The Utter-Crap-Award of the year goes to Sacha Baron Cohen's new BORAT bore

Oh, dear: What has the marriage of Candid Camera and Punk'd wrought?  Another piece of complete ordure from shitmeister Sacha Baron Cohen -- following his only-slightly-better original Borat movie and his recent overlong and overdone Who Is America cable series. His new BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM is as stupid and tiring as anything he's done so far but even more simple-minded and -- god, no! -- syrupy/sentimental (or maybe faux syrupy/sentimental, so its creator can, if necessary, get off the hook). 

TrustMovies must admit to enjoying Mr. Cohen, (shown on poster, top, in mask-wear) during his early British Ali G. days, which were fresher and a lot more fun. I also bow to the man's fine acting skills. He's terrific as Abbie Hoffman in Neflix's new THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 (which is one of 2020's best films with some of its best performances, by the way. Do not miss it), and Cohen has been excellent in any number of roles so far. But his misanthropy and repetitiveness reek and wreak so heavily in and on his recent filmmaking work that I would imagine only those who share his anger and way-too-ugly sense of humor will find much amusing here.

I admit to laughing a few times but was much more often bored and confused as to what the hell Cohen's real point might be. Making fun of us all is just fine but the right-wing, racist bigots he tries to show us (including the deranged Rudy Giuliani) come off as among the nicer and kinder folk this Borat offers up. Stupid they may be, but they're certainly polite and sometimes seem even rather pleasant. Cohen's impersonations, too, by the way, are growing ever more tired and tiresome.

Well, by all means try this one is you're a fan. Running 95 minutes, it's available now via Amazon Prime Video, -- which if you've already paid for this service anyway, remember that you are not required to actually finish watching the film.

Judy Greer's directorial debut, A HAPPENING OF MONUMENTAL PROPORTIONS, opens

I am hard pressed to think of another actor whose performances over 21 years -- 129 of them, according to the imdb, and generally in supporting roles most often of the comedic variety -- have garnered her such good will (at least among movie-goers like me) than Judy Greer.

From Jawbreakers and Three Kings through Cursed, The Descendents and the recent Measure of a Man plus countless TV shows, Ms Greer, shown below,  has proven consistently interesting, reliable, funny and smart. When TrustMovies learned of her directing debut via a film entitled A HAPPENING OF MONUMENTAL PROPORTIONS, he was both excited and expectant.

The stellar cast Greer is working with, too, could hardly be bettered and includes Common, Bradley Whitford, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner, John Cho, Katie Holmes, Kumail Nanjiani and Keanu Reeves. (Mr. Reeves does not appear until movie's end, but his scene -- taking place mostly in a very colorful restaurant men's room, pictured at bottom -- proves bizarrely memorable.)

So: What's not to like? Let's start with the movie itself, which, although Ms Greer, who has directed well enough to pass muster and has most of her actors achieving as consistent a tone as possible, is working here with a screenplay written by Gary Lundy (below) that pretty much sinks the best intentions of the rest of the cast and crew.

What exactly was Mr. Lundy going for, I wonder? Some kind of satire of American society, hypocrisy, the current workplace and our school system, perhaps? If so, the result is slipshop and half-assed. The plot is undercooked, while certain characters -- the school administrator played by Rob Riggle, for instance -- are overdrawn and banged home with a vengeance.

To note but a single joke gone wrong: the suddenly deceased gardener with the name "Kevin," which of course in the Los Angels area where the movie takes place is so wrong, since all gardeners must be Hispanic. The idea may be funny but given the Lundy/Riggle combination, it is repeated so often, long and loudly that what would have been clever once or twice is instead done to death.

Greer and her very able cast try to put the spin of reality (occasionally hyper-reality) onto this mess, but the script and characterization keep upending them.

There are dead moms aplenty, the school's career day in which parents participate, a workplace coffee machine that gets sabotaged, adultery and its payoff, possible suicide, father-daughter/father-son tsuris and other assorted situations, none of which quite work for either comedy or pathos (and especially not for credibility) but instead begin to make us feel real sadness for the performers caught up all this, especially Common, who works particularly hard as a single dad trying to please his daughter while doing his job, as well as his assistant, played by Ms Garner. (The actor is shown above, left, with Mr. Whitford, who plays his nasty new boss, and below, right, with Storm Reid, who plays his sweet, intelligent daughter.)

Along the way there are some funny and/or enjoyable moments, as well as decent performances, too. But the tale told is too often too nonsensical to hold water yet not nearly clever enough for decent satire. Perhaps I am missing the point that screenwriter Lundy is trying to make -- is he just going for something goofy? -- or don't understand or appreciate the style he's using to accomplish it. But I'd have to call this one a misfire of monumental proportions.

From Great Point Media and running 82 minutes, A Happening of Monumental Proportions opens this Friday in a limited run of theaters across the country. In New York City, it will screen at the Cinema Village, and in the Los Angeles area at both the Laemmle Monica Film Center and the Ahrya Fine Arts. 

Owen Harris' KILL YOUR FRIENDS visits the blotto music industry (circa the 1990s)

What The Player did for Hollywood and Exit Through the Gift Shop did for the art world, a new movie called KILL YOUR FRIENDS attempts to do for the music industry -- unfortunately in a mostly been-there/done-that manner. Part of the problem is that the movie must be necessarily set in the past, as there no longer exists a music industry anything like the one pictured here. (Music post-Napster is something else entirely.) With a screenplay by John Niven (who also co-wrote one of the most enjoyable underseen films of modern times, Cat Run), based upon his own novel, and directed by Owen Harris (below), the film features one of those would-be memorable anti-heroes who murders his way to the top.

As played well, if a tad too heavy-handedly, by the increasingly gorgeous Nicholas Hoult (from About a Boy, Jack the Giant Slayer, Warm Bodies and the latest Mad Max overkill, and who is shown below and further below), our main character, Steven, is a talentless, lazy, entitled no-account, whose main abilities seems to be looking good and murdering his peers. Now, we don't have to like the guy, but we ought to at least be interested in how he works his way up the ladder. Slack pacing and wobbly, paint-by-numbers plotting make this difficult, despite a very good supporting cast.

This would include an under-used Joseph Mawle (below, left), a smart and grossly used James Corden, and helpful stand-bys like Tom Riley (in the penultimate photo, below), Craig Roberts (below, right), Jim Piddock (two photos below) and Georgia King (the blond at left, shown three photos below).

If murder, blackmail and accessing your boss' computer were as easy it it all seems here, what a field day villains could have.  However, if you're willing to suspend (and then stomp on) your disbelief, you might have a better time than did I.

Edward Hogg (of another underseen gem, Bunny and the Bull) makes several appearances as a would-be song-writing policeman whose misplaced ambitions play into Steven's unbelievable rise.

Two small supporting performances may grab you unexpectedly: Moritz Bleibtreu, as a German music biz idiot named Rudi, and Rosanna Arquette, as an outspoken feminist at a luncheon Steven attends. Both are better than the material that surrounds them.

Finally not funny enough to be called a comedy, or sharp enough for real satire, Kill Your Friends exists as a glossy, semi-entertaining account of a know-nothing's rise and--were the film to enter the ensuing decade--fall.

From Well Go Entertainment, the movie opens today in New York City at the AMC Empire 25, in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema, and all across the country at various cities. Click here to see all 15 currently scheduled playdates. Simultaneously with today's limited theatrical release, the film will hit Digital HD via, I am guessing, the usual venues.