Doom: Annihilation

Wouldn’t ya know it? It seems as though our bois over at Universal 1440 have been busy little beavers recently. Hot on the heels of a sequel that no one’s asked for since, at best, eight years ago, the 1440 crew graces us with a film that’s surprisingly not a long-distance sequel to some franchise or IP the studio holds in its greedy little clutches. Nope, this time ‘round we’ve got ourselves a reboot of one of their franchises! Yay!

Back in 2005, long-time DP-turned-director Andrzej Bartkowiak helmed the first of two video game adaptations (his next directorial outing would be the maligned-for-damn-good-reason Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li), Doom. Like Chun-Li, Doom wasn’t extremely well-received by audience and critics, and its combination of barely-stock characters, garbage dialogue, sketchy visual effects, loose adaptation of the source material, and admittedly mildly entertaining bit of first-person madness hasn’t endeared the film to the passage of time. Seriously, it’s hilariously dated and strained when looking at it through today’s eyes. Not content with letting the franchise remain unadapted successfully (I will grant that a good adaptation could lead to a damn series of films, what with the open possibilities the source games have provided over the years), Universal tasked 1440 with relaunching the franchise, this time skewing a bit closer to its source material than its predecessor and certainly carrying a reduced budget and star power. Kids, let’s talk about Doom: Annihlation.

The plot, like I said, isn’t too far off from that of the original 1993 game: A group of marines is sent to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, as a security detail for a scientific crew working on a teleportation device, among other just-below-board experiments. When they arrive, though, things have already begun to turn sideways on them, and they’re forced to walk into a bloody bloodbath as they’re assailed by creatures spawned from the teleportation experiment, which has essentially become a doorway to Hell. Fun times, right?

Much like Bartkowiak’s version, the filmmakers have wisely eschewed the facet of the games involving a lone soldier facing off against the hellspawn, as a group is easier to allow expanded fields of simultaneous action, as well as a range of potential personalities responding to the threats. The dynamism is necessarily boosted, and the film is able to avoid the pitfalls of ‘80s-style lone-wolf action flicks in the process. That being said, much like with the earlier adaptation, the group we follow isn’t much to write home about: The painfully stock characters from over a decade-and-a-half ago are replaced with bland nobodies (and a brusque, touchy Aussie) I had a hard time either remembering or distinguishing between, led by Amy Manson’s Joan Dark (cute, movie), who blends into the often dark backgrounds (how appropriate) with her lack of expression. The dialogue has definitely improved, in that it’s not an out-and-out collection of terrible lines meant to be delivered as cheesily as possible (as if it were even possible to deliver them otherwise), but it’s still pretty bland and uninteresting, no flair or personality to speak of, helping to explain why the characters follow suit so closely. The visual effects range from actually pretty solid – especially for the relatively low budget – to just plain dodgy (I’m looking at you, teleportation goo!), the cinematography is duller than an old spoon, and the lighting is flat and drab, making me wonder how we’re supposed to become invested in the allegedly thrilling and dangerous action unfolding before us.

I think the real killer, though, is the music. While the earlier film version tried to match the power and fervor of the game’s still-bumping soundtrack, it often got bogged down in lame nu-metal-style nonsense. Here, we take an even deeper step down, using washed-out stock music and the occasional track that sounds like a milquetoast rip-off of the 2005 selections. As you know, they’re out to make a quick buck with their existing IPs, so there’s no room for actual investment, kids. That’d be effort, and that’s verboten in the 1440 halls, so the music we get pales in comparison to even the 16-bit SNES tunes from the early ’90s.

Now, that’s being a bit harsh, even for a cash grab like this. I will admit that although the film is mostly dull, boring, and by-the-numbers, it’s not altogether a waste of time. It’s a decent-enough adaptation of the first game, albeit with plenty of quirks inherent in the adaptation process, there are some neat nods to the games sprinkled throughout, and the action – reminiscent of a lighter take on 30 Days of Night for most of it, just with more bullets – can be sufficient to sate you if you need a quick fix. It’s just hard to get past how uninteresting it is. A Doom adaptation should be dark, brooding, dripping with style just as much as with blood and gunpowder. This is just a bunch of people going through the motions, and it just so happens that those motions correspond to those found in a popular video game franchise. I can’t recommend the film, but if you’re curious, there’s a chance you won’t feel your time’s been stolen from you, and that’s actually a step up from the rest of 1440’s offerings. I’ll take improvement, no matter how incremental, dunno ‘bout yinz.

Rambo: Last Blood

An old episode of The Angry Video Game Nerd (possibly still going by The Angry Nintendo Nerd, it’s hard to remember) made a joke that the then-upcoming new Rambo movie would be called something lame like John Rambo, much like the lazily-titled Rocky Balboa that had recently come out. Funny thing, he was proven right, until the studio turned tail and retitled the thing just plain ol’ Rambo. I remember watching that movie in college and thinking it was, by far, the worst of the franchise. It was too dark (literally), the bloodshed was gratuitous, and there was a sense of the franchise zombifying before our eyes. Sure, it was moving, but there was no true life, no soul left in the shambling body, a mere shade of its enormously entertaining predecessors. We thought it was over. We were wrong.

Rambo: Last Blood comes at a strange point in Sylvester Stallone’s career: Though well into his seventies, he can still move a bit, yet his roles have oscillated between the emotionally touching Creed films and sad garbage like the later Expendables entries and the already zombifying Escape Plan franchise. On the former hand, he’s aging out a well-loved and -worn character, allowing his twilight years to inform and propel the succeeding generation; on the latter, he looks as though he’s trying real hard to show that he is, in fact, still virile, still a force to be reckoned with, but mostly failing at it, if for no other reason than the films are pretty bad.

What we have here is another entry in that last category, combined with the excruciatingly unnecessary re-exhumation of a beloved character, the star (and the studio, no doubt) unwilling to just let old dogs die. The plot finds our man John Rambo living out his autumn years near the Mexican border, serving as a surrogate husband/father to a Mexican-American family on a farm. The teenage daughter, burning to confront her birth father for answers as to why he left her those years ago, heads across the border to find him. As you might expect in a film like this, she falls victim to a local gang, who presses her into sex slavery. When Rambo finds out, he follows her trail down there, leading to a rough-up and some bad times for his quasi-niece. Shit goes down from there, naturally.

I think what bothers me the most about this entry in the series is just how much of a wasted opportunity it wound up being. First off, it feels like your standard fighting-the-gangs flick, a dime a dozen in the VOD world these days, just with the Rambo brand name slathered on it at the last minute, not unlike the latter Hellraiser offerings. I mean, it’s shot as blandly and standardly as possible, flat lighting, garbage digital zooms at various points (never calling for it, mind you), digital blood effects, and a lackluster plot. We’ve all seen this movie quite a few times by now, and the addition of Stallone, as Rambo or not, does nothing to elevate the material, especially as he’s often too difficult to understand (yeah, I know, that’s been a joke that’s dogged him his whole career, but he’s pretty damn unintelligible here, kids, believe you me). There’s a distinct lack of anything interesting happening until the final ten-or-so minutes, when things are wrapped up very neatly, very quickly, and very easily, and there’s just a mountain of contrivance: This supposedly badass gang doesn’t try for vengeance after one of their flophouses is tossed, then when they’re finally stirred to action against the aging Rambo, they’ve already given him plenty of time to prep, train, and heal. Oh, wait, that healing he does appears to be a massive continuity error: the wounds on his cheek and forehead disappearing for his second jaunt into Mexico and reappearing in slightly healed form when he returns to finish his preparations. And it’s oh-so-convenient that Rambo’s been crazy enough to carve out a series of tunnels beneath the farm where he’s lived and somehow kept up an armory (in spite of the whole nearly-destroying-an-entire-Oregon-town thing and whatnot), and the filmmakers make an overt point to underline this fact in the first act, adhering to Chekhov’s rule so closely that he’s smelling the kvass that late playwright pissed out decades ago.

Speaking of, that’s the other major failing of the film: Despite referencing the title in its own, there’s no connection to the Rambo we met in First Blood and the Rambo we’re seeing here, nor has there really been since the franchise decided to ditch its progenitor’s name. This is no war-ravaged veteran snapping because of the unnecessary pricks of the world, this is the Rambo that fucks everything and everyone up ‘cause he believes it’s right to do so. Screw proper channels, they’re ineffectual, just bust down doors, pop some caps, and stroll off into the sunset. Basically, this is every Stallone tough guy role, from Cobretti to Dredd and beyond. There was ample opportunity to explore the battered brain of John Rambo, to show how time has weathered him and forced him to contemplate his place in a world that’s changed so drastically around him, to question the ethos of the previous trio of entries, and none of this happens. There are a couple brief points where Rambo mumbles something about being fed up all of the bloodshed he’s seen, all of the evil that’s still out there, but he’s not really tired, he’s more than happy to continue the slaughter. He even out-and-out admits that he’s only our for vengeance here that he wants his enemies to know the hate and pain that’s coming their way, and any mental issues that could have been there are swept under the rug and ignored in favor of a generic, worthless action flick with nothing to say and I doubt even the ability to say anything if it wanted to. The old age discussed at the beginning has taken exactly no toll on our hero, as he’s still able to kick some ass with the best of them, and he’s more than willing to do so without hesitation and with plenty of malice of forethought. What could have been a thoughtful and meaningful fading of the character, a la Creed, turns into the opposite, not unlike Rocky Balboa, oddly enough.

Because of this failing, I can’t rightly say that Last Blood is worth your time, even if it’s fairly short. As mildly satisfying as the finale can be, there’s too much nothing to get through (wait, we’re getting two prepping montages in the span of a few minutes?), and nothing that made Rambo unique comes into play, aside from broadly recreating his first on-screen appearance. This thing is a bore and a disappointment, plain and simple.

Tigers Are Not Afraid

When you think of dark fairy tale films from Mexico, you tend to think of the work of Guillermo del Toro, no? It’s not a misguided thought, to be sure, but it is slightly narrow in scope. In fact, it seems others have tossed their hats into the ring, crafting fables with pitch black hearts for everyone to love. The one that skittered onto my desk recently and that I wanna talk about is Tigers Are Not Afraid.

The plot centers on young Estrella, whose school is the victim of a shoot-up by members of a local gang. Whilst taking cover, she is given a trio of sticks of chalk by her teacher and told they represent wishes. When she gets home, she finds her mother has disappeared, another apparent target of the gang. Pretty understandably, she uses her first wish to bring her mother back. Unfortunately, her mother returns in a form unbefitting proper humanity, if you catch my drift. (You can see why the original Spanish title Vuelven (or “They Come Back”) fits, right?) Unable to stay at home, Estrella falls in with a local group of kids, fellow homeless casualties of the violence surrounding their town. As the children go along and Estrella makes her wishes, she notices that a mysterious darkness seems to be following her, just as closely as the gangsters and consequent impending doom.

No doubt about it, writer/director Issa López and her crew have done a spectacular job with Tigers. The recent It movies are joined in having a strong cast of younger kids, all of them shining here with material that isn’t exactly easy for more mature actors. These kids not only give the usual childlike grandstanding and cowering and whatnot, but they also have to deal with some truly grisly stuff, like the deaths of their peers and the creeping dread that comes with the omnipresence of a deadly threat surrounding them. Indeed, it’s this very brutality and darkness that elevates both Lopez and her film in my eyes.

I haven’t said my bit about It: Chapter Two as of yet, but I thought it was pretty damn solid. The reliance on jump scares had a thematic purpose, the pacing was well done, and the acting from both groups of characters was definitely strong. There was a bit of unevenness, wherein the filmmakers didn’t let many scenes end without some kind of tension deflation, but that wasn’t enough to sink things for me. I bring it up, because there are some similarities between that film and this one, most of them pretty obvious, but the one area in which Tigers is superior is the smoothing of that aforementioned tonal unevenness.

It just so happens that the tone is kept bleak, unhappy, cruel throughout most of the film. The magical realism brought into things doesn’t change this, and in fact helps deepen the darkness, a sort of monkey’s paw situation taking hold over the proceedings. I will admit that certain plot beats seem to unnecessarily stymie the otherwise relatively brisk pacing, and some of the basic setup points, like the exact situation regarding the gang, its membership, and its connection to the town, aren’t completely established, but these imperfections, like those from It, don’t scuttle the film for me. Plus, the quick bits of digital effects work add a nice bit of whimsy to the proceedings, while simultaneously showing the power of restraint in such areas. Take notes, Hollywood.

Overall, Tigers is an immensely enjoyable film, one that provides a flutter of chills and a heaping helping of emotionality while wallowing in a pretty depressing morass. There’s a lot to laud here, and the film is more than deserving of the accolades it has received since debuting a couple of years ago on the festival circuit. Give it a go if del Toro’s more low-key works are your bag, and keep an eye out for López’s next effort, a so-called “haunted western” produced by none other than del Toro hisself. Now that’s a combination I’ll be keeping on my calendar for sure, kiddos!

Inside Man: Most Wanted

It’s been a minute, but our friends over at Universal 1440 are back at it again, giving us a sequel absolutely no one was asking for and that I didn’t even know was possible. Props where due, at least I was taught that, eh?

So, do y’all remember a heist film from the mid-‘00s by the name of Inside Man? If not, lemme refresh your memory: Directed by Spike Lee, the film tells the story of a group of thieves (led by Clive Owen) who undertake a hostage-laden bank robbery in New York. Negotiator Denzel Washington is sent to deal with the issue, but Owen seems to be more in control throughout. An extra spanner is tossed into things when an agent of the bank’s owner (Jodie Foster and Christopher Plummer, respectively) gets involved, pulling some strings behind the scenes.

Now, spoilers for a thirteen-year-old film: The robbery was mostly a front for the real heist, the lifting of diamonds from the Nazi-connected Plummer. Moreover, Owen was able to actually get away with it by, get this, remaining within the walls of the bank – literally, inside the walls, hence the name “Inside Man”, y’see – and then waltzing out a while after the hoopla had died down.

Seemed like a pretty self-contained story, right? Lee was able to present a decently thrilling heist flick that also played with the idea of narrative framing (both in-story and structurally) and incorporated some bits about layers of power. It may not be necessarily great, but it did its job, and we were allowed to move on. Not so, says Universal, kings of dragging out every IP they’ve ever owned and making straight-to-video cash-grab sequels out of their carcasses. Now, we have Inside Man: Most Wanted.

The basic premise here is very similar to the original film: a group of robbers execute a hostage-taking heist at the Federal Reserve in New York. Hotshot negotiator Remy is assigned to the case, partnering with FBI agent Brynn, who’s something of an expert on such situations, to the point where the original film’s robbery is taught in her class at the field office. This robbery, though, looks to be playing out eerily like Owen’s job those five in-universe years ago…

So, yeah, it’s essentially a dumbed-down carbon copy of the original, how surprising. In pure 1440 fashion, the connections to the original are tenuous – the leader of the robbery is Owen’s sister, apparently, and we’re still dealing with ill-gotten Nazi treasures – and everything is lesser. The acting is mostly pretty weak, with Rhea Seehorn bringing next to no personality to the role of Brynn, while Aml Ameen goes hard in the other direction, forcing too much empty personality into a negotiator (overcompensating for not being Denzel, I guess). I suppose Roxanne McKee as Owen’s apparent sister is fine, but just about everyone else either completely phones it in or eats as much scenery as possible in their brief moments on screen. (Particular note needs to be given the FBI director(?), who, for some strange reason, puts on the affectation of a wealthy statesman from near the turn of the twentieth century. Good times.)

But the acting isn’t the only thing coming out half-baked. The plot tries to stretch beyond its meager means to capture the magic(?) of the original, but it fails at every turn. At no point is tension actually achieved, the primary motivation to even finish the movie being a sick desire to just see where the hell the filmmakers were going with their ideas, and the ultimate twist is kinda ludicrous, though so is the setup: While Lee was careful to drop some subtle clues about his film’s twist ending, here we’re constantly shown the apparently portable crucible and forge the robbers use to melt down bricks of Nazi gold (spoilers, I guess) for some unknown reason. Thing is, we’re set up for the inevitable twist by the dozens of shots of these tools, so it feels more like a fulfilled expectation than a clever-ish twist. The familial connections between the films are insanely contrived, and it’s painfully clear than Owen didn’t want anything to do with this film, his character being shown only with his face covered, unless it’s in a badly-photoshopped family photo. Lee’s sense of style is completely absent here, replaced with generic-looking visuals awash in flat lighting. Occasionally the camera will move for us, but it’s often in a Spirograph pattern, unnecessarily dancing across the set. The pacing isn’t quite glacial, but it’s constantly sluggish, like that old person in the car ahead of you riding the brake, and certain scenes seem added only to provide some modicum of action to the otherwise fairly dull proceedings, especially the little WW2-set skirmish at the very beginning. Things are so lackluster and boring that I began to nitpick everything, like the fact that this Federal Reserve has decidedly too few guards armed with M-16s (I’ve been admittedly scared a couple times near the Chicago building because of this unexpected show of protective force), but this did wind up leading to some minor kudos for the filmmakers, as I assumed the building they labelled as such was not, in fact, the New York City FBI field office, when it actually was, so there’s that. Yup, that’s what I chose to remember. Take from that what you will.

At the end of the day, there really wasn’t much to expect from a 1440-made unnecessary sequel like this, and it certainly didn’t disappoint there. There’s little of worth to be gleaned from a viewing, aside from knowing for certain that a sequel does, in fact, exist for the film Inside Man.  (And, as it turns out, Lee and the other principals were set to make a direct sequel shortly after the original’s release, but the effort fell apart after years of nothing getting off the ground.  Go figure.) There’s nothing left to ask, save “Will wonders never cease?” I can’t imagine Universal actually thought they’d make much money with this, so maybe the imprint is in reality an effort to keep so-called middle-class filmmaking alive? I mean, it’s not the ideal way to do it, forcing filmmakers to ply their trade on garbage sequels that serve only to beat the dead horses of erstwhile finished franchises, but it’s something, I guess. I dunno, maybe I’m just trying to be optimistic here. Regardless, don’t bother with Inside Man 2, it’s not worth your time.

The Current War

We live in an indisputably electronic world these days. Tell me another one, o observant one, amiright? Yeah yeah, I know, but it’s important to remember just how recently the onset of our situation struck us: It was barely over a century ago that things even began to shift toward our familiar version of modernity, and even closer to today that we achieved anything close to truly recognizable. Hell, just literally lighting our nights took quite the struggle, consuming the thoughts and efforts of engineers, scientists, and various incarnations of the classic industrialist. At the center, though, was the initial conflict between alternating and direct currents, with George Westinghouse (famous and wealthy because of the advent of his railroad air brake) and Nikola Tesla pushing the former and famed inventor Thomas Edison stanning the latter. The veritable war between them is the subject of The Current War, a film just as embattled as the energy and figures it portrays.

The film shows us more than a decade’s worth of back-and-forth-ing between Westinghouse and Edison as they try to convince the US to embrace their own vision of an electrified country. We see the slightly more philanthropic Westinghouse try to spread the wonders and benefits of technology to the rest of the populace spar with the more individualistic Edison as he drives forward on dozens of ideas at once and muscles out any competition he deems a threat to his enterprises’ collective existence. Serbian dreamer Tesla initially joins up with Edison, the household name seemingly capable of bringing his ideas to life, but gets disenchanted and heads for Westinghouse’s camp.

What gets me, though, is just how nicely the film paints these men. Westinghouse is obviously painted as the saintly one, willing to sacrifice his individual fortune in order to promulgate AC for the betterment of mankind. Meanwhile, Edison, though given a couple warts and the clear character trait of egoism, is still shown in a rather rosy light, the ever-industrious genius worthy of having his name carried through time. And, not to be outdone in the category he’s often been identified with, Tesla sees his own posthumous cult of perfect genius kept alive and thriving. I’m not saying these men didn’t do great, amazing, influential, and important things in a fucking global context, ‘cause they certainly did, but their characterizations are awfully flat here, any faults rubbed away as artifacts of the apparently necessary war raging amongst them or polished out entirely. Even in a script that tries to elevate the forgotten, nameless engineers that really brought about many of the advances the titans took the credit for, the latter still get all of the focus, all of the memory, all of the fawning. By the end credits, we’re to be sitting in awe of their accomplishments, a single tear escaping the corners of our eyes. Sorry, it’s just not a proper or compelling narrative, guys.

Worse, the film squanders a bunch of talent in pursuit of this vision of the relatively recent past. Michael Shannon and executive producer Benedict Cumberbatch (couldn’t help but notice the final shot is a slightly linger-y shot of Edison’s wondrous visage, just sayin’…) are mostly great as Westinghouse and Edison, respectively, and they’re given some solid support from Tom Holland as Edison’s right-hand man, Nicholas Hoult as the fellow-named Tesla, and Katherine Waterston as Westinghouse’s stalwart better half. I even appreciated the coldness of Matthew Macfadyen as tycoon J.P. Morgan, Edison’s bedraggled financier. Making them all look good is cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon, likely best-known for his work with Park Chan-wook on flicks like Oldboy and Thirst, who embraces the theatricality of the age and the contrasts between electrically-lit and dark spaces. Unfortunately, the script is fairly shallow, barely scratching the surface when it comes to characterization and speeding us along the course of the story without allowing us to ever catch our breaths, to breathe in the only-stated wonder. This pacing issue is exacerbated by the breezy direction of Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and loose editing of David Trachtenberg and Justin Krohn, who give the film a strangely dreamlike quality, making the scenes flow abruptly into one another so quickly that it’s hard to keep everything solidly in your mind. We’re never allowed to take in the environments, the atmospheres, the spectacles, and thus we’re never able to truly enjoy anything we’re shown. I also noted a distinct dearth of humor, making the often flat lighting all the more indicative of an overly-slick production that was barely interested in telling a truly compelling story here. What we get is a minor glimpse at larger-than-life personages and little else, much less anything of value.

It’s a shame, really, considering the abilities of everyone involved here. It’s a tale worth telling, to be sure, but it deserves a more interesting storyteller, even if it means sacrificing the talented cast and crew assembled here. It’s still worth a watch, I suppose, if the subject sparks your imagination, just not one that costs much (if any) money. Maybe it was better to have the film shelved (especially if under better circumstances than the whole Weinstein debacle), if for no other reason than to spare those involved the ignominy of participating in such a lackluster showing. I dunno.

The Fanatic

Let’s flash back to somewhere in the past, I dunno, eight or more months, shall we? Indulge me, will ya? I’m watching the Northernlion Live Super Show, as I am wont to do, and the boys touch on one of their favorite subjects: Fred Durst. At this point, he was known he was a streamer on Twitch (at least to some degree, anyway), and he was still the butt of many a joke from the crew, ‘cause, I mean, c’mon, he’s Fred Fucking Durst, he fronted Limp Bizkit, the jokes almost write themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I unironically enjoy “Break Stuff” to this day, if for no other reason than it’s an unapologetic call to all the disaffected youths out there tired of the bullshit they feel they’re being fed on a regular basis. Still, the man is hard to take seriously, and it’s almost entirely because his lyrics read like the manifesto of some pompous twerp who thinks he’s cooler and edgier than he is, and his delivery is absolute dogshit, an endless stream of whining and empty blustering. The NLSS crew, on whatever day this happened to have been, delivered the message unto me (and the rest of the viewers) that Mr. Durst (they introduced the joke “If you can’t handle me at my Durst, you don’t deserve me at my Fredst”, which is much better than the slightly creepy and manipulative version that normally gets floated around) was set to write and direct a film based on his own personal experiences with pushy fans. I couldn’t believe my ears. The news then proceeded to fade into memory, like the One Ring before the beginning of Fellowship. Then, just as suddenly, it re-entered my life, this time in the form of the finished version of that ludicrous-sounding film. C’mon, was there any way I could ever resist this flick!?

Aside from the brief bits I got from the NLSS a couple times a while prior, I knew nothing of this going in. Prolly better that way. The story centers on Moose, a die-hard fan of horror/action actor Hunter Dunbar. And when I say “fan”, I mean “insanely obsessive fanatic that’s unable to properly connect to reality and equates massive amounts of self-worth with a parasocial relationship between some schmuck actor”. (Oh, so that’s where the “Fanatic” from the title comes from!) Moose wants desperately for his one-sided love affair with Dunbar to become requited, but the harder he tries, the more Dunbar pushes him away. What results is a combination of Fade to Black and Misery that forgets all of the good things those films brought and emphasizes the absolute weakest ones. Joy.  Hell, say what you will about Tony Scott’s The Fan (and plenty rightly have, believe you me), but at least even that film spoke to some actual form of reality as we know it.

Right off the bat, star John Travolta presents himself as the most visible problem with the film. Moose is clearly written as autistic, a fact Travolta keys in on early and often with his belabored speech pattern and back-and-forth rocking when anxious, and his condition is treated as the source of his overzealous attachment to his idol.  Considering this story is allegedly at least partially based on a true situation involving Durst hisself, one can’t help but read even further into the already bald subtext that zealous fans are inherently mentally unstable, if not mentally disabled (such a view that autistic folks are disabled is taken in the film, often just-short-of-outright spoken by various characters screaming at Moose).  Even without that subtext, Travolta tries way too hard to bring Moose’s mental condition to the fore that his character’s context is glaringly absent from the film.  For example, if Moose’s only income is his bobby schtick on the strip (it’s the only thing we are shown providing him some means), how in the hell can he afford to live in a decent-seeming LA apartment, much less filling said apartment with Hunter Dunbar paraphernalia?  He looks to be middle-aged, if not beyond, so how has he survived this long so apparently disconnected from reality?  How has this person gotten to where we see him?

Aside from the questions his performance raises, it also showcases the fact that he’s trying so damn hard with a script that clearly hasn’t and alongside other actors who are either similarly overacting or barely involved.  It was nice to see Devon Sawa again, but his put-upon actor role is played just over-the-top and angry enough to qualify the man as a lunatic, a spoiled bastard almost asking for someone to fuck with him, rather than a sympathetic idol who just happened to be approached by a creepy fan at the wrong time.  (It also doesn’t help that Moose’s actions are pretty much always going too far and never warranted, I should mention.)  Ana Golja, playing Moose’s only friend (or, as I would prefer to label her, his enabler), is only occasionally invested in the plot at hand, but she’s given little to do by the script, and she just isn’t made for doing voiceover work (see as Blake Lively from Savages).  And Jacob Grodnik, playing a fellow strip performer, just goes off the wall as a sleazy con artist sort, veering toward the downright cartoonish as a source of Moose’s bullying.

There’s little to really comment on in terms of Durst’s direction and the other technical aspects.  Nothing’s really great by any stretch of the imagination, the lighting tends toward the plain and unremarkable, the editing is a bit off, and the cinematography is starkly bland.  I’d question the makeup and costume departments for the atrocity that is Moose’s haircut, but that’s a surprisingly minor concern in the grand scheme of things.  What really stinks here is the script, which is loaded with blithering nonsense parading as cinematic dialogue just as much as worrying messaging about the dangers of parasocial relationships.  The term “celebutard” is uttered several times without a shred of irony, that’s the level we’re working on, folks.  The whole effort toward diving into the mentality of a stalker that never set out to be one is riddled with inconsistencies, secondary causes, and a horrifyingly superficial understanding of the topics at hand.  Hell, things only seem to go fully of the rails because of Moose’s autism, rather than an increasingly toxic view of his non-existent relationship with Dunbar, and his delve off of a psychological cliff seems to happen way too suddenly for what’s about to come.  There are holes everywhere, not just concerning Moose’s mysterious LA survival, but even in terms of progressing the plot (are we to assume the Misery portion came about almost entirely because of Dunbar’s deep, possibly pill-aided sleep?) and where things will go after the credits (I’m pretty sure the police will figure out whose blood that is on Dunbar’s clothing…).

Just like Gotti, it feels as though there is some actual passion behind Travolta’s work here, but instead of editing and writing sabotaging a pretty solid effort there, here it’s almost entirely the script and its manic ideas surrounding stalkers and toxic celebrity culture are terribly shallow and poorly communicated.  Not a soul in this picture is sympathetic in the slightest, save possibly Dunbar’s ill-fated housekeeper, and even the system it ostensibly explores and denigrates seems laughably badly understood by its own members and apparent victims.  This thing is a mess from the start, and it only goes deeper into garbage territory as its runtime progresses.  It’s not even all that much fun to make fun of, it’s just crappy and poorly thought-out.  If nothing else, though, by looking into the film’s existence I learned that Durst had already directed competent and even mildly-acclaimed films in the past, namely The Longshots and The Education of Charlie Banks (not to mention some eHarmony commercials), so he’s not quite the sort of flame-out directorial talent that Madonna turned out to be (my sweet Flying Spaghetti monster, W/E was so goddamn boring!), and that surprise alone was worth sitting through the meaninglessness of The Fanatic, but there’s little value beyond that.

The VelociPastor & Clownado

No matter how much you wanna think yourself above it, convince yourself (and endeavor to convince everyone else) that it doesn’t affect you, you eventually have to face the reality that not only is marketing omnipresent in this predatorily-capitalistic hellscape we’ve carved out for ourselves, but it also tends to be, at least occasionally, rather effective. I know that reality’s tough to face. I also know that reality has forced a good many disappointments into my already fragile brainspace. It’s happened before, and it’s happened again. Can’t wait for the next one, especially after this twin-bill of sadness.

I was sold on these two flicks almost entirely by the posters/cover art (hard to tell what jargon-y bits to use when discussing films that likely never even considered a theatrical release), and the minor synopses sealed the double deal, baby. If only it could all hold up to expectations. Alas, alas, alas…

We’ll start where it started for me, with The VelociPastor. I honestly don’t even remember where it was online I first spied that disturbingly amazing work of art above, but I immediately shared it around. (Fuckin’ Millennials, amiright? God, we’re lame!) I was looking to forward to something I already knew to be a likely so-bad-it’s-good sort o’ thing, ‘cause, I mean, how could I not!? Then I forgot about it for a bit, until it popped back up on my radar, and I pounced in forgotten anticipation.

The basic setup centers on a priest who takes a breather to China. You know he went to China, because, upon alighting in some midland forest, he sighs, “Ah, China.” Never would’ve guessed from the preceding contextual dialogue or anything, guys, but, sure, why not? Anyway, whilst traipsing about in China, this priest magically gains the power to transform into, for lack of a better word, a were-velociraptor. This is a handy ability to have stumbled onto, as you might expect.  Especially when ninjas enter into the equation. I think you can fill in the gaping gaps from there. I wouldn’t wanna spoil anything, naturally.

Unfortunately, the fun never gets beyond the idea of the premise, what’s on paper never truly materializes into the images promised in the artwork. The acting is sketchy at best, the cinematography and production design are on the level of my high school German videos (okay, I’ll thoroughly admit that these guys had much better cameras and better people operating them (and I’m including any tripods or like accouterments here) than we did back then), the lighting is flatter than Rooney Mara’s abs, the script is barely trying to mimic human speech patterns, and the visual effects work is better left unmentioned. Suffice it to say that the first we see of our boy’s therapodian side is a blatantly obvious rubber mask, possibly affixed to someone’s hand as it goes in for a kill. They wasted little time in pulling that rug out from under me, lemme tell ya.

I could see possibly getting some enjoyment out of this with some booze and friends, but it’s got nothing to recommend it beyond that deep baseline, sadly. Of course, it still pissed me off less than our next subject of conversation, Clownado.

I mean, how could I not!?!? It’s called fucking Clownado!! It’s a tornado of clowns. …Or something, I dunno for sure. But before you go thinking this is just Sharknado with clowns (I s’pose I can’t say definitively that it’s not, necessarily, but it certainly walks a different path), lemme give you the rundown: So, a woman runs afoul of a cadre of clowns, mainstays/potentially the only participants of a sort of midnight circus, not wholly unlike that show Professor Screw-Eyes put on in We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story. In retaliation, they make her part of the show, mildly torturing her (going by her reaction to it, anyway) in the process. Looking to get even, she goes in with some sort of witch-type woman (insert Eagles song here, maybe “Doolin-Dalton”?) and casts a hex on the clowns, ostensibly bringing the wrath of Satan down upon their asses. Unfortunately for her and pretty much everybody else out there, what actually happens is the clowns gain the powers of the cyclone and the lightning, a mob of makeup-laden Thors, so to speak. Thusly imbued, the clowns engage in a bloody rampage, ‘cause what the fuck else do clowns do in horror movies, anyway?

And all of that exposition is necessary just to get us to a point where the plot sorta/kinda moves forward, roughly a half-hour in. Yup, it takes that long. I’d tell you to kill me now, but I’m already either dead or immortal from the experience.

Much like our previous conversation piece, this one’s got bottom-of-the-barrel everything, from acting to dialogue to camerawork to direction to pacing to editing, you name it. There’s a yen toward gore, ‘cause the filmmakers are apparently 12, but this is done so unevenly that I wonder what’s even going on with them. I mean, some shots are downright pretty damn good, others are nothing more than the actors constantly squishing what is clearly raspberry preserves (or something akin thereto) masquerading poorly as offal. Everything that happens on screen is painfully obnoxious, and I couldn’t wait for every scene to just go on and end already. It never happened soon enough, though, and the sluggish pace ensured a proper migraine popped up before we moved on to the next annoyance, a veritable Gobstopper of cranial pain building up before long. Lord-a-mercy!

There’s no reason to see this thing, even with the potential for booze-laden fun with your boiz. Trust me, ain’t gonna happen without a dangerous amount of alcohol in your veins. It’s just too damn bad, man, and that’s a shame, what with that awesome, promise-filled title and intriguing art.

It just goes to show you, you can’t judge a film by its poster. Sure ‘nuff, though, I’m likely gonna fall for the same ol’ tricks very shortly, and I’ll be back to where I am now, lamenting my life decisions and pondering that bottle of Door County vodka that’s still somehow more than half-full on my shelf. Or is it half-empty…?

Ready or Not

Sometimes I think I’m just contrary by nature. I know, I know, calm down, I can hear you rolling your eyes and giving me a look saying “You’re just now figuring this out!?”, and I can’t blame you, what with the evidence I’ve put forth over the years. Still, there are times I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something that everyone else isn’t. But this might just be a ripple in the pond of burnout. Tough to say. Case in point: Ready or Not.

Ready or Not sets off showing us the impending nuptials of Samara Weaving’s Grace, who’s about to marry the scion of a wealthy (we’re talking slightly Old Money wealthy here) gaming family. And by that I mean things like board games and the like, not gambling. Right away, it’s set up that the family, particularly the patriarch, isn’t too thrilled about the match, likely due to the bride’s relatively low origins (“Now I ain’t sayin’ she’s a gold digger…”). Following the wedding, the new family member is introduced to a family tradition wherein the newcomer learns of the origin of the family’s fortunes and chooses a game to play for the night. Unfortunately for her, she chooses the wrong card, one that sparks off a game of hide-and-seek that sees the family basically hunting her down. Literally. Insert pretty much the plot you’d expect from such a setup.

I say that last part because, well, this isn’t anything new at all. Especially with the rise of the Purge franchise, stories of the wealthy hunting the poor for sport have become a dime a dozen. While part of the setup of this film slightly undermines the class conflict messaging (I mean, had she chosen a different game, things would have played out differently, and, based on the rules, even fellow wealthy folk could find themselves the prey in this type of hunt), it’s yet on full display here, and fuck you if you think subtlety would squirm its way in. Just as in Paradise Hills and the aforementioned Purge series, the messaging here is thundered into your skull at all times, to the point where I almost wanna disagree with the foundational philosophies just for the sake of it.

What annoys me the most, though, is just how rote this anti-wealthy formula has become. Though some recent flicks have ensured its dominance in the current zeitgeist, the roots run deep. Some could point to the classic The Most Dangerous Game, wherein a famed game hunter uses a remote island as a private game reserve for hunting humans. Thing is, socioeconomic status had little – if anything – to do with the hunter’s motives: he’s more interested in taking down prey that can reason its way out of things better than common beasts, boosting his personal ego. Plus, the admittedly flawed cinematic adaptation from the ‘30s had something our newer films certainly lack: atmosphere. The short story is pure pulp, and the film feels appropriately pulpy, filled with fog and almost quaintly melodramatic tension. Ready or Not? Nah, let’s opt for the cheap equivalent to jump-scares and poorly-conceived humor and superficial theming. ‘Kay.

When The Purge broke out, I felt the socioeconomic undertones weren’t handled as well as they could have been, focusing instead on basic decency in the face of mandated wantonness. The sequels, though, hammered home the idea of the Purge being used to cull and quell the lower classes, with emphases on race and finances. Of course, alongside these messages came atrocious and obvious scripting, poor dialogue, and a failed fascination with trying to be edgy. Credit where credit’s due, Ready or Not has some nice cinematography, awash in earth and wood tones (emphasizing the wealth and roots of the central family) and utilizing the shadows of a relatively low-lit mansion better than many contemporary films. This puts it visually head and shoulders over the Purge films, especially the third entry in the series, which featured editing, acting, scripting, and camera work so inept I was shocked to see it in wide theatrical release. But the sharply superficial and half-hearted attempt to portray the predation of the lower by the upper classes is much the same as can be found in the earlier films, just without the overt political parallels and with mildly differing contrivances.

Contrast this with something like Sorry to Bother You, which took a deeper, more nuanced approach to the subject. There, the pull of capitalist success is shown to be as insidious and invidious as it is enticing, promising wealth and control (over your own life, not just those of others) at the expense of your very humanity. Your identity is robbed, your time and life are co-opted with your unwitting consent. It’s a harsh indictment of the system at large. Oh, and it’s visually interesting, creative, and dripping with oppressive atmosphere. There’s something novel being said here, and it looks great doing so. It’s a breath of fresh air in this time of effortless and guileless examples of pandering to the edgy Marxist crowd. Believe me, kids, they’ve heard your shit before, they thought it all way before you did, and they’re not biting as much as you likely thought they would. This is part of the reason why I think Ready or Not hasn’t fared too well at the box office (at least relatively: it’s fairly low budget all but ensured a profit from the get-go), even though it’s fairly polished and decently acted. We’ve seen it before, and there isn’t much in the way of novelty or skill to help it rise above the rest of its ilk. Shit, there’s a character here, of enough age to know better, who doesn’t know what Old Maid is. You’re killing me smalls, and not in the thematic way of the family’s victims.

Long story short, Ready or Not may look alright and isn’t all that bad, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and its shortcomings become all the more apparent when one simply remembers those other films that share its worldview and approach. It’s not a worthless endeavor, mind you, but there isn’t very much to especially recommend it by any means, unless you like the related films and wanna see some marginally nicer photography. Or if you’re a Henry Czerny fan, that dude doesn’t get nearly enough credit if you ask me. I can’t for the life of me understand some of the gushing I’ve seen on its behalf, and I doubt I’m ever going to. Maybe I’m just too much of a Disney princess, wanting more and all, I dunno. A river I shall a-cry, I guess.

Paradise Hills

It’s not an everyday occurrence that an interesting-looking film drops into my lap with little-to-no fanfare, and it’s an even rarer occurrence for such a film to actually live up to its appearance. In this case, the former certainly happened. Whether or not the latter comes into play is still up in the air. Let’s talk about Paradise Hills for a moment, shall we?

So, I’m not sure where this thing came from (I’m speaking figuratively here, I see where it was filmed and produced and whatnot, just making that clear), but it definitely caught my eye. The plot follows a small cadre of young women who are essentially held captive on a remote-ish island. There, they are basically put through a crazy sort of finishing school, learning how to kick that shoddy habit of expressing themselves as full-fledged individuals and present themselves as “proper” ladies, amenable to whatever situation they find themselves in at home. It’s a wild trip, complete with some interesting levels of mental and social manipulation, and, of course, there are strong undertones of class issues mixed in there as well.

Immediately pushing its way into the mind is the production design. In stark contrast/opposition to most films these days, the sets are complex, imaginative, and visually striking, awash in shocking colors and bright shades of white. The architecture is a post-modern mélange of classicism, nigh-on Baroque, and a smattering of early modernism, forcing not only strong, wild shapes into the settings, but also communicating the breadth of wealth lurking behind everything, pulling all the strings and creating the contexts for the transformations taking place on the island. There’s an air of turn-of-the-20^th-century fancery pervading all, as though the island is an extension of the same luxury that made the Titanic so imagination-catching. Slightly verging on the storybook, the costumes also blend a fantastical version of the past (mostly early-modern, just pre-Victorian) with the contemporary, pushing the ladies in the same backward, overly pinky-up direction as the manipulations themselves. It’s all a clear parallel with the feminist messaging at the heart of the script, the settings and costumes pointing to the same patriarchal trappings of the time that spread the notion that women should be seen and not heard, bending to the will of the men around them. The whites of the fabric reflect the vestal ideal of “untainted” femininity, a concept echoed in the classicist arches peppering the island around the girls. Indeed, this feminist ideology pervades the script, showing that a woman’s ultimate goal need not to be whisked away by some wealthy, possibly well-meaning man.

As laudable as the messaging and as interesting as the production design can be, the script itself leaves quite a bit to be desired. The themes are all but thrust at the viewer from minute one, any sense of subtlety – regarding either the feminism or the Marxism – is tossed right out the window in favor of the most obvious possible methods of communication, and the audience is never once allowed a moment’s respite from the onslaught. The dialogue isn’t allowed to breathe, either, most of the lines coming out either stilted (particularly if spoken by the so-called “Duchess” in charge) or just south of natural, everything in the service of maintaining the almost claustrophobic feel of the messages, come hell or high water. All of the relationships and outcomes are telegraphed, as though we were marching along a well-known thread of legendary destiny etched in stone, surprises and tension be god-damned. Consequently, the acting tends toward the unimodal, with Milla Jovovich stuck in prim-yet-foreboding mode, poor Emma Roberts caught in the role of headstrong rebel with some underlying problems, and everyone else glued to pretty much a single character trait, allowed no room to stretch or breathe. Five minutes or so in, you already know how things are gonna end up, and it’s clear the road to that conclusion isn’t going to live up to the surroundings.

So here I find myself torn: Is a film with a good message and strong artistry that’s weighed down by its script and performances actually to be considered a failure? Honestly, I have to side with those who would answer “Yes”. Credit where credit’s due, this film looks great, and though the messages aren’t nuanced or novel, they’re still welcome these days. Unfortunately, the overall narrative is weak and riddled with holes and slits, and the viewing experience suffers as a result. With different writers and a different director (this hurts me a bit to say, given that Nacho Vigalondo, the man behind Timecrimes and Colossal, had a hand in penning the script), this could possibly have been something approaching great (seriously, give this to someone like Ari Aster, and there’s a damn strong film here); as is, though, it’s a nice-looking mess that’s difficult to recommend to anyone looking to actually think about the messages and themes presented – or even to anyone looking for a fun ride, considering the lack of tension and the halting pacing. This is one best suited to watch in the background while doing other things, methinks.