Winner Takes It All

There's a certain joy in good dumb fun action movies that's hard to match. 

Cue The Tournament.

Quick Plot: Every seven years, 30 of the world's greatest assassins are invited to play in The Tournament, a battle royal with a $10 million prize and the chance to make a roomful of wealthy betters even more. 

It's a simple premise that doesn't really need much more setup. There are no rules, which means civilians caught in the crossfire or used as human shields are simply part of the game. This doesn't bode well for alcoholic priest Father MacAvoy (the always welcome Robert Carlyle) who breaks a commandment when stealing an abandoned cup of coffee only to face some divine punishment when he swallows a contestant's tracking device. 

That's one more player to add to our roster. Also in the mix is stoic yet sympathetic Lai Lai Zen (Kelly Hu), psychotic Texan Miles Slade (Ian Somerhalder, who I thought was Chace Crawford showing personality before realizing that was impossible), parkour expert Anton (Sebastien Foucan), and returning champion Joshua Harlow (the one and only Ving Rhames). Harlow has returned for a more important motive than money: one of the players in the game assassinated his pregnant wife, and he's here for vengeance.

Plot schmot, let's watch physically fit people creatively murder each other...and so we do.

Director Scott Mann has an efficient approach to the material. I don't know why this script required three writers, since all of the character work seems to come from the actors and their physicality. Kelly Hu makes for an appealing lead, even if we get little insight into her actual character. Robert Carlyle is an incredibly versatile actor, and he threads a rather effective braid of pathetic, sympathetic, and amusing in his confused holyman. There are bus chases, hand-to-hand combat, explosions, and shootouts in strip clubs. 

This movie understands its audience.

High Points

We're not quite at Atomic Blonde levels, but The Tournament really does deliver on its violent action, and having someone as physically capable as Kelly Hu as its lead doesn't hurt

Low Points

I'm not really mad that we get so little backstory on any of the characters, but it's a bit ridiculous that Robert Carlyle's priest is introduced at such a low point and the film never actually pauses to explain why he's there, nor really why he's willing to work so hard to get out of it

Lessons Learned

A hanging slab of meat is the new shield

UK laxatives are incredibly ineffective

Assassins never know why

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you're in the mood for a super violent action flick, this should easily satisfy. I found it on Tubi, though it may have since jumped around. Toss a tracking device in the nearest cup of coffee and we'll see where it lands.

I'll Take It Black

 

I'm going to make a declarative objective statement about something that is very much subjective: black comedy is the most divisive of all film genres. Either you click with a movie's intentionally polarizing sense of humor, or you find it deplorable. There is very little room in between.

Especially when it involves...

(SPOILER ALERT THAT YOU SHOULD PROBABLY KNOW GOING IN TO KNOW IF THIS IS GOING TO BE OKAY FOR YOU OR NOT)...

adorable dead babies.

Quick Plot: Opening credits read as an instruction manual for assembling the titular piece of furniture. Maybe it's because I just assembled my own outdoor cart by following pictures that kind of matched tiny parts, but this graphic design decision pleased me grandly.

Meet Jesus and Maria, a very tired married couple navigating the stress of new parenthood in a small city apartment. Despite the bags hanging under her eyes, Maria is actually quite happy. Years of IVF have finally given her exactly what she wanted: infant Cayetano. 

Jesus is less enthused. An overgrown child of sorts, he seems overwhelmed with fatherhood. It doesn't help that the 13-year-old neighbor down the hall is madly in love with him.

What does all of this have to do with a coffee table, you might ask? Doesn't EVERYTHING come down to your choice of coffee table?

Much to Maria's annoyance, Jesus insists on purchasing an incredibly tacky glass table complete with nude women posing as the legs in extremely fake gold. It's clearly his way of holding onto some remnant of his own identity, making a decision completely separate from both his wife and child. It's certainly not the worst crime a new father can commit. 

That comes a few minutes later. 

Spoilers for a movie that, as I've warned, is probably best slightly spoiled in order to know if you can stand it. Maria exits the apartment to do some grocery shopping (even THAT has some bitterness, as it's for a small dinner party for Jesus's not entirely welcome brother and much younger girlfriend). After realizing he's missing a component to complete his table's assembly, Jesus turns away just long enough for something to go terribly, terribly wrong: the unbreakable glass shatters and decapitates his only child. 

What does one do in that kind of situation? Call the authorities? Scream? Throw yourself out a window? Tell your wife?

In the case of Jesus, hide the evidence, go into shock, and host the world's most awkward dinner party in European history. 

Directed by Caye Casas (who also co-wrote with Cristina Borobia), The Coffee Table is a brutally uncomfortable film. It takes the cringe humor of something like The Office at its most extreme and turns it inside out to expose every part you'd rather not witness.

It's also very funny.

(ducks)

But I understand if you don't agree! 

High Points

There is some VERY funny writing here in Cases and Borobia's script, particularly around the wonderfully wry Ruth (perfectly played by Gala Flores) and her inappropriate obsession

Low Points

I understand that The Coffee Table is ultimately Jesus's story, but it feels a little bit of a cheat to not give us insight into Maria's final decision

Lessons Learned

A furniture salesman can solve your table problems, not name your newborn

Never recommend a book of poetry to a teenager, even if it's for a school project

Cowards never admit they're in love

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you (not unjustly) have an absolute zero tolerance for dead babies, The Coffee Table is not the film for you. But if your sense of humor is appropriately twisted, give it a go on Kanopy. 

Emily's Christmas Show: LIVE (and streamed)

It's a Christmas miracle!

Last year, I co-wrote/co-directed/co-hosted a fever dream of a Hallmark Christmas movie for a live reading in Brooklyn. And guess what? It's back, better, bigger, and soon to be streamable.

If you're in the New York area, you can come see it (AND ME) onstage at the Caveat in lower Manhattan on December 7th at a friendly 2:30 PM matinee. Get $5 off your ticket with code EMILY

OR, if that trip is a bit out of the way, you can watch it on demand via our live (and later-) stream. 

Tickets for both are here! 

And if you're thinking, "Lady, I come here to read about terrible horror movies, not holiday romance," I would like to calm your worries by pointing out, without spoiling too much, that said Cozy Cardigan Christmas Movie just might involve bloodsucking vampires. 

Okay, not might. It does. Our heroine is a vampire. 

Did I mention I'll be ACTING?

The show will be streamable up through December 26th, because what is Boxing Day without a Hallmark parody?

Up There

 

We forget how '80s the early '90s were. 1993 is pushing it, but when you're a low budget action movie starring Billy Blanks, you're all in.

Quick Plot: The earth's surface has been poisoned (I should rephrase: humans have polluted and destroyed the air they're supposed to breathe), forcing those that can afford it underground. They're protected by Tracker-Communicators, a martial arts-savvy task force of bodyguards and hunters.

Chief among them is the team of Jason Storm (workout king Billy Blanks) and Zoey Kinsella, daughter of the dead genius who founded the entire city that now keeps the elite safe. When gang leader Nicky Picasso (yes, that's a name) leads his goons in a vicious attack, Zoey is killed. Policy dictates that her body is the property of the underground's lab, and therefore the perfect canvas to test out a new acrobatic supersoldier. 

Jason is rightfully upset, but there's little time to dwell once he's framed for Zoey's murder and banished to the surface. Up there, he teams up with tai chi specialist Sumai (the balletic Bolo Yeung) for a training montage and plan.

At just under 90 minutes long, TC 2000 is about 88% martial arts fighting and 12% half-hearted world building. Don't ask me to show my work, but the math vaguely adds up to some satisfyingly dumb entertainment. Bolo Yeung is incredibly watchable. The villains look like they've emerged from a 2D arcade game into something somewhere between that technology and earth. 

It's a good, very dumb time. Making his film debut, director T.J. Scott (who would go on to helm lots of TV, including a few episodes of my beloved Spartacus) succeeds most when his camera follows the action. Yes, the set is cheap and the costumes are only slightly above the caliber of a Party City sale, but nobody came here for fine art (despite our villain being named, you know, Nicky Picasso). 

High Points

I was unfamiliar with Bolo Yeung before watching TC 2000, so what a treat it was to discover someone so watchable who also happens to have dozens of films to his name

Low Points

Ever watch Top Chef and constantly worry that your kitchen timer is going off because on Top Chef, timers constantly go off? That's annoying. You know what else is annoying? How every scene set in the computer room of TC 2000 has an ambient beep that sounds like a smoke detector. And so at first you pause thinking, "is that MY smoke detector?" And you realize that no, it belongs to the movie, and every time the action RETURNS to this room, you're going to hear it. And pause and worry that you have a carbon monoxide leak. 

Look, TC 2000 isn't a very good movie and there are plenty of other callouts I could make here (having Blanks narrate with less enthusiasm than Harrison Ford in the theatrical Blade Runner cut, for example) but as a new home owner, you have to understand: beeping is scary.

Lessons Learned

Much like Gallagher's humor, the best vessel for communicating tai chi is smashed watermelon

Zoey is Greek for life

Future press conferences will include floor routines

Rent/Bury/Buy

TC 2000 is not a good movie, but it's stuffed with enthusiasm. In the mood for a '90s wasteland that looks like the '80s? Here you go, appropriately hanging out in the junk pile of Amazon Prime. 

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back to the Sewer

In the realm of niche horror genres, the Jaws ripoff is one that I probably enjoy far more than I should. Sometimes, even more than actual Jaws movies (particularly if you're including the full gamut of animal attack flicks in that category). 

Quick Plot: We open in a shifty Florida reptile farm where out-of-towners watch alligators chew up a poorly trained employee. That doesn't deter a young girl from bringing home a baby from the gift shop, where she lovingly takes care of him in her Chicago dwelling. Dad gets mad one day and flushes the little guy down the toilet, unaware of the urban legends about the havoc such action could wreak. 

Twelve years later, detective David Madison (glorious Robert Forster) is investigating a series of murders as body parts wash up from the city sewers. He soon discovers a shady biological research company doing horrendous testing on puppies in order to make a growth serum for livestock. The failed subjects are tossed in the same sewer system where a certain pretten carnivor gets to devour them, fueling an unnatural growth resulting in a 36' long hungry hunter.

David soon teams up with leading herpetologist Marisa Kendell (Robin Riker), who reveals that she once had her own baby alligator that met a watery fate at the hands of her father. If you're wondering if this seemingly very intelligent scientist figures out or acknowledges that this city's blood is on her hands, the answer is no.

That's okay. Forster and Riker have their own unique, fun chemistry, so much so that this movie is what supposedly led Quentin Tarantino to cast Forster in Jackie Brown. With a script by eventual Oscar nominee John Sayles, Alligator is a smart movie playing dumb. It works.

Director Lewis Teague (of Cujo and more importantly, my beloved Cat's Eye) apparently set out to make a scary film but realized quickly that his effects weren't going to be up to the task. Instead, he decided to lean into the humor. Forster easily gets the tone, while Craig Huxley's synth-y score hilariously toes a line between Jaws and a lawsuit. 

High Points

Enough good can't be said about Robert Forster's approach to this movie

Low Points

For a film that's getting a lot of mileage out of comeuppance, it feels a tad icky that so many working people die violent deaths at the big wealthy wedding setpiece

Lessons Learned

You can always trust your first impression of what a man's apartment would look like

Even the most expensive limo is not alligator-proof

There's simply no such thing as an honest mayor in any town that has a water source

For the Ladies

I wish I kept count, but for whatever reason, Robert Forster is constantly topless in this movie. Teague's camera has more shirtless Forster shots than Rob Zombie has closeups of his wife's butt in The Devil's Rejects. 

Rent/Bury/Buy

This is a movie that has a little boy fall off his suburban diving board into the open mouth of a 36' long alligator. Obviously, it's a blast. Find it on Shudder and have a good time. 

There's Got To Be a Morning After (so why not make it a sequel?)

 

The Poseidon Adventure is a masterpiece: a big, bawdy disaster flick with committed movie stars dressed to the nines navigating huge set pieces until they hear the sweet chords of 1972's Best Original Song. What more can you ask for?

Well, a sequel, apparently. 

Quick Plot: Indebted tugboat captain Mike (Michael Caine, or as I know want to think of him, Mike Caine) is having a tough time navigating some stormy waters with a small cargo load. His second mate Wilbur (Karl Malden!) has picked up a clumsy but cute hitchhiker Celeste (Sally Field!!) right in time to discover the overturned remains of the SS Poseidon. 

Mike is a practical man. Having lost some pricey containers, he knows the bank is about to take Jenny (yes, the boat's name is Jenny which is also Forrest Gump's boat's name which also starred Sally Field and who needs 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon now?). Mike and Wilbur decide to invoke their salvage rights to scour the Poseidon for some valuables, though they're soon joined by a shifty group of Greek medics who are hungry to save some lives. Considering their leader is Telly Savalas(!!!), it's as hard for Mike as it is for the audience to trust their good faith. 

Once on board, the teams split up to search for their respective goals. Mike's group quickly gathers a few survivors: angry retired army sergeant dad Peter Boyle!!!! and his daughter, his daughter's handsome Iowan farmer savior (baby Mark Harmon*), a kindly and efficient nurse (Shirley Jones), a drunken Texas billionaire (Slim Pickens), and a middle-aged woman (Shirley Knight) who refuses to leave her blind husband (Jack Warden).

*My keyboard has run out of exclamation points.

As you suspect, Telly Savalas's crew have less-than-noble intentions, making Mike's gold-hungry hunting seem admirable by comparison. As Mike slowly warms to the idea of helping save lives, the other group finds what they were really looking for: crates of firearms and a batch of plutonium. 

Oh, and did I mention THIS BOAT IS SINKING?

Like many sequels to huge hits, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure tries to cover its predecessor's greatest hits. Instead of a doubtful swimming record, we get different accounts of personal achievement in the long jump. A slippery ladder is contractually obligated to reappear. The oldest character makes a heroic sacrifice to save others. And so on. 

Much in the vein of The Lost World to Jurassic Park, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure was commissioned to original novelist Paul Gallico as a book sequel to the film that differed from his book in order to provide the material for a film sequel. As one might expect, that kind of warped timeline doesn't necessarily yield the finest screenplay. 

Irwin Allen, who had produced the first film, moved into the director's chair here. His touch is a few steps below Ronald Neame's, never quite capturing the sheer grandiosity of the disaster at hand. Instead of understanding just how terrifying being trapped in a capsized ship can be, we get axe murders and a shootout.

 

It was probably impossible to match the energy of The Poseidon Adventure. Ultimately, this film really does sit in the same, expected space as Home Alone 2 and Die Harder with the usual foibles of trying to recapture lightning in an expensive but leaking bottle. Still, the utter '70s of it has a certain charm that's hard to resist.

High Points

She's not given the best material, but by golly is Sally Field adorable in what could have been a very annoying role

Low Points

Even with a cast this stacked, the basic truth that these are people who LITERALLY boarded a sinking ship, so much of the actual horror seems a bit muted. The straggling survivors don't even seem to be THAT bothered by the fact that they've been trapped in the middle of the ocean for a full day

Lessons Learned

Never confuse an arms dealer with an impotent terrorist

Being trapped under a sinking luxury liner for a few hours gives one plenty of time to think about the future

Enormous boat disasters merit just one round of coast guard rescues

Advertising At Its Best

I recorded this movie off TCM, which occasionally sprinkles in some commercials for its various themed offshoots, including a Disney-sponsored luxury cruise liner with classic movie stars and screenings. I can't quantify just how much joy it brings me to inform you that this commercial airs before a movie about, you know, a luxury cruise liner sinking into disaster

Rent/Bury/Buy

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure is many, many decks below the perfection of The Poseidon Adventure. It's a bit shrill and very messy, but I can't say I wasn't entertained by the sheer bigness of it. Those curious probably won't be bored, so as long as you go in with low expectations, you'll likely have a good enough time.