DVD, Blu-ray & VODebut: From Canada, April Mullen and Tim Doiron's fast-moving, bloody 88

Perhaps we should think of April Mullen, the director of this new movie, as a kind of Quentina Tarantina -- so insistent is she on giving us fast-moving, comedic and bloody mayhem with a definite ironic twist. If, by now, we've seen a bit too much of aped Tarantino (if not way too much of the real thing, as well), this should not necessarily put you off viewing Ms Mullen's latest offering, 88. It's rather fun, in its over-the-top manner. Much of that fun is provided by a fellow named Tim Doiron, who wrote the screenplay and co-stars as the unlucky young man who finds himself smitten with the film's leading lady, Gwen, payed by Katharine Isabelle, whom some of us fondly remember from Ginger Snaps.

Ms Mullen (shown at left, and something of a looker herself), is an actress, as well as director, and she certainly gives her leading lady enough rope to either hang herself or lasso a nifty performance. Ms Isabelle manages to do both. She's deadly serious throughout, which results in the movie around her often seeming skewed, as the rest of the cast have caught onto the irony and laughs, while she is dead set on nothing but revenge. Sort of. The plot here, you see, deals with a young woman in a "Fugue state," which the movie goes out of its way to explain in some detail, none of which makes the goings-on any more believable, though it does help explain some of the bizarre behavior on display.

88 -- the title refers to just about every street address and motel room number throughout the movie -- begins with our heroine (above) sitting in a diner where, suddenly, all hell breaks loose. This ploy happens often throughout the film, and while it eventually drags things down, initially (and for quite awhile) it proves a lot of fun. This girl is clearly muddled, and when the movie begins flipping back and forth in time, so are we.

For much of its running time, 88 is one of those movies that asks: "Who is this character, what the fuck is happening, and why?" Slowly the pieces come together, but I'm afraid that fugue state doesn't really explain it all to our satisfaction. Yet the action rarely ceases, and much of it is randy, nasty fun, as Gwen looks to find and kill the person responsible for her lover's untimely demise. (He is played by Kyle Schmid, above, right, used here mostly for his drowsy sex appeal.)

Instead it is Mr. Doiron, above, as a new character in Gwen's life named Ty, who provides most of the movie's energy and spirit. The actor is marvelous as this screwball, comical-but-sexy wonder who hopes against hope that he can make Gwen his own. As well as a terrific performance, Doiron also gives us a few surprises via his screenplay.

Canada's old-time favorite Michael Ironside (above) plays the lead cop investigating the many deaths that Gwen oversees, while Christopher Lloyd (below) handles the villain role with his usual bizarre aplomb. Eventually, there are so many killings and maimings going on that you fear there will be nary a cast member remaining by movie's end.

The violence soon become comical -- it's meant to be -- and when you get to the point where one character (the lead cop, as I recall) says, "She's armed, she's dangerous, and she must be stopped!" you know you're in comic book territory.

88 -- from Millennium Entertainment and running, yes, 88 minutes -- makes its DVD, Blu-ray and VOD debut this coming Tuesday, January 6. Consider yourself informed (or maybe warned).

The brutality fest DJANGO UNCHAINED? Better to refer to it as Tarantino bound.

You gotta hand it to this guy. Quentin Tarantino (shown below) is at it again, homaging himself silly. Not content with doing it, three years back, to WWII movies and those naughty Nazis, and this year to Spaghetti westerns and the slave trade in the USA, now he's even homaging himself! And repeating himself. (How many times must our Django gaze off into the distance and see a vision of his slave-traded woman?) All this takes extra time, of course: two and three-quarter hours to be exact. TrustMovies managed to last out two full hours of the film before heading out to the lobby to finish an article he'd begun reading (prior to entering the theater) in the current issue of Cineaste -- a magazine you should take a look at, by the way, if you don't know it already: It's the best of any in terms of connecting movies to our society, past and present).

After being unable to sit through either Inglourious Basterds or DJANGO UNCHAINED (and I almost never give up on any movie), I suppose it is time to reconsider the oeuvre of Mr. T. Later for that. Right now, I'll just say that Tarantino is doing in his most recent work exactly what he did in his penultimate one. He's giving us the questionable pleasure of thrilling to and egging on ultraviolence against folk who so obviously deserve the worst that can be dished out: those WWII Nazis who so abused the Jews, and now the disgusting white slave traders who so abused the blacks. Talk about straw men (women, too).

This kind of on-screen shit -- and that is exactly what it is -- is crass and simple-minded, not to mention fake history, as nothing like what is seen in either of these two films actually existed. Excuse me? Yes, there was a WWII, and slavery flourished here in the good ol' USA. But all our Quentin has managed to do is let us free our inner bullies and cheer on the violence against the villains, who, in the actual day pictured in both of QT's films, were generally accorded praise and fealty, even by their victims who would have otherwise been all the sooner killed. So here's your fantasy chance to even the score! How paltry, pitiful and beneath the level of intelligent audiences. And yet, I guess, it is not. Our current audiences are even more cretinous than I had suspected.

Yes, Django Unchained is pretty to look at -- dat's one big budget up dere on da screen!), is in most cases extremely well-acted, especially by Christoph Waltz (above) as a semi-moral bounty hunter and Samuel L. Jackson (below, left) as the Uncle Tom of all time, and tosses around the word "nigger" like it was about to go out of style and so must not, on any account, be forgotten.

The "n" word, as so many journalists offer it up these days, is used especially often and "well" by Django himself (Jamie Foxx, below), and so gussies itself up ironically -- but so consistently and repeti-tiously that any irony is finally long gone. As violent as the movie is, however, Tarantino actually cuts away from some of the beatings, blood and gore. So this could have been a lot worse. But were not the filmmaker so enamored with himself and his "style," the movie could have been so much better. Shorter, too. There is enough content here for maybe 90 minutes rather than its current 165.

One set piece after another passes before our eyes until, eventually, the eyes begin to glaze over. I cannot vouch for anything in those last 45 minutes that I missed, but I saw only one visual moment I thought very creative on QT's part in the first two hours: the scene in which Django -- dressed in his light blue, silken, Little Lord Fauntleroy attire -- walks quickly across the huge plantation to try to stop a slave being whipped and happens to pass a young black woman swaying beautifully on a swing.  This was a graceful, surprising moment, unlike anything I have seen. Lovely. For the rest, it's just business as usual.

Django Unchained is playing all over town in just about every town. Click here to find the theater nearest you -- and go crazy. Maybe, if you're really lucky, you live in a location where you can legally carry a concealed weapon into the local theater and have yourself some fun. I'll tell you: This movie'll rev you up to it. But remember: You can only shoot the really, really bad guys. 'Cause that's just A-OK.

The photos above are from the film itself,

except that of Mr. Tarantino, which is 

by Donald Bowers, courtesy of Getty Images

SCN: Miguel Ángel Vivas' KIDNAPPED'll get your juices flowing -- and maybe your ire

Crap from an angel? Well, what's in a name? (And it's his middle name, anyhow.) Am I being too hard on Miguel Ángel Vivas and his new Spanish movie KIDNAPPED (Secuestrados)? Maybe. Clearly, Señor Vivas means his film as a provocation to its audience -- which it sure as hell is. But is it much more than that? TrustMovies has doubts. He admits (and grudingly admires) this filmmaker's talent, which is often on noticeable display throughout this 85-minute movie, but at the finale (there's ain't no denouement here) he felt annoyed and abused. (Which is exactly the effect, he suspects, for which the filmmaker hoped.)

If not, then why begin his movie in the manner he has done? It's a terrific opening, by the way: an image of a man, his hands tied and his head covered and loosely wrapped, with the wind making small indentations in that wrapping. What follows is one good shock, followed by another, by another. Then we get a respite, as we decide that the filmmaker (that handsome devil shown at left) has begun in media res, then taken us a few minutes onward, only to flash us back into something like "Several Hours Earlier" or "One Day Previous."  Except that no title card tells us this, and instead -- having seen many, many movies in our day, right? -- we simply assume this to be so. Well, you know the old saying: Never assume: it makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me."

There have been other "provocations" in the popular family-in-jeopardy genre: Haneke's Funny Games (either version) comes immediately to mind, as well as Inside from Bustillo & Maury. But Kidnapped is something different. It doesn't (and I don't think it gives a shit about this) play fair with its audience. Consequently, once the film concludes, anger may be the audience's biggest response. But then, a bit later (like right now -- several hours down the road, as I am writing this review), I find myself grinning as I type and rethink the movie.

Not that my grin means that I am overly happy with this film. Let's start with its title. Kidnapped usually involves being taken away, transported, by force. That doesn't happen here. Seized might have been a better title, but I guess it doesn't have the cojones of "kid-napped." (It does, however have more originality: the K-word has been the title of some 35 movies already; Seized has been used only once). Talking only about the chosen title seems a bit paltry, so instead let's ask about the filmmaker's decision to use the split-screen. This may be the worst example of split-screen in a movie that I have ever seen. Vivas insists on doing it at exactly the mom-ent when two hugely eventful & important things are taking place. Both views are exciting and well done, but one's eye can only take in one of the two. So we simply miss what's happening on the other side of the screen. This is stupid and unforgivable. You can probably piece together what happened plot-wise, all right, but in terms of action -- and there's a lot of it -- you didn't see it.  (Or if you did, you missed what was happening on the other side of the screen.)

Considering how short the film is, it still drags a bit midway, and a little too much goes wrong with the kidnappers' plot for maximum believability. Vivas is very good, however, at upping the tension -- both the intergenerational tension we see as we are introduced to the family, and then the tension we feel as audience members because we know something awful is going to happen. As director and co-writer (with Javier García) Vivas withholds the blood and gore for quite awhile, and then lets it come on full force. (The most violent scene provoked loud screams from the Walter Reade audience the afternoon I saw the film. But the filmmaker lets us know this is OK: the victim has been shown to be a very naughty Albanian, these days the eastern European bad-guy of choice.)

What Vivas is probably best at is upending our expectations, which is also the main point behind this provocation. To move immediately from his ending -- one of the nastiest in movie history -- to the song he has chosen to be sung as the credits roll, is to be slapped in the face repeatedly and hard by the grinning, son-of-a-bitch director.

I realize that I have now said enough to send fans of this genre racing non-stop to check out the film. Unfortunately, it has already played both of its performances at Spanish Cinema Now. But don't despair: I am told that IFC Films has picked up Kidnapped for its On-Demand IFC Midnight series, after which a DVD debut is probably in the cards. When the official VOD dates are announced, I'll keep you posted.

Just one week left for the Spanish Cinema Now series. Click here for the complete program.