Unhinged (2020)

With a talented writer and director having fun with their material, Unhinged would have been a decent enough thriller for film fans to enjoy easily enough. The addition of Russell Crowe in the lead role, giving a performance as gleefully psychotic as any I can think of, makes it even better, turning it into something that feels surprisingly unmissable for this particular subgenre.

Essentially, this is a “*insert noun* from hell” movie. Crowe plays a character who is having such a bad time, apparently, that his only solution is to kill some people. And with that killing done, he is sitting in traffic, and zones out while a traffic light turns to green, when he is given a horn honk from Rachel (Caren Pistorius). Rachel is late, a bit stressed, and also has her son, Kyle (Gabriel Bateman), in the car with her. Thinking that she is having a bad day, the man she upset with her horn honking becomes determined to show her just how bad her day can get.

Director Derrick Borte has an interesting filmography that includes Cat Run (very enjoyable stuff) and The Joneses (excellent). He doesn’t seem drawn to any one genre, but rather seems to simply react to material he thinks he can treat well. Carl Ellsworth, on the other hand, definitely feels comfortable writing thrillers, having also worked on the excellent Disturbia, Red Eye, and the remake of The Last House On The Left. Ellsworth knows how to make the most of a cracking concept, and both he and Borte do superb work here. Because the unique aspect to this movie is the fact that Crowe’s character gives absolutely zero shits. He doesn’t care who seems him acting like a psycho, and doesn’t care who else he has to hurt by his one-man tsunami of violence and pain.

Crowe is more than up to the task when it comes to being intimidating, vicious, and also playing things in a way that feels very darkly comedic. Pistorius is a solid lead, starting off bewildered by the sharp turn of events before accepting the madness and digging deep to find extra reserves of strength. Bateman is a decent child actor, there’s a great little scene for Jimmi Simpson that underlines just how dangerous Crowe’s character is, and Austin P. McKenzie, Juliene Joyner, and others do a good job portraying likeable individuals who could very easily become unable to continue breathing due to the actions of one madman.

If this had gone along the same lines of many other films we have seen like it then Unhinged would not be as memorable as it is. It goes from zero to one hundred within the first few scenes, and that makes it a memorable viewing experience. It allows the film to feel different from others in this subgenre, despite heading to the same third act. And I like to think that some candy cane scissors owned by the lead character were a nice nod to another superb thriller about a vicious psycho behind the wheel of a big engine. 

Highly recommended. In fact, you will be mad at yourself if you dismiss it as something not worth your time. And the fact that it's a nice and well-paced 90 minutes (something becoming increasingly rare nowadays) is another reason to recommend it.

8/10

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Mubi Monday: Under The Silver Lake (2018)

Although this is his third feature film, David Robert Mitchell's Under The Silver Lake most definitely feels like a sophomore effort. It's a film made by someone who has been given the budget and casting choices to let loose and indulge himself after making a name with his previous outing (in this case, the enjoyable It Follows).

The plot, seemingly dense but also actually fairly slim for the 2hr+ runtime, sees a young man named Sam (Andrew Garfield) drawn into a Hitchcockian web that involves a missing girl (Riley Keough), a number of local urban legends, and a conspiracy theory so grandiose that it dances and twirls through absurd territory. It's a mix of The Big Lebowski, Inherent Vice, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, with the obvious influence of The Long Goodbye also in there. It's also frustrating, because so many individual moments are great, without adding up to anything really worthwhile.

Garfield is great in the lead role, playing someone smart but without any drive or focus. He's so likeable that it's easy to watch the film without being preoccupied by the many questions we should have about him. What happened recently in his life? What did he do to get money when he was working? How the hell does he attract some gorgeous women while placing himself firmly in slacker/loser territory? You get some details that help to answer the first question but not much else. Now I don't need a film to fill in every space for me but when you spend most of the lengthy runtime with a character who delves deeper and deeper into an investigation of his own making then it's good to know a bit more about that character, as far as I am concerned. Instead, Mitchell's script is more concerned with putting together a collage of cool visual motifs and soundtrack choices. It's a fever dream, but one without the sense of urgency or energy, which is an odd combination.

The direction matches the script, not bothering about logic or coherence when there's a chance to jump from one memorable moment to the next (and the less said about the repeated touch of having women turn to the main character and eventually start making dog noises the better). This means that you get a lot of wonderful moments in a film that only had to bring them all together in a satisfying way to become something great. It doesn't manage that, instead turning into one of those enjoyable albums that you stay in love with because there are always two or three tracks that you skip, leading to some confusion about why you love it so on the rare occasions when you listen to it all the way through.

Alongside Garfield, Keough does well in her small role, and you have decent turns from Riki Lindhome, Grace Van Patten, Jimmi Simpson, Topher Grace, and, in one particularly memorable scene, Jeremy Bobb, playing a super-talented songwriter responsible for all of the most memorable tunes throughout the years. The acting is pretty flawless throughout, which is another major plus helping to keep the film enjoyable in the lesser scenes.

I liked this, at times I liked it a lot, but it's obviously a film that was made by Mitchell coming up with some memorable ideas and moments that he then had to find a plot for. I don't think he came up with a good enough plot, not for the lack of trying, but the individual moments ensure that it's not without many pleasures for cinephiles.

7/10

Here's the film on shiny disc.
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April Fools: Knights Of Badassdom (2013)

When I first saw the trailer for Knights Of Badassdom I knew that I was going to love it. Well, I felt very strongly that I was going to love it. It had a great cast and a premise that I thought couldn't fail. Unfortunately, the film was held back for a long, long time before finally being released, after a great deal of studio interference, apparently. It would be nice to see the original movie that director Joe Lynch intended people to see, but it's hard to think of any improvements that would turn this into something truly great. As it stands, it's massively disappointing, mainly because of how it fails to fully exploit the brilliant central idea.

Steve Zahn and Peter Dinklage play a couple of guys who enjoy a bit of LARP (Live Action Role Playing) now and again. They drag their buddy (Ryan Kwanten) along to a big event, in order to cheer him up after he was unceremoniously ditched by his girlfriend, and start to play. Unfortunately, one of the props being used for the game is a bit too real, and one of the main character unwittingly summons a demon that quickly starts preying on the helpless LARPers all around.

What do you think? Sounds fantastic, right? It really does, and it was that central concept that had me salivating for a long time, eager for the film to get any kind of release that would allow me to at least see the damn thing. Well, maybe Joe Lynch has some super-duper extended cut that rejigs everything and magically turns the movie into what many people hoped it would be, but I'm not holding my breath.

The main problem seems to lie with the screenplay by Matt Wall and Kevin Dreyfuss. It just doesn't pack in enough mirth, doesn't throw enough gore in to compensate, and spends far too little time with the best characters, played by Zahn and Dinklage (both on fine form). Kwanten is someone I like, but he's not treated well here. I spent many of his scenes just wishing that his character had been wiped from the movie, he was simply unnecessary and uninteresting. Summer Glau brightens things up slightly by being Summer Glau, and Jimmi Simpson is pretty hilarious for almost every moment that he's onscreen, but there's still not enough to raise this to the level of something even average.

The direction from Lynch seems to add to the mishandling of the material, but maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe all of my problems with the movie DO reflect on the studio interference more than the potential that the movie had to be something great, but we can always only ultimately critique whatever we have available to us, and this IS Knights Of Badassdom. For the time being, at least. And, in this incarnation of the movie, Lynch seems happy to go along with the undercooked helpings served up by Wall and Dreyfuss, before using the finale to turn off anyone who has watched all the way through and tried to convince themselves that it was worth the wait.

Not badass. Just bad.

4/10

http://www.amazon.com/Knights-Badassdom-Blu-ray-Peter-Dinklage/dp/B00HOGRJQG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392233506&sr=8-1&keywords=knights+of+badassdom