WAR PIGS (2015) ** ½

Mickey Rourke sends Luke Goss and Dolph Lundgren to whip the eponymous army unit into shape and get them ready for battle.  After the grunts gradually earn Goss’ respect, they receive orders to go behind enemy lines and bring back information on a new superweapon the Nazis have been tinkering with.  When two of Goss’ men are captured by the Germans, he rallies the troops together for a rescue mission.

Director Ryan Little makes the most of the film’s slim budget.  Although it’s relatively slow going at the outset, things heat up nicely during the third act.  If you’re patient enough, you’ll be treated to some decent WWII action.

The funniest thing about War Pigs is Rourke’s character.  I guess Little couldn’t talk Rourke into cutting his hair or taking off his white cowboy hat.  I’ve seen some sights in my time, but seeing Mickey Rourke wearing a cowboy hat and long hair trying to pass himself off as a WWII colonel will be hard to forget.

Dolph does a good job as a French foreign legion captain.  He and Goss make for a solid team.  If only Dolph was given more to do than to ask Goss, “Do you think the men are ready?” every ten minutes.  Goss, looking grizzled and miserable, wears his Army fatigues in an authentic manner.  He looks like he just walked out of a Sam Fuller flick.  Contrast his appearance with that of Rourke.  They look like they came out of two different movies. 

I just wish the war pigs themselves were a bit more distinguishable.  They all seem interchangeable and fail to make much of an impression.  At all times they look like a bunch of struggling 21^st century actors trying to pass themselves off as wisecracking Army grunts.  They aren’t great or anything, but they look much more authentic than Rourke.  

AKA:  Saints and Soldiers:  War Pigs.

THE RUNNER (2015) **

After the devastation of the BP oil spill, Congressman Nic Cage makes a passionate speech to Congress that gains nationwide attention.  Using the momentum of the speech, he sets out to make real changes for his Louisiana fishing community.  Soon after, he gets embroiled in a sex scandal and is ultimately forced to resign.  Months later, he comes out of hiding and works as a pro bono lawyer to help fishermen affected by the spill.  He also begins an affair with his married publicist (Sarah Paulson), which could harm his future political chances.

The Runner is well-acted and earnest enough, although it’s hardly what you would call engrossing.  I mean it’s hard to really sympathize with Cage’s character.  It’s almost as if the sole audience for this thing was disgraced, alcoholic, sex-addicted Congressmen with marital problems.  That’s a very narrow market to capture, but I guarantee that if you’re a disgraced, alcoholic, sex-addicted Congressman, this will be right up your alley.  

Fans of Cage’s onscreen high jinx will no doubt be disappointed as he is much too subtle in this to make it memorable.  Even though he’s playing a character struggling with alcoholism, he never once reaches into his grab bag of Cagey tricks and achieves the same level of alcoholic antics of Leaving Las Vegas.  I’m not saying that a full-blown Cage performance could’ve saved this lackluster drama, but it definitely couldn’t have hurt.

The supporting cast is strong though.  Cage’s Ghost Rider co-star Peter Fonda has some good moments as his disgraced former politician father.  Fonda and Cage have enormous chemistry in their scenes together.  When you look at them bantering back and forth, you can almost see the movie The Runner wanted to be.  Connie Nielsen is solid as Cage’s long-suffering wife and Paulson is better than the film deserves as the new object of Cage’s affection.

THE BEGGAR OF NO EQUAL (1980) **

Confession Time:  It was hard to tell what the hell was going on half the time in The Beggar of No Equal because the subtitles were often completely unreadable.  The horribly cropped transfer cut off about half the words on the screen.  If a line of dialogue was more than five words long, I was shit out of luck.  To make matters worse, the subtitles themselves were often blurry and hard to make out.  At least the litany of misspelled words was sometimes good for a laugh. (“Dame you!")

The plot, as much as I could surmise, focused on a shirtless guy whose job was protecting a sacred book of herbs.  Meanwhile, a badass government official goes around kicking the asses of townsfolk who don't cotton to the king’s rules, which admittedly are pretty bullshit and are mostly made up just so this guy can kick their ass.  Anyway, this cute Kung Fu fighter enters the fray and beats the snot out of a lot of people.

It was here where things started getting a little hazy.  The shitty subtitles were mostly to blame, but I admittedly started zoning out halfway through because I started losing track of the plot.  There is a decent plot twist at the end though.  It might have had some impact if I knew what was going on for the half-hour or so before that.

Because of subtitle snafu, the only way to really grade The Beggar of No Equal is on the Kung Fu action.  Sadly, the fight sequences don’t occur often enough to make up for the unintelligible plot.  In general, the fight scenes were okay.  They’re definitely nothing you haven’t seen before.  Then again, the cropping is so bad that you sometimes can’t even see who the hero is fighting.  

POTTERSVILLE (2017) **

I was so enamored by Michael Shannon’s performance in The Shape of Water that I went out looking for another Shannon film in hopes of seeing him once again chew the scenery like a madman.  Now The Shape of Water of course was all about a fish man finding love with a mute woman.  Incredibly enough, the plot to Pottersville is just as weird.

Shannon plays a meek nice guy who owns the general store in his small snowy hometown.  One day, he decides to leave work early and surprise his wife (Christina Hendricks) and is dismayed to find her dressed in a bunny costume and having “furry sex” with Ron Perlman (who likes to dress in a wolf costume).  I try not to be too judgmental when it comes to folks’ sexual eccentricities, but these two make the fish man sex in The Shape of Water look downright conventional by comparison.

Anyway, Shannon does what anyone would do in that situation:  Go out and get drunk on Ian McShane’s moonshine.  Feeling despondent, Shannon dresses up in a gorilla costume in hopes of winning back his wife.  His drunken costumed escapades in the town makes everyone think Bigfoot is on the loose and soon, the place becomes a booming tourist trap.  A reality show host (Thomas Lennon) even shows up with a camera crew looking to capture the beast.  Shannon continues the charade and runs around like Sasquatch to keep the town’s morale up, but predictably everyone turns their back on him when he’s ultimately unmasked.

On the surface, Pottersville looks like your typical Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas movie, but the slightly warped plot pretty much guarantees little white-haired old ladies will not be amused.  The fact that the plot hinges on kinky animal costume sex (even though no skin is ever shown) is probably enough to make sure it’ll never be shown on the channel.  While it’s just a tad weirder than your average Christmas flick, it’s not nearly weird enough to be consistently entertaining.

Even though I really like the guy, I’ll be the first to admit that Shannon is badly miscast.  They really needed someone bland in the lead.  When he tries to act “normal” and be “nice”, he just comes off looking like a serial killer.  Imagine if Rondo Hatton replaced Jimmy Stewart as the star of It’s a Wonderful Life with a furry sex subplot and that might give you an idea of what we’re talking about here.

Some will want to watch it just for the fact that Hendricks plays a sex-starved woman with a furry fetish.  You’ve got to wonder about her character though.  I mean she leaves Shannon for Perlman.  It’s almost enough to make me think I have a shot with her.

All of this might’ve been worth a damn if it was actually funny.  Although I got a kick out of seeing Ian McShane as a crusty hunter doing a good imitation of Robert Shaw’s big scene in Jaws, for the most part, the gags fall flat.  Even the usually reliable Lennon fails to generate any laughs.

If you’re a Bigfoot fanatic with a furry sex fetish in need of a Christmas movie, look no further.  Pottersville has got you covered.  Everyone else will probably be left scratching their head.  

BATTLE OF THE SEXES (2017) ***

Before Andy Kaufman wrestled women in bouts of intergender wrestling buffoonery, Bobby Riggs challenged women tennis players to show man’s superiority on the tennis court.  Of course, that all backfired on him when Billie Jean King mopped the court with Riggs on national television.  Battle of the Sexes is a dramatized version of the events leading up to that fateful match.

While Riggs (Steve Carell) runs his mouth and puts on a good show for the cameras, King (Emma Stone) tries to keep her head down and train hard for the match.  She’s hoping that all the publicity will allow her to make a stand for equal rights and feminism.  She doesn’t want any needless distractions around.  Naturally, that’s just what she gets in the form of Marilyn (Andrea Riseborough), a hairdresser she becomes romantically entangled with while on tour.  Since this is the ‘70s we’re talking about, King must keep the relationship quiet because if the media found out about her lesbian affair, it would bring an abrupt end to her career.  

Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (who also collaborated with Carell on Little Miss Sunshine) get a bit heavy-handed while delivering the movie’s messages.  A lot of the on-the-nose dialogue hammers home King’s dilemma with the subtlety of a hundred-mile-an-hour tennis serve.  Once the film switches gears and turns into an honest to God sports movie, it quickly rights itself and becomes a rather irresistible underdog story.  The finale is surprisingly suspenseful too, even if you already know the outcome.

The thing about Riggs is, he’s pretty likeable.  He’s not an out-and-out bad guy.  He just misses the limelight and sees the battle of the sexes matches as get-rich-quick scheme.  He goes so over the top with his whole male chauvinist performance (his insults are kind of funny) that he becomes a caricature of a villain.  I mean he can be only taken about as seriously as your average wrestling heel. 

Even King doesn’t really have a problem with his overboard blustering.  Her real issue is with the sexist men behind the scenes who want hold women back.  While Riggs is using the chauvinist thing as a publicity stunt, these guys actually talk the talk.

The cast is uniformly excellent and help to anchor the movie whenever it threatens to get too preachy.  Carell gives a terrific performance and makes what could’ve been a one-dimensional cretin likeable and well-rounded.  The scene where he goes to Gamblers Anonymous and puts down the people in the group for being bad gamblers is hysterical.  Stone does an equally fine job as King.  Halfway through the movie, you kind of forget it’s her, which is about as good of a compliment as you can give.  The supporting cast is a veritable who’s who featuring everyone from Bill Pullman (sexist asshole) to Elizabeth Shue (Riggs’ long-suffering wife) to Fred Armisen (Riggs’ “vitamin consultant”), all of whom do a great job.  Alan Cumming in particular does wonders, giving a thinly-written role a hefty amount of gravitas.  

THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017) ****

Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is further proof that most women just want a quiet guy with a great set of abs.  The fact that he’s a fish man is kind of beside the point.  In del Toro’s universe, love is blind.

It’s also mute.  As in, Elisa (Sally Hawkins) the heroine is a mute.  She works as a cleaning lady in a top-secret government lab.  One day, an amphibian humanoid known only as “The Asset” (Doug Jones) is brought in by his handler, Strickland (Michael Shannon) for observation and experimentation.  Strickland rules over the creature with an iron fist, gleefully giving him shocks from his trusty cattle prod (“The Alabama Howdy-Doo”) whenever he acts up.  Elisa shows The Asset kindness by… Hold on, I can’t keep calling this guy “The Asset”, because that just sounds too funky.  We’ll just call him Gill.

Anyway, Elisa shows Gill a little kindness and even develops a crush on him.  When she learns that Strickland intends on killing Gill, she ropes a coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and a neighbor (Richard Jenkins) in on a plan to help him escape.  Naturally, that sends Strickland on a warpath, and he’ll stop at nothing until he gets his hands on Gill.

The Shape of Water is Guillermo del Toro’s seamless blend of late night creature feature, forbidden love story, and fairy tale.  It works as an exemplary take on each of those conventions.  Imagine if Douglas Sirk and Jean Cocteau had teamed up to direct The Creature from the Black Lagoon.  

Del Toro does a great little shorthand to endear the character of Elisa to the audience early on by showing her masturbatory routine.  I mean you have to respect anyone who can rub one out just before work.  It’s exactly the sort of thing that makes her instantly relatable to the audience.

I also love del Toro’s childlike nonjudgmental handling of Elisa and Gill’s relationship.  At one point, they even partake in a black and white song and dance number.  Forget Fred and Ginger.  Wait till you get a load of Gill and Elisa.  

Del Toro contrasts this by showing us Strickland’s own sexual routine.  Let me tell you this.  When you see the matter-of-fact way Strickland sticks it to his wife, Gill’s treatment of Elisa is downright beautiful.  One thing is for sure:  Fish men mating techniques have come a long way since the days of Humanoids from the Deep.

Hawkins is good and all, and Jones can do this sort of mo-cap creature work in his sleep by now.  Jenkins gives us yet another classic Richard Jenkins character.  They’re all solid, and give ample life to the characters they play.

It is Shannon who dominates the screen.  He’s played some slimy, creepy assholes before, but this is some next level shit.  It is a tour de force in every way. He’s maniacal and disgusting, yet wickedly funny at the same time.  Whenever he’s on screen, you can’t take your eyes off him.  It’s one of his most mesmerizing performances and is easily one of the best performances of the year. 

A CERTAIN JUSTICE (2014) **

Cung Le stars as a soldier with PTSD who accidentally kills three men roughing up a hooker (Briana Evigan).  Her pimp (Dolph Lundgren) lashes out by burning Le’s family alive.  Enraged, Le sets his sights on bringing Dolph’s operation down.

The first fifteen minutes look like they were chopped up in a blender and edited with a hot glue gun.  It’s hard to make heads or tails what's going on half the time.  I don't know if directors Giorgio Serafini and James Coyne were trying to put us in Le’s PTSD mindset or what, but it's damned irritating.  

Things improve when Dolph arrives on the scene.  He's great as the scary, soft spoken, and manipulative pimp.  While the movie is decidedly less than stellar, Dolph still manages to do some genuinely interesting character work.  He’s especially despicable when telling Evigan the harsh truth about their relationship.  Although his fight scenes leave something to be desired, he does get a decent shirtless training sequence.

A Certain Justice is generally more meanspirited and unpleasant than most of its ilk.  That doesn’t necessarily make it better.  Even though the beginning is poorly executed, the camerawork, editing, and action gets better as it goes along.  I can’t say it’s “good”, but it’s about on par with your average DTV actioner.  

It does lose points for the dumb ending.  I mean Dolph has Cung tied up and on his knees with a gun to his head.  All he had to do was pull the trigger.  Naturally, his stupid flunky wants a piece of him, so Dolph unties him so they can fight.  Predictably, Cung schools him, which leads to the big Le vs. Lundgren finale.  

AKA:  Puncture Wounds.  AKA:  Lethal Punisher.  AKA:  Lethal Punisher:  Kill or be Killed.