Joe Lynch's very violent MAYHEM goes gleefully and crazily over the top

Ah, the workplace. Isn't it fun? We've just seen the French version, Corporate, via Nicolas Silhol, which gets a one-time run today in NYC at FIAF (until some smart distributor picks it up for further attention). Best of all, maybe, would be Joe Johnston's little gem from 2014, Not Safe for Work, a B-movie workplace thriller that gets everything right. Add now to your list of workplace goodies, MAYHEM, from Long Island filmmaker Joe Lynch, who a few years back gave us the the very tasty and so politically incorrect vengeance thriller, Everly, in which Salma Hayek strutted her very impressive stuff.

Now Mr. Lynch (shown at left) turns his attention to the corporate world and all (or much) of its malfeasance with his usual grin and copious squirts of the red stuff. Mayhem arrives at its titular state rather quickly, but prior to that it provides a bit of exposition regarding a new virus that has arrived to give humanity ever more problems. Thankfully (and a good deal more creatively) this virus does not turn folk into zombies.

Rather, once infected, the host's eyes turn red and he (or she) loses all inhibitions, becoming ultra-violent, ultra-horny and ultra-, well, just about any naughty thing you might be able to imagine. (One of the film's funnier moments has to do with emptying wastebaskets.)

So when our hero, Derek (played by a fine and feisty Steven Yeun, shown above and below, pre- and post-mayhem), who has risen to a higher rank in the corporate world by becoming an ever-better shit-heel, even if (as we note in an early scene) he has not yet lost quite all of his humanity, is suddenly made the fall guy for the mistakes of others, he plots revenge on his "horrible bosses."

Along for the ride is a pretty young woman named Melanie (Samantha Weaving, above, right, and below), who has come to the corporation to plead with it not to evict her from her family home -- the mortgage of which the corporation now owns. When the virus infects the building, including our sort-of good guy and gal, and the corporation headquarters is quarantined, the opportunity arises to redress certain grievances.

Among the numerous villains are some very fine actors playing people who've been given just enough specific and nasty qualities that each is enable to endow his/her character with some lip-smacking fun via a clever, on-target performance.

These would include the estimable Kerry Fox (at extreme left, above) as the corporate dragon lady, and Stephen Brand (above, front and center) as the would-be fellow in charge. Ms Fox is always a treat to see, and she nails it once again in this juicy supporting role.

Also on tap is the very hot actress, Caroline Chikezie (center left), as the firm's lower-level dragon lady known as The Siren, who provides a lot of nasty, sexy fun. As the violence escalates (it's all pretty cartoonish, from which the recipients keep rising up again and again) and our heroes make their way to the "top," things get dicier, funnier and ever more actionful.

It may seem odd to describe a movie this bloody and violent as an enjoyable romp, but given what keeps unfurling in the real world about our corporate culture and its negative impact upon us all, I suppose we can be forgiven for indulging in a little fantasy payback now and again, especially when it is this inventively staged. So thank you, Mr. Lynch. And keep up the good work.

From RLJE Films and running a swift 86 minutes, Mayhem opens this Friday, November 10, in theaters, via VOD and digital high def. In Los Angeles you can view it at Laemmle's Monica Film Center, in New York City at the Cinema Village, and at the other eight cities/theaters listed below: Atlanta/AMC Conyers Crossing 16, Dallas/AMC Hickory Creek, Houston/AMC Yorktown, San Francisco/AMC Deer Valley, Phoenix/AMC Arizona Center, Chicago/AMC Woodridge, Detroit/ AMC Gratiot and Tampa/AMC Sundial. 

Paul Verhoeven's bizarre TRICKED proves an enjoyable -- if misfired -- cinema oddity

Even though his resume is rather up-and-down -- The Fourth Man to Showgirls, Spetters to the original Robocop, Basic Instinct to Black Book -- anything Dutch director Paul Verhoeven hands us is worth at least a look, if not an occasional repeat viewing. So it is with his latest film (and one of his oddest) to reach our shores, the 2012 TRICKED, which is advertised to be (though I rather doubt it) "the first user-generated film." This supposedly means that a bunch of film fans had their say in writing the screenplay, along with maybe a half dozen more-or-less professional writers, all of whom "developed" the movie as the filming process went along.

Verhoeven, shown at left, has long been noted for his diversity -- he doesn't like to do the same thing twice. So tackling this "user-generated" thing probably had some appeal to the guy. Yet it is difficult to believe that a filmmaker this accomplished would not have seen some of the insurmountable problems coming a mile away. The biggest of these is the fact that using so many "screenwriters" (I think I heard the number 70 mentioned) all working independently and handing in their own "scenarios" that took off from an original four-page set-up could not help but result in a movie that has little continuity and certainly no momentum or satisfying finale. Eventually this multi-writer idea had to be scrapped, with the final film using the input from only a few of the scribes. (So much for this truly being a user-generated film.)

We learn all of the above and more from the first third of the movie, just over a half-hour, which is a kind of documentary about the creation of Tricked. Then we see the resulting film (stills from which are shown above and below). While that documentary is not uninteresting, it is clear to any intelligent viewer, almost from the beginning, that this was a terrible, a genuinely stupid idea. All of which makes that first half-hour rather a slough, even though there is an occasional bright moment seen or smart thought expressed.

When we get to the film itself, the Verhoeven we know and love takes over, and things get juicy and spicy and melodramatic and generally lots of fun. The plot is full of lust and betrayal, heavy-duty emotions, family problems and business deals. The performances -- all from pros, young and old -- are just fine, as is always the case in Verhoeven's films, and the technical aspects (editing, sound, cinematography, and all the rest) are great, as well. But the finished movie, coming in at just under one hour, seems like something that would work better on television. Its highly melodramatic plot (it must be, under this kind of time constraint) involves so much "incident" that it often seems to approach a level of "camp."

Verhoeven has always been a director who fills his films with so many happenings, including incident and coincidence, that you're zipping along at a super-fast pace. When this works well, as in Black Book, and a number of his other films, the entertainment quotient is very high. And when the film's running time also allows for some character deepening and theme development, the result can be quite fine. Here, though, it all seems rushed and TV-level (old-fashioned television, like a Twilight Zone episode but without the supernatural or fantasy elements).

And yet, such an old pro is the filmmaker that by the end of Tricked, I found myself hurling right along with all this nonsense, which involved a rake of a husband and his mistresses, current and past; a corporate takeover; and a birthday party with a bulging surprise at its center. I suppose it was decided that releasing a mere 55-minute movie would not be a smart marketing move, so the documentary footage was added to make something full-length. How much better it might have been, TrustMovies suggests, to have made a full-length Verhoeven film instead: one in which all that juicy melodrama was given the kind of backup development it ought to have had. Post-viewing, you're likely to start imagining what all this could have been, and you'll be disappointed not to have seen it, instead.

From Kino Lorber and running a total of 89 minutes, Tricked opens in New York City this Friday, February 26. at the Cinema Village theater and simultaneously via digital streaming on Fandor.

Philipp Stölzl's ERASED gives its cast--and its audience -- a speedy, thrilling workout

If you're looking for a nifty suspense thriller with a intelligently convoluted premise and some great action/fight set pieces, you could do a lot worse than ERASED, the new film from Philipp Stölz (shown below, the Bavarian filmmaker who earlier gave us the fine North Face and the just-OK Young Goethe in Love). An example of one of those internationally created, funded, cast and executed movies that actually works pretty well, Erased was filmed in and around mostly Belgium (with a little Montreal tossed in), using locations that are scenic and photogenic, as well as pleasantly different from the sort we most often get.

The film's original title was The Expatriate, which, once you know the story, proves a much better choice for both its meaning and irony. Undoubtedly the movie's marketing mavens decided that those extra couple of syllables in this fifty-cent word would prove too much for mass audiences to handle. So Erased it is, and erased (or nearly) are our hero and heroine. The former is played by the always reliable Aaron Eckhart (below), as, yes, an expatriate working in Belgium for a company that makes a very interesting product, about which a glitch has just been discovered.

Into Eckhart's care has come his somewhat estranged teen-age daughter, played with grace and grit by Liana Liberato (below, of Trust and Trespass). The movie begins with a gunshot and the trail of corpses the shooter has left in his wake. Something is stolen, then passed from hand to hand.

By the time, shortly thereafter, that father and daughter are running for their lives (below), the audience is piecing together plot strands like crazy, trying to figure out, as is the Eckhart character, what is going on and why.

Into the mix comes the lately-often-seen Olga Kurylenko (below, of Oblivion, To the Wonder, Seven Psychopaths) as a suspect ex-compatriot of Eckhart, and Garrick Hagon (further below, with Eckhart), as a naughty corporate head.

As the body count increases -- it's huge, for the bad guys are relentless and remorseless -- betrayals both planned and accidental occur, while father and daughter alternately spar and join forces to stay alive.

If the finale proves somewhat less exciting and worthwhile than what has come before, this is unfortunately par for the course of most of these international thrillers. On the plus side, I would say that Erased builds up enough good will and excitement during its first hour or so that you won't mind tagging along for the duration.

The movie -- from Radius-TWC and running 104 minutes -- is currently playing the L.A. area at Laemmle's Town Center 5 and will open this Friday, May 17, in Manhattan at the Village East Cinema and perhaps elsewhere. But, as it's been playing VOD since the beginning of April, you'll be able to gain access to it fairly easily.

NYFF50: There's PASSION tonight (later, too) as Brian De Palma's newest unveils

Might as well come right out with it: PASSION, the new film from Brian De Palma which has its American debut at the New York Film Festival tonight, is a remake of the two-year-old French film Love Crime by Alain Corneau (which proved to be that director's final movie). That Mr. De Palma would choose to remake a movie this recent that was released in a dozen major countries around the world was by far a bigger shock to TrustMovies than anything he saw in Passion itself. Does that make it a bad movie? Not at all. It's actually a lot of fun -- perhaps even more so for those of us (many, I would wager) who have already seen the earlier version.

As a stylist, M. Corneau was quiet in the extreme (Love Crimes was all icy blues and greys -- as icy as its leading lady, Kristin Scott Thomas -- particularly its interiors, which were "corporate" to a fault.) De Palma (at left), as usual, goes so over the top that you can't (and wouldn't want to) take your eyes off the screen. All or many of his signature tropes are here, from that huge staircase seen from above to the sudden, bloody slash of the knife, from fetish objects to twins. Not that he was the first to make use of any of these, but few have used them better.

There are differences in plot and character between the movies, but mostly it's a matter of style. The American, being a practitioner of giallo (well, he's Italian American!) gives us a far wide color palette, stylish but not plentiful gore, a number of goosebumps and the promise and delivery of some transgressive sex, though not of the lesbian variety that is rather expected.

In the roles created by Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnuier, we now have Rachel McAdams (above, going fairly far afield from her usual sunny-disposition roles) and Noomi Rapace (below, left, the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). To add to the same sex mix, Rapace's assistant is now played by a women (Karoline Herfurth, below, right) rather than a man, with designs -- and ambitions -- of her own regarding her boss.

Comparions may be odios, but as De Palma has practically courted them, they're inevitable. I suspect there will be at least as many positive as negative. Passion plays tonight at 9 at Alice Tully Hall; Saturday, October 6 at 9 at the Walter Reade Theater; and Thurs-day, October 11 at 3:15 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

Size matters! So does reputation. Morten Tyldum's HEADHUNTERS shows us why.

What a week it has been for must-see movies: Three of 'em already -- and TrustMovies has seen only nine of the twenty-one films opening theatrically in New York City in the past seven days. (How does any critic possibly keep up with this flow? At the end of the year, when those "Best Lists" arrive, you just know that nobody's seen 'em all.) The third of the current week's must-sees (Bernie and Safe are the other two) is also, like Safe, part of the thriller genre: HEADHUNTERS (Hodejegerne in the original Norwegian), directed by Morten Tyldum (shown below) and written by Lars Gudmestad and Ulf Ryberg (from the novel by Jo Nesbø).

Our "hero" Roger (Aksel Hennie, shown below, at work) -- and little twat that he is, we still identify with him -- is only a slightly undersized fellow who nonetheless makes up for this with his own brand of Napoleon complex. One of the titular headhunters, he's a top pro in his field and would be by any normal standard considered quite the success. But it is not enough for someone who imagines himself "short," and so he makes up for this by stealing very valuable art and selling it on the black market. How he does this, using his day job as part of the scheme, makes for much of the fun of the opening section of the film.

From then on, however, as Roger gets in just a little too deeply and inextricably, the tension mounts until it is, at times, well nigh unbearable. Yet -- and this is part of the delight of this bleakly funny movie -- the humor is never far away, no matter how dark and disgusting things get (we won't go into what our hero is covered with, below). And, my, these "things" go places that few movies have been. Particularly films that are this funny.

Roger's wife, a statuesque blond played by Synnøve Macody Lund (below, left) has opened  an art gallery and one of her clients is a gorgeous and -- drat it! -- tall hunk named Clas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, below, center, and yes, from HBO's Game of Thrones) who not only might be looking for a newly-on-the-market, high-level job (that Roger could place him in) but also may have a priceless, stolen-by-the-Nazis piece of art in his possession. How can our hero resist this particular combo?

Of course he can't; let the games begin. So cleverly has the scenario been set up, and even more cleverly does it play out, that comparisons with Hitchcock are not amiss. Hitch loved to put his heroes through the wringer, but even he would be shocked at what our Roger has gone through by the time these hundred minutes have ended. (Hitch would also, I suspect, be grinning.)

This include a oddly clingy mistress (Julie R. Ølgaard, below),

a partner-in-crime (Eivind Sander, below) whose sexual tastes run to filming his Russian-prostitute girlfriend with a home camera,

and several others, the most biazrre of which may be the very heavy-set twin policemen from the provinces who end up saving our hero's life in a manner you would not want to try on your own nearby highway. Oh, and did I mention perhaps the most horribly inflicted haircut in the history of movies?

Almost, but not quite, too smart for its own good, the film still works beautifully precisely because it is so smart. Headhunters thrills, amuses and invigorates. That's more than enough, in my book, to make it a must-see. The movie, from Magnolia Pictures, opens today in New York City at the AMC Empire 25, the Beekman and Landmark's Sunshine Cinema, and in Los Angeles at The Landmark.  Click here for other playdates, with cities and theaters, across the country in the weeks to come

Green Sleaze: Laura Israel's WINDFALL tracks wind energy in upstate New York

How disappointing is the experience of viewing WINDFALL, the award-winning documentary by longtime editor and now filmmaker Laura Israel about the coming of wind energy to a small farming town in upstate New York? Hugely. And I don't mean the movie itself -- which seems the very model of a smart, thoughtful documentary about a timely and important subject. No, I am speaking of the reaction that many of us who thought we were "green" -- welcoming all forms of safe and effective alternative energy -- are likely to have after experiencing this 83-minute movie. It will turn many of our preconceptions upside down.

Ms Israel, shown at right, starts slowly, introducing us to the townfolk of Meredith, New York, one by one or two by two. They all seem like such nice people, and indeed they were until a certain company dedicated to installing windmills in upstate New York came calling. The manner of this calling is on the individual person or family, and when any interest is shown, the company requires a confidentiality agreement to be signed. Why? We soon discover that the reason is damned sleazy. When word gets out, as of course word does in a small town, neighbor is soon pitted against neighbor, as some of the less trusting townspeople want to know many more facts and explanations than are being provided.

The one young man who represents the company (and has since parted ways with it), does seems like a decent sort (perhaps this is why ways were parted), and as we learn more of the facts about the windmills to be installed (they are 400 feet high and are to be built awfully close to the surrounding buildings), we also learn about some other communities in New York State and abroad in which windmills have become the bane of residents' existence: health problems, noise pollution, sleep deprivation and so on. ("Imagine, one fellow tells us, "your vacuum cleaner running right beside your bed all night!")

How can all this be? Wind energy is green, after all! Yes, and so is the money that (oh god, here they are again) corporations and shadow banks are making (as well as enjoying heavy-duty and repeated tax breaks) from the construction and operation of the windmills. And yet it seems that the town of Meredith is deeply divided over allowing wind energy into its midst. We hear from various people on this subject, and get to be flies on the wall at town council and planning board meetings. Finally it becomes a question of, if possible, kicking the bums out and voting in a entirely new slate of town leaders in order to stop this incursion. And yet, not all of the pro-wind townsfolk are bums. Many have been good, solid citizens for years, though Ms Israel manages to let us see the conflicts-of-interest that appear to have attached themselves to some elected members of the council who are also -- surprise! -- among the most prosperous of the town's population.

In a sense, little Meredith is a microcosm of big America, where money walks, talks and rules. We're there for all of it, thanks to Ms Israel and her crew, and we come away from the ordeal, I think, a lot wiser than we went in. We can be for "green energy" (god knows, the Meredith residents still are) but done on a scale that matches the community. I was sorry that Ms Israel did not stop the soundtrack's music or commentary long enough to let us simply listen to what one of these windmills sounds like from inside a nearby home. Otherwise, however, she's given us plenty to chew on and mull over. Perhaps it's time for a new rendition of the ever popular British folk song Greensleeves. This time out, it's Green Sleaze, with lyrics to match: Alas, my love, ye do me wrong, to build yer windmill so close to town...

Windfall, with theatrical distribution via First Run Features, opens this Friday, February 3, in New York City at the Quad Cinema and in eight more cities over the next couple of months. Click here for all currently scheduled playdates.

Alain Corneau's swan song, LOVE CRIME -- Kristin Scott Thomas, Ludivine Sagnier star

The corporation as psychotic personality has been picked over by documentaries and narrative films aplenty in the past few years, and god knows this corporate status deserves its lickings (particularly since our own Supreme Court has now gifted the corporation with a status higher than that of America's individuals: Where are those lame-brained tea-party protests when they're actually needed?). To the film canon that points up the corporation's flaws, we can now add LOVE CRIME, the new -- and sadly the last -- film from a fine French director Alain Corneau, shown below, who gave us the disparate delights of Fear and Trembling, All the Mornings of the World, and Fort Saganne.

The film, co-written by Corneau and Nathalie Carter, is also a somewhat clever murder mystery that features crack performances from its two leading ladies and a couple of other excellent ones from its subsidiary males. Kristin Scott Thomas (above, left, and below, right) plays the woman at the top of the French subsidiary of a huge multinational and Ludivine Sagnier (above, right, and below, left) is her unusual assistant, a young woman happy to give her boss all the credit, even when the ideas are her own. (The guys are represented by Patrick Mille, shown at bottom  who plays the source of both business and pleasure for Scott Thomas, and Guillaume Marquet, a business associate of Sagnier who would like to become something more.)

Performances are so good, and the plot is so interesting for awhile that we're hooked. Then, after the moment of truth as it were -- somewhat more than halfway into the film -- exactly what we expect to happen keeps happening, over and over until the finale. For those who enjoy a good mystery, this is very frustrating.

Intelligent viewers like to have their movies keep ahead of them, rather than a mile behind, and as this plot twist has already been used in a few mysteries (one of them by Agatha Christie!), that is unfortunately where we end up. There is a small surprise waiting at the end, but this is far too little too late. Still, the leading ladies (and their gentlemen) make this one worthwhile.

Love Crime, released via Sundance Selects, opened yesterday around town (mine, and maybe yours).

Photos are from the film itself, except that of M. Corneau, 

which comes courtesy of Abaca.