” Bad Qualities: Everything. The Satanic influence pumps through the film’s heart. It is the worst movie ever made. It will lead kids to murder and death and drug use. If they had not experimented with Lesbiansm [sic] or Alcoholism before, they will definitely do it after viewing.” Hit it here for the best review you’re likely to see of horror anthology V/H/S — “a pornographic celebration of blood and violence and a celebration of Satan’s nefarious ways” — in theaters October 5. [ Christwire via @Simon_Barrett , @BradMiska ]
It’s a big week for the filmmaking Paul Andersons. Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master opened in a handful of cinemas in New York and Los Angeles, and Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil: Retribution in theaters everywhere (in 3D and otherwise). While The Master offers up a immersive, abstract look at an unstable man being courted by the head of a cult-like movement, Resident Evil: Retribution in its own way also departs from the usual narrative confines of moviemaking. It’s the closest thing you’ll find yet to a recreation of a video game sensibility on the big screen — which is in line with the franchise’s source material — and makes for a memorably unsettling if not particularly satisfying viewing experience. Resident Evil: Retribution finds action star (and Anderson spouse) Milla Jovovich returning to play Alice, a former employee turned sworn enemy of the evil Umbrella Corporation. Considering how crazily far and, frankly, nonsensical the story has gotten from its start as the story of a weaponized virus infecting a secret genetic research facility, the film pays surprising attention to the basic premise before skimming over the developments of the more recent installments in an intro sequence. The series’ ability to shuck off its own history is put on display in the initial action scene, which picks up where the last film left off: a slow-motion sequence of explosions and gunfire that runs backwards before lurching forward at full speed to neatly do away with the Arcadia and any other surviving characters on board. Then again, who cares about those guys? The Resident Evil films have clearly become a continuing discombobulated nightmare belonging to Alice and Alice alone. Again and again, she seems to find safety, only to wake up in some new, terrible scenario in which she has to fight for her life. Resident Evil: Retribution takes this idea to its end point by being set in an underwater Umbrella-run base in which different test stages have been built for the company to demonstrate its bioweapons. All-white hallways string together life-size recreations of Times Square, downtown Tokyo, central Moscow and a suburban street. Each houses a scenario in which, at the bidding of the central A.I., swarms of infected humans, ax-wielding mutants or zombie soldiers will be released to attack. Resident Evil: Retribution , in other words, has taken great pains to find a way to have real-life game stages. This sensibility extends to the way the film explains its mission — rendezvous with a rescue team and find a way out — and the way it provides weapons for its characters: armories rise out of the ground, or, in a sequence that demonstrates definite game logic, Alice looks in an abandoned cop car, heads to a nearby bike to take its chain, smashes in the window and adds both her new tool and a gun from the vehicle to her inventory. This is even the case in the way actors from earlier installments in the franchise — Michelle Rodriguez and Oded Fehr — are folded into the film, thanks to Umbrella’s fondness for cloning. A glimpse of multiple versions of Alice in storage also reinforces the idea that if she were to die, she could just respawn and start over. Video games and movies have an uneasy partnership. The first Resident Evil is one of the best of a shaky history of adaptations from console to big screen, but the franchise has skewed toward the sensibility of the former medium rather than the latter in a way that’s unique but tiresome. At its best, Resident Evil: Retribution feels like a series of elaborate cut scenes strung together, but much of the time it’s a reminder of how incredibly unfun it can be to sit around watching someone else play without getting a chance yourself. The film’s extravagant action scenes have not a whiff of consequence to them, and other than Alice, the foremost quality of all of the characters is their disposability. A sequence like the one in which clones of familiar characters are put through an impossible test scenario is genuinely disconcerting in how it shakes up our perceptions of the reality of what’s on screen. But even that becomes a reminder that bringing one of the traditional qualities of a video game protagonist — his or her qualified immortality — to a movie further strips any sense of human investment in the character. Any consistency on screen is entirely stylistic: there are no rules in this universe other than that Alice will battle on, defying gravity and physics and looking fabulous despite the world eternally ending all around her. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
If late NWA member Eazy-E doesn’t already have his angel wings — you know, the ones that have remote-controlled Uzis grafted onto the feathers — he earned them on Friday. That’s when Resident Evil franchise star Milla Jovovich appeared on Los Angeles public radio station KCRW’s Guest DJ Project and rapped some of lyrics to the hip-hop artist’s “Nobody Move” by way of explaining how the track helped her break free of her strict upbringing and, as we all know, become the badass beauty she is today. Check out her performance after the jump. Jovovich included “Nobody Move” on her Guest DJ Project set list, explaining that the song “definitely changed my world. In a great way, actually, because I had been raised by a very strict Eastern European family and this was sort of my call for freedom.” Jovovich explained that at 9 years old, she was already working “and my mom always had so much control, and pretty much through Eazy-E, and that kind of like freedom, that I found to wear baggy jeans and big t-shirts and baseball caps and just act like ‘yeah, whatever.’” Here’s a recording of her rap performance: Jovovich turns out to have excellent taste in music too: She included Orchestra Baobab’s “Dee Moo Woor” and the Cocteau Twins “Blue Bell Knoll” among on her set list as well. You can download her full set here. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Thrown together for five months of real-life training and preparation — during which time they witnessed some harsh times, indeed , while preparing to play LAPD officers — Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña put in extraordinary dedication to bring authenticity to David Ayer’s End of Watch . In an exclusive featurette, the duo (along with Ayer and co-star Anna Kendrick ) share their experiences making the gritty found footage cop drama (and love for one another): “[Peña] and I spent over half a year together, going through some of the scariest situations that I’ve been through in my life,” says Gyllenhaal. “Mike’s my other half.” The film, from writer-director Ayer ( Harsh Times , Street Kings , Training Day ), debuted at the Toronto Film Festival to strong reviews. (92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes — not too shabby.) Critics applaud Gyllenhaal and Peña’s close, charismatic chemistry,an element obvious even from trailers and clips . Mark your calendars. Synopsis: Academy Award® nominee Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña star in the action thriller End of Watch as young Los Angeles police officers Taylor and Zavala as they patrol the city’s meanest streets of south central Los Angeles. The film creates a riveting portrait of the city’s most dangerous corners, the cops who risk their lives there every day, and the price they and their families are forced to pay. End of Watch is in theaters September 21. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Animation icon Ralph Bakshi ( Fritz the Cat , Coonskin , Wizards , Cool World ) has never been afraid to push the envelope, and boy does he in Trickle Dickle Down , a new political short introducing his recently announced Bakshi Blues project. An announcement for the series declares, in no uncertain terms, “THERE IS NOWHERE FOR ANYONE TO HIDE.” And how . Watch as Trickle Dickle Down takes aim at Mitt Romney with Bakshi’s explosive take on trickle-down economics. The series promises to “[look] at this new America with some great old characters and some great new characters in all new stories,” and if Trickle Dickle Down is any indication, these are going to light up a few fires in the political blogosphere. The two-minute toon features a Stepin Fetchit-like character waxing ecstatic about Romney’s America as he digs through garbage, packing plenty of controversy into a single scene. And then comes the kicker at the 1:23 mark. Enjoy! More at Bakshi’s official website .
Screenwriter Scott Stabile has read the pans and box office bomb reports and anti- Oogieloves screeds, and yet ! He’s got nothing but (Oogie)love for even his harshest critics: “As all of us adults know, we live in a tense and troubled world. Young kids will be exposed to plenty of real-life scares and violence on TV, in video games, on the computer and in daily life. Why do we have to expose preschoolers to anything but innocence and love in a 90-minute movie? Why isn’t it enough to show a gentle world where people are kind and help one another, in hopes that young kids mimic those sentiments over fighting and jealousy and revenge?” [Scott Stabile via Oogieloves on Facebook ]
The Master , the new film from Paul Thomas Anderson , is the story of a spiritual duel — the battle for a soul — though only one of the participants perceives it as such. Lancaster Dodd ( Philip Seymour Hoffman ), the mystic of the title, is the leader of a young movement not unlike what evolved into a certain real life one well entrenched in the entertainment industry. It’s 1950, and he finds a stowaway on his ship, a drunk vagabond who claims to be an able-bodied seaman and who asks for work. The man’s name is Freddie Quell ( Joaquin Phoenix ), he fought in the war, and he’s not mentally stable, either because of his experiences in battle or because stability was just never meant for him. Lancaster, who is almost never referred to by his name but instead is called, simply, “master,” is intrigued by Freddie, likes him (to the bewilderment of others in his camp) and desires to work with him — wants to shape him using the force of will and ability to find the vulnerability in people that he’s slowly honing as his cause grows. Freddie is both terribly vulnerable and the ultimate challenge, because he’s a man with no ability to conform at will, one for whom all emotion and impulses run hot and right at the surface. If Freddie could be won over, changed and molded into someone new by Lancaster’s lectures and lessons, his “processing,” then the cause could be something real, and not just new age blatherings about past lives to wealthy socialites. What makes The Master such a singular experience, as dense as a mille-feuille, is that it is not Lancaster’s story but Freddie’s, and told as such, in layers that are sensorially rich but that do not always lead easily from one to another. Freddie exists in the moment, ruled by his temper, his libido, or urges he would be unable to pin down or articulate. At one point he wanders away for reasons unclear — restlessness, maybe — and years slip by without his seeming to register them. He loves but has left behind a girl, Doris (Madisen Beaty), though he doesn’t know why, longs to be with her and understands that he’s hurt her but doesn’t return. He has a good job in a department store until with no provocation one day he picks a fight with a client. He is a force of chaos, though it’s not malevolent. We see things as Freddie does, which is often the way a child does: Not fully understood, attention wandering after a while. We have more understanding than him, but it is almost exclusively through his eyes that we perceive the world, and we’re left to assemble the pieces we’re given into a whole that will never be fully coherent. There are only two scenes, by my count, in which Freddie is not present. Both show the ways in which other people, including Lancaster’s steely wife Peggy ( Amy Adams ), attempt to manipulate Lancaster the way he manages others, with rewards and slippery words. Lancaster is a man who is all performance, even, one would guess, when alone, while Freddie can only be himself. The Master is built around two towering, career-high feats of acting. As Lancaster, Philip Seymour Hoffman is both authoritative and ridiculous, a series of shells with nothing inside. He’s not yet perfected the religion he’s building, and is still in the process of convincing himself of his sway over others, marveling in the way that he can tell people things and they will, frequently, be believed. We see the power in him when he processes Freddie in an early scene, demanding from the younger man that he not blink as he offers up answers about his past and himself, pulling from him capitulation even as Freddie is hopelessly moved by the intensity of his attention. Few things, we understand from what we’ve seen already, before Lancaster ever arrived on the scene, leave a mark on Freddie, but this moment does. This moment, he’ll remember. As Freddie, Joaquin Phoenix is entirely transformed — it’s a magnificent performance of remarkable physicality. “Naughty boy,” Lancaster calls him, reprovingly. “Silly animal.” Freddie is both of these things, a primitive, tending to swing his loose arms like an ape, his shoulders slumped, muttering out of one side of his mouth like he was crumpled into a ball once and never fully straightened out. He’s half-feral in a way that can be frightening, especially in a scene in which he loses control in a prison cell, raging, destroying everything within reach and hurting himself while Lancaster poses, still, in the cell next to him. But that coiled energy, that unrestrained carnality, is also appealing, and women are drawn to him (though they may not stay that way) — lucky for him, because baldly propositioning them is his main approach. With very fine cinematography by Mihai Malaimare Jr. and a textured, spiky score by Jonny Greenwood that chases the film along as much as the dialogue, The Master is a more opaque sibling to There Will Be Blood , a story that, like that earlier one, feels like an abstract American creation myth, a celluloid koan to be turned over in the mind. A final encounter between Lancaster and Freddie is sparked by a dream that signals that the former does have a hook in our strange protagonist, if not the ownership he desires, and that sends Freddie over the churning blue seas, images of which punctuate the film, to find his teacher. Lancaster, grown in power and yet more hollow than ever, offers up what may be the key to the film to his wayward ward: “If you figure out a way to live without a master, any master, be sure to let the rest of us know, for you would be the first in the history of the world.” In Freddie, terrible and free, is an image of a life unbounded by rules and unmarked by submission to any structure, whether it be an abstract figure or the one ensconced in his self-created institute, promising a cure for what ails you. Read more on The Master . Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Also in Thursday morning’s round-up of news briefs, the U.K. readies for a tour of James Bond. A museum says it has found the earliest-made color film. And, Summit sets date for Divergent . Update on Anti-Muslim Filmmakers that Sparked Middle East Riots The supposed California-based writer, director and producer, Sam Bacile, has no credit with an industry database. Bacile said he raised $5 million from 100 Jewish donors to make the film. Steve Klein, a self-described militant Christian activist in Riverside, CA told CNN he worked with Bacile on the movie, but told The Atlantic Bacile is a pseudonym, Deadline gives more details . Dustin Hoffman and Led Zeppelin to Lead Kennedy Honors Dustin Hoffman, David Letterman and rock band Led Zeppelin will be feted by the Kennedy Center. The honorees will receive their Kennedy Center Honors medallions at a dinner hosted by Hillary Rodham Clinton and then they’ll join President Obama and the First Lady for the annual gala December 2, CNN reports . James Bond Anniversary Event 007 Days of Bond Tours U.K. Former Bond girls, including Eunice Gayson, Britt Ekland and Shirley Eaton, and villain Richard Kiel are also among the cast for the 007 Days of Bond tour. Roger Moore, 84, who starred in seven Bond films between 1973 and 1985, has officially launched 007 Days of Bond, BBC reports . Earliest Color Film Found The National Media Museum in Bradford, England said it had found what it contends are truly historic films from 1901/02, pre-dating what had been thought to be the first successful colour process – Kinemacolor – by eight years, The Guardian reports . Summit Sets Release Date for Divergent Summit has set March 21, 2014 for the release of their young adult novel, Divergent . Written by Veronica Roth, the story revolves around the future-set tale of a 16 year-old girl who must decide to join one of five ideological factions that control society, THR reports .
Billionaire Robert Miller ( Richard Gere ) is a cheat. He cheats on his wife ( Susan Sarandon ) with his mistress, and on his mistress (Laetitia Casta) with his job. And for his job as CEO of one of those mysteriously mighty hedge funds that control the world in Arbitrage , he’ll cheat everybody : the IRS, his daughter and business partner ( Brit Marling ), the buddy who loaned him $412 million, and the fellow mogul Miller wants to acquire his company so he can, of course, spend time with his family, even though the idea confuses them. “I’m just trying to imagine what we would do?” laughs Marling. Clearly, Robert Miller swims with those economic sharks who nearly ruined the world in 2008, and writer/director Nicholas Jarecki (brother of Andrew and Eugene) is going to make him pay. But not for his actual crimes — no one’s going to jail for those — which means Jarecki has to invent a new sin. And so, late one night when the roads are empty, Miller whisks his mistress toward his lake house. He falls asleep at the wheel, skids into the divider, and comes-to next to her fresh corpse — a bloody metaphor for the lives he’s impersonally ruined, and a vicious end for Casta, a Normandy-born beauty so physically perfect there’s literally a bust of her in every French town hall. The quiet of the crash’s aftermath is chilling; the only sound is Miller screaming. But then he thinks of the millions he could lose if the cops, investors, and his wife look harder at his life and makes the cold decision to abandon her body and rescue his reputation. Hey, what’s a little furtive involuntary manslaughter to the baron of Manhattan? With the overconfidence of someone who’s Tivo-ed every episode of CSI , Miller calmly calls collect to Harlem and asks his ex-chauffeur’s son, a young ex-con named Jimmy (Nate Parker), to meet him at a gas station and shuttle him back to the city, no questions asked. Meanwhile, Detective Bryer (Tim Roth) arrives at the flaming wreck and resolves to find out who was really behind the wheel. This sounds like the set-up of a cat-and-mouse thriller. But Jarecki quickly establishes that Miller is screwed — the detective has him fingered by breakfast, and by lunch he’s got Jimmy in custody and threatened with a 10-year sentence for obstruction of justice if he won’t give testimony proving Miller’s guilt. As Miller’s lawyer warns, “The real world is different than television.” So, too, is this movie. Compared to an episode of your average television procedural, Arbitrage has double the runtime and half the suspense because Jarecki could care less about tension and theatrics. He doesn’t even care about Casta’s death — she doesn’t merit a single emo flashback. Jarecki is only interested in one deeply cynical question: What justice is fair to a billionaire? Money — not sex or death — is what fuels Arbitrage . It’s Miller’s excuse for refusing to confess (what’s 10 years to one innocent man if it protects thousands of employees?), and it’s what Miller offers Jimmy for his silence. Apparently, the going rate for a decade of jail time is $2 million, an insulting number considering it’s also what Miller drops to squire Sarandon’s status-conscious wife to a single Friday night benefit gala. And the detective’s resentment for Miller’s practically meaningless money is why the pinched and bitter Roth is so dogged about putting him in prison, vowing, “He doesn’t get to walk just because he’s on CNBC .” The performances are golden with Marling, Roth and Sarandon adding heft to their slender characters. It’s smart casting to have Vanity Fair impresario Graydon Carter pop up as the tycoon Miller so desperately needs to impress. And as the under-attack Jimmy, Parker works hard to make audiences want to remember his name. But this is a showcase for Gere, who has spent his career playing men who can afford a good scotch. (With that head of expensive silver hair, he could never play a fry cook.) At 63, his features have turned to steel: his eyes are small and watchful, and with his good looks he seems aggressively aware that he only has a few more years to grope Laetitia Casta before he has to holster his penis like Harrison Ford. Here, he’s at once charismatic and clueless, even getting a laugh when he asks Jimmy, “What’s an Applebee’s?” Gere does his best to give Arbitrage an agitated energy, but Jarecki’s fatalism works against the film. We can’t root for Miller; instead, we watch with dispassionate interest how the fallout of his misdeeds affects his friends, business partners and family. The smart surprise is that frankly, some of them don’t give a damn. Miller’s millions haven’t just corrupted him — they’ve corrupted everyone who wants a piece of him. And when Jimmy, the poorest and the purest in this ice cold drama, growls, “You think money’s going to fix this?” we’re forced to agree with Miller’s genuinely confused response: “What else is there?” Amy Nicholson is a critic, playwright and editor. Her interests include hot dogs, standard poodles, Bruce Willis, and comedies about the utter futility of existence. Follow her on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
It is by far and away no secret that Hollywood compensation for a certain cadre of stars have been rocketing beyond the stratosphere for some time now, but one A-lister, in the form of Brad Pitt , says that the era of paychecks reaching into the tens of millions for some may be coming to a close. Both he and his partner Angelina Jolie have topped (or nearly so) the scales for their movies in the past decade, with Pitt garnering a cool $25 million per pic. Not bad, but almost a paltry sum when compared to Tom Cruise, for instance, which Forbes listed as commanding a cool $75 million in 2012. But Pitt says he thinks that the conditions for unbelievable sums (at least for the bottom 99.7 per cent) may be heading back down to the mere stratosphere. “Yeah, that thing died,” Pitt said when asked if fellow A-listers can still easily command a $10 or so million per movie, according to BBC . “That arithmetic doesn’t really work right now…that deal’s not flying these days.” Going further on the economics of Hollywood right now, Pitt added, “”It’s a really interesting time. A lot of the studios have been challenged because of the economic downturn as well, so they’ve been betting on bigger, more tent pole kinds of things. At the same time that opens up a vacuum for really interesting new filmmakers to come in.” Pitt debuted Killing Them Softly in Cannes and is a producer on the title that will head to U.S. theaters next month. But not all films will automatically bring out the masses simply because their idols are in them. Nearly two hours of staring at Robert Pattinson sans vampirism failed to bring out the legions of people who otherwise crave to hear any tidbit possible about the latest travails of their obsession’s personal life. Cosmopolis , for instance, has only cashed in at $5.3 million worldwide so far (and only just over $700K in the U.S. – ouch). “You take the roles for the roles,” said Pitt. “And you’ve just got to balance economics like everyone does.”
