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

         . 

FRANCES HA (2013)

Frances Ha (2013)

Starring Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner and Adam Driver

Directed by Noah Baumbach

An IFC Films Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: R

Noah Baumbach's latest is a coming of age story like few others. Rather than highlight an adolescent waking up to the harsh reality of adulthood, Baumbach and co-writer/star Greta Gerwig focus on an awkward, stunted 27 year old whose free-spirited artist routine isn't cute anymore. Gerwig plays Frances, a dancer who is too old to be budding and too struggling to be hopeful. She can't sustain a relationship, she can barely keep up with rent, and she's the only person who still thinks that she will make it as a dancer. She's full of spirit, though, so she's likable if not sympathetic.

Frances needs to get her shit together, something even a younger girl she meets at a party notices. She's in an awkward place where her peers are getting married, building careers, having kids, and transitioning from the world of all-night benders to conversational dinner parties, and she isn't ready for any of it. Gerwig keeps Frances real without ever dipping into melodramatic highs or lows. Baumbach shoots the film in intimate black and white that seems to squeeze maximum cringe out of every uncomfortable scene.

These people and their stories can get tedious. Watching people with such privileged concerns seems trivial, but then, these are the concerns in most of our lives. In the end I recognized the charm in the story of Frances finding her way in the world, even if she was still only stumbling towards it by the film's final frame.

With Michael Esper, Michael Zegen, and Patrick Heusinger.

-MJ

DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012)

                                                                                  Above image swiped from adventuresinpoortaste.com


DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012)

Starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

A Weinstein Company/Columbia Pictures Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: R

Django (Foxx) gains his freedom from Dr. Schultz (Waltz), a dentist turned bounty hunter and together they look for Django's wife, Broomhilda (Washington), who’s sold separately from him following a failed escape attempt. Calvin Candie (DiCaprio) now owns Broomhilda and the race is on to see if they can take possession of her before anyone in "Candyland" catches on.

DJANGO UNCHAINED again finds Tarantino's head exploding with riffs cribbed from older exploitation films. Unlike his previous INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, here he lets it all bleed out mercilessly without a shred of maturity, leaving much undone and unanswered. Wanting to be a spaghetti western shoehorned into a '70's Falconhurst styled slavesploitation film, DJANGO never finds the proper tone. Humor can be mined from racism when handled properly but it's harder to find it in the subject of slavery. Needless to say, Tarantino doesn't find it. DJANGO lumbers aimlessly, the shifts in narrative are clumsy and for a $100 million movie, DJANGO looks and feels rather cheap. It does an excellent job visually as a western but fails to catch any mood of the antebellum South. The Django/Broomhilda subplot: stinker.

 

Packed with blink and you'll miss cameos from Don Stroud, Franco Nero, Tom Wopat, Lee Horsley, Russ Tamblyn and Robert Carradine, DJANGO has all it needs, except a steady head and heart behind the camera. A bonafide hit, although it looks like Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell saw this one coming. With James Remar, Bruce Dern, Zoe Bell, Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher and Don Johnson as Big Daddy. 

-EH

 

THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (1976)

THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (1976)

Directed by Charles B. Pierce

Starring Ben Johnson, Andrew Prine and Dawn Wells

An American International Pictures Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: R

                                                                                    Above screenshot swiped from Manchester Morgue


Charles B. Pierce hit his stride on this one, a docudrama of The Texas Moonlight Murders that tormented the town of Texarkana for a short period in 1946. Undeniably creepy, chock full of local color and technically proficient with excellent use of Panavision widescreen, TOWN retells the murders with visual class and somewhat decent taste (not counting the trombone scene). Anchored by the fine pairing of Johnson as Texas Ranger Morales and Prine as local Sheriff Deputy Ramsey, TOWN only suffers due to pacing; it's mid 70's shuffle slows the story but that's due to how we expect a film to play in the 21st century.  Essential for any serial killer cinema enthusiast. With Jimmy Clem, the film's writer Earl E. Smith as a doctor and director Pierce as a bumbling cop named Spark Plug.

The 35mm print shown at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, May of 2013, looked brand new; nary a speck of damage and beautiful color. A Blu-Ray from Shout Factory is released on May 21st, 2013.  The inevitable remake is underway with Veronica Cartwright and Gary Cole. 

More on the actual murders here.

-EH

ROOM 237 (2012)

Room 237 (2012)

Directed by Rodney Ascher

Featuring Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, John Fell Ryan, and Jay Weidner.

An IFC Midnight Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: None 

Audiences looking for the documentary film Room 237 to shed any light on Stanley Kubrick's 1980 classic The Shining, probably walked out of the theater disappointed. As it turns out, Rodney Ascher wasn't out to make a movie about The Shining as much as he was interested in using The Shining to explore obsession. With a vocal and obsessive community of Shining analysts and conspiracy theorists as his subjects, Ascher uses footage from The Shining and voice over narration to chart a path from deep appreciation to wildly spurious speculation about Kubrick's message.

If a film ever invited this kind of frame-by-frame nitpicking, The Shining might be it. Kubrick's meticulous eye for detail and composition don't jive with continuity errors and illogical geography. It's easy enough to make the case that a lot of what doesn't feel or look right in Kubrick's film is there to throw the audience off, but each of the theories in Room 237 goes much farther. The theories suggest that The Shining is about the holocaust, or the displacement of Native Americans, or that it is full of subliminal images.  By the end of Ascher's film, I wasn't curious about any of that, but I was fascinated by the lengths to which people had gone to project their own agendas and ideas on a piece of pop art. It also introduced me to The Shining Forwards and Backwards, which is something I need to see in a theater now! -MJ

WRONG (2012)

Wrong (2012)

Starring Jack Plotnick, Eric Judor, & Alexis Dziena.

 Directed by Quentin Dupieux

A Drafthouse Films Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: None

Wrong is about a man named Dolph Springer who simply and suddenly doesn't feel right in the world. His dog goes missing. The palm tree in his back yard mysteriously changes to a pine. It rains inside his office on sunny days. His most human connection is with the girl who answers the phone when he calls to order a pizza, but even that derails into a conceptual deconstruction of the pizza company's logo. Dupieux wrote, directed, and scored Wrong and his background in music and music videos informs everything about it. His features are high on concept and slight on narrative, but they are rich with peculiar details.

The easy and dismissive take on Wrong is that it's quirky for the sake of being quirky, but Dupieux exhibits an emotional honesty in all of the absurd paces that he puts his characters through. Dolph spends his days sitting at a desk at a job where he has been fired, in an office where it rains from the ceiling but no one seems to notice and it's silly but it also feels like the truest way to reflect the droning malaise of modern office work. When a private detective shows that he can use one of Dolph's dog's turds like a security camera to see what happened  right before the dog left the yard, the scene works as both a dumb gag and an indictment on the belief that "you can do anything with technology."

Dupieux may just be having a laugh, but if so, he's doing it with a unique voice that's got my attention. Also starring Steve Little and William Fichtner -MJ

UPSTREAM COLOR (2013)

Upstream Color (2013)

Starring Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig and Thiago Martins. 

Directed by Shane Carruth

MPAA Theatrical Rating: None

Worms. Pigs. Sounds. Strange flowers. Psychic visions. Upstream Color makes little effort to meet the viewer halfway, but then, why should it? People got so worked up about the plot mechanics of Shane Carruth's first film, the excellent time travel mindfuck Primer, that they missed what the movie was about altogether. That Primer's twisted timeline was interesting enough to warrant multiple viewings is a testament to Carruth's writing, but at its heart, Primer was a film about trust more than temporal paradox. In the same way, it's easy to focus on Upstream Color's obtuseness or its sound design or its indignant lack of exposition, but in the end, it feels like a simple story about the ways in which people connect in the face of a trauma.

The plot involves plants that beget worms that secret some kind of neurological agent that works either as a hypnotic drug or a magical mind control device. Ultimately, while that's interesting to dissect, none of it matters because if you substitute the worms and the "Sampler" and the many inexplicable things that happen in the movie for some real tragedy that is equally inexplicable and senseless, you can see what Carruth is after. Upstream Color will likely be completely engrossing or completely off-putting, and I can understand both reactions. I think that may be a sign of greatness. With Kathy Carruth, Meredith Burke and Andreon Watson.

SQUEEZE PLAY (1979)

SQUEEZE PLAY (1979)

Starring Jenni Hetrick, Jim Harris, Diana Valentien, Helen Campitelli, Sonya Jennings, Melissa Michaels, Rick Gitlin, Alford Corley

Directed by Lloyd Kaufman

A Troma Films Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: R

(SQUEEZE PLAY collage swiped from JonathanRosenbaum.com)

SQUEEZE PLAY may be the best ladies softball film ever made. And it holds the distinct honor of being the only movie where a softball gets batted into a guy's ass. I think it also has the distinct honor of being the only movie where all the main characters work at a mattress plant.  There's barely a plot, it's strung together with various low jinks and Lloyd Kaufman never misses an opportunity to ogle some tit.

Samantha hates softball because it keeps her fiancé Wes from spending time with her. After making him promise to give up softball, Wes reneges so Samantha, just to be bitchy, comes up with the idea that he should put a woman on the team. Mary Lou, a Georgia Peach with the worst southern accent ever, is on the run from her father (because he thinks she's a lesbian, I'm not really sure) and just happens to be a world-class pitcher. After Mary Lou's disastrous try-out, the girls at the mattress plant start their own team, challenging the men to a battle of the sexes in the climatic game. They also have to enter the wet T-shirt contest as a climatic game warmup.

Horrible jokes and sight gags come fast and furious; the more they miss, the more fun the movie becomes. You can't help but love a film that ends a scene with some extra off screen yelling, "fuck". Look for Irwin Keyes as a bouncer. - EH

HITCHCOCK (2012)

HITCHCOCK (2012)

Starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Biel.

A Fox Searchlight Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: PG-13

The making of PSYCHO told through the marriage of Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville. A fun and forgettable piece of amiable fluff, HITCHCOCK is pitch perfect and expertly cast, even if Hopkins is a bit puffy in his prosthetics. Mirren gives an engaging performance as Hitchcock's long suffering wife; she's clearly having a blast with the role. In fact, everyone seems to be having a good time on this picture, from the honeywagon drivers to the director, imbuing the film with an infectious, sunny disposition. The kind of picture that once it hits cable, you'll find yourself stumbling into the middle and getting caught up in it all over again. With Toni Collette, Danny Huston, Ralph Macchio, Kurtwood Smith, James D'Arcy and Michael Wincott as Ed Gein.- EH

THE HUNGER GAMES (2012)

THE HUNGER GAMES (2012)

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Stanley Tucci, Wes Bentley, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks and Donald Sutherland

Directed by Gary Ross

A Lionsgate Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: PG-13

BATTLE ROYALE gets a mainstream makeover and becomes a literary and cinematic hit. By setting it in a futuristic, acid-color dystopia, school age children murdering one another sits better with Americans. Lawrence plays Katniss (one of the most annoying character names ever), a sassy, outdoorsy non-conformist who volunteers to take her sister's place in this year's Hunger Games, a to-the-death blood sport of children killing children for fame and glory. Considered an offering to the central government and punishment for the adults in 12 "districts" who rebelled against it, the Hunger Games have become big business and an effective tool for control. That is until Katniss arrives. Not as bad as you'd think but not very compelling either. Like most Hollywood genre movies today, it's too long, too sappy and poorly paced, squeezing out any suspense to be had. You're better off cozying up with Kinji Fukusaku's ROYALE. Two sequels are threatened. With Liam Hensworth, Willow Shields, Josh Hutcherson and for some reason, Lenny Kravitz. - EH

THE LORDS OF SALEM (2012)

THE LORDS OF SALEM (2012)

Starring Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeffrey Daniel Phillips, Judy Geeson, Dee Wallace, Patricia Quinn, Bruce Davison, Ken Foree, Meg Foster and Maria Conchita Alonso

Written and Directed by Rob Zombie

An Anchor Bay Films Release

MPAA Theatrical Rating: R

Zombie’s most accomplished and mature work to date is also his most ludicrous, which is especially hard to believe after HALLOWEEN II. Sheri Moon Zombie plays a Salem, MA disc jockey with a witch problem after a Satanic record is dropped off for her at the station. All kinds of interesting visuals abound but the script ultimately fails, once again making Zombie as writer/director his own worst enemy. After almost 80 minutes of poor storytelling, he just shits the bed and gives up in the third act, at which this whole mess devolves into an extended Rob Zombie music video punctuated by the Velvet Underground. You really want this film to be better than it is. With Andrew Prine, Michael Berryman, Clint Howard and Camille Keaton. - EH