THE LAYOVER (2017) **

Kate Upton and Alexandra Daddario are best friends whose flight to Florida gets redirected due to a hurricane.  On the plane, they both become infatuated with a hunk (Matt Barr) sitting next to them.  The trio then decide to take a road trip down to Florida and the two friends soon become bitter rivals as they compete for his affections. 

Director William H. Macy (yes, THAT William H. Macy) tries to make a raunchy R rated comedy with the gender roles reversed (which is an OK idea, I guess), but with only marginal success.  I’m a big fan of all involved.  Daddario and Upton are charming as always and seem to be having fun playing Girls Behaving Badly.  Sadly, they aren’t given much to work with.  The script by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s David Hornsby and Lance Krall feels like a leftover It’s Always Sunny script.  That might not have been so bad if there were some genuine laughs here.

Macy is one of the greatest actors of his generation.  As a director, he doesn’t have much in the way of style.  It’s hard to see what drew him to the material in the first place as most of the gags revolve around poop, burping, sex, and drugs.  Some enjoyment can be found from seeing Upton and Daddario being totally willing to make a fool of themselves, but they really deserved a vehicle worthy of their talents. 

COLD PURSUIT (2019) ****

I know y’all aren’t watching Liam Neeson movies anymore, and that’s a damn shame because Cold Pursuit just might be the finest film of his latter-day career.  It hits all the notes you want to see from a Neeson revenge picture, but there’s a lot more going on here than just that.  It starts simplistically enough (Neeson is a snowplow driver who is out to avenge the death of his son by some unscrupulous drug dealers) before slowly revealing a grand canvas of violence begetting violence until the bodies begin piling up like cordwood.

It’s a terrific showcase for its supporting cast of colorful characters.  Many of these actors I have never heard of, but all of them shine brightly and leave memorable impressions in their brief screen time.  The best was the ever-reliable William Forsythe as Neeson’s ex-con brother.  

I also wasn’t expecting it to be so damned funny.  There are more laughs here than most recent TV comedies have in an entire season.  Imagine if the Coen Brothers, or maybe even ‘90s era Quentin Tarantino made a Liam Neeson actioner and it might’ve looked a lot like Cold Pursuit.  It’s full of quirky characters, surprising bursts of violence, and colorful dialogue.  The best part is the monologue by one of the villain’s goons about maids in hotels. 

Don’t fret die-hard Neeson fans.  The straightforward revenge stuff is still great.  Director Hans Petter Moland is smart enough not to skimp on the good stuff.  I especially loved how Neeson isn’t very good at killing people in the beginning.  When he murders a guy in a parking garage, he parks so far away that he has to drag the body a long way before putting it into his van.  Later, it takes him multiple tries to strangle a guy to death. 

He gets good at it really quick though.  Neeson gets this one guy all alone, pulls a gun on him, and proceeds to punch him with the gun.  That’s right, folks.  This movie features gun punching.

There are no wasted moments in Cold Pursuit.  Every scene builds on the last.  Each scene is surprising, unique, and morbidly funny in its own way.  By the time Neeson’s using heavy machinery to plant trees in the villain’s Tesla you got to tip your hat to the filmmakers.  They have taken a thoroughly standard action template and turned it into a fascinating, absurd, and unforgettable masterpiece.

PIRANHA (1995) ***

Long before Alexander Aja’s wild and wooly Piranha remake, we got this remake of Joe Dante’s classic from director Scott (Midnight Tease) Levy.  It was part of Roger Corman Presents, a Showtime series that consisted mostly of remakes of Corman’s old titles, with a few originals tossed in there to pad out the season.  The remakes that tried to revamp the classic Corman movies were met with varying degrees of success.  For every ho-hum entry like the Humanoids from the Deep remake, there was a fun one like Wasp Woman to balance things out.  This is one of the good ones.

The cast for this thing is pretty phenomenal.  We have William Katt, Alexandra Paul, Mila Kunis (making her screen debut), Monte Markham, Soleil Moon Frye, James Karen, Lorissa McComas, Leland Orser, and Don Pedro Colley just to name a few.  Even if all of this feels overly familiar (ever the thriftster, Corman even recycled the fish attack scenes from the original movie), the cast alone keeps you watching.

Scream Queen McComas plays the skinny-dipping first victim who who makes an Attack of the Crab Monsters reference before being eaten.  Paul is the private investigator sent to look for her.  She teams up with tracker Katt and together, they stumble upon the Army test site where the piranhas were being experimented on.  They accidentally unleash the deadly fish into the river, which just so happens to lead to a summer camp where Katt’s daughter (Kunis) is attending.  

As far as the Piranha franchises goes, this is somewhere in the middle of the pack.  It’s missing the out and out fun of Dante and Aja’s pictures and lacks the goofy charm of James Cameron’s Piranha 2 and John Gulager’s Piranha 3DD.  It’s still a fairly enjoyable time waster.  It moves at an acceptable pace and the piranha attacks occur at a steady clip.  The highlights include a gnarly scene where a fisherman gets his feet bitten off, a golden retriever being turned into Dog Chow, and a skinny-dipper losing an arm.  

Levy’s direction is a little workmanlike, which prevents it from really cutting loose.  While it all might suffer in comparison to the other Piranhas, it does contain a scene in which Punky Brewster gets eaten by killer fish.  You can’t say that about any of the other films in the series, that’s for sure.  Because of that, this Piranha is OK by me. 

Jim Wynorski was credited as a “Piranha Wrangler”.  

AKA:  Piranha 3.  AKA:  Piranha ’95.

FREEWAY 2: CONFESSIONS OF A TRICKBABY (1999) ** ½

Matthew Bright’s wild Freeway played like a crazy modernized version of Little Red Riding Hood.  This one is more like Hansel and Gretel.  It’s not as consistently entertaining as the original, but it still has that same batshit insane DNA running through its veins.  

White Girl (Natasha Lyonne) and her serial killer cellmate Cyclona (Maria Celedonio) escape from juvie and head to Mexico.  Along the way, Cyclona goes off her meds and kills a bunch of people.  They’re kind of like Hansel and Gretel, only instead of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, they leave a trail of crack.  Some crackheads come along and steal the crack rocks and our heroines wind up getting lost in the woods.  Eventually they wind up in Tijuana where they meet the nun (Vincent Gallo) who raised Cyclona.  The girls realize all too late that the sister is actually a demented cannibal pedophile.

Bright only made a handful of films, which is unfortunate because every one of them I have seen has been unique, unpredictable, and kinda crazy.  Even this one, which isn’t exactly great has its moments of inspired weirdness.  (The first twenty minutes has more scenes of bulimic girls puking than you can shake a stick at.)  It’s not a patch on the original, but there’s enough craziness here to make me kind of wish Bright made another sequel.  

Gallo turns in one of his weirdest performances.  He dials his trademark arrogant persona way down, which sort of works against him.  It’s certainly something to see, but his half of the movie is easily the weakest.  It’s definitely more fun when Lyonne and Celedonio are on the run.  The supporting cast, which include David Alan Grier as Lyonne’s lawyer and John Landis as an incredulous judge are a lot of fun though.

Fun Fact #1:  According to IMDb, this was originally going to be directed by Doris Wishman, which would’ve been… something.

Fun Fact #2:  George Erschbamer, director of the Snake Eater trilogy, was the second unit director. 

AKA:  Freeway 2:  Highway to Hell.  AKA:  Trickbaby (Freeway 2).

THE DUEL (1973) ***

A bloodthirsty clan take out members of a rival gang at their boss’ funeral.  (They smuggle in knives hidden inside burial wreaths.)  The gang retaliates by killing the head of the clan.  His son, Tang (Ti Lung) is sent into exile for safekeeping, but when he returns, he discovers it was all a ruse to supplant him as leader.  His clan even resorts to selling his girlfriend to a brothel.  When she commits suicide, Tang teams up with his sworn enemy, known only as “The Rambler” (David Chiang) to get revenge. 

I love shit like this.  You know how it is.  When you and your mortal enemy are at each other’s throats, but you put your differences aside JUST LONG ENOUGH to help him out of a tight spot.  Of course, when it’s all over, you’re going to have to fight one another to the death.  Naturally, when he’s wounded, you’re going to nurse him back to health too.  I mean, you don’t want to fight him when he isn’t 100%.  Where’s the honor in that?  This is just the kind of macho soap opera shit that director Chang (Five Deadly Venoms) Cheh excels at.  

The Duel features all the bloody fight scenes and out and out mayhem you’d expect from a Shaw Brothers/Chang Cheh collaboration.  The themes of loyalty and honor that run throughout the picture are absorbing and the performances (especially by Chiang as the fan-waving, cigarette-smoking badass) are uniformly great.  The finale probably has one slow-motion overly-dramatic interlude too many, but there’s enough gory goodness here to make it a top-notch Kung Fu flick.

AKA:  Duel of the Iron Fist.  AKA:  Revenge of the Dragons.  

CHAINSAW SALLY (2004) ** ½

Sally (April Monique Burril) is a seemingly innocent looking librarian by day, chainsaw-wielding maniac by night.  She murders people when they talk in the library and hunts them down if they don’t return their books or pay their late fees.  She was molded to become a killer at an early age, due to a traumatizing incident in her childhood and Sally sets out to kill anyone who threatens her family again.

Chainsaw Sally was shot on video and filmed in Baltimore.  As a Maryland resident, I enjoyed hearing some of the thick Maryland accents.  It’s also cool seeing local genre heroes like George Stover and Count Gore De Vol appearing in cameos.  We also get Leatherface himself, Gunnar Hansen playing Sally’s father and the Godfather of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis pops up as the owner of the local hardware store.  

All the stuff with Chainsaw Sally sawing up her victims is just fine.  I liked the scenes where she and her brother play a demented version of Twister as well as “Toolbox Murders:  The Home Game”.  We also get a great scene where Sally ties up a woman and pours acid down her throat until she pees something that looks like the consistency of baked beans.  

Unfortunately, there’s a subplot about a shady real estate deal that eats up a lot of screen time and is kinda dull.  It does give us at least one inexplicable Jaws reference though, so it can’t be all bad.  The weak stabs at Tarantino-esque humor and dialogue (like a conversation about Batman being gay) are obvious and aren’t very funny though.

Chainsaw Sally is better than most low budget shot-on-video horror movies.  However, it falls well short of being a classic of the genre.  Still, it’s nice seeing the future director of Gerald’s Game, Mike Flanagan getting his start as the director of photography (which is probably why the film looks better than a lot of its shot-on-video contemporaries).

THE YOUNG VAGABOND (1985) ** ½

Beggar Su (Gordon Liu) is the rambunctious son of a famous winemaker.  When he’s not out getting drunk, Beggar is getting into brawls.  While he’s away at school, a crooked villain makes a play to take over his father’s winery.  After he kills Beggar’s brother and girlfriend, Beggar goes out for revenge.

The Young Vagabond is a Shaw Brothers production that is similar in some ways to Drunken Master.  Unlike most Drunken Master knockoffs, it’s fairly successful when it’s trying to be funny.  I liked the part where Beggar and a schoolmate fight at their desks whenever the teacher’s back is turned.  Some sequences aren’t very funny or go on too long (like the extended soccer game), but it all works more often than not.  Although it looks like a period piece, one guy makes a random Miami Vice reference, which is probably the funniest thing about the movie.  

All this is entertaining for the most part.  There are also plenty of Kung Fu battles throughout, which certainly helps.  However, the uneven tone prevents it from really kicking into gear.  The first half is dedicated to a lot of slapstick humor while the final act is awfully dark and violent.  The last shot is rather over the top and gory for what was initially a silly and lighthearted movie too.

Lui gives a great performance.  He combines his badass martial arts expertise with a light comic touch and is a lot of fun to watch.  I can’t say it’s one of his best, but The Young Vagabond should please most of his fans.