Sinful Crim-ful.

Thirteen challenges. That will either get you killed, jailed, or set for life with a fortune. 13 SINS is, like all movies of its ilk, not about what the man onscreen would do to acquire the Scrooge McDuck swimming pool of riches, but what YOU would do.

In this American thriller/black comedy that exudes a British feel, Elliott Brindle (Mark Webber) is at his lowest ebb; days away from his wedding, he is fired from his job, which means he loses his insurance to keep his younger mentally-disabled brother (Devon Graye) in a home, and he loses the ability to keep his ailing father (Tom Bower) in assisted living, meaning the old racist has to move in with Elliott and his black pregnant wife-to-be (Rutina Wesley as Shelby).

At a traffic light, a mysterious phone call: a saucy TV-host voice tells Elliott he has been chosen to play a Game that involves thirteen challenges, each completed task paying off more substantially as they grow in complexity, totaling 6.2 million pounds. To prove its legitimacy (or danger) the voice rattles off Elliott’s dire history, convincing Elliott to complete his first task – swat the fly in the car for £1000—wait, his name is Elliott Brindle and there’s a FLY? (Yup, my first thought was Brundle-Fly too! Are writer-director Daniel Stamm and co-writer David Birke fucking with us? Of course they are! Adapted from writer-director Chookiat Sakveerakul’s 2006 Thai movie, 13 GAME SAYAWNG, you can guess that lead character didn’t have a name that conjured Jeff Goldblum).

Elliott swats. His phone pings. £1000 deposited to his account! Then the voice tells him to eat the fly for £3600…

THE GAME meets SE7EN meets SAW, 13 SINS is one of those intriguing “thought experiments” – a “What If” scenario taken to unimaginable proportions. The jolly gameshow voice tells Elliott that if he wins all the challenges, the problems associated with the mayhem he causes will go away; if he loses or quits, he’s on his own. Loses? Yes, halfway through his tasks, Elliott inadvertently discovers there is another mysterious person playing in direct competition with him for the grand prize.

Under the spiraling madness of the tasks is Elliott’s journey from spongey doormat to masculine master of his destiny. When Elliott is fired, his callous boss snarks at his timidity, “the same things that make you a lousy salesman are going to fuck you up as a father and a husband.” And we note Elliott’s changing demeanor through the challenges: when he swatted the fly, he was sitting at a dead red light on a deserted street for ages – later, he’s burning through red lights joyously in a stolen charger, wearing the victim’s leather jacket, whose arm he just amputated…

The boss adds that Elliott is afraid to get his hands dirty for his woman. And this denunciation pushes Elliott to prove his boss wrong as the challenges grow more insane; to prove to himself he HAS the stones to “make a child cry within 5 minutes for £5000” or “take a lonely man out for coffee” – who happens to be a suicide corpse, whom Elliott has to WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S into a diner booth. While oblivious cops slide into the next booth…

We never do find out who the Game organizers are, or how they are omniscient. A detective (Ron Perlman) is hot on Elliott’s eccentric and gory trail, tracking down a recluse (Pruitt Taylor Vince) with a vast file on the Game, revealing the reach of the organizers, sounding like a nutjob yet showing proof – details on past Games, including a photo of JFK from Dealey Plaza! (“Sometimes I think about how so few people on this planet decide everything. One percent of one percent.”)

Now here’s the infuriating thing about movies of this ilk released in the United States under the heel of the Gutless MPAA. Though we’re on the anti-hero’s side, the film chickens out on him keeping the money, because to keep it means he advocates for the criminal enterprise that is staging the Game. In the twisted climax, Elliott chooses to do the “right” thing, rather than the easy thing. BUT – keeping the money is not necessarily “easy” – it was won through psychopathic means that will probably give him PTSD for the rest of his life; he earned that payoff. We all feel his downtrodden pain in a society growing more polarized with each corporate bailout. He’s committing crimes yet we are rooting for him, and none of us would hold it against him if he did keep the money.

13 SINS is chilling and compelling viewing, and we just have to fantasize about what could have been in the Scrooge McDuck swimming pool of riches.

END

Kids come running for the sweet taste of bird box.

What You Don’t See… sure can bird you.

BIRD BOX is the movie M. Night Shyamalan tried to make with THE HAPPENING.

When an unseen entity causes people to kill themselves, a lone woman and two kids brave the rapids to a refugee destination. Blindfolded.

The hook in this compelling thriller is so audacious it works: “something” that can’t be seen – by us viewers – is making people commit suicide; something unholy whispering in the air around them; something that calls inside their skulls, something so soul-crushing that when they “see” it, they are compelled to smash their faces into glass, walk into traffic or throw themselves out of windows… something that its murderous acolytes (who refuse to wear blindfolds), will tell you is beautiful.

This “creature” apparently appears to each person differently. One victim looks into the void and asks, “Mom?” and then climbs into a burning car; one victim asks, “What the fuck is that?” then wells up with tears as she willfully crashes her car. Other than that, no one else describes what none of us viewers will ever see…

Lovecraftian horror sure saves on production budget.

BIRD BOX opens with Malorie (Sandra Bullock) grimly telling two kids that they are all going on a dangerous journey; that no matter what happens – do not remove your blindfolds! While blindfolded, they follow a rope-line to the river into a small rowboat, and Malorie rows away from shore. Through constant flashbacks, we learn how these desperate people arrived here…

FIVE YEARS AGO… After a visit to an obstetrician with her sister (Sarah Paulson, who is stricken by the creatures in an incredibly-acted scene), heavily pregnant Malorie takes refuge in a house of disparate strangers, sheltering from chaos erupting in the streets, as news reports tell of a worldwide plague of suicides. Amongst the strangers, John Malkovich (who makes his “O” face a lot here; not his orgasm face, you know what I’m talking about – when he makes his mouth that O shape while looking blankly at you), B.D. Wong (as always, a solid supporting player), Lil Rel Howery (who attaches an old world legend to the incomprehensible creatures), Jacki Weaver, Colson Baker (aka Machine Gun Kelly), Rosa Salazar, and Danielle Macdonald as Olympia, another pregnant woman, clingy and insecure. Trevante Rhodes is also amongst the refugees as Tom (a solid leading man presence, who is yet to make his Great Movie).

The title refers to the fact that little pet birds get agitated when the creatures are around and do not die upon seeing them (we presume), and therefore make a good Early Warning Signal. Thus, on the river, Malorie insures their journey with a shoebox containing three parakeets.

From the novel by Josh Malerman, screenplayed by Eric Heisserer as compellingly as his other efforts (HOURS, ARRIVAL), and directed by Danish-born, award winning Susanne Bier (BROTHERS, IN A BETTER WORLD), the movie flits between the crises in the refugee house – how to get food, how to avoid the creatures, how to stay sane – to the danger of the present-day river.

The movie uses its non-chronological structure to create dire conundrums, as when Malorie tells the two kids in the boat that to navigate the rapids – someone has to look! As the terrified little girl and boy gaze at her with frightened eyes, a flashback gives us a clue on who Malorie might pick for the tragic sacrifice!

Black guy heading a white family = First to Die.

Edge-of-seat storytelling coupled with excellent performances across the board: Sarah Paulson is the one who asks, “What the fuck is that?” and her visage suddenly changes, her eyes glazing into tears. We wonder where she had to go in her head to transform her face like that! Was there CGI involved? I can’t tell. Can anyone be that good an actor? And later, a stressed Tom Hollander would join the refugees indoors, bringing his own esoteric fanaticism, and some malicious artist renderings of how the creature might look (as if to allude to the Lovecraftian bent of the film, one of the drawings resembles Cthulhu). Special mention to the little girl (Vivien Lyra Blair), with an adult demeanor far beyond her years.

BIRD BOX was such a hit when released on Netflix at the end of 2018, that idiotic copycats tried some of the blindfolded stunts enacted in the movie, mainly driving while blindfolded. Let these Darwin Award Winners winnow themselves out of the human race, I say.

There are a few distractions early in the movie, most notably – Sandy’s face! Like Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock must be nearing her 90s now, but her plastic surgeon is nowhere near the skill level of Nicole’s, who continues to make her look 33. Something about the way that young-woman skin is stretched across that old-woman skull – bugs me. Secondly, I hate Flip Dialogue! Thankfully, this movie avoids that trope of characters alerting us to their relationships in opening greetings, like “Hello, sis!” yet opts for Flip Dialogue which is just as skin-crawling: Bullock is painting, listening to loud music. Paulson enters and turns down the noise, Bullock playfully chides, “Asshole, I was listening to that!” (Oh, so they’re tight. Probably sisters.) Later, pregnant Bullock is lying on a table being examined by a doctor, “I’ve never slept well, even before this…condition.” Doctor replies (flippantly) “It’s called pregnancy.” Paulson chimes in (flippantly), “Don’t you know, doc, if you ignore something it goes away?” (Oh, these characters are sooooo tight. And how many viewers did we just lose?…) Thank Cthulhu that Paulson would stun us with that fear-face not two minutes from now, to keep us glued to our idiot boxes, pondering on the nature of fear, perception, death, and the cosmic horror of plastic surgeons.

END

Conspiracy Clearly.

To sin by silence when we should protest, makes cowards out of men.
–Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

When it comes to 9-11, or John F. Kennedy, or Jesus Christ, no one cares what you think. They know what they know. And no one’s gonna tell ’em otherwise.

Oliver Stone doesn’t care what you think. He directs JFK with the hand of a gunslinger and the eye of a croupier. And you can either accept the fact this truth-seeking movie exists (note I said truth-“seeking” not truth-“ful”), or whine like a petty hyena nibbling around the kill of a feasting lion, because it’s not what you were told to think.

JFK details the deep background behind the assassination of American president John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963, using the Abraham Zapruder film as a starting point. It doesn’t seek to “prove” anything insomuch as “disprove” the Lee Harvey Oswald Lone Gunman Theory. Again, if you are one of the close-minded who wish to accept the bent Warren Commission Report as the “official” truth, keep believing in altruistic government. But even the United States Congress officially admitted there was a “probable conspiracy” surrounding Kennedy’s suspicious murder. A title card tells us a congressional investigation of 1976-79 “recommended the Justice Department investigate further. As of 1991, the department has done nothing. And the files of the House Select Committee on Assassinations are locked away until the year 2029.”

JFK will boil your blood either way. If you believe Oswald killed Kennedy, then this movie will boil your blood because it focuses on a conspiracy that you believe doesn’t exist; if you believe there was/is a conspiracy and coverup, it will boil your blood because the narrative of “Oswald killed Kennedy” still prevails in American culture, and the conspirators are still not revealed or brought to justice.

A mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.
–Joe Pesci as David Ferrie, JFK.

Kevin Costner stars as U.S. attorney Jim Garrison (whose 1988 book On the Trail of the Assassins inspired the movie, along with the book by Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy). Though many people at the time smelled something fishy in the whole operation – not least, the many witnesses in Dealey Plaza whom Garrison interviewed, whose reports differed wildly from the “official” Warren Commission ketchup – Garrison was in a position to do something about it. In an unforeseen irony, by putting the murdered Lee Harvey Oswald under the microscope, studying his character, affiliations, marksmanship and politics, his whereabouts and movements, Garrison and his team discover that Oswald couldn’t possibly have been the lone shooter, let alone fired three bulls eyes in rapid succession (it became doubtful he had even fired a single shot), and was probably what Oswald himself claimed to be – a patsy.

“Hey you guys, the CIA’s staged assassination of the president is on TV tonight!”

Chameleon Gary Oldman is Lee Harvey Oswald, here portrayed as a rudderless communist agitator. Everyone surrounding these two main players in this drama is a familiar face, a recognizable character actor, if not an A- or B-list star: Jack Lemmon, Ed Asner, Michael Rooker, Vincent D’Onofrio, Walter Matthau, Laurie Metcalf, John Candy, Jay O. Sanders, Frank Whaley, Wayne Knight, Kevin Bacon as a rentboy, Sissy Spacek as Garrison’s long-suffering wife, and Brian Doyle-Murray as Jack “Ruby” Rubinstein, Oswald’s killer. (With Oswald’s murder, more questions: Was it a simple revenge killing? Or – before any legal testimony could be coaxed from him – was it a sanction?)

Joe Pesci is David Ferrie, an unbalanced Cuban sympathizer (when is Joe Pesci not unbalanced?), with a wig that just won’t stay straight; Tommy Lee Jones is Clay Shaw, a whacked-out homosexual businessman who, through a circuitous association with Cuban sympathizers, is the only person ever brought to trial for the assassination of Kennedy. A large part of the movie’s dialogue-driven intensity is the Shaw trial, Garrison prosecuting, laying out assassination details step by step. Donald Sutherland makes a covert cameo as a black ops agent who explains the deep background on the government’s and military’s involvement in the assassination, reinforcing our suspicions of the ubiquitous “They.”

As “Mister X,” Sutherland details how events played out that day to a script written by They: Kennedy’s security detail quashed, his motorcade taking an unplanned turn into Dealey Plaza which was not properly secured, the car slowing to 10 mph against protocol, the roof down, the three angles of ambush, his own department sent on a wild goose chase to avoid stepping on the assassination, and so on. In some countries, the “official” versions of the event were made public before they actually happened! A patsy. A setup. A plan falling into place. The lone gunman theory forced into the world media. “They” put forward the Theory and made Oswald fit that theory.

In testimony, Garrison outlines where all the other shots strayed that day, deducing that, “A single bullet now has to account for the remaining seven wounds on Kennedy and Connally [Texas Governor in the front seat of Kennedy’s limo] – but rather than admit to a conspiracy or investigate further, the Warren Commission chose to endorse a theory put forward by an ambitious junior counselor, Arlen Specter; one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people. We’ve come to know it as the Magic Bullet theory.” [Magic Bullet theory: a bullet that turned in midair twice in order to create the entry and exit wounds on the two men.]

Yes, that Arlen Specter (1930-2012). The senator from Pennsylvania. In 1963, he was a Democrat, flipping to Republican in 1965, then flopping back to Democrat in 2009 (because he knew he couldn’t win reelection as a Republican – how’s that for snide, hubristic and arrogant?). Just as Garrison used diagrams and real people to illustrate the path of the “Magic Bullet,” Specter made people sit in various positions to illustrate how one bullet might have somehow done all that damage. Specter died just recently (Oct 2012), which means there was a modern politician who knew guarded secrets about the Kennedy assassination. It is obvious to any rational person that the Magic Bullet theory is a grand illusion, meaning Specter himself knew this, meaning he knew the morbid truth behind the assassination. Did no one think to beat the shit out of this guy to get some answers?

The term “conspiracy theory” has developed into a negative-baggage hammer against anyone who contests the milky, full-of-holes “official” version. (Like the term “grassy knoll” has entered the vernacular as a gag, cited in relation to something not quite kosher.) In the end, the lone gunman has become its own conspiracy theory, because those who endorse it also believe there is an organized group of contras trying to disabuse them of their “faith” in it. But consider these Conspiracy Facts:

“They” ordered the limo full of blood to be cleaned and reconstructed; They ordered the attending doctors not to report correctly on their examinations of Kennedy’s wounds; They superseded all the surgeons’ protocols with military procedures, They spirited away Kennedy’s body before an independent autopsy. Testimony of witnesses was either ignored, edited or destroyed – provided the witnesses themselves did not mysteriously die; arrest records of all the vagrants in the area directly after the shooting went missing… and on it goes. No truth anywhere. None.

Who are “They”? Because there are no answers, everyone is implicated – from the CIA to the FBI, from Cuban sympathizers to the American military and the White House.

During this trial, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. Then Bobby Kennedy. Imagine the tenor of the times – the world was coming apart at the seams. The killers of both men would be claimed as scapegoats to conspiracies, which the film never pursues. It’s too big. Too big to nail. How deep does it all go? We’ll never know. Garrison would later ask his jury, “How many more political murders disguised as suicides, overdose, heart attacks, car crashes….?”

The Zapruder film is its own character here. In essence, JFK is a film made about that film. If it didn’t exist, the Kennedy Assassination would have been an entirely clean sanction.

In carefully staged match-cuts, Stone expands the original grainy footage to take in many angles to give us a more complete perception of the tableau: in Zapruder footage, we see a little girl skipping along next to Kennedy’s limo – cut to closeup of the little girl (Stone’s footage); in Zapruder long shot, a woman waves frantically near the president’s limo – cut to closeup of the woman (Stone’s footage), and so on. It is the most intimate we’ve ever experienced Zapruder, and thus the most disturbing: to see either side of that moment when a human possessed Life and then did not. One minute, he is smiles, expectancy, plans, aches, anxieties, breeze in the hair, memories – the next, Life is gone. Zooming into blurred closeup, we see skull shattering, the infamous “red mist” spoken of by bloodthirsty American sharpshooters, a flap of red skin flying off the head, yet still connected by tissue, the body moving in concert with bullet impacts – sideways, downwards, and then “back and to the left.”

Back and to the left.

Garrison belabors this point for his jury: Back and to the left. Physics. Action-Reaction. When bullets come from different directions, a body will move in reaction to physics laws. Garrison reasons that if there was more than one bullet – and every frame of Zapruder film and resultant reaction points to more than one shooter – then it must by definition be called a conspiracy. That’s all that conspiracy means – more than one person involved.

As his closing argument, and closing the movie, Garrison gives a thunderous Movie Speech; he cajoles, he weeps, he NETWORK‘s, he BRAVEHEART‘s, he Sermon-On-The-Mount‘s… and then does a throwback to the 1950’s “moral tale” movies (when mankind was “tampering in God’s domain”) – he looks directly into the camera and says, “It’s up to you.” The American people. “Do not forget your dying king; show the world this is still a government of the people, for the people, and by the people…” Of course, it falls on the renowned deaf ears of the American people. Garrison, to this date, is the only person to hold a trial in relation to Kennedy’s murder. Clay Shaw was acquitted. It was later revealed he was ex-CIA…

The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.
–attributed to Joseph Goebbels.

Whodunnit? We’ll probably never know. The fact is – it was done. And more than one person was involved. And for that to happen at such a national level, and for the coverup to be so extensive, those involved had to be in positions of unimpeachable authority. Jesus Christ, John F. Kennedy, 9-11. You believe what you want to believe. Next you’ll be telling us the Earth is flat…

END

Just another day in Hollywood…

Inconstantine.

Beautifully shot in ochre tinge, evoking a mythopoeic superstructure, creative camera bespeaking thoughtful setups and engaging angles, striking cinematography accentuating iconic imagery and mellifluous art direction, it’s a pity CONSTANTINE is such an insensate, half-headed dog of a film.

This movie was better when it was called THE MATRIX.

Traversing between two parallel dimensions, Neo – I mean, John Constantine (Keanu Reeves, kickin’ it arctic cool, by way of Eastwood’s Stranger, Mickey Rourke, and Ren & Stimpy) is some kind of secular exorcist, a border patrol for illegal demons trying to cross over into our dimension. Since there are already enough evil acolytes walking the earth – they’re called priests – Constantine routes these aliens with extreme prejudice, utilizing rules and laws that have no basis in any mythology, let alone as apocryphal arcana, that morph at the whim of the watery, unfathomable plot.

That’s the problem with movies of this ilk. No rules. (Or characters desperately mouthing expository “rules” just before a scene which would have been just as illogical with or without the exposition.) The definition of “inconstant” is “likely to change frequently without apparent or cogent reason.” Thus does this visually elegant photoplay shoot itself in the foot.

Constanpoff

But then, how can it be expected to adhere to rules when its source material is more contradictory and confused than a whore crying rape – the Bible? Simultaneously exhorting us to love our enemies, then enjoining Joshua “to destroy all that breathes as the Lord God of Israel commanded” (Joshua 10:40); a world-renowned book that teaches that the sun moves around the earth; that dead humans can be reanimated; that unscrewed virgins can give birth; to turn the other cheek, but to take an eye for an eye; that advocates human sacrifice as some kind of palliative to an imaginary burden of sin; a tome that, through its cold-blooded murders, incest, executions, lies and debauchery cannot but help engender a belief in evil.

Bring the kids.

The writers of the Hellblazer comic book (Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis), that this movie draws from, cannot be wholly blamed for CONSTANTINE’s befuddlement, as screenwriters Kevin Brodbin and Frank A. Cappello consolidated this tale from many Hellblazer episodes.

The first demon we encounter enables a young girl to walk up walls. In the next scene, she is tied to a bed, where Constantine exorcises the demon into a mirror and smashes it, thereby killing the demon. The inconsistencies pile up immediately: if the demon-girl can walk on walls, why not scurry down the outside wall of the building and lose herself in crowds before six men with ropes were called? And if you’re going to possess someone, why possess an underprivileged girl from a minority community? Why not a person whom the authorities would find financially impossible or ethically uncomfortable to restrain – like Donald Trump or Tom Hanks? (Some might say Trump is already in league with demons, what with his overwhelming greed and narcissism; some may say Hanks has also lost to evil, what with THE TERMINAL.) And maybe my mythology is rusty, but I believe the clause that covers disposal of demons via mirrors is right next to the one about “Let he who is without an expressionless movie hero cast the first stoner.”

In what could only be construed as bone-laziness on the demons’ part, why do these poltergeists, who have illimitable power over seemingly everything – the elements, animals, machinery – always allow characters to live just long enough to give out information that enables the hero to destroy them, rather than just killing the stoolie character immediately?

Not only does Beeman (Max Baker) get belatedly killed after giving out crucial info to Constantine (after this movie’s “power of Christ compels you!” scene), Constantine’s eager assistant, Chaz (Shia LeBeouf, whose ancestral family tree surely intersects with Josh Charles’s branches) also meets a belated end after chanting the Right Words and ruining a demon’s possession. Why not kill him BEFORE he starts chanting, Einstein-zebub? If Hanks was this inefficient, he’d be flipping burgers.

After THE MATRIX made him a superstar in this unique mold – the last counter-intuitive casting that worked so well being Michael Keaton as Batman – Reeves need tread no new ground to be accepted as Inter-Dimensional Tough Guy. His authoritative performance here might have wiped away the last stains of Theodore Logan Esq. had he not resorted to calling demons “assholes” and flipping them the bird. (Really, how offensive could an insult like this be to a para-dimensional entity that doesn’t have bowels?)

CONSTANTINE’s brouhaha revolves around the Spear of Destiny – a totally fictitious ornament (mentioned in passing only by John 19:34, and even then, not giving the lance or its holder a name – such details added millennia later) which has somehow gained credence in the catholic vernacular as the “spear that killed Christ.” And whomsoever “holds the Spear of Destiny holds the fate of the world in his hands.” Reportedly in Hitler’s possession at one time, I suppose that accounts for his domination of Western Europe. So what happened in May 1945? He woke up one day and misplaced it?

This Spear is instrumental in birthing the son of the devil – in some contrived plot also found nowhere in any Christian mythologies or apocrypha – where a transgendered angel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton, garbed like one of those insufferable female singer-songwriters who populated the 90s Los Angeles poetry slam scene) betrays god to help the devil’s son for a motivation unknown to anyone but the confused screenwriters.

And Yea, an angel of the Lord shall bring Good News about fashionable slacks.

Constantine uncovers this plot by sitting in a chair of special effects straight out of the bible. (Remember that psychic chair that Jesus sat in that one time?) This chair is apparently so dangerous that its owner, Midnite (Djimon Hounsou, dutifully cast as the African witch-doctor stereotype) constantly disallows its use by Constantine. When Constantine eventually uses it and his life is threatened, to escape, he need only call out to Midnite, who wrenches him bodily from the chair. Uh, guess it wasn’t that dangerous after all.

(How the chair works is anyone’s guess, as Constantine doesn’t punch in any instructions, nor does he “will” it to reveal anything to him. Why it doesn’t show him his last laundry day or an episode of those karaoke douchebags on AMERICAN IDOL is a testament to its lack of danger.)

Enter Rachel Weisz, as cop Angela Dodson. Her twin sister, Isabel, just committed suicide and is walking through hell in her nightie. As a cop – a person trained to only accept evidence – Angela approaches Constantine with unquestioning, juvenile belief in his “gift” of dimensional travel, beseeching him to find her sister and bring a wrap.

Constantine promptly breaches hell by putting his feet in water and staring at a cat. Whilst in hell – which looks like a cross between a Heironymous Bosch painting and Downtown Los Angeles at 2:30 a.m. – Isabel commits suicide by falling off a building (after she kills herself, where does she go then?) whilst Constantine and some half-headed monsters cluster together like N’Sync for a dynamic photo op.

Constantine brings back Isabel’s hospital tag as “evidence.” Rachel asks, “How could this be?” Well, there’s this thing called a POCKET which could very easily have hidden that tag until Constantine needed to whip it out and impress your small mind.

What would any dumb American film be without the British Bad Guy? Gavin Rossdale (from Bush – the band, not the criminal public official) plays Balthazar, a smarmy Bond Villain type who meanders about for no reason, who can’t be killed by heavy artillery, but cowers under the mighty incantations of Keanu’s stoner spells. He ends up as tiny pieces of face that can still talk – without the aid of lungs, lips, voicebox or tongue. He seems discomfited when an unseen entity scatters him even further – although if he can talk when he is made up of such tiny pieces (against any kind of natural laws), why can’t he still function as even tinier pieces?

A thousand transgressions of non-rules later, we arrive at the movie’s conclusion, laden with effects in lieu of excitement, logic and interest, where Constantine slashes his wrists to “die,” precipitating the appearance of Satan (Peter Stormare, clad in angelic white, chewing more scenery than Heston on Sinai), whereby Constantine can then narc on Gabriel in the next room who is using the Spear to bring forth Satan’s son. Exactly like in the Bible.

Let me get this straight: Satan, omniscient bringer of darkness, doesn’t know what is going on in the next room?

Directed by Music Video Director to the Sluts, Francis Lawrence (Britney, Janet, J-Lo), the roaring beauty of this movie is tempered by its dangerous stupidities. If audiences could appreciate it as simply an imaginative story (albeit contradictory and idiotic beyond belief), the human race might just survive. Unfortunately, ninety percent of audiences will take it as fact, to be added to their human-penned gospels and already insane mythologies of Christ and hobbits and Islam and space aliens. And as these gullible dupes become the decision-makers in society, billions more murders will be perpetrated for this “sacred truth” in a never-ending spiral of ignorance.

Bring the kids.

END

Identity Cleft.

More than a murder mystery. More than a psychological thriller. More than a horror movie. IDENTITY is its own special slice of crazy.

With most viewers being either misled by this movie’s similarities to Agatha Christie’s TEN LITTLE INDIANS, or just pompously broadcasting their knowledge that IDENTITY was inspired by it, they missed the point this was not a “murder mystery” per se, instead, a finely-crafted journey through the mind of a multiple personality during the course of purging his violent personas.

Ten guests are flood-stranded at a Nevada Motel; among them, John Cusack, former cop and Go-To Everyman, Rebecca DeMornay (almost unrecognizable with her ample boob-job and burgundy hair, playing a character whom she is assuming the mantle of with each passing botox-ed day – a woman who “used to be that actress”), Amanda Peet (whose stage direction was simple – “Back that booty up some more, honey!”), John C. McGinley playing against type as an uber-dweeb, Jake Busey playing exactly his type – uber-psycho, Ray Liotta – always darkly mysterious…

One by one, these refugee guests start dying all Agatha Christie-like.

A Vegetable Split

Intercut with this storyline is a somber eleventh-hour appeal by doctors and lawyers to an ill-tempered judge to stay an execution of a deranged man (Pruitt Taylor Vince, his jerky eyes doing double time Pong). We are intrigued as to how these two disparate tales are related, but we do sense a connection, because the dry, somber doctors are talking about a “killer” and in that wet parallel Motel story there are killin’s galore!

By the end of the second act, after the film’s most hair-raising moment, when all the corpses at the Motel are found missing, it is revealed the Motel scenes have been taking place within Pruitt’s psychopath mind, and each Motel guest was merely one of his multiple personalities.

Have I given away too much? Is it just another Patrick-Duffy-shower-scene cop-out? All this rain-drenched piling in and out of rooms like the Spanish Inquisition with shocked pusses was merely a psychopath’s IMAGINATION? Guess again. Director James Mangold and writer Michael Cooney are only half-finished with their sleight-of-hand.

The true “twist” of the movie is that the doctors in the real world believe they successfully purge the psychopath’s “killer” persona, but in the last few seconds, we discover the cure did not go deep enough.

With all the options this movie had – to blame spirits from an Indian Burial Ground or to wrap on a Patrick Duffy note at any point, the writers led us on a merrier, more interesting goose chase. It is clever without being snide, shocking without being implausible.

Thus, this deponent sayeth: Bravo to the road less traveled.

On the other hand, my “feminine personality” thought the movie brutalized women too overtly and my “killer psychopath” personality is going to make the film-makers pay for giving away my secrets…

END