Movie Nation

King of quirky Spike Jonze sets out in search of the profound in his profoundly simply sci-fi romance “Her.” A “How I Met Your OS (operating system)” comedy, “Her” is a search for the essence of what we really want out of love, separating the physical from the psycho-spiritual meeting of the minds.
An austere film of heartache and self-assessment, it has an aching loneliness about it that only a movie about a man who falls in love with a sentient computer-generated voice and mind could manage.
Joaquin Phoenix is Theodore, a professional love letter writer of the not-that-distant future. He is a true romantic and is good at his job. But he is deflated and depressed and alone. He’s going through a divorce.
Smart phones have become brilliant phones in this future, connecting Theodore to all manner of media by his compact, wallet-sized companion. Can’t sleep? Anonymous, random phone-sex chat is but a voice command away.
Then he downloads a new “intuitive entity,” an OS that is a learning, empathetic, all-knowing companion. “Samantha,” unlike his testy, brittle ex-wife (Rooney Mara), “gets” him. In an instant.
Jonze (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”) cast the voices in this movie of a world of disembodied voices with extraordinary care, none more than his “Samatha.” Scarlett Johansson’s scratchy, sexy, playful voice is used to great effect as we listen to this machine-generated person learn about Theodore, sympathize with him and fall in love with him. And Phoenix, doing almost all his scenes solo, lets us believe that this crazy notion — which is really just an short extrapolation from where our plugged in and tuned out society is now — is real. Theodore falls for Samantha. Hard.
He makes the leap from “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with my computer” to hurting Samantha’s feelings. Because Samatha has feelings.
Jonze lets us laugh at the idea of this in a lot of ways, because on first blush, this is ridiculous. But as vulnerable Theodore botches a blind date (Olivia Wilde) simply because he’s too damaged to let good things happen, the sensitivity of “Her” steps forward.
The fashions are dress-down funky –Hushpuppies have won the shoe wars. But it’s no great leap to see legions of commuters chattering away, seemingly to themselves, ear-buds plugged in, human race tuned out. We’re living in that world now.
And as Theodore and then others around him (Amy Adams and the omnipresent Chris Pratt play friends) accept this “relationship,” you start to wonder just which tech companies are working on this final social frontier. Is there an OS that can be a balm to a lonely world?
And this being a romance, you wonder where it can go or how it might end? Jonze cleverly ponders the soon-to-be-ponderable?
Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have logged on at all?

MPAA Rating:  R for language, sexual content and brief graphic nudity.
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, the voice of Scarlett Johansson
Credits: Written and directed by Spike Jonze. A Warner Brothers release.
Running time: 2:00

The blow-dried hair, the polyester suits and ’70s-style political incorrectness and facial hair are back in “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.” The buffoonery goes epic in this sillier than silly sequel, a broad, down and dirty comedy overfilled with funny people trying to one-up one another on the set in the classic “best line wins” school of comic improvisation.
Many jokes land, and some die a quiet death that sounds like the crickets that could have made a home in Will Ferrell’s mustache.
But darned if “The Legend” isn’t also a sometimes on-the-money commentary on 24 hour news and what that has done to the civic institution of journalism. “Anchorman 2” suggests that this idea that if there’s a live car chase, a celebrity behaving badly or a cute critter story “trending,” it’s what TV should cover originated with…Ron Burgundy.
“Why do we have to tell people what they need to know? Why can’t we just tell them what they want to hear?”
That may be the sanest thing Burgundy (Ferrell) says, after he’s gotten his “team” (Paul Rudd, Steve Carell and David Koechner) back together and landed them all gigs at a new Australian-owned cable news start-up in the dark days of 1980 New York.
“I’m laughing like a ventriloquist’s dummy!”
Ron needs sports bigot Champ Kind (Koechner), investigative ladie’s man Brian Fantana (Rudd) and weather nerd Brick Tamland (Carell) so that he can fulfill his destiny, to “have salon quality hair and read the news.”
He’s lost his wife (Christina Applegate) and an anchor played by Harrison Ford has run him out of the business. But cable offers them all another shot. If only they can get the better of anchor bully Jack Lime (James Marsden). If only their boss doesn’t insist on “synergy” that keeps his troubled airline out of the news. If only Brick’s high-pitched voice didn’t betray half a dozen nervous disorders with a touch of Asperger’s Syndrome.
“Remember ten years from now when we’re all wearing jet-packs flying around the Earth?”
Ron’s got to get a handle on having a black boss (Meagan Good, bringing it) and his wife having a shrink for a beau (Greg Kinnear). Brian has to get over the money and women he gave up as a pet fashion photographer to return to news. Champ has to adjust to the TV sportscasts showing nothing but home runs — “WHAMMY! WHAMMY! WHAMMY!
And Brick’s got to find someplace, other than the office vending machine, to take the daft office receptionist (Kristen Wiig) he wants to date.
“I’m a person people,” she says.
You can tell the old pros from the novices at improv in this outing, with Carell blurting out random noises and words and scoring snickers every time he opens his mouth.  His scenes with Wiig are rough-hewn exercises in improv — each waiting on tenterhooks to react, cleverly, to whatever unexpected burp comes out of the other. Applegate, a veteran of “Anchorman,” holds her own. Folks like Kinnear, Ford and Marsden settle for just doing their lines, trying to keep a straight face (watch Marsden almost lose it).
And Ferrell is the same bundle of comic energy he’s shown himself to be in the past few months he’s been selling this film, in car commercials, doing local newscasts and ESPN “reports.” The whole cast, but Ferrell especially, hurl so much at the wall that many of the best bits from the movie’s many TV commercials are nowhere to be found in the finished film.
Not all of them work, and the story tilts so heavily toward Ferrell that if you aren’t a fan you have no business paying to see two hours of his tomfoolery. And the finale, leaving no cameo unturned, is a dud.
But “Anchorman 2” proves that you don’t have to be a fine wine to age well. Even a cheap burgundy can get the job done.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual content, drug use, language and comic violence.
Cast: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Meagan Good, Steve Carrell, Vince Vaughn, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Harrison Ford
Credits: Directed by Adam McKay, written by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay.  A  Paramount release.
Running time: 1:59

Check out those teeth!

Jonah Hill had to literally put on his “game face” to co-star with Leo DiCaprio in Scorsese’s “Wolf of Wall Street.” He plays the odd, ambitious stock hustler with the prominent veneers and the never-say-die loyalty who is representative of the Wall Street get-rich-quick class in the film. Whatever brains and savvy DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort deploys in his effort to get more money, more coke and more women during his corners-cutting run to the top, his first disciple Donnie (Hill) was just there to say “Yes.”

Every Wall Street pundit who ever said “When did THESE guys get A) so smart and B) worth so much?” will grin in recognition at this guy. Greedy, brazen, just slick enough to keep the Feds at bay. For a while. A real “master of the universe” who is most certainly not worth the compensation he figures he’s entitled to, just for talking hapless customers out of their commissions. Ruthless.

Questions for Jonah? Comment below, and thanks.

It was time of wide ties and velvet suits, jangly jewelry, open shirts, big hair and boat-sized cars. After Watergate, cynicism was everybody’s default mode. The economy was in the toilet, disco was on the radio and everybody was corrupt.
“American Hustle” reminds us that as jaded as we’ve gotten about crime and a rigged economy and government and politics, none of this is new. And if you’re looking for a place where right and wrong dissolved from black and white to shades of grey, this might capture it.
David O. Russell’s caper comedy is built around the 1970s ABSCAM scandal, a wide-ranging FBI sting operation from the golden age of such stings. It’s a film of bottom-feeding con artists, ambitious politicians and insanely ambitious law enforcement folk. And it makes delicious fun of the zero tolerance zeal built into this scandal and its true cost to our ability to get big things done.
Christian Bale is Irving Rosenfeld, a New York low-life who runs loan scams, art forgery scams and a chain of dry cleaners and glass repair shops all over The Five Boroughs.
He’s got a soul-mate, a paramour and partner in crime — Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams). Like Irving, Sydney’s a dreamer. When she buys into his profession, a fake English accent becomes her calling card and Lady Edith Greensly becomes her name. She has “connections to London banking.”
Irving is fat, with an epic comb-over not quite covering his bald pate. But sexy Sydney, who never met a bra she liked, shrugs that off. She can see through people, size them up. And she’s good at rationalizing their scams, aimed mainly at desperate small business people.
“Everybody at the bottom crosses paths eventually, in a pool of desperation.”

And then they con the wrong guy. Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) is a fanatical F.B.I. agent living the “Saturday Night Fever” dream. He’s got a room in his mom’s home, a fiance that he has no interest in saddling his future to and his permed hair in curlers every night. Richie is every bit the striver that Irving and Sydney are. But what he wants is the glory of tearing down a culture of graft, fraud and corruption. These two, strong-armed into setting up cons to snare bigger fish, are his next promotion.
Russell has plenty of fun with the garish era that was the setting — “This new thing — a microwave…It’s scientific! Don’t put metal in it.” — and he never lets himself get too caught up in the actual facts of this sting. That involved a fake Arab sheik, a lot of money promised to help re-launch the casino industry in Atlantic City and the politicians and mobsters who desperately want that to happen.
“Some of this actually happened,” the opening credits joke.
The three leads narrate the tale. And through them, others find their way in.
Jeremy Renner is a hard-charging, idealistic mayor, Shea Whigham (of Boardwalk Empire) is a shady operator, Louis C.K. is the embattled, common-sense peddling F.B.I. boss that Richie crosses and Jack Huston is a mob lieutenant.
And Jennifer Lawrence is Rosalyn Rosenfeld, Irving’s wife. That’s right. He’s got an unstable child bride who was a single-mom when she married him. Rosalyn is the juiciest character of the lot, a  Martha Mitchell for this Watergate Scandal, a loony loose cannon who cluelessly acts on every impulse — and her favorite impulse is to hurt the husband she knows is cheating on her.
“American Hustle” is about over-reaching, about a sting that grows more dubious and more dangerous the more people it ensares. Irving, blackmailed by the Feds, can see this. Sydney, playing all the angles, worries. But Richie charges on, a lunatic on some sort of hang’em all mission. And he’s got his eye on Lady Edith.
Cooper gives Richie an antic dizziness, which really pays off in his confrontations with the hapless, put-upon comic Louis C.K. Bale plays Irving without a hint of vanity and cagey, overmatched resignation, a man who is no longer “in control” of his scams or his women.
Lawrence is getting the lion’s share of the Oscar buzz for her nasal-voiced, self-absorbed idiot, a happy drunk and a young woman jaded beyond her years. But Adams crackles with bitter longing in scene after scene. Lawrence has the showier moments in their confrontations, but Adams makes their scenes work.
The disco decadence, the seedy era before Times Square became a theme park, the lowered expectations of an endless recession, everything that was then and is now makes up “American Hustle.” And that’s what makes this the best movie of this holiday season.

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language, some sexual content and brief violence
Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K., Jack Huston, Shea Whigham
Credits: Directed by David O. Russell, written by Eric Singer and David O. Russell.  A  Sony/Columbia release.
Running time: 2:18

Tyler Perry made his fortune by pandering to a predominantly African American audience. So a tip of the Santa hat for him trying to broaden his appeal by pandering to a white one with “A Madea Christmas,” his most integrated movie ever.
Give him respect for making an effort to go against the cultural grain, making a black female character a racist, spouting retrograde sentiments about how all a bully needs is a punch in the mouth and embracing the “War Against Christmas” meme of conservative news outlets.
But from its unfunny Madea-in-customer-service opening to the abrupt thud of a finale, on into the seriously stiff outtakes that cover the closing credits, “Christmas” is his worst Madea movie ever.
How bad is this tale of race, “Taking the Christ out of Christmas” and trouble down on the farm? You can’t wait for Larry the Cable Guy to show up. That bad.
And truth be told, Perry and Larry, two old pros at low comedy, could have done a simple two character farce, bickering about bigotry, hip hop vs. country music or what have you and produced a funnier movie. Their scenes at least have a little spark to them. The rest of the movie — none at all.
Madea is fired from her department store greeter gig thanks to assorted “slap the Hell outta you” threats. But Eileen (Anna Maria Horsford), her overbearing colleague, talks her into driving with her on a surprise Christmas visit to Eileen’s school teacher daughter, Lacey (Tika Sumpter).
Lacey’s a black teacher to a class full of white kids in tiny Buck Tussle (not to be confused with Bug Tussle), Alabama. It’s a town about to lose its Christmas festival due to lack of funds, until Lacey’s ex-beau Oliver (JR Lemon) steps in and finds a corporate (and secular) sponsor.
Times are hard in Buck Tussle, with farmers like Tanner (Chad Michael Murray) taking out his frustration on his wife (Alicia Witt) and son, Bailey (Noah Urrea). Lacey’s secret love, Conner (Eric Lively) is a college-trained crop specialist who somehow never learned which cows in his herd actually give the milk. Hilarious.
When Eileen, Madea and Oliver show up, things get complicated. When Connor’s parents (Larry the Cable Guy, Kathy Najimy) arrive, there’s almost no room at the inn.
Madea is famous for her malapropisms, mispronounced words in the manner of Mrs. Malaprop, a character from an 18th century play. Mrs. Madea-prop tells Lacey’s students “the story of the Nativitease. The Virgin Mary…J. Blige…she went into laborer…”
Najimy matches Madea’s word-botching, calling Madea everything from “Medium” to “Mrs. Mandela.”
What Perry doesn’t know about farming would fill a better movie than this. He toys with race, side-stepping into a couple of KKK jokes and making Eileen less than tolerant of “The Help”, which is what she believes Connor is.
The timeline is sloppy, the town “crisis” clumsily handled and the supporting cast — save for the bawdy Larry and Najimy — couldn’t find a laugh if their lives depended on it.
“The Nativitease,” a couple of mild Madea/Larry exchanges and this aphorism — “A lie — the longer you let it live, the harder it is to kill” — are all the movie has to recommend it.
That’s not enough to save “Christmas,” a lump of cinematic coal Perry’s shoving into America’s stockings this holiday season.

(The Ten Worst movies of 2013? “Madea” makes the cut.)

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual references, crude humor and language
Cast: Tyler Perry, Larry the Cable Guy, Tika Sumpter, Kathy Najimy, Alicia Witt, Chad Michael Murray
Credits: Written and directed by Tyler Perry.  A Lionsgate release.
Running time: 1:41

“American Hustle” and “12 Years a Slave” led this year’s Golden Globes nominations, announced today.

A few quick observations — the broader Globes “comedy” vs. “Drama” categories always allows greater inclusion. So you get both Bruce Dern AND Robert Redford nominations, Amy Adams gets an “American Hustle” bump, along with Oscar favorite Jennifer Lawrence.

But they’ve still helped narrow the field, as did the SAG announcement.

“The Butler” took a pretty good sized hit, this time around.  “Inside Llewyn Davis” still has hope.

“Saving Mr. Banks” was left out of the best picture mix. I see it an as Oscar best picture nominee. “Rush” won’t be.

“Philomena” is getting more Globes love than I figure Oscar will show it, though Dame Judi seems like a cinch.

Love Greta Gerwig, but “Frances Ha”? That’s a stretch. No way she makes the Oscar field.

“Tellingly, “Mandela” pulled in three big nominations. Ignored by SAG, boosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press. Shocking. It’s good enough to merit the attention.

Ditto “Wolf of Wall Street,” perhaps a long shot for best picture, but Leonardo DiCaprio, ignored by SAG, gets his Globes due. As he should.

BEST MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA
“12 Years a Slave”
“Captain Phillips”
“Gravity”
“Philomena”
“Rush”

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA
Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”
Sandra Bullock, “Gravity”
Judi Dench, “Philomena”
Emma Thompson, “Saving Mr. Banks”
Kate Winslet, “Labor Day”

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA
Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years a Slave”
Idris Elba, “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”
Tom Hanks, “Saving Mr. Banks”
Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”
Robert Redford, “All Is Lost”

BEST MOTION PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL
“American Hustle”
“Her”
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“Nebraska”
“The Wolf Of Wall Street”

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Amy Adams, “American Hustle”
Julie Delpy, “Before Midnight”
Greta Gerwig, “Frances Ha”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “Enough Said”
Meryl Streep, “August: Osage County”

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Christian Bale, “American Hustle”
Bruce Dern, “Nebraska”
Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Wolf of Wall Street”
Oscar Isaac, “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Joaquin Phoenix, “Her”

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
“The Croods”
“Despicable Me 2″
“Frozen”

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
“Blue is the Warmest Color”
“The Great Beauty”
“The Hunt”
“The Past”
“The Wind Rises”

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE
Sally Hawkins, “Blue Jasmine”
Jennifer Lawrence “American Hustle”
Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave”
Julia Roberts, “August: Osage County”
June Squibb, “Nebraska”

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE
Barkhad Abdi, “Captain Phillips”

Daniel Brühl, “Rush”
Bradley Cooper, “American Hustle”
Michael Fassbender, “12 Years a Slave”
Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club”

BEST DIRECTOR – MOTION PICTURE

Alfonso Cuaron, “Gravity”
Paul Greengrass, Captain Phillips”
Steve McQueen, “12 Years a Slave”
Alexander Payne, “Nebraska”
David O. Russell, “American Hustle”

BEST SCREENPLAY – MOTION PICTURE
Spike Jonze, “Her”
Bob Nelson, “Nebraska”
Jeff Pope, Steve Coogan, “Philomena”
John Ridley, “12 Years A Slave”
Eric Warren Singer, David O. Russell, “American Hustle”

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – MOTION PICTURE
Alex Ebert, “All Is Lost”
Alex Heffes, “Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom”
Steven Price, “Gravity”
John Williams, “The Book Thief”
Hans Zimmer, “12 Years A Slave”

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – MOTION PICTURE
“Atlas,” “Hunger Games: Catching Fire”
Music by: Chris Martin, Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion
Lyrics by: Chris Martin, Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion

“Let It Go,” “Frozen”
Music by: Kristen Anderson Lopez, Robert Lopez
Lyrics by: Kristen Anderson Lopez, Robert Lopez

“Ordinary Love,” “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”
Music by: Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen, Jr., Brian Burton
Lyrics by: Bono

“Please Mr Kennedy,” “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Music by: Ed Rush, George Cromarty, T Bone Burnett, Justin Timberlake, Joel
Coen, Ethan Coen
Lyrics by: Ed Rush, George Cromarty, T Bone Burnett, Justin Timberlake, Joel
Coen, Ethan Coen

“Sweeter Than Fiction,” “One Chance”
Music by: Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff
Lyrics by: Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff

Steve Carell is determined to lower expectations for “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.”
“It’s SO stupid. I couldn’t believe how stupid it is.”
And in a world of stupid and a cast ’70s era TV news buffoons, Steve’s character, the ditzy, naive TV weatherman Brick Tamland, stands out. “Unrelentingly dumb,” Carell says. He’s being kind.
“It was the easiest movie ever, because I got to just stand there and look dumb. For two months. I rarely had to say anything. Empty every thought out of my head, and just blurt out words.”
The script doesn’t give Brick, a nitwit’s nitwit, much to say. But director and longtime Will Ferrell writing partner Adam McKay would stand off camera, and at the end of a take say “give me something extra. Just say something, anything,” McKay recalls.
Lines like, “Would you like to see the smile I use when I pose for photographs?” came out.
McKay made his directing debut with 2004’s “Anchorman.” He’s had time to figure out why the film, not a blockbuster hit in theaters, became a cultural phenomenon. The “news team” in the movie, the foursome of blow-dried anchor Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell), weather dunce Brick (Carell), investigative reporter/ladykiller Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) and racist, alcoholic loose cannon sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner) are — to McKay — the new Marx Brothers.
“You’ve got the blowhard, misguided leader, Burgundy, who is Groucho. Then there’s the slick womanizer, Fantana.” He could be Chico Marx. “The out of control, high energy nut, Champ.”
OK, he sounds a little more “Three Stooges.”
“And the naive, irrepressibly goofball? Brick Tamland is Harpo Marx. That’s obvious.”
“The Legend Continues” is set in 1980, as the unemployed news team is rounded up for a new venture — 24 hour news. And that presented co-writers Ferrell and McKay with a chance for satire, a more pointed commentary on the state of TV news.
“It was right in front of us,” McKay says. “News got dumber with 24 hours news. Babies in the wells, car chases, Pee Wee Herman in the porno theater. We decided to make all that Ron Burgundy’s fault.”
And another thing right in front of them? The birth of the green screen weather segment, when weather-casters learned to stand in front of a blank, green wall and point to a map that was super-imposed behind them. Brick, of course, was going to have trouble with that.
“I first did green screen stuff back when I was on ‘The Daily Show,'” Carell recalls. “And it was…awkward. So I pitched that idea to Adam. Brick’s a weather guy, it’s 1980. Put him in this new situation with this new technology. Weathermen had to deal with this. I’m sure some of them reacted the same way. Well, maybe not the SAME way.”
In the movie, Brick’s exposure to the technology comes on the most inopportune day.
“Happy St. Patricks’ Day, for all our Native American viewers.”
McKay says that “I’ve never been that confidant in a laugh. Never. After we shot it, Steve was like, ‘Are you sure it works? Is it funny?’ I was all, ‘You are out of your mind. It’s hilarious.'”
One piece of the “Anchorman” phenomenon that’s changed in the past decade is its reception by TV news folks. Mocking airhead, over-coiffed TV news anchors, even in a period piece set in the ’70s, was going to hit close to home for America’s chattering-on-TV-classes.Some newspaper film critics, such as Roger Ebert, dared to suggest that these idiots were based on notoriously dim TV personalities in their own market.
“Television journalists weren’t immediately enamored of it,” remembers Carell, laughing. “Maybe they took it personally. But they kept it at arm’s length.”
McKay noticed that, too. He thinks TV news, sports and weather reporters were just hoping it would just go away.
“When it’s just an odd comedy with inside jokes about your business, and nobody sees it, you can ignore it,” McKay says. “But that didn’t happen.”
“Anchorman” became a decent hit in theaters, and a cultural phenomenon on home video. And now, the “Anchorman” team is turning up on all manner of news and sports programs, with Ferrell, in character, even traveling to Bismarck, North Dakota, to co-anchor a weekend newscast.
“These TV news guys, now they can’t get enough of us,” Carell jokes.
Or, McKay adds, “of us making fun of them.”

“Here Comes the Devil” is a case study in how to make your low-budget horror movie sellable.
It barely has a fright in it on its own, this bloody, Mexican-made supernatural thriller set in the hill country near Tijuana.
But open it with a hot “Blue is the Warmest Color” sex scene, toss in a few other hot and heavy moments and a generous helping of nudity and you can be sure, at least, of getting a Hollywood studio’s attention.
The movie surrounding that sexual stuff? Meh.
That opening all-female sex scene ends with a brutal, bloody attack, with the crazed killer escaping to a mysterious, rock-covered hill. That’s the perfect place for Sol (Laura Caro) and Felix (Francisco Barreiro) to let their kids take off for a hike. The grownups need a little make-out and talk-dirty time in the car.
It’s only after the kids fail to come back that the locals warn (in Spanish, with English subtitles) that “Too many people have gone missing up there.”
But no harm, no foul. Sara (Michelle Garcia) and Adolfo (Alan Martinez) show up the next day, their ordeal in a cave over. Or is it? Sara’s burgeoning sexuality and odd behavior make the parents suspect something happened to her. A creepy loner named Lucio (David Arturo Cabezud) figures as the prime suspect. Hey, his name’s close to “Lucifer,” so go figure.
Writer-director Adrian Garcia Bogliano toys with a Hitchcockian touch, here and there — parents skipping past the cops and seeking answers, and maybe revenge. The leads — Caro and Barreiro — nicely suggest the confusion, paranoia and terror that takes over when you fear the worst for your kids. “Devil” is in able hands so long as Caro is carrying it.
But the supernatural scares that start happening around our stricken family — flickering lights, random shrieks, “earthquakes” and the like — take “Here Comes the Devil” over much too-familiar ground.
And the best Bogliano can come up with for a flimsy-effects finale is such pure queso that if it weren’t for the subtitles and the sex, “Here Comes the Devil” would have traveled straight to video, where it belongs.
 
MPAA Rating: unrated, with graphic violence, explicit sex
Cast: Laura Caro, Francisco Barreiro, Michelle Garcia, Alan Martinez, David Arturo Cabezud, Giancarlo Ruiz
Credits: Written and directed by Adrián García Bogliano. A Magnet release.
Running time: 1:37