DVD Review: Werewolf Rising

Starring: Melissa Carnell, Matt Copko, Brian Berry
Director: BC Furtney
Rating: 4/10

After an absence of twenty years, Emma (Melissa Carnell) returns home to the old family homestead on the edge of the woods, only to experience a complete absence of peace and quiet. For starters, Johnny Lee (Matt Copko), a beardy, beady-eyed escaped convict is hanging around at all hours. And then there’s old family friend Wayne (Brian Berry) – he takes a keen interest in her, but is it just paternal or is it something more? Then Johnny Lee gets bitten by a mysterious creature in the forest, and before you can say, “Down, boy!” he’s eating nauseating scraps, gulping water and running under the full moon.

For a good part of the time, BC Furtney’s low budget horror channels a slightly cleaned up Winter’s Bone vibe. Everyone has something wrong with them: Emma and Wayne are both recovering alcohols, Johnny Lee is an ex-drug addict. They’re all out here in the sticks, presumably, because they just can’t cut it in civilisation. Looking convincingly fragile, Melissa Carnell makes a good fist of her role, and the tension tightens as she helps the sickly, wounded Johnny Lee inside her little cabin, then puzzles over why he seems to be getting better rather than worse.

Most of this has some merit. All the same, it would be nice if the werewolf could have arrived on the scene a bit sooner, and that when it did it could have been a bit more convincing. As it is, it’s like watching someone being attacked by the contents of a horsehair sofa.

Still, the film puts a low-powered middle section behind it and bucks up considerably for an eventful last twenty minutes or so, with a snarling, bullet-riddled showdown and the unexpected appearance of a mysterious naked lady in the woods (ably played by the very striking Irena Murphy, and it’s a shame the director didn’t think to flesh out her part a bit more), followed by a kind of nightmare firelit orgy. Yes, you think, watching those scenes, now that’s what a werewolf movie should be like.

DVD Review: Fading Gigolo

Starring: John Turturro, Woody Allen, Sharon Stone
Director: John Turturro
Rating: 7/10

Fading Gigolo lives up to its name by being lazily seductive – you probably shouldn’t fall for it, but you do. The story won’t win any awards for gritty realism. New Yorker Murray (Woody Allen), bitter and strapped for cash after his beloved second-hand bookshop goes belly up, comes up with the idea of pimping out his friend Fioravante (John Turturro), a part-time florist, to his horny dermatologist (Sharon Stone). Against all the odds, Fioravante turns out to have a knack for this sort of work, and they soon have a thriving concern on their hands with an eager clientele. But when Avigal (Vanessa Paradis), the widow of a highly respected rabbi, starts benefiting from Fioravanti’s attentions, their activities arouse the suspicions of Dovi (Liev Schreiber), a member of an Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood patrol.

It’s a plotline that tilts towards wish-fulfilment for writer/director John Turturro. His Fioravanti is an unworldly soul who has always eschewed the rat race, and who can only turn to being a male prostitute because he allows himself to be persuaded that comforting needy, depressed, insecure women is a noble calling. But pushing the film the other way are all the female characters, who are vividly individualized, with plenty to say for themselves, and dazzling cast – especially Sofia Vergara’s cougarish Selima, and Vanessa Paradis’ touching widow, hemmed in by her grief, her own beliefs and the expectations of her community: the rawness and realness of her situation is a reprimand to Fioravanti, who can only be so glib and smooth because he is so detached from ordinary responsibilities.

Given that Woody Allen has a prominent supporting role, it’s hard not to think of this as in some sense a Woody Allen film, but actually it all feels much grimier and more hip than if Allen had helmed it himself. It’s even quite sexy at times (not in Allen’s scenes, perish forbid). Turturro’s direction shows a keen sense of place – this is a story that couldn’t occur anywhere else but within these few city blocks – and a brash way with New York’s multicultural melting pot, most noticeably in the fashion in which it makes the city’s Orthodox Jewish community a key plot-point and butt of mockery.

Whatever you think of it, his decision to do this undoubtedly vitalizes the film, as does his handling of Allen, who is more consistently funny here than he has been in years, especially in a scene where he is strong-armed into a car with tinted windows by a bunch of heavies with sidecurls and scuttles straight out the other side – Allen, it turns out, can still do physical comedy. Unlike Fiorvanti, who has his scruples, Murray is all about the cash. You could wag a finger and say “Jewish stereotype”, but it doesn’t feel that way because Allen seems only too delighted to play the rogue.

Another of the movie’s saving graces is an ongoing theme that develops over time. We see Fioravanti arranging flowers with delicate hands, we see Avigal meticulously boning a fish. If flowers and fish are to be savoured, the message seems to be, there’s a correct way of doing these things, one that requires patience, and your whole life should be treated with a similar fastidiousness and attention to detail. Instant gratification is no gratification at all. Not a bad moral to take away from a movie about a male hooker.

DVD Review: Crimes of Passion

Starring: Ola Rapace, Tuva Novotny, Linus Wahlgren
Rating: 7/10

No Nordic gloom here. Crimes of Passion – a set of six feature-length cases based on a series of books by Maria Lang, postwar pioneer of the Swedish detective novel – plunges you into a picture postcard version of the ’50s with a Scandi twist. The first episode establishes the mood and introduces the principle characters. It’s a tale of bed-hopping among the intelligensia as writers, artists and academics gather for a Midsummer’s party on a small island – a bit like the setting for a Bergman film, only everyone has a lot more fun. At least until the murders start.

Among the guests are Puck (Tuva Novotny), a trim, neat young literature lecturer, and Einar (Linus Wahlgren), the laid back blond guy she fancies. When one of the party winds up dead, Einar calls in his old friend Christer Wijk (Ola Rapace), head of the Stockholm murder squad. After the boat that is their only means of transport goes missing, Christer finds himself stuck on the island with a whole bunch of suspects and not so much as a change of underwear. Luckily, Puck – who happens to be writing a thesis on fictional murderers – is only too eager to do some of his work for him, snooping around like a bloodhound in Capri pants. Not that Christer needs any help really – old family skeletons come flying out of the closet at his very approach, and usually he only has to accuse a culprit for him to crumple and pour out a complete confession.

The same trio reconvene for the subsequent cases, with Puck and Christer doing the sleuthing and sifting through alibis and Einar – now married to Puck – stuck with the less glamorous role of supplying the occasional piece of background info and grumbling about how their holidays keep on getting ruined. He has a point, because it seems like they can’t go anywhere without someone kicking the bucket. This premise quickly becomes a bit of a stretch, and you might well snort with amusement when Puck starts stopping people in the street to interrogate them, or when she and Einar take a vacation and a corpse happens to pop up on their front lawn.

The show’s creators are clearly aware of the problem, because the fourth episode sees the corpse-magnet taking to bed with a cold, leaving Christer to manage more or less by himself. But she’s back to her old tricks in the fifth episode, working as a secretary to a Nobel Prize winning author, who promptly keels over after eating a fruit salad laced with strychnine. By this stage, Puck is becoming a positive jinx to all around her, and if you can’t handle this web of coincidence, then Crimes of Passion probably isn’t for you. But most viewers will be inclined to go with it and cut the series some slack, simply because it’s so charming and lovely to look at.

Although actually it’s more than that. You might baulk at this or that plot device, but each episode is spot-on in its creation of a distinct and memorable ambience – the island of the first episode, which turns from a place of leisure and hedonistic pursuits to one of isolation and imprisonment; the chilly, tomblike author’s house in the fifth episode; and the grand estate of the fourth episode, with its seances and rumours of a haunting, its beautiful rose beds and not so beautiful people.

Puck herself, pert and tomboyish and sporting a range of pretty pastel cardies, is a very relatable heroine (even if, when a suspect does finally retaliate and clobber her with a candlestick, you do rather think she’s had it coming). Although she’s steadfastly married to the handsome, open-hearted Einar, she has a little something going on with the aloof, cynical and hard to read Christer, and their investigations are almost like a sublimated flirtation. (Perhaps that’s why the show is called Crimes of Passion. It’s hard to account for the choice of title otherwise, because, Scandinavian phlegm being what it is, most of the murders are more like crimes of peevishness.)

Tuva Novotny’s winning turn is backed up by some gorgeous set-dressing and location cinematography. The fictional town of Skoga, where several of the cases are set, makes Midsomer Worthy look like a sink estate, and costume designer Ingrid Sjogren supplies delicious period glad rags for everyone to parade around in. And while the ladies get to waft about in floral prints, a handsome vintage Plymouth Savoy is pressed into service to take Christer from case to case in style. For those who prefer detective stories of a cosy variety and are prepared to swallow some of the show’s more glaring contrivances, Crimes of Passion is a delight, with strong performances from a good-looking cast and luxe production values. One to stack on the shelf next to Marple and Inspector de Luca.

DVD Review: Joe

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Tye Sheridan, Gary Poulter
Director: David Gordon Green
Rating: 8/10

There’s a moment in Joe when a drive-by shooter puts a bullet in Nicolas Cage’s titular character’s shoulder and you think the story’s going to go in a History of Violence direction. But Joe just patches himself up with gaffer tape and forgets about it. You can’t go around taking umbrage at every little thing. Or, as he puts it at one point, “I know what keeps me alive is restraint.”

The setting of David Gordon Green’s film (based on a novel by Larry Brown) is the impoverished rural South, a place where people live in crumbling shacks and where everyone has guns and guard dogs and grudges. Joe runs a crew who clear land by killing trees with pesticide. Gruff but kindly and decent, he takes on Gary (Tye Sheridan), a 15-year-old boy from white trash parents. Soon his attitude towards the boy becomes more paternal, which makes it hard for him to sit by and watch Gary being beaten up and harangued by his mean old drunk of a father, Wade (Gary Poulter).

But then, Joe has problems of his own. Having served a term in jail, he doesn’t trust his own temper, and a few of the local police are only too eager to test him. Plagued by feelings of helplessness about the poverty and suffering around him, he knows that these impulses could be his downfall.

Green has a patient way with his material. The film is part character study, part portrait of a place and of a forgotten underclass, his camera a discreet observer, non-threatening, non-judgemental. Tensions bubble beneath a gentle flow of episodes – visits to the whorehouse (about the only thriving local concern), lessons in how to cut the perfect butterfly steak from a deer that happens to be hanging in someone’s living room. Stars Cage and Sheridan are mixed with non-actors to achieve a gritty authenticity – Cage’s crew were played by real day labourers, and Gary Poulter, cast as Wade, was a homeless man whom Green happened to spot (sadly, he passed away shortly after the film wrapped). Poulter cuts an almost unbearable figure of suffering and degradation – it can be hard to follow his toothless drawl, but the stricken state of his body speaks loud and clear. The scenes where he’s off by himself, hunting that next bottle of booze, are among the most harrowing in the entire movie.

There’s just a touch of voyeurism in this brand of realism perhaps, but there’s no denying that it draws from Cage one of his best performances in years, full of gravitas and weary humour. And brutal as some of the movie is, Green, like his central character, exercises restraint, hinting that what he hasn’t shown is far worse than what he has (there’s a scene, quite late on, where Gary reveals, almost casually, that his sister has lost the power of speech, and Joe is stunned, wondering what horrors have been going on in that decayed hovel of theirs). Sensitive and serious, bleak but robustly humane, Joe makes you feel like hell is a country road and that you’ve walked that road yourself.

The DVD comes with a brief but interesting 10-minute featurette, in which Green talks about his unusual approach to film-making and his search for honesty on screen, and in which we also learn that the snake that Nicolas Cage waves around in one scene was a highly poisonous cottonmouth.