Europa Report (2013)

Europa Report (2013)

Starring: Michael Nyqvist, Sharlto Copely, Embeth Davidtz, Daniel Wu

Directed by Sebastian Cordero

Magnet Releasing

MPAA Theatrical Rating: PG-13

This found footage (I know) space mission movie is exactly the kind of story that was promised during the final scenes of 1984's ill-received sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Arthur C. Clarke's prescient ending to 2010 invited Roy Scheider and the people of Earth to explore all of the moons of Jupiter EXCEPT Europa. We were to attempt no landings there.

Two decades later, real-life astronomers tell us that there might actually be life in the water under Europa's icy crust. Clarke was right, and this is all fertile ground for a science fiction thriller, which is exactly what Europa Report turns out to be. Director Sebastian Cordero makes an odd choice to tell the story through mission-cam footage edited out of order, but it ultimately works. The audience knows that the mission will suffer losses from the get-go, but the confined spaces and limited cameras add to the growing dread.

Bear McCreary's music is effectively unsettling and Cordero injects a lot of tension through cameras that stop working at inopportune times. I kept waiting for something supernatural or vicious to happen and that was part of the fun. The film's science crew is relatively believable, generally putting mission objectives and data ahead of personal motivations. As scientists, their personal motivation IS the mission, which makes most of the choices feel authentic. Somehow, the filmmakers even made the found footage gimmick pay off emotionally--no easy feat with such a beat-to-death device, so I walked out of the theater smiling. -MJ

Pacific Rim (2013)

PACIFIC RIM (2013)

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi

Directed by Guillermo del Toro

A Warner Bros Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: PG-13

When giant monsters appear through a dimensional portal at the bottom of the ocean, humanity is forced to fight back with giant mechanized robot suits driven by pairs of pilots. After a string of successful monster kills and a somewhat tragic defeat, the mechanical suits are decommissioned in favor of a giant wall to contain the beasts. That fails, and the men in giant suits return to mount an attack on the portal to keep the beasts at bay.

It's OK for a movie to be based on the fun and singular logline of "giant robots fight giant monsters" but that doesn't mean that the writers can take the night off. They still need to fill 90 plus minutes with stuff that makes sense, and in Pacific Rim, they don't even try. 

Guillermo del Toro chooses to stage most of the mayhem at night or under water, obscuring details behind rain and shadows and a constant wash of debris. When his actors are on a set with props, the movie looks sharp. When the fights rage in the ocean at night, it's hard to see what is going on. The film offers a few amazingly fun moments, and a score that recalls classic Toho, but it strings that together with idiotic dialog, cartoonish characters, and plot machinations that work to get the film where it needs to be without much regard for the most sensible way to do that.

Even for a giant monsters and robots movie, we deserve better. -MJ

With Charlie Day, Burn Gorman, and Ron Pearlman.

NOT FADE AWAY (2012)

NOT FADE AWAY (2012)

Starring John Magaro, Jack Huston, Bella Heathcoate, Christopher McDonald and James Gandolfini.

Directed by David Chase

A Paramount Vantage Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: R
 

David Chase makes his own late-70's Floyd Mutrux nostalgia pic in this Jersey-centric ode to first-world tumultuous 1960's living, garage rock and the lingering effect of the British Invasion on all involved. Magaro (THE BRAVE ONE, THE BOX) headlines as Douglas, a short, talented, working class Italian-American teen with a hankering for a rock and roll "career" and the affections of the WASPy, well-off Grace (Heathcoate, DARK SHADOWS). Journeying with his fracturing band from one small town drama to the next, Douglas gains limited perspective but obvious life lessons to draw on later, even if he doesn't know it.  An excellent ensemble cast is led into dramatic battle with a loose yet focused script and style from SOPRANOS creator (and debut director) Chase. It's central theme: youth is wasted on the young but the joy is being alive to waste it, with the even bigger joy of knowing how much you wasted it as you get older. This isn't a movie for kids with dreams. It's for adults who've naturally lost their way.

 

A few weeks back, I read a half-baked, poorly researched article with possible sponsored content overtones about the demise of the midnight movie and how Rob Zombie's self-aware LORDS OF SALEM is a return to that type of film-making, as if somehow you can replicate what makes a film a cult movie. THIS is a modern midnight movie: a sincere, rock and roll laced theatrical bomb with dream-like pacing best appreciated with like-minded folk at an hour when things aren't as cut and dry as they seem. If you get onto its level, it works some kind of magic. With Dominique McElligot, Lisa Lampenelli, Will Brill and Molly Price.

Executive Producer and Music Supervisor Steve Van Zandt's catchy tune "St. Valentines' Day Massacre":

BEFORE MIDNIGHT (2013)

BEFORE MIDNIGHT (2013)

Starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy

Directed by Richard Linklater

A Sony Pictures Classics release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: R

It's safe to say that no one who caught Before Sunrise in 1995 predicted that we'd be seeing Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their roles as Jesse and Celine for a third installment of walking and talking 18 years later.  Before Midnight is easily the most mature film in the bunch.  It's driven by conflict and crafted as something much more than two characters walking through town with a singular motivation. Jesse and Celine spend as much time nipping at each other as they do flirting this time around, and Linklater captures it all effortlessly.

More walking, More Talking

The cast and crew are out to prove that love is a complicated thing, and that the wistful romantic encounter that starts a relationship isn't enough to sustain one. There's still a romantic heart beating at the center here, but it's now stressed by years and mileage. Movies about two people fighting over kids, careers, and long-entrenched habits aren't always entertaining, but this one is surprisingly funny.  It may be less sunny and hopeful than its predecessors, but Linklater and his co-writers Delpy and Hawke have at least made a film that is honest in a way that even the best major studio romcoms and dramedies are not. -MJ

SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN (2012)

SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN (2012)

Starring Sixto Rodriguez, Stephen "Sugar" Segerman,  Dennis Coffey, Mike Theodore and Craig Bartholomew Strydom

Directed by Malik Bendjelloul

A Sony Pictures Classic Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: PG-13

Interesting enough topic but not sure if it rates an Academy Award much less feature length status. Sixto Rodriguez, a long forgotten folk-rocker from Detroit achieves rock star status in South Africa but never knows until almost 30 years after the fact. Turns out most of his fans thought he had committed suicide when actually he was working construction and running for Mayor. Told by the folks who hunted him down, Rodriguez's family and the man himself, SUGARMAN is guaranteed to put a smile on your face but lacks any real emotional depth and its third act stretches it pretty thin. The music, like a more rocking James Taylor, is catchy and Rodriguez himself seems like a really cool dude. Given that people nowadays make five-epsiode docs about toe jam if they can borrow an digital SLR camera and $557, you could do a lot worse. With Steve Rowland, Clarence Avant and Eva & Regan Rodriguez.  - EH    

 

 

BLOOD BEACH (1980)

BLOOD BEACH (1980)

Starring John Saxon, David Huffman, Marianna Hill and Burt Young

Directed by Jeffrey Bloom

A Jerry Gross Organization Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: R

    Image from jawsripoffs.wordpress.com

This odd, somewhat original head scratcher from writer/director Jeffrey Bloom does JAWS one better. You can't get to the water because some unseen monster has moved under the beach and it's sucking down beachgoers. And unseen is right. You barely get a glimpse of the thing when it shows up at the end.

Normally that's not bad. Sometimes we need the mystery, like the first half of JAWS. But here, it's too little too late. You can feel for a jaded horror audience that might've been pissed due to lack of creature.

BLOOD BEACH operates on its own terms, making it more interesting than the glut of horror films in theaters at the time. It's also its downfall. You keep waiting for something to happen that never does and every so often it pops you in the back of the head just to see if you're awake. The tech credits are pro-grade and the actors are perfectly cast; Burt Young's a howl as Neanderthal detective Royko. It has a laid back Southern California beach bum vibe to the overall tone and the gauzy cinematography matched with the effective score keep it creepy enough to sit out the running time.

Yet it never comes together as a whole  because somebody keeps forgetting this is a movie about a monster pulling people under the sand. Action, gore and nudity is supplied but none of it works in the way you expect it to work from a scare pic titled BLOOD BEACH.  It's almost too aloof and arty during moments. There's times where it forgets it's a horror movie and becomes INVESTIGATION AT BLOOD BEACH, a police procedural not unlike LAW & ORDER.

There is rapist junk mutilation though. 

Without a doubt a huge influence on the 1990 sleeper TREMORS, BLOOD BEACH is a rare bird: a film that would benefit from a remake. That said, every few years I come back to BLOOD BEACH and re-watch it, if only to lament on it's hard to pin down inadequacies. Something’s there and it's not under the sand. In other words, required viewing. With Otis Young, Lena Pousette, Eleanor Zee, Stefan Gierasch and Darrell Fetty - EH


Above screen captures swiped from AV Maniacs.

EXTRA ADDED ARTWORK:

The zombie on this Turkish ad art kills me.

THE CLUB (1980)

THE CLUB (1980)

Starring Jack Thompson, Harold Hopper, Graham Kennedy, Frank Wilson and John Howard

Directed by Bruce Beresford

A Roadshow Release (Australia)/ A Stage Fright - Australian Film Office Release (USA, 1982)
 

MPAA Theatrical Rating: PG

Breezy Aussie sports drama starring Oz cinema stalwart Jack Thompson and written by David Williamson, based on his play. Thompson (BREAKER MORANT) plays Laurie, an aging Australian Rules Football coach up against a front office hellbent on turning the Collingwood franchise into a money machine. After obtaining an obscene sum of money, new recruit Geoff (John Howard) throws the team into disarray by playing poorly for ethical reasons. As Laurie tries to hold the team together and salvage his own position, office politics threaten to tear away the tradition of the club.

Being one of those play-based movies with stagy dialogue, THE CLUB nevertheless entertains, even from an American perspective (we're in NORTH DALLAS FORTY and SEMI-TOUGH territory). Beresford's direction is quite pedestrian but competent; he lets the actors and dialogue do the real work up on the screen. Thompson chews up the scenery and Frank Wilson is a real bastard as Jock, the old player coach with a grudge against Laurie.

It never taxes you brain and it's not something you need to see immediately but if you're looking for something a little different, THE CLUB is a welcome diversion. Let's call it a ripper.

With Alan Cassell, Toni-Gay Shaw and Maggie Doyle. Currently streaming on Netflix in full screen with VHS quality. -EH

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