Comedy

Coopers’ Christmas (2008)

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Instead of watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation again this holiday season, make a new annual tradition with its Canadian counterpart, Coopers’ Christmas. A should-be cult classic from Trailer Park Boys director Warren P. Sonoda, it has what the Chevy Chase sequel really lacks: the Lampoon’s anarchic humor and a hard-R rating to match.

Starring real-life spouses and The Daily Show vets Jason Jones (who co-wrote) and Samantha Bee, the film captures one crazy Christmas in 1985, all via a barely used VHS camcorder Gord (Jones) gives to his wife, Nancy (Bee). She’s pissed he spent their Orlando vacation money on it, but their youngest son (Dylan Everett) is so enthused, he tapes most of the day and night, often surreptitiously.

Each family member is royally screwed-up. Big brother Marcus (Nick McKinlay) is Star Wars-obsessed, socially inept and suicidal; teen niece (Hayley Lochner) seems well on her way to a career as a stripper and/or prostitute; and elderly Nana (Jayne Eastwood, 2004’s Dawn of the Dead) is perpetually sour-faced and would rather be dead. Then there’s Uncle Nick (co-scripter Mike Beaver), this film’s Cousin Eddie, as channeled through the Danny McBride blend of obnoxious and inappropriate — mullet included!

Then the real problems start: Gord’s brother, Tim (Ginger Snaps’ Peter Keleghan), arrives. See, rumor has it that Tim may or may have not have slept with Nancy on her and Gord’s wedding night. What is Christmas if not a time for dysfunction?

Known as Coopers’ Camera in its native country, this comedy has plenty of familial instability. It’s refreshingly politically incorrect, raunchy and, to my pleasant surprise, hysterical, as such adjectives don’t necessarily go hand in hand. It’s not all scatological humor, either, although even those instances manage to be funny. For example, when Marcus throws up Pine-Sol on the living room floor after a failed suicide attempt, Gord offers some fatherly advice: Clean it up. “It smells like egg salad and blue spruce.”

Daily Show devotees wanting to see Jones and Bee in action should know both are more than willing to ugly themselves up for a laugh. Dave Foley of The Kids in the Hall has a small role, as do his, um, ornaments. To borrow Christmas Vacation’s original tagline, yule crack up. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

The Burning Sea (2021)

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On the coast of Norway, Sofia (Kristine Kujath Thorp, Ninjababy) works as an offshore robotics researcher. She, her lab partner (Rolf Kristian Larsen, Cold Prey) and their snake-like robot camera are called into action — and accompanying NDA — to look for bodies when an oil platform topples into the water.

After the structure explodes, the Saga oil company overlords are quick to blame a gas leak from the well. Sofia, however, is not so sure. In typical disaster-movie fashion, she believes the threat comes from underneath the ocean floor. Indeed, as fractures and slides grow in number and size, hundreds and hundreds of wells are endangered — not to mention any nearby countries.

As with The Wave and The Quake, which share several producers and screenwriter Harald Rosenløw-Eeg, The Burning Sea possesses a rock-solid understanding of what makes this subgenre work best: by establishing characters — not caricatures, Mr. Emmerich — before throwing all the Bad Stuff at them. Otherwise, you’re just a CGI lightshow with no reason to care.

Fresh from helming The Quake, John Andreas Andersen already knows this. Although that 2019 film was a sequel, The Burning Sea gives us an all-new cast of realistic people, capably led by Thorp. The second half makes the event extremely personal for Sofia by trapping the man she loves (Henrik Bjelland, Now It’s Dark), so the stakes hit close to home and her literal home. But worry not, fans of global decimation: The effects are truly incredible, too. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Alienoid (2022)

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As the South Korean blockbuster Alienoid posits, aliens hide their prisoners inside human bodies. Whenever those prisoners escape, in swoop Guard and Thunder to make things right. The sleek Guard is basically Iron Man with all right angles smoothed out, while Thunder resembles an overweight View-Master and can turn into a talking car.

Meanwhile (?), in the late 14th century, people tussle over the Divine Blade, a sword with regenerative properties and the ability to rip open portals in time. Never the twain shall meet? Not a chance! And to no one’s surprise, the melding of very different time periods (and the subgenres of martial arts and superhero sci-fi) makes for fun sequences — not that the film lacks in that department before a single dimension is hopped.

Look, a lot goes on in Alienoid‘s 142 minutes. Bursts of energy shoot from palms. Spiked tentacles whip this way and that. Kitty cats emerge from paper fans. Guard and Thunder have adopted a precocious daughter. There’s even a character named Dog Turd. One could argue writer and director Choi Dong-hoon (The Thieves) has packed in too much “much” for his movie’s own good. (To be transparent, its sequel was shot in tandem.)

Although not based on a comic book, Alienoid is assuredly influenced by Marvel, for good and for ill. It’s big, bright and colorful. Action and humor occupy a common space. Special effects appear no-expense-spared. But when spectacle overwhelms all else, as it does in a punishing 20-minute finale, your patience may be as defeated as the forces of evil. —Rod Lott

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Sex

Twenty Dollar Star (1990)

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Movie star Lisa Brandon has everything a modern woman could want: a growing reputation as a prima donna, a perfect doctor boyfriend she shuns, a father who only wanted a son, a daughter she gets to see one whole day a week and a burgeoning side hustle as a prostitute. (That’s everything, right?)

To borrow the infamous tagline of 1983’s Angel, she’s a Hollywood actress by day, Hollywood hooker by night. Through a series of unconvincing wigs, including the Tina Turner, Lisa (Rebecca Holden, The Sisterhood) prowls the L.A. streets for johns with fist-crumpled cash. One such negotiation goes like this:

Potential Client: “I use [this truck] when I wanna pick up a cheap whore.”
Lisa: “You found her, mister. Now how ya fixed for dollar bills?”

Lisa’s efforts at keeping her #girlboss gig a secret are threatened with implosion when the slobbish manager (Eddie Barth, 1979’s The Amityville Horror) of her preferred roach motel for trick-turning discovers her true identity. He blackmails her for a condo and a job — and not the blow kind.

Unbeknownst to her, the redheaded bombshell Holden earned herself a lifelong crush with 11-year-old me when she slinkily sauntered into an episode of Police Squad! (and seemingly every other network show at the time) with sexiness and confidence. Turns out, neither are reason enough to search for Paul Leder’s relentlessly downbeat Twenty Dollar Star, not easily located.

One can see Holden’s motivations for working with the A*P*E writer and director:
1. It’s the lead role.
1a. In a feature, even!
2. Despite the subject matter, he allowed her to stay clothed.
3. He let her sing a couple of songs. (It’s not unlike her fellow ginger Cynthia Brimhall in the Andy Sidaris pics. Someone dropped the ball by not pairing these two in a pilot about crime-solving singer sisters.)

Other than showcasing her voice, the melodramatic film does her no favors. Leder choreographs exchanges of dialogue with unnaturally lengthy pauses in between characters and sentences. Said dialogue is involuntarily campy, from Lisa dissing a journalist as “that overdressed barracuda” to telling her director he “made my nose look like Godzilla!” Under a more skilled director, Holden could pour her all into each scene without coming off as histrionic and shrill.

Speaking of, Twenty Dollar Star boasts a two-bit score in which the supposedly sexy saxophone nears the vibrating tones of a kazoo. —Rod Lott

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Horror

The Death of April (2013)

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Fresh out of college, California girl Meagen Mullen (Katarina Hughes, Pretty Problems) heads for the East Coast for a teaching job. Separated from her friends and family, Meagen starts a video diary, capturing her showing off her apartment, talking on the phone, fucking around with a Ouija board.

Then inexplicable things start to happen … except they are explicable, given the Ouija board and the hence-the-title murder of a woman named April in the place six months prior. With no suspects, the case has gone cold … and straight into a case of possession!

Although no found-footage landmark, The Death of April is better-acted than the horror subgenre is used to. Hughes seems cast from the Katie Holmes mold, with solid support from Adam Lowder as Meagen’s loving brother and Rent-a-Pal’s Amy Rutledge in a small, but pivotal role. As writer and director, Ruben Rodriguez (The Portal) in particular nails the interstitial talking-head interviews, lending these portions a patina of authenticity similar movies struggle to fake. —Rod Lott

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