Movie Nation

I’m from Florida, and even we have a hard time saying his name right.

Just remember “Rhymes with runt.”

You could do a LOT worse when casting your horror movie than parking Corbin Bernsen and Judd Hirsch as village elders caught up in battle between good and “the spiral stone” evil.

And let’s not forget the Once and Future “Tank Girl,” Lori Petty.

“She’s looked better.”

“That’s not all on me,” screenwriter Eric Wolf says, in a line he gave Eric Wolf/actor. “She let herself go.”

“A Deadly Legend” is a laugh-out-loud Z-movie about haunted land being profaned by developers somewhere in the Northeast, and not in Florida, where such cursed happenings are common.

And Wolf, a bit-player (“Shopper #2 in “Daddy’s Home 2”) turned producer and screenwriter, is a big reason why. As madman Mike, the backhoe/bulldozer operator hired to clear a “mound” in a controversial redevelopment on the outskirts of Small Town, Adirondacks, he’s got the eye-bugging drollery thing down pat.

I mean, I laugh when Judd Hirsch, as the town character, an antiques dealer who interrupts a planning board meeting with “You will unearth what had been dead for CENTURIES,” goes all Old Testament.

Corbin Bernsen, playing a local seller of crystals and knockoffs of Gandalf’s wizard’s staff, goes off on “HALF off” sales to anybody gullible enough to drop by.

And Petty? She’s doing the same antic “Tank Girl” shtick she did back in the last millennium, flailing her arms around, improvising nonsense, looking 25 years older.

“All it takes to make me HAPPY” she bellows at beau Mike (Wolf) on the backhoe, “is beer.” And no, she’s not find of the low-cal kind.

But Wolf goes OFF, and is a hoot to watch as a guy who turns possessed, digging up and bleeding on “the stones,” which open “the gate,” and for which he should feel honored and thus work off-the-clock.

“NO BREAKS!”

The film’s a daffy, no-budget riff on the “ancient spirits disturbed” and “every fifty year curse” thing. Digging up an Indian mound awakens Luci, the ghoul (Tatiana Szpur), who caused a wreck that killed the developer’s (Kristen Anne Ferraro) husband, years before.

Now, Developer Joan is making a mess out of the place where “the stones” preside, a “gate” where “the chain witch” rules — once the chain has chosen Eva (Jean Tree) for her bitchin’ bikini bod out on Lake Ancient Curse.

This is the sort of bad horror that is best experienced with a crowd of fellow aficionados, maybe over the favorite beverage of Wicked Wanda (Petty). Maybe social distance with a few friends?

There’s  a single effect, a pale blue light taking over the eyes.

The scenario is filled with laughs intentional and unintentional laughs. Joan and her daughter — Andee Buchari — need to have the “it gets better” talk with her fey son (John Pope). I mean, he’s willing to take on “the chain witch,” even if he’s about as butch as Billy Eichner.

The director has given herself the moniker “Pamela Moriarty.” But as my mother noted as the credits rolled, maybe the nom de réalisatrice (director) suggests sinister skills not yet acquired.

“This must have been her first go at it.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, bloody violence

Cast: Kristen Anne Ferraro, Eric Wolf, Dwayne A. Thomas, Jean Tree, Corbin Bernson, Judd Hirsch and Lori Petty.

Credits: Directed by Pamela Moriarty, script by Eric Wolf, and no, I don’t believe those are their real names either.   A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:36

The resolution to the mystery of “The Rental” tends to spoil the suspenseful thriller that comes before it. It’s generic, as so many horror movies are. What we’re told and shown that’s “really going on?” It’s been done before and done better.

The finale? Seriously unsatisfying.

But rather than give away the game straight-off and earn a “spoiler alert” rep, let’s just say “mumblecore” master Joe Swanberg (“Drinking Buddies,” “Nights and Weekends,” “Happy Christmas”) should at least blush when you confront him over his “story by” credit. A guy named Victor Zarcoff got there first.

The directing debut of Dave Franco, the “Franco brother we’re still allowed to talk about,” is moody and paranoid horror of a non-supernatural variety. The terrors here are “being found out,” being watched and being treated badly by a racist you’ve just met.

The setting is yuppie lush — a cliffside/seaside showplace that two couples decide to rent for a weekend getaway.

The threats there are existential, familial and pharmaceutical. Arabic-looking Mina (Sheila Vand of TV’s “Snowpiercer”) tried to rent it, but it was her tech start-up partner Charlie (Dan Stevens of TV’s “Downton Abbey” and “Legion”) whose credit card got processed.

He’s with Michelle (Alison Brie “GLOW”). She’s taken up with Charlie’s aimless, police-record brother Josh (Jeremy Allen White of TV’s “Shameless”).

Charlie gives up a little too much praise when talking about Mina to Michelle. “She’s the whole package,” he says. Josh “hit the f—–g jackpot” with her.

Duly noted. And once they arrive at the house, a few more personality quirks rear their heads. Mina isn’t shy about confrontation. A rude question of the “racist” guy who rented them the place (Toby Huss) isn’t softened by “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Taylor (Huss) gives as rude as he gets, and his sarcastic “didn’t mean anything by it” is the perfect punchline.

Michelle is there to recreate and hike. Mina and Josh just want to hide their dog from Taylor (“No pets allowed.”), get loose and stay loose.

“So…shall we do some drugs?”

There’s a clockwork compactness to the plot that you can’t help but notice and appreciate. Michelle wants to be fresh the next day’s hike, so she abstains with a promise to imbibe “tomorrow night.” All the bad decisions thhis first evening are made by the other three.

And that sets up the next night, as Brie gets to play semi-insensate and clueless as the previous night’s transgressions and mistakes come home to roost for the now-sober Josh, Charlie and Mina.

“Hey you guys, where’s the Molly?”

She’s wasted, and if drugs contributed to everything that went wrong before, drugs will trigger a lot of day-late/dollar short responses when the rising paranoia turns out to be justified on “the last night of our weekend.”

That’s not a new twist in horror, that “See where drugs’ll get you?” messaging. But damn, seeing “The Beach House” and “The Rental” use very similar settings and this Big Bullet Point in their plotting, back to back, is jarring.

Just say no, already.

The younger Franco doesn’t reinvent the genre or advance it in any way. But horror, as always, proves a nice proof-of-directing-chops test case, and he passes with flying colors. The performances are pitch-perfect, the picture opens with dread and the suspense builds nicely.

Sure, the foreshadowing is too-obvious (dogs make it into screenplays for a reason), the actual menace trite and the ending nothing novel. But “The Rental” is promising enough to put down a deposit on “the other Franco” and his directing future.

MPAA Rating: R for violence, language throughout, drug use and some sexuality

Cast: Dan Stevens, Allison Brie, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White and Toby Huss

Credits: Directed by Dave Franco, script by Dave Franco and Joe Swanberg. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:28

Every subscriber’s “around the world with Netflix” experience is going to be littered with…litter.

So it’s no surprise than in dropping in on several Nigerian films (“Nollywood”) in recent months, I’d eventually get around to one that’s unwatchable.

Tedious, generic and soap opera slow, “Sylvia” is about a man haunted — literally — by the imaginary girlfriend he’s had since childhood.

The premise may be a bit “out there,” but considering the supernatural drivel Hollywood summons up on a weekly basis, that’s no reason to write this one off.

But from the funereal opening, where we meet Richard (Chris Attoh) as “an old madman,” hiding out in an asylum, “Sylvia” is a clunker — slower than molasses dripping in the Arctic.

That framing device sets the tone. Every line is painstakingly performed as if English isn’t a common language in Nigeria and everybody has to sound the words out phonetically.

And such lines! They’re bad enough to be repeated in that “You mean to tell me” explain-it-to-the-dummies-in-the-audience way TV soap operas perfected.

“How could you say that? After everything, how could you honestly say that?”

And say it twice?

That’s the adult Sylvia (Zainab Balogun) reacting to the news that after residing in Richard’s dreams, day and night, all through his childhood, college and early adult years, that he’s “met someone,” and that someone is real — Gbemi (Ini Dima Okojie).

He may be a great success headed for marriage and a life of happiness, so he thinks. But Sylvia has her ways. Never mess with a Dream Lover Scorned.

There are limp office jokes here, hallucinations in the gym, “temptations” and trip-ups taking many forms. Anything to prevent this “real” marriage.

None of it amounts to anything and every single moment drags like a movie played at one third speed.

Director Daniel Oriahi (“Taxi Driver: Oko Ashewo,”” “For My Girls”) has been around long enough to know something about pacing. It’s as if he set out to imitate a genre and he and his cast had to do it in slow and tentative baby steps, lest they stumble and fall.

They did, mainly by slow-walking this thin thriller, first scene to last.

You make allowances for other cultures and their storytelling conventions when you watch a foreign film. This? This film “Sylvia” is unwatchable.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA

Cast: Zainab Balogun, Chris Attoh, Ini Dima Okojie, Udoka Oyeka and Ijeoma Grace Agu

Credits:Directed by Daniel Oriahi, script by Vanessa Kanu. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:44

It’s almost a relief to learn that the French can make a sex farce as crude, clumsy and obvious as its title.

Does “MILF” leave anything to the imagination? No.

It took six credited screenwriters to concoct this “romance” about “women of a certain age” showing off their perfect bikini bodies on the beaches of the South of France and luring cut, rich young boors who give sailing lessons there.

At least when Jennifer Coolidge introduced the world to the acronym — via “American Pie” — she was aloof, funny and harder to get.

Cecile, played by Virginie Ledoyen, has just lost her husband Laurent, and has enlisted pals Sonia (Marie-Josée Croze) and Elise (Axelle Laffont, who also co-wrote and directed this) to help her clean and prep for sale a family beach house on the Med.

Cecile may be in mourning, but the solemn mood is broken when one of them chooses to flash the rude, aggressive young punks tailgating them on the drive down.

Sonia has carried on her “bad habits from high school.” She’s dating a married man.

Elise is ready to put Cecile on a dating/hook-up app.

But Cecile is the modest one, sad and it turns out, naive. She’s the one who’s ever heard what the acronym MILF stands for. Well, at least they’re not “cougars,” they reassure themselves. Besides, Cecile sighs (in French, with English subtitles). “a widow of my age (Ledoyen is 44), no one is interested.”

It’s just that randy college-age Paul (Waël Sersoub) and Julien (Matthias Dandois) ARE interested. They are cocky, confident and cut, so good looking that Laffont throws a little animation and “oooga-oooga” effect in to mark the ladies’ reaction to the hunks across the harbor.  Subtle. 

They’re also crude behind the trio’s backs — “Not bad for an old piece of a–.”

They aggressively pursue the well-preserved not-old-but-older women. Cecile may be off limits, but Sonia and Elise are down for a little get-down.

“That punk sure can kiss!”

Enter Markus (Victor Meutelet), who used to babysit Cecile’s kids and now is handsome enough to make her blush. Will she?

There’s clubbing, skinny dipping, flirting and peacocking. The lads are insatiable, over-eager (in a “premature” sense) and not shy about parading around buck naked to show off what they’ve just been doing.

They’re also callow and potentially cruel. There are plenty of women their age who turn their heads.

Conflict comes from the “age appropriate” Thomas (Rémi Pedevilla) who is put off by the boys throwing themselves at the women, and how the women react.

“You’re cute. Trying to be big men, eh?”

And there’s the sullen, sexy bouncer (Jéromine Chasseriaud) who is furious that these women, whom she wouldn’t let in the door, are stealing young man meat she has her eyes on.

There’s barely a laugh in it (six writers, remember), the situations are trite and playing the many sex scenes straight flatters the stars but does nothing for the movie’s central comic premise.

Perhaps “MILF” simply doesn’t translate. You look at these three — Ledoyen, of “The Beach,” is all of 44 — and there’s a “Why COULDN’T they have any straight man on Earth?”

And without that, there’s no challenge, no irony and not

Rating: TV-MA, explicit sex, nudity, profanity, lots of drinking

Cast: Virginie Ledoyen, Marie-Josée Croze, Axelle Laffont, Waël Sersoub, Waël Sersoub and Victor Meutelet

Credits: Directed by Axelle Laffont, script by Axelle Laffont, Jean-François Halin, Alain Layrac, Jonathan Cohen, David Lanzman and Lilou Fogli. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36

Enthusiastic, irreverent to the point of rude and delivered in clips and quips edited into rat-a-tat-tat bursts, “Creem: America’s Only Rock’n Roll Magazine” is a documentary that mimics its subject to a T.

Sacred cows from its legend are celebrated, then skewered, feuds are revisited with the rockers who came under its Detroit Rock City gaze, and everybody remembers the good, not-quite-clean fun they had writing it, reading it and being in it.

“It was the ’70s,” writer/editor (and the documentary’s co-writer) Jaan Uhelszki deadpans in her best “Sorry-not-sorry.” “Kill me!”

Fans from Jeff Daniels to Michael Stipe, Gene Simmons and Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith wax lyrical about it.

“It was like buying Playboy,” actor and Detroit native Daniels recalls. “You didn’t want your parents to find it!”

And, like the National Lampoon magazine documentary, “A Futile and Stupid Gesture,” it’s nostalgic. “Creem,” unlike the AARP set interviewed here, didn’t stick around long enough to get old. It only published from 1969-1989, with the first dozen years being the ones that made its legend.

Director Scott Crawford lines up legions of on-camera talkers — the surviving senior staff, former editors in chief from Dave Marsh on down, writers from future film director Cameron Crowe to Roberta “Robbie” Cruger,  Rolling Stone mainstays Greil Marcus and Ed Ward.

There are plenty of women staffers here to admit “It was a ‘boy’s magazine,” and to confess that many of the leering, sexist and innuendo-laden headlines and photo captions were produced by the ladies who answered the phone, “Creem your jeans, boys and girls!”

And there are the rock stars — mostly white, after a few early years when it was more Motown-Detroit friendly, mostly heavy metal, pop metal, glam, etc. — who filled its pages.

Joan Jett remembers her nuclear letter to the editor come-back for a bad review of her first band, The Runaways. Simmons recalls the stunt of dolling up Uhelski like a fifth member of KISS, and bringing her on-stage for a story.

Mitch Ryder and Suzi Quatro, Ted Nugent and Wayne Kramer of the MC (Motor City) 5, remember the way the record store that spawned the magazine set the town for an all-embracing entrance to the “scene” of late ’60s Detroit. Smokey Robinson made the cover, the MC5 were ridiculed for “not knowing how to tune their instruments.”

“That hit close-ta home,” Kramer admits with a grin.

And then there’s the middle chapter on the most famous writer to grace its pages during its heyday, Lester Bangs. Wilder and more the enthusiast than Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal in Crowe’s autobiographical “Almost Famous” film, Bangs was loved and hated by Marsh (who appears here) and every rock star and rock band who came under his critical eye.

“He called our first record ‘a tragic waste of plastic,'” Alice Cooper laughs.

Bangs is portrayed as both a tragic figure — he overdosed a year after the magazine’s founder and publisher — and as a Freudian cliche of a critic. He ridiculed stars until he became pals and drinking buddies with them, something Crowe remembers Bangs expressly warning HIM not to do when he first started writing there.

“He always saw the irony of the situation,” Crowe offers.

Bangs pushed for the magazine — which published from a communal, dysfunctional hippy-style farm for a bit, everybody under one roof and coupling up — to be rock’n roll itself, “like a band putting out a magazine.” Marsh saw it as the political conscience of a generation. It’s only natural that he’s the writer credited with coining the phrase “punk rock.”

The magazine’s glory years, up to Bangs’ death, earn most of the attention, shortchanging its last decade and creating a sense that the movie, like the magazine, kind of peters out.

Nobody defends the homophobia that drove a lot of the early humor, shots at Steven Tyler and Freddie Mercury and story after story with “f—-t” jokes. And nobody NOBODY apologizes for the nuclear takedowns of Springsteen and the other Rolling Stone-proclaimed titans of the era.

“U.F.O.s, Hitler and David Bowie” headlined one “appreciation” of the Brit. “John Denver is GOD” another cover cartoon was captioned, while “Springsteen” most certainly “isn’t.”

And they all hated Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone like poison, taking a Mad Magazine approach — eternal outsiders, mocking one, mocking all.

“Either you’re in on the joke, or you ARE the joke.”

(Roger Moore’s review of the similar “Ticket to Write: The Golden Age of Rock Journalism”)

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity, a little skin, some discussion of drugs

Cast: Dave Marsh, Jaan Uhelszki, Suzi Quatro, Alice Cooper, Joan Jett, Chad Smith, Wayne Kramer, Gene Simmons and Ted Nugent.

Credits: Directed by Scott Crawford, script by Jaan Uhelski and Scott Crawford. A Greenwich release.

Running tine: 1:18

Yes, here’s a documentary where a bunch of psychologists talk about the “stable genius” in the White House.

Isn’t his sister pushing a book right now that covers all this?

“Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump” rolls out Sept. 1.

Here’s a lightweight little Italian collection of short films on the subject “Italian men are pigs.” Enjoy.

Well, try to enjoy “The Players (Gli Infideli).”

A handful of solid Italian performers — anchored by Riccardo Scamarcio (“Loro,” “John Wick Chapter 2”), Valerio Mastandrea (“Pasolini,” “Nine”)  Laura Chiatti (“Somewhere,” “Il volto di un’altra”) and Valentina Cervi (“Jane Eyre,” TV’s “True Blood”) — play assorted characters in a string of stereotypically “Italian” marriages.

Ergo, the men cheat, dream of cheating or sneak into porn clubs, the women suspect, spy on them and do a lot of screaming when the confrontation comes.

Not in every “marriage.” Not in every story. But pretty much.

A shrew shouts accusations at her spouse all the way through the airport, toning it down only when they board their flight to a vacation.

“Would I cheat on you just before we go to the Maldives?” isn’t much of a defense.

A dull, and bored husband (Mastandrea) uses “the game” as his excuse for slipping out every night for a little hit-the-peep-show adventure. But he keeps coming home with torn underwear. His seamstress wife (Marina Foïs) can’t help but get suspicious.

The owlish, curly-haired Scarmacio plays a collection of disparate creeps — the husband who self-peddles his infidelities to friends at a dinner party, while his wife is in the kitchen, a 1970s English toothed yard dog who hits on everything with a skirt during a corporate retreat, and a man whose wife (Chiatti) tracks him to a hotel, but manages the best “Who me?” act of them all.

Here’s a very serious hole in “Gil Infideli,” as  “The Players” is titled in Italy.

The characters aren’t so different that one picks up on “Oh, this is a collection of SHORT films.” Scamarcio, save for that one character who wears false teeth, could be the same guy, first short to last.

Mastandrea may be bald here, stubbly there, and the characters have more pronounced personality differences. But most of them are just variations on a piggish theme.

“It’s…ancestral. I’m a man!”

Chiatti and Cervi have just a couple of moments to shine in the most interesting of the episodes, with Cervi’s highlight a wife who tricks/badgers her husband into revealing his cheating, and Chiatti having a couple of over-the-top meltdowns in a couple of different shorts.

But those are mere comic crumbs when one expects a meal, or at least a dessert.

The idea here was some sort of “Divorce, Italian Style” romp. But there’s no romping to this, no particularly funny lines (in Italian with English subtitles), a near chuckle from a broad bit of comedy here and there.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, adult themes.

Cast: Riccardo Scamarcio, Valentina Cervi, Valerio Mastandrea, Laura Chiatti

Credits: Directed by Stefano Mordini, script by Filippo Bologna, Stefano Mordini.   A Netflix release.

Running time:

This year’s FFF arrives late and truncated, due to the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic.

The only venue listed in the following press release (and on their website) is the festival’s home base, the Enzian theater.

Lots of titles will be streaming, but there will be panels and Joe Bob Briggs will be here to make the case for “How Rednecks Saved Hollywood.”

Read on!

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It’s not subtle, not particularly scary or suspenseful either.

What “The Beach House” has going for it is dread, a feeling that rides along with it from its opening frames to the horror parable’s final image.

Liana Liberato (“To the Stars”) and Noah Le Gros (TV’s “The Get Down”) are a college couple out to spend a “make up” weekend at his family’s place on the beach.

It’s off season. Nobody is there. Apparently.

And then this other couple turns up, already staying in the house, friends of Randall’s father.

No, he didn’t check with his Dad to make arrangements to stay there. No, they’re “not getting along” right now. And above all else, he insists to Emily, no, “It’s not my fault.”

The older folks (Jake Weber and Maryann Nagel) seem nice enough. But Emily’s noticed a medicine cabinet full of prescriptions. Jane seems…medicated. Mitch? He dotes on her.

Stilk, what the heck? Let’s share the place, cook on the grill, have some wine.

Randall’s first “tell” was the dismissive way he wants Emily to write-off grad school in her field, organic chemistry. The second was his insistence that they ditch college and move to the beach. “It’ll be like vacation all the time!”

And the third is how he copes with them running out of wine.

“Are you familiar with edibles?”

He’s self-absorbed, carefree and careless. She has a plan, a field which will pull her towards finding the limits of “life” at say, the bottom of the ocean. And he’s just privileged and tuning everything out.

The “edibles” bring everything to a head as everyone who partakes descends into what they have to believe in a “bad trip” or at least a bad reaction. Something is going on — with Jane and Mitch, with the weather (fog sets in), with the sea itself.

“Do you SMELL that?”

First-time feature writer-director Jeffrey A. Brown cast this well, and Liberato makes a plucky surrogate for the viewer, the aspiring scientist asking “What’s really going on here?” even as we start to get answers about what happened to the the people in the house and. the neighbors, and ask more and more questions about the sea.

Intercutting shots of mineral vents from the ocean floor give away the point of it all. Slugs and Portuguese Man-of-War beachings, parasites that may or may not be real, all of those step to the fore after our initial unease with “this other couple” recede with the tide.

I like that bit of misdirection, because the rest of the movie is rather drably-played formula, swiping a bit from Stephen King (“The Mist”) here, a little “Night of the Living Dead” there.

Sadly, the mystery of it all will evaporate long before that fog clears.

MPAA Rating: unrated, grisly sci-fi images, alcohol and drug abuse

Cast: Liana Liberato, Noah Le Gros, Maryann Nagel and Jake Weber.

Credits: Written and directed by Jeffrey A. Brown. A Shudder/Uncork’d release.

Running time: 1:28