FILM FRENZY

Cate Blanchett in Borderlands (Photo: Lionsgate)

By Matt Brunson

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray, 4K and DVD. Ratings are on a four-star scale.)

AFRAID (2024). The title of this film about Artificial Intelligence has been written in much of the advertising as AfrAId, and were it not for the fact that this was originally to be called They Listen, it would be fair to assume that writer-director Chris Weitz came up with that moniker and was so impressed with his own cleverness that he decided to build a whole movie around that one word. How else to explain a film that feels like it’s grasping for viable directions for much of its running time? The villain is, of course, a sophisticated A.I. — named AIA, it’s a home system which eventually takes over the lives of computer guy Curtis (John Cho) and his family. This is the sort of film that’s so badly paced, it feels like it should be taking off right when it’s ending — instead, true moments of horror are few and far between, and the back story is as feeble as the one placed front and center. Better titles might have been StAId, FrAIl, and FAIlure.

Blu-ray extras include deleted scenes and an alternate ending.

Movie: ★½

AMERICAN MOVIE (1999). The American Dream gets the Ed Wood treatment in American Movie, an affectionate documentary about an aspiring filmmaker seeking to make his mark. Mark Borchardt is the wannabe Spielberg, hoping to shoot his magnum opus Northwestern in his hometown of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Unable to acquire financing, he instead decides to finish Coven, a horror short he had started making years earlier. What follows is an often hilarious and occasionally sad journal of a minimally talented craftsman enlisting his friends and family members (all amateurs) to complete his movie. Borchardt’s best bud, the amiable goofball Mark Schank, and his peevish, 82-year-old Uncle Bill vie for scene-stealing honors.

4K extras include audio commentary by director Chris Smith, producer Sarah Price, Borchardt, and Schank; deleted scenes; and Borchardt’s completed Coven.

Movie: ★★★

BLINK TWICE (2024). Zoë Kravitz originally wanted to call her debut feature as writer-director-producer Pussy Island, although Epstein Island would have worked just as well. It’s fitting that Blink Twice hit Blu-ray on Election Day, as it’s a movie about how powerful white men with contempt for everyone else believe they can get away with anything. Given Tuesday’s depressing results, that’s an accurate assessment, but this film at least features characters furiously fighting back. A violent and disturbing piece — it even opens with a trigger warning pasted across the screen — this finds Channing Tatum cast as tech billionaire Slater King, who likes to invite lovely ladies to his private island for nonstop partying with his male friends. Struggling waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) is among the latest group, but her enjoyment ends when she uncovers the insidiousness at work. Reminiscent of Get Out, it places a societal injustice in the crosshairs and takes aim with cathartic precision.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★★

BORDERLANDS (2024). Here’s yet another lousy video-game adaptation to add to the heap, a mountain that by now matches Everest in height. In this Mad Max/Star Wars mishmash from director Eli Roth, a misfit band of guardians of the galaxy attempts to locate a snarky teen (Ariana Greenblatt) who just might be some sort of chosen one as well as the only being who can open a mystical vault that contains — oh, who cares? I don’t blame Cate Blanchett (as a snarky bounty hunter) for headlining this — it was probably a nice break from Oscar-y projects. But she’s playing both an attitude and an IP rather than a developed character — ditto Kevin Hart (as a snarky mercenary), Gina Gershon (as a snarky bar owner), Jamie Lee Curtis (as a scientist who’s not snarky, just boring), and Jack Black (voicing an obnoxious robot named Claptrap). Junky and clunky, it’s cosplay masquerading as cinema.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray + Digital edition include a featurette on the characters and a piece on the visual effects.

Movie: ★½

THE CREATURE (1977) / A DOG CALLED… VENGEANCE (1978). German Shepherds with natural acting chops are the headliners of two late-seventies oddities from Spain, both receiving their first-ever North American disc releases via the Severin label.

One of the more unique filmmakers to ever emerge from Spain, Eloy de la Iglesia (The Cannibal Man) again courts controversy with The Creature (La criatura), which is often mislabeled as a film about bestiality when it’s actually a film about zoophilia. Married to a right-wing TV host (Juan Diego) and reeling from a miscarriage, Cristina (Ana Belén) finds herself forging a unique bond with a male German Shepherd that wanders into her life. An openly gay director, de la Iglesia frequently took aim at risky targets, and he uses this outrageous premise to rail against the evils of the Franco era, the rigidity of the Catholic Church, and the hypocrisy of traditional marriages. It’s always interesting if not always convincing.

Director Antonio Isasi’s A Dog Called… Vengeance, or simply The Dog (El perro) as on the print used here, is more traditional than The Creature but no less politically motivated. The Exorcist co-star Jason Miller stars as a wrongly imprisoned mathematician who manages to escape from a prison overseen by a South American country’s military dictatorship. Whether fleeing through backwoods swamps or crowded city streets, he’s relentlessly pursued by a German Shepherd that’s handled by former Nazis now working for the right-wing government. Accept that the canine killer has the smarts and stamina of Arnie’s Terminator and you’ll have a good time with this bruising chase flick.

Blu-ray extras on The Creature include an interview with assistant director Alejo Loren, while extras on A Dog Called… Vengeance include an interview with supporting player Marisa Paredes.

The Creature: ★★½

A Dog Called… Vengeance: ★★★

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (2024). Superhero fatigue receives a brief respite with the release of the umpteenth MCU movie. The film gets off to a shaky start, with Ryan Reynolds’ shtick as Deadpool starting to feel as shopworn as any other Marvel-approved trope. But the way the story handles the character(s) of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is highly inventive, and for once here are some cameos that don’t lean on the obvious but are instead rather ingenious. A familiarity with Loki is required to understand all the chatter about the TVA and the Sacred Timeline, but the plot basically involves Wade Wilson and a Logan variant racing hither and yon to save Wade’s universe. The sentimental bits directed at Deadpool aren’t as poignant as the ones involving Wolverine, but, as expected, both stars work well together in their signature roles. All in all, it’s a mixed bag, but the positives do outweigh the negatives.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Reynolds and director Shawn Levy; deleted scenes; and a gag reel.

Movie: ★★½

FRANKIE FREAKO (2024). In my review for 2020’s bonkers PG: Psycho Goreman, I noted that it “combines ‘80s Spielberg, ‘80s Troma, ‘80s Saturday morning cartoons, and ‘80s Marvel comic books.” With Frankie Freako, Goreman writer-director Steven Kostanski focuses exclusively on such ‘80s efforts as Gremlins, Ghoulies, Critters, Munchies, and any other franchise featuring malevolent creatures performed by puppets. Conor (Conor Sweeney) is such a hopeless square that his idea of wild sex with his wife Kristina (Kristy Wordsworth) consists solely of them touching index fingers. When she heads out of town, he decides to call a party hotline, a move that results in mischievous munchkins Frankie Freako, Dottie Dunko, and Boink Bardo showing up and trashing the place. The use of real puppets rather than CGI is an immediate plus, but the movie also entertains with its sight gags and set designs.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Kostanski and Sweeney, and the “Frankie Freako’s Funtime Phone” commercial.

Movie: ★★★

THE HITCHER (1986). As a straightforward thriller, The Hitcher is idiotic and illogical; as an allegorical piece about the power of Evil to wilt the foundation of Good, it becomes more interesting. It’s basically Spielberg’s Duel except with Rutger Hauer instead of a tanker truck, as a young man (C. Thomas Howell) plays a game of cat-and-mouse with a sadistic killer while traveling across sprawling Texas highways. The Hitcher is both slick and sick, and while films of this nature are of course going to be unsettling and mean-spirited, one particular slaying nevertheless feels gratuitous and like a bridge too far. Hauer is in his menacing element, even if the story badly bungles its telegraphed link between his psycho and Howell’s prey.

4K UHD extras consist of audio commentary by director Robert Harmon and writer Eric Red; an interview with Harmon; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★½

IL DEMONIO (1963). This haunting Italian effort (The Demon stateside) is ambiguous in its execution if not its intentions. In the same year she starred opposite Christopher Lee in Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body, Daliah Lavi delivered a forceful and frenzied performance in this psychological drama about Purif, a peasant woman whose obsession with a betrothed villager (Frank Wolff) leads to increasingly frantic behavior on her part. She claims she’s involved in witchcraft, leading the superstitious villagers to mull over how best to handle her. The strength in the screenplay by writer-director Brunello Rondi and cohorts is in the way it feints in the direction of portraying Purif as the piece’s unrepentant sinner only to reveal that the true villain is a patriarchal system that encourages brutality toward women.

Blu-ray extras include film historian audio commentary and a piece on Lavi.

Movie: ★★★

IT ENDS WITH US (2024). Colleen Hoover’s massive bestseller gets turned into a massive box office hit, albeit one in which the serious subject matter occasionally gets buried in romcom-styled excess. Blake Lively stars as Lily Bloom, a young woman still reeling from a childhood dominated by a father (Kevin McKidd) who perpetually abused her mother (Amy Morton) and even once put her high school boyfriend Atlas Corrigan (Alex Neustaedter) in the hospital. Lily meets neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directed) and they immediately hit it off. But there are signs that he might be the sort to engage in domestic violence, and matters grow more complicated when an adult Atlas (now played by Brandon Sklenar) reenters her life. The movie is rich in character and incident, but tonal inconsistencies and some narrative fudging (not to mention a few whopping coincidences) blunt its overall impact.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★½

NINE QUEENS (2000). An enormous hit in its Argentinian homeland, Nine Queens (Nueve reinas) is the sort of twist-upon-twist-under-another-twist-next-to-yet-another-twist caper yarn that might not quite hold up if you think about it too much. My advice? Don’t think about it too much or you’ll cheat yourself out of a cracking good time. Taking its cue from such pretzel-plotted pictures as The Sting, The Grifters, and any given Mamet, this casts Ricardo Darin as an experienced con man named Marcos and Gastón Pauls as the greenhorn scammer he takes under his wing. Their scheme involves selling some rare stamps to a mobster (Ignasi Abadal), but their ruse grows more complicated as other characters get involved, including Marcos’ combative sister (Leticia Brédice). Strong characterizations and quirky humor further drive this artful puzzle that snaps into place even more than one might have reasonably expected.

The only Blu-ray extra is the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★½

WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954). A quasi-sequel to 1942’s Holiday Inn (which introduced the Oscar-winning song and all-time top-selling single, Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”), this finds a successful song-and-dance-team (Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye) and a promising sister act (Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen) pooling their talents to save a Vermont resort from bankruptcy. The top-grossing film of 1954, this is zestfully performed and has endured as a holiday staple, but the gags could stand being a bit funnier and the musical numbers a bit snappier. This earned a Best Original Song Oscar nomination for a lesser Berlin tune, “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep.”

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray + Digital Code edition include audio commentary by Clooney; a retrospective making-of featurette; and pieces on Crosby, Kaye, and “White Christmas.”

Movie: ★★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

IN THE FRENCH STYLE (1963). Irwin Shaw welded together two of his short stories to create the screenplay for this drama starring the lovely — and ultimately doomed — Jean Seberg. Seberg, the Breathless star who died at 40 after enduring a turbulent life (loss of a baby, unhappy marriages, political persecution, suicide attempts), is radiant here at 24, playing a young American in Paris whose naiveté when it comes to social matters soon gives way to a new identity as a bon vivant who nearly matches Holly Golightly drink for drink, party for party, and man for man. The black-and-white location shooting by Michel Kelber is easy on the eyes, and there’s a good performance by Addison Powell as Seberg’s father, a loving if opinionated parent who doesn’t mince words when speaking to his daughter.

Movie: ★★★

PANIC IN YEAR ZERO! (1962). Many filmmakers working under the American International Pictures banner didn’t allow the studio’s commitment to low budgets hamper their creative vision; one such individual was Ray Milland, who delivered one of the period’s better end-of-the-world sagas with Panic in Year Zero! Milland both directs and stars in this picture about a family of four — dad Milland, mom Jean Hagen, son Frankie Avalon, and daughter Mary Mitchel — and their efforts to survive following the decimation of Los Angeles by a nuclear bomb. The peppy score by Les Baxter is awful and completely at odds with what’s transpiring on the screen; otherwise, this is a solid “B” flick, and its depiction of humanity post-apocalypse is startling in its harshness.

Movie: ★★★