RED SPARROW (2018) ***

It’s hard out here for a Russian ballerina.  You can pirouette all you want, but the second you break your leg, Mother Russia will turn her back on you.  If you want to keep hustling, you have to go to Sparrow School where you learn to be a spy.  And by “spy”, I mean you learn how to be humiliated, degraded, and raped.  That way, when you meet your target, you’ll let him do anything he wants to, so you can get close enough to him and get whatever MacGuffin Mother Russia needs you to get from them.

If you thought Jennifer Lawrence got put the wringer in mother! wait till you see her in this.  She is beaten, abused, raped, and humiliated constantly throughout the film’s two and a half hour running time.  No matter what Russia or the Americans throw at her, she perseveres.  She does what she must for her country (OK, for her sick mother), but just know if you cross her, she holds one helluva grudge.

Red Sparrow (directed by Lawrence’s frequent Hunger Games collaborator, Francis Lawrence) is a throwback to the Cold War espionage thrillers of yesteryear.  The plot is very simple yet convoluted at the same time.  The relationship between Lawrence and an American agent SEEMS genuine, but is it?  You never know who’s conning who although you THINK you have a good idea.  

Those seeking action and thrills will be disappointed.  This is more of a character study of how secrets kill, how loyalties are tested, and the toil dehumanizing yourself for your country takes on not only your body, but your mind.  Is it a little too long?  Perhaps, but the length helps to put you squarely in Lawrence’s shoes.  You feel every punch, slap, and slice she endures, and when she finally retaliates, it’s a truly rousing moment.

Lawrence, as she proved in mother!, excels at playing a put-upon woman who continually puts others above herself and sacrifices everything for a seemingly higher power.  You root for her every step of the way.  This is one of her all-time best performances and the film is worth checking out solely for her.  

The supporting cast is grand.  Joel Edgerton is a good match for her.  He has a way of breaking down the barriers between them in a realistic way.  He may be a spy, but he feels like a regular joe, which may or may not be a ploy on the character’s part.  Jeremy Irons is excellent as a Russian general who may or may not be advocating the termination of Lawrence’s character.  Charlotte Rampling is stunning as the cruel matron of the Sparrow School.  You’ll be certain she has ice water in her veins by the end of the movie.

The most entertaining turn comes courtesy of Mary-Louise Parker.  She plays a chief of staff member in cahoots with Russia who loves her vodka.  It’s little more than an extended cameo, but she practically steals the movie out from under everyone.  I’d pay good money to see her character in a spin-off.

It’s Lawrence who gets the best line of the movie when she says, “You sent me to whore school!”

DEATH WISH (2018) ****

When Charles Bronson starred in Michael Winner’s Death Wish in 1974, his career (at least in America) had started to fade.  The role of Paul Kersey fit Bronson like a glove, and audiences responded to his performance, making it a box-office smash.  The film’s success rejuvenated Bronson’s career and throughout the years, the increasingly wacky sequels found Bronson even more legions of fans worldwide. 

That’s why a remake of Death Wish seems tailor made for Bruce Willis.  Recently, Willis has been toiling away in the DTV market.  I’m not saying he’s been sleepwalking in his performances lately, but that old time Bruno swagger has been a scare commodity in recent years.  It’s been a while since he’s invested himself totally in a role.  

I’m glad to report that this is Bruce’s best performance in decades.  His portrayal of Paul Kersey ranks up there with the likes of John McClane and Joe Hallenbeck.  Not only is the new Death Wish Bruce’s best solo effort since Last Man Standing, it also happens to be the third best Death Wish ever made.

We shouldn’t have even doubted it.  After all, this is an Eli Roth movie we’re talking about here.  Like the last couple of Roth pictures, Death Wish ’18 has a knowing sense of humor about it that complements the graphic violence nicely.  The humor is never cartoonish or at the expense of the characters, but it is often black as midnight and funny as hell.

The film follows the beats of the original for the most part.  Paul Kersey is devastated by a home invasion that leaves his wife murdered and his daughter comatose.  Distraught, he grabs a gun and wanders into the bad part of town shooting down muggers and thieves.  He becomes a local antihero and the cops quietly try to figure a way to put a lid on his vigilante activities.

The biggest change is Kersey’s occupation.  I’m not sure I bought Charles Bronson as an architect in the original series.  I feel the same way about Bruce Willis portraying a surgeon in this.  However, his skill set is a perfect complement to his vigilantism.  When he gets shot during shootouts with street thugs, he can always go home and patch himself up, usually by MacGyvering something together using Krazy Glue and staples.  His knowledge of human anatomy also gives him the upper hand while torturing his victims.  I particularly loved the way Roth contrasted the duality of the character during a split screen montage where Kersey pulls bullets out of his patients while putting bullets into his gun.  

Another difference from the Bronson pictures:  Kersey isn’t a very good vigilante; at least in the beginning.  In fact, he even hurts himself the first time he fires a gun!  In the original Death Wish, it felt like Bronson was never in any danger… mostly because… he’s Charles Bronson.  Here, there’s a feeling Bruce might actually fulfill his death wish.  I mean he can’t even win an argument with an angry parent at his daughter’s soccer game.  How will he fare against a heavily armed den of thieves? 

He’s a quick learner though.  The film is structured like a Rocky movie.  This iteration of Kersey is an underdog and we’re rooting for him the whole time.  There are even montages like Rocky that show Kersey progressively getting better at shooting a gun.

Bruce is better than he’s been in years.  He hits the right notes as a grieving husband who feels he’s let his family down.  He’s even better when it comes to the scenes of him dishing out vigilante justice.  The supporting cast is equally stellar.  This is truly one of the finest ensemble casts assembled in recent memory.  Vincent D’Onofrio is excellent as Willis’ brother.  Their scenes together are some of the finest work either man has ever done.  I also thoroughly enjoyed Dean Norris as the detective on the case who slowly gets wise to Willis’ target practice.  Elizabeth Shue does a wonderful job as Willis’ wife.  She and Bruce feel like a real married couple and not just two actors playing scenes, which makes her death even more tragic.

Since this is an origin Death Wish story, it doesn’t veer heavily into the outrageousness that made the sequels so legendary.  However, there are a few moments that live up to the heights of the original series.  There’s a scene involving brake fluid that is cringe-inducing, and the confrontation with a hoodlum known as “The Ice Cream Man” is as badass as anything Bronson did in the O.G. D.W. franchise.  By the time the bad guys make their final siege on Willis’ home, he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve that Bronson himself would approve of.

What I’m saying is:  Any self-respecting fan of Death Wish or Bruce Willis needs to support this to ensure the survival of the series.  Can you imagine this incarnation of Kersey waging war against The Giggler?  Or using an exploding remote-controlled soccer ball on gangsters?  I for one am all for it.

If you enjoyed this review of Death Wish and are hungry for more reviews of Eli Roth movies, be sure to purchase my latest book, The Bloody Book of Horror as it contains reviews of Roth’s Knock Knock and The Green Inferno.  You can purchase it through Amazon here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1542566622/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520113366&sr=8-1&keywords=mitch+lovell

Or, you can get the e-book version on Kindle:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B6TBVG1/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1520120839&sr=8-2&keywords=mitch+lovell

THE BLOODY BOOK OF HORROR--ON SALE NOW!

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know my new book, The Bloody Book of Horror is now on sale at Amazon.  It is a collection of over 150 brand-spanking-new reviews of horror films ranging from Mark of the Vampire to Don’t Breathe.  Here’s the official press release:

For the faint of heart, keep repeating--"IT'S ONLY A BOOK! IT'S ONLY A BOOK!" Do you love horror movies? Probably not as much as author Mitch Lovell does. He's been obsessively watching horror movies since the age of five. After three and a half decades of binging horror flicks, he's written about some of his favorite (and not-so favorite) genre films. From '80s slashers to '50s monster movies. From the works of Stephen King to the films from out of the WWE wrestling ring. From killer animals and creepy kids to wicked witches and deranged Satanists. Mitch reviews them all. Horror fans! This is the book you've been waiting for! 

Mitch Lovell is the proprietor of The Video Vacuum website and the author of Double Vision: Hollywood vs. Hollywood. He has also contributed to Exploitation Retrospect, Saturday Night Screening, and Rupert Pupkin Speaks.

You can purchase the book on Amazon here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1542566622/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520113366&sr=8-1&keywords=mitch+lovell

If you’re tech savvy, you can get the e-book version on Kindle:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B6TBVG1/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1520120839&sr=8-2&keywords=mitch+lovell

Thanks to everyone who has frequented The Video Vacuum in the past decade.  Thanks to everyone who's bought my previous books.  I hope you'll enjoy this one!  See you at the movies…

4GOT10 (2015) **

4GOT10 plays like one of those Tarantino knockoffs from the ‘90s, minus the black humor and quirky characters.  It’s an Everybody’s-Chasing-a-Bag-of-Money movie.  A crooked cop (Michael Pare), an amnesiac crook (Johnny Messner from Anacondas:  The Hunt for the Blood Orchid), and a Mexican drug lord (Danny Trejo) are among the people after the loot after a shootout in the desert goes awry.  Dolph Lundgren is the DEA agent in hot pursuit of the cash, who may or may not have an ulterior motive.

We spend the most time with Messner.  He kind of looks and acts like a budget version of Hugh Jackman.  Like Wolverine, he spends most of the movie trying to remember who he is, and he doesn’t do a bad job all things considered.  Dolph is fun to watch as the straight-laced Fed.  He wore his nerdy horn-rimmed glasses well.  I know I’d pay good money to see him in a DTV sequel to Falling Down.  It’s Pare who gives the best performance though as the corrupt sheriff who quickly gets in over his head.

Despite the efforts of the first-rate cast, this is a thoroughly routine affair.  You know you’re in trouble from the first scene when the characters are introduced with a freeze frame and a title card with a stupid nickname like “The Kid”, “The Suit”, and “The Enforcer”.  It gets points for the OK twist at the end, and being relatively short, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.  One thing is for sure, 4GOT10 will be 4GOT10 not long after you watch it.

AKA:  The Good, the Bad, and the Dead.  AKA:  Forgotten.

CONTRACT TO KILL (2016) **

Steven Seagal has been Hard to Kill.  He’s gone Out for a Kill.  He’s even been Driven to Kill.  This time around, he's got a Contract to Kill. 

Seagal plays a former assassin who is lured out of retirement.  His mission:  Bust up a meeting between the Mexican drug cartel and an Islamic terrorist cell.  Seagal soon learns he and his team are merely a pawn in a bigger government scheme.

If you can get past the talky first half, you’ll be treated to some OK action.  Like most of the films Seagal makes for director Keoni Waxman, Contract to Kill has more action than many recent Seagal outings.  The fights are your typical Seagal slap-happy affairs.  Sometimes, the rapid-fire editing turns them into a near incoherent mess. The knife and sword fights are slightly better, if only because they're punctuated by someone getting a sword to the head or knife to the throat.  

Seagal is also more liable to get up and walk around for Waxman and does so again here.  There are only a handful of scenes of Seagal sitting around doing nothing.  (He does have one fight scene while sitting down though.)  Contract to Kill is a little low on late-era Seagal goofiness, but we do get a funny scene of a drone flying around carrying a machine gun. 

Waxman also has the uncanny ability to get Seagal to share scenes with other actors.  In most of his recent films, Seagal has been obviously inserted into the scene after the fact.  In Contract to Kill, he actually appears in several two-shots with other actors, which is a little jarring if you’ve become accustomed to seeing him awkwardly edited into dialogue scenes in recent years.  

Giving Seagal a team to work with is beneficial.  That way, he can delegate duties to others while sitting down.  Not only do these scenes help disguise the fact that Seagal has just spent five minutes of screen time sitting down, they also serve a plot function.  (These scenes are similar to the True Justice TV show in many ways.)  If filmmakers can find more justifiable reasons for Seagal to spend most of his screen time sitting down without being so obvious about it, I’d say he still has a long career ahead of him. 

THE ASIAN CONNECTION (2016) **

Steven Seagal stars as a shady crime boss in Cambodia.  A bank robber (John Edward Lee) steals from a bank that contains a hefty sum of Seagal’s cash.  Seagal’s right hand man (Sahajak Boonthanakit from Hard Target 2) tracks him down, but instead of killing him, he offers Lee a deal:  Continue to knock off the banks where Seagal keeps his cash and they’ll split the money down the middle.

The Asian Connection (which was co-written by Tom Sizemore of all people) is a mediocre, but watchable latter-day Seagal effort.  This one combines his recent love of playing villains with his penchant for wearing sunglasses, a doo rag, and a big bushy beard (although he still wears his more traditional Asian-inspired fashions).  As far as these things go, it’s not bad.  He spends a lot of his time sitting down (another new Seagal motif), but he does have a pretty good knife fight that opens the picture.

Since Seagal spends most of his screen time hanging around the edges of the plot, it’s up to Lee to do much of the heavy lifting.  Looking like Johnny Knoxville cosplaying as Tyler Durden, Lee makes for a serviceable leading man.  His romantic scenes are a bit dull, but he makes out just fine during the bank robbing sequences.  

Michael Jai White is around for one scene as an arms dealer who equips Lee.  He doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but he gives the movie a much-needed shot in the arm.  White delivers a solid performance, and is pretty funny too, which makes you wish he hung around longer.

DOCTOR DRACULA (1978) * ½

Producer Sam Sherman got a hold of the softcore skin flick Lucifer’s Women and hired cult director Al Adamson to take all the sex out and put in a bunch of new scenes. The new scenes feature members of his usual stock players such as John Carradine and Regina Carrol.  Because of that, it’s a lot more tolerable than Lucifer’s Women, which was filled with a lot of bad acting. 

The central premise of Lucifer’s Women is still there, but Adamson shoehorns a vampire subplot in there.  The narrative was already pretty jumbled to begin with.  The movie already has hypnotism, reincarnation, and Satanists in it.  It’s a small miracle that the new scenes are much more entertaining than the old footage.

If you’re a fan of Adamson, this should go down smooth enough.  I’ll admit, he’s not one of the most competent filmmakers out there, but he does a better-than-expected job at blending the new footage with the old.  It helps that they got Larry Hankin back for the new scenes, so the transitions between the old and new footage is hard to spot in some scenes.

Although most of the movie is bad, the scene where Dracula has sex in a coffin is kinkier and more inventive than anything in the X-Rated Lucifer’s Women.  Adamson also wisely dropped the Paul Thomas subplot, which allows the film to run much smoother.  You still have to sit through those long scenes from Lucifer’s Women though, and let me tell you, they’re twice as hard to get through the second time around.

It’s not all bad though.  I liked it when Carradine name-dropped Elvis in a list of Satanic messengers.  While the new stuff isn’t great, the scenes of Svengali holding seances and Dracula stalking his victims are more entertaining and atmospheric than the stuff the other director came up with.  However, the ending is really dumb and is about as stupid as anything found in Lucifer’s Women.  In fact, it was probably a Two Star movie until the shitty ending brought things to an abrupt halt.

AKA:  Lucifer’s Women.  AKA:  Svengali.