On VOD: THE RENTAL (2020)

THE RENTAL
(US - 2020)

Directed by Dave Franco. Written by Dave Franco and Joe Swanberg. Cast: Dan Stevens, Alison Brie, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White, Toby Huss, Anthony Molinari. (R, 88 mins)

"This'll be over soon, I promise."

"This will never be over." 

A confident and very well-crafted directing debut from apparent master of horror Dave Franco, THE RENTAL aims to establish itself as the quintessential Airbnb-from-Hell thriller and the end result is a merciless screw-tightener where the tensions are already very quietly simmering from the start. Co-written by Franco and mumblecore vet Joe Swanberg, THE RENTAL is one of these films that pulls a 180 at the midpoint and becomes something completely different. A set-up like this will inevitably prove divisive, with some preferring the character-based drama of the first half while others will wish the whole thing was a home-invasion horror movie like the second half, but things are so off with these characters from the get-go that their weekend vacay was doomed one way or another. Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Mina (A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT's Sheila Vand) are business partners at some unspecified trendy, Casual Friday-all-week-long startup. They have such an affectionate, touchy-feely camaraderie that it's a jarring surprise--barely a minute into the film--when her boyfriend Josh (SHAMELESS' Jeremy Allen White) pops into the office unannounced. Josh is also Charlie's younger brother, but he and Charlie's wife Michelle (Alison Brie, Franco's wife) are used to the harmlessly playful interaction between their significant others. To celebrate the closing of a lucrative deal, Charlie and Mina rent a huge oceanfront house on a cliff for weekend couples getaway.

Mina is already irked on the way there, since her attempt to reserve the weekend was denied while Charlie's was approved an hour later without hassle. Of Middle Eastern descent, Mina is convinced her last name (Mohammadi) is the reason for the rejection and once they meet the surly and vaguely intimidating Taylor (Toby Huss), things get off to a rocky start. "You own this place?" Mina incredulously asks the grizzled Taylor when she sees his beat-up pickup. "Why you gotta say it like that?" he replies. His brother actually owns the house--Taylor just manages the property and takes care of it. Offended by Mina's assumption that he can't possibly own a house like this and doing little to dispel the notion that the's kind of guy who has a problem with a surname like "Mohammadi," he prods a little further, asking her "How'd you get mixed up with this family?" The cringeworthy awkwardness of the confrontation (Huss is terrific with very minimal screen time) escalates when she confronts him about rejecting the rental application, leading to him angrily peeling out of the driveway. Things eventually settle down and they all go for a walk along the beach, where Charlie and Mina walk ahead of Josh and Michelle, with Josh expressing concern not so much about Charlie and Mina's work closeness ("They get pretty intense," Michelle says in a way that suggests it's frequently on her mind), but that the intelligent, successful Mina is out of his league, something Charlie and Michelle have felt all along. Recovering anger management case Josh is a Lyft driver and has been historically unmotivated, has always been in his brother's shadow, and spent a brief time in jail for beating the shit out of a guy in a bar fight, but sees Mina as the best thing that's happened to him and strives to be a better person because of her.

The tensions and the insecurities have long been there, silently accumulating, and there's nothing like a secluded weekend getaway in the middle of nowhere with some bonus molly to bring out the worst in everyone. Things happen. Things are said. Secrets are revealed. People make one wrong decision after another. Then Mina spots a small camera in the shower head of one of the bathrooms. Are they being watched by Taylor? Or someone else? What have they seen? Are there other cameras in the house? Why does a crawlspace under the porch have a secured door with a keypad? And what happened to Reggie, Josh's French bulldog that he brought along and kept hidden from Taylor because a "no pets" clause in the rental agreement?

Despite the immense popularity of Airbnbs (the term is never specifically invoked), there is something inherently risky about making the conscious decision to stay in the home of a stranger based almost entirely on positive reviews on an app. THE RENTAL plays on that fear, especially in the second half with the arrival of a black-gloved killer whose first appearance is a genuinely effective jolt. Franco wisely keeps this figure's onscreen presence to a minimum, but he's always lurking and watching. In his style and shot compositions, Franco has an undeniable flair for this sort of thing, and with the black gloves and a couple of visual shout-outs to Dario Argento's DEEP RED and Sergio Martino's TORSO, it's a good indication that either he or Swanberg are closet giallo nerds. It's a given that horror gatekeepers will bemoan the slow-burn character buildup of the first half before "it gets good," while Swanberg's mumblecore followers (he started out as part of that whole Duplass Brothers/Greta Gerwig crew that helped establish the movement in the mid '00s) will wish for more introspective relationship drama and ask why it had to turn into a slasher movie. But the transition is surprisingly smooth, largely due to the palpable unease that's established from the opening scene. Besides, Swanberg is no stranger to the horror genre, having been involved in various capacities in films like V/H/S, YOU'RE NEXT, 24 EXPOSURES, and THE SACRAMENT. The real surprise is Franco who, at least here, exhibits none of the self-indulgent, patience-testing tendencies of the "auteur" work of his older brother James, who proved with THE DISASTER ARTIST that he can make a good commercial movie, but usually just chooses not to. THE RENTAL doesn't reinvent the home invasion scenario, and it likely wasn't going to get a wide release anyway since it's from IFC (though In These Uncertain Times™,  it is getting some play at drive-ins), but it's exactly the kind of efficient scare machine that, in any other year, could've easily turned into a sleeper summer hit in theaters.

On Netflix: APOSTLE (2018)

APOSTLE
(US/UK - 2018)

Written and directed by Gareth Evans. Cast: Dan Stevens, Michael Sheen, Lucy Boynton, Mark Lewis Jones, Bill Milner, Kristine Froseth, Paul Higgins, Elen Rhys, Sharon Morgan, Sebastian McCheyne, John Weldon, Richard Elfyn, Ross O'Hennessy. (Unrated, 129 mins)

Welsh-born writer/director Gareth Evans is best known for his Indonesian action extravaganzas with Iko Uwais (MERENTAU and the two RAID films), but he's explored the horror genre as well with his little-seen 2006 debut FOOTSTEPS and the "Safe Haven" segment of 2013's V/H/S/2. "Safe Haven" was set in the present-day and centered on an Indonesia-based religious cult, a topic Evans explores in a different time and place with his latest film, the Netflix Original APOSTLE. In the early 1900s, Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens), the black sheep of a wealthy British family, is summoned home after years away by his near-catatonic father's attorney. Presumed dead for reasons the film specifies later and looking perilously close to feral amidst his upper-class surroundings, Thomas' return is an absolute last resort: his younger sister Jennifer (Elen Rhys) has been abducted and whisked away to a distant island, where a religious cult led by the Prophet Malcolm (Michael Sheen) has fled England and established a community called Erisden. She didn't join the cult--she was taken for ransom and they want it delivered personally. Thomas must infiltrate Erisden, blend in, and bring Jennifer home. His doing so ends up costing an innocent man his life when Thomas switches out his marked invitation, indicating that Malcolm and his right-hand men Quinn (Mark Lewis Jones) and Frank (Paul Higgins) have no intention of letting Jennifer or her rescuer off the island alive.

The obvious point of comparison in the early going is the 1973 classic THE WICKER MAN, which was already ripped off by Ben Wheatley with 2011's wildly overpraised KILL LIST. But THE WICKER MAN is just a launch pad for APOSTLE, as Evans has more metaphorically loaded ideas in mind. He doles out just enough details--about Erisden, Malcolm, and especially Thomas--to methodically tighten the screws and drive up the tension (abetted significantly by a nerve-jangling soundtrack that vacillates between folkish instruments and screeching violins). As Malcolm's rebellious (conveyed in a rather facile fashion by her fiery red hair) daughter Andrea (Lucy Boynton) says to Thomas, "Your eyes...they've seen things." But she hasn't seen the scars and burns on his back, part of a backstory that will make things much clearer as the film goes on. Unlike most self-appointed prophets of this sort, Malcolm is initially practical, save for the requirement that the new arrivals on Erisden must leave a small jar of their blood outside their quarters every night. The crops have failed, but Jennifer hasn't been taken to Erisden as a sacrifice to their version of a wicker man, but rather, because they need money and goods brought from the mainland and kidnapping an heiress for a hefty ransom is a last-ditch act of desperation. Malcolm brought his flock to Erisden but reality seems to have given them a swift kick in the ass. This is also represented by the blossoming (and secret) relationship between Frank's son Jeremy (Bill Milner) and Quinn's daughter Ffion (Kristine Froseth), which sets off a chain reaction of tragedy and terror that takes APOSTLE into genuinely horrific, Stephen King-by-way-of-Neil Gaiman territory in the second hour.

To divulge more plot is difficult without going into spoilers, but while it only briefly detours into the bone-crushing action choreography that's synonymous with Evans, APOSTLE is his most conceptually ambitious work yet. That's not just in the unforeseen roads the story travels, but also in its multi-dimensional characters, even finding some sense of morality in the lunacy of Malcolm and his ideas. He's not even the most dangerous person--or thing--on Erisden, which becomes painfully clear to him when things spiral out of his control. There's also a harsh lesson to be learned for those on Erisden who commit heinous acts in the name of their god or their religion. When one character exacts his personal revenge on another, triumphantly declaring "I've wanted this," it's proof positive that Erisden has lost its way and its people are doing things not out of religious conviction but rather, control and power. There are those on Erisden who are complicit in the worst things happening and hide behind their religion, increasingly divorced from what they purport to stand for and believe, thereby offending a god who sees fit to poison the crops and make the land toxic. These notions make parts of APOSTLE a blistering indictment of rampant religious hypocrisy, but despite its grievances, the film is ultimately a spiritual one that falls on the side of faith. Evans also doesn't forget he's making a Gareth Evans joint, coming up with some innovative torture devices and increasingly painful ways for people to be killed, particularly one nightmarish mechanism that serves as a rustic tribute to the legendary drill scene in Lucio Fulci's CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. And don't be surprised when cosplay versions of "Her" and "The Grinder" start appearing at fan conventions.

On DVD/Blu-ray: CHUCK (2017) and KILL SWITCH (2017)

CHUCK
(US - 2017)

The kind of modest, uncomplicated programmer that just can't find a place in today's blockbuster-driven, franchise-focused business model, CHUCK is a film that should've been given a chance to be the sleeper hit it was obviously made to be. A long-in-the-works pet project of veteran actor Liev Schreiber, who also co-produced and co-wrote the script, CHUCK is a biopic of boxer Chuck Wepner, aka "The Bayonne Bleeder," the heavyweight champ of New Jersey. Wepner was never a major player in boxing outside of the Garden State but he made it far enough to get a shot at the title, almost going the distance at 36 years of age in a 1975 fight with Muhammad Ali, ultimately losing by TKO when the fight was stopped with 19 seconds left in the final round. Wepner's career fizzled for a few more years, when he would often be reduced to exhibition bouts with bears and, in one famous 1976 stunt, legendary wrestler Andre the Giant. Wepner retired from the ring in 1978, around the time he began benefiting from the notoriety of Sylvester Stallone and ROCKY when word started going around that Stallone's script was inspired by Wepner's bout with Ali. Stallone (played here by a surprisingly well-cast Morgan Spector) never confirmed it, but Wepner dined out on his tenuous connection to ROCKY for years, even getting an audition for a small part in ROCKY II and blowing it when he shows up late and coked-up and having not even taken a cursory glance at Stallone's script.

Schreiber worked on the script with Jerry Stahl (PERMANENT MIDNIGHT), Michael Cristofer (GIA), and Jeff Feuerzeig, a Wepner authority who directed the documentary THE REAL ROCKY for ESPN's 30 FOR 30 series. CHUCK doesn't sugarcoat its subject: he's obnoxious, self-absorbed, and a total bullshit artist. His wandering eye and his need to always be putting on a show drives his wife Phyliss (Elisabeth Moss) and daughter Kimberly (Sadie Sink) away. He's also all too eager to dive into the hedonistic, coke-fueled excess of the disco era '70s until he's eventually caught in an a drug sting and sent to prison in the 1980s. Schreiber is terrific as Wepner, and while nothing here is particularly fresh--Quebecois director Philippe Falardeau has obviously studied every move in the Martin Scorsese playbook--CHUCK works the biopic formula perfectly. Excellent performances all around give it a tremendous boost--Naomi Watts as a sassy bartender eyed by Chuck, Michael Rapaport as his estranged brother, Jim Gaffigan as his best buddy and chief enabler, and a scene-stealing Ron Perlman as his grouchy, Mickey-like trainer--and the period detail is convincing without being oversold. That's a pleasant surprise considering that it's produced by Cannon cover band Millennium/NuImage, and while much of it was shot in NYC, the involvement of Avi Lerner means there was some work at the Nu Boyana Studios in Bulgaria, and from the looks of it, they were probably the boxing sequences and the exhibition bouts set in the strip club run by Chuck's sleazy pal (former DAILY SHOW correspondent Jason Jones), which take place on a set that should look familiar to anyone who's seen an UNDISPUTED sequel. CHUCK isn't award-caliber filmmaking, but it's solid entertainment that's well-acted, unpretentious, and doesn't overstay its welcome. In a summer filled with underperforming "sure things," a movie like CHUCK might've caught on and been a minor hit. But hey, whatever...I guess we needed another TRANSFORMERS loitering on four screens at a theater near you. (R, 98 mins)




KILL SWITCH
(US/Netherlands - 2017)

If you're a follower of gut instinct, you may be ready to dismiss KILL SWITCH before it even begins once you're aware that director Tim Smit stylizes his palindrome name as "TimSmiT." But even if you give TimSmiT a pass, there's still plenty of reason to not even bother with KILL SWITCH, a tedious and abrasively off-putting hard sci-fi outing that borrows tons of ideas from other movies and TV shows but can't weave any of them into a story that's even remotely coherent. Shot in 2014 as REDIVIDER and probably only released at all because of Dan Stevens' starring turn in the live-action Disney blockbuster BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, KILL SWITCH takes place in a near-future where the world has run out of all energy resources. Physicist and former astronaut Will Porter (Stevens) is summoned to Holland by Abigail Vos (SKYFALL'S Berenice Marlohe), a representative of Alterplex Energy, a mysterious corporation run by billionaire Reynard (Gijs Scholten van Aschat). They've built a massive tower in Amsterdam that's a portal to "The Echo," an alternate, mirror image Earth created by Alterplex to be used to pool endless resources and energy for the real Earth. Just after the Tower goes live, the screen fades to black and Porter wakes up inside The Echo in possession of the "Redivider," a box designed to destroy The Echo's mainframe. It seems miscalculations were made by Reynard, and now one of the worlds--Earth or The Echo--must be destroyed to save the other. Judging from what's on display here, maybe TimSmiT should've considered annihilating both to save audiences from KILL SWITCH.

Making his directing debut, TimSmiT, a veteran special effects designer on films on recent VOD/DTV titles like LAST PASSENGER and TIGER HOUSE, takes an almost Murphy's Law approach. Other than some decent visual effects--no surprise since that's his day job--whatever can go wrong does as TimSmiT makes one bad decision after another. His attempt to turn it into a first-person shooter POV video game might predate the already forgotten HARDCORE HENRY, but by cutting back and forth between timelines with the first-person POV in The Echo and scenes on Earth with Porter and his sister (Charity Wakefield, one of the most awesomely British names this side of Benedict Cumberbatch) and her special needs son (Kasper van Groesen), TimSmiT kills any momentum that he might be building. The time element is a completely incomprehensible jumble, the rules of The Echo are never really established, and a potentially interesting character like underground rebel leader Hugo (Mike Libanon) is killed off almost immediately after he's introduced. KILL SWITCH is a miserable experience of SKYLINE proportions that starts in a confusing fashion and never gets its act together, stumbling all the way to an unsatisfying finish. The dumbest thing TimSmiT does--aside from doing that with his name--is having a charismatic and intense actor like Stevens (who was so great in A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES and THE GUEST) at his disposal and leaving him offscreen for most of the movie. Stevens only worked on this for four days as TimSmiT cranked out his Earth scenes quickly and then used a stand-in to wear the GoPro for the first-person POV shots, then had Stevens revoice the stand-in a two-hour recording session after the rest of the film was finished. It's a level of commitment usually reserved for the likes of Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal, and it's kind of trifle that Stevens probably wishes he never made, with the end result being a sci-fi film so irritating that its only surprise is that Sharlto Copley isn't in it. (R, 92 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: COLOSSAL (2017); BOYKA: UNDISPUTED (2017); and UNFORGETTABLE (2017)

COLOSSAL
(US/South Korea/Spain/Canada/China/Luxembourg - 2017)

One of the most audacious and inventive films of the year, COLOSSAL is so offbeat and bizarre that its eccentricities are enough to carry it through its infrequent sections that don't work, like its uneven tone and its heavy-handed metaphors conveying its underlying themes. In a riff on her RACHEL GETTING MARRIED character, Anne Hathaway is Gloria, a hard-partying alcoholic who's been let go from a job at an online publication and has tested the patience of her boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens) one too many times. He dumps her and kicks her out of his apartment, and she heads back home to the small midwestern town where she grew up. She gets reacquainted with childhood friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), who runs his late father's bar and clearly still nurses a lifelong crush on her. Gloria doesn't change her ways, working at Oscar's bar and staying up all hours with Oscar and his buddies Garth (Tim Blake Nelson) and Joel (Austin Stowell). After sleeping off a bender on a bench at a local playground, she gets online and is horrified by breaking news and terrifying footage of a giant, Godzilla-like reptilian creature appearing in Seoul. When she sees the creature mimicking some of her own gestures, Gloria realizes that if she stands in a certain spot on the playground at 8:05 am, the creature manifests itself in Seoul as her sort of kaiju avatar. If she dances, it dances half a world away. If she scratches her head, it scratches its head. She reveals the secret to Oscar and the guys and when Oscar steps in the spot, a giant robot appears next to the creature in Seoul. When they start playfully horsing around and Gloria falls, several hundred people are killed when the creature falls and crushes them in Seoul. When Gloria sleeps with Joel, Oscar quickly goes from hurt to angry, using their newfound powers over the events in Seoul to guilt her about the deaths she's caused and keep her under his control, especially when Tim arrives in town to try and patch things up now that Gloria has made serious attempts to get sober.

Written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo (TIMECRIMES,
EXTRATERRESTRIAL, OPEN WINDOWS), COLOSSAL is like a Toho kaiju if conceived by Charlie Kaufman. It initially approaches the concept as an inspired black comedy, but things gradually turn serious as Oscar grows more angry, more possessive, and even physically abusive toward Gloria, taking out his rage over the perceived betrayal of sleeping with Joel and threatening to flatten Seoul and kill all of its citizens if she doesn't submit to his will. As a metaphor for pulling one out of destructive and self-destructive situation, it's rather large-scale, but the entire film has such a WTF? sense of originality about it that it helps get over some of the less graceful passages. There's an attempt at an explanation to it all--a flashback to a childhood incident in the park, a map that shows a straight latitudinal line drawn from their town and Seoul--but it's still a little foggy and nonsensical. But in the end, these issues matters less than they would have in less imaginative hands. Even with its flaws, COLOSSAL is a film that earns its cult cred the old-fashioned way, and the performances of Hathaway and especially Sudeikis, who's a revelation here, are quite impressive. A strange one, for sure, and unlike anything you've seen before. (R, 109 mins)



BOYKA: UNDISPUTED
(US - 2017)

Only in the world of DTV does a gritty 2002 Wesley Snipes/Ving Rhames boxing drama directed by Walter Hill and featuring a hilariously profane rant from Peter Falk morph over the course of 15 years into a Bulgaria-shot Nu Image franchise about a Russian MMA fighter who wasn't even in the original movie. The fourth entry in the UNDISPUTED series, and the first since 2010's UNDISPUTED III: REDEMPTION, BOYKA: UNDISPUTED continues the spiritual quest for redemption for hardened Russian convict Yuri Boyka (Scott Adkins). Boyka was introduced as the villain in 2007's UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING but turned into a hero for the third film thanks to Adkins' colorful performance and powerhouse screen presence stealing the film from II star Michael Jai White. After emerging victorious in III's BLOODSPORT-style prison fighting tournament and escaping over the border into Georgia, Boyka has been living in Kiev, Ukraine, scraping by in underground MMA fights and using his extra cash to donate to a local church. He's now deeply religious and wants to prove himself a legitimate fighter and put his murderous past behind him for good. Consumed by guilt after killing opponent Viktor Gregov (Emilien De Falco) in the ring, Boyka gets a fake passport and crosses the border into Russia to give his fight earnings to Gregov's widow Alma (Teodora Duhovnikova) and ask for her forgiveness. Gregov owed money to Russian mob boss Zourab (Alon Aboutboul), who essentially enslaves Alma in order to pay back her late husband's debt. After several run-ins with Zourab's goons, Boyka reluctantly agrees to three fights in order to buy Alma's freedom. Of course, Zourab foolishly attempts to screw over Boyka, threatening to turn him in and have him sent back to maximum security Chornya Cholmi if he doesn't agree to a fourth fight with superhuman killing machine Koshmar the Nightmare (Martyn Ford).

UNDISPUTEDs II and III were directed by DTV action auteur Isaac Florentine, who gets a producer credit here but passes the torch to Syfy vet Todor Chapkanov (MIAMI MAGMA, CRYSTAL SKULLS), whose execution of the fight sequences does a mostly solid job of replicating Florentine's master touch, but the big showdown between Boyka and Koshmar is over way too quickly and isn't put together as well as it should be. Of his three turns as Boyka, this gives Adkins the most space to act, but his arc is a bit predictable and cliched and it's pretty dumb how the film has Boyka fighting for Zourab under his own name in public when he's a wanted man in Russia. Still, in an era when VOD/DTV action is defined by guys like Steven Seagal, Bruce Willis, and now Jean-Claude Van Damme coasting through doing as little as possible, the 41-year-old Adkins has genuine star quality, busts his ass time and again and has more than paid his dues over the years. He really should be headlining bigger movies by now (I seem to say this every time I review a new Scott Adkins movie), and while BOYKA: UNDISPUTED is a notch below the Florentine sequels (does anyone even remember the Hill movie anymore?), it's still way above average for this sort of thing. (R, 90 mins)




UNFORGETTABLE
(US - 2017)

A throwback to the '90s "(Blank)-from-Hell" thriller, UNFORGETTABLE marks the directing debut of veteran producer Denise Di Novi. Di Novi's career kicked off when she shepherded the 1989 cult classic HEATHERS and served as Tim Burton's producing partner during his 1990s glory years on the likes EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, BATMAN RETURNS, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, ED WOOD, and JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH. She went on to have a long association with Warner Bros., where she produced several Nicholas Sparks adaptations and both installments of THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS. In other words, Di Novi is a pretty major player who's generated a ton of money in Hollywood, and the acknowledgment of that appears to be the only reason something as uninspired and thoroughly generic as UNFORGETTABLE managed to get a nationwide theatrical release from a major studio in 2017. Headlined by the best star teaming that 2008 had to offer, UNFORGETTABLE centers on online publishing editor Julia Banks (Rosario Dawson) moving to SoCal to live with her fiance David (Geoff Stults), who left his job at Merrill Lynch to open a craft brewery. Everything is going smoothly until the inevitable clash with David's uptight and unstable ex-wife Tessa (Katherine Heigl, in between her annual heavily-hyped new TV series that's inevitably cancelled after three episodes), who's convinced she and David are getting back together and is doing everything she can to turn their daughter Lily (Isabella Rice) against her future stepmother. Tessa starts by criticizing Julia's cooking, then escalates to stealing her phone and digging into her past, uncovering a restraining order against an abusive ex (Simon Kassianides) and luring him by pretending to be Julia online. Then she breaks into the house while Julia's taking a bath, stealing lingerie and sending it to the ex, giving him Julia's new address and inviting him to show up after sexting with him as Julia (Heigl's masturbation scene is hilariously intercut with Julia and David going down on each other in the men's room at a restaurant after Tessa tells Julia how much he used to like public sex, meaning that both women are basically obsessing over the other while they're getting off). Of course, things veer into mayhem and murder as the ex-wife-from-Hell stops at nothing to reclaim what she believes is hers.

Basically a Lifetime movie with a few F-bombs, some splatter, and a great view of Rosario Dawson's body double's butt (Di Novi doesn't even competently match the shots of Dawson and the double, whose presence would be painfully obvious even if she wasn't listed in the closing cast credits as "Rosario Dawson's body double"), UNFORGETTABLE is lethargically paced and never really cuts loose. Even the big catfight between Julia and Tessa seems to be over as soon as it starts. It hits every trope and cliche and the genre, it does nothing with Whitney Cummings as Julia's wisecracking best friend who helps her uncover dirt on Tessa (UNFORGETTABLE is so going-through-the-motions that it doesn't even bother killing off Cummings' pointless character), and it really only comes alive for a couple of scenes where Cheryl Ladd turns up as Tessa's chilly, perfectionist mother, who's even more of an ice-cold bitch who only speaks when she's got something negative to say to Tessa ("You didn't bake scones?" she scoffs at Tessa's store-bought pastries; "You're dragging your knife...and your silver needs polished!"), making it clear why Tessa is the way she is, almost generating a little sympathy for her in the process. But UNFORGETTABLE can't be bothered with multi-faceted character complexities. Dawson seems to know this is junk, the bland-to-the-point-of-transparency Stults looks like a third-string Peter Krause who's just biding his time until his perpetual stubble gets a little grayer and he can take over as the Trivago pitchman, and in the right hands, Heigl could've had some self-deprecating fun with the parallels between her character and her image as a difficult diva with a stick up her ass, but UNFORGETTABLE just coasts by doing the bare minimum. With the help of overqualified cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (THE BLACK STALLION, THE RIGHT STUFF, THE NATURAL, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST), who likely wouldn't be involved with something this junky if not for Di Novi, UNFORGETTABLE at least looks polished and professional on the surface. It's marginally better than the INCONCEIVABLE, another recent "(Blank)-from-Hell" '90s throwback thriller, but all these glossy retro potboilers end up demonstrating is that these things were a lot more enjoyable 25 years ago. (R, 100 mins)

In Theaters/On VOD: CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES (2015)

CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES
(US - 2015)

Directed by Jackie Earle Haley. Written by Robert Lowell. Cast: Michael Pitt, Dan Stevens, John Travolta, Jackie Earle Haley, Christopher Abbott, Rob Brown, Edi Gathegi, Travis Aaron Wade, Alan B. Jones, Tyrone Jenkins, Chris Haley, Morgan Wolk. (Unrated, 93 mins)

Or, GET SHORTY III: THINGS FOR SUICIDE KINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE KEYSER SOZE FOR 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY. As generic as its title, the Cleveland-shot straight-to-VOD dumpjob CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES plays like any number of post-Tarantino/post-USUAL SUSPECTS-meets-Elmore Leonard knockoffs that cluttered the new release shelves of video stores in the latter half of the 1990s. Former Bad News Bear Kelly Leak-turned-LITTLE CHILDREN Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley, whose unexpected late '00s renaissance led to his being cast as Rorschach in WATCHMEN and as Freddy Krueger in the awful NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET reboot, makes his directorial debut here, and it's mostly by-the-numbers and undistinguished. The script is credited to Robert Lowell, who may or may not be the poet who died in 1977 (IMDb and several reviews seem to think it is, and that Haley extensively rewrote it) and has familiar situations and even more familiar dialogue from several noir thrillers of two decades ago. Less than five minutes in, and one of David Della Rocco's more memorable lines in THE BOONDOCK SAINTS is repeated almost word-for-word, and much later, a traumatized character proclaims "I'm pretty fuckin' far from OK," just like Ving Rhames' Marcellus Wallace did in PULP FICTION. But in CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES (shouldn't that be the title of a bad CBS police procedural?), it doesn't come off as a winking homage. It comes off as stale and lazy. Haley is a terrific character actor, but he doesn't come close to capturing the style and the flow of Tarantino. The script sounds like Haley cobbled it together after binge-watching a bunch of '90s Tarantino imitators and like most of those films (it really plays like a ripoff of a ripoff), CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES makes a lot of noise but it's all pretend and posturing, and seems a little too pleased with itself.

Getting drinks after the funeral of their buddy Matthew (Chris Haley, the director's son), who was run over by a bus, longtime friends Zach (Michael Pitt)--now a douchebag, coke-snorting investment broker with a trophy fiancee (Morgan Wolk) he suspects is cheating on him (foreshadowing alert!)--Bryce (Rob Brown), and recovering alcoholic Warren (Christopher Abbott) are joined by outcast and frequent bullying target Noah (Dan Stevens of THE GUEST). Noah is now a filthy rich real estate mogul, and in the course of their conversation, Bryce mentions he has a buddy who's got a hot tip on investing in a lucrative new pharmaceutical startup. After a month, the stock in the company is worthless following an SEC bust, and the four guys are out the $200,000 Noah borrowed from a benefactor who turns out to be Cleveland mob kingpin Eddie Lovato (John Travolta, wearing a shiny, helmet-like Big Boy wig). Lovato's got all of them on the hook for the investment plus interest, demanding $400,000 but offering them a clean slate if they kidnap Marques Flemmings (Edi Gathegi), whose brother is holding Lovato's niece for ransom and whose uncle is Demetrius Flemmings (Tyrone Jenkins), a top rival of Lovato's. Of course, putting four bickering incompetents in charge of an abduction never works out well, and of course the pragmatic Marques (Gathegi is the best thing in the movie) senses their weaknesses, manipulates them and attempts to turn them against one another, leading to twists, turns, buried secrets being revealed, and lots of dialogue that goes as follows:

• Marques: "Shut the fuck up!"
• Warren: "No, you shut the fuck up!"
• Noah: "SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!"
• Zach and Bryce: "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

The major plot twists are telegraphed pretty hard throughout, to the point where it becomes painfully obvious who's not who he says is, though the big reveal of why this person has gone to the lengths he's gone has a surprising degree of chutzpah and an admirable "Whoa...what?" factor to it. The finale and Gathegi's performance give CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES a big boost, and Travolta and Haley (who plays Lovato's chief flunky) seem to be having a good time. Travolta coasts through in a supporting role, probably as a favor for his buddy Haley, and gets to resurrect some of his Vincent Vega and Chili Palmer schtick, holding court with long-winded speeches (everybody in this movie has multiple long-winded speeches) on everything from economics to Macbeth to how much he hates drinking kale shakes. It's all cut from the same cloth as "Royale with Cheese," and like most of its '90s influences, there's some unexpected, darkly-comedic accidental death (like Marvin getting shot in the face because of a bump in the road in PULP FICTION). CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES is shamelessly derivative at times, and you really don't care at all about the four main characters, especially Pitt's obnoxious Zach, who seems like nearly every other obnoxious Michael Pitt character (if you want to see Pitt in a better mob movie, check out the little-seen and much more entertaining ROB THE MOB) but Stevens' portrayal of nebbishy dweeb Noah seems to be channeling a young Woody Allen at times. Except for the finale where it tries far too late to find its own voice, CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES is a minor and mostly forgettable film for Travolta completists and people who can't get enough of dated Tarantino ripoffs that instantly play like relics found frozen in ice after 20 years and just now thawed for viewing.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE COBBLER (2015) and THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST (2015)

THE COBBLER
(US - 2015)

The 2014 Toronto Film Festival didn't go very well for Adam Sandler. Seemingly in response to criticism about his juvenile and increasingly lazy star vehicles that just give him an excuse to hang out with his buddies, Sandler tried to get serious with two smaller films, both of which were unveiled at Toronto: JUNO director Jason Reitman's dysfunction drama MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN and Tom McCarthy's THE COBBLER. McCarthy's made some respected and acclaimed indie films, such as THE STATION AGENT (2003), THE VISITOR (2008), and WIN WIN (2011), and Sandler would seem to be in good hands with either director if he was seeking an indie-cred reinvention. But whatever mojo Reitman had circa UP IN THE AIR is gone, as MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN was a ridiculous CRASH knockoff that got laughed off the screen with its "Old Man Yells at Cloud" attitude about social media and modern technology and eventually opened in theaters to the tune of a $700,000 total gross while asking the tough questions like "What's with all the selfies and the texting and the porn and the jerking off?" THE COBBLER got an even more toxic response. Earnest and schmaltzy to a fault, it plays like an excessively sappy take on the kind of middling, klezmer-scored, high-concept trifle that Woody Allen might churn out to lighten the mood between dramas. Acquired by Image Entertainment and relegated to a few theaters and VOD, THE COBBLER grossed just $24,000 and is somehow worse than any of Sandler's phoned-in Happy Madison joints.

The dumb concept might've provided passable entertainment had McCarthy been able to settle on the right tone. Instead, he veers wildly from comedy to fantasy to drama, with Sandler doing his best to keep up as schlubby Max Simkin, a fourth-generation cobbler in a Lower East Side neighborhood that's struggling to hold off gentrification. Weighed down by Allen-esque Jewish neuroses, deserted by his father (Dustin Hoffman), and living with his dementia-addled mom (Lynn Cohen), Max wishes he'd made different choices in life but just plugs away in his mundane existence. That is, until he discovers an old stitching machine in the basement that enables him to literally walk in someone else's shoes: when he slips on shoes that have been repaired using the antique stitcher, he turns into the person who owns the shoes. At first, he uses his new trick to mess with Jimmy (Steve Buscemi), who owns the barber shop next door, but then he's dining-and-dashing by switching into another pair of shoes in the restaurant's men's room and trying to get in the shower with the hot girlfriend of local DJ Emiliano (THE GUEST's Dan Stevens), and while wearing the shoes of neighborhood gangster Leon (Method Man), he threateningly steals the shoes of another (Joey Slotnick) because he wants to get that guy's sports car out of the parking garage and speed throuogh the streets. There's probably a ton of ways that shoe-stealing scene, relying on Leon being a stereotypical thug, could've been subversive and funny, but McCarthy treats the joke the same way a regular Sandler director would and it lands with the expectedly uncomfortable thud. THE COBBLER gets hopelessly maudlin as Max slips on his dad's shoes to stage a reconciliation with his mom, but he soon decides to use it to stop gentrification in his neighborhood, with Leon in cahoots with a corrupt property developer (Ellen Barkin, who can play this kind of bitch-on-wheels character in her sleep) to run elderly holdout Mr. Solomon (Fritz Weaver) out of his building so they can tear it down. This all leads to a twist ending that, among other things, somehow turns THE COBBLER into a superhero origin story ("You are the Guardian of Soles. You are the Cobbler" is probably the single worst line of dialogue Hoffman's been forced to utter in his 50-year career). In his defense, Sandler really isn't the problem here, nor was he the issue with the overwrought MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN. It's almost like he's acting out by defiantly choosing the most terrible serious scripts he can find so people stop giving him so much shit about paid vacations like GROWN-UPS 2. (PG-13, 98 mins)



THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST
(Germany/Austria - 2013; US release 2015)

Though he'll always be the director of 1988's PAPERHOUSE and 1992's CANDYMAN, Bernard Rose's freefall into Roland Joffe depths of irrelevance continues with the laughable Niccolo Paganini biopic THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST. Rose directed 1994's well-regarded IMMORTAL BELOVED, anchored by a great Gary Oldman performance as Beethoven but here, he's saddled with violinist/PBS crossover sensation David Garrett as the maverick 19th century classical great Paganini. Garrett can obviously play but he can't act and as a result, there's a massive void in the center of the film that's impossible to fill. But really, Garrett is just one of many insurmountable problems with THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST: Rose wisely offers his inexperienced lead some support with veteran professionals, almost of whom decided to bring their D-game. In the worst performance of his career, Jared Harris is Urbani, a vaguely demonic figure in a ludicrous top hat who has Paganini sign a contract in exchange for fame and fortune. Rose seemingly treats the metaphorical "deal with the devil" as historical fact, and it leads to all manner of self-destructive behavior on Paganini's part. Rose has no interest in exploring Paganini as a character and simply bulldozes through the exposition--in rapid-fire succession, Paganini goes from unknown violinist to superstar to father of a five-year-old boy to hopeless opium addict. That's all in the first 12 minutes. Then the kid disappears, and we see him again 100 or so minutes later, then five minutes after that, he's a decade older. Then Paganini is on opium again after no signs of drug abuse for 90% of the movie. At times, it seems like a long "Previously on..." recap for a TV series that doesn't exist.

Goaded by Urbani, Paganini treats everyone like dog shit, callously bankrupting the London benefactor (Christian McKay gives the only thing resembling a performance) who tries to help him expand his audience, breaks the heart of Charlotte, the benefactor's daughter (Andrea Deck), and demands financial compensation to play for the King of England. He takes the stage hours late like some 19th century Axl Rose, and is targeted by an ever-present group of religious protesters--led by the prudish and perpetually haranguing Primrose Blackstone (Olivia d'Abo)--that also functions as a Greek chorus for the plot. Everything about THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST is wrong-headed: casting a violinist with no acting experience and a complete inability to correctly pronounce the name "Charlotte" instead of a real actor who could maybe learn to mimic the violin performance scenes; Harris playing Urbani with a Mephistophelian scowl more befitting a silent movie villain, and with a bizarre vocal affect that can best be described as "SLING BLADE starring Peter Lorre"; Joely Richardson as a rough, cigarillo-smoking journalist with Carrot Top's hair, getting catty with Charlotte over Paganini's attention; giving the great Helmut Berger prominent billing but nothing to do...I could go on.  Boasting some nicely ornate interior production design, THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST is otherwise appallingly bad and just more proof, along with the little-seen 2014 found-footage horror film SX_TAPE, that Rose just has no idea what he's doing anymore. He's made some accomplished films and a couple of his early ones could arguably be called great, but while he keeps busy, he's done nothing noteworthy since his 1997 version of ANNA KARENINA with Sophie Marceau. Rose is prolific but his consistently barely-released or completely unseen films fly so far under the radar that it's easy to forget he's even still around, let alone cranking out six movies in the last five years. In the end, THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST, released on just ten screens in the US by Freestyle two years after flopping in Europe, seems like as much of vanity project for Garrett as Klaus Kinski's humbly-titled 1989 Paganini chronicle KINSKI PAGANINI. Garrett, also one of 26 credited producers, gets to show off his chops numerous times, his Paganini beds a slew of comely women, and his female fans are always shown fanning themselves as they mob him like he's One Direction, accompanied by sounds of Elvis and Beatlemania crowd shrieking. And in a bizarre onscreen credit worthy of infamously self-aggrandizing neoclassical metal Paganini disciple Yngwie Malmsteen, there's even a special acknowledgment from the producers thanking Garrett for his work on the film. Does that mean he's thanking himself for starring in a movie that he co-produced?  Isn't that like a Malpaso production thanking Clint Eastwood for showing up?  (R, 123 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE GUEST (2014); FALCON RISING (2014); and I ORIGINS (2014)

THE GUEST
(US/UK - 2014)

The terrific YOU'RE NEXT (2013) earned some significant critical acclaim even outside the usual insulated and self-congratulatory horror circles and showed that indie filmmaker Adam Wingard and screenwriting partner Simon Barrett were ready to take things to the next level. The film didn't do very well commercially as mainstream audiences were perhaps a bit fatigued with home-invasion thrillers, but it's found a major cult following on DVD and Netflix streaming. Wingard and Barrett are part of the horror hipster collective that also includes their buddies and V/H/S franchise collaborators Joe Swanberg and Ti West (Wingard and Barrett starred in the horribly self-indulgent 24 EXPOSURES, a recent film by the prolific Swanberg. who also co-starred in YOU'RE NEXT), but as with YOU'RE NEXT, THE GUEST demonstrates that Wingard and Barrett are just as skillfully adept at making smart and entertaining thriller as they are the would-be auteurist circle-jerk home movies they get roped into by their friends. THE GUEST had an even tougher time in theaters than YOU'RE NEXT when distributor Picturehouse--a relaunch of the short-lived '00s indie distributor--cancelled their plans to roll it out nationwide (it was their only 2014 release) and instead halted THE GUEST's run on a mere 53 screens at its widest release for a gross of just $330,000. It deserved better and it's another one of those films that, had it been released ten years ago, would've easily become a huge word-of-mouth sleeper hit and likely launched the big-screen career of former DOWNTON ABBEY co-star Dan Stevens.

Sporting a flawless American accent, the British Stevens (also seen recently opposite Liam Neeson in the underrated A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES) is David, recently discharged from the military and paying a visit to the mourning family of his fallen friend Caleb. Caleb's family--mom Laura (Sheila Kelley), dad Spencer (Leland Orser), 20-year-old sister Anna (Maika Monroe), and teenage brother Luke (Brendan Meyer)--are dealing with his death in their own ways when David arrives to grant Caleb's final wish to tell each of them that he loved them very much. Touched by the extent of David's respect for their son by following through on his promise to honor Caleb's request, Laura and Spencer invite him to stay with them as long as he needs. David repays their kindness by helping out with some problems, whether it's handling some bullies making Luke's life hell, kicking some troublemakers out of a party thrown by Anna's friends, or just being a calming, comforting presence in a home fraught with tension. But something seems off about David, even with his story seemingly checking out and his being clearly visible in one of Laura's photos of Caleb's Special Forces unit in Iraq. To say any more about where the story heads would spoil the surprises THE GUEST has to offer (I haven't even mentioned the involvement of character actor Lance Reddick and an almost unrecognizable Ethan Embry), but with its twisty plot that expertly balances dark comedy and odd bits of humor (note the GENERAL HOSPITAL references in the family names) with grim and shocking dramatic turns, its unexpected character development (Brittany Murphy lookalike Monroe is quite good at playing Anna's very believable maturation from one who is disaffected and can't even to being the first to see through David's ruse and attempt to do something about it), and its killer John Carpenter-esque score by Steve Moore (one half of American synth-rock duo Zombi), it's one of the most giddily entertaining genre pieces in ages, and with the exception of THE IMMIGRANT, perhaps the best film of 2014 that nobody saw. Best of all is Stevens, whose brilliant performance brings to mind the smiling sincerity masking the tightly-coiled, ticking time-bomb menace that Terry O'Quinn brought to the 1987 classic THE STEPFATHER. Wingard admirably wastes absolutely no time in getting THE GUEST off and running, and it rapidly unfolds with all the appeal of a catchy song that's immediately got you hooked. This one should've been big, but like YOU'RE NEXT, it had to wait to be discovered. (R, 100 mins)



FALCON RISING
(US/Germany - 2014)

The busy Michael Jai White divides his time between DTV actioners and the Tyler Perry universe, starring in the Perry-produced WHY DID I GET MARRIED? TV spinoff FOR BETTER OR WORSE, a show that started on TBS but is now about to air its sixth season on OWN. For many years, White was best known for the title roles in the HBO movie TYSON (1995) and the big-screen SPAWN (1997), but his place in pop culture history would eventually be cemented by the 2009 cult classic BLACK DYNAMITE, a dead-on, labor-of-love spoof of blaxploitation films that White also wrote and shepherded every step of the way to its completion. BLACK DYNAMITE only received a limited theatrical release, but it's gone on to become one of the most revered and quotable comedies--at least with hardcore movie nerds--of the last several years, and in that sense, it's surprising that White, who's absolutely perfect as Black Dynamite, hasn't gone on to bigger things. White's no stranger to the world of DTV action, and his films have generally been a cut above the norm, whether he's working for Isaac Florentine in UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING (2006), headlining the bone-crushing and bloody BLOOD AND BONE (2009), or directing himself in NEVER BACK DOWN 2: THE BEATDOWN (2011). Like Florentine--another DTV action figure who should theoretically be getting better mainstream offers--it may just be that White prefers the relative freedom that the world of low-budget action allows. Florentine is one of the producers of White's latest, FALCON RISING, which actually made it into a few theaters in September courtesy of Freestyle Releasing. It's the tentative beginning to what producers Shahar & Etchie Stroh of Moonstone Entertainment have christened the "Codename: Falcon" franchise, with White as former Marine-turned-government Black Ops agent John "Falcon" Chapman.

As FALCON RISING opens, a suicidal Chapman, haunted by his Iraq War memories, is playing Russian Roulette before heading to the liquor store, where he of course thwarts a robbery. When his humanitarian aid worker sister Cindy (Laila Ali, Muhammad's youngest daughter) is brutally beaten and left for dead in the "Favela" slums of Rio, Chapman heads to the Rio de Janeiro capital where his old war buddy Manny (Neal McDonough) conveniently runs the US Consulate. It seems Cindy was working to stop a human trafficking and child prostitution ring and got the attention of Rio's most corrupt cops and an evil crew of yakuza planning to ship underage girls to Japan. When an yakuza hit woman disguised as a nurse tries to kill a comatose Cindy, Chapman goes full One Man Wrecking Crew to take out the trash in the Favela. Director Ernie Barbarash is a DTV action veteran (CUBE ZERO, ASSASSINATION GAMES), not on the level of a Florentine or a John Hyams, but FALCON RISING (shot under the far less catchy title FAVELA) shows he's getting a little better. There's an enjoyable Cannon vibe to much of FALCON RISING, right down to its 101-minute run time, and it's really just one action movie cliche after another: PTSD-stricken Chapman's death wish, the Rio cop in charge of the case (Jimmy Navarro, looking and acting like his character should be named "Brazilem Dafoe") obviously being a villain, and the inevitable climactic shootout/MMA throwdown at a shipyard warehouse. There's nothing here you haven't seen before: the villains are complete cardboard cutouts; a sequence where Chapman issues a beatdown on a suspicious-looking guy who turns out to be a complete red herring who never bothers to introduce or explain himself until he and five of his buddies have been decked senseless is unbelievably dumb; a subplot about cleaning up the Favela owes a bit too much to THE RAID; and former boxer Ali has nothing to do but lie motionless in a hospital bed (and she gets an "introducing" credit despite IMDb showing 12 prior acting credits dating back to 2000), but FALCON RISING works as brainlessly diverting action fare. White is an engaging and stoical hero, there's some nice bantering with McDonough (shockingly not cast as a smug prick), who quips "I see you stopped working out" when he first sees the hulking Chapman at the Consulate, the fight choreography by Larnell Stovall is top-notch, and Barbarash and cinematographer Yaron Levy do a fine job of passing Puerto Rico off as Rio and making FALCON RISING look a bit bigger-budgeted than it really is (though you could make a drinking game out of how many times Barbarash cuts to swirling, second-unit aerial shots of the Christ the Redeemer statue). It's hard telling if FALCON RISING will actually lead to a franchise, but it's got plenty of action and no shortage of a perpetually scowling White beating the shit out of people, so what more do you need? (R, 101 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)


I ORIGINS
(US - 2014)

(Some SPOILERS ahead). The 2011 Sundance hit ANOTHER EARTH, directed by Mike Cahill and written by star Brit Marling, was one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking indie sci-fi films to come down the pike since PRIMER introduced the world to Shane Carruth. While Marling wrote and starred in the interesting SOUND OF MY VOICE and the disastrous THE EAST for their director pal Zal Batmanglij, Cahill was busy writing his follow-up film I ORIGINS. Marling is just an actress in this one, but it has that distinct feel that she usually brings to her projects. However, the film is ultimately a disappoint that never recovers from the glacially-paced mumblecore moping of its first half and it eventually succumbs to silliness despite an interesting premise once the narrative finally starts advancing. Opening in 2006, molecular biology Ph.D. candidate Ian Gray (Michael Pitt), his roommate Kenny (THE WALKING DEAD's Steven Yeun), and their frumpy research assistant Karen (Marling) are studying the evolution of the human eye in an effort to dismantle the notion of intelligent design and creationism. Ian meets Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) at a party and the two begin a whirlwind romance that comes to an abrupt end when Sofi is killed in an elevator accident. Cut to 2013, as the now-Dr. Gray and his research partner/wife Karen are told their infant son displays signs of autism. They're suspicious of the tests given to the baby and, through some plot advancement that the audience is just forced to roll with, discover that their son's iris pattern is identical to that of a man who died two years earlier, and the photos which provoked an emotional response from the baby during the test were images from that dead man's past. Making this their new mission--apparently with the plan of cutting the autism specialist (Cara Seymour) out entirely--Ian jets off to New Delhi when an eye-scan database indicates that a child with Sofi's iris pattern was there as recently as three months earlier.

Cahill tries to go for some heady ideas involving reincarnation, religion, and scientific theory, but too much of I ORIGINS is a laborious, pretentious bore. The courtship scenes between Ian and Sofi go on forever, with the two demonstrating the kind of odd, eccentric behavior that only goes over well at film festivals (their meet-cute is particularly absurd), and the performances of Pitt and Berges-Frisbey respectively channeling the most grating aspects of circa-2000 Jeremy Davies and circa-anytime Paz de la Huerta. The first 50 minutes are a slog, but if you can hang with it, it gets marginally better--for a while, at least--as Cahill gets a decent Shane Carruth forward momentum going and actually takes the concept somewhere. But it's ultimately a lot of talk on the way to nowhere special and not really worth the effort. There's still a lot of lingering questions, William Mapother's one-scene appearance as an American minister in Ian's New Delhi hotel seems to be what's left of a larger role that got hacked down in post, and a post-credits stinger tries to go for a big surprise but is just hokey and laughable. There's some nice cinematography, particularly in the New Delhi sequences, but Cahill's follow-up to the far-superior ANOTHER EARTH is, for the most part, a dull, draggy misfire, and though Marling is only in front of the camera, it's a good indication along with THE EAST that maybe the Marling/Cahill/Batmanglij team have said everything they've had to say. (R, 107 mins)