One Dark Night

One Dark Night (1983) is one of those low-budget, b-grade, indie horror movies from the '80s that was 'lost' for awhile awaiting a DVD distributor. Along came Shriek Show to the rescue, specializing in rare, cult, indie, and foreign horror. Shriek Show has been responsible for bringing some great film from the Italian school of horror to American viewers. Highlights include The Church (1989), Michele Soavi's atmospheric tale of a demonic portal, and Massamo Dellamano's giallo, What Have They Done to Solange? (1972). Unfortunately, Shriek Show's contributions to DVD distribution also include some of the dregs of cinema: the putrid Elsa Fraulein SS (1977), and the pointless and vile exploitation flick Violence in a Women's Prison (1982). Tom McLoughlin's One Dark Night falls a little to the positive side of the middle. The film is mercifully free of over-the-top exploitation and gore, but the acting is wooden, and the effects are inconsistent.

High schooler Julie (Meg Tilly) has always wanted to be one of the 'Sisters,' a sorority-esque clique of popular girls. She just has one more initiation stunt to pull: a night alone in a creepy mausoleum. But you can bet that the head Sister, Carol, isn't going to make it easy on Julie, especially since Julie recently stole Carol's boyfriend. The sisters are planning a night of pranks at Julie's expense, but they haven't counted on the mausoleum's newest resident: the late Karl Raymar, notorious occultist, psychic, and telekinetic. When Raymar rises from the dead and begins to assemble a corpse army, it's up to Julie's boyfriend and Raymar's daughter to come to Julie's rescue.

This movie's not bad. Had the director had some decent acting, One Dark Night might even have been good. The film's major flaw is acting. Let's put it this way: the best actor out of this crop is Adam West. That's right, the man made famous by slinging really fake punches and really lame one-liners as TV's Batman is the best this film's got. The rest of the acting is clichéd, hackneyed, or just plain bad. Meg Tilly is so monumentally wooden that they have to give her character narcotics just to try and cover for her. It doesn't work. Problem is, she's exactly the same both before and after taking demerol.

For another thing, the pace is glacial. It takes forever just to get into the mausoleum. Then it takes yet another forever for some serious shit to start going down. And interspersed in what should be the frenzied climax of the film are cut scenes of Raymar's daughter taking an excruciatingly long time to realize what everyone else including the audience already knows: that Raymar is one powerful telekinetic and he's come back from beyond the grave to raise some corpses and harvest some psychic energy from his terrified victims. And speaking of Raymar, when his big bad psychic ass is finally revealed.... well, he's about the least frightening thing of the entire film. Standing motionless in his upright coffin, swathed in a totally inexplicable pink glow, with cheesy CGI lightning bolts exuding from his eyes (to signify his telekinesis at work, I suppose), the great Raymar is nothing but an ineffectual corpse-like mannequin.

The rest of the reanimated dead, however, are really well done, considering the standards of the day. Using real cadavers (yikes!), make-up effects, and good old fashioned puppetry, the dead are brought to life in glorious detail, reflecting a realistic variability in level of decomposition. In contrast to Raymar, these corpses are actually frightening to a degree, especially when combined with Cricket Rowland's great set work on the mausoleum. The antiseptic white marble of the mausoleum projects an eerie coldness, and the camerawork by Hal Trussel gives the appearance of immensity, row after row, hall after hall of blank white marble and iron placards holding in the ranks of moldering corpses. The rest of Trussel's cinematography is equally great, including a harrowing shot featuring two of the Sisters opposite a slowly opening casket, surrounded by the gloom of the mausoleum and the settling dust from pulverized marble walls.

The lesson here is patience, I guess. If you can make it through the snooze-inducing first half, you'll be rewarded with some truly good film towards the end, as long as you can stop laughing every time they cut to Raymar's face. Hey, at least he's entertaining is some way.

Storyline & plot: 4/10
Cinematography & effects: 8/10
Music & mood: 7/10
Performances: 3/10

The Reverend says: 6/10

Idiocracy

Mike Judge just can't catch the box office magic. His cult masterpiece, Office Space (1999), barely cleared $10 million at the theaters, also barely recouping the budget costs. Of course, it went on to be a home video and rental smash hit, as well as a cultural landmark in our overworked times. Judge's 2006 offering, Idiocracy, also did very little at the box office. In fact, you may not have even realized the film had a theatrical run. After disastrous test screenings, the release was tightly restricted, trickling out to just over 100 theaters, mostly in large markets. So, the meager box office draw, less than $500 thousand, was an expected disappointment. The film has since gained some small popularity on DVD, although not near as much as its big brother Office Space. Of course, it's not near as a good a movie as Office Space, so that makes sense. But the film is not bad by any means. It's an entertaining, if ultimately forgettable, futuristic farce.

In 2006, the US Army seeks recruits for a top secret human hibernation program, seeking to put humans into suspended animation for one year and successfully revive them. Recommended for the program is unassuming army librarian Joe Bauer (Luke Wilson), whose attempts to fly completely under the radar of the system had been so far successful. Joining Joe in suspension is Rita (Maya Rudolph), a whore with no family and only a vengeful pimp to miss her. Midway through the project, when funding falls through, Joe and Rita's suspension cases are misplaced, forgotten, and ultimately buried in the rubble when the army base is razed for a Fuddrucker's burger joint.

Fast forward 500 years, when a garbage avalanche uncovers Joe and Rita's suspension capsules. Reanimated into a world dumbed down through generations of selective breeding, Joe and Rita find themselves literally the smartest humans on the planet. But in 2505, being smart isn't all it's cracked up to be. The pair face ridicule, hostility, and even imprisonment in a world that is too dumb to understand what they're talking about. But when their story reaches the ears of the US president, strapping ex-wrestler and motorcycle and gun enthusiast Hector Elizando Mountain Dew Camacho, Joe is commissioned to be the new Secretary of the Interior, and charged with discovering the mysterious blight that has devastated America's crops. Can Joe come through before America's idiots tire of his fancy schmanzy intelligence? And what about rumors of a time machine to take Joe and Rita back to their own time?

There are definitely some good laughs in this film, although many of them are knee-jerk laughs at the expense of future America's idiocy, including some fairly lame fart and gay jokes. Where Judge shines is his attention to detail: every aspect of the futuristic world is rendered according to his satiric vision, down to minute details whose screentime hardly calls for such measures. Judge shows us this future bombarded by layers of intrusive advertising, pervasive to the core of human culture, dictating everything from children's and institution's names, to clothing, to architecture, to urban planning. The irony is, we laugh at such silly extremes, but such a market totalitarianism is surely not so far off if we continue on our current path.

The acting here is a mixed bag. There is very little chemistry between Wilson and Rudolph, making the half-hearted attempt at romance fall fairly flat. But Dax Shepard and Terry Crews turn in fine performances as Frito, Joe's idiotic lawyer, and President Camacho, respectively. The effects are really quite terrible, rendering futuristic monster truck death rallies mawkishly cartoonish. In fact, all of the large scale CGI effects appear just a shade above cartoon quality. Maybe this was intended as yet another layer of stupidity, but it just ends up detracting from the quality of the film.

Storyline & plot: 6/10
Cinematography & effects: 2/10
Music & mood: 5/10
Performances: 6/10

The Reverend says: 6/10

Californication, Season 1

"Californication" (2007), the brainchild of one-time "Dawson's Creek" writer and producer Tom Kapinos, is an existential conundrum: a painfully real show flourishing in an atmosphere of complete unreality. Los Angeles is a city that has always played by its own peculiar rules, confounding the rest of society at large. This quirk of existence is a fact not lost on our protagonist, novelist Hank Moody (David Duchovny). Transplanted to LA from his native NYC by a seemingly serendipitous turn of events, Hank is constantly and often violently at odds with his adopted city and the version of reality that rules there. An old-fashioned guy caught in the midst of the screaming fast pace and ugly indifference of Southern California, Hank maintains an attitude of disgust: disgust at the starry-eyed text-talking young women of LA, disgust at the Hollywood crowd who have summarily butchered his 'staggering work of heart-breaking genius' and then immortalized the carcass as a piece of saccharine-laced film, and above all, disgust at himself for falling prey to the Hollywood lifestyle.

The audience soon learns the real root of Hank's towering self-loathing: he's recently lost Karen (Natascha McElhone), the only woman he's ever loved, to Bill, a man that Hank despises as an archetypical specimen of all the things he hates about California. Hank is a walking talking mid-life crisis mess. Devastated by the success of the horrid film adaptation of his best novel, set adrift without Karen, and without his precocious pop-punk-goth daughter Becca (picture a much more annoying version of Wednesday Addams), Hank wallows is self-hate, self-pity, and enough booze and women to take the edge off. On top of this, Hank suffers from epic writer's block. As the money dries up, Hank turns to peddling his prose as a blogger for an alternative news magazine owned by, you guessed it, his arch-nemesis Bill.

While his blogging is razor-sharp, sardonically exposing the seedy underbelly of LA, Hank is still unable to make an iota of progress on a new novel. He spends his days listlessly trawling for his next sexual conquest, searching out anything with tits and ass, enacting his indirect revenge out on Karen, who he still desperately loves and wastes no opportunity trying to lure back. For his part, while a bit distant and boring, Bill is hardly a bad guy. He seems almost infinitely tolerant of Hank's continued presence in Becca's and Karen's lives, as well as Hank's less-than-kosher relationship with Bill's 16-year-old daughter Mia (Madeline Zima).

The first season of "Californication" is astoundingly, painfully good. The writing is perfect, the storylines engaging on multiple levels. Each show is alternatingly hilarious, sexy, and emotionally raw. Duchovny brings Moody to life with his characteristic dry-as-the-desert humor and careworn features, portraying Moody as largely apathetic about his various debaucheries, a man just a step above rock bottom, but for whom hope apparently springs eternal. Best of all, Natascha McElhone, who I've always found to be rather plain and uncompelling, is positively radiant here as Karen, a woman caught between a decent man that she may not love, and a depraved wretch that nevertheless owns a large part of her heart.

The show's only detractors, other than the annoying Becca, are the title sequence, which features a fairly heinous song and plays like an early '90s show intro; and the season finale. As often happens with TV series, the season finale becomes a free-for-all where the previous rules and feel of the show tend to get thrown out the window in favor of cliffhanger shock value. While "Californication"'s season one ending is a bit of a shocker, if it pans out, it would more or less destroy the central dynamic of the entire show. Here's to hoping that the ending is just one of Hank's ubiquitous dream sequences.

Storyline & plot: 9/10
Cinematography & effects: 6/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 9/10

The Reverend says: 8/10

The Innocents

Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961), based on Henry James's classic novella "The Turn of the Screw", rivals Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) as the premier supernatural horror film of the 1960s. Both films are exquisitely crafted and terrifying. While The Haunting's effects are considerably better, and the cinematography a shade more sophisticated, Truman Capote's screenplay for The Innocents is a good deal more complex and fully realized. And while the terror of The Haunting's Hill House takes hold immediately, The Innocents builds slowly and methodically to a frenzied and climactic crescendo.

Set in Victorian England, the film tells the story of Miss Giddens, who's just taken a position as governess to the niece and nephew of a wealthy London businessman/socialite. Much too busy to care for the orphaned children, their uncle has sent them away to a palatial country house in the south of England. Miss Giddens relieves a grateful and overtaxed housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. At first, all is well, as Miss Giddens finds the country house much to her liking, as well as Flora, the adorable little niece. But when Flora's brother Miles returns to the country from school, along with a mysterious letter of expulsion, the idyllic manor soon becomes eerie. Miss Giddens starts hearing the children whispering and laughing through the echoey corridors, along with stranger and more sinister voices. Apparitions appear upon the veranda, and in the tall reeds surrounding the manor's pond. Miss Giddens starts asking questions about the house's history. What happened to the last governess? And the master's valet before her? And what does it all have to do with the children? Fearing for the children's souls, Miss Giddens spirals through paranoia and into madness, hurtling toward the film's stunning climax in the starkly lit garden, surrounded by ominous statues and sculpture.

As I've mentioned, Capote's screenplay is masterful, drawing out the suspense with episodic encounters with the children. Each scene brings new information, tantalizing us with the hideous and disturbing truth about the valet and the previous governess. Like The Bad Seed (1956) before it and countless films after it, The Innocents exploits our collective repulsion at the corruption of innocence, the near-universal capacity to be creeped the hell out by creepy kids. And these child actors (Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin) are really really good at being creepy, from Flora's blank stares and dead eyes to Miles's lascivious grins and voracious precocity.

The Innocents highlights the importance not just of a film's score, but also of sound effects and design. Miss Giddens's terror is carried to the audience on a wave of whispers, laughter, screams, screeches, and eerie intonations. And I cannot stress enough the expert use silence in this film. Silence is golden. And in this case, silence is haunting. Filmmakers, please, take heed. Hesitate, I say. Hesitate to fill that void in your picture with more sounds. Wait. Let the silence tell its own tale. Let it spin out into the distances, let it bring its own ominous atmosphere to the table. The use of silence in The Innocents says as much about the genius of Georges Auric as his skillful use of sound.

The Innocents is a must-see for any fan of film, the supernatural, or just anyone looking for a good scare.

Storyline & plot: 9/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 10/10
Performances: 8/10

The Reverend says: 9/10

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

A buddy noir comedy that repeatedly breaks down the 4th wall? How the hell is this going to work? I mean, buddy comedy, sure. Staggering precedent on that one. Even buddy comedy that breaks down the 4th wall. Precedent on that one, too, from Bill & Ted to the underrated early Christian Slater buddy cop vehicle Kuffs (1992). But to throw noir and a classic Chandler-esque pulp ambience into the mix? Ballsy. And to cast an actor as notoriously hit-and-miss as Val Kilmer. Ballsy indeed. But with superb (as always) help from his co-star Robert Downey Jr as the petty thief turned actor turned private investigator Harry Lockheart, Kilmer actually shines as LA private dick and movie consultant known affectionately as Gay Perry. The role allows Kilmer to be in his element as a world-weary, gruff, and dismissive jerk.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) takes its title from an international slang term for the Bond-esque spy genre of the 1960s and '70s. The title hints already at the depths of self-parody lurking in the screenplay by Shane Black. Black's writing credits up to this point are an interesting mixed bag of action staples, including work on all the Lethal Weapon movies, good and bad, the vaguely entertaining Bruce Willis action vehicle The Last Boyscout (1991), the universally panned and completely unnecessary Schwarzenegger bomb Last Action Hero (1993), and the underappreciated Sam Jackson gem The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996). Black delivers on the goods in KKBB, his directorial debut.

In true pulp fashion, Black opens the film on a temporal pivot point. We join our narrator Lockhart (Downey Jr) at a Hollywood party with Hollywood types. As Lockhart mingles, he fills us in on himself and other characters via voiceover, flashback, and direct manipulation of the film and the audience. Transplanted to Hollywood by a quirk of mistaken identity, Lockhart flounders in the LA scene and is about to find himself the unwitting center of a mysterious scandal involving stolen identity, kidnapping, and murder. Playing the savvy opposite to RDJ's manic and naively bumbling Lockheart is veteran PI Gay Perry (Kilmer). Lockhart shadows Perry on an investigation into a simple case of adultery, but things turn dangerous when two masked men drive a car, complete with requisite corpse, into a lake. When the corpse later shows up in Lockhart's hotel room, it begins to look like a setup. Enter the unfortunately-named Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan), whose past connects her to both Harry Lockhart and another mysterious corpse. What secrets is she harboring? Is she a damsel in distress or a femme fatale?

Thanks largely to RDJ's acting chops, and to a surprisingly good turn from Kilmer, the funny moments in the film seem to blossom naturally from the characters' interactions, rather than being inserted externally through elaborate screenwriting set-up or clunky direction. A less than tactful reliance on gay jokes and innuendos, and riffs on Harmony's implied sluttiness are the only truly egregious lapses. With enough action, comedy, and one-liners to make John Carpenter proud, this one's a keeper.

Storyline & plot: 7/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 7/10

The Reverend says: 7/10

Dial M for Murder

Almost fifteen years before the release of Wait Until Dark (1967), based on Frederick Knott's tightly-written stage play, Knott penned the play and screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's classic mystery Dial M for Murder (1954). DMfM prefigures the style used to great effect in Wait Until Dark. Because the vast majority of the film is set in a single room of a London flat, the focus for the film must lie on the intricate relationships among characters, the razor sharp dialogue, and the complexity of the ever-changing scheme laid out by Tony Wendice (Ray Milland, bearing a striking resemblance to Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, both in appearance and character).

Wendice, an aging British tennis star, suspects his wife Margot (Grace Kelly) of dallying with Mark Halliday, a dashing American crime fiction writer. Tony hatches an amateurish revenge plan of blackmail and extortion that slowly evolves into a sleek and sophisticated plot to murder his wife and collect on a generous inheritance. But when things go awry with Tony's fall guy, Tony's got to do some lightning quick thinking to keep the ball up in the air and his chances of inheritance alive. But has he accounted for everything? Will his ever-changing story hold water or will proudly mustachioed and drolly British Inspector Hubbard sniff out the hole in his plan?

DMfM is a low-key yet highly complex mystery/thriller, rivaled only by Hitchcock's masterpiece Vertigo (1958) in terms of twists and turns. Yet the mystery here is not of the traditional murder mystery kind. Who killed who and why is not the central theme. Those variables are already laid out on the table. Instead, Hitchcock takes a psychological gamble: he makes the audience complicit in Tony's murderous scheme, even to the point where you find yourself rooting for him. After all, he has shown great dedication in incubating his plan for well over a year, and great mental acumen in quickly reacting to any number of unfavorable situations and managing to turn every bit of damning evidence to his advantage. And through it all, Wendice is cool, calm, charismatic, even quite funny: in short, the archetype of the British villain later exemplified on screen by such greats as David Warner, Alan Rickman, and Jeremy Irons.

Measuring greatness by influence, imitation, and parody, Dial M for Murder is decidedly one of the greatest. Its influence ranges from the (albeit extremely inferior) quasi-remake A Perfect Murder (1998), to a couple of Brian De Palma imitators, Obsession (1976) and Body Double (1984), to numerous television and film homages and parodies, including Mel Brooks's High Anxiety (1977), "The Simpsons," and "Third Rock from the Sun." This one definitely joins the pantheon of Hitchcock must-sees.

Storyline & plot: 9/10
Cinematography & effects: 6/10
Music & mood: 8/10
Performances: 9/10

The Reverend says: 9/10

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs

The Beast with a Billion Backs (2008), the 2nd Futurama feature film, centers around the rift in the universe created by Bender's misadventures through time in Bender's Big Score (2007). After Fry flees yet another relationship in his vain search for love, he decides to throw himself through the interdimensional rift in desperation. Hitching a ride on Zap Brannigan's warship, which has been sent by President Nixon to destroy the perceived threat of another universe, Fry tumbles through the rift and communes with the other side. Turns out, the other side consists of a planet-sized tentacled being named Yivo who has watched our universe in loneliness for billions of years. After encountering Fry, Yivo seizes upon the opportunity presented by the rift. The tentacle monster begins a forced and systematic conversion of Fry's universe to the unitarian and harmonious nature of Yivo's world. Meanwhile, Bender, as a non-living being, is unable to pass through the rift or receive the conversion of Yivo. Slighted, Bender becomes the leader of the secret League of Robots and vows to kill all humans before they can transcend to Yivo's dimension.

As much as it pains me to say this, for the first time in its existence, "Futurama" has failed to be spectacularly awesome. This movie is way too scattered. All of our favorite main characters are too disconnected, robbing the film of its proper laugh source: the interactions of the ensemble cast, particularly our proverbial three amigos, Bender, Fry, and Leela. I suppose I can understand the producers' desire to do something a little different, but they've simply gone about it in the wrong way. Compared to the hilarious and heartfelt time-traveling epic that was Bender's Big Score, Beast with a Billion Backs falls flat, never delivering on any of the great themes the show was built on.

And there just weren't many laughs either. We're subjected to a main storyline featuring Amy and Kif which quickly grows stale and boring, and Bender is completely isolated from the rest of the main cast for the vast majority of the movie, making him virtually useless in the absence of humans to interact with and rip on. On top of this, the potential comic gold of David Cross is completely wasted on the rather disappointingly ho-hum tentacle monster Yivo. I suppose it's not all bad, though. The film does feature appearances by perennial favorites such as the Shatner-parodying Zap Brannigan, and Calculon, the over-acting robot soap star. But it's not quite enough. Hate to say it, but this one was a disappointment, fans.

Storyline & plot: 3/10
Cinematography & effects: 6/10
Music & mood: 5/10
Performances: 6/10

The Reverend says: 5/10

Wait Until Dark

Alan Arkin has said of Wait Until Dark (1967) that the film's genius arises from two main sources: Audrey Hepburn's virtuoso performance, and leaving things to the audience's imagination. I would have to agree. The true terror of the film lies in experiencing it from the perspective of our heroine, in darkness, disoriented, and with a fertile imagination to supply us with all the nasty unpleasant things that may be going on around us.

When a mix-up at the airport sends a heroin-laden toy doll off with the wrong man, the intended recipient, Mr. Roat (Arkin) assembles a crack team to determine the doll's whereabouts. They track down the accidental recipient, a NYC photographer named Sam Hendrix. Sensing their chance, Roat's men draw Hendrix out of his apartment on a spurious errand. Instead, they choose to deal with Hendrix's wife Susie (Hepburn), recently blinded in an accident and falteringly learning to deal with her new situation. Using an elaborate ruse and good-cop bad-cop tactics, the criminals hope to glean from Susie the location of the doll without alerting her to its significance.

It may unfairly pigeonhole me as some sort of crotchety film curmudgeon, but Arkin's words about this film ring true. So many of today's filmmakers take the audience completely out of the equation by allowing our imaginations no room to run. Everything is so explicit, so out there in all its gory glory, that the audience can shut off their minds and simply watch, absorb the horror like an unfeeling sponge. Not that these films are completely without merit; often their technical achievements are nothing short of wizardry. And not that these films aren't fun. But usually, they're not very good. And almost inevitably, they aren't frightening.

Wait Until Dark, in keeping the gore and the lights low, suffers neither of these setbacks. Owing to its stageplay source material, the film keeps its action focused to a single small Manhattan apartment (much like 1948's Rope, a classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller), and its cast list extremely small. Not only does this impart a suffocating sense of claustrophobia, but it also puts the onus of performance on the actors and the tightly-written script. When there are no massive plot devices and pyrotechnics to distract, the entire film plays out in the minute gestures and dialogue of our actors, in the spellbinding way that our three thugs slowly circle Mrs. Hendrix like sharks, laying the trap and tightening the noose.

In my own personal book of film appreciation, I hold all thrillers up to be judged in the light of Hitchcock's masterpieces: Spellbound (1945), Strangers on a Train (1951), Rear Window (1954), and Vertigo (1958), among a myriad of others. Much like And Soon the Darkness (1970), another superb non-Hitchcock thriller of the time, Wait Until Dark meets and exceeds the bar. It's a taut and slow-burning thriller with elements of an Ocean's Eleven-style (or better yet, "A-Team"-style) complex heist set-up. Throw in one of the most talented and beloved actresses of all time and a snake-in-the-grass villain like Roat, and you have the recipe for a truly exceptional film.

Not that the film is completely without fault. Susie has the annoying habit of making some incredibly unfortunate decisions, including not locking her door in Manhattan, even after a night filled with repeated intrusions by strangers bearing cryptic messages or suspicious good-will. And Mr. Hendrix's treatment of his wife, while on the surface appearing as a noble attempt to make her self-sufficient, upon deeper reflection, smacks of a brutish sexism and equates the visually impaired to wayward puppies.

However, this film is just too good to let these relatively minor faults hold sway. If you're looking for an exemplary thriller, a successful stage-to-screen adaptation, or just Audrey Hepburn's last great film, give this one a try.

Storyline & plot: 9/10
Cinematography & effects: 8/10
Music & mood: 9/10
Performances: 8/10

The Reverend says: 10/10

JCVD

JCVD (2008) is the brainchild of Mabrouk El Mechri, virtually unknown writer and director, and the legendary action/martial arts star tuned Hollywood joke Jean-Claude Van Damme. The film is a profoundly dark action comedy, drawing on Van Damme's semi-autobiographical torment as a glorified has-been relegated to direct-to-DVD schlockfests and playing third fiddle to Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal as 'that other cheesy karate movie guy.' The film is helped along by El Mechri's brazen use of extended tracking shots, and cinematographer Pierre-Yves Bastard's talent at pulling them off, not to mention emotional acting chops no one ever knew Van Damme had. If Van Damme is lucky, this film might just do for him what Sin City (2005) and The Wrestler (2008) have done for Mickey Rourke.

In JCVD, Jeane-Claude Van Damme has returned home to the Belgian countryside to start a new life after losing his daugter in a a bitter custody battle. Following on the heels of this defeat comes yet another: Van Damme has lost his latest acting gig to rival Steven Seagal. Tired, defeated, and penniless, Van Damme is forced to beg an advance on his next film. He stops in a small Belgian town to receive the wired money, and that's when all hell breaks loose. Van Damme unwittingly walks in on a bank heist in progress. The robbers subdue Van Damme and begin the process of setting him up to take the fall. Now Van Damme must try to keep all the hostages alive while dealing with the dangerously unstable bank robbers and the unfortunate consequences of his own fame.

JCVD reflects heavy influence from Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon (1975), the classic bank heist gone terribly wrong. The characterizations of two of the bank robbers, played by Karim Belkhadra and Zinedine Soualem, even bear remarkable resemblance to Dog Day's doomed lovers Sonny and Sal (Al Pacino and John Cazale). The imitations are admirable, considering the talented sources. The music used for JCVD is excellent, mixing ominously pounding drums with sweet Curtis Mayfield soul and quirky folksy tunes (including a nice cover of David Bowie's "Modern Love"). The director and scriptwriters take a huge gamble in the middle of the film, suddenly taking the movie beyond the confines of a well-made black comedy, and lifting it straight into the meta-art stratosphere with a ballsy six minute soliloquy delivered straight from Van Damme to you at home. It's weird, no doubt, but it's also brutally honest. An explanation. An apology, if you will.

It's hard to really encapsulate this film. It's part parody, part homage, and part flat-out kickass goodness. Fans of Van Damme will be vindicated and others will be pleasantly surprised.

Storyline & plot: 7/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 8/10
Performances: 8/10

The Reverend says: 8/10