, the where, when, how, and why are initially obscure. Like those bizarre Kennedy assassination tourists, Paulius and Indre slavishly retrace Matas’s final steps, to fulfill their pilgrimage to be exactly where he was and see essentially what he saw during those final minutes, hours, and days. The villagers do not seem to appreciate that much. In fact, their hostility stokes the audience’s suspicions.

Bareisa’s approach might sound annoying, but the execution is so rigorously disciplined, it is really quite surprisingly powerful. Although it is not truly a thriller, there are moments in Pilgrims that feel comparable to the climax of George Sluizer’s The Vanishing.

Giedrius Kiela is so brutally down-to-earth-looking, you might confuse the film for a documentary while watching him. Although Gabija Bargailaite looks a little more likely to have a film career, there is nothing posh or extravagant about her work or the way she is presented. Indeed, it is an extraordinarily complex performance.

Hostile Dimensions

The multiverse is a lot like California. People talk about it all the time, but nothing good ever comes from there. Two struggling documentary filmmakers would agree. They thought the internet footage of a woman disappearing through a mysterious door was a hoax, but their latest project is about to get much bigger than they anticipated. Unfortunately, some bad things also come through that door into our world in director-screenwriter Graham Hughes’ Hostile Dimensions, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on VOD.

Ash Shah and Sam Shields do not have much to show for their last doc, an expose on the stuffed animal industry (I certainly would not have covered it). Advocating a change of pace, Shields suggests they investigate the case of a missing tagger, who became an internet sensation, thanks to online video that supposedly shows her disappearing through a strange door, mysteriously standing in the middle of a room in the abandoned house she was spray-painting.

They assume it is all a hoax, but they find the weird door right where it was in the posted clip. For the sake of their project, they pack up the door and schlep it back to Shah’s apartment, which probably sounds like a terrible idea, because it is. When they finally open the door, they find themselves in the world of “Pandemonium,” basically a Chinese restaurant and arcade parlor from Hell, populated by a psychotic man in a panda suit.

It is obviously a portal, but they have no idea how to navigate it, so they consult Innis, a cynical stoner academic, who advises them to focus their thoughts on a person or thing, before crossing the threshold, in much the same way Joel Edgerton slips between parallel diumensions in Dark Matter.  However, the shadowy figure stalking them is much more adept charting a course through the multiverse.

Even if you thought the multiverse was almost played out, Hughes still develops some clever ideas. His execution is also crisp and inventive, turning his limited budget into a virtue. Despite the big concept, Hostile Dimension is not really special effects-driven. There are some strange otherworldly visuals, but they compliment rather than carry (or compensate for) Hughes’ story and concepts.

The Other Laurens

Jade Laurens’ family home in Perpignan looks like the White House (in real life, the Chateau de Rastignac is a considered a source of inspiration for our official presidential residence) and her Uncle Gabriel is the spitting image of his twin brother, her late father Francois. However, both sets of doppelgängers are very different on the inside. Francois always had all the luck, because he was the older brother, by mere minutes. Nevertheless, now that her father is dead, Jade thinks her uncle should investigate, since he is a private detective. Reluctantly, he uncovers a good deal of dirty family laundry in Claude Schmitz’s The Other Laurens, which opens Friday in theaters.

Gabriel Laurens specializes in grubby divorces and background checks. Francois took the woman he loved, but Gabriel outlived them both, leaving him to deal with his mother’s death alone, shortly after his brother’s accidental demise. Of course, his niece does not believe it was an accident and the bikers that constantly tail her understandably pique Laurens’ own suspicion.

The same goes for his brother’s less than bereft American widow, Shelby, who was wife #2. She seems to be tight with the biker posse that claims to be Jade’s guardian [Hell’s] angels. Something is definitely afoot, but the family connections clearly cloud the detective’s judgment. He also tends to freak out the Perpignan locals, considering he is such a dead-ringer for his brother, so to speak.

Twists ensue (some of which viewers might anticipate), but Schmitz’s feverish, neon-lit noir is still a good deal of fun. You have plenty of classic elements, starting with the Cain and Abel twins. Olivier Rabourdin is appropriately rumpled and degenerate as Uncle Gabriel. He also has convincingly dysfunctional but potent familial chemistry Louise Leroy as Jade, which is important, because the film really would not make sense without it.

Paradise, on Klassiki

Fossil fuels are the only things propping up the Russian economy right now, so don’t expect Putin to help reduce carbon emissions. Keep in mind, he was also a KGB agent, when the USSR was one of the dirtiest polluters on Earth. As usual, Russia’s regional ethnic minorities pay the price. Thanks to record high temperatures, northeast Siberia was plagued with unprecedented forest fires in 2021, but the national government in Moscow supplied no assistance. It wasn’t an oversight. That was policy. The hardscrabble residents of Shologon must face the advancing flames alone in Alexander Abaturov’s documentary, Paradise, which premieres tomorrow on Klassiki as the “Pick of the Week.”

Unfortunately, the Taiga region where Shologon is located had been designated one of Russia’s inaptly named special “control” zones. That means the national government will withhold support if they believe the potential costs of fighting fires are greater than the benefits of saving the endangered areas. Somehow, Shologon was fortunate enough to get Pavel, a forest fire expert temporarily assigned to them, but all the labor involved comes from the village. (To be fair, Pavel appears willing to roll up his sleeves and pitch in too.)

Although Abaturov takes an editorially restrained, highly observational approach, he still captures some very dramatic footage of the wildfires encroaching on Shologon—mostly just by leaning out of car windows and filming the villages as the desperately trying to set backfires and firebreaks. The villagers do so largely unprotected, as was presumably true for Abaturov as well. The air and skies often look ominously orange and smoky, which is not the result of filters or any sort of augmentation (as New Yorkers will remember from when the Canadian forest fires turned our skyline a sickly shade of amber last year.)

Like Pavel, Abaturov clearly sympathizes with the citizens of Shologon. The current regime badly exploits its regional minorities, definitely including the Turkic and Mongolian people of Siberia. In 2021, Putin’s government turned their backs on them, during their time of crisis. Today, the hardscrabble provinces are disproportionately likely to serve as cannon-fodder, because they cannot afford the estimated five to seven thousand dollar bribes necessary to buy their way out of conscription.

TouTouYouTou, on MHz Choice

In the 1980s, France still had Yves Saint Laurent, but America had leg-warmers and spandex. They had Mitterand, but we had Reagan and contrary to what you might have heard, America in the Eighties offered far more professional opportunities for women. Consequently, an American spy reluctantly posted to France on an industrial espionage assignment has two potent weapons at her disposal: aerobics and feminism. French aerospace hardly stands a chance in co-creators Geraldine de Margerie & Maxime Donzel’s ten-part TouTouYouTou, which premieres today on MHz Choice.

Karine Lurdou could have been a great airplane designer, but instead she married pompous Didier, who treats her like a live-in maid, while he flails about hopelessly as a clueless executive at the Blagnac aeronautic company. Their daughter Laura hates them both—but her mother really can’t blame her. She pretty much hates herself too. Jane, the super-fit American expat uber-cougar who moves in next door does not exactly boost her self-esteem either.

Yet, that is ironically what Jane seems determined to do. She convinces Lurdou to try her aerobics classes at the community center. The 1980s craze had yet to reach Blagnac, so the moves and the style are all new to Lurdou and her friends. Her best friend, Mapi (who also happens to be the mistress of the aerospace company director) is skeptical, but Lurdou is receptive. Frankly, she gets the most of Jane’s message of physical and emotional empowerment, but she is also the only one who starts to suspect their aerobics instructor is a spy.

Obviously, there is an anti-American bias baked into TouTouYouTou. However, Alexia Barlier is so terrific as the jazzercizing Mata Hari, she almost single-handedly flips the audience’s nationalistic loyalties. It isn’t just her wardrobe. Barlier is enormously charismatic and caustically droll. Watching her scheming and skulking about is highly entertaining.

Claire Dumas is also very good as Lurdou, convincingly portraying both her outer and inner transformations. In fact, the strength of their two performances makes the somewhat ambiguous conclusion so counter-intuitively satisfying.

Johnny Staccato: Fly Baby, Fly

The way this classic jazz-flavored detective show depicts air travel is sadly dated. However, the protagonist jazz musician’s constant need to scrounge for money remains frustratingly true-to-life, as ever. Sometimes, our man on the piano is so hard up, he must do detective work on the side. He also agrees to carry a mysterious briefcase on a flight to LA, but boy, is that a mistake in “Fly Baby, Fly,” the one episode of Johnny Staccato the late, great Gena Rowlands guest-starred in, opposite her husband and legendary creative partner, John Cassavetes (probably their only collaboration overlooked in the recent posthumous tributes to Rowlands).

Even though Staccato needs to look after his hands, he still gets into a fight with an obnoxious club customer. Weirdly, Guy Fletcher takes a liking to the musician-sleuth, after taking a beating from him outside Waldo’s. He even asks Staccato to come round to his corporate offices for a special gig.

According to the cover story, Fletcher needs a trusted courier to schlep some hush-hush mineral samples to the Coast, so he can secure a profitable deal. Unbeknownst, to Staccato, Fletcher swaps the case holding the rocks with one rigged to explode when opened. Presumably, that will happen when Staccato checks on the contents when the plane reaches Arizona, as per Fletcher’s instructions. However, once the flight takes off, Staccato finds it quite a strange coincidence to discover Fletcher’s estranged wife Nina Van Ness is also onboard—and she is quite freaked out to share the flight with an employee of her abusive husband.

Although Staccato episodes only ran half an hour, director Robert B. Sinclair and writer Philip S. Goodman nicely build the suspense around the briefcase. It turns out Staccato’s annoying row-mate, pop songwriter Victor Morse also carries an identical case. In fact, this is quite a cleverly constructed and helmed episode. The only drawback is jazz plays much less of a role than other installments. Mostly, we just hear the terrific uncredited musicians during the opening number. The soundtrack album, composed by Elmer Bernstein, featured jazz greats (and studio warriors) like Shelly Manne, Barney Kessel, Pete Candoli, and Red Mitchell, who presumably performed on multiple episodes throughout the show’s run.

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.

Significant Other, on AFN

Let's agree once and for all, camping trips are never romantic. Harry still thinks otherwise, hatching a plan to propose to Ruth during a hiking trip. He really should have opted for a candle-light dinner, because a mysterious creature loose in the forest completely ruins the mood in director-screenwriters Dan Berk & Robert Olsen’s Significant Other, which Walmart members can watch on Paramount+ and American Servicemen stationed overseas with access to American Forces Network can watch this Thursday night.

Ruth comes with a lot of emotional baggage and a bottle full of panic-attack poppers. Harry wants to marry her anyway, because he is in love. However, after witnessing her parents’ chaos, Ruth is not sure she believes in marriage. She also worries about strange things she sees in the forest, like the deer with only one antler, who seems to be giving her the side-eye.

She is not wrong. Something weird and unearthly is definitely afoot. Unfortunately, Ruth and Harry get intimately enmeshed in the terror. Sadly, another camping couple also stumble into the sf-horror hybrid mess.

Regular genre viewers might guess what is coming, but Berk & Olsen execute it quite cleverly. They also benefit from casting Maika Monroe and Jake Lacy, two rising thesps, who really keep viewers off-balance, selling the premise convincingly. Indeed, Lacy is flat-out terrific during the third act, but it would be spoilery to explain how and why. Regardless, this is his best work yet, even better than his work in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and Apples Never Fall, which was also quite strong.

Although their names do not even appear in the opening credits, Dana Green and Matthew Yang King are also both very good as the other couple camping. There are some impressive-looking visual effects in Significant Other, but it is the sort of story that is far more reliant on its performances, especially that of Lacy.

Tobe Hooper at MoMA: Lifeforce

When the European Space Agency gets in trouble, NASA is there to rescue them. Unfortunately, everyone was already dead on the ESA shuttle, except for the space vampires in suspended animation. However, there is a survivor heading home in the escape pod. Of course, he was the one American crew-member. Perhaps that is why naked “Space Girl” (as fans refer to her) forged a telepathic connection to Col. Tom Carlson, but that link works both ways in Tobe Hooper’s cult classic Lifeforce, which screens again Tuesday as part of MoMA’s retrospective of Hooper’s 1980s films.

You would think screenwriter Dan O’Bannon (who also penned Alien and Dark Star) would have made Carlson a “Major Tom” instead. However, he was certainly on solid ground describing an unexpected encounter with a dangerous race of space aliens. Ironically, the early scenes of the space vampire’s lair on Halley’s comet have serious Prometheus and Covenant vibes. Understandably, most of the Churchill’s crew assume the three good-looking humanoids are dead—since they are not breathing. Yet, the comatose bodies still exert a strange disruptive influence over the humans.

Things will go very badly on the Churchill, but Carlson’s explanation must wait for a later flashback. Frankly, by the time he reaches Earth Dr. Hans Fallada of the ESA and Col. Colin Caine of the SAS have already figured out the aliens consume people’s lifeforce. Like vampires, their victims also turn into lifeforce-suckers, but they are not as powerful. Apparently, Space Girl ditched her conspicuously naked body, having assumed control over a chin of hosts, but Carlson can now detect her influence with even an incidental touch.

Admittedly, it is hard to explain Lifeforce, even though it obviously layers science fiction elements over the narrative bones of Dracula. However, Hooper’s film is still an under-heralded genre gem. In some ways, it represents a once-in-a-lifetime genre collaboration, including Hooper (the director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist), narrator John Larroquette (who also supplied the voice-over intro to Texas Chainsaw), O’Bannon, special effects artist John Dykstra (notable for Star Wars in 1977 and Spider-Man in 2002), a grand symphonic score composed by Henry “Pink Panther” Mancini, and it even features Patrick Stewart in a supporting role, as Dr. Armstrong. Plus, it was produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, of Cannon Films, who contracted Hooper to a three-picture deal.

Despite some excesses, like Space Girl walking through the city of London without a stitch of clothing, Lifeforce holds up nicely as a hybrid sf-horror production. Arguably, many of the scenes aboard the Churchill have a look and texture that evoke the vibes of earlier Dykstra films, such as Star Wars and Silent Running, which is very cool.

Peter Firth and Frank Finlay also develop intelligent, crisply professional chemistry in the Peter Cushing-Christopher Lee tradition, as Caine and Fallada. They embody smart, coolly competent characters, who admittedly have an awful lot on their plates. As Col. Carlson, Steve Railsback has terrific freakouts and fully commits to some over-the-top sex scenes, but if there had been a sequel, Firth’s Col. Caine would have been the one to carry it.

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, in Cinema Daily US

Maybe it was intended as an indictment of pre-1996 lawlessness, but TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN delivers a surrpisingly nostalgic love letter to Hong Kong's disappearing working-class neighborhoods, along with the spectacular fight scenes, CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

The Greatest Surf Movie in the Universe . . . but, not really

This could be anti-vaxxer RFK Jr.’s favorite new surfing movie, but that’s not a compliment. It starts with the premise that the next big pandemic was treated with a vaccine that erased all memory of surfing, as a strange, undetected side effect. Of course, that rather perturbs the “Surf God,” so he enlists champion Australian surfer Mick Fanning to re-awaken the surfing memories of five fellow former surfing greats, to make a surfing film that will make the whole world re-embrace the sport. At least that is how the narrator, Luke Hemsworth playing his future, post-pandemic self explains it in Vaughan Blakey & Nick Pollet’s The Greatest Surf Movie in the Universe, which opens today in theaters.

When the Surf God gives Fanning his marching orders, he references many previous surfing movies, but bizarrely overlooks Bruce Brown’s classic documentaries—The Endless Summer is probably the best known, but Barefoot Adventure has a terrific Bud Shank soundtrack. This film could have used some Bud shank music, but it really just needs help in general.

In an agonizingly slow process, Fanning recruits real-life surfers Mason Ho, Griffin Colapinto, Craig Anderson, Jack Freestone, and Matt Wilkinson, playing goofy stop-motion animated versions of themselves, giving them each the same repetitive pitch. Each time he reawakens their surfing memories, we are treated to a highlight reel of their greatest wave-riding hits. Unfortunately, a lot of this footage loses its novelty for viewers who just spent two weeks watching Olympic surfing.

This hardly needs to be said, but Blakey and Pollet are no Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Greatest Surf Movie does not compare well to Team America World Police or any other rude animated film for adults. Despite constantly taking the low, scatological road, they rarely get laughs. Instead, the attempts at gross-out humor inspire embarrassment and sometimes pity.

In the Rearview [Mirror]

Polish director Maciek Hamela followed the example of Jafar Panahi, helming his latest film from the driver’s seat. Panahi had to operate undercover making Taxi, because the Iranian regime banned him from filmmaking. In contrast, Hamela voluntarily took the wheel to shuttle Ukrainians to safety in Poland. Not merely a driver, Hamela documents average Ukrainians’ oral history of Putin’s illegal invasion throughout In the Rearview, which releases today on VOD.

Together with his cameraman riding shotgun, Hamela ferries a constant stream of families, seniors, students, and a few cats across the Polish border. Thanks to his Russian fluency, he is unusually well-qualified for the job, which frequently requires Hamela to talk his way through checkpoints.

It quickly becomes clear a generation of Ukrainian children have been deeply traumatized by the invasion. Families have been fractured, trapped in different shelters, unable to contact each other for long stretches of time—if they are lucky. Of course, many of Hamela’s passengers have lost loved ones.

Hamela’s film might also explain why the DRC is one of the few African nations that have spoken out against Putin’s war. It turns out Hamela’s minivan sometimes doubles as an official ambulance, as when he delivers a gravely injured woman from Kinshasa to a Polish hospital better equipped to treat her. According to his patient-passenger, Russian troops opened fire on her and a group of fellow Congolese students, even though they obviously did not look Ukrainian. Nevertheless, they were still potential witnesses to Russian crimes against humanity.

Dissidents (AAIFF), in The Epoch Times

DISSIDENTS documents the CCP's systematic harrassment of Chinese democracy activists on American soil. It is a timely and revealing expose/wake-up call, as well as three extraordinary profiles-in-courage. EPOCH TIMES AAIFF review up here.

Alien: Romulus

Thanks to Ash and a few other bad apples, it is not easy being a synthetic person in the Alien universe. It is even harder being a real person when Xenomorphs are around. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation probably bears a lot of responsibility on both counts. To escape their unfair company contracts, a group of space miners try to salvage the wrong derelict space-vessel in Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, which opens this Friday in theaters.

The nearest livable refuge planet to their ringed hellhole is nine years away, so it requires cryo-pods. Fatefully, Rain Carradine’s ex-boyfriend Tyler detected an abandoned scientific research space-station in a decaying orbit around the planet, which has five intact pods. To retrieve them, they need Carradine’s “brother,” Andy, a glitchy synthetic, to interface with the ship’s system.

Even though they require Andy’s assistance, Tyler’s jerkweed cousin Bjorn keeps bullying him, because another synthetic made the triage decision that led to his mother’s death. Bjorn even deliberately taunts Andy with the significance of the five pods: one each for himself, Carradine, Tyler, his secretly (for now) pregnant sister Kay, and their pilot Navarro, but none for Andy.

Of course, the station (divided into two halves, “Romulus” and “Remus”) has a serious Xenomorph infestation problem. It also has the remnants of Rook, a synthetic science officer, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Ash, the sinister synthetic from the original Alien. True to his programming, he wants to deliver the potential power of the Xenomorphs to the company, regardless of the potential human harm. Unfortunately, some of his nasty coding will overwrite Andy’s prime directive—always do what is best for Carradine—when she tries to install Rook’s security clearances.

Clearly, Alvarez and co-screenwriter Rodo Sayagues deliberately went back to what everybody loves about the first film. Ditching the complex mythology-building, they simply but shrewdly offer up Xenomorphs hunting people in space. They even CGI’ed Rook to resemble Ash (with Daniel Betts serving as the stand-in). Guess what? It still works.

This time around, they come up with some clever business involving the acidic alien blood in zero-gravity. However, the cleverest elements involve Andy’s altered personality and Carradine’s efforts change him back. Plus, it is very cool to see what looks like Ian Holm’s Ash up to his old tricks again. It is also somewhat terrifying to see such convincing deep-faking.

Bad Monkey, on Apple TV+

Andrew Yancy tries to be laidback, but he just can’t do it. You would never confuse him for Jeff Lebowski, even though he has a Sam Elliott-esque narrator in the salty tourist boat captain, Fitzpatrick. On the other hand,, Yancy’s dad Jim is very Dude-like, but we must wait several episodes before we meet him. However, everyone is extremely Florida in executive producer-showrunner Bill Lawrence’s ten-episode Bad Monkey, based on the Carl Hiaasen novel, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

Yancy will be the first to admit he always compulsively does the right thing, but usually in the absolute worst way, especially when it comes to being diplomatic or politically sensitive. His crusader zeal got him transferred from the Miami police department to the Key West-(stone) cops. Then it got him demoted from a detective to a restaurant inspector. He might have gotten his old job back if he’d just made an inconvenient piece of evidence disappear for tourist-conscious police chief Sonny Summers, but he figured someone might be looking for whoever was once attached to the severed arm one of Fitzpatrick’s clients hooked in the Gulf.

It turns out there are no matching body parts in the Miami morgue, but Yancy finds Rosa Campesino, a medical examiner, who is surprisingly fun to banter with. Against her better judgement (and her worse judgement too), Campesino starts unofficially investigating the non-case with Yancy. Initially, it is not romantic, because Yancy is technically still seeing Bonnie Witt, the game-plying wife of a rich but abusive older man. However, their relationship essentially ends when an out-of-state cop turn up, looking to extradite Witt for a statutory crime involving a former student.

Logically, Yancy first suspects Eve Stripling, the very merry widow who shows up to claim the arm. He is not wrong, because Stripling is a truly evil and manipulative femme fatale. However, Nick Stripling is not entirely dead—just one of his arms. Having faked his death, he is trying to salvage his real estate development in the Bahamas. To that end, he bought Neville Stafford’s beachfront shack out from under him. Normally, Stafford is defiantly unambitious, but to reclaim his lazy lifestyle, he declares war on the Striplings, primarily by hiring the “Dragon Queen” to put a curse on the Striplings. Stafford also owns the titular monkey, Driggs.

Fans of Hiassen will be happy to see Lawrence and company finally get it right, making up for the bitter disappointment that was Striptease. First and foremost, Vince Vaughn’s sarcastic but likable persona perfectly suits the colorful eccentricity of Hiaasen’s Florida. As Yancy, Vaughn might even deliver his rapid-fire dialogue faster than in Swingers. Yet, he is consistently laugh-out loud funny.

Vaughn also has terrific chemistry with Natalie Martinez’s Campesino. She holds her own opposite Vaughn—and then some. The two of them put on one heck of a show. Scott Glenn adds a great deal of crusty charm as Yancy’s old man. As a bonus, it is loads of funs watching Yancy feud with Evan Shook, the sleazy developer erecting an eyesore McMansion next to his tasteful beach house and Mendez, the crooked cop who contributed to Yancy’s fall from grace in Miami. Played by Alex Moffat and Gonzalo Menendez, they contribute big Florida vibes, without descending into silly cartoonishness.

Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, This Time Its More Respectable

As a boy, the future despotic emperor Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was nicknamed “Caligula,” meaning “Little Boots.” You could say he was the original “Kinky Boots.” This time, however, he is a little less kinky. The 1979 historical drama sort of directed by Tinto Brass was fatefully financed by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, who notoriously added excessively graphic scenes of sex and violence. As a result, Brass and most of the cast disowned the grotesque final product. Years later, Thomas Negovan reconstructed an entirely new cut that more closely follows Gore Vidal’s original screenplay. Consisting of alternate takes and outtakes, 100% of Negovan’s edit never appeared on-screen before (having duly jettisoned all of Guccione’s footage). It is still very mature, but the viewing experience is more coherent when Caligula: The Ultimate Cut opens this Friday in theaters.

Guccione spared no expense, hiring Peter O’Toole and Sir John Gielgud for roles the great actors were probably grateful were mercifully short. O’Toole plays Emperor Tiberius, Caligula’s STD-riddled great-uncle, who has reluctantly groomed the orphan to succeed him. Following in the time-honored Roman tradition, Caligula decides to succeed him earlier than Tiberius intended, but he needs the ambitious Macro to do his dirty work. Of course, Caligula realizes anyone willing to kill one emperor is capable of killing two.

Some things have not changed, definitely including Caligula’s incestuous relationship with his sister Drusilla. However, she is shrewd enough to insist her brother wed a proper, socially elite wife. Almost perversely, he chooses the scandalous Caesonia, who rather turns out to be a good match for him. They both have their appetites. She also learns to live with his lunacy and fits of rage, even when they start to interfere with his ability to rule the empire.

It is still pretty mind-blowing to see Dame Helen Mirren participating in a threesome with Malcolm McDowell (who currently plays a grouchy grandpa on Son of a Critch) and Teresa Ann Savoy, but judging from the 1979 film’s reputation, a great deal of the erotic content has been toned down, particularly in the second half. It is still more explicit than Those About to Die, but most viewers will not feel unclean after watching Negovan’s cut.

It is too bad Guccione’s edit became what it was, because when seen in the proper light, McDowell’s gloriously unhinged performance should have solidified his reputation as the boldest thesp of his generation. Supposedly, the new reconstruction better illustrates Lord Acton’s maxim of absolutely power corrupting absolutely, but there is not much of a slide into corruption. McDowell’s Caligula arguably starts at deranged and tyrannical—and steadily grows more intensely so.

One of the real discoveries is the performance of Savoy as Drusilla. Originally, Maria Schneider had been cast in the part, but she exited due to the sexually charged content. She clearly did the right thing, especially considering her troubling memories of Last Tango in Paris. Nevertheless, Savoy probably served up the performance of her career as the ruthless shrewd but ambiguously sensitive Drusilla. It is also nice to fully see John Steiner (the English actor who was a mainstay of Italian genre cinema for years) scheming as Longinus, the chancellor of the treasury.