Horror

Deliver Us from Evil (2014)

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deliverusfromevilBased on supposedly “actual accounts” that I do not believe for a second, Deliver Us from Evil casts Eric Bana (Hanna) as NYPD Sgt. Ralph Sarchie, who investigates a string of spooky shit. He and his partner, Butler (Joel McHale of TV’s Community, playing against type in a backwards ball cap and an Alice in Chains T-shirt), are left perplexed at the inhumanity they find, such as at The Bronx Zoo, where a woman quite literally has thrown her kid to the lions.

It gives nothing away to say that the crimes are linked and grow increasingly twisted — like, kitty-on-a-crucifix twisted. It gives nothing away to say that for Sarchie, these unspeakable acts take a real toll on the ol’ home life with the preggo wifey (Olivia Munn, Mortdecai). It gives nothing away — in fact, you expect it — to say that satanic forces are at work. On that note, an unconventional priest (Edgar Ramírez, The Counselor) comes to the aid of Sarchie and Butler.

deliverusfromevil1Remove the ensuing exorcism angle, and Scott Derrickson’s film exudes the feel of other true-crime dramas about Big Apple law enforcement — Serpico, The Super Cops, The French Connection — in a gritty adherence to reality, especially in portraying a police career as fraught with perpetual misery. The deeper the movie dives into demonic territory, however, the more I was reminded of 1990’s The First Power, that forgettable Lou Diamond Phillips vehicle of yore.

Despite Derrickson’s previous experience with scares (Sinister and The Exorcism of Emily Rose), Deliver Us from Evil arrives nearly empty-handed in that department. I say “nearly” because there’s this scene of a roly-poly owl stuffed animal that terrorizes Sarchie’s daughter by doing things it shouldn’t be able to do (read: move). And then there’s the soundtrack, which unloads a lot of tunes by The Doors, a band I can’t stand. In fact, The Doors’ music becomes a bona fide plot point, keeping the Jim Morrison estate awash in royalty payments. To my ears, that’s frightening. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

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abelincolnVHFour score and seven years ago — or was it 2012? — two studio pictures, each budgeted around $65 million, portrayed our nation’s 16th president as a larger-than-life, all-American hero. Whereas Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln could boast of taking home two Academy Awards, only Timur Bekmambetov’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter portrayed him as an ax-twirling ass-kicker.

Let’s see you do that, Daniel Day-Lewis! If he had, it wouldn’t make the movie any better; sitting through this Lincoln log is like a night at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and you’ve got an upper-right box seat. (Too soon?)

By day, a pre-politics Lincoln (Benjamin Walker, Kinsey) works as a shopkeeper, attempting to woo regular customer Mary Todd (Final Destination 3’s Mary Elizabeth Winstead, here looking like a porcelain doll and/or a Campbell’s Soup Kid). And largely by night, he is devoted to killing the monsters who deprived him of a mother since childhood.

Despite the apparent novelty of putting the red stuff in the White House, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter suffers from being just another watered-down vampire movie. Seeing the bloodsuckers fling live horses at those who wish to stake them is new. Then again, so is stopping the movie cold for a rousing speech by abolitionist Harriet Tubman (Jaqueline Fleming, Contraband), as if to lend PC integrity to soulless fantasy. Our leading man is as wooden as the trees Lincoln chops; on the other hand, Winstead acts her heart out, as if no one told her the project was junk.

As with Wanted, Bekmambetov nurtures a directorial flair that is not just style over substance, but style smothering it. Tim Burton producing only encourages the Russian filmmaker’s worst sensibilities, and your reaction to this flick is tied directly to your tolerance for his affinity to take an action move from regular speed to slow motion and then back to regular speed again, all within the same edit. The mashup of horror and history is a joke that should have ended with screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2010 novel, and that long-in-the-tooth best seller should have been a short story.

But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln … —Rod Lott

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Action

Octopussy (1983)

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octopussyWhat I remember most about seeing Octopussy in the summer of 1983 is that my overprotective mother actually took me, then 12, and my 9-year-old brother to see a movie titled Octopussy. This was, after all, a woman who forbade us from rewatching Grease 2 because it was “too racy,” and yet here was a film more or less bearing the name Eight Vaginas. I guess because it was a 007 adventure, it was deemed okay.

The only other things I remember about it was that James Bond snuck through a lagoon in a tiny submersible disguised as a crocodile, which is pretty cool, and that James Bond dressed up as a goddamn circus clown, which is not. So how in the hell did I forget the most cringeworthy part: James Bond swinging on jungle vines as Johnny Weissmuller’s famous Tarzan yell yodel-ay-hee-hooed on the soundtrack?

I have a theory: Because Octopussy makes for a dreadfully dull picture. If it isn’t quite the single-worst entry of the franchise, it can take a quantum of solace that its Rita Coolidge theme song is.

octopussy1Officially the 13th 007 installment — and the penultimate go-round for Roger Moore — the pic gets off to a good start as our secret-agent hero pilots a one-man plane out of a horse’s ass, but in this series, those pre-credit sequences — all part of the tried-and-true formula — have zip to do with the story that follows. That to-do involves Fabergé eggs, nuclear weapons and Maud Adams’ nether regions — a full seven uteri short than what’s promised.

The only Bond Girl to play two leads, having brightened The Man with the Golden Gun, Adams fills the role of villainess and, of course, but one of Bond’s conquests; every woman with whom he comes in contact wants to bed him — even the menopausal ones. (Yes, you, Miss Moneypenny.) How did 007 not contract the AIDS virus?

Because he’s a master of escape, duh. Those chase scenes are when John Glen (in his second of five turns as 007 director, from For Your Eyes Only to A View to a Kill) seems to wake up and rouse the film along with him. Standing out is the sequence in which Bond, in a three-wheeled taxi, is pursued through a crowded marketplace in India and utilizes the stereotypical sword swallowers and fire walkers to best his enemies. Those bits are intentionally amusing, but shoved among them is a supremely silly sight gag on tennis that has no business being here; I suspect producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli stuck it in just to nudge and wink at his buddies back at the club. —Rod Lott

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Guest List

Guest List: Julie E. Czerneda’s Top 5 Movie Cravings That Inspire Creativity

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czerneda-gulfSince 1997, Canadian author Julie E. Czerneda has shared her love and curiosity about living things through her science fiction, writing about shapechanging semi-immortals, terraformed worlds, salmon researchers and the perils of power. Her latest sci-fi novel, This Gulf of Time and Stars, which kicks off her Reunification trilogy, is now available. What gets her going to put words on the page? Movies, of course — specifically these five, for her Flick Attack Guest List.

I love movies. My other half and I set Friday nights aside to watch something special together, be it new and anticipated, a hopeful discovery, or, often as not, an old favorite. What to watch is a fun and mutual decision.

Unless I’m in the midst of writing a new book.

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Comedy

Up the Academy (1980)

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upacademyAfter the unprecedented success of National Lampoon’s Animal House, it seemed only natural that the nation’s other most influential comedy magazine of the period would get into the movie game as well.

Unfortunately for the usual gang of idiots at Mad, the result wasn’t nearly as financially rewarding. In fact, the Mad men were so disappointed with the way Up the Academy turned out, they eventually took the Mad Magazine Presents out of the title and disavowed any association with the film — instantly turning Alfred E. Neuman’s cameo into a strange non sequitur.

In retrospect, though, you have to wonder how they ever thought hiring the iconoclastic filmmaker Robert Downey could have ever resulted in a successful mainstream comedy. Best known (aside from siring the future star of Iron Man) for his cult masterpiece, Putney Swope, Downey Sr. was an auteur whose gifts pretty obviously didn’t extend to the creation of a sophomoric teen comedy (or at least one that could actually be appreciated by its intended audience).

upacademy1Sloppy, deliberately offensive (the film’s casual jokes about race and teen pregnancy seem especially shocking today) and almost angrily broad, the film plays less like an actual movie than a feature-length version of one of Swope’s infamous commercial satires. But then at the same time, it also feels strangely restrained for a film supposedly inspired by the anarchic spirit of Mad (a spirit much better exemplified onscreen that same year in Airplane!).

For this reason, Up the Academy is one of those films I personally find interesting even though it clearly fails on all of the levels by which it should be judged. An experiment gone hopelessly awry, it’s one of those strange projects that should be viewed if only because it somehow manages to exist even though it probably shouldn’t.

And it has an awesome soundtrack. —Allan Mott

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