Taylor Ri'chard/Zach Davis' THE FINAL PROJECT: the latest found-footage fumble

God damn -- they just keep on a comin', these nothing-new-under-the-sun, hand-held, found-footage exercises that began 17 years ago with The Blair Witch Project. With the exception of the terrific, engaging, funny, creepy and surprising Afflicted, there has barely been a movie in this new genre worth its salt, including that original boring and pretty awful marketing success, Blair Witch. Now arrives a film that marks the biggest waste of time TrustMovies has spent viewing both this year and last (maybe longer, too): THE FINAL PROJECT, the title of which comes via the video project a group of supposed college kids (they look a lot older) must deliver to their professor in order to get a passing grade. (The best thing about the film is its smart poster art, shown above.)

As directed, co-produced and co-written by newcomer Taylor Ri'chard (shown at left) and co-written/co-produced by Zach Davis (also a newcomer), the film begins with some barely understandable babblings (due to perhaps deliberately crummy sound) from a shadowy figure wondering why these kids would deliberately go into a known-to-be-haunted house. As Austin Powers might say, "Oh, come on!"

All too soon we realize that the sound is not the only thing sub-standard here. The visuals are even worse.  And both remain so throughout. I still do not quite understand why the filmmakers who dabble in this fairly new genre insist on providing some of the worst dialog currently going -- crammed with unsubtle exposition and attempting "realism" before art or entertainment.

These found footage "epics" desperately need characters with a trace of intelligence and wit, so that they can mouth some dialog that's fun and clever for a change, rather than the supposedly "realistic" but uber-tiresome stuff that comes out of the mouths of these cretins. The difference between the characters (their concerns and their dialog) in a joy like Paper Towns or the formerly mentioned Afflicted and the kids seen and heard here gives us the difference between a real movie and a big, fat waste of time.

Worse yet: So little happens for such a long while that audiences are likely to tune out well before the first scare (a comic one) arrives at the 49-minute point.  There's another scary scare at the 69-minute point, if you're still around. The entire film lasts only 79 minutes, with an extra full minute or more devoted to a supposedly frightening scratching sound on the soundtrack while the screen is black -- then appears a visual of a final newspaper article about disappeared students. All this extra nonsense allows the movie to reach its requisite 80-odd-minute running time.

Not a scene in the film has any originality; it's all been-there/done-that -- from playing the game of "Never-have-I-ever" and the inevitable sound of things that go bump in the night to dialog like "Mama, don't worry. Nuthin's gonna happen" and "We're gonna get outta here! It's gonna be all right!" If we are told -- and you can bet we are -- about an apparition in a white dress, you can be sure we'll see her eventually (as in the window above). Some of the other things we hear about, we don't see -- Civil War soldiers, for instance -- but as the budget here is miniscule, we are not surprised.

For awhile, the movie appears as though it might be more a simple murder mystery than anything to do with occult.  But so poorly made is the film that you can't be certain this was an intentional red herring on the filmmakers' part or the result of sheer laziness and lack of talent. The acting, from all concerned, is only as good as the dialog and characteri-zations make possible. The most interesting performance comes from Arin Jones (shown center, below, and three photos above), as the movie's most mysterious presence.

The surprising thing about The Final Project, however, is that it comes from the distributor, CAVU Pictures. CAVU releases a diverse slate -- from art films (Sunset Edge) to documentaries (The Real Dirt on Farmer John) to genre movie (Lucky Bastard). What unites these is their quality and originality. So I don't know quite what to make of this company's latest, well..., "surprise."

In any case, the movie opens this Friday, February 12, in Houston and Atlanta, and the following Friday, February 19, in Broussard, Louisiana, and on March 4 in New York and Los Angeles, and then expands nationwide. You can view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters by clicking here. 

Sunday Corner with Lee Liberman: Foyle's War -- our war from across the pond

You may have watched some of this British series (2002-2015) on PBS filled with absorbing stories and British acting elite. But a serial watch on Netflix of all 28 feature-length episodes is better. Taken as a whole it feels like 3-D immersion into World War II years (later of the post-war and early Cold War) in bucolic Hastings by the sea, while combat rages in Europe.

Every chapter of FOYLE's WAR has an intriguing mystery, several layered story-lines, believable conversation, and memorable imagery. At end you've grown completely fond of the exacting, self-effacing Chief Inspector Christopher Foyle (accomplished actor Michael Kitchen), his plucky, quirky, entrepreneurial assistant Sam (Samantha) Stewart (Honeysuckle Weeks), and their mate, Sergeant Paul Milner, home from defeat at Trondheim missing half a leg, to help Foyle solve crimes (Anthony Howell).

Foyle has an RAF pilot son, Andrew, played by charming Julian Ovenden, below, left (Lady Mary Crawley's suitor, Charles Blake, in Downton Abbey). Ovenden left the scene before Andrew and Sam had progressed beyond 'will they, won't they', but several RAF-related stories unfold first. In one, a pilot who loves Andrew conceals his homosexuality and pays with his life; in another, an airforce officer (Roger Allam) resorts to crime to cover up sexual abuse of a young subordinate. But Andrew doesn't leave the scene before we share his flying experiences testing radar technology and experiencing "battle fatigue."

Our affection for the main characters is maintained by side-trips into their private lives and vicarious participation with Foyle in the moral choices he must make in each case -- he is the foil of wrong-doing, the moral center, our better selves. There's satisfaction also in the body of work as a whole -- the circumstances of war are so deeply, accurately embedded in the story lines that one absorbs history by osmosis, aided by many guest stars such as below (l to r) a youthful Rosamund Pike, David Tennant, and Emily Blunt from early episodes.

The stories begin in 1940 with pro-fascist, anti-Semitic views rife in the British upper classes and general hostility brewing as refugees pour into England to escape the Nazi's. The authorities are detaining enemy aliens and the public is griping about foreigners. In tracking down the killer of 'the German Woman', Foyle discovers that his superior (Edward Fox) had previously pulled strings enabling his judge colleague's German wife to avoid internment as an enemy alien. Meanwhile, a renown Jewish musician is locked up for shamefully trivial reasons.

Another episode is led by Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) as Guy Spencer, self-styled British patriot, who whips public opinion and schmoozes pro-Nazi political elites. Spencer is relishing his glorious future under the Nazi's; Foyle needs to take him down without violating his right to free speech -- fortunately there's treason.

And onward, episode by episode, to the abuse of conscientious objectors (and anyone with a whif of socialist leanings), food shortages and other privations. Land girls tend the fields and kids collect trash (a chop bone yields enough glycerine to make cordite for two cartridges). Random bombs fall on Hastings and secret installations are multiplying. One hides the building of coffins; another conceals anthrax experiments. A Hastings murder leads Foyle to the secret SOE -- Special Operations Executive, MI5's branch of 'secret ops and dirty tricks' and (below) agent Hilda Pierce (Ellie Haddington), a spinster of complexity.

We meet English tycoon, Sir Reginald Walker, doing illegal business with the Germans. Sir Reginald's son Simon has built himself a Nazi shrine in the basement of the family estate where he meditates on German greatness. Below, Laurence Fox (nephew of Edward Fox, episode 1) has a juicier part in Simon than ever he did as the sidekick of Inspector Lewis.

After Pearl Harbor, American troop arrivals upset Hastings. A landowner has his acreage paved over for an American air base. The Yanks are paid more and they eat more. Racism against black soldiers creates incidents and Yanks impregnate local girls. One episode features Charlotte Riley as a young mother dying to emigrate to America with her baby's black father and maliciously blocked by red tape and violence.

At last, VE day, but not all flags and balloons; folks are exhausted, poor, and lives have to be rebooted. Now come the post-war stories. One is the repatriation of prisoners of war, except that our wartime ally Stalin has revenge in mind. Returning Russian POW's who had fought with the Germans are massacred fresh off the Ship Almanzora in Odessa -- a famously open secret. Foyle, assigned to recover a Russian escapee, finds that the Russians do not want to leave. And he doesn't want to see them murdered off the boat in Russia either.

Special mention goes to Andrew Scott (below, who also plays Moriarty in Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock), for his moving portrayal of a soldier who as a boy saw his aristocrat father murder his mother. Aiming to des-troy his father's reputation, he faces hanging, refusing to defend himself against false charges. (Hints are that Foyle himself may be his real father.)

The last season finds Foyle induced into working for MI5 in London where the mood and color of espionage is gray. I agree with creator Anthony Horowitz who says this may be some of his best work especially 'Elise', the very powerful final episode, in which MI5 contributed to the deaths of many agents dropped into France. The testing of the atomic bomb in New Mexico is recreated and Cold War engaged, and Sam gets a life of her own. Now the question is will prolific mystery maker Anthony Horowitz and his endearing policeman Christopher Foyle be coaxed back for more? Will Foyle's War ever be recognized here for the exceptional work it is?

Anthony Horowitz (shown above, right, with Prince Charles) is also the author/adapter of Agatha Christie's Poirot in the 1990's and early Midsomer Murders; he was commissioned by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle to pen Sherlock Holmes novels (The House of Silk and Moriarty) and to add to the Ian Fleming list of Bond novels with Trigger Mortis. He has many screenplays to his credit and has made himself a national treasure with all, as is now Michael Kitchen's Christopher Foyle, himself.

Click HERE for Anthony Horowitz's excellent discussion of the making of the last series, which I think can be taken to mean that he's got more Foyle in him before he quits.

The above post is written by TrustMovies' 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman

Streaming tip: Riley Stearns' indie, FAULTS, proves a superb surprise in every way

One of those streaming surprises that catch you up between breaths in their twisty, funny, spacey logic, as well as a movie that knows exactly what it's doing while keeping a number of steps ahead of its audience, FAULTS , written and directed by Riley Stearns, opened theatrically in a very limited released almost one year ago, and, as often happens to low-budget independent films, simply disappeared. It's available now via Netflix streaming and Amazon (and probably elsewhere), and it is a don't-miss movie for anyone who enjoys something different that is just about perfectly executed.

Mr. Stearns, shown at left, has come up with something equal parts darkly comic, timely and increasingly bizarre, and he has cast it to perfection, too, -- using his wife, that superb actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and an equally fine actor, Leland Orser, in the leading roles.  Ms Winstead (shown below and currently getting her long overdue moment in the sun in the new PBS series, Mercy Street), has given nonstop great performances in everything from the latest remake of The Thing to Smashed. I would say that she has outdone herself with Faults, except she always outdoes herself. That seems to come naturally to the woman.

Her co-star, Mr. Orser (shown below), too, proves a surprise. A fine actor (and one of the reasons Taken 3 was a better movie that most critics wanted to admit), he matches Winstead scene for scene and surprise for surprise. What these characters do and go through in the course of this 89-minute movie is, as we used to say, a humdinger.

The story is a simple and sturdy one: a down-on-his-luck fellow whose career has been all about deprogramming victims of cults, is hired by the parents of a young woman who's been recently "cultivated."  His job is to deprogram her as quickly as possible. That he himself is in big financial trouble proves no small inducement to take this latest case.

The movie is by turns funny, bizarre, dramatic and understated. And the performances from the entire cast are simply terrific. These include Beth Grant and Chris Ellis and the parents, Jon Gries as Orser's boss, and Lance Reddick as the boss' hired hand.

Everything works in Faults, and the beauty of the film is how it works. Part mystery, part comedy, part drama, part "exposé," a movie this good does not appear all that often. Pounce, please -- and do so before you learn much more about this very special film. (I am adding it now to my best-of-last-year list.)

Sean Mewshaw's rom-com TUMBLEDOWN: loss and recovery, with some fun in between

There are those of us film lovers who would never miss a movie starring Rebecca Hall, one of the finer and more versatile actresses working today. A keen intelligence coupled to deep feeling radiates from this woman. If her co-star, Jason Sudeikis, can't quite match the depths of Ms Hall, he still manages to partner her quite nicely in the new rom-com, TUMBLEDOWN, directed by Sean Mewshaw (shown below: this is his first full-length film), from an initially intelligent and occasionally off-the-wall funny screenplay by Desiree Van Til.

In the film, Hall (below, left) plays Hannah, the widow of a famous folk rock musician who died far too early in his successful career, leaving his many fans and Hannah bereft. Enter Sudeikis (below, right) as Andrew, a college professor with a Random House contract to write a book about the late musician -- even though the widow is supremely protective of her late husband's life and work and, in fact, plans to write about him herself. Do we expect conflict, humor and budding romance? You got it. And for about two-third of the film, this all works quite entertainingly -- buoyed by Hall's commanding presence and Sudeikis' looney, sexy charm.

In the supporting cast are a number of stalwarts like Blythe Danner (as Hannah's mom), Richard Masur (as her dad) and Griffin Dunne as the local bookstore owner and friend, each of whom does wonders with relatively small screen time.

The biggest problem in the film arises with the current "significant others" of our protagonists: Diana Agron (above) as Andrew's girl, and Joe Manganiello (below, right) as Hannah's main squeeze. These two are treated so cavalierly by the filmmakers as to be almost beside the point. Yet they exist; we meet and get to know them a bit, and then they're summarily disposed of with less than a "by your leave."

Granted Hannah has made it clear that she uses the Manganiello character merely for sex (so does that mean he's not worth a goodbye?), but Agron, caring and supportive of her man, is treated even worse.

All this might perhaps not be a deal-breaker, except for the fact that the movie runs downhill during it's final third. There's too much repetitive angst from Hannah about not being able to "let go," and the movie ends with that typical and cliched  race-to-declare-oneself-before-the-love-object-gets-away.

Too bad, because the build-up is winning, and the performances are fine. But somebody didn't think things out well enough before the filming began, and so the movie leaves us exceedingly unconvinced. Tumbledown, from Starz Digital and running a too-long 103 minutes, opens theatrically in New York (at the Village East Cinema) and Los Angeles (at the Sundance Sunset Cinemas) tomorrow, February 5, then goes nationwide and hits VOD the following Friday, February 12.

EISENSTEIN IN GUANAJUATO: It's the new Peter Greenaway and very sexual. 'Nuff said.

OK. So it's gorgeous (that pretty much goes without saying regarding most movies by Peter Greenaway). With EISENSTEIN IN GUANAJUATO, black-and-white cinematography moves into color; the screen splits, then splits again. Sometimes we see black-and-white and color simultaneously. And as happens with Greenaway now and again (remember The Pillow Book?), there are a number of shots featuring uncut cock (belonging here to famed film director Sergei Eisenstein -- or at least the actor who's playing him, Elmer Bäck).

I would say that Mr. Greenaway, shown at right, is up to his old tricks, but these are rather new tricks, and simply for that color, exquisite sets and locations, not to mention all of the full-frontal beauty, the movie is worth seeing. As an exploration into the life and desires of filmmaker Eisenstein, I do not know enough about the filmmaker to be certain. But maybe Sergei himself would fall in love with this movie. I certainly did.

I want to see it again, too -- with English subtitles included, because, even though the film is spoken mostly in English, the accents of its two stars (one Finnish, the other Mexican) are so strong that I suspect I missed enough of the dialog to need a second viewing. Visually, too, it's such a knockout that it warrants another look.

Historically, the movie tampers with the time that Eisenstein, having departed the United States for Mexico in 1931, where he hoped to make a film (he did indeed shoot more than two miles of film stock), but instead -- as shown here, at least -- gets more involved with his guide, Palomino Cañedo (played by the quietly commanding Mexican actor, Luis Alberti), who opens Eisenstein's heart, mind and ass to new worlds of pleasure and ideas.

In addition to its gorgeous location photography and interior sets, much of the movie takes place in and around a very large bed (above) that proves pivotal to a number of scenes. In the role of Eisenstein, Mr. Bäck seems a rather inspired choice. The actor, below, who looks a good like like his real-life counterpart, combines a kind of loopy, clownish behavior with a physicality and sexuality that prove oddly charismatic.

In the role of his guide, Señor Alberti (shown below, right), a man of small, thin stature who possesses very large penile/genital package, seems born to disrobe -- which he does several times in the course of the film.

Greenaway uses this character of "guide" in ways both obvious and symbolic, never more so than in the film's prize sex scene in which this man of clearly Indian ancestry tutors our filmmaker in the joys of sex, as well as the philosophy of the conquered and conqueror, planting a flag in a place where, up till now, I don't think we've seen it dwell.

For all its visual pleasures -- including a couple of dramatic and gorgeous sudden changes of perspective -- Eisenstein in Guamajuato is also full of history (the entourage of Upton Sinclair makes an appearance here), ideas and provocations.

The filmmaker seems to have taken what is known of Eisenstein's time in Mexico and embroidered this with extravagant visuals that perfectly underscore what is going on physically and emotionally: exploration, loneliness, discovery, transgression.

If we get much more into the mind and body of the filmmaker rather than the guide, that's fine, as Palomino's character exists mostly to bring forth the repressed -- sexually and politically -- side of Eisenstein. What the filmmaker needs, as his wife tells him in one of the several phone conversations, "Is a secretary, a nurse, and a bum wiper."

Intercut periodically are scenes from the filmmaker's greatest hits, as well as some sexual animation that stands in for what arthouse/mainstream audiences are not quite ready to view just yet.

All in all, this is one hell of a surprising, eye-opening, mind-expanding ride. And I can't help but wonder what its viewers will think the next time they see one of Eisenstein's classics?

From Strand Releasing and running 105 minutes, the movie opens this Friday in New York (at the Angelika Film Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema) and in Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal and Playhouse 7). In the weeks to come, it will hit theaters nationwide on a limited basis. Click here, and then click on "Screenings"  to see all currently scheduled playdates.

The Catholic Church in Chile: Pablo Larraín's masterfully cringe-inducing THE CLUB opens

Here's a film that makes our current Catholic-scandal movie, Spotlight, look practically benign. THE CLUB, the new film from Chilean director/co-writer Pablo Larraín tackles priestly pedophilia in the kind of manner we have not seen previously: utterly raw, angry, take-no-prisoners. Unspooling in a small Chilean seacoast town in a home in which are housed several priests with, shall we say, bad reputations, along with a "nun" (maybe former nun) who takes care of them, from the outset the movie alerts us to the fact this little group has managed to do very well for itself. In fact, the film works quite nicely as a microcosm of The Catholic Church itself -- with all of its power and rewards, hypocrisy and denial offered up in full bloom.

The Club may be the most anti-Catholic movie I have ever seen, and yet its characters also seem very human and real (if pretty bizarre). What they do here, however, is shockingly awful, and the fact that it all works out for the "best" makes it seem even more so. Senor Larrain, shown at left, has given us a tale of Catholic guilt and non-retribution that stands with the best (or is it the worst?) of them. Although we come to understand to some extent the half dozen men, along with the woman who keeps them, as individuals, it is finally the group -- that Club of the title -- that we know best.

This is rather like the Church itself, don't you think? Where all is accomplished to keep the "group" -- the power -- together and going strong, no matter the "sacrifices" that must be made along the way. Here, as with all organized religion, the end justifies the means. Interlopers of any kind (there are three major ones in this movie) must be destroyed or co-opted. Maybe both simultaneously.

How all this is demonstrated by Larraín and his co-writers (Guillermo Calderón and Daniel Villalobos) involves everything from small-minded townspeople to greyhound racing, black-market babies to sexual child abuse (performed, of course, in the name of Jesus), military torture to simple blackmail. And all this is woven into the fabric of life experienced by our little beachfront club members.

The movie opens with a bout of that dog racing and then the introduction of a new "priest" into the current group, followed almost immediately by the introduction of the classic "victim" figure, a fellow named Sandokan (a fine Roberto Farías, above), who makes this figure one of the strongest and most original yet seen in the many films about priest pedophilia so far served up.

Then we have another newcomer to the group: an investigator sent from the Vatican to assess the group and decide what to do with them, since pushing defrocked priests off into far-away places and then forgetting about them has now come back to haunt the Church. How our investigator plies his trade and how he, too, is finally used and co-opted proves one of the films darkly comic highlights.

Watching these people play off of and bounce around each other makes for some of the more unsettling, unnerving scenes experienced in cinema over the past few years. Larraín is increasingly masterful at the kind of indirection that shows us how we are all perpetrators and victims. Does this let us off the hook? Hardly. Instead the filmmaker does here for the The Catholic Church what he has done earlier in his films regarding the Pinochet regime in Chile.

The performances are all as bizarre as the subject matter would indicate, and they work individually and together to make the movie as creepily memorable as it ought to be. Organized evil never dies. Particularly when it comes from organized religion.

The Club, from Music Box Films and running a mere 97 minutes, opens this Friday in New York City (at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Landmark Sunshine Cinema), and on Friday, February 12 in Los Angeles (at Landmark's NuArt) and in Southern Florida at the O Cinema Miami Beach, the Tower Theater Miami and the Silverspot in Naples, and then on February 19 here in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters. Click here -- and then click on THEATERS -- to see all currently scheduled playdates across the country.

Blu-ray/DVD/digital download debut: Nelson George's documentary, A BALLERINA'S TALE

Back in the summer of 2010, TrustMovies reviewed a wonderful documentary about a couple of budding black dancers in Brazil entitled Only When I Dance. One of the points the viewer took away from this fine little film was how very difficult it was for black ballerinas to break into the ranks of the best of the world's ballet companies. Giving us a real Black Swan in one of the world's major dance companies, for instance, has not been an easy task, but the career of black ballerina Misty Copeland finally proved that this could be done.

The documentary about Miss Copeland -- A BALLERINA'S TALE directed by Nelson George, (shown at right) -- arrived theatrically in limited release last fall and is now available via DVD, Blu-ray and digital download. Though it is entirely career-oriented and we get to know almost nothing about Miss Copeland's personal life, it's worth a look, especially for ballet fans and anyone interested in how that color barrier, still standing rather more firmly than many of us might like, can be made to quake a bit, if not yet topple.

In addition to its fairly standard this-happened-and-then-that format, the movie does offer up a bit of history of blacks in dance, with emphasis on the women rather than the men. We also hear from dance aficionados and historians, and from various black women in places of power in the entertainment industries. Mostly though, it's Copeland (above and below) all the time, and this pert energetic performer shows us that a black woman with, yes, breasts, muscles and a strong body can dance the roles we may have thought only belonged to flat-chested, somewhat emaciated, white porcelain doll-like creatures,

This "look," explains one of the experts here, was due as much to the tastes and whims of George Balanchine, as to anything else, because pre-Balanchine this kind of dancer's body barely existed. One of the pleasures of the film comes from viewing Copeland in action, as her muscular but lithe body shows us the kind of ballerina most of us will have not yet seen. (Some of Mr. George's camera angles, however -- under the ballerina's skirt? -- could use some adjustment.)

Nowhere near as interesting and full of life, history and surprise as the outstanding 2013 documentary on Tanaquil Le Clerc, the movie should still take its place in the canon of documentaries about notable dancers. From IFC Films and running 84 minutes, A Ballerina's Tale makes its DVD, Blu-ray and digital download debut tomorrow, February 2 -- for purchase or rental.