On Blu-ray/DVD: FILM STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL (2017); BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS (2018); and DEEP BLUE SEA 2 (2018)

FILM STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL
(UK - 2017)

Gloria Grahame won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1952's THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL and while she was a big star from the late 1940s through the 1950s, she's been largely forgotten aside from well-schooled movie buffs and regular viewers of Turner Classic Movies. She lived a life ready-made for the tabloids, her most notable scandal being that her fourth husband Tony Ray was the son of her second husband, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE director Nicholas Ray. As the story goes, Nicholas Ray caught Grahame in bed with his 13-year-old son (from his first marriage) and promptly filed for divorce. Grahame's marriage to the younger Ray several years later in 1960 effectively got her blackballed from Hollywood, appearing in just one film that entire decade, a supporting role in the 1966 Chuck Connors western RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE. She resurfaced in the early 1970s, paying the bills mostly in drive-in exploitation fare like 1971's BLOOD AND LACE, 1974's MAMA'S DIRTY GIRLS, 1976's MANSION OF THE DOOMED, and her final film, 1981's THE NESTING. Grahame and Tony Ray divorced in 1974 and Grahame split her time between Hollywood, NYC, and the UK, where she stayed busy doing theater work in her final years when she was terminally ill with cancer and refused to even acknowledge her condition until it was far too late. She died in 1981 at just 57.

Based on Peter Turner's 1986 memoir detailing his relationship with Grahame, FILM STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL concentrates on the actress' final years from 1979 to 1981, and doesn't really address the more tawdry elements of her life and never even mentions the declining quality of her film work (though she did manage to land small roles in a few reputable films like 1980's MELVIN AND HOWARD). In 1981, Gloria (Annette Bening) is doing a play at a small theater in Liverpool and collapses in her dressing room just before going on stage. She calls Peter (Jamie Bell) and asks to stay with him at home of his parents Bella (Julie Walters) and Joe (Kenneth Cranham). FILM STARS then cuts back and forth between the present in 1981 and 1979, when Gloria and Peter, nearly 30 years her junior, meet and begin a torrid romance. Director Paul McGuigan (LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN) and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh (CONTROL, NOWHERE BOY) generally hit all the biopic bullet points and standard-issue melodrama of a kind-hearted but sometimes mercurial, past-her-prime star and a younger man falling head over heels. FILM STARS gets its biggest benefit from a wonderful performance by Bening, who displays only a passing physical resemblance to Grahame but really captures her spirit, demeanor, and especially her voice. The filmmakers allow her to bring some complexity to a sincere but troubled person--she genuinely loves Peter and doesn't treat him as some kind of boy-toy, she generally doesn't behave like a diva and is at the point where she prefers a quieter, simpler life--and we also get to spend some time with Peter's family, who welcome Gloria into their lives with open arms. The film glosses over some details, though a dinner scene with Gloria's mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and her bitter sister (Frances Barber) serves to inform Peter about Tony Ray without going into too many lurid specifics (when Grahame leaves the room, her mother implores Peter, "Don't marry Gloria"). Gloria's and Peter's arguments grow a bit repetitive and tiresome in the second half, but the always-great Bening is just superb throughout, and she was getting a push for awards season recognition before Sony pretty much gave up on the film, stalling its release on just 107 screens at its widest. (R, 106 mins)



BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS
(Denmark/Canada - 2018)

A24 replicates its bizarre LAST MOVIE STAR release strategy with BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS, which premiered on DirecTV a month before its Blu-ray/DVD release, followed by a limited theatrical rollout the Friday after. There's really no viable distribution option for this unbearably dull political thriller, which isn't helped at all by a title that sounds like a YA teen comedy or the kind of movie whose poster has the tag line "The con is on." It's based on the 2010 memoir of the same title by Michael Soussan, a UN diplomat and whistleblower who exposed rampant, systemic corruption in the UN's Oil for Food Program in 2003. When economic sanctions against Iraq led to the country's economy crashing and its people starving and dying under Saddam Hussein, the Oil for Food Program was developed to sell Iraqi oil vouchers in exchange for humanitarian aid. The scandal more or less got lost in the shuffle with the mainstream media amidst the extensive reporting on the Iraqi invasion in 2003, but as a film, the utterly lifeless BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS never even comes close to catching fire. Nothing works in its favor, especially the robotic, monotone Theo James (the DIVERGENT series) as Soussan surrogate "Michael Sullivan," here upgraded to the assistant to UN Under-Secretary-General Benon "Pasha" Sevan (Ben Kingsley). Pasha's palm-greasing, money-grubbing, and assorted wheelings-and-dealings are referenced and talked about but never really demonstrably shown. He spends a lot of time lecturing the idealistic "Sullivan" with sage advice like "We never lie, but we choose our facts or truths with utmost care," and "Information is currency...it's power!"

Everyone in BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS talks like this, whether it's one Baghdad-based UN office drone telling Sullivan "We're just pawns in a bigger game, you and me," or the UN's Baghdad field chief Christine Dupre (Jacqueline Bisset) yelling "Everyone is grifting! Corruption grows like a cancer!" There's a lot of talk about Sullivan's predecessor in his job being killed in a hit and run that probably wasn't an accident, and a time-consuming subplot about Pasha trying to throw a Kurdish interpreter and Sullivan love interest (Belcim Bilgin) under the bus with trumped-up espionage charges, but BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS is an oppressively boring "thriller" that might've been something worthwhile in the hands of, say, Costa-Gavras. But under the watch of director/co-writer Per Fly, it's terribly written and acted, even by a profane Kingsley, who hams mercilessly and sports an accent that has him almost constantly shouting "Fack!" This is the kind of movie that opens with a shot of the NYC skyline, the Empire State Building in plain view, accompanied by the caption "New York." This is the kind of movie that spells "Morocco" two different ways on the same closing credits page. How bad is BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS? It's so bad that it actually ends with Sullivan reflecting on the scandal and telling a reporter "The truth isn't about the lies we told each other...it's about the lies we tell ourselves." Get the fuck outta here with that shitty writing. (R, 108 mins)

Come on, BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS!

DEEP BLUE SEA 2
(US - 2018)

After 19 years, was anyone demanding a sequel to Renny Harlin's shark movie DEEP BLUE SEA? The original film, a moderate hit that's become a cable favorite to this day, has one of the all-time great shocks I've ever experienced in a crowded movie theater (if you've seen it, you know the scene) as well as one of the dumbest closing credits songs you'll ever hear, but the primitive CGI looked bad then and is utterly laughable now. It should come as no surprise that the CGI looks pretty much the same in this low-budget, DTV sequel that, for a while, throws some pretty crazy shit at the wall to see what sticks but eventually settles into being a by-the-numbers, de facto remake of its predecessor. The only reason this even exists is that it's a recognizable name that can belatedly hitch a ride on the SHARKNADO/ SHALLOWS/ 47 METERS DOWN bandwagon. Billionaire pharmaceutical CEO and standard-issue megalomaniac Carl Durant (Michael Beach as Samuel L. Jackson) is bankrolling an illegal, off-the-books research project at an underwater research facility off the coast of South Africa. He's pumped five aggressive bull sharks full of an experimental serum that's altered their genetic structure in an attempt to get to the core of creating a hyper-intelligence that he hopes to use on humans. He and his security chief Trent Slater (JOHN DIES AT THE END's Rob Mayes as Thomas Jane) can control the sharks via key fob, but a crew of scientists recruited by Durant, led by world-renowned marine conservationist Dr. Misty Calhoun (Danielle Savre as Saffron Burrows), are appalled at the lack of ethics. Of course, the sharks start to develop intelligence beyond anyone's control--first digging a tunnel under the electric fence at the perimeter of the base--and the main female shark (named "Ella") ends up having babies, which are born addicted to Durant's super-intelligent wonder drug that--wait for it--also increases their aggression and has them attacking as quickly and ferociously as small piranha. To make matters worse, Durant's gotten himself hooked on the drug himself and grows increasingly paranoid and as the situation gets worse, he has no problem sacrificing everyone else if it means preserving his research.

That's the set-up, and while it's no great shakes, it's surprisingly not terrible even if the actors are notch below what the 1999 film could corral (Savre has more than established her DTV bona fides after BRING IT ON: ALL OR NOTHING, BOOGEYMAN 2, and JARHEAD 2: FIELDS OF FIRE). It really makes no sense why this drug has to be tested on sharks, unless it's only because Durant had nothing else to do with a massive underwater research installation he owned as was just letting go to waste. But once Ella has her babies and the underwater facility starts flooding, it's strictly business as usual as the mostly non-descript cast is devoured one by one and the script seems to completely forget about Durant getting all fucked up on his superdrug. Director Darin Scott has been around for decades--he co-wrote 1987's THE OFFSPRING and 1995's TALES FROM THE HOOD, and in the '90s, produced Charles Burnett's TO SLEEP WITH ANGER, the rap comedy FEAR OF A BLACK HAT, and the great MENACE II SOCIETY (man...DEEP BLUE SEA 2, dude? I guess a job's a job)--and brings some bizarre items to table in the early going, like opening credits that look like they belong in a 007 movie. But there is one moment in DEEP BLUE SEA 2 that's so inspired, so hilarious, so brilliantly, off-the-charts ridiculous that it makes the whole thing impossible to simply dismiss: Durant is yelling at his flunky attorney, who's concerned about the legality of that they're doing and what will become of the sharks after the research is complete. Durant says he just needs the sharks until he gets the information he needs and then he'll simply kill them off. "Not so fast," thinks the super-smart Ella, lingering outside the porthole in Durant's quarters, glaring at him and reading his lips. OK, fine, DEEP BLUE SEA 2. You win. (R, 94 mins)

Retro Review: A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY (1968)

A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY
(Italy/France - 1968; US release 1970)

A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY is a strange and impenetrable supernatural art/horror hybrid from Italian filmmaker Elio Petri that came between his pop Eurocult masterpiece THE 10TH VICTIM (1965) and the Oscar-winning INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION (1970). Petri and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY co-writer Luciano Vincenzoni are credited with the screenplay, which also had some input from frequent Michelangelo Antonioni collaborator Tonino Guerra, and the end result definitely has an Antonioni-gone-horror feel to it, along with some distinctly Mario Bava-esque set pieces and story tropes (cursed houses, buried secrets, etc) that also prefigure the coming rise of the giallo, particularly the more paranormally-charged ones like Dario Argento's DEEP RED (1975). The film was also a likely influence on Pupi Avati's THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS (1976), especially with its immersion in the art world. Unable to focus on his work in Milan, creatively-blocked artist Leonardo Ferri (Franco Nero) decides to get away to the titular location, a villa in a remote rural community that was found by his married lover and primary backer Flavia (Vanessa Redgrave). Already suffering from strange nightmares--the film opens with a psychosexual, S&M fever dream sequence where Flavia is teasing and taunting a restrained Leonardo, who's wearing nothing but a diaper--Leonardo finds the isolation of the villa does little to improve his mental state. He's losing his grip on reality and starts seeing the ghostly apparition of Wanda (Gabriella Grimaldi), a promiscuous 18-year-old local girl who died on the property under mysterious circumstances in 1944. The townspeople obviously know something they aren't revealing, Leonardo's already bizarre behavior grows more erratic by the minute, and it becomes quite clear that Wanda's spirit doesn't like it when Flavia is around.

That plot synopsis makes A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY sound a lot more consistently grounded than it is. Torn between his art film aesthetic and the genre gutter, Petri too often errs on the side of the pretentious cineaste. He seems particularly indebted to Antonioni and 1966's BLOW-UP, from the trippy psychedelia and the obsession of its lead character to the script input of Guerra and the presence of Redgrave who, despite her top billing, really has a supporting role (she and Nero met on the set of 1967's CAMELOT and were a couple at the time, and would eventually marry decades later in 2006). The film takes forever to get going and the tedious first hour is a real slog, but once Petri decides to focus on the horror elements, things improve significantly. The villa--a Cinecitta set seen in many Italian films--is incredibly atmospheric and filled with corners and hidden spaces that have you on edge (there's some terrific cinematography by Luigi Kuveiller and wonderfully fluid camera work by Ubaldo Terzano, Bava's favorite camera operator), and the film features a score by Ennio Morricone that finds the legendary composer in one of his free-jazz freakout moods, occasionally incongruously comedic-sounding, with moans, dissonant percussion, and randomly blaring trumpets. Until a surprisingly grisly finale, Petri keeps things pretty low-key though he does stage one of the more chillingly effective seances you'll ever see in this type of movie. There's a lot to appreciate about A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY, a rather obscure Eurocult curiosity that didn't turn up in US theaters until August 1970, just a couple of months before Petri's INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION opened. It infrequently appears on Turner Classic Movies in the vicinity of 3:30 am (with its gore and nudity, this is pretty strong stuff by TCM standards) and was given an manufactured-on-demand DVD release by MGM a few years ago, but it remains a little-remembered relic from its day. Its biggest problem is that Petri non-committally hovers around the line separating "important" and commercial cinema and throughout, he fights the obvious desire to slum it in genre fare. He handled that fusion a bit better with THE 10TH VICTIM, but ultimately, A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY is an intriguing, uneven mess that works best after snapping out of its Antonioni worship and begrudgingly admitting that it's a horror movie. (R, 106 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: FOXCATCHER (2014) and THE CAPTIVE (2014)

FOXCATCHER
(US - 2014)

It couldn't have been that difficult to put together a riveting true crime drama about the events leading up to the 1996 murder of Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz at the hand of billionaire philanthropist John du Pont. Du Pont, played here by a prosthetic nose attached to Steve Carell, was the heir to the Du Pont chemical company fortune who dabbled in all sorts of professions--he was best-known as a respected ornithologist who published several books on birds--but had a passion for wrestling. In 1986, Du Pont contacts Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), the younger brother of Dave (Mark Ruffalo), both of whom won gold medals in wrestling at the 1984 Olympics, about running a training facility for potential Olympic wrestlers at du Pont's Foxcatcher Farms compound in Wilmington, DE. Mark, depicted as a bit of a dumb lug, has grown tired of living in Dave's shadow, and since Dave is contractually tied down to his college coaching gig, Mark sees this as his chance to establish a legacy of his own, even though, as he constantly has to remind everyone, "I won a gold medal, too." A father-son bond forms between du Pont and Mark, though their relationship gets rocky, especially once Dave eventually joins the Foxcatcher team at du Pont's insistence, though it's not helped by du Pont's increasingly erratic behavior, including firing a gun in the gym and goading the impressionable, eager-to-please Mark into recreational cocaine use.

Director Bennett Miller (CAPOTE, MONEYBALL) and screenwriters E. Max Frye (SOMETHING WILD) and Dan Futterman (CAPOTE) play entirely too fast and loose with the facts of the case, so much so that it's hard to say which is the most egregious offense. It could be that the film seems to portray the events as taking place from 1986 to just after the Seoul qualifying tryouts in 1988, when in fact, the time period was 1986 to 1996. It could be the depiction of Mark leaving Foxcatcher after du Pont and Dave become chummy and Mark falls out of du Pont's good graces, when in fact, there was no sibling rivalry in regard to du Pont because the Schultz brothers didn't live or coach together at Foxcatcher--Dave moved his family to Foxcatcher a year after Mark quit following his last falling out with du Pont. It could be du Pont's mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and her disapproval of his wrestling fixation and the creation of Foxcatcher Farms, but in fact, she died before du Pont even created Foxcatcher Farms. Dramatic license is to be expected, but it's very vague exactly what the filmmakers are trying to show here. Essentially, it's about a rich, manipulative, socially inept weirdo whose mother had to buy friends for him when he was a child, and his codependent relationship with a none-too-bright wrestler who was tired of getting the leftover table scraps of his more popular brother. It's about a guy who develops an obsession with coaching wrestling so he can both please his disapproving mom and finally get a chance to be one of the guys, even if he has to drive a wedge between two loving brothers to achieve it. Except that du Pont didn't drive the brothers apart. FOXCATCHER is smoke-and-mirrors Oscar-baiting at its most cynical, starting with the stunt casting of Carell. Sure, it's a dramatic departure for a guy generally known for comedy, but since everything about FOXCATCHER is empty and meaningless, there's nothing there beyond the distracting fake nose. It's mind-boggling that this received five Oscar nominations, including acting nods for Carell and Ruffalo, who's good because he's Mark Ruffalo and he's always good, but this is hardly a standout performance in his career. Miller's direction and Frye & Futterman's script were also nominated, while the one legitimately great thing about FOXCATCHER--the revelatory work of Tatum--went ignored. In a textbook example of an internalized powderkeg of a performance, Tatum almost single-handedly makes the inexplicably feted FOXCATCHER worth enduring for 134 excruciating minutes. It's these kinds of performances that go unnoticed by awards outfits because they're too subtle and low-key, not like Carell acting all creepy with a ridiculous phony schnoz. FOXCATCHER is proof positive that Tatum can act, but otherwise, it's one of the worst awards-season prestige films in years. (R, 134 mins)



THE CAPTIVE
(Canada - 2014)

Coming quickly on the heels of his utterly superfluous West Memphis Three chronicle DEVIL'S KNOT, the once-great Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan continues his decade-long slide into irrelevance with the maddeningly uneven THE CAPTIVE. With only 2008's ADORATION showing signs of the Egoyan of old, the filmmaker has spent most of his time over the last ten or so years making documentaries and short films as passion projects while keeping food on the table by directing commercial thrillers like WHERE THE TRUTH LIES (2005) and CHLOE (2009), an erotic thriller that felt 15 years old the day it was released. Egoyan tries to have the best of both worlds with THE CAPTIVE and while the film has its moments, it just doesn't work as a whole. Most of THE CAPTIVE is made up of the same kind of fractured, non-linear narrative that old-school Egoyan fans will recognize from his 1990s masterpieces EXOTICA and THE SWEET HEREAFTER. In the outskirts of Niagara Falls, ON, 21-year-old Cass (Alexia Fast) was abducted eight years earlier by Mika (Kevin Durand) and kept in a locked basement room. Mika allows her webcam access to function as a "gateway," luring other young girls into a vaguely-defined underage kidnapping ring. Cass' separated parents, Matthew (Ryan Reynolds) and Tina (Mireille Enos) are shells of what they once were, and Tina blames Matthew for Cass' disappearance (he stopped at a bakery to get a pie for dessert that night as 13-year-old Cass was taken while lying down in the backseat of his truck). The cops, led by crusading Dunlop (Rosario Dawson) and hot-headed Cornwall (Scott Speedman), seem pretty set on the idea that financially-strapped Matthew is behind Cass' disappearance, at least until Dunlop herself goes missing after a benefit dinner for a charity organization that helps victims of child sex trafficking.

All of this plot is parsed out in bits and pieces as Egoyan jumps around the eight-year timeline. It gradually comes together like it does in his best work, and in that best work, attentive viewers begin piecing the puzzle and marveling at Egoyan's expert story construction and devastating emotional impact. THE CAPTIVE has the puzzle part down, but not so much the expert story construction and the devastating emotional impact. Once the pieces are in place, Egoyan doles out one ludicrous and often laughable contrivance after another. Mika is one of these limitlessly wealthy psychos who has the time and the technological wherewithal to plant cameras in the rooms of an entire floor of the hotel where Tina works, for the sole purpose of leaving Cass' childhood trinkets and mementos--a hairbrush, an ice-skating trophy, baby teeth--in plain sight for her to see, taunting her from afar as he watches her on a row of monitors on a control panel at his mansion. It doesn't help that, as in DEVIL'S KNOT, Egoyan has directed Durand to go hammy, playing Mika broadly and completely unbelievably. Like Sharlto Copley in Spike Lee's remake of OLDBOY, Durand doesn't even seem to be in the same movie as the other actors, looking like an anachronistic, erudite David Niven/Errol Flynn-type and behaving like a cartoon character, but somehow never drawing attention to himself and never becoming a suspect, even though he visits one other busted member of a pedophile ring in jail. Also, when Dunlop is roofied and taken from the gala benefit, she's at the same table as Mika and a strange woman (Christine Horne) in an obvious wig, and nobody seems to notice that the guest speaker is stumbling and bumbling and needs to be helped out of the building and into a waiting limo by this mystery woman. Is there an entire secret society of child abductors in this town? And are they less interested in pedophilia and more focused on using high-tech surveillance to spy on their parents and the cops?  How in the hell does Mika have remote access to turn on the webcam on Cornwall's laptop so he can spy on Cornwall and Dunlop discussing their investigation? If Egoyan were ever to direct an episode of LAW & ORDER: SVU, it would probably look a lot like THE CAPTIVE, right down to the detectives standing around the office and chiming in with bits of exposition as the camera moves around them. The only thing missing is Dunlop calling in Richard Belzer's retired John Munch to consult on the case. Witness this stunning exercise in textbook Dick Wolfery:

Detective 1: "Maybe there was a watcher."
Detective 2: "Or watchers."
Detective 3: "A whole new class of freaks."

More than a little reminiscent of Denis Villeneuve's PRISONERS, THE CAPTIVE could've worked one of two ways: as a total throwback, give-the-arthouse-nerds-what-they-want Atom Egoyan film (fixtures like Bruce Greenwood and Egoyan's wife Arsinee Khanjian have minor supporting roles!) or as a ludicrous-but-just-roll-with-it multiplex thriller, where the contrivances and the silliness could've been easier to overlook, and a moment like Cornwall, one of the most unjustifiably cocky cops you'll ever see (he's always wrong!), finally getting clocked by an enraged Matthew would've served as a real crowd-pleaser. But Egoyan is just lost. He comes up short at both ends of the spectrum and seems to have no idea what he's doing or who his films are even for anymore. Egoyan is too smart to let the rampant stupidity of THE CAPTIVE's second half even happen, especially after making such a concerted effort to present the first half as quintessential Egoyan. I'm a sucker for depictions of cold, snowy, desolate Canada and the film does succeed on that front, and Egoyan does get two strong performances from Reynolds and Enos, both of whom seem to dominate the "smart" portions of the movie, but THE CAPTIVE is yet another sign that a slumping Egoyan desperately needs to locate his apparently abducted mojo. (R, 112 mins)