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CBGB (2013)

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

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D: Randall Miller / 101m

Cast: Alan Rickman, Malin Akerman, Justin Bartha, Richard de Klerk, Johnny Galecki, Kyle Gallner, Ashley Greene, Rupert Grint, Estelle Harris, Taylor Hawkins, Ryan Hurst, Stana Katic, Donal Logue, Joel David Moore, Ahna O’Reilly, Freddy Rodriguez, Mickey Sumner, Bradley Whitford, Josh Zuckerman

When a movie begins by telling its audience that punk began, not in the UK, but in a basement in New York in 1975, then you can be sure that the story you’re about to be told isn’t going to be too concerned with getting all the details absolutely correct. Admittedly, that’s the prerequisite of any movie portraying real events, but when it takes the time and effort to make such a statement (and such a questionable one at that), then it does tend to make the viewer question the validity of anything else that’s depicted. (That said, if you pay attention to the closing credits there’s an acknowledgment relating to Iggy Pop that’s more than a little relevant to any notions of fidelity to the truth.)

There’s a saying that, “If you remember the 60s, then you weren’t really there”. In truth you could substitute “the 60’s” for “CBGB’s” and the saying would retain the same meaning. And with the screenplay by director Randall Miller and Jody Savin not having been based on an article or a book or a memoir, how factual it all is becomes very much the issue. Because as a remembrance of (mostly) good times past, CBGB is a massive disappointment. This should have been a celebration of a period when underground music was making a bigger and bigger impact on the wider music industry, and helping to shape the future for emerging artists. Instead it quickly defaults into telling a piecemeal tale where CBGB’s owner, Hilly Kristal (Rickman), continuously mismanages the club to the point of near-bankruptcy, scenes revisit the same issues time and time again, characters pop in and out of the narrative with little reference as to why they’re there, and the viewer gets to play Spot the Famous Band Before They Were Famous. And that’s about it.

As an evocation of the late Seventies/early Eighties, CBGB rarely strays far enough away from its Bowery location to give any indication of the musical and cultural changes that were going on elsewhere, and relies on newspaper articles being read out to provide any sense that the club is having any greater impact than at a local level. As a result, the movie maintains an insular and largely passive tone that makes even the more dramatic events – a New York shakedown, band The Dead Boys crashing their tour bus – feel bland and uninteresting to watch. Part of the issue is with Kristal himself, who is portrayed as a man travelling the path of least resistance, and who seems passively intent on ruining the most successful business he’s ever had (when we meet him he’s in bankruptcy court for the second time). While his business partner, Merv (Logue), and daughter Lisa (Greene), continually berate him for ignoring the basics of owning a club (like paying the rent), Kristal floats above it all, oblivious to the risks to the club and focusing on the bands coming through his doors looking for a stage on which to express themselves.

With the main storyline – how did Kristal manage to keep the club open for so long? – failing to provide anything meaningful for the viewer to connect with, it falls to the music to add some flair and excitement to proceedings. However, despite the level of talent that appeared at the club over the years, and despite some very obvious choices – Television, Talking Heads, Blondie, Ramones, The Police – the musical interludes lack for energy, even when Justin Bartha throws himself around as Dead Boys’ singer Stiv Bators. When even the music that’s meant to be celebrated can’t make a difference to things then it’s time to close the club (or shutdown the movie) and send everyone home.

Thanks to the script the performances have no option but to range from adequate to perfunctory. Rickman is on good form in terms of expressing Kristal’s blasé attitude, but it ends up being the whole performance. Everyone else is a secondary character, with Logue, Greene and Hawkins (as Iggy Pop) faring best, and the rest contributing what are mostly extended cameos. Rodriguez is the junkie Kristal gives a kitchen job to, Grint looks out of place as Dead Boys’ bassist Cheetah Chrome (who really cameos as a cab driver), Harris is Kristal’s mother who when told Stiv Bators has been known to jerk off into Hilly’s Chili remarks that she’s “had worse in her mouth”, and Akerman is so stiff as Debbie Harry you’d be happy for the real thing to step in and take over (and despite Harry being seventy-two). When you have such a great cast and they’re given so little to work with, it definitely qualifies as a waste.

As alluded to above, the fault lies squarely with Miller and Savin’s script, and Miller’s direction. With the screenplay lacking purpose, and much of the dialogue sounding like the co-writers’ did a first pass and kept to what they’d written, there are too many occasions where what’s being said seems trivial and/or unlikely given the circumstances on screen. Miller seems unable to inject any verve or energy into proceedings, and the movie trails along in a functional, pedestrian way that saps what little vigour the movie does possess. By the movie’s end it’s hard to work out what the motive was behind making it, but if it was in tribute to Hilly Kristal and his championing of the underground music scene, then it’s unfortunate that his influence is best exemplified by an end credits sequence that shows real-life footage from the 2002 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. Here we get to see Talking Heads accepting their award and inviting Kristal up on stage with them, and then thanking him for his support. Sadly, it’s the most poignant and moving moment in the whole movie.

Rating: 4/10 – lacking a clear purpose and repeating itself too often, CBGB at least has a killer soundtrack to fall back on – and thank heavens for that; less a biopic than a slow trawl through a defining era in the history of rock music, the movie spends too much time trying to define the iconic nature of the club, and in doing so, fails to portray adequately its influence on the wider music scene. (5/31)

Mini-Review: Urge (2016)

27 Monday Jun 2016

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Urge

D: Aaron Kaufman / 90m

Cast: Justin Chatwin, Danny Masterson, Ashley Greene, Pierce Brosnan, Nick Thune, Alexis Knapp, Chris Geere, Bar Paly, Eric Davis, Jeff Fahey, Kevin Corrigan

In Urge, there is only One Rule: you can only take said designer drug once. It’s new, much more addictive than any other drug available, and can only be found at a nightclub on Eastman Island, off the coast of New York. When arrogant businessman Neil (Masterson) takes his p.a. Theresa (Greene), and friends Joey (Knapp), Danny (Thune), Vick (Geere), and Denise (Paly) to his home there for the weekend, they find another (uninvited) friend, Jason (Chatwin) already there. The group head for the island’s only nightclub, where they find the guests rapidly shedding their inhibitions and having the time of their lives. Jason is invited to meet the club’s owner (Brosnan), who supplies him with Urge, a new drug that promises to surpass anything Jason and his friends have tried before… and so it proves, except for Jason who is unaffected by it.

Despite the One Rule, Neil and friends go back the next night to score some more Urge. Later, Jason awakes back at Neil’s house where a party is in full swing, and Urge is being taken repeatedly by everyone there. But instead of providing everyone with a good time, darker aspects of their personalities and hidden desires are being drawn out by the drug. Sex and violence abound, and try as he might, Jason can’t get any one of his friends to listen to him when he tells them something is wrong. With the violent behaviour increasing, he attempts to get them to leave but only Joey is able to go with him. But once they do they discover that things are worse all over the island, and Jason learns that the mysterious club owner has a much darker plan for Urge than anyone could have imagined.

Urge - scene1

Showing the effects of a drug high on screen is often an excuse for directors to go overboard in the editing suite by stitching together static shots with jump cuts featuring bursts of colour and/or flashing images (and not always in a way that makes any sense). Urge takes this option but doesn’t overdo it, choosing instead to have its cast behave in angry, declamatory ways that are meant to be dramatic but are often absurd and laughable; you could be forgiven for thinking that getting high means acting in an over the top manner and shouting a lot (which is pretty much Masterson’s entire performance). This all leads to various comeuppances and violent confrontations that, alas, add little to the main narrative, and are largely contrived.

What doesn’t help is the movie’s determination to be a tortured religious allegory, with Brosnan’s character (all tired verbiage and inappropriate laughing) put forward as a vengeful God, and Urge being used as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. None of it makes any real dramatic sense, and when Jerry Stahl’s script isn’t trying to make Urge seem like an edgy thriller, it stops the movie short and lets Brosnan’s mysterious club owner pontificate on the failings of the human race (dialogue that not even Brosnan can make credible). There’s an attempt at making the spread of the drug an example of the drawbacks relating to free will, but it’s awkward and ill-conceived in its execution.

Rating: 3/10 – with an unwieldy narrative that rarely makes sense and has a nodding acquaintance with plausibility, Urge wants to be a tense, disturbing thriller, but ends up  falling short on both fronts; Chatwin and co. struggle with their underwritten characters, and director Kaufman (making his feature debut) shows an aptitude-lite approach to the material that hampers it even further.

Kristy (2014)

11 Thursday Sep 2014

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Kristy

D: Olly Blackburn / 86m

Cast: Haley Bennett, Ashley Greene, Lucas Till, James Ransone, Chris Coy, Mike Seal, Lucius Falick, Mathew St Patrick, Erica Ash

Justine (Bennett) is a slightly nerdy college student who’s planning to spend Thanksgiving on campus as she can’t afford to get home for the holiday.  Her boyfriend, Aaron (Till), tries to persuade her to come with him to stay with his family but she won’t accept his kindness.  With only her friend, Nicole (Ash) and campus security guard Wayne (St Patrick) for company, Justine is looking forward to spending some time (largely) by herself.  However, Nicole heads home too, leaving Justine (nearly) all alone.

When she goes out to get some supplies at a local gas station, she encounters a young woman (Greene) whose strange attitude and challenging manner Justine attempts to placate in order to avoid an ugly encounter with the gas station attendant.  With her offer rebuffed, Justine voices her disappointment at not being able to just help someone.  The young woman rounds on her and tells her she’s the “Kristy”.  Later, on her way back to the campus, the young woman uses her car to block Justine’s, but Justine gets past her.  She tells Wayne what’s happened and although he’s sure nothing worse will happen, Justine isn’t so sure.

It isn’t long before she’s proven right.  The young woman appears in her room carrying  a knife.  Justine gets past her but soon learns the young woman isn’t alone: she has three male accomplices, all wearing tin foil masks and hoodies, and all carrying weapons.  A game of cat and mouse begins between Justine and the intruders.  Wayne is murdered and Justine is forced to run from building to building in an attempt to avoid being killed as well.  Even when she seeks help from the campus maintenance man, Scott (Ransone), who has a shotgun, the intruders outsmart him and Justine is left to fend for herself once again.  She must use every ounce of ingenuity she has to outwit the intruders and stay alive…

RANDOM

With its mix of Halloween (1978), The Shining (1980) and every school-based slasher movie ever released, Kristy could be accused of being derivative and unimaginative.  But in the hands of director Blackburn and writer Anthony Jaswinski, the movie is strong on atmosphere, as tense as barbed wire, and features some sterling, predatory camerawork thanks to DoP Crille Forsberg.  It’s an impressively mounted picture as well, the university environs – in particular, the swimming pool – put to very good use, the wide open spaces of the grounds proving just as claustrophobic as the interiors, Justine’s attempts at hiding or escape placed against a pitiless, unremarkable background of beiges and off-whites.

It’s a very measured, well-constructed mise-en-scene that benefits from Blackburn’s close attention to detail, validating his decision to combine tightly framed shots with wider, equally threatening compositions that add immeasurably to the sense of unease the movie displays from the first moment an overhead light begins to flicker in the dorm’s laundry room.  But while there’s a sure hand behind the camera, in front of it there’s a commanding performance from Bennett, her slightly geeky, girl-next-door looks and demeanour explored with effortless simplicity in the opening twenty minutes, from her interaction with Aaron to a deceptively effective montage of her activities once everyone’s left.  Justine is instantly likeable, the kind of young woman who makes you smile from the off.  Bennett invests her with a goofy charm, and while she spends the middle third running from the intruders, once Justine decides to take the hunt to them instead, she applies a calculating side of her character that comes across as entirely natural (it’s less the worm turning, more the worm realising she’s actually more than a match for her tormentors).

As the unreasoning, psychotic leader of a cell that’s part of a wider, Internet-based cult, Greene is hidden for the most part under a pink-tinged hoodie, only her facial piercings and chapped lips allowed any prominence.  She gives an angry, embittered performance, her coiled physicality threatening to erupt at any moment, making her the most unpredictable character of all; you watch her to see just what she’ll do next.  As her homicidal accomplices, Messrs Coy, Seal and Falick are hidden behind their masks but their presences are felt even when they’re off screen (Kristy is one of those movies where the viewer can’t quite be sure that one or more of them won’t just pop into view when it’s least expected).

There is violence throughout, from an opening montage of video clips of the cell’s other victims (which are posted on the Internet for other cult members to “enjoy”), to the outcome of Justine’s showdown with the young woman, but there is very little actual bloodshed, and Blackburn wisely avoids the kind of brutality that would have taken Kristy down the torture-porn route.  Instead, and aside from one crowd-pleasing contact blow that is entirely justified, each kill is rendered out-of-shot and with an emphasis on good old-fashioned sound effects.  In fact, the sound mix is one of the most effective aspects of the movie (take a bow, Michael B. Koff), particularly when the intruders are stalking Justine through the kitchens, their knives and weapons scraping against the fixtures and walls with hideous potency.

As mentioned above, the movie is indebted to several other horror outings, and while there will be those who won’t see beyond those influences, and will see deliberate moments taken from those movies – the fate of one character is lifted wholesale from Kubrick’s masterpiece – any naysayers will be missing the efficiency and verve that Blackburn et al. have employed to make these staple ingredients appear fresh and invigorated.  It’s very difficult these days to come up with something new in the horror arena, and while the thriller elements are pushed to the fore here, this variation on the home invasion sub-genre is refreshingly presented and, one unnecessary post-end credits sequence aside, belies its derivative nature to provide a riveting viewing experience.

Rating: 8/10 – unnerving, gripping and rewarding in equal measure, Kristy is a step up from other movies of a similar nature, and treats its audience accordingly; with clear intelligence at work both behind and in front of the camera this is one horror/thriller that really does deserve a wider audience.