Horror

Mirrors 2 (2010)

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Honestly, I’m cool with direct-to-video horror sequels. What they lack in big-name stars, they make up for in gore. See Wrong Turn 3, 30 Days of Night: Dark Days and, now, Mirrors 2.

Looking like Dexter‘s little brother, Nick Stahl plays Max, still grieving over the car-crash death of his fiancé. His dad (William Katt) hires him to be the night watchman of his soon-to-open upscale department store. He’ll be replacing the one whose mirror image happily chewed broken glass, causing his own face and mouth to be cut up.

And so it goes that upper management get killed as they watch their mirror images do gruesome things, such as slicing their own tendons. The best death scene comes when Christy Romano (formerly Disney’s squeaky-clean Kim Possible) meets a really bloody death in the shower after soaping up her new, ugly fake boobs.

While the first half plays like Final Destination in the creative deaths department, the second finds Max and second-half love interest Emmanuelle Vaugiér attempting to solve the riddle behind these gruesome shenanigans. Maybe it makes more sense if you’ve seen the first Mirrors; I haven’t. As director, DTV vet Victor García (Return to House on Haunted Hill) brings visual class to these proceedings, yielding a satisfying fright flick, even if it’s completely void of frights (Katt’s middle-age ponytail notwithstanding). —Rod Lott

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Sex

Killing Me Softly (2001)

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Austin Powers would be proud to see that Heather Graham shags well — and shags often — in Killing Me Softly, the kind of softcore erotic thriller most name actresses aren’t desperate enough to appear in this early in their career. Was she in such a slump that she thought humping Joseph Fiennes on film half a dozen times was her ticket to the A-list?

In Killing Me Softly — not an adaptation of the Roberta Flack song — she plays a designer of corporate CD-ROMs. I’m not convinced that the real-life Graham even knows how to insert a CD-ROM, so the credibility factor goes right out the window from frame one. Plus, every reaction shot of her suggests deer-in-the-headlights stupid (but hey, nice headlights!); nevertheless, they cast her as this happy, well-off, picture-perfect, upwardly mobile gal living in London who, one day, exchanges lustful glances with a mega-creepy Fiennes on a street corner and, within the hour, exchanges sex fluids with him without so much as asking his name.

Heather, thy name is horny! These two do it everywhere, at the drop of a hat, a needle, a thong — you pick the object. And violently! Apparently, she has no problem with vaginal chafing. His character is a mountain climber and he likes to mount her — so clever! Despite a demeanor that suggests Fiennes is a predatory nutball, the sex is so good that Graham dumps her boyfriend for Fiennes, seconds after he smashes a would-be thief’s head to a pulp in a phone booth. Y’know, for her.

You’d think that would be the first sign that her Mr. Mountaineer is an unhinged loony, but nope, Graham needs several more! Not even when, on their honeymoon, he ties a naked Graham up in knots like a freaking Gerry Anderson marionette so he can cut off her breathing while he nails her. Finally, as the clues pile up so high they threaten to topple over on her, she starts to suspect him of murdering an old girlfriend. By then, I was praying she’d become the next victim.

I know that the sex isn’t supposed to be funny, but it is here. And Graham (Acting It Poorly) looks ridiculous feigning passion with her boobs flying every which way (Bouncing Them Madly). Not only am I unsure what her character sees in Fiennes, I’m also unsure what the filmmakers saw in him, either, because with his stoic nature and half-evil smile, he comes off as autistic. Granted, an autistic who’s grrreat in bed, but autistic nonetheless.

Killing Me Softly is a tremendous embarrassment to all parties involved, so be sure to get the unrated cut; I have a sneaking suspicion the R-rated version is far less riotous. —Rod Lott

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Action

Body Count (1996)

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Back in the ’90s, the direct-to-video market existed because many producers had discovered they could make a lot of money before a single frame of film was shot by pre-selling a generic action plot starring a handful of semi-famous actors to a bunch of unwary foreign distributors.

With their profit ledgers already in the black, there was no incentive then to spend further money on quality filmmaking, publicity or a theatrical release for these films and, as a result, they would just suddenly appear on the “New Releases” shelf of your local video store and stay there until some sucker decided he was tired enough of life to give them 90 minutes of his time.

Starring that pockmarked guy who was in Die Hard and The Goonies, that one guy who was in Scarface, that fucked-up Airwolf dude, plus Red Sonja and The Streetfighter, Body Count is an archetypal example of one of these pre-fab films.

In it, The Streetfighter plays a Japanese hitman who teams up with Red Sonja to get revenge on the cops who sent him to prison for a hit he performed on two acquitted child-pornographer gangsters. Pockmarked guy is aided in his investigation of these murders by a leggy FBI agent whose nonregulation miniskirts are highly inappropriate for the workplace. Naturally, they’re the only two who make it to the end of the movie alive.

Body Count is one of those movies you forget about while you’re still watching it, so it isn’t exactly worth seeking out, but it does feature enough violence, explosions and gratuitous nudity to sit through if it were to suddenly appear on your television screen. That is, if you’re a sucker who’s really tired of life. —Allan Mott

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Thriller

Jackie Brown (1997)

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First impressions can be deceiving. I first saw Jackie Brown during its theatrical release and, coming three years after Quentin Tarantino’s revelatory Pulp Fiction, this two-and-a-half-hour follow-up seemed indulgent and sluggish. Even Tarantino’s agent at the time reportedly griped to Miramax execs after the premiere, “There’s the ultimate case for not giving the director final cut.”

But, like the two protagonists at the film’s crux, Jackie Brown improves greatly with age. Viewed far from the imposing shadow of Pulp Fiction, it stands as perhaps Tarantino’s most emotionally meaty work, as soulful as The Delfonics and Bobby Womack songs that punctuate its soundtrack.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t also a hell of a lot of fun, brimming with dark humor, film-geek references, show-off set pieces and Tarantino’s patently quirky dialogue. Most notable, however, is that the writer/director snags outstanding performances from two beloved icons of 1970s B movies: Pam Grier and Robert Forster.

Based on Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, the crime thriller takes off when L.A. baddie Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson in full-on badass mode) whacks an underling (a mercifully quick appearance by Chris Tucker) before the guy can turn informant. A series of circumstances leads to Jackie Brown (Grier), a down-on-her-luck flight attendant who is one of Ordell’s smugglers. All this and Robert De Niro taking bong hits with Bridget Fonda’s leggy surfer girl.

Grier is smart, sexy and dangerous in the title role, but for my money, it’s Forster who damn near steals the picture as Max Cherry, a world-weary bail bondsman whose fate bumps into Ordell and Jackie. Forster makes plain, no-frills decency seem downright cool, and his performance — even-keeled, relaxed, laconic — is pitch perfect. —Phil Bacharach

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Comedy

Loose Screws (1985)

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The second film in Canadian director Rafal Zielinski’s immortal Screwballs trilogy (Screwballs and Screwball Hotel round out the series, which does not include the crassly retitled Colleen Camp vehicle Screwball Academy), Loose Screws is less a sequel than an updated remake of the ’60s-set original, featuring the same character archetypes, but only two of the original actors.

In Screwballs, we watched as four different kinds of douchebags (cool, rich, nerdy and fat) competed to see who would be the first to behold the unclad body of gorgeous class prude Purity Busch, despite the fact that they seemed to find naked female bodies everywhere they went. In Loose Screws, we watch those same douchebags compete to see who will be the first to bed hot French teacher Mona Lott (presumably no relation to our humble editor), while also earning points for all of the other naked bodies they connive to uncover.

Both films conclude with the four plucky young assholes coming together to unclothe the objects of their desire in front of large audiences. In the first film, they use magnets; in the second, an unspecified gaseous aphrodisiac.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to quickly shake the film’s frequently miserable attempts at comedy and come away knowing that a surprising amount of attractive Canadian women were willing to appear nude for the sake of art in 1985. Beyond that, Loose Screws remains memorable only for its two strange attempts at musical numbers, both of which are just inexplicable enough to stay with you for far longer than the film itself deserves. —Allan Mott

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