6/24/15: The Cause of, and Solution to, All of Life’s Problems

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'80s comedies, ad agencies, advertising agency, advertising industry, Alan C. Peterson, Alar Aedma, alcoholism, Allan Weisbecker, alternate title, bad films, battle of the sexes, Beer, Bill Butler, Bill Conti, brewery, cinema, comedies, David Alan Grier, David Wohl, Dick Shawn, directorial debut, film reviews, films, homophobia, husband-wife relationship, Kenneth Mars, Loretta Swit, masculinity, Mel Brooks, misogyny, Movies, Norbecker, offensive films, over-the-top, Patrick Kelly, Peter Michael Goetz, racist, Rip Torn, satire, Saul Stein, sexist, silly films, spoof, The Selling of America, TV ads, unlikely heroes, William Russ

Every once in a while, a movie comes along that manages to genuinely surprise me, for one reason or another. It might be a film that’s surprisingly good or even unexpectedly great. It might be a “sure thing” that fails miserably, maybe something by a beloved filmmaker that manages to completely miss the mark. On very rare occasions, a movie might surprise with an unexpectedly thought-provoking concept or some heretofore unexplored insights into the human condition. And then, of course, there’s Beer (1985), also known by the much more on-the-nose title The Selling of America.

In this particular case, Beer surprises by being one of the most outrageously misguided, casually offensive films that I think I’ve ever seen. Coming across as a completely tone-deaf attempt to emulate the societal critique of Mel Brooks’ immortal Blazing Saddles (1974), Kelly’s film is stuffed to bursting with so many outdated, honestly offensive observations on race, feminism, masculinity, nationality, gender and sexuality that it makes something like Porky’s (1982) seem progressive. Beer is a “have your cake and eat it, too” kind of film, a movie that wants to shake a finger at society’s ills while gleefully indulging in the same sort of bad behavior.

A.J. Norbecker (Mel Brooks mainstay Kenneth Mars) has a bit of a problem: the German-born brewery owner is experiencing an unprecedented drop in sales and he places the blame squarely on the advertising agency that’s handling his promotional material. As Norbecker sees it, all beer is just “piss-water”: it’s the ads that really make the difference and he wants ads as cool as Miller and the other major players. To that end, he gives the agency’s president, Harley Feemer (Peter Michael Goetz), an ultimatum: beef up their campaign, increase his sales or lose their biggest client.

Behind the scenes, Feemer and the other guys try, in vain, to come up with anything original. Leave it to B.D. Tucker (M.A.S.H.’s Loretta Swit), the agency’s “token female executive” (their phrase, of course) to come up with the only good idea: they need an ad campaign that will appeal to the common, everyday man who’s the actual market for Norbecker Beer…nothing posh, highfalutin’ or pretentious, just a bunch of normal, macho guys drinking beer. Hiring her old friend, former hotshot director/current washed-up alcoholic Buzz Beckerman (Rip Torn, consuming scenery like a black hole), B.D. goes about putting together the ad campaign that will reset Norbecker’s fortune and secure her own future.

As luck would have it, B.D. and Buzz find their ideal spokesmen when they witness a trio of doofuses accidentally stop an attempted robbery in a dive bar. The three guys are perfect for their purposes, mostly because they’re not real people so much as generic templates: Merle (William Russ) is a good-ol’-boy (complete with steer horns on his Cadillac) fish out of water in big, bad New York City; Frankie (Saul Stein) is an Italian-American construction worker with a raging libido and the kind of enormous, stereotypical Italian family that passes around bowls of pasta large enough to drown in; and Elliot (David Alan Grier) is an uber-nerdy black lawyer who gets pushed around at his blatantly racist firm and fights a losing battle, at home, to prevent his young son from listening to boomboxes (no, really).

In no time at all, Merle, Frankie and Elliot are national heroes and superstars: all men want to be them and all women want to bed them, which is quite a change from their former loser/unemployed statuses. With new-found fame, however, comes a whole new raft of problems. Merle begins to feel a loss of identity and pines for the simpler life, Frankie develops erectile dysfunction just as he becomes a sex symbol and formerly nice-guy Elliot is starting to treat his wife and kid like crap. As the men become more and more wrapped-up in their manufactured personas, their real selves begin to fall by the wayside.

As the campaign continues to pick up steam, B.D. looks to find new ways to keep her manufactured stars in the media spotlight, mostly by injecting some all-important sex appeal into the proceedings (“Whip out your Norbecker…Beer!). With feminists around the country in an uproar, Norbecker Beer becomes more popular than ever, cornering a whopping 50% of the U.S. market. Norbecker, obviously ecstatic, sets his sights a little higher: he decides that he wants to take over the European market, as well, believing that a “surprise advertising blitz” will allow him to take over Germany (his first name is Adolph, after all). Will our hapless heroes end up losing their very humanity, becoming as callous and ruthless as the Madison Avenue execs that made them what they are? Will B.D. ever earn the respect that she so desperately wants? Will Adolph conquer Europe? Whip out your Norbecker and find out for yourself!

Make no bones about it: Beer (or The Selling of America, whichever you prefer) is an absolute mess, albeit a fascinating one. The biggest, most obvious issue with the film is that director Patrick Kelly (on his sole production, apparently) and screenwriter Allan Weisbecker (who also wrote an episode of Miami Vice) have absolutely no grasp on the supposedly satirical material whatsoever. Beer ends up in that nebulous “no-man’s-land” between pointing out the systematic stupidity of things like sexism and racism and actively upholding said prejudicial viewpoints. It’s the equivalent of someone who goes out of their way to explain that they aren’t racist before busting out the most virulently racist joke you’ve ever heard. It’s the “feminist” who drops a wink while telling women to get back into the kitchen, the “progressive” who thinks the term “twinkletoes” is a perfectly acceptable descriptor for a gay man.

Time and time again, the film seems to be attempting to poke holes in these very real issues while also attempting to milk them for easy, shallow laughs, many of which end up being more than a little mean-spirited. At one point, B.D. tells Elliot that he isn’t “black enough,” so he goes home and watches a handy “black studies” videotape, picking up such important tips as grabbing his crotch, swaggering and walking around with a boombox. When he shows up to the next shoot looking like an extra from Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1985), B.D. is absolutely shocked: “You look like you just stepped out of the ghetto! When I said ‘black,’ I didn’t mean ‘black-black’!” Funny shit, right?

Or how about the thoroughly “fresh” way in which Frankie’s entire family seems to have stepped out of a dinner-theater version of Mama Mia, complete with endless shouting and fainting when our friendly mook reveals that he plans to move out of their unbelievably crowded apartment? He’s only 29, after all, which is way too early for a good Italian boy to cut the apron strings. Frankie’s also such a completely irresistible ladies’ man that even when he can’t get it up, his conquest-of-the-moment blames it all on herself, begging him profusely for the opportunity to “do better” and not “disappoint him.” Whatta guy, right?

We even get a heart-warming, climatic scene where Merle and Frankie must wade into the “horrors” of a gay bar and “rescue” poor, drunk Elliot from a fate worse than death: that the scene devolves into the kind of rousing fist fight that would be more at home in Road House (1989) probably goes a long way towards indicating where the filmmakers sympathies lie. Never fear, however: it’s all balanced when ol’ Norbecker decides to market a new “lite” beer to gay men. As we see him cavort with a bunch of half-naked men in a sauna, he delivers the immortal pitch-line: “You can take it in the bottle or you can take it in the can.” Because, you know, “can” is also used as a slang word for “butt” and that’s kind of funny, right?

Truth be told, not much in Beer is actually funny, though nearly all of it is pitched at the kind of frantic, hysterical pace that usually denotes slapstick comedy. There are moments that manage to shine through the mess: the various TV commercials are actually pretty good and Buzz gets in a great line about how he once made Alan Ladd look “six feet tall” (I’m a movie nerd: that’s the kind of reference that makes me chuckle, sadly enough). The acting is also just fine (or, at the very least, it’s all of a piece with the film’s overall tone), with fantastic turns from David Alan Grier (in a very thankless role) and Loretta Swit (in an even more thankless role).

While I frequently found myself cringing during the film, my heart really went out to poor Swit: she really is a great actress and she gives the performance her all but it’s a ruthlessly stacked deck, from the get-go. Nothing about the character of B.D. really makes sense (at one point, she actively fights against sexualizing the ads, only to flip-flop a moment later) and the filmmakers seem bound and determined to humiliate her as much as possible. Rather than letting B.D. succeed, since she mounted a successful ad campaign and won a coveted CLEO award, we instead get the pathetic culmination where Merle comes to his senses and decides to leave, spurring B.D. to bed him to stay: “Do I have to get down on my knees,” she asks, with her tone and body language pointing to the obvious.

Turning B.D. into the butt of the film’s joke actually manages to sum up the movie’s problems in a pretty good nutshell: while Beer makes noises about tackling issues like sexism, racism and masculinity, it’s pretty clear that its sympathies lie elsewhere. The feminist protesters are portrayed as shrill nuts, the gay men in the club are lascivious wolves, the German guy is power-mad and the only one who makes any sense is the guy who looks like he stepped out of an old Western. It’s a stacked deck, regardless of how ridiculous the prejudicial portrayals are: showcasing an eye-rollingly obvious example of racism isn’t the same thing as condemning or commenting on it, after all.

There will, undoubtedly, be many who would counter my observations with the rejoinder that Beer is nothing more than a typical, ’80s comedy (almost, but not quite, a sex comedy, to boot): was I really expecting any kind of astute observations on anything? I’ll freely admit that I never expected Beer to be a great film, nor even a particularly smart one. There’s nothing wrong with dumb, politically incorrect comedies: I saw more than my fair share of Police Academy and Porky’s movies, growing up, and I don’t consider myself to be a raging, misogynist beast. This is a very different era than 30 years ago (or even 10 years ago, to be honest) and certain mindsets have a tendency to look as quaint as museum setpieces in this day and age.

At the end of the day, however, Beer can really only be judged on its own merits. As a film, it’s silly, nonsensical, occasionally funny but, for the most part, resoundingly lunk-headed. With too many detours into genuine racism and sexism to have much modern value, Beer/The Selling of America will probably best be remembered as a curio, a representation of a time when films could flaunt flagrant stereotypes, all in the guise of “making a statement.” Don’t be fooled, though: the only statement here is that this Beer is warm, flat and skunky.

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5/22/15: Doin’ It For the Kids

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7th Floor, Abel Dolz Doval, Adrian Garcia Bogliano, Alfred Hitchcock, alternate title, Argentinian film, Belén Rueda, Buenos Aires, Charo Dolz Doval, cheating husbands, cinema, custody issues, divorced parents, film reviews, films, foreign films, Guillermo Arengo, husband-wife relationship, infidelity, Jorge D'Elía, kids in peril, Lucas Nolla, Lucio Bonelli, Luis Ziembrowski, missing children, Movies, mysteries, Osvaldo Santoro, parent-child relationships, Patxi Amezcua, Ricardo Darín, Septimo, set in Argentina, Spurloos, suspense, The Lady Vanishes, The Vanishing, thrillers, twist ending, writer-director

For parents of young children, there can’t be many more terrifying nightmares than having them vanish, seemingly without a trace. Despite how careful and attentive parents might be, they’re not omniscient deities: even the best parents can let their attention stray for a moment, become complacent with friendly surroundings, take their eyes off their precious charges for the barest of moments. As we find out all too frequently these days, it doesn’t take more than a moment (sometimes only a few seconds) for tragedy to strike.

Argentinian writer-director Patxi Amezcua’s Septimo (2013) deals with just this parental nightmare and, for over half its 88 minute running-time, it’s quite the razor-sharp, white knuckle thriller. Coming off as a grim combination of Hitchcock’s classic The Lady Vanishes (1938) and George Sluzier’s Spurloos (The Vanishing) (1988), Amezcua puts his characters (and his audience) through the wringer, giving us a front-row seat to the mounting terror that an estranged husband and wife feel as they desperately search for their missing children. Once the mystery comes into sharper focus, however, the film loses much of its inherent tension, playing out towards a rather predictable ending, right up to the fourth act “twist.” At the end of the day, however, half a Hitchcock ain’t too shabby.

When we first meet newly divorced criminal lawyer, Sebastian (Ricardo Darín), it’s pretty obvious that the guy is a dick: we watch him shrug off his anxious sister’s concerns about her potentially abusive ex and see him rage against the “old lady” who keeps parking in his designated spot at his apartment building. After the kindly super, Miguel (Luis Ziembrowski), explains that the old lady is almost blind, Sebastian snorts and replies that he’ll happily have her towed, anyway: if she can’t see, sell the damn car. George Bailey, he’s most certainly not.

Once Sebastian gets up to his seventh floor apartment (hence the film’s Spanish title, as well as its alternate title, 7th Floor), we meet his adorable kids, Luna (Charo Dolz Doval) and Luca (Abel Dolz Doval), as well as his put-upon ex-wife, Delia (Belén Rueda). There’s still lots of simmering tension in the relationship, mostly due to the fact that Sebastian is a pompous ass who’s constantly running late, although more for the fact that he steadfastly refuses to sign the paperwork that will allow Delia to move herself and the kids to Spain (they all currently reside in Buenos Aires), so that she can take care of her ailing father. Sebastian is, above all else, a deeply selfish man, however, and he has no intention of making anything easy for his ex.

On the day of a particularly high-profile case, however, Sebastian’s life hits a bit of a speed-bump. Humoring his children, the lawyer lets them race down the stairs while he takes the elevator, the exact same “game” that Delia has previously complained about being “too dangerous.” Beating them to the lobby, Sebastian waits around until he gets a troublesome notion: the kids aren’t coming down. From this point, Luna and Luca’s father flies into a mad frenzy of activity, frantically searching his apartment building for any sign of his kids, all while trying to avoid alerting Delia to the present crisis. Enlisting a resident police office, Rosales (Osvaldo Santoro), for help, Sebastian questions his neighbors, many of whom seem to be decidedly odd, suspicious people. As the clock continues to tick down, the obnoxious lawyer must learn to rely on the help of others, even as he seeks to unravel the mystery of his kids’ disappearance. Is this related to his high-profile case? Does Rosales know more than he’s letting on? And, most importantly: will Sebastian and Delia ever see their children again?

Up until the midpoint revelation, Septimo is an endlessly tense, nail-biting bit of cinema, easily comparable to the work of fellow Argentinian Adrián García Bogliano (there are bits and pieces of his Cold Sweat (2010) and Penumbra (2011) littered through Septimo’s DNA). The acting is uniformly solid, with Darín and Rueda being easy standouts as the parents. There’s a real art-form to playing an asshole character (too much on either side and the character becomes either completely unbearable or thoroughly unrealistic) and Darín hits the bulls-eye with what seems to be studied ease. It’s all in the margins for the character: we get enough casual exposition to establish Sebastian’s more douche-bag tendencies (his infidelity with Delia’s best friend, his casually dismissive interactions with anyone “below” his station) but he fills in the spaces with some truly subtle mannerisms that are almost subliminal. We can see that Sebastian is an asshole but, more importantly, we can feel that he’s an asshole: as far as I’m concerned, that’s great characterization, right there.

For her part, Rueda’s Delia is a massively complex character, made more so by the fact that we spend so little time with her compared to Sebastian: like Sebastian, we pick up much of our impressions of her from the margins, with the added benefit of the surprise “revelations” of the mystery format. There’s a subtle sense of downplaying that really works with Rueda’s performance: she dials it back enough that, when Delia needs to let loose, her outbursts actually come with a little punch. Call it the benefit of knowing when to turn the knobs to 11 and when to exercise a little restraint.

The rest of the cast does equally admirable work, albeit in much smaller doses. Osvaldo Santoro is extremely charismatic as the gruff, no-nonsense police officer, while Luis Ziembrowski manages to make the character of the landlord seem kindly, sympathetic and a tad bit sinister. Perhaps most impressively, the Dovals do fantastic work as the children, Luna and Luca. Oftentimes, child performers are the weak link in any production: it pretty much comes with the territory. In this case, however, Abel and Charo hit every single required beat, managing to walk a tight line between adorable urchins and actual flesh-and-blood people.

If I have any real complaints with Septimo, they lie more with what is being expressed than how it’s being expressed (although I’ll freely admit that the midpoint resolution and resulting “twist” ending did nothing for me and actually knocked the film down a peg or two, in my mind). While I won’t give away the final revelation (astute viewers will probably be able to piece at least part of it together well before the final act), suffice to say that it felt more than a little misogynistic and casually cruel, at least to this viewer. It seems that Amezcua went out of his way to establish Sebastian as an unrepentant cad throughout the film, only to suddenly end up in his corner by the finale. It feels a little unfair, sure, but it also feels as if it blatantly disregards many of the subtle points that have been raised throughout the rest of the film. I’m not sure if Amezcua was making an actual point or whether I just read a bit too much into it: regardless, this ended up leaving a distinctly bad taste in my mouth that impacted my overall impression.

Slightly muddled message aside, there’s an awful lot to like here. As stated earlier, the first 40+ minutes of the film are some of the tightest, most tense and atmospheric that I’ve seen recently: I don’t throw that Hitchcock stuff around lightly, after all. When Darín is frantically racing around his apartment building, barging into locked residences and alternately cajoling and threatening anyone who crosses his path, there’s a sweaty, adrenalized sense of panic to the proceedings that are pure cinematic bliss. Perhaps it was asking a bit much for Amezcua and company to sustain that fever pitch for the entirety of the film but I still can’t help but feel a bit disappointed. Here’s to hoping that, next time around, Amezcua lets us all twist on the hook just a little longer.

2/13/15: Old Habits Die Hard

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Aidan McArdle, alternate title, British films, British horror, Catholic church, Christianity vs paganism, cinema, Elliot Goldner, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Final Prayer, foreign films, found-footage, found-footage films, Gordon Kennedy, haunted church, horror, horror films, horror movies, insanity, isolated estates, Luke Neal, mental illness, miracles, Movies, paganism, paranormal investigators, Patrick Godfrey, religious-themed horror, Robin Hill, suicide, The Borderlands, UK films, Vatican investigators, writer-director

Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to give a particular film a leg up on its competitors. Take writer-director Elliot Goldner’s feature-debut, The Borderlands (2014), for example. For the most part, Goldner’s film doesn’t do much different from the majority of other found-footage horror films on the market but it also doesn’t make many obvious mistakes, either. Add to this some effective performances, along with a creepy, fairly original main concept, and you end up with a pretty winning formula. While The Borderlands doesn’t raise the bar for these types of films, it’s still a suitably sturdy entry and should prove duly thought-provoking for patient horror aficionados.

Goldner’s debut deals with a small team of Vatican investigators who have been sent to a rural British church in order to check on claims of strange, miraculous occurrences. Our team consists of Deacon (Gordon Kennedy), the good-humored, gruff, hard-drinking veteran investigator; Mark (Aidan McArdle) the stick-in-the-mud, uptight, by-the-book priest who doesn’t actually seem to believe in anything; and their tech expert, Gray (Robin Hill), a studied non-believer who still seems more open to the concept of miracles than his religious-oriented cohorts. The group has been called to the small church in order to investigate the resident priest, Father Crellick (Luke Neal), whose claims of strange, unexplained happenings have set off alarm bells in Vatican City. While Deacon and Gray are used to debunking such claims, the case quickly proves itself to be a singularly odd one. For one thing, Crellick is a decidedly weird duck, given to strange proclamations and privy to “visions” that no one else seems to have. For another, the rural church is a ridiculously creepy place, less of a functional religious center than a hold-over from a much older, darker time: as a rule, folks in films should steer clear of anything built “on top” of anything else: suffice to say, it’s always bad news.

As the team continue to investigate, Deacon comes upon a journal, belonging to the church’s 1800s-era caretaker, which seems to hint at some sort of dark presence in the area. After a horrifying incident involving a flaming sheep, the group gets the distinct impression that the locals are a little less than welcoming of this intrusion into their land. Who (or what) is responsible for the mysterious, seemingly paranormal incidents at the church? Is eccentric Father Crellick somehow responsible? Is it all related to stories of ancient pagan ceremonies in the isolated valley? Is someone trying to chase the investigators away from an earth-bound conspiracy or is the reality something much darker and more sinister? As each of the men begins to experience their own strange events, Deacon and the others will be forced to face the unfathomable: if a “miraculous” event isn’t a miracle…what, exactly, is it?

For the most part, The Borderlands (given the unbelievably boring, generic alternate title of “Final Prayer” for American audiences, natch) is an assured, well-made and interesting film, albeit one that makes many of the same (inherent) missteps that most found-footage movies make. While nothing here is as obvious as the many Paranormal Activity (2007) sequels, we still get plenty of scenes that involves the audience intently peering at a static video image, waiting for something to move/jump/make a scary face/etc. Again, not terrible but so old hat, at this point, as to be almost risible. There are also plenty of strangely “unmotivated” camera shots, such as the lovely but out-of-place landscape exteriors, that pop up from time to time: like many found-footage films, the makers of The Borderlands don’t always have the tightest grasp on their “gimmick,” as it were, although this is hardly the sloppiest example of said issue.

Where Goldner’s film really sets itself apart from the found-footage pack is in the quality of its acting. Gordon Kennedy and Robin Hill are both pretty great and make nice foils for each other: there’s a level of shared respect between the two characters that’s nicely illustrated in the performances. Kennedy does the gruff “two-fisted man of God” schtick to a tee and Hill is nicely nerdy and kind of sweet as the tech wizard who only wants to believe, even though he really doesn’t. For his part, Aidan McArdle is appropriately assholish as the immovable Mark but, for some reason, I had the hardest time not seeing his character as a non-secular version of David Mitchell’s odious Mark character in Peep Show (2003-present). Jerks are jerks, however, and McArdle acquits himself nicely as the smug priest/bean-counter.

One of the biggest issues with found-footage films is always the endings: in most cases, they simply devolve into shaky camera-work, motion blurs and the all-important “drop the camera” bit, regardless of what came before. The Borderlands doesn’t (quite) go that route, opting for something quite a bit creepier and more bizarre. While the ending is certainly open for multiple interpretations, I’d like to think that the whole thing is a nod to Ken Russell’s batshit-crazy Lair of the White Worm (1988): it’s probably highly unlikely but who wouldn’t want to throw some props Russell’s way? Regardless of what it ultimately means, however, the ending is just different enough to warrant sitting through the entire film, especially if one is inclined to enjoy found-footage films.

For a debut-feature, The Borderlands is surprisingly good and makes an effective calling card for Goldner. By making good use of a rather unique location, a rarely-used religious angle, some rock-solid acting and a creepy, unexpected climax, Goldner and crew have come up with a film that looks a lot like its peers but has enough individuality and presence to stand on its own. It also features one of the single most disturbing, horrific and unforgettable scenes I’ve ever seen in a film (the burning sheep scene will haunt you, guaranteed), indicating that writer-director Goldner has no problems hanging out in the “dark side,” when necessary. Here’s to hoping that his next feature takes the good will he earned here and runs it in for the touch-down: The Borderlands may not be perfect but I’m willing to wager that Goldner has a pretty fascinating career ahead of him.

 

2/3/15: It’s Always the Quiet Ones

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Aloha Oe, alternate title, Carl Marznap, Carl Panzram, child abuse, childhood trauma, cinema, crime film, dark films, dark tourism, Dark Tourist, disturbing films, dramas, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Frank John Hughes, gang rape, grief tourism, Grief Tourist, hallucinations, Hawaiian songs, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, homophobia, horror, insanity, isolation, juvenile detention facility, juvenile offenders, loners, Lovely Molly, Melanie Griffith, mental breakdown, mental illness, Michael Cudlitz, misanthropes, misanthropic, mother-son relationships, Movies, murdered prostitutes, Nayo Wallace, Pruitt Taylor Vince, serial killers, Suri Krishnamma, Suzanne Quast, Taxi Driver, transgender, Travis Bickle, twist ending, unpleasant films, voice-over narration

In certain cases, I can predict exactly what I’ll be getting when I sit down with a previously unknown film. Sometimes the cover art will give clues or there’ll be some strategic stunt casting that sets off alarm bells (anything with a WWE personality, for example, is probably not going to be “a contender”). It might be a filmmaker that I’m familiar with, giving me a general idea of what lays ahead, or a screenwriter that’s intrigued me with other scripts. In some cases, certain films just project an aura of…well, let’s just call it “compromise” and be generous, shall we? These are the equivalent of the direct-to-video detritus that used to line store shelves back in the glory days of VHS: they’re still here, of course, although now they clog virtual racks rather than physical ones.

There are always those films, however, that end up defying, destroying and resetting expectations. Every once in a while, a film that might seem completely forgettable from the outside ends up surprising me and boring straight into my brain-pan. One of my favorite examples of this is Eduardo Sanchez’s Lovely Molly (2011), a film which seems so generic and bland from the outside that it feels like you’ve been dipped in lava once it reveals itself to be an absolutely unholy hell of an experience. Without a doubt, Lovely Molly is one of the single most unpleasant films I’ve ever watched: it’s also completely unforgettable and, quite possibly, one of the greatest unknown films of the 2000s. While Suri Krishnamma’s Dark Tourist (2012) isn’t quite the film that Lovely Molly is, it still managed to obliterate my low expectations, positioning itself as a sort of cross between Taxi Driver (1976) and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986). When Dark Tourist is good, it’s absolutely riveting and, easily, one of the most grueling, unpleasant cinematic experiences I’ve had in months. This is definitely not a film that can (or will) appeal to everyone. If you’re ready to take a trip to some seriously damaged locales, however, Dark Tourist is saving you a seat on the bus.

Our protagonist is Jim (Michael Cudlitz), a misanthropic security guard who works the over-night shift at some sort of factory. Via his near constant voiceover, we learn a few handy things about our wannabe hero: he absolutely loves his solitude, eschewing human contact whenever possible; he’s obsessed with serial killers and their lives to the point where he makes yearly “pilgrimages” to check out their childhood homes, murder sites, etc.; he’s a virulent homophobe, racist and sexist, who decries Hollywood as “for the faggots,” bitches about his “Jew fucker” doctor and cheerfully describes his co-workers as “sluts, drug addicts, whore mongers and child molesters.” That Jim is able to be this terrible of a human being while still maintaining the outward semblance of normalcy is admirable, to say the least: we know how fucked up the guy is, since we’re getting the info straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. To everyone else, however, he just comes across as a standoffish, polite but cold guy with some weird hobbies. In other words, the epitome of “he seemed like such a nice, quiet guy.”

For this year’s trip, Jim has set his sights on the life and times of one Carl Marznap (based on real-life serial killer/monster Carl Panzram). Marznap was a killer/arsonist who was gang-raped in a juvenile facility and sought to take out his anger on the rest of the world, culminating in burning down a church full of people. Jim traces Marznap’s journey from his boyhood home to the (now abandoned) juvenile facility and the remains of the burned church, trying to get some sense of who the real Carl was. Along the way, Jim strikes up a tentative friendship with a lonely diner waitress (Melanie Griffith) and stays at a fleabag motel where the constant activities of the resident hooker, Iris (Suzanne Quast), start to provoke some rather “Travis Bickle-esque” feelings in him. Soon, Jim is having a hard time concentrating on his “vacation,” a situation which becomes even more difficult once he starts to see visions of an adult Marznap (Taylor Pruitt Vince). As Jim’s grasp on reality gets more and more precarious, he finds himself rocketing towards a revelation that is both impossibly sad and unrelentingly horrifying.

One of the greatest tricks that Krishnamma and screenwriter Frank John Hughes pull with Dark Tourist is making the misanthropic Jim such a thoroughly fascinating character. Chalk this up to a combination of good writing and a great performance by Cudlitz (who instantly reminded me of a younger Ron Perlman) but it’s a real coup: Jim should have been an absolutely miserable character to spend 80 minutes with but we still end up on his side (kind of/sort of) right up until the whole thing goes ass-over-tea kettle in a holocaust of violence. For a time, it’s easy to believe that Jim is just a severely damaged individual, ala Travis Bickle, who still has some deep-buried sense of morality, however perverted. When the worm turns, however, we’re smack-dab in Henry territory and it’s a pretty nasty place to be.

Craftwise, Dark Tourist isn’t exactly a home-run. The cinematography is often flat and kind of ugly, at its worst, and serviceable, at best. There’s an unfortunate lens-distortion effect used on the flashback scenes, which is rather cheesy, and the supporting performances range from good (Donna Ponterotto as Jim’s waitress mother) to serviceable (Pruitt Taylor Vince’s performance as Marznap is fine, if rather clichéd and perilously close to a cameo) to rather dreadful (I adore Melanie Griffith but the less said about her awkward, halting performance as Betsy, the better). There’s also an unfortunate tendency to hammer things home a bit hard: the part where Jim’s voice-over explicitly lays out his mental state is way too obvious, especially since the film had been so good at subtly laying out the same notion prior to that.

When the film follows through on its convictions, however, it comes perilously close to being a truly soul-shattering experience. The “twist” is a real gutpunch, which allows the previously foregone conclusion to pack much more emotional weight than it might otherwise have. The violence is sparse but genuinely disturbing when it comes (similar to Henry, if you think about it) and Krishnamma’s use of traditional Hawaiian instrumentals and songs such as “Aloha Oe” help keep the whole thing off kilter. For every familiar beat, Krishnamma throws in something so outside the box that it makes the whole production feel much fresher than it probably should have. This is, without a doubt, the very definition of something being far greater than the sum of its parts.

Ultimately, for as good as Dark Tourist ends up being (and the film is very, very good), it’s still the kind of movie that will have extremely limited appeal. Similar to Simon Rumley’s misery-epics The Living and the Dead (2006) and Red, White & Blue (2010), there is no sunshine to be found here whatsoever. Things begin on a grim note and degrade from there into abject and complete despair: it’s not spoiling a thing to say that nothing in Dark Tourist will end positively because there’s no way it could…Jim (and the world he inhabits) are way too fucked up for any sort of “fairy tale ending.” This is the kind of film that is best described as an “endurance match”: for as much as I respected Krishnamma and Hughes’ bleak vision, I would be extremely wary of anyone who said that they actually enjoyed it. Gentle readers, take note: if you’re not ready to descend to the depths of human depravity, you might want to book passage on an entirely different cruise.

2/1/15 (Part One): Crazy in Love

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alienists, alternate title, Asylum, based on a short story, Ben Kingsley, Benjamin Salt, Brad Anderson, Brendan Gleeson, cinema, David Thewlis, Don't Look in the Basement, dramas, Edgar Allen Poe, Edward Newgate, electro-shock therapy, Eliza Graves, Even Dwarfs Started Small, film reviews, films, Gothic, Guillaume Delaunay, House of Crazies, inmates, insane asylum, insane asylums, insanity, isolated estates, Jason Flemyng, Jim Sturgess, Joe Gangemi, Kate Beckinsale, King of Hearts, Lady Eliza Graves, lobotomies, love story, lunatics, madhouse, medical school, mental breakdown, mental illness, Michael Caine, Movies, mysteries, period-piece, Session 9, set in 1890s, Shutter Island, Sinéad Cusack, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Stonehearst Asylum, The Call, The Machinist, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, Tom Yatsko, Transsiberian, twist ending, Vanishing on 7th Street

Back in the 2000s, writer-director Brad Anderson was responsible for two of the most interesting, thought-provoking films of the decade: Session 9 (2001) and The Machinist (2004). While Session 9 was a subtle, endlessly creepy psychological chiller about a supposedly haunted, abandoned insane asylum, The Machinist showcased Christian Bale in a haunting role as an emaciated factory worker suffering from insomnia and really seemed to put Anderson on the map. After being duly impressed by both films (Session 9, in particular, is a phenomenal horror film and truly frightening), I eagerly awaited what seemed, on the outside, to be the ascension of a brilliant filmmaker. And then…nothing.

When Anderson finally followed-up The Machinist with 2008’s Transsiberian, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. Unlike his previous two films, Transsiberian was average, at best, a Hitchcock-lite exercise that had been done much more effectively by Sam Raimi with A Simple Plan (1998). While the film wasn’t terrible and featured a good turn by Woody Harrelson, it was a notable step-down from The Machinist. After Vanishing on 7th Street (2010) showed up, however, my disappointment turned into a sort of dismal acceptance: not only was Vanishing worse than Transsiberian, it managed to be a fairly awful film, by any definition. Marked by iffy acting, a scenario that felt cobbled together from much better films and a decided lack of common sense, Vanishing on 7th Street was the first legitimately bad film of Anderson’s I’d seen. After spending the next few years working in television, Anderson returned to the big-screen with the Halle Berry-starring howler The Call (2013), which only seemed to drive home the fact that the party was over. Suffice to say, he fell off my radar at that point.

Which, of course, brings us to the present with Stonehearst Asylum (2014), Anderson’s follow-up to the critically reviled The Call. Since I no longer had any particular expectations one way or the other, I was able to approach the film with a relatively clean slate, so to speak. From the outside, there certainly seem to be a lot of positives here: Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley top-line the cast (never a bad thing), it’s a period-piece set in a turn of the century insane asylum (always a cool setting/time) and it’s listed as an adaptation of Poe’s classic short story, “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.” On paper, this would definitely seem to have all the earmarks of an effective, low-key psycho-drama. In reality, however, Stonehearst Asylum (originally titled Eliza Graves) is much closer to Transsiberian: decidedly average and middle of the road, Anderson’s newest film features some good acting and plenty of nicely realized Gothic atmosphere but is a decidedly “been-there, done-that” affair. It’s always problematic when a film’s big “twist” can be parsed within the first quarter of the film, especially when the film makes great efforts to obscure this fact, only to deliver the self-same “twist” that was previously discovered.

Taking the basic narrative of Poe’s story but expanding upon it (in ways both effective and decidedly less so), Stonehearst Asylum tells the story of Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess), a newly graduated “alienist” (a doctor who specializes in asylum patients) who finds himself at the mysterious, Gothic Stonehearst Asylum. Once there, he meets the eccentric staff, including Dr. Silas Lamb (Ben Kingsley), the head administrator; Mickey Finn (David Thewlis), the earthy, vaguely threatening chief steward; Lady Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale), a piano-playing patient who also seems to serve on the staff and Millie (Sophie Kennedy Clark), the swoony nurse who seems to be smitten with the young doctor.

Settling into his rounds, Newgate discovers that the asylum employs a decidedly unconventional approach: not only are the patients not restricted in their movements or activities, they’re also encouraged in their various psychoses. One patient fancies himself a horse, so Lamb and the staff hand-feed him and “brush him down” regularly. “Why turn a perfectly happy horse into a miserable man?” Lamb impishly responds when Newgate asks why he doesn’t attempt to “cure” the poor, delusional fellow. Most of the patients at Stonehearst are “outcasts” and “embarrassments to their families,” Lamb continues, and have been, for all intents and purposes, abandoned at the facility.

In very short order, Newgate seems to be falling hard for Lady Graves, who suffers from a particularly debilitating form of “female hysteria”: any time she’s touched by a man, her body locks up in a rigid, paralytic state and she becomes completely unresponsive. She looks the piano, however, and her and Newgate begin to bond over their shared affinity for music. At this point, Stonehearst Asylum begins to seem like a Gothic romance, a story about star-crossed, ill-fated lovers doomed to feint and pirouette around each other like so many shadows. There is, of course, another shoe waiting in the wings.

This other shoe drops with a resounding thud when Newgate happens to look into the basement and discovers a group of filthy, hungry people locked in cages. Horrified, he listens in stunned disbelief as the leader of the group, a man who calls himself Dr. Benjamin Salt (Michael Caine), explains that the captives are the real staff of the asylum: Lamb and the other patients overthrew them, imprisoned them and took over the facility. In the strictest sense of the term, the inmates, according to Salt, are running the asylum. In a case of extreme agitation, Newgate approaches Eliza with his discovery and she seems to confirm Salt’s story, with one caveat: the former administrators of the asylum were monsters who tortured the patients in the name of “science” and deserve to be caged.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Newgate doesn’t seem to have anywhere to turn. Although Eliza confirmed Salt’s story, certain discrepancies indicate that either (or both) parties might be lying. If Salt’s story is true, Newgate is in terrible danger, especially if Lamb and the others discover that he knows the truth. If Eliza is telling the truth, however, imprisoning Salt and the others is more an act of self-defense than anything else: restoring the original balance of power could have tragic results for all involved. As everyone around him (including the caged prisoners) continue to act in increasingly erratic, troubling ways, Newgate must figure out how to get both himself and Eliza out safely, even though she’s explained that she has no intention of leaving. Newgate must be quick, however: Dr. Lamb has just developed a new technique called “electro-shock therapy” and he’s quite eager to test it out…if Edward isn’t careful, he might find his stay at Stonehearst to be a bit more permanent than he might’ve hoped.

As mentioned earlier, there’s a lot working in the film’s favor. For one thing, the Gothic atmosphere is always thick and highly effective: aside from Session 9, this is, easily, Anderson’s most atmospheric work. Thick wisps of fog obscure the hulking, angular asylum’s exterior walls, long, dark halls hold endless secrets and the continuous cries and laughing of the insane form a cacophonous soundtrack to the events. The asylum, itself, is a great location and cinematographer Tom Yatsko shoots it to great effect. The cast is also, for the most part, quite effective: while Sturgess and Beckinsale are blandly vanilla as the potential lovers, they’re surrounded by a suitably colorful cast doing some nice work. While Kingsley and Caine occasionally slide from “passionate” into “melodramatic,” they’re still both rock-solid and their handful of shared scenes are an easy highlight. I actually wish that Caine would do more low-key genre work like this: he’s pretty great and lends an air of prestige to the film that certainly helps elevate it.

There’s also plenty of great performances from Thewlis as the ultra-slimy Finn (the scene where he slow-burns over Newgate’s jokey comment about his name is genuinely scary), Clark as the (presumably) nymphomaniac nurse and Brendan Gleeson, in a glorified cameo, as the head alienist. There are plenty of quirky psychiatric conditions on display here, most of which make for (at the very least) some highly entertaining scenes: the man-horse bit is pretty damn great, truth be told. The film is also able to whip up some decent tension, especially as conditions in the asylum begin to rapidly degrade and we can start to see the unfortunate writing on the wall. The lobotomy scene is both effective and highly disturbing and there’s an incredibly chilling scene involving a pair of escapees that manages to be both beautifully visual and a subtle gut-punch.

On the downside, however, Stonehearst Asylum is just never quite as surprising or inventive as it should be (or thinks it is, to be honest). As mentioned, the film’s big “twist” is pretty apparent at about 30 minutes into the film, which makes the various “slight of hand” machinations at the end seem both unnecessary and a little offensive. It’s the equivalent of trying to run a shell game with only one shell: we know exactly where the pea is, so moving the shell in endless circles doesn’t really do anything. The film is also about 30 minutes too long: it would have been much more effective as a tidy 80-90 minute sprint but quickly runs out of ideas and energy when stretched to marathon-length. The use of flashbacks to illustrate one character’s fractured mental state is both ineffective and confusing and the ultimate “twist” makes so little sense as to be almost completely arbitrary. In many ways, Anderson seems to be trying to approximate the look and feel of Cronenberg’s latter-day “prestige” pictures, such as A Dangerous Method (2011) without any of his trademark character development: it’s definitely a far cry from the anguished internalism of The Machinist or, even, Session 9.

Ultimately, Stonehearst Asylum is decent enough, which is actually part of the issue. While well-made and sturdily acted, nothing here stands out: this exact same storyline has already been explored (to much greater effect) in films like Asylum (1972), Don’t Look in the Basement (1973),  Shutter Island (2010)…none of these are necessarily classics but all manage to come up with more unique scenarios than we find here. This isn’t a terrible film but it does seem like a terribly unnecessary one: by-the-book, largely bereft of genuine surprise and unevenly paced, Stonehearst Asylum will probably only be of interest if something…say, a lobotomy, for example…has managed to wipe out all memories of other, better films. Check in to Stonehearst if you like but, unless you’re nuts, you might want to find better accommodations.

1/3/15 (Part Five): Reset Your Life

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action films, alien invasion, alternate title, based on a graphic novel, Best of 2014, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson, Christopher McQuarrie, cinema, covert military action, Dion Beebe, Doug Liman, Edge of Tomorrow, Emily Blunt, favorite films, film reviews, films, Go, Groundhog Day, Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, Jonas Armstrong, Kick Gurry, Live Die Repeat, Mimics, Movies, multiple writers, Omega Mimic, regeneration, sci-fi, science-fiction, special-effects extravaganza, super soldiers, Swingers, The Bourne Identity, Tom Cruise, Tony Way, unable to die, video game, video games

When I call Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow (2014) the best video game movie I’ve ever seen, understand that’s neither sarcasm nor a pejorative: it really is the one film that perfectly encapsulates everything that’s great about video games and successfully translates it to the big screen. Like the best video games, it’s got a gripping storyline to lead from one action setpiece to the next, a wannabe hero who becomes our avatar into the action and a precise understanding of the importance of multiple lives and the need to reset the whole game from time to time. The fact that Edge of Tomorrow can function as the equivalent of a life-action video game and still maintain enough genuine emotional heft and three-dimensional characters to seem like the furthest thing from a video game is one of the reasons why the film was one of the best of 2014.

Functioning as sort of a first-person-shooter take on Groundhog Day (1993), we get dropped into a reality where the Earth is under attack from an alien menace dubbed the Mimics. The Mimics are horrendously lethal, tentacled monstrosities that prove especially efficient at destroying soft-skinned humans and have proceeded to put the entire species into a serious headlock. After we develop exo-suit technology and creat “super soldiers,” however, we begin to fight back against the extraterrestrial menace and slowly make headway. The forces of humanity are now gathering for a last, desperate push against the Mimic threat on the European front (ala World War 2), a campaign that is being called “Operation Downfall.”

Into this set-up, we get the snide, arrogant, paper-pushing personality of Major William Cage (Tom Cruise). A proud desk jockey and bureaucrat, Cage is the furthest thing from a soldier, despite his rank. He gets the nasty shock of a lifetime, therefore, when he’s called before the imposing person of General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson) and ordered to the frontline. Stripped of his rank, labeled a coward and handed over to the tender mercies of Master Sargeant Farell (Bill Paxton) and the rowdy grunts of J Squad, Cage is pretty much a sitting duck. Once he actually gets to the battlefield, however, he quickly becomes a cooked duck. Game over.

Until, that is, Cage wakes up back at the army base, on the morning of his previous death. Through some sort of exposure to the Mimic’s blood, Cage has now acquired their ability to “reset the day,” as it were: every time he dies, he’s just brought right back to the base, in the morning. As he works through this horrendous case of deja vu, Cage comes into contact with a highly skilled “super-soldier,” Sgt. Rita Pitaki (Emily Blunt), who knows exactly what he’s going through: after all, she used to have the same “condition” until recently. Rita wants to use Cage’s ability to put an end to the Mimic menace once and for all: if he can lead them to the Omega Mimic (and keep dying/resetting in the process), the human forces will be able to strike a decisive victory against the enemy, ending the nightmare.

Cage, however, is such a wimp that he can’t survive in the fury of battle for five minutes, let alone the length of time it will take to lead them to the Omega Mimic. Cue a rigorous training regime that will see poor Cage “die” more times than…well, than your usual video game character, shall we say. Over time, however, Rita is able to bludgeon Cage into the kind of soldier who just might have a chance out there. The odds are never less than dicey, however, and treacherous revelations lie around every corner. Will Cage be able to play this game through to the end or will he lose his last life trying?

First off, Edge of Tomorrow is an absolute blast, a non-stop thrill ride that leaves you breathless from the jump and never flags in energy, invention or wit for the entirety of its runtime time. Director Liman, working with a screenplay from genre virtuoso Christopher McQuarrie and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, is an absolute wizard at crafting show-stopping action sequences and the entire film is a ridiculous amount of fun to watch. One of my big complaints with modern action films is that the action sequences are always staged in ways that are too needlessly kinetic, robbing the scenes of any sense of fluidity or space. This is definitely not the problem with Edge of Tomorrow, which manages to be non-stop, yet orderly enough to allow for the action sequences to have their own individual quirks and not devolve into blurs of motion.

The film also looks great, with a fully established world that feels lived in and authentic, while maintaining a kind of hyper-reality: again, very reminiscent of modern video games. Cinematographer Dion Beebe, whose resume includes things like Holy Smoke (1999), Chicago (2002) and the recent adaptation of Into the Woods (2014), turns in some suitably stunning images and the effects work is all top-notch.

While Cruise would probably be a huge draw for many viewers, I’ve never been an automatic fan of his: it really depends on the film, as far as I’m concerned. In this case, Cruise is a natural fit for the role of Major Cage and he turns in one of my favorite performances of his in years. Smug, self-serving and vaguely slimy, Cage is positioned as the least likable character you can imagine, yet Cruise is able to develop that into someone who’s a charismatic hero, by the film’s final reel. It’s a really neat hat trick and Cruise is incredibly likable here: I can see why he’s still regarded as a matinée idol. There’s a nuance and sense of irony to his performance that’s quite nice and he manages to pull some genuinely funny moments out of the film, as well (the bit where he bites it rolling under a car is absolutely hilarious, as is the bit where he gets “reset” after breaking his back).

Cruise receives excellent support from Emily Blunt, who turns in a nicely asskicking turn as Rita. She’s always believable as the cold-blooded soldier, yet her subtle emotional turns help posit her as a more three-dimensional character. Blunt and Cruise make a great team, to boot, and the two have genuine chemistry: the scenes where they slowly slog through the battle, inch by inch, are masterpieces of action yet still retain a surprising amount of intimacy.

The supporting cast is equally great, with veterans like Brendan Gleeson and Bill Paxton turning in some fantastic work, along with folks like Jonas Armstrong, Tony Way and Kick Gurry, who bring vivid life to the soldiers of J Squad. In fact, there’s no one performance that comes across as awkward, off or just flat-out awful: everyone in the cast gives consistently strong, believable performances, from the principals to the walk-ons. The film is pulpy, to be sure, but the acting still manages to be broad without sliding over into self-parody or stupidity.

I honestly wasn’t expecting Edge of Tomorrow to be anything special: if anything, I expected it would be nothing more than a glossy, well-made, big-budget studio film that was loud, frenetic and utterly devoid of meaning. Instead, the film ends up being a whip-smart, funny, thrilling and endlessly fun spectacle that slows down just enough for some character development but never enough to let up on the adrenaline. It also looked so good that I instantly regretted not seeing it in a legitimate theater: cest la vie, I suppose. While I enjoyed Liman’s Swingers (1996) back in the day and thought Go (1999) was alright, I never liked his Bourne Identity (2002), mostly because I didn’t care for the staging of the action sequences. Imagine my surprise, then, when the same director manages to helm one of my favorite action films in years. The world really is a funny place, isn’t it?

12/22/14 (Part One): Tie Your Mother Down

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Adam Robitel, alternate title, Alzheimer's Disease, Anne Bedian, Anne Ramsay, Brett Gentile, children in peril, cinema, co-writers, Deborah Logan, evil old lady, feature-film debut, film crews, film reviews, films, found-footage films, horror, horror films, immortality, Jeremy DeCarlos, Jill Larson, Julianne Taylor, Michelle Ang, mockumentary, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, murdered children, Paranormal Activity, possession, pseudo-documentary, Ryan Cutrona, serial killers, snakes, The Blair Witch Project, The Taking, The Taking of Deborah Logan, titular characters, Tonya Bludsworth, writer-director-editor

Anyone who’s ever watched a loved one succumb to Alzheimer’s knows that the disease is a true monster that rivals anything the brightest stars in horror can dream up: formerly brilliant minds revert to a state of petulant childhood, life-long lovers forget the partner who’s been by their side for decades and, eventually, the victim’s body betrays its own basic functions and forgets such prime directives as “Eat” and “Breathe.” The deepest, most enduring tragedy of the disease is the way it makes the familiar alien to us: when all that we ever really carry with us is our memories, Alzheimer’s ends up being the most lethal, insidious thief of all.

Despite the inherently horrifying nature of the disease, cinematic depictions of Alzheimer’s are almost always delivered as tear-jerking dramas, stories of families in crisis, bittersweet ruminations on life-long love running its course, etc…Thanks to writer-director Adam Robitel, however, the world of cinematic horror finally has its first “Alzheimer’s disease”-related film: The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014) is a found-footage film that purports to examine someone suffering from the effects of Alzheimer’s who may also (or may not) be suffering from some sort of demonic possession. While the film’s angle is pretty unique and the first half manages to offer up some nicely subtle chills, however, Robitel’s feature-length debut winds up collapsing into a mess of lazy Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2007) clichés by its final act, squandering much of the good will that the film earns along the way. Nonetheless, The Taking of Deborah Logan certainly earns points for finding a more unique subject to exploit” than the same moldy old haunted house/moving furniture tropes that have been de rigueur in found-footage for the past 15 years or so.

Right off the bat, we’re greeted with text that explains that the film we’re about to see has been cobbled together from various footage sources and has been “lightly” edited and spruced-up: a vague bit of base-covering that, essentially, gives a pass for any and all unexplained angles, non-digetic sounds, etc…that we’ll be encountering. It’s also, by its very nature, a rather lazy approach to the format and the first (of many) warning signs that this particular way will be a rocky one. In a nutshell, medical student Mia (Michelle Ang), along with crew members Gavin (Brett Gentile) and Luis (Jeremy DeCarlos), wants to make a documentary about Alzheimer’s patient Deborah Logan (Jill Larson). Deborah’s grown daughter, Sarah (Anne Ramsay), is eager to get the filmmakers involved, since they’ve offered to help pay for her mother’s increasingly expensive medical care. When the formerly on-board Deborah suddenly decides that she values her privacy more than the assistance, however, all signs point to Mia’s documentary being D.O.A.

There wouldn’t, of course, be a movie without a change of heart, however, the crew are invited back a week later to begin filming their project. At first, everything seems pretty normal: Deborah is certainly more forgetful than the average person but there doesn’t seem to be anything too terrible going on. In short order, however, we see just how fast Deborah is stuck in the sticky web that is Alzheimer’s: she begins to forget basic things about her own daughter and past, has mood changes on a moment’s notice and has started to let her own hygiene slide. As Sarah tries to help her mother retain as much of her personality as she can, we witness the heartbreaking ways in the disease breaks down both its victim and her caregiver: as Mia notes in one of her documentaries many talking points, caring for an Alzheimer victim can alter the caregiver’s brain chemistry, as well, making the terrible disease a truly lose-lose proposition.

Just when it seems as if The Taking of Deborah Logan might be the world’s first found-footage-styled “after-school special,” however, things begin to take a turn for the sinister. Cameraman Gavin happens to spy Deborah doing some odd things with a snake and the older woman seems to develop a habit of appearing right behind folks, scaring the everlovin’ shit out of them. Things really come to a head, however, when Deborah completely flips out and accuses Gavin of stealing her beloved garden trowel: she chases him around the kitchen with a large butcher knife, cornering him on the counter and very nearly costs everyone involved several fingers. After taking her back to the hospital and the kindly Dr. Nazir (Anne Bedian), Sarah gets the worst news possible: her mother’s condition is deteriorating at an ever more rapid rate and she’s losing more of her brain on a daily basis. The end, as Sarah knows all to well, may be over the next horizon but it’s getting closer by the minute.

Deborah’s condition may be terrible but Mia and the others begin to notice a frightening pattern: Alzheimer’s explains some, but not all, of the things that are happening around them. Snakes start popping up everywhere, Deborah has taking to painting a series of pictures which depict a mysterious, black figure moving ever closer to their house and she’s developed an alarming propensity for what medical experts must surely dub “scary, intense and gravely demon voices” (take two pills twice a day, as needed). After a truly creepy incident involving Deborah’s patented in-home switchboard system, Mia and the others come to think that someone else might be responsible for Deborah’s more violent tendencies: specifically, they come to believe that poor Deborah is possessed by the spirit of serial killer Henry Desjardins (Kevin A. Campbell), a pediatrician who mysteriously disappeared after killing four children as part of an immortality ceremony.

As Deborah’s behavior becomes more and more extreme, Sarah is truly backed-up against a wall: she could barely care for her mother before creepy paranormal shit started happening and this all just seems like one cruel cosmic joke, especially when everyone from the local priest to the college’s expert in anthropological studies seems unable to give her any assistance. Is Deborah actually possessed by the spirit of an insane killer or is her Alzheimer’s just getting exponentially worse as time goes on? What’s up with all of the snakes that seem to be popping up everywhere? Could there be another, darker, mystery at the heart of everything…a mystery that could potentially unravel our comfortable belief in a rational world and give us a front-seat to our own demise? What is actually taking Deborah Logan: an unstoppable disease or pure evil?

For roughly the first half of the film, The Taking of Deborah Logan is a really well made found-footage film, albeit one that doesn’t do much new with the sub-genre, aside from the subject matter. That being said, the early found footage aspect of Robitel’s film is quite strong: in particular, I really liked the pseudo-documentary aspects of Mia’s film, such as the computer-aided infographics, actor reenactments and talking head interviews. Unlike other found-footage films that aim for a pseudo-doc feel, The Taking of Deborah Logan actually feels like the real thing: kudos to Robitel for managing to nail the tone/look so spot-on.

The acting is also quite good across the first few acts, with Jill Larson turning in a massively impressive performance as the titular character: her ability to vacillate between sweet, angry, forgetful and prideful is absolutely essential to the success of the character and Larson pulls it off quite handily. There are moments in The Taking of Deborah Logan that are absolutely heart-breaking and it’s all down to Larson’s incredibly subtle, expressive performance. Once she gets more bonkers in the latter half of the film, her performance begins to seem a bit more heavy-handed but the early going is quite masterful.

If only the same could be said of Anne Ramsay’s performance as Sarah, however. Ramsay comes into the film “turned up to 11,” as it were, and her performance only gets more strident as the film wears on. By the climax, both Sarah and Mia are so shrill, giddy and obnoxious that I spent the final 15 minutes secretly hoping something would bump off both their characters, a pretty extreme switch from rooting for them a mere 20 minutes before that. Ditto for Gentile and DeCarlos’ unlikable turns as Mia’s film crew: neither character ever gets more to do than utter tired variations on “Oh, hell no!” and the script saddles DeCarlos with one of the awful “these crazy white people” asides that’s a real head-smacker. I’m also not sure what’s going on with Ryan Cutrona’s performance as next-door-neighbor Harris: not only did he never really seem to factor into the story, his motivations and personality also seemed to change on the drop of a hat, based on whatever the script needed him to do…nothing quite like a character who might as well be named “Johnny Plot Contrivance.”

As mentioned earlier, the subtle, sparse quality of The Taking of Deborah Logan’s first 40 minutes ends up getting thrown completely out the window in the last half of the film, resulting in endless scenes where characters look through a camera viewfinder while running down endless, anonymous dark tunnels, as well as those now ubiquitous “stationary cameras recording while everyone sleeps” clichés that seemed to spring fully formed from Paranormal Activity like Athena busting out of Zeus’ cranium. None of it adds anything new to the format whatsoever and the film even manages to end with one of those moldy “or are they…evil?” “twists” that’s probably only novel for folks that have been in comas for the past several decades.

Despite how disappointing the film becomes, however, there’s plenty to like here, including a thoroughly gonzo, kickass scene during the climax that involves one of the characters spitting acidic venom and distending their jaw like a snake in order to swallow someone whole: suffice to say that my resulting upraised fist probably knocked a big chunk of cheese out of the moon. On the whole, however, The Taking of Deborah Logan ends up being just another found-footage film, full of all of the same problems and clichés, albeit with slightly more imagination and invention, than the rest of the unwashed masses. There was enough solid material here to make Robitel’s film easy to recommend, even if the film will always function best as one of the “rainy day” viewings. Nonetheless, give Robitel and co-writer Gavin Heffernan credit for one thing: they have to be the first filmmakers to plant a horror flag in the desolate wasteland that is Alzheimer’s Disease and that, on its own, has to be worth something.

12/20/14: No Room At the Inn

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abandoned inns, alternate title, Carolina Guerra, cinema, Evil Dead, evil kids, Fallen, father-daughter relationships, film reviews, films, Gallows' Hill, Gustavo Angarita, Hellraiser: Revelations, isolated estates, isolation, Juan Pablo Gamboa, Julieta Salazar, Movies, Nathalia Ramos, Peter Facinelli, possession, rainforests, Richard D'Ovidio, Sebastian Martinez, self-sacrifice, set in South America, Sophia Myles, Tatiana Renteria, The Damned, The Evil Dead, Victor Garcia, witches

Here’s a little advice for all you fine folks, free of charge: should you ever find yourself in some fundamentally creepy location like, say, an abandoned inn in the middle of the Columbian rain forest, do not – I repeat, do not – attempt to free any strange, emotionless children who appear to be locked inside small cells covered in occult symbols and writing. At the very least, you might be interfering with some sort of extreme time-out scenario. Worst case? You might actually be unleashing an all-powerful, unstoppable witch onto the general populace. Now, wouldn’t that just make you feel like a big, ol’ jackass?

Good advice, to be sure, but advice that doesn’t seem to have made it to the characters in Victor Garcia’s The Damned (2013): they end up at that creepy inn, they let loose the creepy girl and, as often happens, they reap plenty of Hell in the process. While the scenario may be slightly musty, Garcia’s film is an atmospheric enough little chiller that features a handful of suitably creepy scenes, plenty of by-the-book jump scares and enough references to classic genre fare like The Evil Dead (1981) and Fallen (1998) to prove that the filmmaker’s done his research. While The Damned won’t necessarily blow anyone away, it’s a more than suitable entry in this particular sub-genre and worth at least a watch.

The evil presence, in this case, is a long-dead witch by the name of Elena. Elena, even for a witch, is a pretty nasty piece of work: she can’t be killed, knows everyone’s deepest, darkest secrets and can “jump” into a new host whenever her current body is killed. Since Elena can’t be killed, the only recourse is to keep her locked away, forever, in a magically protected wooden box. When we first meet the witch, she’s been imprisoned in the body of a young girl, in said creepy, abandoned inn, watched over by her father, Felipe (Gustavo Angarito) for as long as he continues to live.

As often happens in these situations, a bunch of American tourists end up wrecking the party for everyone. David (Peter Facinelli) and his fiance, Lauren (Sophia Myles), have traveled to Bogata, Columbia, in order to pick up David’s wayward daughter, Jill (Nathalia Ramos), and return her to the States for their wedding. Jill is in Columbia hanging out with her aunt, Gina (Carolina Guerra), a local reporter and sister to David’s deceased wife, Marcela (Tatiana Renteria) and has no interest in attending the wedding: she misses her “real” mom and views Lauren as a “gold-digging bitch”…clearly, no love lost here. After it’s revealed that Jill has left her passport at Gina’s house, the group, along with Gina’s camera-man, Ramon (Sebastian Martinez), decides to go get it, despite the torrential rains that are currently causing flooding everywhere.

Sure enough, the group attempts to cross a flooded-out wash and almost get killed for their troubles when their van is washed away in a truly thrilling bit of outdoor survival action. Regrouping, they manage to make it to the aforementioned creepy, abandoned inn, where they meet the aforementioned Felipe. When the group ignores Felipe’s warnings and explores the inn, they end up finding the sinister, imprisoned Ana Maria (Julieta Salazar), who may look like a little girl but is something far older and more deadly. As the group falls pray to the witch’s spirit, one by one, the ancient evil jumps from one to the next. As their numbers dwindle, the survivors are left to figure out who is now possessed and how, if at all, they’ll be able to excise themselves from this nightmare. Elena, as it turns out, has a plan and each and every “innocent” soul will play its own part.

Lest it seem that the above review is a tad “spoilery,” let me assure you that the film does nothing to hide any of the inevitable revelations about Ana Maria’s true identity: at no point is there ever any doubt that the young girl is evil, even if it takes us a little while to get the full backstory. From the very time we see young Julieta Salazar, with her blank, expressionless eyes and lack of emotion, we should know what we’re getting into: I can’t imagine anyone but honest-to-god horror “newbies” being surprised by any of the film’s twists or revelations, right down to the supposed “shocking twist” ending. Unlike other films that keep audiences guessing as to whether the evil is genuine or not, The Damned throws all its cards on the table the first time Ana Maria uses one of those stereotypical “gravely demon voices” to taunt Felipe. Again, if you’re surprised by this, you really weren’t paying particularly good attention in the first place.

Despite its over-familiarity, however, The Damned is actually a pretty good film: it’s not great, mind you, but the acting tends to be pretty sturdy, the effects are nicely realized (although the hokey CGI storm clouds are real head-smackers) and it’s got some killer locations: you really can’t beat an abandoned inn in the middle of the rain forest as far as creepy places go. The witch’s backstory is also nicely realized and provides a nice counterpoint to more generic horror origin stories: it’s nothing particularly original, mind you, but it also hasn’t been beaten to death (at least yet). Garcia manages to come up with some nicely atmospheric scenes, such as the first time we see the creepy basement area, and balances this atmosphere with some more traditional jump scares (stuff like closing the open fridge door to reveal someone standing there, etc…). There also seem to be quite a few references to Sam Raimi’s classic Evil Dead here, too: everything from the large trapdoor that hides the basement to the “Deadite”-esque demon voices and possessions seem to directly reference the granddaddy of “cabin in the woods” horrors.

For the most part, Garcia is known for films like Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007), Mirrors 2 (2010) and Hellraiser: Revelations (2011), which is easily one of the worst films in a pretty wretched series. With that kind of back catalog, The Damned easily stands out as a high-water mark, if for no other reason than it bears the distinction of not being a direct-to-video sequel to previously established franchises. He gets good performances from his cast, for the most part, with Nurse Jackie’s Peter Facinelli faring the best as the father trying desperately to save his family and Gustavo Angarita faring the worst as the overly angry, shouty Felipe: everyone else falls in between these extremes, although no one really sticks out like a sore thumb.

Ultimately, The Damned is one of those films that plays best on a lazy, rainy weekend when you’ve got nothing better to do than lounge around and watch rain drops race down the window pane. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been done before (and, in many cases, better) but that doesn’t change the fact that Garcia’s film is eminently watchable and engaging enough to keep viewers hooked til the end. In an era when possession films seem to rule the horror film roost, it’s always nice to see something that takes a route slightly less traveled, even if marginally so.

Just remember: if you find that creepy little girl, leave her right where she is…no good deed ever goes unpunished.

10/27/14: Disease as Love, Death as Eroticism

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'70s films, 31 Days of Halloween, Allan Kolman, alternate title, apartment-living, auteur theory, Barbara Steele, body horror, Canadian films, Cathy Graham, cinema, David Cronenberg, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Fred Doederlein, horror films, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Joe Silver, Joy Coghill, Lynn Lowry, Movies, parasites, Paul Hampton, possession, rape, Ronald Mlodzik, set in the 1970s, sexual violence, Shivers, Silvie Debois, Society, Susan Petrie, They Came From Within, Vlasta Vrana, writer-director, zombie films, zombies

In the world of horror filmmaking, it’s not uncommon for fledgling directors to first cut their teeth on low-budget zombie flicks: after all, ever since George A. Romero kicked the door in with his revolutionary Night of the Living Dead (1968), the walking dead have become an ingrained part of the horror industry, even bleeding over into pop culture over time. Over forty years removed from Romero’s modest black and white chiller, we now live in a day and age when graphic fare like The Walking Dead can become a hit television series: stick that in your pipe and smoke it, NYPD Blue!

Why do zombie films make such good “starter projects,” however? For one thing, zombie films lend themselves well to a low-budget aesthetic: as Romero proved, you don’t really need more than a willing group of actors, a dedicated location and rudimentary special effects to capture an audience’s attention…in fact, grainy, visceral images tend to heighten the impact of zombie films, not detract from them. The same can’t really be said for any other over-arching horror subset, for the most part, unless one is discussing slasher films: trying making a sci-fi-horror film “on the cheap” and see how effective it is. For another thing, zombie films readily lend themselves to a filmmaker’s desire to “shake things up”: individual filmmakers can mess around with the origin of the infection, the behavior of the dead, the general world around the characters, the internal politics, etc…and come up with a hundred different films off of the same basic “the dead get up and eat the living” log-line. It’s a generic “recipe” that can be turned into an awful lot of different dishes.

To this group of filmmakers who got their start with zombie flicks, be sure to add the inimitable, confounding, living legend that is Canadian body horror auteur David Cronenberg. Although Cronenberg’s first films were actually a pair of art features, he first gained notice with his third film (technically his first feature, as the others were right around an hour apiece). Shivers (1975), known in some circles by the far kitchier title They Came From Within, might be early Cronenberg, but anyone familiar with his career will see the through-line with little trouble: chilly, clinical, unemotional, obsessed with yet disgusted by sexual activity, full of skin-crawling body horror elements and ooky practical effects…in other words, classic Cronenberg.

Kicking off with an effective faux-infomercial for Starliner Island, a self-contained community with everything from apartments to stores and recreational areas, we’re given a sneak peek into what will become our besieged farmhouse, as it were: Starliner Towers. We’re introduced to a number of characters, including Nick Tudor (Allan Kolman) and his wife, Janine (Susan Petrie); the apartment’s manager, Mr. Merrick (Ronald Mlodzik); resident physician Dr. Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton) and his nurse/paramour, Miss Forsythe (Lynn Lowry); the Svibens (Vlasta Vrana, Silvie Debois) and, perhaps most importantly, Dr. Emil Hobbes (Fred Doederlein) and teenager Annabelle (Cathy Graham). When we first meet Hobbes and Annabelle, the good doctor is strangling the young woman, after which he cuts her open and proceeds to pour acid into her chest cavity before slitting his own throat. As we might gather, all is not sunshine and warm summer breezes here at Starliner Towers…not by a long shot.

As it turns out, Dr. Hobbes, along with his partner, Rollo Linsky (Joe Silver), was working on a way to use parasites as an alternative to organ transplants: the researchers wanted to breed special parasites to take over the organs in a sick person’s body, allowing them to opportunity to heal internally. Somewhere along the way, however, something went drastically wrong (or drastically right, as we’ll come to learn later): the parasites are now jumping from host to host, taking over their victim’s bodies and transforming them into mindless, sexually ravenous zombies. As more and more residents of Starliner Towers fall prey to the disgusting, fleshy slug-things, Roger and Nurse Forsythe, along with Dr. Linsky, must do all they can to remain uninfected, all while frantically searching for some cure to this disorder. In no time, however, the trio find themselves trapped in a house of horrors that’s one part orgy, one part stone-cold nightmare. This is no ordinary “zombie infection,” however: as the ill-fated protagonists will discover, what’s taking place may be as simple and terrifying as the next step in human evolution…an evolutionary move that may see humanity wave goodbye to its cosmic neighbors and embrace a way of life that can best be described as primal, animalistic and completely free of the niceties of polite society.

As with the majority of Cronenberg’s “body horror” films, Shivers can be a massively unpleasant piece of work, especially once one takes into account the added weight of the violent sexuality aspect: if you’re the kind of audience member who shudders at the thought of nasty little slug creatures crawling into every orifice imaginable, you might want to give this a wide berth. For everyone else, however, Shivers serves as an interesting reminder of where Cronenberg started, a particular psychosexual neighborhood that he still lives in, even though his most recent body of work has tended to minimize the sci-fi/horror elements while playing up his more violent tendencies.

Like The Brood (1979), Scanners (1981) and Videodrome (1983), Shivers is a chilly, spartan, clinical film, all blown-out whites, hard-shadows and insidious things happening in the background. It’s a meticulously crafted film, which is par for the course with Cronenberg, but it’s also a very detached film, so unemotional as to occasionally seem aloof. Paul Hampton, in particular, has a bearing about him that seems to speak more to extreme boredom and ennui than the “normal” emotions one might expect from someone under attack from mind-controlling parasites. Truth be told, much of the acting in the film is rather rough and detached, with the exception of genre-vet Barbara Steele, who turns in one of her typically hot-blooded performances as Mrs. Tudor’s friend, Betts. Shivers is also one of the few Cronenberg films, his adaptation of Stephen King’s Dead Zone (1983) being another, to feel distinctly dated and “of its time.”

For all of its rough edges and occasional tonal missteps (one scene involving a slug “jumping” at a woman is very silly and reminds of something Paul Bartel might have snickered his way through), however, Shivers is still undoubtedly a Cronenberg film. When the film is firing on all cylinders, such as the horrifying finale that handily presages Brian Yuzna’s equally yucky (if brilliant) Society (1989), it’s an unbeatable, claustrophobic nightmare. The notion of the “new flesh” that Cronenberg explored so brilliantly in Videodrome seems to get its genesis here, as does his career-long melding of disease, sex and bodily functions. Shivers is also a much more streamlined, “simple” film than Cronenberg’s later work, which helps to amplify the genre elements: in many ways, this is one of the auteur’s purest horror films, hands down.

Despite being a lifelong fan of Cronenberg’s horror films, I must admit to really relishing his more recent “non-horror” films like Spider (2002), A History of Violence (2005), Eastern Promises (2007) and A Dangerous Method (2011). As of late, it seems to me that Cronenberg has sharpened his already lethal skills into a fine, diamond-edged blade: his films may be decidedly less “icky” than they used to be, but the grue has been traded for devastating insights into the human condition that are that much more powerful for being delivered relatively straight-faced. That being said, however, I’ll always have a soft-spot in my heart for his early genre work, especially when I’m feeling down on the human condition, in general. As Cronenberg knows so well, despite all of our innovations, art, emotion and high-minded morality, we’re all just sacks of meat, at the end of the day: clockwork piles of blood, guts, sinew and muscle that may aim for the heavens but spend the majority of our lives wallowing in the muck.

10/14/15 (Part One): The Sisterhood of the Flying Broom

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31 Days of Halloween, 800 Bullets, Accion Mutante, Alex de la Iglesia, alternate title, armed robbery, auteur theory, battle of the sexes, Carmen Maura, Carolina Bang, El dia de la bestia, favorite films, feminism, Film auteurs, foreign films, Gabriel Delgado, Guillermo del Toro, horror movies, horror-comedies, Hugo Silva, Jaime Ordonez, Kiko de la Rica, Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi, love story, Macarena Gomez, Mario Casas, men vs women, misogyny, paganism, Peter Jackson, romance, Santiago Segura, Secun de la Rosa, small town life, Spanish film, special-effects extravaganza, Terele Pavez, The Day of the Beast, The Last Circus, witches, Witching and Bitching, writer-director, Zugarramurdi

Occupying a common ground somewhere between cinema-fantastique auteur Guillermo del Toro and legendary surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky, the films of Spanish writer-director Alex de la Iglesia are, without a doubt, one-of-a-kind treasures, little islands of individuality adrift in a cinematic sea of homogeneity. Since the early ’90s, de la Iglesia has used genre films like feature-length debut Accion mutante (1993) and El dia de la bestia (1995) to address everything from organized religion to societal responsibility, from the vagaries of the child adoption system to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War.

Beginning with 2002’s 800 Bullets, de la Iglesia began to move further afield from the scrappy supernatural-themed films that began his career to focus on more “mature” films, albeit ones which still bore very little resemblance to anyone else’s. El crimen perfecto (2004), The Last Circus (2010) and As Luck Would Have It (2011) might have been more grounded in reality than de la Iglesia’s previous films (although The Last Circus is a pretty surreal cake, no matter how you slice it) but were no less quirky and ground-breaking. Since As Luck Would Have It was his most linear, “normal” film yet, I found myself wondering if the wild man of Spanish cinema had decided to walk the straight and narrow, so to speak.

For his most recent film, however, de la Iglesia opted to go a little further back in his career: all the way back to the outrageous El dia de la bestia, as it turns out. Witching and Bitching (or the Witches of Eastwick-referencing original title, Las brujas de Zugarramurdi) (2013) combines action, slapstick, sly black humor and the supernatural in truly invigorating ways, offering up a treatise on the eternal battle of the sexes that manages to lob grenades at both sides while still finding plenty of room for romance, some sneaky asides about Spanish pop culture and some pretty awesome SFX setpieces, including a climatic battle with a massive, ancient goddess that would make Peter Jackson smile. In other words: that magnificent bastard de la Iglesia has done it again.

De la Iglesia has always been masterful with his opening segments and Witching and Bitching continues this trend. After a nicely atmospheric intro featuring some good, old-fashioned witch action (think “bubble bubble toil and trouble/big black cauldron type stuff), we get jumped into a thoroughly dynamic credit sequence that manages to juxtapose images of famous female actors, politicians, historical figures and celebrities with those of witches, pagan symbols, fertility statues, arcane images and serial killers, as if to make the claim that pigeonholing women is just about as stupid and pointless an exercise as possible. De la Iglesia seems to be making the statement that women, like men, are a little bit of every archetype: that old cliché of “the Madonna or the whore” is just as worthless today as it was a hundred years ago.

The film, proper, begins with Jose (Hugo Silva), his young son, Sergio (Gabriel Delgado) and accomplice, Antonio (Mario Casas), fleeing a badly botched jewelry store heist. They make off with a dufflebag filled with gold wedding rings but Tony’s girlfriend has taken off with their getaway car (in her defense, Antonio never bothered to let her know that he would be using her car for an armed robbery, so her reaction is kind of understandable), leaving them stranded as the cops begin to bear down. Springing into action, Jose carjacks a taxi, taking the driver, Manuel (Jaime Ordonez), and his passenger hostage. All that Jose wants to do is get to the French border and he sees Manuel’s taxi as his golden parachute.

Meanwhile, Jose’s highly irate ex-wife, Silvia (Macarena Gomez), has heard about the botched robbery on the news and is rushing over to rescue her poor son and slap Jose upside the head so hard that it jogs his common-sense loose. Along for the ride are bickering cops Calvo (Pepon Nieto) and Pacheco (Secun de la Rosa), who are both convinced that Silvia somehow abetted her low-life ex-husband with the robbery. As luck would have it, all of these disparate characters converge on the titular town of Zugarramurdi, where they will find themselves in the midst of an ancient coven of witches, led by Graciana (Carmen Maura), her elderly mother, Maritxu (Terele Pavez), and daughter, Eva (Carolina Bang). The witches are seeking to resurrect a pagan goddess, in order to replace the reigning patriarchy with a matriarchy and right the countless wrongs that have been inflicted on women since the dawn of time. As love affairs pop up left and right, however, loyalties will be tested: when Eva experiences the first pangs of true love, she must make the impossible decision to either betray her family and her gender or her own heart.

As with all of de la Iglesia’s films, there’s a lot going on in Witching and Bitching: at times, the film seems to move from one complex setpiece to another, with very little room in-between to catch one’s breath. This only ends up being an issue if the film’s setpieces are lacking which, fortunately, is not a problem that de la Iglesia ever seems to be saddled with. From the dynamic, thrilling and hilarious opening robbery (seeing SpongeBob Squarepants get all murdery with a shotgun is, to be frank, a sublime joy that my mind never knew it was missing) to the jaw-dropping special effects showcase that ends the film (I wasn’t lying about Peter Jackson approving: it’s one hell of an awesome sequence), there’s very little about the movie that isn’t captivating, visually stunning or flat-out hilarious.

As a comedy, Witching and Bitching works on a variety of levels, from the silly and slapsticky (Eva serves “finger food” that consists of actual fingers; the various chase scenes remind of Scooby Doo cartoons, at times) to the more subtle and cutting (Eva’s family frequently reminds her that she should be out engaging in “fist-fucking, golden showers and zoophilia,” not falling in love with a wimpy man…they didn’t send her to “the worst schools” just to suffer this indignity!). In addition, there’s plenty of commentary on the “battle of the sexes” from both sides: neither men nor women escape the film’s withering glare unscathed.

As a horror film, de la Iglesia’s movie is, likewise, a home-run – despite the near-constant comedy, he manages to sneak plenty of pure horror beats into the mix, as well. The town of Zugarramurdi is ridiculously atmospheric, coming across as nothing so much as the return of the fog-shrouded hamlets of Hammer Studios’ glory days. There’s a nicely tense bit involving a mysterious person reaching up through a toilet-bowl that’s nearly Hitchcockian in its sustained sense of suspense and the previously mentioned climax, featuring the massive, ancient and blind goddess (brilliantly depicted as a towering combination of the Venus of Willendorf and one of Jackson’s trolls from LOTR) is a real showstopper: they even manage to throw in a nifty mid-air “witches’ battle” to keep things lively.

Despite the nearly constant spectacle, the cast of Witching and Bitching manages to hold their own against the onslaught. Hugo Silva is a charismatic hero and he’s ably paired up with Mario Casas to give the film a pair of sympathetic (to a point) protagonists. Jaime Ordonez is, likewise, pretty great as the kidnapped taxi driver: the scene where he decides to “join” the gang, only to be met with mass confusion by Jose and Antonio (“Does this mean you want a cut or something? How do we know we can trust you?”) is an easy highlight and Ordonez’s nervous, fidgety energy contrasts nicely with Silva’s more traditional heroism and Casas’ kind-of/sort-of nice-guy dumbass.

On the female side of things, Carmen Maura, Carolina Bang and Terele Pavez pretty much steal the film from the rest of the cast: the bit where Pavez puts in razor-sharp steel teeth and Maura scuttles across the ceiling, like a fly, are undeniably badass, as is Bang’s ridiculously hot-headed Eva whenever she’s on-screen. More importantly, none of the witches ever come across as overly shrill or needlessly bumbling: unlike many genre films that purport to detail a (literal) battle of the sexes (Jake West’s Doghouse (2009) comes immediately to mind), there’s never the notion that de la Iglesia has unfairly stacked the deck against his female antagonists.

In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of the film is the way in which the notion of feminism is handled. Early on, we get a pretty much never-ending stream of misogyny from the likes of Jose and Manuel: even nice-guy Tony joins in after he realizes that his girlfriend actually “holds the reins” in their relationship. This is qualified, of course, once we get to Zugarramurdi and get the other half of argument from the female participants. As Graciana makes plainly clear, men are really afraid of women because they realize that God is actually female and are too terrified to admit the truth: by bringing about the return of their goddess, the women hope to usher in a new, enlightened era, one where women are not subjugated, abused and ridiculed. In a way, neither gender makes it out of Witching and Bitching completely intact, although most of de la Iglesia’s sharpest rocks are reserved for the lunk-headed men in the film.

Ultimately, de la Iglesia’s latest film is proof-positive of why I absolutely adore his movies: they’re big, brash, colorful, lively, funny and intelligent…pretty much any and everything that I possibly hope to find at the theater. While del Toro and Jackson might be better known, I’d argue that de la Iglesia is, without a doubt, the more accomplished, interesting filmmaker: he has a way of blending the fantastic and the mundane in some truly invigorating ways. While The Last Circus will probably always be my favorite de la Iglesia film (if there are flaws in that film, I haven’t found them), Witching and Bitching is an instant classic and should be required viewing for genre fans. Start with this one, start with The Last Circus or pick a random title out of a hat: whatever you do, make yourself familiar with the films of Alex de la Iglesia. If you love films as much as I do, I’m willing to guarantee that you might just find yourself with a new favorite director.