Fortunately, for the producers of this film, horror fans have a long tradition of
forgiving misleading titles. For instance, there is no “curse” in this film. The
title evokes Wolfman vibes, but it is closer in spirit to Wolf Creek.
There is also the matter of the famous above-the-title co-stars, Tobin Bell and
Danny Trejo, who maybe have a combined ten or fifteen minutes of screen-time. So,
adjust your expectations accordingly when David Lipper’s The Curse of Wolf
Mountain releases today on VOD.
AJ
has always been haunted by the feeling there was an evil presence with his
parents when they fell to their deaths off Wolf Mountain. However, his mind
still suppresses the traumatic events he possibly witnessed, even after years
of therapy with Dr. Avery. They were close to a break through with hypnosis,
but Avery was afraid further sessions could be dangerous, so he advises AJ to
revisit the scene of his parents’ deaths, which sounds way safer, right?
At
least AJ will not be alone. His wife Samantha insists on coming too. Then his
brother Max decides to tag-along and his wife Lexi tags-along with him, and her
sister Emma and her deadbeat boyfriend James tag-along with Lexi. Maybe the
last two will be useful, since they are so randy and trashy, the slasher is
sure to kill them first.
Weirdly,
there is also a trio of hold-up men hiding out on Wolf Mountain too, but they
will be no match for the masked killer. Their best hope just might be Ric, AJ’s
dog-sitting slacker cousin, so it looks pretty grim.
Honestly,
Tobin Bell’s early scene as Dr. Avery is probably of counter-productive reminder
of his always intriguing screen presence and how under-employed it is in Wolf
Mountain. It is also painfully clear Lipper and co-producer-screenwriter-co-star
Keli Price could only afford a few days with Trejo, because his brief appearances
as one of the fugitives do not last long. Price is okay as AJ, but Lipper is
probably his own best asset in-front of the camera, playing Max.
Before iPhones and Androids, it was the handheld addiction of choice. They were
pseudo-affectionately called “CrackBerries.” The company that manufactured them
rode their market-share to great heights, but it eventually crashed hard. And
yes, they can partially blame China. The semi-lightly-fictionalized true story
of Research in Motion and its once-popular product unfold in Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry,
somewhat adapted from Jacqie McNish & Sean Silcoff’s Losing the Signal,
which opens Friday in theaters.
Mike
Lazaridis was the tech guy who could figure things out. Jim Balsillie was the
business guy who could get things done. Doug Fregin was the fun guy everyone
else really enjoyed working for. Initially, Balsillie had no interest in Lazaridis’s
pitch, but when his sharp elbows got him fired, he bought into Research in
Motion, thinking he could right the aimless Canadian start-up’s ship.
Unfortunately,
the company is in even worse shape than Balsillie expected, but Lazaridis has a
potentially game-changing device on the drawing board. Of course, he is
reluctant to pitch anything that is not absolutely perfect, but Balsillie is
sure Lazaridis can deliver whatever he has to promise. The fact is they really
do not have any choice, which Lazaridis grudgingly acknowledges. Fregin, on the
other hand, is shocked when his old friend refuses to push back against the
sharky Balsillie’s demands.
Of
course, that product was the BlackBerry, which a lot of former users still
remember with fond nostalgia. For a while, the company could not lose, until
they suddenly lost big. Johnson and co-screenwriter-producer Matthew Miller efficiently
compress the company’s history into a highly compellingly drama, while sort-or
maintaining the quasi-verite style of Johnson’s previous features, The
Dirties and the underwhelming Operation Avalanche. At times, it
resembles an episode of The Office, but the stakes are higher—and everything
we see on-screen, most definitely including the performances, are much more
realistic.
Jay
Baruchel portrays Lazaridis as a twitchy bundle of neuroses, but his performance
is never cartoony or lazily shticky. As Balsillie, Glenn Howerton rivals Michael
Douglas in Wall Street and Alec Baldwin in Glengerry Glen Ross.
When he roars and rages, people better listen, including the audience. Johnson
himself is probably the weakest link playing Fregin, whose goofy behavior is so
abrasively unprofessional, it pushes viewers to identify with Balsillie.
However,
the film gets a huge energy boost from the great Michael Ironside as
back-breaking (or a less polite term) COO Charles Purdy. Ironside also had a
small but significant role in Hulu’s The Dropout—if you enjoyed its depiction
of Elizabeth Holmes’ fall from grace, you should also dig BlackBerry.
Plus, reliable character actor Saul Rubinek makes the most of his appearances
as Woodman, a Verizon executive.
Of course, the original Star Wars films were far more fun than the
recent stuff from Disney. The knock-offs were also better back then. It is
always hard to stop watching the Roger Corman-produced “homages” like Battle
Beyond the Stars and Space Raiders (with its suspiciously similar
looking special effects). At its best moments, this movie is a little like
those scruffy space operas, but only just a little. Still, a lot of stuff gets
blasted in Garo Setian’s Space Wars: Quest for the Deep Star, which
releases Tuesday on DVD.
In
this far, far away galaxy, a dead person’s essence, their consciousness and
soul, can be bottled up and reconstituted in an android, but only if you have
enough money. Kip Corman (a hat-tip to the B-movie king?) did not have enough
money to finish the job for his late (at least for now) wife. To pay for her
android transfer, he and his daughter Taylor have taken on several dubious
salvage jobs, earning the antagonism of the evil galactic dictator Elnora in the
process.
The
mother of all salvage jobs would be the Deep Star, a legendary space wreck lost
somewhere in the universe. Corman was not even looking for it, when he and Taylor
save Jackie, a quirky star-cartographer (who has probably been living alone in
space too long), from the outlaw Dykstra, who wants her to chart his course to
the Deep Star. Unfortunately, he captures Taylor, in return.
Frankly,
the special effects were probably better in Roger Corman’s aforementioned movies
(seriously, would he have re-used lackluster space battles?). However, there is
something weirdly endearing about its eager over-ambitions. VOD mainstay
Michael Pare plays it straight as Corman, never winking for the camera. Olivier
Gruner makes an unusually tough villain as Dystra, but he must have been
slightly embarrassed by the fight choreography, which mostly consists of everyone
exchanging round house punches, like drunken cowboys. Plus, Anahit Setian is
surprisingly endearing as the less-shticky-than-you-might-expect Jackie.
Compared to the shadowy host who abducted these seven people, U.N. Owen was a model
of hospitality in And Then There Were None. At least he was decent
enough to murder his guests himself. This unwelcoming mastermind expects them
to do it for him. They must choose a victim to kill amongst themselves, but no
volunteers, or else. Of course, it is never just one, is it? Clearly, the seven
(mostly) strangers are in a heap of trouble in Manolo Cardona’s Death’s
Roulette, which is now streaming on Paramount+.
Simon
is a cop. Armando is a doctor. Teresa is a flight attendant and Jose is a
retiree. As far as they know, they share no connection to Esteban, a powerful
industrial, his entitled wife Marta, or their rebellious tree-hugger daughter
Lupe. Nevertheless, all seven wake-up groggy, trapped in a drawing room worthy
of Clue, over-looking the ocean. Via an old-timey teletype machine, the
unseen host explains the rules. They need to chose a victim. Nobody can offer
themselves as a sacrifice, but once the decision is made, the “lottery-winner”
must willingly accept his or her fate. If no choice is made, he will kill them
all.
The
shadowy puppet master has two very lethal lackeys to enforce the rules, as the
not-so-magnificent seven quickly learn. He obviously means business, so the
guests try to quickly figure out what they have in common, while literally
debating the life-and-death issue at-hand.
Admittedly,
Death’s Roulette is like a lot of other Christie rip-offs and revenge
thrillers, but screenwriters Gavo Amiel, Frank Ariza, and Julieta Steinberg
come up with enough fresh wrinkles to keep it interesting. Thesp-director Cardona
nicely capitalizes on the claustrophobic setting and atmospheric trappings. This
film straddles genre borders, but it probably leans more towards mystery-thriller
than horror.
The annual Alabama-Mobile Seahawks game against Tennessee A&M
Commonwealth is a lot like the Alabama-Auburn or Michigan-Ohio State rivalries, but
the schools are fictional, so they can’t sue. Their annual game is always
around Halloween. As a result, everyone around the ‘Bama-Tennessee border always
drinks too much during the game, which makes it the perfect night for an
inhuman serial killer to strike—and he keeps striking. Conceived as the fifth
and first instalments of a lost 1980s-spanning slasher franchise,
screenwriter-director Jay Burleson’s companion films Third Saturday in
October Part V and Part I both release today on VOD.
For
the viewing experience Burleson intends, start the fifth film, supposedly
produced in the early 1990s and then go back to watch the original film,
retro-crafted to look like 1979. His concept invites is to watch them out of
sequence to approximate the video store experience, when horror fans had to rent
whatever was in-stock.
Of
course, it is not too difficult to pick up Jakkariah Harding’s backstory in a
hurry. He is an unstoppable serial killer, who survived a ride in the electric
chair and now terrorizes northern Alabama every Third Saturday in October. In Part
V, Maggie is a baby-sitting final girl, very much in the tradition of
Laurie Strode, who is looking after PJ (the film’s Tommy Doyle substitute).
However, she has the extraordinarily bad idea of taking the little girl to a
party hosted by Peter, a womanizing Alabama-Mobile superfan, who gets tied to
his bed as joke by the several women he is trying to seduce, at an incredibly
inopportune time.
We
can sort of appreciate Burleson’s gimmick, but if you only want to watch one of
the films, it should be Part I. It turns out the “original” is always
better. The fake-1979 series launch is probably just as successful as an homage
to post-Halloween slashers, but it is funnier as a send-up and the characters
are far more compelling.
Ricky
Dean Logan and Vicki Newton are two grieving family members of Harding’s victims,
who witnessed his resurrection from the electric chair and followed him to
Hackleburg. Whereas everyone in the first/fifth film is aggressively annoying
(except little PJ), Logan and Newton are highly watchable. In fact, if Burleson
ever fills in any of the “missing” sequels, they absolutely must feature Darius
Willis and K.J. Baker, as Logan and Newton.
Far more westerns were shot on-location in Bronson Canyon, but those that
were made in Monument Valley are among the absolute best of the genre.
Unfortunately, to some culture warriors, their status as westerns amounts to an
original sin. After documenting the horror genre in previous films (78/52,
Memory: The Origin of Alien, Leap of Faith), director Alexandre O. Philippe
turns his attention to westerns and the power of landscape in The Taking,
which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.
Monument
Valley is absolutely not in Texas, but John Ford shot The Searchers there
anyway. The resulting film remains un-cancel-ably iconic. It and the other six
films Ford shot amid the famous Colorado Plateau landscape supply the most
memorable images of Philippe’s film. Many critics take issue with the
geographic liberties Ford and other filmmakers took. Yet, Bronson Canyon is not
in Texas either, but none of the commentators complain about the scenes from The
Searchers that were filmed there.
Without
question, The Searchers is the film Taking is most concerned
with. It is universally recognized as a classic, yet widely misunderstood. In
many ways, it is a blistering indictment of white settler prejudice against the
native tribes, but those who have never seen it, often assume quite the
opposite. Frustratingly, little of the analysis in Taking addresses this
misunderstanding.
Monument
Valley is indeed on Navajo Nation land, which Taking repeatedly
emphasizes. However, it ignores the good will Ford and John Wayne earned with
the Navajo community. (Reportedly, Wayne halted production of The Searchers
for a few days, just so Beulah Archuletta could attend her son’s wedding.)
That
leads into the film’s critical shortcoming, which is the lack of differing
opinions. Taking really could have used some input from a sympathetic
John Ford or John Wayne biographer. Instead, all of Philippe’s commentators
basically have the same viewpoint. Since they are never seen on-camera, it is
almost like hearing the same, uninterrupted voice, repeating the same opinions.
Frankly,
that uniformity of perspective becomes rather boring. As a point of contrast,
one of the reasons why Mark Hartley’s Not Quite Hollywood is so lively
is due to the presence of dissenting critics who argued Australian exploitation
films were really just a pile of rubbish.
Please do not accidentally call them “Bonnie & Clyde,” because they aren’t
worthy of the comparison, not to the real-life outlaws, the musical, or any of
the films depicting them, except maybe Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula.
In this case, Johnny and his lover are taking on a demonically protected crime syndicate,
when they aren’t killing innocent victims. Like the Bonnie & Clyde mash-up,
the resulting mayhem is not as fun as it sounds. In fact, the violence and
nihilism are a bit much in Tom DeNucci’s Johnny & Clyde, which
releases this Friday.
Former
Sheriff Randall Lock is determined to catch and kill Johnny & Clyde now
that they are back in Rhode Island. The serial killer couple tortured Lock’s
daughter to death, but perversely, the film expects viewers to root for them
instead of him. Sadly, those expectations are probably based on the fact he is
old, fat, and pasty white, whereas they are young and fit. However, the
title twosome are actually the most loathsome characters in this unpleasant
film.
Even
Alana Hart is more endearing than Johnny & Clyde. Hart is managing her
gangster father’s local gambling interests, with the supernational assistance
of his ancient satanic cult. She is definitely the boss, but she dresses like
Larry Flint’s administrative assistant. When Johnny and Clyde hijack one of
Hart’s cash shipment, the surviving guard tries to exchange information
regarding the syndicate’s secret vaults for his life. Hart knows Johnny &
Clyde and their freaky friends are coming, so she arranges to have a demon
named Bakwas waiting for them.
As
Johnny & Clyde, Avan Jogia and Ajani Russell so completely lack charisma,
viewers will only want to see them get the painful payback they so richly
deserve. Of course, that rather undermines any sense of rooting interest in
anyone on-screen. Sadly, there is no pithy Tarantino dialogue to punch-up this Natural
Born Killers supernatural rip-off. Frankly, all the casual cruelty,
depicted in such a flat, unremarkable style, make the film a relentlessly grim
viewing experience.
Compared to the other attorneys in this film, Assistant DA Mark Setter was relatively
upright and ethical. He was only cheating on his wife. In contrast, his
colleagues’ corruption is undermining public safety. Unfortunately, Setter is
also one who gets murdered, on the eve of his biggest trial. His demise will
also be the awkward catalyst bringing together his wife and secret hook-up
(words like “mistress” or “lover” would probably overstate the depth of their
relationship) in Martin Wood’s Double Life, which releases this Friday
in theaters and on VOD.
Sharon
Setter thought her husband was on his way back from the office when he placed
that final fateful call, but he has really returning from Jo Creuzot’s place.
Regardless, Ms. Setter hears it all when he is driven off the road to his
death. She quickly tires of the smarmy sympathy and fake solicitousness of her late
husband’s colleagues, but Creuzot seems refreshingly down-to-earth.
She
introduces herself as the manager of Setter’s favorite courthouse tavern, whom
he helped with some legal difficulties, but the truth will come out eventually.
When it does, it is sure to complicate the two women’s amateur sleuthing
efforts to solve Setter’s murder—not that is much of a mystery. A blind alpaca
could figure out who in the small cast of characters is guilty, by virtue of
their blatantly suspicious behavior.
Honestly,
most episodes of Barnaby Jones are more intricately plotted than Double
Life. There is no question Michael Hurst & Chris Sivertson’s screenplay
is better suited to Lifetime than a ticket-selling movie theater. The only conceivable
commercial justification for its studio distribution would be the post-Arrowverse
starring role for former Batwoman Javicia Leslie, but even that seems like
a stretch.
Still,
as Creuzot, she has the strongest screen presence and shows off some decent chops,
in the otherwise unremarkable action scenes. Supposedly, Creuzot’s ex before
Setter was a security specialist, who taught her Krav Maga and left behind some
convenient surveillance devices (because apparently that sort of equipment isn’t
very expensive).
Anyone who ever tweeted out a cliché about "defending democracy" should see WHO'S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW, to understand what that sentiment really means. It's an important documentary chronicling the struggle (so far) for Hong Kong's soul. EPOCH TIMES exclusive review up here.
Do not tell the new Hungarian Communist regime: “it takes village to raise
a child.” Everything is now the state’s business, but it could not care any less
about a lonely teen Holocaust survivor like Klara Wiener. Her great-aunt Olgi
is all she has left, but the middle-aged woman is ill-equipped to handle a rebellious
teenager. Their emotionally frozen doctor seems even more poorly suited to
foster-parenting, but their common experiences help him bond with her in Barnabas
Toth’s Those Who Remained (shortlisted for the Best International Film
Oscar as part of the Parasite class), which opens Friday in Los Angeles
(and is now playing in New York).
Puberty
is coming late for Wiener, but that hardly shocks Dr. Aladar “Aldo” Korner,
Olgi’s gynecologist, considering the trauma she suffered. He knows his wife and
child perished in the camps, whereas Wiener still clings to false hopes. Given
their shared grief and survivor’s guilt, Aladar starts taking an interest in
her, which blossoms into an unofficial foster-parent relationship, with Olgi’s
blessing.
That
all sounds like a super-cute Full House-ish arrangement, but the Party apparatchiks
at Wiener’s school do not necessarily see it that way. Korner is especially
vulnerable to their slanders, because the Party has marked him as a person of
suspicion. He knows that for a fact, because one of his colleagues tells him he
was expressly ordered to inform on him.
Despite
the incredibly heavy subject matter (Holocaust survival and Communist
oppression), Those Who Remained is very personal in scope and surprisingly
touching. It is literally about several highly damaged people coming together
as an ad-hoc extended family. Even Olgi lost her closest loved ones during the
war and finds solace with Wiener and Korner. Of course, the greatest obstacle
to their healing is the Party.
Karoly
Hajduk is quietly devastating as Korner, convincingly portraying his emotional
re-awakening, like a Hungarian Silas Marner, except, under Communism, caring
for someone again sometimes places them in jeopardy. Abigel Szoke is also
completely convincing as Wiener, showing how the teen matures greatly over the
course of the film. Even relatively smaller supporting parts make a powerful impact,
especially Katalin Simko, as Erzsi, a patient of Korner’s, with an equally
tragic backstory, who could also become something more to the doctor.
These Eastenders lived gritty working-class lives not unlike those of the long-running
British soap opera, but their story is much more noir. Ealing Studios put
themselves on the map with this slice-of-life story that explored the aspirations
and regrets of a wide circle of characters, tangentially related to an escaped
prison inmate currently at-large. Post-war life is hard, even for the criminals
in Robert Hamer’s It Always Rains on Sunday, which screens as part of MoMA’s
Rialto at 25 film series.
Tommy
Swann once swept Rose Sandigate off her feet, but went he was sentenced to
prison, she settled down with her current husband George Sandigate—with the
emphasis on “settle.” Her relationship with her step-daughters is strained, to
put it mildly. To the annoyance of Vi and Doris Sandigate, their good-natured
father largely defers to his second wife. He knows she used to run with a fast
crowd, but news of Swann’s escape means nothing to him.
Inevitably,
Swann will approach his old flame for help, which she cannot deny him. Initially,
she hides him in their old air raid shelter, as she waits for the rest of the
family to leave for their Sunday recreation. Meanwhile, the police launch a
citywide dragnet, while also searching for a gang of three burglars, who are
desperately trying to fence the shipment of roller-skates they mistakenly
boosted.
In
some ways, Sunday is Robert Altman-esque film, introducing viewers to a
large cast of characters, revealing the unexpected ways they are
interconnected. Yet, it also has some gorgeously moody noir sequences (shot by
legendary cinematographer Douglas Slocombe) that would not look out of place in
classic Carol Reed film noirs, like Odd Man Out or The Third Man.
Indeed,
the last thirty minutes are as good as noir gets. Hamer definitely down-shifts into
the third act, but the way the everyday desperations of the first hour builds
into the life-and-death conflict of the finale makes perfect emotional and
dramatic sense.
INSIDE THE RED BRICK WALL and the shorter companion documentary TAKING BACK THE LEGISLATURE are valuable primary sources documenting the Hong Kong democracy protests. They are inconvenient for the CCP, so everybody should watch them. Combined EPOCH TIMES review up here.
His name should ring a bell and not for singing the theme song to Thunderball.
Unfortunately, a lot of English majors can graduate without reading Fielding
these days and the 1963 adaptation has steadily lost its critical cachet since
winning the Best Picture Oscar. Frankly, the story of the roguish foundling
will probably be new to a lot of viewers, but they might not necessarily be
watching PBS’s Masterpiece. However, older fans of costume dramas will
be interested to see how Gwyneth Hughes’ four-part adaption departs from the
novel and Albert Finney film when Tom Jones premieres tomorrow on PBS.
Squire
Allworthy was a decent widower, who raised Tom Jones as his own, when he discovered
the foundling mysteriously left in his chambers. Frankly, he might be a little
too upright, but Jones always appreciated his kindness. In contrast, Jones’ legitimate
cousin, William Blifil, and the heir to the estate always hated him, with
visceral intensity. That is partly is so determined to be matched with Sophia
Western, with whom Jones is clearly smitten. It is quite mutual, but Squire
Western is not about to marry her off to a man of Jones’ dubious lineage.
In
this adaptation, Miss Sophie is the Squire’s granddaughter. Her father recently
passed away on the family’s Jamaican plantation and her mother, a slave, died
in childbirth. That was not in the original Fielding. Sophie Wilde (who previously
played another Sophie namesake in The Portable Door) is one of the
brightest, most watchable members of this ensemble, but her character’s acutely
tragic backstory conflicts with Fielding’s original bawdy mock-epic tone, which
Hughes still tries to preserve.
Hughes
also largely dispenses with the ironic narrator, which was the whole point of
Fielding’s novel (and a major reason why post-structuralist literary critics
are drawn to Eighteenth Century literature). There are brief voice-overs,
recorded by Wilde, at the start and close of each episode, presumably conceived
as a means for Sophie Western to “reclaim the narrative,” but they have little
wit.
Citadel is a lot like U.N.C.L.E., but it is not an acronym, at least not as far
as we know yet. The super-secret, trans-national spy agency’s backstory is
getting filled in as the series goes along. The problem is, there are not a lot
of people left who would know. Nadia Sinh and Mason Kane are two of the handful
of agents who survived their enemies’ lethal purge, but their memories were
wiped clean, as per agency protocols. With or without their memories, Kane and
Sinh will reteam to save the world and themselves in the first season of
showrunner David Weil’s Citadel executive produced by the Russo
Brothers, which premieres today on Prime Video.
There
was definitely some awkward but potently charged history between Sinh and Kane
when they found themselves on the same assignment that fateful day. Unfortunately,
they were being set up, like every other Citadel agent, as part of a worldwide
gambit launched by Manticore, a more buttoned-down corporate cousin of SPECTRE
and THRUSH, fronted by the ruthless Dahlia Archer.
Kane
basically started over when he woke up in an Italian hospital with no memory of
his previous life. In the eight years that followed, he married and had a
daughter, but occasionally he has visions of Sinh. The feeling of
incompleteness spurs him to launch a highly advanced DNA search, which alerts
his old boss, Bernard Orlick—and their old foes at Manticore.
To
protect his family, Kane agrees to help Orlick recover Citadel’s global nuclear
code skeleton key, before Manticore figures out how to use it. Kane still has
no memory of his past, but he can get by on his reflexes and muscle memories.
However, when things really get bad, he will need to find Sinh.
Citadel
is
a lot like a lot of other shows and movies (call it The Bourne Citadel),
but it is way more expensive (reportedly the second costliest series ever). At
least it is much more watchable than the tedious, de-Tolkien-ized The Rings
of Power (assumed to be the #1 most expensive). There are non-stop stunts,
punctuated by a bunch of explosions, set-off against a rapidly changing panorama
of exotic backdrops. There is even a flashback to a
mission targeting the Iranian regime, which earns Weil and company credit for
actually taking on a real-life bad guy who is really bad.
The National Socialists had two weird obsessions: purity and the occult. It
therefore rather follows that a group of super-heroic circus freaks would be
their nemeses. Yet, an increasingly unhinged Nazi pianist has a mad dream of
harnessing their powers to save the regime. That sounds like an unlikely Hail
Mary scheme, but he knows Germany’s defeat is likely from his drug-induced
visions of the future in Gabriele Mainetti’s dark superhero fantasy Freaks
vs. the Reich (a.k.a. Freaks Out), which releases today in theaters
and on-demand.
Fulvio
is the wolfman, Mario is the magnetic clown, Cencio is an albino with an
Aquaman-like power over bugs, and Matilde harnesses the power of electricity.
She is the real deal, not like Rooney Mara in the inferior Nightmare Alley remake.
In fact, all their powers are real, but hers are potentially the most powerful.
However, she has issues when it comes to using them to their fullest extent. Her
conductivity also somewhat alienates her from humanity, since her touch is
potentially fatal. Nevertheless, Cencio still carries a torch for her, which is
also creepy, given their apparent age differences.
Nevertheless,
the four circus freaks regularly dazzle audiences for old Israel’s traveling
sideshow, until the war intervenes. The Germans have invaded their former
Italian allies, but at this point of the war, it is not going well for either
nation. Franz desperately wants to turn it around for the Reich, but he is
probably lucky to be alive, considering he has six fingers on either hand,
making him a freak himself. Through liberal ether-huffing, Franz has seen
images of the future. As a result, he is convinced only Matilde’s powers can
save the Reich.
This
is probably the weirdest circus film since Alex de la Iglesia’s The Last Circus (a.k.a. A Sad Trumpet Ballad), which Freaks also
resembles in tone. It is far more macabre than most superhero movies, but that
is its strength, whereas its weakness is Mainetti’s inclination to excess,
especially the two-hour-and-twenty-minute running time.
Be
that as it may, Mainetti and co-screenwriter Nicola Guaglianone earn a lot of
points for originality, particularly for their distinctive villain, Franz. He
is a sinister psychopath, but it is easy to understand how living with his
conspicuous “deformity” in German society helped warp him into the monster we
see in the film. Those predisposed to object the film uses him to represent the
physically different should keep in mind there is also a band of war-amputee partisans
in the woods, waging guerilla attacks against the Germans.
Lately, streaming services really seem to be out to discredit fertility doctors,
like Rachel Wiesz’s disturbed twins in Prime’s Dead Ringers and Pierce
Brosnan’s creepy villain in Hulu’s False Positive. Hulu has another one
to add to the list. Technically, Dr. Elizabeth Simmons is not administering
fertility treatments. She will try to fix Ella Patel’s “biological clock,” so
her maternal instincts will finally kick in. Unfortunately, she might rewire
her patient so much, she loses her mind in screenwriter-director Alexis Jacknow’s
Clock, which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.
Even
though all the Patels’ friends are having rugrats, she remains obstinately opposed
to parenthood. Sensing her attitude is starting to be an issue with her
husband, Patel considers her new doctor’s referral to Dr. Simmons’ cutting-edge
clinic. Her problem might be physical, but not one of low potency. If she can
reset her body’s internal clock, she might suddenly want som dirty, smelly children
of her own.
Basically,
Jacknow invites us to buy into the notion Patel would voluntarily agree to be
gaslit into wanting children and then feel surprised when she gets driven all
the way out to crazy town. Of course, kneejerk critics will defend the film as
a critique of the way medicine disempowers women, but it isn’t their place to
convince us. Jacknow needs to do that on the screen, but it never happens.
What
Patel’s body goes through at Simmons’ clinic is absolutely horrendous, in a
David Cronenberg kind of way. Ill-advisedly, Jacknow somewhat lessens the
impact of the body horror with some is-she-nuts-or-not gamesmanship that weirdly
undermines what was presumably the whole point of the film. The subplot
involving her aging father, the son of Holocaust survivors, also pushes the bounds
of exploitation, using his survivors’ guilt to fuel her neurotic perspective on
pregnancy.
Ezra Pound is probably the most advanced American modernist poet ever, but he
was not just canceled for his ideology. He was committed to an insane asylum.
Critics keep trying to cancel his onetime protégé T.S. Eliot for his
conservatism as well, but his comparative accessibility and even greater cultural
significance have helped his literary reputation withstand their efforts. In
fact, Ralph Fiennes adapted Eliot’s Four Quartets for the stage, which
in turn, his filmmaker sibling has transferred to the screen in T.S. Eliot’s
Four Quartets, opening tomorrow in New York.
The
Hollow Men and
Prufrock probably have a reputation for being somewhat less dense, but
it is surprising how contemporary Eliot’s Quartets sound. The opening
words of Burnt Norton: “Time present and time past are both perhaps
present in time future” represent a meditation on the ways humanity relates to
time that could easily fit within a post-modernist reading list. However, Eliot
later tries to illuminate a path out of the post-structuralist morass, through his
high Anglican faith. Indeed, Fiennes recites lines from Little Gidding,
like “You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid” with the reverent
gravity they deserve.
It
is just Fiennes on-stage, barefoot in a rumpled sportscoat, looking very much
like a homeless English professor. Yet, his expressive performance and command
of Eliot’s language holds up against the stark, surreally minimalist backdrop. This
is definitely a spartan production, but it suits Eliot’s aesthetics.
It's a shark, it’s a megalodon, it’s an Aztec god—and a structural
engineering inspector. It’s the god, Tlaloc and he is really ticked off.
Fortunately, he mostly swims around a soon-to-be decommissioned petroleum
platform, which should be easy to avoid, but that is exactly where Paul Sturges
and his family go in Adrian Grunberg’s The Black Demon, opening this
Friday, only in theaters.
Sturges
always enjoyed inspecting this platform, because the town that services it is
so quaint and welcoming. He doesn’t even bother making a reservation at his
hotel, because planning ahead is for squares. Much to his surprise, he finds
the town practically shuttered. The locals who remain are creepy bad-touching
rustics. One of them even starts pawing his wife, Ines, who coldcocks him in
response. That is why she commandeers a boat to follow her negligent husband
out to the oil platform.
Unfortunately,
as Sturges already discovered, she finds the platform under siege from a massive
prehistoric shark. She and the kids barely make it on to the platform. To get
back to the mainland, they need a bigger, more shark-proof boat. Unfortunately,
coms are out and even if they weren’t, the villagers are so disgusted with the
environmental damage wrought by the platform, they wouldn’t be much inclined to
help. In fact, that is why the rag-tag platform survivors believe Tlaloc is
terrorizing them. He has judged the rig’s environmental controls and found them
lacking.
Maybe
when the development process started on Black Demon the oil rig setting
looked like a fresh hook for a shark attack movie. However, in the last sixteen
months, Prime’s The Rig, Globo’s Ilha de Ferro, and The Burning Sea have made petroleum platforms a whole lot more familiar.
Screenwriters Carlos Cisco and Boise Esquerra also try to introduce elements of
New Agey Aztec spirituality, but their corniness is embarrassing.
The racism Sam Meffire faced in his own native country was so bad, he joined
the riot police, for the protection conferred by their reputation. Then the
Berlin Wall fell. Yes, he was an East German, but he wasn’t always treated like
one. Things were even more complicated after Reunification. Meffire’s story is
told, with a don’t-take-it-as-gospel disclaimer in creators Jorg Winger,
Christoph Silber, and Tyron Ricketts’ seven-part Sam—a Saxon, which premieres
today on Hulu.
For
Meffire (the son of a Marxist Cameroonian exchange student, who died under mysterious circumstances), the GDR could be a pretty racist place. His wife Antje and her
democracy activist friends understood that, but their first priorities were democratic
reforms, like free speech. Consequently, they are shocked when Meffire enrolls
in the riot police’s exam, having been inspired by a chance encounter with
Major Shreier. As an athlete, Meffire easily passes the physical requirements
and Shreier is honest enough to recognize his qualifications.
Of
course, the Wall will soon fall, which will force Meffire to start over, but
without his estranged wife and their young son. He gets another shot at a law
enforcement career with the Dresden police, but it all seems futile when his
corrupt superiors keep him sidelined with clerical tasks. However, everything
changes with the rise of racist extremism in the former GDR. First, Meffire
achieves some personal notoriety as the literal face of an ad campaign for
racial tolerance in Saxony. Then he is tapped by the state’s justice minister
to put together a task-force targeting the growing National Socialist revival.
Based
(somewhat loosely, according to the opening credits) on Meffire’s memoir, Sam,
a Saxon tells a tragic rise-and-fall story. Technically, Meffire is usually
right on the issues, but his intransigence and his temper inevitably cause his
downfall. In fact, he becomes a violent outlaw, not unlike the criminals he was
trying to arrest. Yet, Winger, Silnber, and Ricketts never fully delve into the
he-who-fights-monsters-becomes-a-monster irony of his story. Not surprisingly,
identity (of the racial, national, East vs. West regional, and social-tribal
varieties) overshadows everything.
Nonetheless,
there are a lot of historical ironies in Sam, a Saxon, as when Meffire gets
jumped by Nazi-identified thugs in the Workers’ Paradise or when former riot
police recruits convert to far-right enforcers. This is an epic story, but the
flow is a little clunky. The start of each episode tends to skip ahead a few months
(or years), with little transitionary exposition, to explain how Meffire got
there. It also shows him making the same mistakes over and over. Every episode
we see Meffire alienate someone important in his life, because he is so
consumed with his work. That might be true to how people are in real life, but
the repetitiveness is a problem on-screen.
Regardless,
Malick Bauer is terrific as Meffire. He nearly spontaneously combusts from his nuclear
brooding, while his charisma truly pops out of the screen. It is easy to
understand why he was chosen to be the face of the “I am a Saxon” campaign.
Thanks to Putin, Finland is bringing some sisu to NATO. That is a hard to
precisely translate Finnish word that roughly encompasses gritty determination
and sheer, defiant guts. Aatami Korpi has it in abundance. His sisu became
legendary during the Winter War against the Soviets, but so far, he has taken a
pass on the Lapland War against the National Socialists. Unfortunately, a
retreating German commander decides to declare war on him, which is a very bad
decision in Jalmari Helander’s Sisu, opening Friday in theaters.
The
Soviets took everything from Korpi, killing his family and burning his home—and
then he totally lost it. His superior officers couldn’t control him anymore, so
they just turned Korpi loose to kill Soviets, which he did, in legendary numbers.
Now, he is a grizzled old prospector, who wants the world to leave him alone. Like
Tom Waits in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Korpi proceeds from a few
specks of gold dust in his pan to a considerable vein in remarkably short order.
Also,
like Waits, Korpi will have to defend his diggings, but instead of
claim-jumpers, he will be hunted by the retreating German SS company he
encounters on the road to Helsinki. Officer Bruno Helldorf has been conducting
a scorched earth campaign, but he is savvy enough to understand the war is
lost. Looking to the future, he figures Korpi’s gold can set him up for
whatever comes next, so he is willing to disregard orders to get his hands on
it.
Frankly,
Helander’s two prior features, Big Game and Rare Exports, sounded
cool, but failed to live up to their high concept promise. However, Sisu is
far and away his most successful film to-date, thanks to its archetypal
simplicity. Much like Korpi’s superiors in the Winter War, Helander just winds
him up and sends off into big action set pieces to kill Germans. It isn’t
complicated, but its brutally, cathartically entertaining, especially if you
have reached an age where at you really enjoy watching old guys kick butt.
