Three Films Make A Post: Are you a watcher or a player?

American Ultra (2015): Stoner and slacker Mike (Jesse Eisenberg) learns that he is in fact a government super spy experiment when an overacting idiot (Topher Grace) and his gang of spy goons start burning down his home town to murder him and his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart). Despite being written by only one guy, Nima Nourizadeh’s action comedy thing is pretty much a mess of tones and forms that neither belong nor fit together. But then, that writer is Max Landis, whose own films and scripts tend to be messes (sometimes hot ones). So expect a film that wavers between Mark Millar-style cynical low-brow violence humour, nerdy playfulness, indie rom com and random crap without sense or much of a point, with acting performances that suggest a director who didn’t tell anyone in front of the camera for what he was going, and scenes that are sometimes good as standalones but never come together to form an actual film. Plus, this is a film that tries to sell me the idea that being allowed to work as a killer for an organization that tried to murder you is some kind of a happy ending. Seriously.

I Bury the Living (1958): Albert Band’s gothic and somewhat Twilight Zone-ish tale of a new part-time cemetery director - played by Richard Boone in a nice tour-de-force performance that allows his character to be rather more fragile than typical of male leads of this time - who comes to the conviction that changing the pin colours on a wall map of the cemetery kills people is for the longest time a fine low budget film. In its mood of increasing (melodramatic) dread and use of expressionist techniques and a bit of early Sam Fuller-style tackiness, it’s a film rather atypical for US genre cinema of its time, particularly those set in the contemporary USA.

Unfortunately, the status as a lost classic one could imagine for the film is badly served by a “natural explanation” so preposterous and illogical even the writers responsible for quite a few of today’s lame twist endings would be embarrassed by it.

Negative (2017): While its plot certainly isn’t terribly plausible (unless you compare it to the ending of I Bury the Living), Joshua Caldwell’s tale of a hapless photographer (Simon Quarterman) being drawn into the desert road movie style flight of a former British spy (Katia Winter) is good low budget spy movie fun. The film recommends itself with stylish and atmospheric shots of the desert, two lead characters who for once in a movie of this kind don’t fall in love but whose actors do work well together, a nice line in sarcastic dialogue, and a handful of more than decent action and suspense sequences.


It’s certainly not a film that’ll change anyone’s life (unless by chance) but it is worth watching.

In short: Adventureland (2009)

Not being a professional middle-aged US film critic, I don’t really share the group’s love – obsession, really – for coming of age films (nor films about directors whining about how horrible their life of luxury and fame is). You probably need to be nostalgic for your youth to love the sub-genre quite so much, I suspect, and I tend to be not terribly nostalgic for the worst decades of my life.

Anyway, that doesn’t mean I cannot appreciate when a coming of age movie works as well as Greg Mottola’s film about a young guy (Jesse Eisenberg) taking a summer job in an amusement park to scratch together the money for his college tuition does. Especially when a film puts an enormous effort into portraying a recognizable time and place. While Adventureland certainly hits the usual beats of its genre, it is often really rather witty doing it, with sharp dialogue and pacing that suggests thoughtfulness without being slow.

The film also takes some pleasantly unexpected turns, adding complications and depths to character types that don’t usually get these, in coming of age comedies particularly. The film even makes efforts to treat its female characters as more than pure hurdles for its teenage male white main character to jump over, under or through. Characters who have their own lives, wishes, and dreams that might even not have anything to do with the protagonist at all. In fact, one of the film’s more subtle arguments seems to be that growing up means learning to realize how people and their lives aren’t only important in the ways they relate to one’s own life, and that some adults – here exemplified by Ryan Reynolds – never learn this kind of empathy and understanding, which stunts them more than any shit job ever could.


This is also one of the better outings of young Kristen Stewart, doing an okay job in the part of her career when that sort of consistency wasn’t a given – which is of course perfectly understandable from a nineteen year old kid.

Three Films Make A Post: A warrior without equal. A weapon without limits

The Messengers (2007): And then there was the time when the Pang Brothers Danny and Oxide went to Saskatchewan to shoot a movie for a US company that’s supposed to be taking place in North Dakota, while none of the actors even attempted to pretend to be Midwesterners (in a way even a German notices). It has a perfectly decent cast including Penelope Ann Miller, Dylan McDermott and Kristen Stewart in a non-horrible performance, looks – it’s a Pang Brothers joint after all – really nice, and culminates in a finale as crappy as only the Pangs do them. In between there’s a run-through of variants of many a classic horror scene (done ever so slightly to very much worse, of course) and little that’ll catch one’s interest.

It’s all perfectly inoffensive, but when has that ever been a good thing to be said about a horror film?

The Messengers 2 (2009): Of course, this direct-to-DVD sequel-in-name-only by Martin Barnewitz manages to be even less interesting than the Pang Brothers film that came before. It’s got little of the slickness of its predecessor and clearly not much of an idea what to put in place of that slickness. Despite decent actors like Norman Reedus and Heather Stephens, there’s little to see on the acting front either, for the script can’t do ambiguous characters or just internal complexity at all, but then, this is the sort of movie that thinks not going to church and “taking His name in vain” (seriously) is something that can only be the first step on the path to adultery and cursed-scarecrow incited murder.

The Caller (2011): So props to this US-Puerto Rican production directed by Matthew Parkhill for at least leaving the baby Jesus home. But I’m being unfair, for this is actually a rather decent thriller of the timey-wimey sub-genre, with a good lead performance by Rachelle Lefevre, a well-cast handful of other actors (well, and Stephen Moyer whose attraction this heterosexual guy can’t fathom, but we can’t have everything), and even a script that doesn’t go for any kind of idiotic twist in the end but works fairly and consequential from its premise. While I’m not particularly excited about the film – it is good but never quite as riveting as it perhaps could be – this is the sort of random Netflix find that makes one look at one’s queue with a degree of hope, and certainly a film it’s easy enough to appreciate.