Day: September 17, 2014

By Joe Bendel. In the 1970s, Skylab represented the future. Today, the International Space Station is an anachronism of the New World Order. Yet, even in the analog future as envisioned in the “Me Decade,” Omega 76 was a sleepy backwater assignment. They still ought to take asteroids more seriously in Jack Plotnick’s nostalgic Space Station 76, which opens this Friday in New York.

Omega 76 is a deep space refueling station, where the crew marks time until they are promoted to more prestigious postings. However, the previous first mate (if you will) was promoted suspiciously quickly. Whenever the obviously closeted Captain Glenn is asked about it, he always gives a slightly different answer. Not surprisingly, he is less than gracious welcoming his new first officer, Jessica Marlowe, who also happens to be a woman.

There is not much to do on Omega 76, so Marlowe is happy to spend time with Sunshine, the brainy young daughter of Misty, the pill-popping peak of the station’s social pyramid. Marlowe also ambiguously befriends Misty’s cuckolded technician husband, but both are too honorable to act on their mutual attraction. When not angsting over the state of her life, Marlowe tries to get Capt. Glenn to pay attention to the asteroid projections generated by her predecessor, but he wants nothing to do with anything associated with his former whatever.

There is no question SS76 was handcrafted by true fans of vintage seventies-era science fiction. Seth Reed’s design team and costumers Sandra Burns and Sarah Brown have created some pitch perfect frocks, sets, and models. The vibe is spot-on, but somehow Plotnick and his quartet of co-writers forgot to include most of the jokes. Essentially, the film’s sequences are like most SNL skits from the last fifteen years. It is all set-up that just peters out without a punchline. At times, SS76 seems fatally determined to channel the spirit of 1970s relationship movies, like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, but they have already been better satirized by the criminally under-appreciated Serial.

Weirdly, SS76 represents the reunion of The Ledge co-stars Liv Tyler and Patrick Wilson nobody ever asked for. Needless to say, this is a vastly superior film than that misogynistic polemic disguised as an unthrilling thriller. Tyler is still rather stiff and distant as Marlowe (to put it generously), but Wilson’s Glenn is strangely compelling and ultimately sympathetic, if we adjust for 1970s cultural inflation. Marisa Coughlan and Kali Rocha also seem to enjoy vamping it up as Misty and her self-absorbed best friend Donna, which helps. Also look for none other than Keir Dullea, giving the film extra genre cred in a video-phone cameo.

SS76 is such a great concept, so aptly rendered by Plotnick’s technical collaborators, it is a shame there isn’t more humor or narrative muscle to go with it. Instead, he is content to stage one awkward conversation after another amid the terrific station backdrops. There are chuckles here and there (and the Todd Rundgren soundtrack is a blast), but viewers are really left to wonder what might have been. For diehard fans of Space: 1999 and the like, Space Station 76 opens this Friday (9/19) in New York at the Quad Cinema, with digital and DVD releases scheduled to follow shortly after.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on September 17th, 2014 at 11:02pm.

By Joe Bendel. The Petersons should have remembered what Ben Franklin said about fish and houseguests. Initially, the mysterious “David” is so handy to have around the house, he earns more than three days. Unfortunately, the suspicions of their twenty year old daughter will be fully justified in Adam Wingard’s The Guest, which opened today in New York.

When Caleb Peterson was killed in Iraq, it devastated his family, particularly his mother Laura. However, meeting “David,” Caleb’s freshly discharged friend and fellow squad member, offers her some consolation. Despite his humble origins, David is so faultlessly polite and gracious, she immediately invites the former soldier to be their guest, for as long as takes for him to get back on his feet. Her husband Spencer is rather put out by her impulsiveness, until he spends some quality drinking time with David. Soon only their daughter Anna remains uncomfortable with the arrangement.

Within the context of the film, it is easy to understand why the Petersons so readily embrace their guest, at the expense of common sense. After all, he seems to bring good luck. In reality, David starts clandestinely “lending a hand” to the Peterson family, doing the sort of things they always secretly wished would happen, but would never admit. Sometimes Wingard and his screenwriter collaborator Simon Barrett maintain some ambiguity, as to just what David did or did not do, but there is no question about his proactive approach to the high school bullies tormenting the youngest Peterson sibling. Even Anna warms to David, but plot contrivances will interrupt their mounting sexual tension.

The first half of The Guest is absolutely terrific, inviting viewers to vicariously enjoy David’s freelance friend-of-the-family activism. Let’s face it, there are times everyone wished they had a secret benefactor who could make troublesome people disappear, but without any knowledge or culpability troubling our consciences.

Frustratingly, much of what works in the first half is largely lost in the second. Instead of a Nietzschean super-man, we learn David is a veritable super-soldier, thanks to a clichéd top secret government program, following in the tradition of the Universal Soldier franchise and scores of similar b-movies. What was once a very sly thriller becomes a formulaic exercise in comeuppance for a Blackwater-like military contractor in a tiresome by-the-numbers endgame.

That is a real shame, because it squanders the intriguing performances and cleverly executed action scenes from the early acts. Formerly of Downton Abbey, Dan Stevens could not get any further from Cousin Matthew than the mysterious David, but he pulls it off (clearly after putting in his time at the gym). He commands the screen with his sociopathic charm. Frankly, his supposedly Kentucky accent often sounds weird, like he is speaking through a Vocoder, but it kind of works nonetheless. As Anna, Maika Monroe generates plenty of heat with Stevens, while maintaining a sense of propriety and intelligence.

The Guest has the right look and soundtrack to appeal to nostalgia for the 1980s action movies that inspired it. It is considerably more entertaining when it allows its title character to be a wildcard instead of a Terminator surrogate. Ultimately, it is a potentially great cult film that is undermined by a screenplay too intent on making statements. The first fifty or sixty percent will be recommended for genre fans when it eventually hits Netflix, but they should probably hold off when the whole uneven thing opens this Wednesday (9/17) in New York at the AMC Empire and Village 7.

LFM GRADE: C

Posted on September 17th, 2014 at 11:01pm.

By Joe Bendel. Known as “Jumper’s Tower” to residents, Juniper Tower is the Arkham of mental health halfway houses. If you move in, you are unlikely to get much better or live much longer. However, Suki has an advantage over her new neighbors. One of her multiple personalities happens to be uncannily resourceful in John Suits’ The Scribbler, which opens this Friday in select markets.

Considering Suki is undergoing radical therapy to “burn off” her excess personalities, she would presumably be an unlikely candidate for out-patient treatment. Nevertheless, she has been issued a portable burn unit and a room in the friendly tower. Upon arrival, she is met by the grisly spectacle of a jumper. It will not be the last one.

Juniper is entirely populated by female patients, except for Hogan, who takes pride and pleasure in being “the rooster in the hen house.” One of Suki’s multiples had a thing for him when they were formally institutionalized together, so they naturally pick up where they left off. Frankly, he is somewhat saddened by her burn-off regimen, lamenting some of her multiples were his friends. Nevertheless, the treatment seems to work, even though it causes temporary blackouts and states of altered perception. Whenever Suki comes to, it seems like another resident has committed suicide and the so-called Scribbler persona has been busy modifying her décor and the burn unit.

Adapted by Dan Schaffer from his graphic novel, The Scribbler incorporates elements from several genres (science fiction, horror, dark fantasy) and generates some clever disbelief-suspending psychological double-talk. Until the third act collapses into a maelstrom of mumbo jumbo, it is a surprisingly effective noir psycho-thriller.

Arguably, the best thing Suits has going for him is the massively creepy Juniper Tower. Production designer Kathrin Eder and art director Melisa Jusufi truly make this film come together, while cinematography Mark Putnam makes it all look suitably ominous, in the tradition of its source material and Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum graphic novel.

The cast is generally pretty good as well, particularly Katie Cassidy and Garret Dillahunt as Suki and Hogan, respectively. Their screen chemistry is appropriately weird, but undeniably charged-up. Gina Gershon, Ashlynn Yennie, and Michelle Trachtenberg all chew the scenery with glee as various eccentrically macabre residents of the Tower, but Eliza Dushku and Michael Imperioli seem visibly confused to be playing their scenes as the cops interrogating Suki within the film’s framing device. Fans of Sasha Grey should also take note, her character quickly disappears after her entrance (it’s almost as much of a tease as her prominently-billed cameo in The Girl from the Naked Eye).

Granted, the ending makes little sense, but that is almost always the case in genre cinema. What is more important is how smart and stylishly sinister the film is as it works its way there. Recommended with surprising enthusiasm, The Scribbler opens this Friday (9/19) in limited release.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 17th, 2014 at 11:01pm.

By Joe Bendel. Kids today are dangerously ignorant of the blues. Nobody worth their Robert Johnson box-set would play along if a creepy Aryan cultist told them to walk down to the crossroads and say your name so the boss can find you later. She will do it for five bills, but she will not live to regret it in Nicholas McCarthy’s At the Devil’s Door, which opened last Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

A few years and a deep recession later, people would stand in line to sell their souls for pocket change. Nevertheless, Leigh, a go-getting real estate agent, is convinced she can sell her motivated clients’ house quickly, despite the state of the market. Teetering on the brink of foreclosure, they have also been dealing with their daughter Charlene’s behavioral issues. As Leigh pokes around the nearly empty domicile, she finds evidence of a fire, a twitchy young teen answering Charlene’s description, and wickedly bad vibes in every cupboard and closet, but she remains undeterred.

Frankly, Leigh’s hard-charging Tony Robbins self-help trips are a major reason why her depressive hipster artist sister artist Vera keeps her at arm’s length. However, when Leigh misses the opening of her latest show, she cannot help worrying. Inevitably, she will be drawn into the supernatural business as well.

There are individual sequences in Door that are chillingly effective, but you have to suspect McCarthy’s screenplay was substantially rewritten at several junctures. There are several thirty degree course corrections that are dramatic enough to interrupt the smooth narrative flow, but not wild enough to be jaw-dropping game-changers. At times, it feels like a horror movie built around alternating elements of haunted house and demonic possession films, drawn randomly out of a hat.

Still, McCarthy demonstrates a thorough command of mood and atmosphere, just as he did in The Pact. When the film stays in that house, it works just fine, but whenever it steps outside, it has a lot of explaining to do.

The sisters’ baton hand-off also looks like a mistake in retrospect. Catalina Sandino Moreno has had an interesting career after her Oscar nomination for Maria Full of Grace, appearing in Soderbergh’s Che on the left and then For Greater Glory on the right, followed by a dubious action turn in A Stranger in Paradise. Regardless, by genre standards, she is quite compelling as Leigh, the responsible sister, always trying please everyone else. Unfortunately, Naya Rivera (who was once on a short-lived show called something like Merriment or maybe Glee) lacks her energy and presence as the dull and dour Vera.

If you want to see horror movie, Door has enough elements, sufficiently executed, to satisfy a fan’s craving. McCarthy again puts some nice twists on familiar genre conventions, but he sort of loses the handle on his narrative. Maybe the next one will be his breakout. Recommended for fans of The Pact and those who want a demonic fix, At the Devil’s Door opened last week at the IFC Center and is also available via IFC Midnight’s VOD platforms.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on September 17th, 2014 at 9:59pm.