A full review will be dropping later in the week, but it’s worth noting that John Cusack’s War, Inc., releasing this weekend in New York and Los Angeles, is a hot mess. The film is a sprawling, alleged satire about a shadowy gunslinger-fixer (Cusack) who trips to a fictional Middle Eastern country that the United States has invaded — and is now being occupied by a private army fronted by a corporation run by the former American vice president (Dan Aykroyd) — to both bump off a foreign dignitary who has the temerity to want to build his own oil pipeline and, for some reason never quite made clear, preside over the impending marriage of a Middle Eastern pop star played by Hilary Duff.
There are a few pockets of very small intrigue here, mostly owing to the charmed participation of Marisa Tomei, as a hard-driving, liberal reporter who is out to expose the corruption of this massive exercise in American “branding.” When the movie stoops to contrivances to advance the relationship between she and Cusack beyond spitfire head-bumping, however, what little air there was there goes completely pfft. Apart from its simply awful construction, the most surprising thing, however, may be how tedious the film is — there’s not even the piercing, occasional amusement of diamond-brilliant, unpolished righteous anger. If capital-I indignation were going to make a scathing, satirical rebuke of American military/capitalistic arrogance, but then had a few beers, fell asleep on the couch, woke up with a start four hours later with nachos all over its shirt and MSNBC on the TV, and then just yawningly agreed with whatever Rachel Maddow was saying, and muttered, “Fucking Bush administration” under its breath, that would be this movie. It doesn’t feel thought through, honed or even self-assured, and certainly not very smart.
Billed as a Belgian underground sicko classic, writer-director Johan Vandewoestijne’s Lucker: The Necrophagous, from 1986, has the “controversial” advantage of being shocking to the film establishment of that particular place and era, but little else working in its favor. Gory but entirely thoughtless in its construction, the shoestring-budgeted, low-grade horror flick is a niche-market relic of ’80s slasher cinema that could have easily been left behind by the digital revolution, and not much missed.
The story centers around John Lucker (Nick van Suyt), a deeply disturbed serial rapist and killer locked up in a clinic after committing eight murders. After managing to escape (in a sequence owing a debt to John Carpenter’s Halloween) and dispatching a nurse and her doctor boyfriend (Carry van Middel and Frank van Laecke, respectively) in the process, Lucker flees to the city, searching for the one lone survivor, Cathy Jordan (Helga Vandevelde, above), of his previous killing spree. His disgusting rampage continues, and so more people — including a drug-peddling woman at a bar who strangely, aggressively comes on to him — all die, mostly by way of shivs to the head, eyes and gut.
The rub in all this? Lucker’s psycho-sexual kink is that he prefers his victims dead… like, way dead — rotted, skeleton-dead. There’s no back story or attempt at psychological explanation here, but neither is Lucker a lurking boogeyman-type flick, in the vein of something like When a Stranger Calls. Much of the film unfolds from arguably Lucker’s point-of-view, but because the story is so brazenly designed to air-quote shock and only shock — as much as William Castle’s old vibrating seat cushions — one feels nothing, except for the impulse for this to pass. This paper-mache construction, as much as its middling to very poor execution — save for some nice musical touches — render the entire affair a big yawn.
For many years, Lucker — owing as much to a reputation earned by its absence as anything else, it seems — was one of the more sought-after and widely distributed films on the “grey market.” The quality of the movie notwithstanding, distributor Synapse Films has done a fine job bringing marginalized foreign genre titles and alt-cinema to DVD, and their treatment of Lucker is no exception. Housed in a regular Amray case and presented in a brushed-up, if still a bit grainy 16:9 anamorphic widescreen transfer, the film’s DVD debut comes with Vandewoestijne’s full participation in restoration, as well as a new director’s cut, running a trim 68 minutes. Additionally, there’s the original, 74-minute VHS version of the movie, presented in English with Dutch subtitles. This latter version basically has a few more “socially redeeming”-type environmental inserts, like Lucker attempting to hitchhike, and wandering about the city, which are the most (read: only, even vaguely) interesting part of the movie to begin with.
Apart from this, there’s also a 36-minute making-of featurette built around a present-day interview with Vandewoestijne, who more than a bit resembles Jon Lovitz’s character from The Critic. The writer-director snickeringly admits the purely naked shock motives of his story’s inception (other various projects he pitched were turned down for government-financed funding), and intimates that he misled a bank into providing the bulk of the movie’s $30,000 budget by being less than forthcoming about the film’s script. Vandewoestijne shares a few anecdotes about the eight-day, April 1985 shoot, but a fair portion of the chat is dedicated to the film’s post-production hang-ups (“The distributor was only producing films in order to find girls, and to fuck them,” he says, charmingly) and its clean-up two decades later. Interspersed throughout are a handful of out-of-focus set photos, as well as some deleted scenes. Vandewoestijne makes a case that there are various artistic as well as business reasons for their exclusion, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that a sequence in a video store with a prominently displayed poster of Return of the Jedi, plus other movie paraphernalia, wouldn’t have passed clearance for theatrical distribution, even in France, where the movie initially played. For more information, or to purchase the film on DVD, click here. F (Movie) B (Disc)
The success of 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give, which grossed $125 million domestically en route to a worldwide haul of $267 million, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it reminded audiences — and especially casting directors, filmmakers and film executives looking to tap back into the lucrative, upscale boomer market — what they loved about Diane Keaton. On the downside, it spawned wearying mock-entertainment like last year’s Because I Said So and, now, Mad Money.
Directed by Callie Khouri (the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Thelma and Louise), and starring Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes, Mad Money tells the story of three ordinary women who decide to do something extraordinary — rob the Federal Reserve Bank. White-collar Kansas City suburbanites Bridget and Don Cardigan (Keaton and Ted Danson) have racked up an immense debt ever since he lost his job as a consultant, or whatever it is rich, white-haired dudes do, so Bridget — heretofore blind to the financial particulars of the household — gets a job as a janitor at the Fed, where old money is shredded, in order to avoid foreclosure on her home.
There she meets Nina Brewster (Latifah), a single mother of two boys, and Jackie Truman (Holmes), a flighty, gum-chewing… idiot? I don’t know — Jackie’s defining characteristic seems to be the fact that she likes to wear headphones, lots of flair, and daaaaaance to the music. At any rate, money at the Fed is destroyed through a labyrinthine process, but Bridget figures out that using a store-bought padlock and some well-planned timing, there’s a way to “liberate” old bills about to be destroyed, and smuggle them out with the trash. Working to outsmart their haughty, uptight supervisor, Mr. Glover (Stephen Root, of Office Space), so begins a slow-bleed robbery, with each of the women’s men (Don, plus Jackie’s boyfriend and Nina’s new crush, a shy guard at the building) eventually getting in on the action.
Mad Money is a sort of deranged cocktail of Set It Off, Fun with Dick and Jane and The First Wives Club, if only the worst parts of those films were stitched together, around some loosely defined, femme-centric, Up with People! idea. The movie doesn’t really ever take the specifics of its plotting very seriously, not to mention the fact that Bridget’s utter naivete at her family’s dire straits renders her later criminal masterminding more than a bit unbelievable. No, Mad Money is instead more concerned with merely taking contrasting comedic styles and rubbing them up against one another, willy-nilly. An ill-conceived framing device only makes things worse, more tedious.
Tone is a big problem here. Latifah’s demeanor is more or less understated and — apart from the
wincing harping on her seven-year sexless streak, which comes off as an
unintentional commentary on race, big-boned girls, or both, since she’s
by far the closest thing to a real gal on screen — she nominally roots
the movie in something approaching a tangible carbon copy of reality. All gassy, wide-eyed, kewpie doll confusion, though, Holmes just offers up a wince-inducing catalogue of ditzy mannerisms, which makes the fact that Jackie suddenly becomes a MacGyver-esque bomb expert in a third act sequence all the more baffling. Then there’s Keaton’s wheel-spinning shtick, an appropriation of wildly pantomimed signposts of emotional constipation and sped-up Jeff Goldblum-esque verbal detours. “Improvisation,”
as it were, was clearly encouraged during the film’s making, but what
it mostly results in are all the characters merely talking over one another
in wound-up, oh-no-you-didn’t style. This gets old — fast.
From frame one, Glover, too, is presented as strangely antagonistic, even if his oft-repeated admonition of watchful warning (“Everyone, everywhere, every minute…”) doesn’t really make much sense. Surprisingly, though, the movie doesn’t really satisfyingly coalesce around him as a villain, which could have given the proceedings a nice little 9 to 5-type kick. Alas, it’s too busy trying to somehow argue that its protagonists have been squeezed out of the American dream, despite all evidence to the contrary. I know what you’re thinking, though: Does the movie have a scene in which its characters dance, and roll
around on a bed in piles of money after having thrown them up into the
air in celebratory fashion? You bet your sweet ass it does. If that and that alone makes you cackle in delight, no words from me can save you from this, or dissuade you from thinking it’s deliriously witty.
Housed in a slightly-thinner-than-normal fold-out case, Mad Money comes with a solid video transfer and choice of two video presentations — cropped full-frame or 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, which preserves the aspect ratio of its original theatrical presentation. There are also English language Dolby digital 5.1 and 2.0 surround sound audio tracks. Apart from the theatrical trailer and previews for other Anchor Bay releases, there are two other supplemental bonus features — a feature-length audio commentary track from director Khouri, in which she ladles praise on the cast and mentions
that the movie has its roots in a true, albeit dramatically altered, British story; and a nine-minute behind-the-scenes featurette peppered with interviews with cast and crew. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) C+ (Disc)
How did this escape my attention for so long — the fact that someone actually created Barack Obama shoes?
Kinda funny. I guess it might risk being considered condescending if someone came out with Hillary Clinton-inspired business high heels. Flats, maybe? I don’t know, but one thing’s for certain — any John McCain kicks would have to rock the velcro.
I thought about setting up a couple typewriters and letting a gaggle of monkeys (I have some that apparently live nearby, since I frequently hear their shrieks at my pool) pound out a review for Ape Genius, but in the end I didn’t, because I couldn’t be assured they could meet a deadline.
I know what you’re thinking: “Do I have enough weed to get me through the rest of the month?” I know what else you’re thinking: “A gaggle of monkeys? Isn’t that geese?” Aha — my point precisely! Do monkeys and their ilk have the same grasp with word association that humans do? Questions like these are addressed in Ape Genius, an hour-long NOVA special that plumbs the connections between humankind and our nearest relatives in the animal world.
It’s easy to feel empathy for the great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas. For decades we’ve known that some of them can use simple tools and even be trained to communicate with us in sign language. Their faces and eyes are expressive, they have a social component to their interaction with the world, and they have some of the largest brains in proportion to body size of any animals. But just how smart are these animals?
In co-production with National Geographic, this mini-documentary explores the secret mental lives of apes, and specifically the small yet crucial gap between ape intellects and our own. Every time we’ve defined a mental ability that we think is uniquely human — everything from culture to simple math — the great apes have it too. But now scientists are zeroing in on tantalizing hints of what that essential difference may be. Besides its hugely entertaining sequences of chimps staging pool parties and working vending machines, Ape Genius reveals a new and deeper understanding of our profound kinship with our primate relatives. Naturally, Ape Genius is fascinating in no small part because of the manner in which it points up the complex nature — at once defined and elusive — of exactly what it means to be human. In this respect, writer-director John Rubin’s film works for both high- and lowbrow audiences, entertaining and engaging them, and allowing them to reflect only as much as they want.
Housed in a regular Amray case, Ape Genius is presented in 16×9 anamorphic widescreen, with closed captions, video descriptions for the visually impaired and downloadable, printable materials for educators. There are, alas, no other supplemental DVD features. For more information, or to purchase the disc, click here. B+ (Movie) D (Disc)
Acting is of course a hard-knock lifestyle, with daily judgments from casting directors, filmmakers, audiences, and then finally the actual critics. But debut directors also have it tough. First they have to compete in tooth-and-nail fashion for one of a limited number of studio jobs, and then hope the movie does well enough to book another gig. Nicholas Stoller though, had a not-so-secret weapon. A writer on TV’s Undeclared and a collaborator with Judd Apatow on the script for Fun with Dick and Jane, Stoller is the first-time helmer of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, one of a dozen movies produced by Apatow since 2005’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin hit it big at the box office. On the eve of his film’s release, we met up for a chat over coffee, which is excerpted here, for H Magazine. For separate talk about the movie’s 83 frames of penis, meanwhile, click here.
It’s never really a good idea to have a character, late in your movie, say, “I don’t understand,” and then have that followed by a lengthy recap explanation of what’s just happened. It rather needlessly and obviously opens one up for all sorts of exasperated cracks about shoddy, tangled storytelling. And yet that’s just what happens at the end of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the hotly anticipated latest installment in the whip-cracking, period piece adventure trilogy.
When we last saw Harrison Ford’s globe-trotting archeologist Indiana Jones nearly two decades ago, the year on screen was 1938, and the world stood on the brink of war as Dr. Jones chased down evildoers to find the Holy Grail. Nineteen years later, he’s cracking his whip again, and many things have changed but some have remained the same. Again the world is at a precipice, this time caused by the specter of nuclear annihilation, and Indy’s struggle is to once more ensure that a precious, mysterious object remains safe from those bent on destroying humanity.
The early scenes find a captured Indiana Jones grappling with “Stalin’s fair-haired gal” Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett, exercising a severe accent and an even more severe hairstyle), a brilliant and ruthless Russian scientist intent on scooping up items of paranormal interest, with an eye toward their potential military application. So when the movie opens, we’re back in the same massive government warehouse glimpsed at the end of 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the spoils of unearthed civilizations and all sorts of other secret artifacts are kept.
With both his father and good friend and colleague Dr. Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) having passed away, Indiana is now a bit more isolated and alone in the world, even though new dean Charles Stanforth (Jim Broadbent) has his back, and is a trusted friend. Pal George “Mac” Michale (Ray Winstone) is a bit more suspicious, though; he sells Indy out, then much later claims it was a game of play-acted double agent, which seems curious given all the very real bullets flying around in the opening act.
After escaping both Spalko’s grasp and a nuclear test blast (more on this in a moment), Indiana is approached by Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf, above right), a young, headstrong biker kid who apparently took all his clothing and grooming cues from Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Mutt pitches a tale of woe related to an old mutual friend, Professor Oxley (John Hurt), and after escaping some more Ruskies, he and Indiana set out for the jungle in search of the title’s crystal skull, eventually reconnecting with Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), spitfire leading lady of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
All the proper details of nostalgia are pretty much spot on, and Ford’s well-worn embodiment of the timeless adventure hero is equally enjoyable, particularly for boomer audiences who may have long ago dragged their kids to see the original trilogy. Part of the problem here, though, lies in the updating of the character and the passage of time. Director Steven Spielberg and his cohorts wisely acknowledge Indiana’s advanced age, in both word and deed, and yet also cling strongly to the same B-movie logic that allows for cartoonish set pieces and escapes. These sequences are technically of a piece with the rest of the series (after all, who can forget Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom‘s airplane dive on an inflatable raft, down a snowy mountainside, and then into a river?), but come off as cheats in a sense, because what’s the point of exposing Indiana’s fallibility if it doesn’t translate to some degree to his feats of derring-do? This credibility gap is exposed early on when Indiana Jones ducks into a lead-lined refrigerator to protect himself from a nuclear test. The lesson: if you don’t accept this, here, as a sort of live-action Looney Tunes cartoon, you’re going to have issues with how things unfold. (On the other hand, now we have a good idea of how Indy will die — from cancer from radiation poisoning.)
Spielberg, of course, is a technical maestro on many levels, so the movie more or less quickens pulses when it should — you can easily envision the theme park ride, complete with wild jungle chase and CGI ants — and there’s some pithy, whip-crack enjoyableness to some of the dialogue (“You fight like a young man — eager to begin, quick to finish!” says Spalko to Mutt at one point, during a sword fight set on speeding jeeps). But if anything, the script here — credited to David Koepp, from a story by George Lucas and Jeff Nathanson — seems a bit bored with its own labyrinthine back story. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull introduces the tantalizing possibility of aliens, or “inter-dimensional beings,” which would seem an interesting way to bridge the E.T./Close Encounters of the Third Kind/A.I. branch of Spielberg’s canon with his swashbuckling instincts, but gets too bogged down with Hurt’s catatonic Professor Oxley, a yawning connective plot element.
Indiana Jones is at his best as a character when grappling with or confronted by something parallel to his own nature — be it amoral plunderer/shadow self Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman) from the first film, or the complicated nature of his bickering relationship with his father (Sean Connery) in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Marion and Mutt are meant to provide that here, but — while offering some fitful fun — that strand doesn’t sing as a legitimate throughline. That fact, combined with the aforementioned criticisms, creates somewhat of a strange generational gap — and probably still the first wholly nostalgic action adventure blockbuster. (Paramount, PG-13, 124 minutes)
A decently sourced tip came my way that 20-year-old adult film star Sasha Grey (below) is possibly set to star in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience — his next down-and-dirty, HD-lensed flick, shot in the same seat-of-the-pants fashion as Full Frontal and Bubble.
I say possibly because depending on whom you believe she’s either already been cast, and the announcement is under wraps for reasons of publicity control, or it’s yet to be finalized. Either way, the fact that Grey is even under serious consideration for the role (Soderbergh previously indicated a desire to go with unknowns, while also mulling over an adult film starlet for the lead) while at the same time in the midst of what by all accounts is an ascendant career path in the flesh-pic biz makes for interesting theory and speculation. Other porn stars (notably Traci Lords, Ron Jeremy and of course now Jenna Jameson) have gone “legit,” but mostly toward the tail end of their on-camera careers, and with limited success or mainstream penetration. (Yeah, I went there.) Appearing in a movie for an Oscar-winning director — no matter how much of a niche market one-off it is — is a no-brainer for Grey, I get it, but this is all perhaps most interesting for the manner in which it actualizes the merging of American narrative film and the sensory-overload pleasures of adult flicks, which long ago pervaded Hollywood action cinema.
Set for simultaneous distribution across various platforms, as with Bubble, the ultra-low-budget, Los Angeles-set movie will examine the world of a $10,000-a-pop call girl (presumably, Soderbergh pal Julia Roberts will not cameo), and the stable of regular clients who pay for her company. Soderbergh will shot the movie — hashed out with screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien during the shoot for Ocean’s Thirteen — later this fall, after wrapping up the very Michael Clayton-sounding The Informant, starring Matt Damon, for Warner Bros.
For a Three Stooges preview clip from the forthcoming second volume DVD release of their voluminous archive of two-reel shorts, click here. For a review of the first volume, meanwhile, click here.
The 2005 Swedish fantasy thriller Storm, from co-directors Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein, hits DVD this week via TLA Releasing’s “Danger After Dark” imprint. Starring Eric Ericson, Eva Rose, Lina Englund, Karl Norrhall and Sasha Becker, the film is described as a cross between The Matrix and Nightwatch — a thrill ride with gut-punching action and gory murders, but presumably no Keanu Reeves. Ericson stars as Donny, a slacker whose life takes a terrifying turn when a fiery-haired woman enters his life possessing a box which may hold the answers to the mystery of human existence. Plunged into a harrowing adventure, the pair travel through time and fight off dangerous assassins bent on claiming the mysterious object. But time is quickly running out for Donny, and soon he’s caught up in the battle between good and evil, leaving the very future of mankind in his bloody hands. Housed in a clear Amray case, the DVD comes in 1.85 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby 5.1 surround sound Swedish language track with optional English subtitles, as well as an English language dubbed version. To watch the movie’s trailer, click here.
For those in the Los Angeles area, a restored and uncut version of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate will screen at the Aero Theatre
on Thursday, May 22, at 7:30 p.m., as part of the venue’s ongoing series of the favorite films of quasi-retired Los Angeles Times film critic Kevin Thomas, who will introduce the screening — presumably not raving in foaming-mouth fashion about how he needs production notes before it can begin. Cimino’s sprawling, epic anti-Western, from 1980, was one of the most hotly debated films of its time, a blockbuster whose budget spiraled out of control, nearly bankrupting United Artists and hastening the embattled company’s sale to MGM. Did that color its reception? Sure, you bet. Is it still a hot mess? Yes, indeed. The uncut version, by the way? Three hours and 39 minutes, for those counting.
The Aero Theatre
is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Tickets for this movie, as well as other special events, are available through Fandango, but for 24-hour recorded
information on directions and the Aero’s upcoming schedule,
phone (323) 466-FILM.
