BIRDS OF PREY (AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN) (2020) * ½

After a disappointing opening weekend, Warner Brothers and DC quietly changed the name of Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) to a more streamlined Harley Quinn:  Birds of Prey.  (The version I saw kept the needlessly wordy original title intact.)  The more I think about it though, the newer title is shockingly a lot more accurate.  This is a Harley Quinn movie with precious little Birds of Prey action.  The original title seems to suggest that the Birds of Prey would be the main focus with Harley Quinn’s parenthetical adventure being almost an afterthought.  That is not the case however as Harley dominates the movie.  So much so that the Birds of Prey probably only get about ten or fifteen minutes of screen time together as an actual team.  

The schizophrenic title should’ve been my tip-off that this was going to suck.  It immediately clues you in on how the movie gratuitously winks at the camera and thinks it’s oh-so precious and clever when it’s really just a noisy, ugly, and obnoxious slog.  Like the title, the picture itself is unnecessarily cluttered with a lot of extra nonsense that a more experienced director would’ve chunked in favor of forward motion.  As it is, it’s full of a bunch of little asides, flashbacks, and mini-origin stories in search of a feature film.  

For the record, I think a standalone Birds of Prey movie would’ve worked.  I also believe a Harley Quin spin-off could’ve been great.  Frankensteining the two projects together does neither property any favors.

I liked Margot Robbie as much as anyone did in Suicide Squad.  She was easily the best thing about that film.  Here, the filmmakers make her the centerpiece, which wasn’t a bad idea in theory.  However, their approach is to make the movie as colorful, rambunctious, and chaotic as the main character, which is a crucial mistake.  It’s so all over the place you might have to sprinkle a little ADHD medication over your popcorn to make sense of it.  You know you’re in trouble when the usually energetic Rosie Perez gives the most subdued performance.  

Fans of the Birds of Prey TV show and comics will probably be mystified by the handling of the non-Harley characters.  Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) only uses her sonic scream once and Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) has more in common with Oliver Twist than Batgirl.  Only Mary Elizabeth Winstead really nails her character, Huntress.  Even then, they try to make her comical, which feels kind of forced and isn’t very successful (although I liked her interactions with the team as she is not a people person).  I mean, where’s Oracle?  How they could do a Birds of Prey movie without her is beyond me.

Only Ewan McGregor shines as the villain, Black Mask.  He doesn’t take any of this nonsense seriously and is content to just chew on the scenery.  He gets a funny line or two, but that’s not nearly enough to make it worth the slog.  Chris Messina might’ve gotten to sink his teeth into the role of his henchman, Victor Zsasz, but he’s pretty much wasted.

Most of the movie plays like the byproduct of an offscreen bet between film departments to see who could louse up their job the most.  The costumes are atrocious, the lightning is garish, and the cinematography is ugly.  At least the fight scenes are coherent, although only one of them (Harley’s action sequence in the police station) is memorable.  

The R rating feels gratuitous too.  The adult approach to Joker and the in-joke snark of Deadpool warranted an R rating.  Here, it just feels like a tween who just found out they can say the word “fuck” and begin tossing it out whenever they feel like it.  

In short, Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous yada, yada, yada) is by far the worst DC Extended Universe movie and their worst effort since the much-maligned Superman Returns.

DC Extended Universe Scorecard:  

Batman v Superman:  Dawn of Justice: ****

Man of Steel:  ****

Aquaman:  *** ½

Wonder Woman:  *** ½

Justice League:  *** ½

Shazam!:  ***

Suicide Squad:  ***

Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn):  * ½

AKA:  Harley Quinn:  Birds of Prey.  

DATE BAIT (1960) ** ½

Brad (Richard Gering) is a disturbed hophead who gets out of jail to find his ex, Sue (Marlo Ryan) is now in the arms of Danny (Gary Clarke from How to Make a Monster).  Almost immediately, they begin brawling at the local juke joint.  Brad’s brother Nico, a small-time gangster who looks after him and mops up his messes, warns Danny to stay away from Sue.  Naturally, they end up eloping, which sends Brad over the edge. 

Date Bait comes to us from the makers of High School Caesar, and it’s a pretty sleazy juvenile delinquent movie for the time.  The surprising use of heroin (we see Brad with the needle, but not it going into his arm) is what makes it memorable.  I mean we’re not talking about The Man with the Golden Arm or anything here, but the fact that it broaches the subject of drug abuse so boldly (Gering’s wild-eyed junkie performance would look right at home in Reefer Madness) is enough to make you take notice.

Overall, this isn’t nearly as strong of a film as High School Caesar.  That’s mostly because the storyline isn’t quite as involving.  What made Caesar feel so fresh was that there weren’t a lot of unnecessary parents and guardians chastising their JD kids.  Date Bait is rife with them, and the scenes of the temperamental fathers grounding their daughters and unsympathetic big brothers not listening to their troubled siblings until it’s too late really bog things down.  Also, Clarke is merely serviceable in the lead and lacks the intensity of a John Ashley.  Gering is pretty good as the hopped-up dope fiend though.

While Date Bait lacks the energy of High School Caesar, director O’Dale Ireland does deliver a decent car chase sequence.  He also gives us enough scenes of teenagers dancing in malt shops to make it watchable.  Say what you will about the movie, but you have to respect any director who makes a film that features a scene where teenagers hold a calypso picnic.  That alone is enough to make you wish Ireland directed more stuff.  

HIGH SCHOOL CAESAR (1960) ***

John Ashley stars as Matt, a juvenile delinquent who runs a low-rent racketeering operation out of his high school.  Together with his hoodlum friends, they routinely shake down their fellow classmates.  This of course means he’s a natural fit for politics.  Matt rigs the election to get himself voted president of the student body and uses his newfound powers to have his flunkies steal test answers, which they sell for a profit.  The seeds of his downfall are sewn when he accidentally kills a classmate in a fit of road rage and flees the scene.

High School Caesar has everything you could possibly want in a juvenile delinquent movie.  It’s populated with greasers in leather jackets, flunkies with names like “Cricket” and “Stick”, hot rods, and teenagers dancing to rock n’ roll in malt shops.  This one is just different enough to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack.  For instance, most JD flicks feature drag racing.  In this one, it’s a big road race with over a dozen entrants tearing hell down a dirt road.  

I also appreciated the fact that the adults were largely absent from the picture.  That means there’s no useless subplots about town sheriffs warning teens about speeding or lame scenes of teachers trying to “reach” their students.  In fact, much is made about Ashley’s absentee parents being the cause of his delinquency.  He’s really just a misunderstood mixed-up kid looking for attention who’s lashing out because his rich daddy never hugged him.  Heck, he probably would’ve been okay if his dad called him now and again.

Writer/director/producer O’Dale Ireland only made one other movie, Date Bait, which was High School Caesar’s co-feature when it played on drive-in double bills.  That’s unfortunate too because he does a fine job, especially on the racing scenes.  He also gives the finale, in which Ashley’s peers turn on him, a dreamlike quality that is unlike many similar genre films of the time.

ASSAULT OF THE REBEL GIRLS (1959) ½ *

Assault of the Rebel Girls was Errol Flynn’s last movie, and what a depressing swan song it is.  Legend goes Flynn owed an investor another movie on his contract.  In a pinch, he took footage from Cuban Story, a pro-Castro documentary he directed, had his drinking buddy Barry (The Beast Who Killed Women) Mahon film a handful of new “dramatic” scenes, and cobbled this together.  Flynn appeared as “The American” (who is basically himself) and gave the leading lady role to his seventeen-year-old girlfri… uh… “protege”, Beverly Aadland.  The results are akin to watching a partially dramatized newsreel directed by Coleman Francis.

The plot has Flynn going down to Cuba to see firsthand the rise of Castro.  Meanwhile, an American girl played by Aadland searches for her boyfriend who left home to join up with the revolution.  Naturally, it doesn’t take long for her to get caught up in the cause.

Assault of the Rebel Girls is shoddy in every way imaginable.  The bulk of the film is comprised of long scenes of documentary footage narrated by Flynn.  The Cuban footage is mind-numbingly dull, which makes the hour-long running time feel about three times longer.  I mentioned Coleman Francis earlier, and that’s really the best comparison I can make.  Assault of the Rebel Girls would make an ideal double feature with Francis’ Red Zone Cuba as both contain long, perplexing stretches where nothing happens.  

Although the ads made a big deal about Aadland being Flynn’s protégé, she can’t act to save her life.  She manages to botch even the simplest of line readings.  (I did like her delivery of this chestnut though:  “The man I love is somewhere in this lousy, stinking jungle and I’m gonna find him!”)  It’s almost as if Flynn wasn’t even teaching her how to act!  What’s interesting is that even in their scenes together, there is zero chemistry between them.  That’s kind of odd for a pair who are allegedly banging… I mean…. engaged in a mentor/protégé relationship.

The mixture of turgid love story, half-assed war scenes, and haphazard insertion of documentary footage will leave you doubting your sanity.  You can’t blame Flynn for looking blitzed.  I’d be drunk as a skunk while making this turkey too.  (He especially looks hammered during his final pro-Castro speech to the camera.) 

This was Mahon’s first feature.  It’s probable that most of the movie’s problems weren’t his fault as he was likely just doing what Flynn told him to do.  Thankfully, Mahon got much better at directing, especially once he turned his talents to the nudie-cutie market.  (There’s a brief skinny-dipping scene that sort of portends Mahon’s eventual nudie career, although nothing is shown.)  

Mahon was the real-life inspiration for the Steve McQueen character in The Great Escape.  If you ask me, Hollywood really needs to make an Ed Wood-style biopic about his life.  Unlike Plan 9, Assault of the Rebel Girls isn’t enjoyable in the least.  However, the circumstances around its creation ensure its place in cult movie history. 

AKA:  Cuban Rebel Girls.

THE KILLING KIND (1973) ***

Terry (John Savage) is an already disturbed young man when his friends force him to participate in a gang rape.  He takes the rap for his friends and winds up going to prison.  Terry gets out two years later, much to the delight of his overbearing and suffocating mother (Ann Sothern).  She thinks everything will be okay since he’s safe at home, but unbeknownst to her, Terry sneaks out at night and gets revenge on the people he blames for landing him in jail.  Meanwhile, a pretty boarder (Cindy Williams, the same year as American Graffiti) and a sexually repressed neighbor (Dementia 13’s Luana Anders) take a shine to Terry and try to seduce him, which makes him even more emotionally unstable.

Directed with admirable restraint by Curtis (Night Tide) Harrington, The Killing Kind has a unique creepy vibe and an air of sinister atmosphere that hangs over the entire movie.  Harrington is more interested in examining the relationships between his conflicted characters than he is getting bogged down with cliched plot devices and delivering scares.  The dynamic between Savage and Sothern has passing similarities to Psycho (there’s even a bathtub version of Hitchcock’s shower scene), but Harrington prefers to get under the characters’ skin and find out what makes them tick to orchestrating suspenseful set pieces.  Because of that, there are some stretches where nothing happens, but the performances are strong enough to make up for some of the lengthy, sluggish passages.

Savage is great, and his tortured performance keeps you invested even when the movie is spinning its wheels.  Sothern brings a fun energy to the film too.  You’re never quite sure what she’s going to do next.  The best performance comes from Anders, who in the movie’s most memorable scene tries to drunkenly proposition Savage.

So, if you enjoy moody atmosphere rather than cheap thrills, and prefer multi-faceted characters to standard-issue horror movie victims, then The Killing Kind will be your kind of film.

CHOOSE ME (1984) ***

From the outset, writer/director Alan Rudolph’s Choose Me looks like it’s going to be a sexy thriller, but as it turns out, it’s more of an offbeat drama that’s less about sex and more about loneliness and longing.  A character finds someone they yearn and desire, yet somehow they wind up sleeping with someone else.  They feel lost and lonely, but their desire pushes them like a broken compass to places they probably shouldn’t go with people they don’t necessarily need to be with.

Lesley Ann Warren is a bar owner who gets new roommate played by Genevie Bujold.  She’s a call-in radio show host who specializes in sex therapy.  She’s traveling incognito so she can better research Warren, a frequent caller to the show.  Keith Carradine is a mental house parolee and habitual liar (or is he?) who becomes the object of desire by not only Warren, but the other female customers.

Characters intersect, most times at the bar, and leave an indelible impression on one another.  When they’re not in each other’s thoughts they’re in someone else’s thoughts (or beds).  Jazz music runs throughout the film, and the way Rudolph allows scenes to play out often feels like visual jazz.  Sometimes the riffs have structure.  Other times not.  It’s not so much about the notes, but the feeling.  

The cinematography is also kind of dreamy.  The sky often looks unnaturally purple.  The bar is filled with over stylized light, making it feel like someone’s memory of a bar rather than a functioning business. 

Choose Me maybe spins its wheels a bit too much.  There are a few narrative dead ends too, and it goes on a good fifteen minutes longer than necessary, but it’s still an engrossing little sleeper.  That’s mostly due to the performances.  Carradine and especially Warren, are terrific.  Their scenes together particularly crackle.  Some of the other interaction among the cast are a little on the uneven side, but whenever they are front and center, Choose Me is worth choosing. 

BERNIE (2012) *** ½

At its heart, director Richard Linklater’s Bernie is a true crime story.  It’s a smart and darkly funny black comedy that caters to the demands of the genre but is told through Linklater’s distinct prism.  He knows that the best true crime movie characters don’t start out as villains.  Part of the fun of the film comes from seeing what drives such a seemingly nice guy like Bernie to murder.

Only Linklater could’ve done a true crime thriller this way.  He uses real townspeople who knew Bernie as interview subjects, much like a documentarian would.  They provide commentary on the action as it unfolds, with actors dramatizing the events.  It’s a perfect blend of reel and real.  It’s part documentary and part re-enactment.  Even though it doesn’t sound like something Linklater would be interested in, the results are very much in his wheelhouse.

Jack Black stars as Bernie, the assistant mortician in a small East Texas town.  Bernie is an unassuming, effeminate, emphatic, and all-around good Christian who is well-loved in the town, especially by the elderly ladies.  Bernie is such a nice guy that he even charms the usually venomous widow (Shirley MacLaine), who eventually takes a shine to him.  She lavishes him with gifts and has him accompany her on expensive trips in exchange for companionship.  Even a nice guy like Bernie has his breaking point though.  As she becomes crueler and her grip more suffocating, Bernie finally snaps and does away with the old broad once and for all.

Black is great as Bernie.  It’s a real showcase for him.  Not only does he get to explore a nice range of comedy and drama, he gets to do a lot of singing too (everything from hymns to showtunes).  It’s Matthew McConaughey who steals the movie though as the overly anxious prosecutor who’s ready to railroad Bernie.  What makes his scenes work is that the townsfolk are all on Bernie’s side, only because they all know just how much of a bitch MacClaine’s character was.  

Speaking of MacLaine, her character is the only real debit as she’s basically one-note.  It’s nothing she hasn’t done in other movies like Guarding Tess or Steel Magnolias.  Maybe if she wasn’t such an old biddy, it would’ve added some moral ambiguity to the picture.  As it is, you’re practically rooting for Bernie to shoot her from the get-go.  Still, that doesn’t detract too much from the overall fun of the movie.