Kitchen Sink

Country of Hotels (2019)

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WTFWhat’s going on in Room 508 of a hotel in Palatine, Illinois? Gaudy decor aside, a lot and yet nothing: mistaken identity, sexual trysts, power flashes, disturbing visions, out-of-body experiences.

A business traveler, a cam girl, a cowboy in the lobby, an alcoholic, a nudie photographer using the pages of a Gideon Bible to play “she loves me, she loves me not” while seated for a bowel movement.

Plus subliminal imagery, television static, temporal leaps, gibberish dialogue (“I taste like blueberries”) and equal-opportunity full-frontal nudity.

Marking the first film for director Julio Maria Martino and screenwriter David Hauptschein, both heralding from the world of the stage, the genre-defying Country of Hotels owes a lot to David Lynch — both Lynch in general and his Hotel Room in particular. Like that 1993 pilot for HBO, this picture is an anthology of three stories, all taking place in the same room. While the guests differ from segment to segment, the staff members reoccur.

With the proceedings so intentionally cryptic, determining its level of success is tough. If appearing like programming from another planet was the intent, Country of Hotels passes. It’s just oddly engaging (or engagingly odd) enough to give it a look. Among the large cast, Siobhan Hewlett (2013’s Redemption) and Eugenia Caruso (Berberian Sound Studio) struck me as particularly brave. And for the ears, the score by newcomer Christos Fanaras is fantastic. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Documentary

Jerry Springer: Too Hot for TV! (1997)

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Now that Jerry Springer is not of this earth, it’s time to revisit his lasting legacy: The Jerry Springer Show. If you weren’t alive or cognizant in the late ’90s, you might not believe what a cultural phenomenon his utterly trashy TV talk fest was — so large, the former Cincinnati mayor was able to parlay the ratings juggernaut into a feature film, 1998’s Ringmaster, in which he played himself. Suck on that, Oprah!

Springer’s weekday gig was so popular, producers realized they could make a mint selling a series of “UNCENSORED” VHS compilations through direct-response commercials. Following in the footsteps of the monster hit Cops: Too Hot for TV! and its rogue’s gallery of sequels, Jerry Springer: Too Hot for TV! was the first — a near-hour circus of footage that was, well, too hot for TV.

No bleeps, no blurs. Mostly, it’s fists a-flyin’ between family members who share too many chromosomes, but occasionally we get the flashed fake breast or unappetizing crotch shot. Nearly everyone cusses with the regularity of the words “and” and “the,” or pronounces “ask” as “ax.”

Vocabulary shortcomings aside, Springer’s guests threw the best punches for your daytime TV dollar. Springer actually has precious little screen time here, yielding it to topless waitresses, cross-dressing siblings, dog-faced strippers and a morbidly obese woman who may render you lactose-intolerant by making an ice cream sundae in her cleavage. As the carnage continues, an air of depression casts itself over the proceedings.

The moral? Stay in school, kids. —Rod Lott

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Action

The Avengers (1998)

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So laid-back and limey that I can understand why all Americans hated it, The Avengers adaptation is simply misunderstood. It’s a decent movie as long as you know what to expect: the most British movie ever made by an American studio. Then again, the iconic 1960s TV series never went over all that well here, either, so I don’t know why the film’s reception would be any different.

Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman — he of the bowler hat, she of the catsuit — star as secret agents John Steed and Emma Peel. Prim, proper and pernicious, they join forces to take down Sir August de Wynter (Sean Connery), maniacal designer of contraptions to control the world’s weather for handsome profits. While the UK sees torrential rainfall and mammoth tornadoes, our Avengers take time out for tea and macaroons.

De Wynter has a Peel clone on his side, as well as a group of thugs encased in teddy bear costumes every color of the rainbow. As absurd as this is, it has nothing on an attack by robotic killer beecopters or the brief (non)appearance of original Steed Patrick Macnee, now cameoing as the agency’s invisible archivist.

Although it doesn’t play as well as it thinks it does, The Avengers is still worthy entertainment. At a scant 90 minutes, it asks little of you to invest. Sadly, a lot of what director Jeremiah Chechik (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) shot — the most curvaceous scenes of Uma in that sexy suit included — hit the cutting-room floor. I’d like to think someday this will thrive as a cult item, but for now, it remains pegged as a creative catastrophe on the level of 1997’s Batman & Robin — a comparison most unfair. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Motion Detected (2023)

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Maybe it’s just me, but if I had escaped the clutches of a serial killer named El Diablo, then fled to a new locale for safety, the last house I would move into would be the one with a security system from a company named Diablo Controls. That would go double if said company used a devil’s head for its logo. And triple if the place’s previous tenants disappeared without a trace.

Yet that’s exactly what the remarkably dumb spouses at the center of Motion Detected do, which instantly puts the movie on terra not-so-firma. So dunderheaded are they throughout, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next-door neighbor turned out to be the guy from The Break-In. Hey, there’s suspension of disbelief; then there’s something called a second draft.

Emma (Natasha Esca, TV’s Narcos: Mexico) and Miguel (Carlo Mendez, Bitch Slap) constitute the aforementioned couple. Their new abode spots the Diablo system — one so advanced, it can sense residents’ heart rate and analyze their dreams. Quoth Emma, “I can’t figure out if this thing’s going to protect me or if it’s going to kill me.” Famous last words …

… except many more have yet to come. Motion Detected makes for a long 80 minutes, especially after Miguel bolts for a biz trip, leaving Emma stuck at home — and often in the home, like a rape-free Demon Seed scenario. Viewers are abandoned, too, on an idle path of circuitousness events: Miguel calls “mi amor” to say he has to stay an extra day or two; the Diablo alarm goes off; Emma investigates and talks to herself; repeat. This might jolt some juice if the movie’s prologue didn’t literally give up the ghost.

Culminating in a laughable scene even the most misguided Twilight Zone imitator wouldn’t settle for, Motion Detected barely moves. In their first feature, co-directors Justin Gallaher and Sam Roseme at least can deflect a chunk of blame to their screenwriters: Justin Gallaher and Sam Roseme. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

Outpost (2022)

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Fleeing an abusive relationship, Portland restaurateur Kate (Beth Dover) jumps states and lifestyles, volunteering for a three-month stint as a fire tower lookout in the forests of Idaho.

Like a certain big-city, alcoholic writer transplanting the fam to overlook an empty Colorado hotel for the winter, Kate is out of her element, but insistent the silence is what she needs. Until the silence gets the best of her and brings out the worst in her. As a retired doctor in town (Dylan Baker, Trick ’r Treat) warns, “There’s no peace in nature.”

That one line serves as Outpost’s thesis, which writer/director Joe Lo Truglio sees through to its end. Yes, Joe Lo Truglio, the bug-eyed goofball of TV’s The State and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. As his fellow comedians have proved in recent years, from Jordan Peele’s Get Out to Zach Creggar’s Barbarian, funny guys have a knack for cracking the code of horror. I don’t know how or why they do, but to work, both those genres require perfect timing. Lo Truglio proves he has that.

Visually confident and with excellent support from Blood Diamond’s Ato Essandoh and My Friend Dahmer’s Dallas Roberts as Kate’s fellow rangers, Outpost is a pleasantly unpleasant surprise. Even for the desensitized, some scenes of terror land with the force of an ax. Although its ultimate destination is preordained (thanks in large part to its marketing), some of the turns it takes can shock.

Lo Truglio casting his wife in the lead role may have been a budgetary necessity, but Dover more than earns the showcase. Her name unknown to me until now (I never watched Orange Is the New Black), she qualifies as a revelation as Kate, a complicated character who’s believable even when she’s not all that likable. Their movie sure as hell is. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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