In Theaters: GOING IN STYLE (2017)

GOING IN STYLE
(US - 2017)

Directed by Zach Braff. Written by Theodore Melfi. Cast: Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Alan Arkin, Christopher Lloyd, Matt Dillon, Ann-Margret, John Ortiz, Peter Serafinowicz, Joey King, Kenan Thompson, Josh Pais, Maria Dizzia, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Melanie Nichols-King, Ashley Aufderheide. (PG-13, 96 mins)

1979's GOING IN STYLE was sold as a wacky comedy about a trio of elderly retirees robbing a bank in Groucho Marx disguises. But the stick-up was only a small part of the story, which primarily focused on the three aging widowers (George Burns as Joe, Art Carney as Al, and Lee Strasberg as Willie) looking for something to alleviate the boredom, the loneliness, and the depression of getting old and spending their days sitting in the park feeding the pigeons. The breakthrough film for 28-year-old writer/director Martin Brest (who would go on to make BEVERLY HILLS COP, MIDNIGHT RUN, SCENT OF A WOMAN, and the career-ending GIGLI), GOING IN STYLE was a comedy but a dark and character-driven one, with poignant and heartfelt observations about growing old, living with regrets, and knowing you don't have a lot of time left. It wasn't a feel-good movie. Hell, Al and Willie both die, and Joe not only gets nabbed, but he's in prison at the end. Nearly 40 years later, GOING IN STYLE gets the remake treatment, appropriately cast with three living legends--Michael Caine as Joe, Alan Arkin as Al, and Morgan Freeman as Willie--but the results aren't the same. GOING IN STYLE '17 is perfectly acceptable in a dumb and unchallenging kind of way. It's less a story than it is a focus group-approved checklist of cliches, tropes, and contrivances. This new take is a GOING IN STYLE that's a mash-up of GRUMPY OLD MEN, THE BUCKET LIST, and HORRIBLE BOSSES. It's all about the bank robbery, now an intricately-planned heist with alibis, decoys, a getaway vehicle, and an ethnic accomplice in Jesus (John Ortiz), a Latino version of Jamie Foxx's Motherfucker Jones from HORRIBLE BOSSES, There's no depth to GOING IN STYLE '17. The humor is limited primarily to "It's funny because they're old!" jokes like a motorized scooter chase, Joe and Willie smoking weed and getting the munchies, and Al rediscovering the long-dormant sexual dynamo within after hooking up with still-foxy grocery clerk Annie (Ann-Margret).

Written by Theodore Melfi, whose script existed several years before he scored big by writing and directing HIDDEN FIGURES, and directed by, of all people, SCRUBS star, GARDEN STATE auteur, and emo cautionary tale Zach Braff, GOING IN STYLE '17 goes out of its way to give the trio substantial reasons to rob the bank. Retired from a Brooklyn steel mill that's about to screw over their workforce and move its operations to Vietnam, Joe, Al, and Willie find their pensions frozen with no money coming in. This causes Joe's house to go into foreclosure when his mortgage triples after being sold on a sketchy refinancing offer by the asshole loan manager (Josh Pais) at the bank. Joe is at the bank trying to deal with this issue when it's robbed by a trio of highly-coordinated gunmen. When Joe finds out the same bank that's foreclosing on him also holds the steel mill's liquidated pension accounts, the seed is planted. He convinces his best buddies to go along with him on a robbery by promising to only take the money they'd be getting in their pensions for the next seven or so years (estimating how long they'll likely be alive) and if any more is accrued, they'll give it to charity. After a test run of their crime skills fails miserably when they're busted shoplifting at the neighborhood market (this entire sequence is embarrassingly awful), they decide they need help from a pro, and end up meeting Jesus through Joe's weed-dealing ex-son-in-law Murphy (Peter Serafinowicz). Jesus helps them map out the heist, helps them set up alibis, and teaches them how to hotwire a car, at which the old guys are immediately experts. Sporting Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. Rat Pack masks, they barely pull off the robbery--a bank employee hits the silent alarm, but according to the movie's own timeline, it takes roughly 30 minutes for the police to arrive--but are pursued by dogged FBI agent Hamer (Matt Dillon), who knows they're his guys but can't prove it.

GOING IN STYLE '17 is so concerned with making the audience love its altruistic, irascible old geezers that it constantly stacks the deck against them for maximum sympathy: Joe's house in foreclosure, his daughter (Maria Dizzia) and granddaughter (Joey King) live with him after they get away from loser Murphy, Willie's in late-stage renal failure and hasn't told anyone that he needs a kidney transplant ASAP or he'll die, and he desperately wants to be closer to his own daughter and granddaughter who live across the country. Al has no pressing issues other than his innate grouchiness, which is vintage late-career Arkin, but his work here is awfully similar to 2012's already-forgotten STAND-UP GUYS, where he, Al Pacino, and Christopher Walken played aging mobsters pulling off One Last Job. GOING IN STYLE '17 is beneath its stars, but Freeman, Caine, and Arkin are so good at doing whatever they do whenever they're onscreen in anything that there's some moderate level of enjoyment to be had, even if it's watching the three of them sitting around watching TV and arguing about who THE BACHELORETTE's choice should be. But the whole thing is too formulaic and too afraid to take chances, like embracing the inherent sense of melancholy that Burns, Carney, and Strasberg were allowed to do back in 1979.

Burns, Strasberg, and Carney in
the original 1979 version.

GOING IN STYLE '17 doesn't want to address any of these serious concerns in an intelligent, mature, and dignified way. It lacks the courage to allow any of its heroes to die (is there any chance Willie doesn't find a donor?) and goes for easy laughs like an old woman screaming "Who the fuck took my scooter?" when Joe commandeers it fleeing the grocery store, because geriatrics dropping vulgarities is a can't-miss, as decreed in the Burgess Meredith Amendment of 1993. It wants to show Freeman and Caine stuffing ham and pork loins down their pants and then getting all hazy and glassy-eyed after blazing up with Jesus' weed, or Arkin and Ann-Margret panting in a post-coital sweat. It's mostly good-natured and not done in a mean-spirited or mocking way (though there's several laughs at the expense of a senile and perpetually befuddled lodge brother played by Christopher Lloyd in total Reverend Jim mode), but at the same time, these are cheap and lazy jokes that allow the film to coast on the charm and the accomplishments of its three Oscar-winning stars. They're fun to watch, but wouldn't you almost rather watch 96 minutes of Freeman, Caine, and Arkin just sitting around bullshitting and telling stories? GOING IN STYLE '79 was a modest hit at the box office but is still fondly remembered by those who saw it 38 years ago. Will anyone remember GOING IN STYLE '17 38 days from now?

On DVD/Blu-ray: I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER (2016); SHELLEY (2016); and BROTHER NATURE (2016)

I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER
(Ireland/UK - 2016)

Based on the 2009 novel by Dan Wells, which led to five books thus far centered on protagonist John Wayne Cleaver, I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER is one of the best genre offerings of 2016, an eclectic mix of teen angst, detective story, and supernatural horror. John (Max Records, who's grown a bit since his first big role in 2009's WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE) lives in Clayton County in the rural outskirts of Minneapolis. It's a small industrial town where everyone knows everyone, and John is the weird, bullied outcast at school because his single mother April (Laura Fraser) owns and operates the funeral home which, whether it was nature or nurture, has had a profound impact on him. His therapist Dr. Neblin (Karl Geary) has diagnosed him as a sociopath, the school is concerned because he wrote a term paper about BTK serial killer Dennis Rader. John believes that he has the innate psychological capacity for serial killing, but he does things to keep his impulses in check. These include repeating a reassuring mantra, hanging out with his only friend Max (Raymond Brandstrom), because goofing off and playing video games makes him feel normal, and regularly chatting with and helping out friendly, elderly neighbor Bill Crowley (Christopher Lloyd). John's fascination with death leads to his investigating a series of brutal murders that have rocked the small community. The victims are found dead, often with vital organs missing. Eating lunch in the town's greasy spoon, John spots Crowley talking to a drifter and offering him a ride. Following them on his bike at a distance, John witnesses Crowley slaughter and disembowel the drifter, then removing several of his organs and appearing to eat them. There's an oil like residue left at all of the murder scenes, and as John follows Crowley as he claims other victims over the next several weeks, thus begins a game of cat-and-mouse, as John, fighting his own sociopathic impulses and desperately trying to be a good person, leaves a note on Crowley's windshield reading "I know what you are," but he really has no idea exactly what his seemingly normal neighbor really is.

An Irish-British co-production, directed and co-written by Irish Billy O'Brien and shot in Minnesota, I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER first and foremost establishes its starkly effective atmosphere with its gray color palette, overcast skies, and plumes of smoke and steam billowing from factories. Much like Italian filmmakers really nailing the seediness of NYC in their guerrilla-shot excursions of the early 1980s, O'Brien captures the midwestern dreariness in a way that only outsiders with different eyes sometimes can. With the lonely and isolated small-town atmosphere (John riding his bike around town accompanied by the song "On Your Side" by The Family Dog is maybe the best opening credits sequence of the year) and the teen angst despair, I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER manages to evoke memories of everything from PHANTASM to DONNIE DARKO. But it's not all downbeat navel-gazing, as there's some darkly funny touches throughout, like John following Crowley and his wife (Dee Noah) to a Chinese buffet and running into his mom and Dr. Neblin on a date. Records is terrific as John and Lloyd takes the best role he's had in years and just runs with it. A thoughtful, insightful, smart, and often terrifying genre-bending mash-up, I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER juggles a lot but keeps focus and emerges as an original piece of work that deserves all the cult movie glory it's going to get. (Unrated, 103 mins, also streaming on Netflix)



SHELLEY
(Denmark/France/Sweden - 2016)

There's a vividly Scandinavian chill in this horror film that looks like what might've hypothetically happened had Ingmar Bergman made ROSEMARY'S BABY. Married, well-to-do couple Louise (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Kasper (Peter Christoffersen) live in a very remote and isolated cabin, largely off the grid and living off the land. They raise their own chickens, get water from a well, and eschew the modern benefits of things like TVs, computers, and even electricity. This is a jarring adjustment to Elena (Cosmina Stratan), a Romanian immigrant and single mother who left her child with her parents while she headed to other parts of Europe to find work. They've hired Elena to do housework and farming chores, as Kasper is often away and Louise is recovering from surgery after her most recent miscarriage. Louise and Kasper are both pushing 40 and have endured multiple miscarriages, the most recent resulting in a hysterectomy. With a lot of down time and little in the way of leisure activities other than reading, Elena finds herself bonding with Louise, who then reveals the real intention they hired her: to be a surrogate mother and have the child she isn't capable of carrying. The financially secure couple offers Elena significant compensation and enough money to move her young son and her struggling parents to Denmark. Elena agrees, and for a while, everything is fine. But before long, Elena's morning sickness becomes something else. She grows increasingly ill, suffers from horrifying nightmares, starts behaving erratically, and is convinced something is wrong with the unborn child.

A plot synopsis makes SHELLEY sound a lot more formulaic and commercial than it really is. Director/co-writer Ali Abbasi ends up leaving the viewer with more questions than answers, with the unfolding story ambiguous almost to a fault. Strange occurrences are never explained and elements are introduced and never expanded upon. It's by design and it works in creating a sense of unease and menace in the way Elena is never really sure what's happening to her and what is real. Abbasi also has you questioning the characters in the way they'll lose and regain your sympathy: are Louise and Kasper fully aware of what's happening to Elena? Is it part of a plan? They even say they know they should call her family but put her health further in jeopardy by not doing so because they're afraid Elena's family will keep the baby. And just as we begin to worry for Elena, we see she's sneaking cigarettes during her daily walks through the surrounding forest (during one such walk, she's confronted by a wild dog who just stares at her, almost silently judging--we never see this dog again). It's never really clear what's going on in SHELLEY, but Abbasi excels at maintaining an ominous tone throughout, whether it's the stark atmosphere of the interiors that allow for a BARRY LYNDON sense of a natural lighting look thanks to the candles and the lanterns, the way he uses the light and the shadows (the scene where Louise finds a feral Elena cowering in the basement is terrifying) or the unsettling rumblings on the soundtrack. Similar in some ways to the profoundly disturbing PROXY but not quite as good, SHELLEY is a slow-burner that may frustrate those looking for a commercial horror movie, but for those whose fright-film tastes lean toward the arthouse side of things, it's worth a look. (Unrated, 92 mins, also streaming on Netflix)



BROTHER NATURE
(US - 2016)

Another buried SNL/Lorne Michaels production to go along with last year's Colin Jost pet project STATEN ISLAND SUMMER, BROTHER NATURE has former SNL cast member Taran Killam (a veteran who abruptly departed the show prior to the current season) as Roger Fellner, the uptight, control-freak Chief of Staff to beloved Seattle congressman Frank McLaren (Giancarlo Esposito). When McLaren announces his intention to retire from politics, he tells Roger that he wants him to run for his seat. But first, Roger is off on vacation at a remote lake with his girlfriend Gwen (Gillian Jacobs) and her wacky, vulgar family. Roger intends to propose on the trip, but can't find any alone time thanks to Todd Dotchman (Bobby Moynihan), the loud, obnoxious boyfriend of Gwen's sister Margie (Sarah Burns). Growing up as the baby of the family with six older lesbian sisters, Todd is desperate for male bonding and comes on a little too strong, but with one mishap after another, Roger manages to alienate the entire family. He causes skunks to spray a cabin, rendering it uninhabitable; he high-fives Gwen's nephew who has a splinter in his palm; he walks in on Gwen's parents (Bill Pullman, Rita Wilson) having sex; he eats some pot-laced potato chips that Todd bought for the sisters' sciatica-suffering grandmother; he gets covered in ants and bitten all over after Todd uses Coke to clean up spilled ice cream near where Roger is sleeping; and he gets preoccupied with work when word leaks of McLaren's retirement and is forced to announce his candidacy live from the lake while covered in ant bites, which of course Todd intrudes upon and becomes a media sensation even though a humiliated Roger feels his career is ruined.

There's definitely a GREAT OUTDOORS and WHAT ABOUT BOB? influence on BROTHER NATURE, especially in the way Killam's increasingly shrieking performance draws from Richard Dreyfuss' masterful raging in WHAT ABOUT BOB?  BROTHER NATURE means well, but it's simply not very funny, with the script by Killam and current SNL writer/cast member Mikey Day (the guy behind "David S. Pumpkins") just too formulaic and filled with too many gags that land with a thud. Few of Roger's mishaps are amusing, and a little of Todd--with Moynihan in total Belushi/Blutarsky mode--goes a long way. Of course Todd is the main reason Roger's life falls apart, but everyone loves Todd and blames Roger, even though Todd a) accidentally throws the engagement ring into the lake, and b) usurps all the attention by proposing to Margie before Roger has a chance to propose to Gwen. We saw all of this in WHAT ABOUT BOB? so Killam and Day add other jokes that go nowhere, like Gwen's mom using the term "nut" but not knowing it means "to ejaculate," and Pullman's character telling a heartwarming story about being hospitalized for shoulder surgery and getting a handjob from his wife. A running gag about the Spin Doctors' hit "Two Princes" plays as lazy '90s nostalgia that leaves no doubt that you're getting a cameo by the band. There are a couple of funny bits--Todd grew up in Reno and can only sleep with a white noise machine programmed with casino sounds, and the ultimate fate of the beloved Gill the Fish is an absurdly over-the-top grossout gag that works (regular SNL viewers will be reminded of last season's "Farewell Mr. Bunting" filmed piece)--but two solid jokes can't carry an otherwise painfully unfunny 97 minutes. Even with ringers like Rachael Harris and WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER mastermind David Wain, along with SNL cast members Day, Kenan Thompson, and Aidy Bryant in supporting roles, BROTHER NATURE just whiffs too much to be even remotely successful. The film was directed by Matt Villines and Oz Rodriguez, the "Matt and Oz" team behind the SNL commercials and filmed bits. Sadly, Villines died in July 2016 at just 39 after a two-year battle with kidney cancer, two months before Paramount dumped this on 17 screens and VOD with no publicity at all. (R, 97 mins)