Gaming -- of all sorts -- distinguishes the new sort-of-thriller, Adam Randall's LEVEL UP

One of those ever-more-plentiful what's-going-on-here-and-why? movies, the new would-be thriller/suspense film, LEVEL UP, takes a typically irresponsible male, who would rather spend his time drinking, drugging and gaming than working for a living, and puts him through one hell of a day or so in the service of... what, exactly? Our entertainment, one would guess. But that means you would need to be pretty heavily into gaming yourself before finding worthwhile this over-reaching combo of an early David Fincher film, The Game, and its more recent online cousin, Nerve.

As directed and co-written (with Gary Young) by Adam Randall, shown at left, the movie and its WTF plot seems initially pretty silly before turning serious and then even life-threatening. Our non-hero, Matt (played by Josh Bowman, below, left) gets off on his usual morning of doing damned little but slouching around and maybe playing video games. Then, just after his girlfriend leaves for work, he has his day interrupted by three hooded fellows who do some very naughty things.

And yet, no matter how horrible life becomes for poor Matt, this viewer could not shake the sense that everything going on here was one big, complicated and maybe pointless game. Along the way various scenarios present themselves, coming either via the film itself or perhaps from the several other movies we've seen that have played similar games:

Because his girlfriend has suddenly been kidnapped, Matt must then go all over the place and do all kind of weird things to save her life. Is all this merely the adventures of a poor shnook or schmuck being used for nefarious purposes? Maybe. But, really now, if you want someone killed, would you have to go to this much complicated trouble to do the job?

Or maybe this is some kind of treatise on the evils/perils of too much gaming (as Nerve tried so hard to be)? Or a cautionary tale about how the Internet is taking over our lives? Or could it really be about... surveillance? Or this: After a time of being around a bunch of numbskull males, one begins to wonder if the whole idea and plot has been concocted by a group of women who have grown thoroughly fed up with their dim-bulb men.

Matt's adventures takes him from one oddball place and person to another, and Mr. Bowman, who is in just about every scene in the film, certainly proves to be game. Some of the other males and females have their moments, too. Little by little, that plot begins to offer a few revelations, though nothing that quite pinpoints exactly what is going on. At least not for a very long time.

This is probably for the better, since mysteries are almost always more fun than their resolutions. The movie looks snappy, too; it's well filmed and edited, and the performances are as good as the concept and characters call for. Over all, I could have done without it -- though perhaps I've already seen too many films a little too much like this one. You younger folk may have more patience -- due to having less of a catalog/backlog of movie memories to weigh the film down.

In any case, Level Up -- from filmbuff and running 84 minutes -- will open tomorrow, Friday, August 26, for a week-long run in a dozen theaters in a dozen cities across the country, including  New York (at the Cinema Village), Los Angeles (at the Downtown Independent), and Austin (Alamo Drafthouse, Slaughter Lane). Look for it in Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth, Milwaukee, San Francisco/San Jose, Seattle/Tacoma, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Detroit, too. On September 26, the film will make its nationwide VOD debut.

Joost & Schulman's NERVE has some verve -- along with a whole lot of nonsense

Alternately ugly and silly, suspenseful and ridiculous, the new would-be thriller NERVE -- from that Catfish duo, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman -- proves a trying time at the movies. For all its timeliness (giving us an online game more popular than this new Pokemon nonsense), the film keeps asking you to suspend your disbelief over and over until you're ready to scream, "Fuck it!" and take that disbelief behind the barn to permanently put it out of its misery. Younger audiences may be able to manage this. We older folk will want to call it a day well before this 96-minute movie does the same.

Part of the problem here is the so-so screenplay by Jessica Sharzer (from a novel by Jeanne Ryan) in which, necessarily I suppose, the "game" at the center of the film overrides all else. The filmmakers, shown above, with Mr. Joost on the left (photo is by Jimi Celeste, courtesy of Getty Images) are at this point -- after Catfish and some of the Paranormal Activity drivel -- well-versed in hand-held, by-the-bootstraps filmmaking, and they do a good job or putting us in the role of voyeurs in the online game in which you are either a watcher or a player (you pay money to be the former, and perhaps considerably more than that if you choose to be the latter).

The game is basically one of those Do-you-dare-attempt-what-we-tell-you? deals, in which the stakes grow higher and higher, after which most of us would simply say, "Oh, please!" and move on to something else. But this is "the movies" and so instead our heroine (an ever-game Emma Roberts, above) and maybe hero (the slightly-sleazier-than-his-older-brother, Dave Franco, below) do the dares and take us along with them.

Some of the dares have built-in suspense aplenty (driving a motorcycle at 60 mph while blindfolded) and the directors milk these for what they're worth. Others (hanging from skyscraper construction beams or waking across a horizontal ladder placed between buildings) seem awfully tired. And some (trying on pricey clothes at a posh department store, and then...) are rather fun.

Much worse is the movie's lame try at characterization. Ms Roberts hasn't much, except to be the usual ugly duckling/hang-backer who suddenly develops into a feisty swan. But Ms Roberts is always pretty and real, with charm aplenty, all of which she must rely on bigtime here. Mr. Franco is relegated to the role of is-he-or-isn't-he a cad and so must rely on his very sexy body to do the heavy-lifting.

Worst of all are the subsidiary characters who either fade into the wallpaper (Miles Heizer, above, right, as the lovestruck best male friend) or change character completely and unbelievably (Emily Meade as the best female friend and Colson Baker/aka Machine Gun Kelly as the top competitor in the game). Themes of ambition, fame, and the meaning of friendship rear their somewhat tired heads, too, and all are given as shallow a treatment as you might imagine.

The movie takes place in New York City and its boroughs (mostly Staten Island), yet the penultimate scene, set in what looks something like the Roman Coliseum by night, seems to be housing maybe twice the population of Rome. (How did these thousands upon thousands of kids get here without attracting a little police attention or supervision?)

Nerve, which becomes uglier and uglier as it goes along, finally offers too little of what its title promises. Think of it as Saw for the PG set. It would like to be a warning call regarding the morality of online game playing, but in its rush to finally make everything all right, not only does it not have the courage of its convictions, it turns out to have lacked any convictions in the first place. But, yes, it is -- off and on -- bad, silly fun.

From Lionsgate and set to entice the marginally-intelligent teen crowd, the movie opens today all over the place. Click here, and you'll be greeted with a venue (or ten) near you.

Douglas Tirola's ALL IN: THE POKER MOVIE -- history, cards and a lot of talking heads

Do you love poker? Then you're a shoo-in for ALL IN: THE POKER MOVIE, the new documentary that looks very much like a labor of love from filmmaker Douglas Tirola (An Omar Broadway Film, A Reason to Believe), who insists (maybe once too often) that poker is somehow America and America poker. Poker is a part of our history, played by everyone from Presidents to pikers, and full of that rebellious streak that so personifies our country. Or something like that. Juggling historical footage with a large array of present-day talking heads and taking us into important games and events (the rise, fall and -- maybe -- rise again of online poker), the movie would seem a "must" for poker-heads and possible viewing, too, for people like me, who may have played poker as kids but don't have much interest in it now.

Tirola, shown at left, begins with the FBI indictment of online poker (notes one player, expressing the movie's typical poker-centric universe: "Like the Kennedy assassination, everyone remembers exactly where he was when he first heard about this"), then goes back in time to gather up that history and talk with folk both classy (historian/author Doris Kearns Goodwin and social commentator Ira Glass) and crass (you choose, once you've seen the movie). We hear a lot from actor Matt Damon (below), who, along with Edward Norton, made that famous flop poker-movie Rounders -- of which and about which we see so much here that for awhile it appears that Mr. Tirola is trying to conjur some kind of revival (or maybe a remake) of that film.

We learn about and watch some old footage of poker legend Thomas "Amarillo Slim" Preston, as well as meeting one of the newest legends, pro player Chris Moneymaker (yes, that's his real and, as we see, quite fitting name). Mr. Moneymaker, shown below with his daughter on his lap, turns out to be the most interesting thing in the movie (along with a fellow named Henry Orenstein, who invented the "hole cam," now used in all video-ed poker games), and his entry into online poker provides the film with its most suspenseful moments (unless you follow poker and already know the outcome).

How poker grows from being a player's to a spectator's sport also proves an interesting journey, and a discussion of exactly how poker has become so popular leads to the film's funniest line: "Things don't grow that don't have growabilitiness to them."

Statistics are occasionally spoken of and shown on-screen -- in 1961, most homes included a card table; in 1991, almost all casinos had closed their poker rooms; in 2001, 60 million Americans played poker weekly -- and someone tells us that poker is now more popular than the NFL games. Really?

Much is also made of the freedom that is being taken away from us Americans by the government's banning of online poker. However, as of this year, online gaming appears to be coming back, via various of our individual states, so freedom, thank god, is secure again. Even if this may be, in reality, the freedom to get fleeced. Earlier in the movie, in reference to Rounders, one person calls this, "The best movie ever!" Yes, notes another, "Thank you for bringing million of suckers into the game and making us rich!"

All In: The Poker Movie, from 4th Row Films and a little too long at 109 minutes (though I may have seen a slightly longer version on the screener sent me than the 100 minutes that will play theatri-cally), opens this Friday in New York City at the Cinema Village. Upcoming playdates all the around the country, with cities and theaters, can be found by clicking here and then scrolling down.