Killer Joe

William Friedkin, 2012

IMDB

3/5

Two years before Matthew McConaughey wowed audiences with his Rust Cohle character in HBO's True Detective, he got some reps playing the morally obscure man of law enforcement in title character Killer Joe. Joe is a Dallas police officer who moonlights as a hit-man.

Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) is in debt to some shady characters and he has reached the end of his rope with time to pay them back. He hires Joe to kill his mother to collect a $50,000 life insurance policy which would be split among himself, his father, and his sister after paying Joe off.

Killer Joe is a film filled with despicable figures. There is really only one redeeming person, that being sister Dottie (Juno Temple). Dottie is sort of written off by her other family members because she is of inferior intellect so she therefore gets some special treatment. But Dottie is surrounded by chaos. Their father (Hayden Church) is a heavy drinker / low-life. Brother Chris is just an untrustworthy dirtbag. Their mother is virtually out of the picture. Joe comes into the situation and it's interesting because while is slightly above them in terms of the social hierarchy, he is not too far above them in the sense that he gravitates to Dottie for companionship. You get a sense that Joe, while he may be a capable hitman, really doesn't have much going on in his own personal life.

It all ends up being a tornado of malevolent deception, with Dottie unfortunately too close to it all. It's an enticing story not because you are so concerned with the characters well-being but you just want to see how it all plays out. It's pretty clear early on that it's not going to work out well for everyone involved in the whole assassination scheme. One of the things I had heard prior to seeing this film was "you'll never look at fried chicken the same again". I had to bring that up, because they were so right. You won't.

Green Room

Jeremy Saulnier, 2016

IMDB

3/5

Jeremy Saulnier certainly creates an environment that viewers would not have any interest spending time in in real life. A rural white supremacist rock club where blaring punk rock is played to crowds of aggressive skinheads. But that’s one of the best things about cinema; that it can transport you to places you would otherwise never visit. And he transports you in the company of a group of young punk kids that are struggling to make ends meat, living out of their van. Scraping by, taking any gig willing to pay a meager wage. They find themselves driving into the backwoods of Oregon to take an ambiguous gig given to them by a shady promoter. After their set one of the bandmates forgets a cell phone in the green room. Upon opening the door to the green room, Pat (Anton Yelchin) quickly discovers there is a woman’s dead body on the floor. Realizing that a murder has just taken place, he panics and attempts to call for help. They are soon trapped inside this claustrophobic green room, as the club owner and his aides attempt to cover up the whole situation.

Saulnier carefully plays with stylism and tension in this limited storytelling thriller. Basically the entire film takes place in this rock club, which is a glorified industrial corrugated metal shed in Bigfoot country. Saulnier is committed to his environment his builds; the Neo-Nazi imagery is strewn across every nook and cranny in the building. Stickers, graffiti, Sharpie doodles. The tension sets in from the second they get out of their rinky dink van and are quickly escorted inside the building. What follows is a violent display of a group of rather innocent punk kids trying to escape the worst gig of their short-lived music career. Outside the building, club owner Darcy (Patrick Stewart playing one of the most unexpected roles of his career) attempts to delicately clean up the situation rather than kicking the doors down and massacring them. But you realize that Darcy is totally capable of this. The fact that he doesn’t do this almost makes him more frightening.

The movie ends and you will be happy to leave this horrible universe you spend 95 minutes in. But Saulnier creates some unforgettable images, very much like he did in his last film Blue Ruin. He finds new ways to shed blood. People will probably remember this film as being one of Anton Yelchin’s last projects, as he tragically died in 2016 after the film was released. He was good in this film, although he was guilty of doing something Stewart also did a little too much of, whispering. I don’t know if it was the audio track or just the hardware I was viewing the film on. At times it was so difficult to hear the dialogue. Yelchin was often mumbling to the others. Patrick Stewart spent a lot of time whispering orders to his cohorts, and it was also very difficult to make out what he was saying when he was on the other side of the metal green room door. But the technical complaints aside, this is a film that should be seen. And surprisingly, even with such disturbing imagery, it’s a film that I will want to rewatch sometime soon.

Cold in July

Jim Mickle, 2014

IMDB

3/5

Any fan of Dexter probably believes that Michael C. Hall has paid his dues enough to give his future work a shot. Even those (I among one of them) who gave up in the final season on the mostly great series. That wasn’t his fault. Dexter showed he is a guy who has range, constantly having to shift from the unassuming blue collar guy to the struggling-to-keep-restrained serial killer. And although in tone Cold in July is a dark film, it’s quite a departure from his work on Dexter. His character Dane is an everyman character, mullet and all, living in Texas as a picture framer working out of a mom and pop storefront. Awoken in the middle of the night by an intruder in his home, he impulsively takes action to protect his family and finds that his life is immediately turned upside down. What transpires is an attempt to return his life to it’s normalcy, but he soon finds that the disruption in the routine has shaken things up to a point that he can’t help but venture into the depths of the mystery surrounding that intruder.

This pursuit leads him to the company of two men, Russel (Sam Shepard) and Jim-Bob (Don Johnson), men who are living the complete opposite life as himself but men that he can’t seem to distance himself from. And while there are moments where your eyebrow is raised, wondering why Dane doesn’t just move on with his life and let sleeping dogs lie - it sort of makes sense. It sort of makes sense that he is hungry for some disruption from the routine. And also a sense of closure on everything. Cold in July is an ultimately satisfying film, not without it’s flaws. You are introduced to Russel quite abruptly without much explanation, you really have to do the quick work yourself to realize who he is. But the movie is well shot, sounds good (especially with the period-fitting synthwave soundtrack). And the chemistry between the three men are enough to fuel your engagement. When does Sam Shepard NOT deliver?

Terminator

James Cameron, 1984

IMDB

3/5

The Terminator franchise is as culturally familiar to America as the Rocky franchise. The whole concept of artificial intelligence taking over the Earth and eliminating the human race feels very visceral, and scarily possible. The unfortunate part of this franchise is, while it’s such a rich story with much to draw from, it’s been repeatedly put in the wrong hands and the many Terminator movies are just wildly inconsistent. The best of all of them is undoubtedly Terminator 2: Judgement Day. But without this original right here there wouldn’t ever be a T2. 

Of course visiting this film in 2016 is going to involve looking past some of the primitive production elements. The periodic battle scenes of humans vs machines in the future feel like very obvious set pieces. There’s that distinctively 1980’s electrical light effect that we all remember so well from Back to the Future and any other sci-fi type film that was released in that era. 

But Cameron captures some of the energy that would be present in it’s successor. The relentlessness of the pursuit. The unbearably high stakes that Sarah Connor discovers she’s a part of. The coldly-menacing determination of the Terminator cyborg to eradicate Sarah so she cannot bear the offspring that would eventually give the machines their challenge. The Terminator manages to do a lot with the limited resources available in that period. The explosions, the gunfire. It’s an important movie. It is a cinematic piece that sort of has it’s place in time. The 90’s action films had a level of male bravado and big guns that sort of faded away over time. Now it becomes more of a nostalgia thing to revisit. Of course there’s humorous aspects of that as well. Like when the Terminator is shooting his way through the police station, taking out anyone in his path. You would think that the officers would quickly realize that The Terminator doesn’t exactly fall when shot. Instead of fleeing they all jump out at him firing like they are going to be the one who gets him. Even many years after this movie had been made, this still feels groundbreaking.