LARCENY (2017) **

I was a fan of director R. Ellis Frazier’s Rumble, so I decided to take a chance on his latest film, Larceny.  Like Rumble, it is a competently made picture.  Since it doesn’t have the same kind of bonkers twist ending, it’s kind of a forgettable affair. 

Dolph Lundgren stars as an ex-DEA agent who gets himself thrown in jail down in Mexico.  That might sound like a dumb thing for a gringo to do, but Dolph has a plan.  He knows that’s where a big drug dealer keeps all his money and Dolph and his team are planning to take it off his hands.

Larceny is a heist film, so those expecting your typical Lundgren shoot ‘em up may be a little disappointed.  The pacing is also a bit slow and nothing much happens during the middle section.  Frazier fails to get any mileage out of the admittedly novel setting.  It’s a shame too because combining the heist and prison genres seemed like a good idea.

It’s one thing for a movie to be low on action.  It’s another thing to set up a big action sequence and not deliver.  In order to make his escape, Dolph lets the prisoners loose to create a distraction.  Everything looks like it’s leading up to a big shootout, only Frazier cuts to black and flash-forwards to Dolph’s girlfriend being kidnapped after the heist.  It happens so abruptly that it made me think that the production simply ran out of money and couldn't afford to film the sequence.

Dolph is his usual charismatic self.  We also get solid support from Corbin Bernsen as Dolph's boss and Louis Mandylor as a crooked senator.  Jocelyn Osorio also does a fine job as the lone woman on Dolph’s team.  She proves she’s just as capable as the boys and holds her own in her dramatic scenes.  I wouldn’t mind seeing her in her own starring vehicle.

AKA:  Maximum Security.

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1963) *

William Castle seemed liked the right person to remake James Whale’s classic The Old Dark House.  Castle had a knack for presenting horror with a light tongue-in-cheek touch, which made him perfectly suited to the material.  Unfortunately, his version of The Old Dark House relies way too heavily on comedy, and none of it is very funny.

Tom Poston stars as an American car salesman who comes to a decrepit mansion to deliver a car to his English roommate, played by Peter Bull.  The place is crawling with kooky relatives who inform Poston his roommate died suddenly under shady circumstances.  Poston gets mixed up in the family squabble for the will, and soon becomes the killer’s next target.

Castle’s most famous films featured gimmicks that were often more fun than the movies themselves.  The Old Dark House doesn’t have one, and it’s doubtful the wildest gimmick imaginable could’ve made it work.  It’s probably his all-time worst.  There is one memorable scene involving a death by knitting needle, but that’s about as close as Castle comes to blending horror and humor effectively.

Much of the problem has to do with Poston’s performance.  He was great on Newhart and all, but he is painfully unfunny here.  To be fair, he wasn’t given much to work with as the script mostly requires him to do a lot of double-takes and pratfalls while interacting with the oddball family.  Bull fairs slightly better playing multiple roles, although he doesn’t garner any laughs either.

The best part is the opening credits sequence, designed by Charles Addams.  His most famous creation, The Addams Family, premiered on television the next year.  At times, this almost feels like a test run for that show, but it’s nowhere near as much fun.

KEEP WATCHING (2017) * ½

A killer installs hidden cameras inside unsuspecting families’ homes and watches them.  He then murders them live on camera and broadcasts it on the internet for the world to see.  Bella Thorne is a typical teenage girl who hates her new stepmother.  She also happens to be the killer’s next target.

Keep Watching is basically The Strangers remade as a Found Footage horror movie.  It relies heavily on the hidden camera gimmick, which is a double-edged sword.  Some of the camera placements give us a handful of interesting angles.  I particularly liked the shot from inside the microwave (although you have to wonder how the hell the killer rigged it up).  Other times, the cameras should’ve been easily seen by any and all of the family members.  The camera that’s mounted onto flashlight is the most obvious example.  (Although this leads to an OK sequence involving a Polaroid camera.)

Like most of these things, you have to wait an awful long time for something to happen.  The thing is, you know exactly where it’s going the whole time, which makes the wait feel even longer.  Even the big “twist” is a foregone conclusion, but the movie seems to think it’s pretty damned clever, so it drags it out as long as humanly possible.

I basically only watched this for Bella Thorne.  Unfortunately, she isn’t nearly as well-utilized here as she was in Amityville:  The Awakening or The Babysitter.  The supporting cast, which includes Chandler Riggs, Ioan Gruffudd, and Leigh Whannell are decent, although they aren’t strong enough to carry the movie throughout its slower passages (of which there are many).

DE PALMA (2016) ****

Noah (Frances Ha) Baumbach and Jake (Young Ones) Paltrow aren’t the first two guys you’d expect to make a documentary about Brian De Palma.  Thank God that they did.  It’s essential viewing for De Palma die-hards, or for anyone who loves cinema in general.

Baumbach and Paltrow are slavish to chronology, which makes me love the documentary even more.  They go through De Palma’s filmography with a fine-tooth comb, starting with his early experimental ‘60s movies and moving onwards.  In between clips of his films, we see De Palma talking about the movies and giving on-set anecdotes and dishing out a wealth of fascinating technical and incidental information.  This approach works, mostly because you get to see his work as an artist slowly take shape over the years, but also because every one of his films is covered.  You knew they were going to go in-depth on Scarface, but did you expect them to spend so much time on Mission to Mars?  Heck, even the underrated Wise Guys gets its due!

Folks, this is simply a two-hour film school.  Some may grouse about the rhythm of the movie as it goes from film clip to talking head shot of De Palma to film clip.  Me?  I loved the conciseness of the project.  Few filmmakers deserved a documentary of this nature.  Hell, fewer filmmakers have a filmography worth discussing for two hours.  

You know what, there’s a part of me that wishes it was twice as long.  That’s mostly because De Palma is so damned interesting.  He’s a born storyteller.  Even without a camera, he’s fascinating just sitting there talking movies.  Whether he’s regaling us with war stories from his battles with the ratings board or talking shit on the Carrie remakes, De Palma holds court like few can.  As a filmmaker, there are few finer.  His misfires are more interesting than most directors’ best work. Even his worst films have his distinct fingerprints all over them, which is something that can’t be said for most filmmakers.   

ATOR: THE FIGHTING EAGLE (1983) **

Miles O'Keefe stars in this Conan rip-off from Joe D'Amato.  It is curiously lacking the exploitation goodness you’d expect from that Italian sleaze merchant.  Instead, what we get is long stretches of extreme boredom punctuated with moments of side-splitting hilarity. 

O’Keefe stars as Ator, who must rescue his wife (Ritza Brown) from the clutches of the evil Spider King (Dakkar).  An Amazon warrior (Sabrina Siani) in search of gold and adventure, joins him on his quest.  In the end, Ator squares off against the king and does battle with his giant spider.   

For a while there, I thought this was going to be worse than its more famous sequel, Cave Dwellers.  I mean nothing happens for about the first twenty minutes.  (Heck, the first five minutes is filled with old guys spouting prophecy after prophecy.)  The plot moves along at a sluggish pace, but some of the side journeys Ator takes are amusing.  I liked the part where the Amazon women held wrestling matches and the winner got to use Ator as breeding stock, and the scene where Laura Gemser tries slip Ator a Mickey is right out of a Hercules movie from the ‘60s.   

Dakkar makes for an OK villain, if only because of his willingness to let spiders crawl all over his bare arms and bald head.  The giant spider is probably the most memorable part, and for all the wrong reasons.  The budget was so low that they could only afford to show four of its legs at a time.  The editing during Ator’s final showdown with it is downright hilarious too.     

AKA:  Ator.  AKA:  Ator the Invincible.

BLACK PANTHER (2018) *** ½

Twenty years ago, Blade was released.  Its success was largely due to Wesley Snipes’ iconic performance as the badass bloodsucker.  Back in 1998, there were no notions of shared Cinematic Universes.  It was just a strong black actor starring in a comic book movie and elevating it into the ranks of a modern classic.  Oddly enough, it took twenty years for another black Marvel character to topline his own franchise.  Although I think Blade is more significant because it was the first film under the modern-day Marvel brand, there is no denying that Black Panther has taken the world by storm. 

The closest comparison to Black Panther I can make is Shaft.  It is not a perfect movie, but it's cultural significance overshadows its flaws.  Like Shaft, it's a black director working with a mostly black cast on a tent pole action film with a soundtrack by a renowned black artist.  Since it was director Ryan Coogler’s follow-up to Creed, I couldn’t wait to see it.  While it falls short of the heights of Creed (and Blade), it’s still a top-rate comic book flick.

After the events of Captain America:  Civil War, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns home to Africa to take up the mantel of Black Panther, king of Wakanda.  His reign is challenged by the determined Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) who claims he has a legitimate right to the throne.   When Killmonger defeats T’Challa, the kingdom is forced to go along with his militant regime.  It’s then up to T’Challa to regain his strength and defeat Killmonger once and for all. 

I think the weaker parts of Black Panther are the superhero-y moments, mostly because we have seen that stuff a dozen times before.  What we haven't seen is a black nation portrayed as royalty with tech that would make Luke Skywalker and James Bond envious.  As great as Boseman and Jordan are, Wakanda is the real star.  The world-building aspects take elements from other movies, but still manage to feel fresh and unique.  I loved the hierarchy of the various tribes and the combination of primitive and futuristic tech reminded me a bit of John Carter.

As a fan of Creed, I was hoping Coogler would deliver on the action sequences.  Unfortunately, some of the fights are too dark and/or feature quick-cut editing that detract from the action.  The big costumed brawl during the finale looks a bit too cartoony, but the challenge fights for the throne are heated, brutal, and gorgeously filmed.  These fights are also structured like a Rocky movie.  Specifically, Rocky 3 as Black Panther loses his title and has to have a rematch in order to reclaim it.

There are a lot of characters to juggle, but Coogler does a good job at giving the supporting characters moments to shine.  The cast contains a wealth of strong women, all of whom leave their mark.  Lupita Nyong’o has considerable chemistry with Boseman as his love interest, and Danai Gurira kicks a lot of ass as the leader of his royal guard.  It’s Letita Wright who steals the show as Black Panther’s smart mouth sister who constantly busts his balls and acts like a teenage version of Q.

The movie really belongs to Jordan as the seething Killmonger.  When he’s front and center, you kind of forget about Black Panther.  That’s not a knock on Boseman, who is charismatic, and a born leading man.  Like The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, he blows the hero off the screen with his commanding screen presence.  He’s truly one of the best Marvel villains of all time.

Sure, the movie has its flaws.  In fact, I think if the running time had been a good twenty or thirty minutes longer, it would’ve let the plot breathe a little and some of the pacing issues would’ve ironed themselves out.  However, the big take away is that Marvel has a character that resonates with a whole new audience.  I for one can’t wait to see Black Panther kick some ass in the upcoming Infinity War.

Marvel Cinematic Universe Scorecard:

Avengers:  Age of Ultron:  ****

The Incredible Hulk:  ****
Iron Man:  ****
Thor:  Ragnarok:  ****
Spider-Man:  Homecoming:  ****
Iron Man 3:  ****
Captain America:  Civil War:  *** ½
Ant-Man:  *** ½
Guardians of the Galaxy:  *** ½
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:  *** ½ 
Black Panther:  *** ½ 
The Avengers:  ***
Captain America:  The First Avenger:  ***
Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  ***
Thor:  ***
Thor:  The Dark World:  ***
Iron Man 2:  ***
Doctor Strange:  ** ½ 

MYSTERIOUS ISLAND OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN (1979) **

Peter Lawford is a wealthy industrialist who is using his private plane to get an injured worker (Michael McGreevey, from the Dexter Riley movies) to a hospital.  The pilot (Sandy McPeak) gets them hopelessly lost so when they run low of fuel, they have to land on an uncharted island.  They soon learn the place is inhabited solely by women.  Lizbeth (Jaime Lyn Bower) rules the women with an iron fist and takes orders from a divine spirit known only as “Sister”.  She allows the men to stay only if they agree to fight off some nasty “head choppers" who periodically pillage the island.  Naturally, the co-pilot (Steven Keats, from Death Wish) falls head over heels for one of the natives, which causes a power struggle among the women.

Even for a ‘70s Made for TV movie, Mysterious Island of Beautiful Women is a slow and uneventful affair.  Once the men find their way to the island, there isn’t a whole lot for them to do except make doe eyes at the natives.  The identity of Lizbeth’s supernatural deity is predictable, and the explanation is overly long-winded.  (I mean, what would a ‘70s Made for TV be without a lot of gratuitous padding?)

The cast makes it watchable.  Lawford seems to be having a good time surrounded by beautiful women and Keats does a fine job as the most levelheaded male in the bunch.  Clint (Killdozer) Walker is probably the most memorable as the muscle-bound passenger with a giant chip on his shoulder.  Of the native women, Kathryn Davis fares best as the blond-haired “Snow” who gets a crush on Keats.  It’s unfortunate she only starred in one more movie because she is quite fetching.  We also have Jayne (Body and Soul) Kennedy as the lone black woman of the tribe named “Chocolate”.

The script was co-written by Gary Sherman, who was a few years away from his magnum opus, Vice Squad. 

AKA:  Island of Sister Theresa.