By Gary Dretzka Dretzka@moviecitynews.com
The DVD Wrapup: Godzilla, Girl in Yellow Boots, Last Passenger, My Name Is A, Calling, Come Morning, Reign, Hillbilly Butcher … More
Godzilla: Blu-ray
To paraphrase a much tortured aphorism from the Savoyard intellectual Joseph de Maistre, “Every generation has the Godzilla it deserves.” In fact, every new generation since 1954 has gotten several new fire-breathing lizards, however, whether we deserved one or not. First introduced in post-WWII Japan as the King of the Monsters, the daikaiju and other giant monsters were Japan’s metaphorical response to America’s war-ending bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even then, the gargantuan creature looked as if it had escaped from a toy factory. And, yet, Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and other irradiated critters captured the fancy of movie audiences around the world. Not all iterations of Godzilla have gone on to make a lot of money, but there’s always been a few geniuses in Hollywood and Tokyo who think they can milk a few more dollars from the franchise. The last version I reviewed was the 1998 Roland Emmerich/Dean Devlin turkey, which laid a giant egg with critics and underperformed on the world stage. It was easy to believe that everyone involved in the enterprise had phoned in their assignment and relied on the special-effects wizards to carry the load. Sixteen years later, this generation’s Godzilla is a marked improvement on that movie and everybody involved appears to have earned their pay. Even though it cost a bloody fortune to make and market, Gareth Edwards and Max Borenstein’s reptilian thriller probably made someone some money, somewhere. Most critics gave it a passing grade, as well. If the special effects occasionally overshadowed the acting and dialogue, they never made the characters look superfluous or out of scale to the monsters. It helped that this Godzilla reserved an ounce or two of compassion for those wee humans, as well at its feet. When confronted with an equally dangerous threat from another mutated killer, the King is forced to choose between saving mankind or his own substantial backside. Or, perhaps, he just dug San Francisco too much to watch it be destroyed by giant bat creatures.
I was surprised to find Oscar-winner Juliette Binoche (The English Patient) and Oscar-nominee Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine) among the cast members, alongside Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”), David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck), Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai), Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene) and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass), who becomes the lead human by default. Neither of these esteemed actresses were given much more to do than look as if they had stepped on a landmine and knew they were going to die. Still, who knows, their presence may have added a few more Euros to the box-office total. Obviously, the last several Godzillas were designed to be seen on very large screens, with dangerously loud sound systems … in 3D, too, when possible. Warner’s Blu-ray edition does a nice job replicating the experience, sonically and visually. Much of the movie was shot at night, with flashes of brilliant colors from explosives, industrial lighting and the monster’s fiery breath. The contrasts hold true throughout, as do the dark edges of machinery, infrastructure and vegetation. I can’t vouch for the 3D presentation, but, I imagine, it provides a fair test for anyone’s expensive home-theater system. The Blu-ray bonus package isn’t all that extensive, with two sections of making-of and background featurettes, representing less than an hour’s worth of material.
That Girl in Yellow Boots
So much attention is paid to the romantic musicals churned out by Bollywood that India’s regional and independent cinemas are almost completely ignored outside the subcontinent. That hasn’t always been the case and, so long as TMC shows the occasional masterpiece by Satyajit Ray, Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy, Mehboob Khan and Raj Kapoor, there’s always the hope that American viewers will grow to love something other than Bollywood’s elaborately choreographed dance scenes, irresistible music and almost comically chaste love scenes. Lately, though, we’ve been introduced to some exciting independent titles, representing various regions, genres and economic classes, primarily on DVD. Most of them are very good, indeed. Even better than very good is Anurag Kashyap’s That Girl in Yellow Boots, which debuted at the 2010 TIFF, but only now is getting a wide release in home video. It chronicles a harrowing journey of discovery undertaken by an emotionally fragile, mixed-race Brit, Ruth Edscer (Kalki Koechlin). The recent passing of her British mother and earlier death by suicide of her 15-year-old sister has left her alone in the world. She was raised to believe that her father, Arjun Patel, deserted the family after her sister’s death and returned to India, where he simply disappeared. One day, out of the blue, Ruth receives a letter from her father, inviting her to drop by if she’s ever passing through India. That’s it … no address, no phone, no update on his life away from England. Sensing that he may have gotten a raw deal back home, Ruth wants nothing more than to be reunited with him.
The only thing Ruth has going for her, though, is the belief that he’s still working as a photographer and is likely to be living in Mumbai. It’s the Indian equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack. Spunky to the point of being foolhardy, Ruth decides to move to teeming Mumbai to begin her desperate search. Although she’s not legally allowed to work, the morally vague young woman – perfectly described as “Bugs Bunny crossed with Julia Roberts” – takes a job at a massage joint, where a “happy ending” only costs an additional 1,000 rupees. Ruth’s investigation exposes her to a seedy cross-section of Mumbai’s male population, including corrupt bureaucrats, extortionist landlords, a junkie boyfriend and his thieving cronies. Her loyal customers run the gamut from helpful older men, who welcome the opportunity to spend a few minutes with a much younger woman, to those who simply want to enjoy their “handshake” in silence. It isn’t made clear how Ruth hooked up with her useless, cocaine-addicted boyfriend, Prashant (Prashant Prakash), but he helps open our eyes to how a country dominated by men literally allows the worst of them to get away with rape and murder in their dealings with women. There’s no way to explain what happens in the final reel without revealing the story’s soul-crushing ending. Koechlin, who co-wrote That Girl in Yellow Boots with her husband, Kashyup, grew up in an Indian ashram with her French hippy parents, and understands the rhythms of Mumbai street life. Her character shouldn’t last a minute in Mumbai – not to be confused with the glitter and glamour of Bollywood – but she possesses an inner strength that trumps her vulnerability at almost every turn. The DVD adds a Q&A from a festival panel discussion.
Last Passenger: Blu-ray
Not all movies about runaway or otherwise doomed trains are exactly the same, but they share enough qualities to justify a stand-alone sub-genre of their own. Typically, the only question that requires an answer at the end of the day concerns the number of people left alive by the time the tick-tock clock hits strikes midnight. If our favorite characters are very lucky, they’ll get off the speeding train before it crashes through an unstable bridge or hits a dead-end. Agatha Christie’s many fans might not approve of such blunt story-telling, but not everyone can afford a ticket on the Orient Express. Last Passenger is a surprisingly good thriller about a runaway train, despite the absence of a known antagonist or payload of inestimable value. Not that it matters all that much where the movie is set, but almost all of the key actors are from the UK, as is co-writer/director Omid Nooshin. Nothing seems out of the ordinary when a doctor (Dougray Scott) and his young son hop a late-night commuter train, along with a stunningly beautiful blond (Kara Tointon); pain-in-the-ass Polish immigrant (Iddo Goldberg); a standoffish businessman (David Schofield); and angelic grandmother (Lindsay Duncan). There’s also an unseen engineer and ticket-taker, whose disappearance signals the first indication that something is out of whack. The second is the driver’s refusal to slow down at terminals to allow passengers to disembark. When the emergency brake fails to stop the train and calls to the engineer go unanswered, drastic action needs to be taken before it crashes. This, of course, requires one or more of the characters to risk death by separating the passenger cars from the engine. The last-ditch suicide mission never grows old. Without relying too heavily on CGI, Nooshin somehow manages to convince us of two things, 1) that the passengers are, indeed, in serious danger, and 2) that we’ll enjoy coming along for the ride. For any director, let alone a first-timer, that’s no small trick. Featurettes in the Blu-ray bonus package help explain how he pulls it off.
Hangmen Also Die: Blu-ray
Made at a time when the future of Europe was still very much in doubt, Hangmen Also Die is a broad dramatization of the manhunt that followed the assassination of SS second-in-command Reinhard Heydrich in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. The bombing of the black-hearted fiend’s open-top Mercedes was executed in May, 1942, by Czech guerrilla fighters trained in Britain. Because it took another two weeks for Heydrich to succumb to injuries and other complications, the brazen attack wasn’t widely publicized outside Czechoslovakia. That would change in 1943, when three movies were made on the subject. Among other things, the movies demonstrated that resistance fighters were in place throughout occupied Europe and no one was too powerful to be targeted for extinction. The cold reality, also exposed in the movie, was that Hitler’s Gestapo was perfectly willing to eliminate exponentially more Czechs in response to Heydrich’s assassination and their lack of cooperation in the investigation. Hundreds of men, women and children were executed on the spot or sent to death camps, in lieu of prison. Such reprisals caused Allied plotters and governments-in-exile to reconsider plans for future actions of the sort. Co-writer/director Fritz Lang and playwright Bertolt Brecht, both living in Hollywood to escape the war, combined their considerable talents on the story of assassin Dr. Franticek Svoboda (Brian Donlevy) and people of Czechoslovakia who risked their lives to support the resistance. They also devised a crowd-pleasing twist at the end, which is pure Hollywood. Among the other stars of the noir-tinged drama are Anna Lee, Gene Lockhart, Lionel Stander and an almost unrecognizable Walter Brennan. Hollywood executives were so buffaloed by Joseph McCarthy and the HUAC witch hunt that they agreed to blacklist Hangmen Also Die, because of Brecht’s participation and some dialogue believed to be pro-communist. It wouldn’t be seen again in the United States until the mid-1970s. The Cohen Media presentation restores the last few minutes of a closing montage, which was crudely deleted in some theatrical prints and many previous home video releases. The Blu-ray also adds the half-hour doc, “Story of a Hangman: Robert Gerwath on Reinhard Heydrich”; a 1942 German newsreel; a comparison of scenes before-and-after restoration; the 2014 theatrical re-release trailer; and commentary by Richard Peña, director emeritus of the New York Film Festival.
My Name Is A By Anonymous
One of the most frightening films of the 1980s was River’s Edge, a true-life horror story starring Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover, Ione Skye and Dennis Hopper. In it, the body of a girl is killed by her dimwitted boyfriend is left to decay near the spot local misfits gather to smoke pot and drink beer. None of the teens considers it their duty to report the death, or even the location of the corpse, which is an open secret among a growing number of their friends. Once seen, it’s impossible not to recall River’s Edge whenever one reads a news article about a particularly grisly crime committed by kids willing to trade their freedom for whatever thrill derives from murder. Shane Ryan’s similarly disturbing My Name Is A By Anonymous likewise is based on shockingly mindless murder, this one being the Alyssa Bustamante case, which took place in 2009, in Cole County, Missouri. Apparently, the 17-year-old killer took the life of her much younger neighbor, simply to experience what if felt like to watch someone die. Ryan takes a slightly different tack, by examining the killing of a cheerful 9-year-old girl through the eyes and backgrounds of four California girls trapped in a teenage wasteland of their own device. Outside of their homes, the girls don’t look any more alienated or depressed than the average SoCal Goth wannabe. The biggest negative influence in their lives could be the cold reality of having next to nothing to do in dusty Saugus, except throw rocks in a dry river bed and use the cameras on their cellphones to document their every move. Positive role models are nowhere to be seen and any aspirations they might have for the future don’t extend much further than the restaurant franchises and discount outlets that line the Interstate. That could all change if one of their videos went viral on YouTube, but even the least of them knows the odds against that happening.
It’s inside their threadbare homes, however, where the girls encourage their inner demons to come out to play. When they look in the mirror, all they see is their pain and emotional insecurity staring back at them. All of the teens are self-destructive in one way or another. They cut themselves and feign suicide by putting their fingers to their head and cocking their thumbs. Two, at least, have been abused sexually by the men to whom their mothers are currently married. One is so severely bulimic that she has begun to enjoy the pain that comes from regurgitating what little food she eats. They distort their pretty young faces with grotesque makeup, which becomes smeared when their tears begin to flow. Nothing suggests to viewers that any of them would find relief, catharsis or anything else in the murder of a beautiful and trusting child. It could be that they resent her as-yet-unspoiled happiness or, knowing she’ll probably end up like them, want to spare her their agony. Ryan doesn’t attempt to make excuses for the girls’ actions or suggest they might have turned out differently if they’d grown up in Boulder or Milwaukee. The only real hint comes in the title of one of two full-length re-edits included in the DVD package — “The Columbine Effect” – and, even then, there is no stockpiling of weapons or conspiratorial activities. As was the case in the actual Bustamante killing, the older girls didn’t look ahead to weigh their options or consider what life might be like for as a child in a prison built to house adults. Ryan leaves those questions for us to answer. In a very real sense, My Name Is A By Anonymous is about the horror of everyday life in a America that no longer works and rewards corruption as much as it punishes unfounded optimism. Stylistically, everything from co-star Teona Dolnikova’s atonal musical score and Arturo Guerrero’s ominously bleak cinematography, to Ryan’s razor-sharp editing, contribute to the palpable sense of dread that covers the movie like a sheet. The fact that the movie is going out straight-to-DVD has nothing to do with its quality and everything to do with its bleak subject matter. The set includes the alternate version, a deleted scene and a pair of interesting shorts.
After
If a student in a screenwriting class were asked to graft elements of Eugene O’Neill’s harrowing “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” onto a network family drama, such as “Brothers & Sisters,” the result might approximate what happens in After. I’d be very surprised to learn that director Pieter Gaspersz and writer Sabrina Gennarino had O’Neill in mind when they embarked on their story of an abjectly dysfunctional family in Upstate New York, let alone a series starring Sally Field, but there’s no ignoring the common elements, however tangential. At the core of After is the working-class Valentino family, which, when we meet them, is coming apart at its emotional seams. The patriarch, Mitch (John Doman), is a grumpy old shit who barks out orders and insults his children every time he opens his mouth. Matriarch Nora (Kathleen Quinlan) is a fragile flower to whom everyone defers and could very well have been modeled after one of Field’s many characters. The adult siblings don’t resemble each other one bit, except in their unwillingness to upset the delicate balance of their parents’ relationship. The oldest son, Christian (Pablo Schreiber), has been put in charge of the family stone-cutting business, but is paralyzed to act on its impending bankruptcy by Mitch’s refusal to answer his son’s questions. A younger son, Nicky (Adam Scarimbolo), is persona non grata in his father’s eyes for his unwillingness to play along with the family charade or aspire to anything more than being a tattoo artist and barroom brawler. Daughter Maxine (Gennarino) hopes to marry her African-American boyfriend (Darrin Dewitt Henson), but, likewise, is afraid how her father might react. While the young man is welcome to join the family at dinner, his still unsettled career path somehow brings out dad’s racism. Diane Neal plays a woman of undetermined relationship to the Valentinos – Nora’s sister, perhaps – who tends bar with Maxine, but, otherwise, serves as window dressing. I hesitate to add anything more to the synopsis, because it would necessarily add information that could spoil the next few unexpected twists, as well as a spectacularly contrived ending. It’s true, of course, that many people don’t object a whit to contrived climaxes, so far be it for me to discourage from enjoying this one, which also is loaded with more than a few ounces of familial redemption.
The Calling
As Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef, Susan Sarandon rescues this reasonably chilling, if predictable serial-killer drama from being just another hecho-en-Canada thriller with quasi-religious overtones. Micalleff is a recovering alcoholic and pill-popper, who seems perfectly placed in a small town where almost nothing of any consequence happens. Nothing, that is, until an elderly woman is found nearly behead in her home and, not far away, a wealthy horse trainer has been disemboweled in his stable. The department isn’t blessed with the latest in forensics technology, but, along a fellow detective (Gil Bellows) and a transfer cop (Topher Grace), the team’s able to connect the dots to a series of similar killings across the country. One set of clues leads them to a country priest (Donald Sutherland), who gives them a crash course in pre-Vatican mysticism and other things the Church generally keeps hidden from parishioners. Without spoiling too much of the fun in The Calling, however, let’s just say that the plot owes as much to Dr. Kevorkian as it does to the apostles of Christ. Because of this, we occasionally feel nearly as sympathetic to the killer as his victims, who aren’t innocent bystanders, exactly. In his first feature, director Jason Stone maintains a steady pace and only occasionally relies on a jump-scare to keep viewers interested. By bouncing between town and country, he’s also able to prevent our eyes from getting fixated on one or two shades of gray in the Ontario winter. Without the sterling cast – Ellen Burstyn adds her calming presence as Micallef’s mom, a retired judge – The Calling might have been forced to rely on it popularity as a mystery novel by Inger Ash Wolfe (a.k.a., Michael Redhill). The DVD adds interviews and making-of material.
Julius Caesar Against the Pirates
Heavily influenced by Hollywood’s sword-and-sandal and biblical epics of the 1950s, the ever-inventive Italian film industry churned out dozens of similarly themed action pictures that honored the the heroics of its own historical and mythological figures. The movies were made at a fraction of the cost of the American productions and sometimes on sets repurposed from earlier designs. Today, the best remembered of these redubbed Saturday-matinee flicks are those in which Steve Reeves’ Hercules met the challenges posed by men and monsters. The inclusion of prominent American, British and French actors in these costume dramas, spaghetti Westerns and gialllos looked good on the posters and added some credibility to the low-budget projects. Although a knowledge of Roman history wasn’t required to enjoy S&S movies (a.k.a., pepla), a cursory interest in the period works to the benefit of viewers. This isn’t to suggest that such whoppers as Sergio Grieco’s 1962 Julius Caesar Against the Pirates were particularly accurate, only that the characters were based on real people and events. Julius Caesar did, indeed, cross paths with the esteemed Roman general and dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and a gaggle of Cilician pirates, led here by Gordon Mitchell, had the temerity to kidnap him. His task here, though, requires J.C. mostly to save a few damsels in distress, including Abbe Lane and Franca Paris, not all of Rome. Neither is the time frame remotely accurate. All things considered, Julius Caesar Against the Pirates is primarily for hard-core fans of pepla, sword fights and busty, if thoroughly clothed dancing girls. Anyone expecting the sex and violence of “Rome” and “Spartacus” will be disappointed. Given the movie’s age and humble budget, the Cheezy Flicks DVD is remarkably free of gunk and scratches.
The Perfect Wave: Blu-ray
Rise Up Black Man
Bruce Macdonald’s faith-based drama The Perfect Wave recounts the true story of an adventurous New Zealand surfer who left home an atheist and came home a born-again Christian … literally. Unlike most other films that deliver an evangelical message, the blurbs on the DVD/Blu-ray only hint at the film’s spiritual payoff: “A surfer’s glimpse into eternity.” There are several seals of approval on the jacket, including one from the Dove Foundation, but you practically need a magnifying glass to identify them. It would be a mistake, however, to accuse The Perfect Wave’s backers of attempting to pull off a bait-and-switch scam. Imagine, if you can, a hybrid of Endless Summer and 127 Hours, with a late cameo by Jesus Christ, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what happens in the 94 minutes it’s is on the screen. Like many other Kiwis, McCormack (Scott Eastwood) decides to see the world before settling down and raising a family. He and a buddy had grown up on tales told by older surfers of the perpetual search for the perfect wave and decide to try their luck. Their excursion takes them to Australia, Southeast Asia, Africa and several exotic islands in between. The waves are spectacular, the wahines are beautiful and the good times go round-the-clock. McCormack was turned off by religion at an early age and has no moral qualms about partying hardy. In any case, his mother (Cheryl Ladd) would do enough praying for both of them. He falls in love with a mysterious young woman (Rachel Hendrix), whose list of former boyfriends is as long as the board that is never far from his reach. McCormack is on Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, when he agrees to join an acquaintance on a nighttime lobster dive. After being stung five times by a box jellyfish, he’s dragged to a hospital and pronounced dead. In the 15 minutes it takes to wheel him to the morgue, McCormack is invited to a come-to-Jesus meeting, at which he’s given the choice of coming clean or extending his big sleep. As incredible as this sounds, McCormack firmly insists it’s the gospel truth and the basis for a ministry of his own. Somehow, Macdonald manages to keep the character’s rebirth as low-key as possible. Those of us who believe that miracles do occasionally occur – Johnny Cash recounted a similar visitation — will appreciate the straight-forward approach, just as it is. The bonus package adds several decent featurettes, some of which more directly address the 800-pound Christian in the movie’s living room.
Whoever talked freshman writer/director Kendall Irvin out of cutting at least 46 minutes from the 2½-hour Rise Up Black Man shouldn’t be allowed to offer advice to any aspiring filmmaker ever again. The trims might not have been enough to rescue Irvin’s bloated salt-and-pepper story of two recent college graduates, who independently struggle to find the path to righteousness, but it would have saved viewers the agony of watching his worst instincts play out on the screen. Ostensibly a faith-based drama with a sharp urban edge, Rise Up Black Man, delivers its inspirational messages with a sledge hammer and telegraphs the blows with an airhorn. Will and Gary have spent most of their post-college years killing time in bars and chasing women. This ends when Will decides to hitch his star to a slick-talking African-American minister, who extorts money from white-owned businesses and outright steals it from his inner-city parishioners. Nonetheless, he talks a good game and convinces Will that he’s traveling with God. For his part, Gary is pushing his luck on every front. He’s a borderline alcoholic and world-class slacker. His soul finally opens up to a boy in desperate need of a father figure, big brother and mentor rolled into one jumbo-sized package. If Will is able to see the error in his ways and accept that discarded friends are more valuable than phony ministers, Gary is required to accept the reality that shit happens and no one should expect God to intervene. I doubt that this is the message Irvin wants to impart to Christian audiences, but I couldn’t find anything else to take from it.
Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher
Sanctuary: Quite a Conundrum
Hellinger/Holy Terror: Drive-In Double Feature
Telephone World
Released in 2012, Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher looks as if it could have been made any time in the last 50 years and shown as the third attraction on a triple-bill at the local drive-in. The grainy texture of the film stock suggests that it might have been shot on Super 8 and blown up to 35mm, while the actors appear to have been chosen from a Hell’s Angels yearbook. And, for once, the five-word title leaves no question as to what to expect from the DVD’s contents. A pissed-off hillbilly, Carl, kills anyone who dares trespass, take a dump or fornicate on his land and turns them into sausages. You simply can’t get any more succinct than that and have a movie that still begs to be watched. A separate narrative thread involves Carl’s blood pact with a demon, Sam Bakoo, in which he offers his soul in exchange for the full-fledged reanimation of his parents’ rotting corpses. Joaquin Montalvan’s film may be a throwback to such classics as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and Deliverance, but it blends the elements into something that feels fresh and almost contemporary. Cannibal hillbillies are as timeless as zombies and vampires, after all. Almost as interesting as the movie, itself, is the making-up featurette in which Montalvan and other participants describe the movie was made on a shoestring, substituting Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco parkway for Appalachia. (The early Tarzan movies were shot in the same area.) Also included in the DVD are the short film, “The Razor,” and interviews.
From its incomprehensible title to an inexplicable suicide that triggers the horror, Sanctuary: Quite a Conundrum is as confounding a genre picture as I’ve seen in a long time. Even after re-watching it with the commentary track engaged, I was unable to tell with any certainty what writer/director Thomas L. Phillips was attempting to accomplish here. It opens with an overweight biker-type geezer having sex with a thoroughly bored young woman barely out of her teens. She disses his performance and, in return, he throws his used condom in her face. (That’s entertainment, folks.) I’m guessing that this is what Phillips consideres to a comic turn in comedy/horror/thriller, as described in his commentary. It doesn’t take long for Mimi (Sasha Ramos) to shake off the insult and enlist her equally frivolous best friend, Tabitha (Erin Cline), in her plan to throw a party, during which her 18-year-old sister, Kylene (Emily Rogers), can finally hook up with one of their male friends. There’s a good reason Kylene has maintained a virginal visage throughout her teen years and, alas, it resides in spoiler territory. It doesn’t make much sense, either, though. No sooner does the party begin to get going than the offended old fart returns, with a gun, and shoots himself in the head. His bloody corpse will remain floating in the swimming pool for the rest of the picture, but he’ll have company soon enough.
The “Drive-In Double Feature” of Hellinger and Holy Terror – both from the twisted mind of cult favorite, Massimiliano Cerchis — provides an intentional reminder of the days when movies that went straight-to-video were the ugly stepchildren of the home-entertainment industry. The economics of digital filmmaking had yet to work in the favor of aspiring filmmakers, with big ideas and very little money. To make any money at all, these genre flicks had to be made cheap and dirty, with the emphasis on cheap. These two bargain-basement thrillers share Roman Catholic antagonists – a priest and a nun — who gave up their souls to Satan, only to return to this mortal coil to torment evil doers and horny yuppies. The unholy creatures look as if they were made from sock puppets and leftover Halloween costumes. To keep things interesting for male viewers – do women ever watch these things? – some of the female characters pull off their tops and simulate sex with a guy whose face no one will recognize the next day. In this case, the movies are just goofy enough to be fun to watch stoned.
Ramzi Abed’s Telephone World is a gimmicky thriller whose horror comes in the dramatization of one young actress’ best and worst experiences, all of which occur in the same afternoon. After Rachel Plasky (Elissa Dowling) learns that she’s scored the lead part in a new TV show called “Fairfax Girls,” she returns to her apartment and hears from a voice message on the phone that her boyfriend is breaking up with her. We know this because Abed has planted a camera in her home and it follows her for the next 80 minutes as she responds to both revelations, in a single continuous shot. I may have missed something, but the unassuming Rachel devolves from typical Hollywood wannabe to Sara Goldfarb, at her most self-destructive, in Requiem for a Dream. Dowling does a terrific job, even if it’s difficult to understand what motivates her character.
Come Morning
On its surface, Derrick Sims’ impressive debut feature, Come Morning, describes a country boy’s coming-of-age in the most punishing way possible. Scratch the surface and you’ll discover a story that’s almost as old as time and shows no sign of losing its relevance. In it, an old man and his grandson wander into the woods one afternoon to repeat a ritual some people consider to be a passing of the torch, while others treat as a crime against nature. After spending a number of hours in the family stand, the pre-teen boy, D (Thor Wahlestedt), takes aims at what he believes to be a deer, but is, in fact, a neighbor trespassing on their land. He isn’t wearing an orange vest and, in the late-afternoon haze, could understandably be mistaken for a four-legged meal ticket. Even though D already knows that such things happen in the woods, the man’s death shakes him to his core. He wants to report the accident to the police, but Frank convinces him that doing the right thing could turn out worse than putting the body in a wheelbarrow and finding a place to bury it. By doing so, Frank has introduced D to a cycle of violence that has gone on for a couple of generations, at least, and whose list of victims includes the boy’s father. Unlike the gentle Frank and D’s pensive mother, the family’s next-door neighbors are hillbilly trash hell-bent on continuing the feud, choosing their spots to provoke Frank and D’s Uncle Charlie into a confrontation. They do this mostly by poaching deer on Frank’s land and leaving behind the innards after stripping the deer of their hides and meat.
During the nighttime trek to dispose of the trespasser’s body, the angel of vengeance comes to claim Frank and provide D with an excuse for continuing the feud or ending it, once and for all. Or, like I said, it’s also possible that Sims simply intended Come Morning to be an achingly poignant coming-of-story, set in a corner of Bill Clinton’s Arkansas he still recognizes and loves. Although set in the 1970s, there’s a timeless quality to it that is only disrupted by noticing the ages of the pickup trucks. What I saw, as well, were parallels to the tragic tale chronicled in the documentary Kanun: The Law of Honour, which describes how families in mountainous northern Albania have come to be haunted by a strictly enforced code of vendetta that’s existed since the 15th Century. Fearful of revenge attacks, thousands of men, women and children dare not leave their homes, because, once they do, the code allows for them to be murdered. Kanun introduces us to a nun attempting to end this hideous practice. By extension, the vendetta mentality explains why Frank forbids D from calling police – thus abiding by an unwritten code of hill-country justice – and leads us to wonder if the bullet that killed the man might not have come from the boy’s rifle, after all. Either way, during the course of single night, D’s life is forever changed, while those of Frank, Charlie and the neighbors have simply added another tragic chapter to the legacy of hate. The DVD adds several deleted scenes and an excellent making-of featurette, during which Sims explains his one-man-band production methodology, the Kickstarter campaign and his desire to slow down the action, so as to reflect a feel for the South he knows but hasn’t seen in other movies.
Fort McCoy
Even 70 years after the end of World War II, it still might surprise some Americans to learn that 425,000 German POWs lived in 700 camps throughout the United States during World War II. Early in the conflict, Wisconsin’s Fort McCoy first was used as a detention center for approximately 170 Japanese- and 120 German- and Italian-American civilians arrested as potentially dangerous “enemy aliens.” It later would hold 4,000 Japanese and German POWs. Fort McCoy is situated in the rolling farmlands of central Wisconsin, where cows probably still outnumber people and prisoners once tilled the fertile soil for corn and other crops. Despite the brutal winters, serving time in America’s heartland was a million times easier for the POWs than an uncertain future in a Red Army camp. That’s the historical backdrop for Fort McCoy, a labor of love for multi-hyphenate filmmaker and actress Kate Connor, who based her story on the experiences of her family during the war. Connor not only was inspired to play her grandmother, Ruby Stirn, but also produce, direct and write the movie. In it, the family of Frank and Ruby Stirn moves to a cozy cottage situated between camps populated with soldiers and POWs. The German-American barber (Eric Stoltz) had been rejected from serving his country and, in 1944, volunteered to cut the hair of men from both sectors. His wife and sister-in-law (Lyndsy Fonseca) would find work at the camp, as well, while the children enjoyed the Wisconsin summer and asked their parents difficult questions about man’s inhumanity to man.
Besides the drama inherent in such a scenario, Connor adds subplots involving Frank’s feelings of guilt over being rejected and jealousy over a GI’s perceived overture to Ruby; her uneasiness with living so close to laxly policed prisoners; their daughter’s befriending of a prisoner young enough to be in 4th Grade; a perverted SS officer who preys on the weakest of POWs; and the Catholic sister-in-law’s decision to marry a wounded Jewish soldier. The irony there being that the soldier had been wounded in the service of a country that assured religious freedom, but allowed church leaders to push their prejudicial rules and beliefs on worshippers. The soldier also voiced his disappointment with the U.S. for virtually ignoring reports of the mass slaughter of European Jews. That’s a lot of baggage for a 100-minute movie to carry and not all of the storylines are neatly exploited. Still, Fort McCoy benefits greatly from a solid narrative, heartfelt acting, the Wisconsin landscape and the camp’s little-known wartime history.
TV-to-DVD
The CW: Reign: The Complete First Season
LA Law: Season 3
PBS: Secrets of Westminster/Her Majesty’s Secret Service
PBS: James Mcneill Whistler & the Case for Beauty
PBS: Royal Paintbox
While it’s highly unlikely that The CW conspired with Scottish separatists to stage the recent referendum to decide whether or not Scotland should declare its independence from the UK, the timing couldn’t be better for the second-second season debut of its royal soap-opera, “Reign.” The historical fantasy finds 15-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots in France, where she’s been awaiting her long-planned marriage to the future Francis II of France for nine years. The wedding would theoretically align predominantly France and Scotland against the Protestant British monarchy. Not everyone is awaiting Mary Stuart’s return to her homeland with optimism, but “Reign” is most interested in establishing Mary and her handmaidens as hotties ready to be plucked by the most eligible of bachelors at court. Not everything was smooth-sailing for Mary in France, either. Palace intrigue and family rivalries threatened to disrupt her wedding to the dauphin, while Henry II’s wife, Catherine de Medici, secretly schemes to prevent the marriage following Nostradamus’ confidential prediction that the marriage will lead to Francis’ death. Hey, and that’s just Season One. The temptation, of course, is to compare “Reign” to HBO’s “The Tudors,” Showtime’s “The Borgias” and Starz’ “The White Queen.” The CW’s target market, though, is teenagers and young adults who might not miss the nudity, sex and violence allowed on premium-cable outlets. It’s here, but packaged to fit the demands of network censors and, presumably, parents. Otherwise, the production values are comparable and settings lovely. Once again, students are cautioned against using anything gleaned from “Reign” as fact when preparing essays or taking tests. My guess is, however, that American kids aren’t taught anything about British history that comes before World War II and the births of the Fab Four. Almost no one from the primary cast will be recognizable to CW audiences, except for Aussie Adelaide Kane, who once had a role on “Teen Wolf” and hasn’t been a teenager for seven years, at least. The DVD set adds a pair of making-of featurettes and deleted scenes.
Season Three of the groundbreaking legal series “L.A. Law” found the relay team of McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak running at full speed, with a mix of cases that ran the gamut from ludicrous to deadly serious and internecine warfare that ranged from trivial to treasonous. The strike-shortened season introduced such defendants as a mentally disturbed ventriloquist, a cop-killing gang member, ear-lickers, the leader of a nudist colony and a gay Olympian from an endorsement deal after exiting the closet. Meanwhile, Stuart and Ann continue their struggle to have children; Abby leaves the firm; Kuzak endures a losing strike; Grace shoots an attacker; and Becker dates a judge. The 1988-89 go-round saw nine members of the show’s cast nominated for Emmy awards and its second of four victories as Outstanding Drama Series.
PBS’ entertaining and informative “Secrets of …” series provides viewers with the kind of guided tours usually only available to VIPs and historians. This month’s offerings on DVD include visits to Westminster and the headquarters of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In the former, we’re taken behind the velvet ropes of London’s House of Commons, House of Lords and Westminster Abbey that separate the tourists from the treasures. There’s probably enough history here for a year’s worth of episodes, but some secrets will have to keep until the next time around. The same is true for the spy agency known as
MI6, whose headquarters is hidden in plain sight in the center of London on the River Thames. Among other things, we learn what it takes to become a British secret agent – besides a tuxedo and taste for martinis – and the truth behind the fiction in the James Bond books and movies.
PBS’s “James McNeill Whistler & the Case for Beauty” introduces us to a painter whose mother is almost as famous a model as Lisa del Giocondo, whose face is believed to have inspired Leonardo da Vinci and the “Mona Lisa.” The American-born Whistler is portrayed as a world-class dandy, whose artistic talent was equaled only by his showmanship. Although he followed in his father’s footsteps at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Whistler was more at home in St. Petersburg, Paris and London. The producers take us beyond “Whistler’s Mother,” to a gallery’s worth of paintings, etching and sketches with which many viewers won’t be familiar. In a similar vein, the network’s “Royal Paintbox” provides a platform for HRH: The Prince of Wales to reveal a trove of rarely seen art by members of the Royal Family, past and present. It was filmed at Balmoral, Highgrove, Windsor Castle, Frogmore, and Osborne House and includes some of Prince Charles’ own watercolors.
Ghost in the Shell: 25th Anniversary Edition: Blu-ray
Cartoon Network: Ben 10 Omniverse: Volume 5: Galactic Monsters
Slugterra: Return of the Elementals
Fans of Japanese anime will already know how a movie first released in 1995 can be celebrating its 25th anniversary in a special Blu-ray edition. In fact, the landmark date being referenced is the 25th anniversary of the publication of Masamune Shirow’s original manga, “Ghost in the Shell.” Anchor Bay Entertainment has taken the same opportunity to release Mamoru Oshii’s theatrical adaptation, Ghost in the Shell, almost as an early apology for the much-reviled “2.0” edition released five years ago in hi-def. That iteration of the story took the liberty of eliminating key scenes, revising others and messing with the color scheme and soundtrack. The “25th Anniversary” version replicates the 1995 original, only in Blu-ray, and the freshly re-mastered film looks terrific. Upon its international theatrical release, manga and anime had yet to catch fire beyond Japan. The formats had yet to prove themselves at feature length or as vehicles for sophisticated sci-fi concepts. Ghost in the Shell demonstrated just how sophisticated anime had become and that adult tastes – an anatomically correct and frequently unclothed female cyber agent as protagonist – could be served. In Oshii’s noir-ish universe, cyborgs and humans exist on an equal basis and occasionally are stymied by existential quandaries. Here, government agents are hot on the trail of the Puppet Master: a computer virus capable of invading cybernetic brains and altering its victim’s memory. Created by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and codenamed Project 2501, this hacker is actually a prototype virtual agent which has now defied its makers by seeking asylum within a new host body outside of the omnipotent electronic net. As much as Ghost in the Shell likely was influenced by Blade Runner, Oshii’s vision would impress James Cameron and the Wachowskis. The so-called cyberpunk thriller enjoyed both critical and popular success at the U.S. box office and was the first Japanese animated film to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Top Video Sales Chart. Its success would spawn several sequels, spinoffs, novelizations, games and toys.
The same degree of commercialization has followed in the wake of Ben 10 Omniverse’s success. This time around, Ben is required to fight fire with fire, by transforming into monster heroes — Frankenstrike and Whampire, among them — capable of turning back such evil forces as Zs’Skayr and Lord Transyl of Monster Planet. Bonus episodes include “Something Zombozo This Way Comes” and “Mystery, Incorporeal.”
Slugterra: Return of the Elementals is the second feature-length spinoff of the DisneyXD series, which is set in an underground world overrun by slugs. Some of them can be used for good, while others are bad. Eli Shane is a teenager determined to be the greatest slug-slinging hero of them all. He can do this only by collecting, training, and dueling the little creatures. In the movie, a new member joins the Shane Gang. Junjie is a master of the mysterious slug-slinging art of Slug Fu. But even with the power of five slug-slingers working together, the Shane Gang finds itself in over their heads as they race to protect the ancient Elemental Slugs from an evil alliance set on using them to destroy the 99 caverns. A bonus slugisode, “Noodle Strikes Back,” is included.
I’m a Porn Star
Fall Away
1 Last Chance at Paradise
Charlie David’s breezy primer on the gay-porn industry is broken into two parts. The first is a history lesson, beginning with the gift of projection that the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison’s gave to the movie industry. Not surprisingly, there wasn’t much lag time recorded between the advent of gender-specific eroticism on film. At one point, David recalls the point in time – before the popularization of Playboy and body-building mags – when straight and gay men turned to the underwear pages of the Sears catalogue for their masturbatory stimuli. Next would come the 8mm and 16mm loops, video and digital formats. The parallels continue from there, with stops at the AIDS crisis, the transition from film to tape, the burgeoning fetish market, the Internet and legislation to prevent bare-backing. In the second and longer section of the frequently explicit I’m a Porn Star, we’re introduced to a half-dozen of the today’s more prominent actors, who discuss these issues and how it is that so many of the stars are bisexual or gay-for-pay. David contends that the industry has grown so large and lucrative, with millions of pro and amateur websites, fans shouldn’t be surprised if a friend, relative or neighbor pops up. With the porn stigma still prevalent in most parts of the U.S., such a theory would only hold water in the San Fernando Valley, the Castro or Lower Manhattan.
Julian Grant’s wildly uneven story about the painfully conflicted singer/songwriter of a dysfunctional Americana band has its moments, but most of them come when the musicians are singing instead of exchanging dialogue. In Fall Away, Grant Stokes gives an annoyingly stylized portrayal of “Handsome Jake,” another one of those archetypal rock/country fuck-ups who represent Nashville in the movies. No sooner does the band 65 Home catch the break it’s been struggling to get than Jake’s prima donna side come to the fore. A male lover re-enters his life, while a recently thrown-aside girlfriend breaks the news that she’s pregnant. Other members of the band question his authority and sudden decisions about writer’s credit and personnel. It’s enough to drive an artiste to drink, which he does. His comeuppance comes in the ugliest way possible, but not before he sings some very decent songs. Grant’s moody cinematography nicely captures the grime and grit of Chicago and Nashville’s smoke-filled clubs and dank alleyways.
In Jason Impey’s exceedingly talky 1 Last Chance at Paradise, two young lovers, Kai and Tobi, share intimate memories of a wonderful weekend away from Tobi’s aggressively homophobic mother, before their world crashes in on them. The overall tone shifts from romantic to sad, poignant to confrontational. The narrative experiment is based on an original concept by co-star Wade Radford. It was filmed in one day, live, ad lib and with no script. It repeats the same style employed by Radford and Impey for Boys Behind Bars. 1980s’ punk goddess, Honey Bane, plays the mother as if she were medieval gargoyle.
Prisoner of Paradise
I’m not sure when exactly Nazisploitation established itself as viable subgenre in arthouse, grindhouse and drive-in fare. It was clearly in vogue by the mid-1970s, after Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter, Tinto Brass’ Salon Kitty and Luchino Visconti’s The Damned washed up on these shores, to be joined in short order by Hitler’s Harlot, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, SS Camp 5: Women’s Hell and other such Italian-made atrocities. Bob Chinn and Gail Palmer’s hard-core Prisoner of Paradise simultaneously parodies Naziploitation and wallows in its tropes. In it, John C. Holmes plays an American sailor marooned on a seemingly deserted tropical isle. After surveying the island for food and shelter, the sailor comes across a Nazi compound in which an American nurse is being held as a sexual plaything for the fat kraut and his henchwomen Ilsa (Seka), Greta (Sue Carol) and Suke (Jade Wong). Ever the gallant gentleman, Holmes attempts to rescue the nurse (Nikki Anderson), but fails. Instead, his tool is used as an implement of torture/pleasure when captured. Future hall-of-famer Mai Lai makes an early appearance as one of Holmes’ conquests. It’s a very goofy picture, but hotter than 90 percent of the gonzo stuff out there. It’s been newly restored in 2K from Caribbean Films’ 35mm negative.
Also from the Vinegar Syndrome stable comes the Carlos Tobalina’s double-feature, Mai Lin vs. Serena/Oriental Hawaii, once again featuring Mai and Jade, and the Anthony Spinelli triple-bill, Cry for Cindy, Touch Me and the nunsploitation rarity, Act of Confession. All have been restored to the extent that it’s possible to do so.
