Mafia Mamma: Insert You Own Corny Mobster Cliché Here

Allegedly, this film is a mafia comedy, but as any successful gangster will tell you, allegations have to be proven. In this case, good luck with that. To be fair, you can certainly see it trying to be funny. Oh boy, can you ever. It is also probably supposed to be another half-baked story of “family,” when Kristin Balbano Jordan inherits two family businesses from the grandfather she never really knew. One is a terrible winery, but it doesn’t have to be very good, because it is really a front for the down-on-their-luck Balbano crime syndicate. Being a soon-to-be-divorced empty nester, she has the time to turn both around in Catherine Hardwicke’s Mafia Mamma, which opens today in theaters.

Jordan always put her son and husband first, but after the coddled little brat leaves for college, she catches her not-nearly-as-cool-as-he-thinks-he-is husband with another woman. It is the perfect time to claim her inheritance from her recently departed grandfather. As Bianca, the consigliere, explains, old man Balbano picked her to succeed him as the don, or whatever. Of course, that does not sit well with the presumed heir apparent. Frankly, he is welcomed to it, as far as Jordan is concerned. She just wants an Italian fling that will live up to her bestie’s “Eat, Pray, F***” mantra. Yes, the comedy of Michael J. Feldman & Debbie Jhoon’s screenplay is largely built around a cringy Eat, Pray, Love reference. You’ve been warned.

Of course, through incredibly dumb slapstick, Jordan manages to foil the rival crime family’s assassination attempts. She even turns round the Balbano syndicate’s fortunes with a feel-good, totally ethical, if not 100% legal generic drug importation scheme, but then the stupid husband and son show up.

Riklis’s Spider in the Web

For years, Israel has tried to alert the world to the threat Syria poses to human rights and regional stability. They ought to know, since they have been attacked by Syria in numerous wars (the Arab-Israeli, Six-Day, Yom Kippur, War of Attrition, etc.). However, the world only started to protest when the Assad regime employed chemical weapons against its own people. We were warned—and Adereth, a veteran Israeli spy did a lot of the warning. He hopes to expose a Euro chemical company’s links to the terrorist-sponsoring nation in Eran Riklis’s English language production Spider in the Web, which opens today in Los Angeles.

Admittedly, Adereth is not the best representative of Syria hawks. For years, he has been “sexing up” the meager intel supplied by a formerly high-ranking Syria defector, to justify the continuing stream of payments to him and also to protect his own position. Just as the Mossad launches an internal investigation into his handling of Nader Khadir, his old friend passes along something urgent and actionable: details on the Virobe company’s dealings with the Syrian government.

Facing the likely prospect of prosecution, Adereth scrambles to mount an operation to obtain proof against Virobe. He going under cover as an environmental activist, he seduces Angela Caroni, an executive who might also have a social conscience. Daniel, the son of his late partner will serve as his back-up, but he is also there to keep Adereth in line and make sure he eventually faces the music, if he survives.

In terms of tone, Web is somewhat similar to Fred Schepsi’s The Russia House, in which smoldering seduction and elegiac catharsis trumped the espionage business. Sir Ben Kingsley romancing Monica Bellucci also parallels the Sean Connery-Michelle Pfeiffer sexual dynamic, but in this case, there are probably fewer years separating the lovers.

In fact, it is rather refreshing to see a complex relationship between mature adult lovers on screen, even if it is all undercover play-acting—or is it? Regardless, Kingsley and Bellucci generate a great deal of heat together, but the tension and rapport he shares with Daniel is even more compelling. As Daniel, Itay Tiran is quite the quiet cat, but he expresses a lot. Plus, Itzik Cohen adds some grit and color as the pear-shaped but hard-nosed Mossad boss, Samuel. It is a good thing the inter-personal stuff works so well, because screenwriters Gidon Maron & Emmanuel Naccache’s actual espionage plotting is frustratingly elliptical and excessively complicated.

Nevertheless, it is a treat to watch a somewhat unlikely pairing of two charismatic professionals, like Kingsley and Bellucci. Despite the somewhat le Carré-esque tone, the film also delivers a timely warning regarding Syria’s support for terrorism and its dismal human rights record. It is not quite as stylish and suspenseful as Riklis’s own Shelter, but it is still a solid international thriller. Recommended for fans of spy movies and the prestigious co-leads, Spider in the Web opens today (8/30) in LA, at the Laemmle Music Hall.

The Roache-Turners’ Nekrotronic

It turns out those mind-numbing internet games are powered by the pentagram rather than Pentium. For millennia, necromancers have battled demons, tooth and nail, but the forces of darkness have really upped their game during the internet age. It is up to a formerly oblivious necromancer and his rag-tag band of allies to foil a web-based scheme for total planetary domination in Kiah & Tristan Roache-Turner’s Nekrotronic, which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.

The latest internet game craze is devilishly addictive—and just plain devilish. People think it is cool to be able to view the wraiths and ghosts around them, but they do not realize they are really real. The app also opens up a backdoor through which the demons can suck out users’ souls. Unfortunately, Rangi, Howie North’s mate and partner in the garbage collection trade perishes from his use of the demon app, but he comes back to haunt (or hang with) him as a wraith. It certainly freaks North out, but he will soon have wilder revelations to process.

Basically, as the orphaned son of two esteemed necromancers, he is the prophesized prodigy of all prodigies. Unfortunately, his mother Finnegan succumbed to the dark side and killed his father, right after he managed to arrange magical protections for North. That is all gone now, but at least he gets a crash course in necromancy from three who have survived Finnegan’s relentless war on necromancers—grizzled Luther and his two grown daughters, Molly and Torquel. Oops, make that two surviving necromancers.

Nekrotronic is even more unruly and chaotic than the Roache-Turner Brothers’ Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. With all its flashing lights and over-the-top carnage, Nekrotronic is tailor-made for an ADD-addled generation raised on Candy Crush. That sounds cynical, but its eagerness to please is quite impressive. Frankly, there are a lot of clever elements the Roache-Turners do not fully capitalize on, because they are already moving on to something new and different.

Of course, it helps enormously having Monica Bellucci vamping it up something infernal as Finnegan. It is like she is getting revenge for all the films that roughly abused her characters, most notably Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. She definitely seems to enjoy being evil, especially when belittling blokes like North.

Ben O’Toole certainly brings out North’s blokiness, but that is appropriate, since he is a rather passive fellow, who just gets caught up in the maelstrom. Bob Epine Savea has plenty of shticky goofball moments as Rangi, but he wears well over time, becoming something of a trusted companion for characters and audience alike. Caroline Ford and Tess Haubrich both step up nicely, assuming the action responsibilities as hard-charging sisters, but the latter really shines as the take-no-prisoners Torquel.

Nekrotronic is quite a bit of fun, but definitely in a meathead kind of way. Yet, that makes it rather refreshing. Recommended for fans of kitchen sink sf-horror hybrids, Nekrotronic opens tomorrow (8/9) in LA, at the Arena.

First Look ‘12: That Summer

If someone is said to have an artistic temperament, it usually means they are not just creative, but emotionally tempestuous. The term certainly applies to Frédéric and his wife Angèle. They will dazzle and disturb Frédéric’s hanger-on friend and his lover with the sort of emotional games that have become the hallmark of under-sung auteur Philippe Garrel’s work. Presumably his final collaboration with both his son Louis and late father Maurice (1923-2011), Philippe Garrel’s That Summer (trailer here) screens this weekend during the inaugural First Look at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens.

Frédéric is a wealthy and talented French painter, who never sells his work. Angèle is a major Italian movie star, garnering the best reviews of her career. They are everything the penniless and untalented Paul is not. Yet, for some reason the artistic couple befriends the dubious actor and his girlfriend Elisabeth, inviting them into their home in Rome. The needy Elisabeth has attempted suicide in the past, but she will be a model of stability compared to their hosts.

Initially, Frédéric and Angèle seem like a perfectly compatible and loving couple, but over the course of the summer, their mutual contempt degenerates into a repeating cycle of infidelity and petty cruelty. For the most part, Paul and Elisabeth are spectators rather than participants in the proceedings—an audience for the imploding marriage as performance art.

As is often the case with Philippe Garrel’s films, Summer is often uncomfortably intimate. However, it is never as squalid, lurid, or coyly obtuse as some of his previous films, including even (or especially) his arguably best known, I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar. The dolce vita environment of Rome certainly helps.

Garrel’s son Louis also does some of his best work as Frédéric. More Byronic than petulant for a refreshing change, he is strangely engaging throughout. Unleashing her inner diva, Monica Bellucci radiates sexuality, while reveling in the melodrama of it all. Unfortunately, Jérôme Robart and Céline Sallette are rather dull as the sponging guests. Perhaps that is required of him to serve as the narrator. However, Elisabeth’s established psychological issues are never really conveyed or followed-up on in a substantive way.

Appearing briefly as Frédéric’s long deceased grandfather, a frail looking Maurice Garrel adds a redemptive coda, bringing meaning to the film. Indeed, it is always interesting to see the son and grandfather interact in the middle Garrel’s films, starting with 1989’s Emergency Kisses, in which all three starred.

Nouvelle Vague veteran cinematographer Willy Kurant’s gives it all a pleasing look, basking in the vivid blues and greens of the couples’ photogenic abode, while John Cale’s piano soundtrack always sounds politely refined. Frankly, Summer might be a good entry point into Garrel’s filmography. Though hardly action driven, it moves along at a reasonable clip for such decidedly arthouse fare. (Bellucci also has an early nude scene, so for some viewers it pays off quickly). Considerably better the response at Toronto would suggest, That Summer is complex and intriguing film, definitely recommended to discriminating viewers when it screens this Friday (1/13) during First Look at the Museum of the Moving Image.