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Shared Darkness

A Communal Life in Film, Examined

Daily Archives: August 15, 2013

Do Not Disturb

A grim but hackishly assembled horror flick, Do Not Disturb takes a couple of decent ideas for twisty genre fun and puts them through a cheap and dispiritingly familiar filter. The result — inclusive of one of the last performances of Corey Haim — is nothing more than a big yawn.

The film’s story centers around Hollywood screenwriter Don Malek (Stephen Geoffreys), who’s holed up in a seedy hotel working on a diabolical plan for revenge. The twist is that he’s not just writing about a bloodthirsty serial killer, but instead doing some demented air-quote research that actually involves a bunch of nasty killing. Geoffreys has an intriguing off-kilter quality that’s the right match for this sort of material, but writer-director-producer BC Furtney doesn’t plumb Don’s instability in interesting ways, instead preferring to merely cycle mechanically through crap, lowest-common-denominator set-ups and payoffs. The end can’t come soon enough, even for more forgiving horror fans inclined to grade such material on a curve.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case stored in a complementary cardboard slipcover, Do Not Disturb comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional closed captioning for the hearing-impaired. Unfortunately, apart from some chapter stops, there are no supplemental bonus features contained herein. To purchase the DVD via Half, click here. D- (Movie) D (Disc)

Super Storm (Blu-ray)

SyFy Channel original movie Super Storm, originally titled Mega Cyclone, doesn’t have airborne sharks, alas. But it does deliver an appropriate level of tongue-in-cheek mayhem.

Penned by Ice Quake writer David Ray and helmed by Snowmageddon director Sheldon Wilson, this willfully straightforward and occasionally schlocky FX spectacle isn’t aiming for Academy Awards. But it comes up with a halfway decent hybrid framing device for its silly chaos and destruction, making it a sort of matinee-throwback B-feature to more gargantuan Hollywood enviro-disaster flicks like Dante’s Peak or The Day After Tomorrow.

Its story, set in the small town Midwest, centers around Will (Brett Dier), the stereotypically disaffected son of divorced Jason (Richard Sutcliffe) and Andrea Newmar (Leah Cairns), the latter of whom is the town’s sheriff. When the giant red spot on the planet Jupiter triggers a spate of electrical storms, cyclones and tornados across the United States, Will and his high school detention mates — Megan (Luisa D’Oliveira), Susan (Cindy Busby) and Lawson (Riley Dolman) — team up with Gunter (Mitch Pileggi) and Carolyn (Erica Cerra) to try to unlock and utilize the lessons of a special science project in order to turn the tide on Mother Nature’s unleashed carnarge. The CGI work here is shaky, and some of the wisecracking kind of ridiculous, but the youth-oriented spin on genre formula actually works decently, delivering a kitschy slice of throwaway entertainment suitable for the tween set.

Housed in a regular case, Super Storm comes to Blu-ray presented in 1080p, in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with a suitably robust Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio track (kind of what one might expect/hope for from a movie called Super Storm) and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Unfortunately, apart from chapter stops, there are no supplemental bonus features herein, not even EPK-style on-set interviews. Nevertheless, to purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C- (Disc)

Clear History


As both a writer and performer, Larry David has long mined anxiety, irritation, social faux pas and self-flagellating neuroses for all sorts of uncomfortable laughs. It seems no empty pose, though, this persona; it feels hard-wired to his soul. Without the angst, and its slip-sleeve of puffed-up, mock-selfishness he got to slip on for HBO’s Emmy Award-winning Curb Your Enthusiasm, would there actually be a Larry David?

Well, Clear History provides no answer to that question, for those wondering. Debuting this week on HBO, the movie finds David re-teaming, in multi-hyphenate fashion, with three of his Seinfeld and Curb collaborators (writers Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer), for another comic tale of put-upon exasperation. The result starts strong but fades in the end, like a sprinter out of the blocks in a mid-distance race with which he or she is unaccustomed. Gags and joke writing are given favor over deeper characterizations, a tack which works for a while but eventually undercuts what is a quite promising set-up.

Clear History opens in 2003, with a nearly unrecognizable David starring as Nathan Flomm, the marketing expert at an upstart California electric car company headed up by Will Haney (Jon Hamm). When Nathan balks at Haney naming the set-to-debut vehicle after his son Howard (who is in turn named after Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead), he impulsively gives up his 10 percent stake in the company and resigns. Naturally, this movie existing in David’s world, the car becomes a $10-billion, zeitgeist-defining hit.

Needing to pretty much drop off the face of the Earth, Nathan assumes the name of Rolly DaVore and moves to Martha’s Vineyard. Nobody there knows his secret, not even best friend Frank (Danny McBride). Ten years later, though, Nathan-as-Rolly is happy and an integrated part of this community, even if his preoccupations — like his concern over the fact that his ex-girlfriend Wendy (Amy Ryan), may have performed oral sex on (multiple?) members of the band Chicago when last they toured in the area — are stuck in arrested development.

When a retiring Haney and his new wife Rhonda (Kate Hudson) move into the neighborhood, however, Nathan sees his well-ordered world crumbling down around him. He considers fleeing, but then has a better idea: he’ll blow up Haney’s mansion, which construction crews are in the process of putting the finishing touches on. Through Frank, Nathan connects with a couple of idiot quarry workers, Joe and Rags (Micheal Keaton and Bill Hader, respectively), and even a shady Chechnyan black market dealer named Tibor (Liev Schreiber). Antics ensue.

The rhythms of much of the movie’s patter are familiar, and as funneled through David’s angsty kvetching a lot of this material connects with no small amusement. Rants about the placement of electrical outlets, placing silverware on napkins instead of directly on a table, the sincerity of apologies and why Nathan doesn’t reply to birthday emails (“There are so many it turns into a job, which kind of defeats the purpose”) are funny, and definitely bring a smile to the face. Director Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland), too, keeps things moving at a generally good clip.

But if Clear History has energy to spare, for sure, it also lacks the verve and intellectually compacted punch of the best of Curb Your Enthusiasm. At several points, the script plots a seemingly wild change of course only to abandon its outrageousness in midstream. As its story winds its way into the second and third acts, ideas are engaged in the most fitful fashion, while certain potentially rich details (Haney’s seemingly incongruous predilection for Ayn Rand, for instance) are abandoned completely. Characters become servants to the writers’ joke-writing instincts, rather than the other way around. There’s enough here to still merit a curious click. But Clear History may not be what hardcore David acolytes most crave. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Clear History plays throughout the month of August on HBO and its affiliated channels; check local listings for showtimes. (HBO Films, unrated, 100 minutes)

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