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American Ultra

(2015)

(SPOILERS) One would probably be mistaken to put the apparently unstoppable ascent of Max Landis down to Hollywood nepotism. After all, it isn’t as if anyone has been battering down his dad’s door offering him work over the past couple of decades. I suspect the truth is closer to the means by which Seth Grahame-Smith established himself, through readily recognisable gimmicks (of the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies genre mash-up variety); Landis has an aptitude for an easy (as in facile), high concept soundbite, of the sort studio execs love to hear, which firmly precludes any attempt to evaluate whether there’s anything of value in them, let alone the finished screenplays. Which is where American Ultra comes in. An appealing-enough premise, even a half-decent trailer. But as a movie, it’s a stinker.

The kernel comes from the legendary MKUltra psy-ops programmes, whereby the CIA would programme/brainwash operatives to do their bidding. It’s a fascinating part of dark (as in not really all that mainstream) US twentieth (and twenty-first, it’s not as if it has all gone away suddenly) history, ideal fodder for the conspiracy-minded, and great subject matter for a Hollywood thriller. Provided the mettle is sufficiently grasped.

It has, of course, been tinkered with; Jason Bourne is essentially a programmed super-assassin, but a faulty one who has developed a conscience and is thus granted the thrilling skill set of a merciless killing machine, but in the reconstituted form of a hero. The Manchurian Candidate was the first picture to really set the cat among the pigeons in this regard, suggesting the establishment’s capacity for eliminating inconvenient political targets prior to the Kennedy assassinations. One could have a high old time in terms of movie potential just documenting the backgrounds and activities of the initiators of the MKUltra project, their theories and experiments, and the whole Nazi legacy, without needing to wrap in the palatable antiseptic scepticism that comes via its iteration in The Men Who Stare at Goats.

From the evidence of Landis’ screenplay, he didn’t even deign to read the Wiki-page on the subject, rather gleaning his marginal insights from movies themselves. Which, I guess, is legitimate, if you want to be responsible for strictly D-grade movies. Mike Howell (Jess Eisenberg, convincingly cast as a befuddled stoner, less so as an invincible death machine) and his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart, their second of three pairings to date) live in a small, middle-of-nowhere town, getting majorly mashed while Mike tries and fails to leave amid difficulty expressing his thoughts and phobias to his ever-attentive partner.

His yen for getting out, rather than getting out of it, has attracted the attention of CIA up-and-comer Topher Grace, however, who summarily orders their ex-asset iced. Yes, Mike’s mental health issues don’t result from copious weed, but from being subjected to government mind control. Which is, of course, something anyone who has been regularly stoned has been paranoid about at some point, but is depicted in such a banal fashion by director Nima Nourizadeh (Project X) and his (no doubt stoned) writer as to render it creatively a bummer.

Nourizadeh’s action – and the chance to see the worm, or geek, turn, to satisfying effect, clearly the whole point of the exercise – is often incoherent and poorly-paced, accompanied by a noisy soundtrack from Marcelo Zarvos that’s trying and failing to paper over cracks where the editing is at a loss. Nourizadeh has little aptitude for the humour either, much of which, like the premise, has been borrowed from better movies (“He was armed with a spoon, sir”; if you’re going to steal, steal from Chronicles of Riddick).

As for his martialling of the actors. The leads are fine, but Walton Goggins and his magnificently, miraculously regrown hair is irritatingly, rather than appealingly OTT. As is Grace’s increasingly-frustrated CIA nemesis; ridiculous and annoying, and not remotely believable or threatening. John Legiuizamo, continuing with a recent parade of cameos, some of them solid, makes a mark as a paranoid dealer, while Tony Hale can’t help but turn his character into Tony Hale.

This is, at least, brief. But it’s also highly questionable in intent. Come the final scene, Mike and his handler Phoebe (now that was a surprise) are back working for the agency, free from moral qualms. We’re supposed to celebrate their choice, because it’s, like, cool. Which, I suspect, extends to Landis’ criteria with any given writing project. At one point It looks as if Mike might be having a flashback to being programmed as an operative from childhood (shots of boarding a school bus, fitting in with tales from those syphoned off from normal lessons for special careers from an early age), but then we find he simply signed up at 18. That might have given the picture a frisson, but probably not. It’s studiously safe and unchallenging throughout.

Perhaps Landis himself has been programmed, but to churn out formulaic bullshit. Perhaps Chronicle will remain that one exception in both his and Josh Trank’s careers. Somehow, Max has been let loose on a new version of Dirk Gently; at least we we have the half-decent BBC4 version of a few years back. He’s also hit the jackpot with Netflix, which has paid a Shane Black-in-his-heyday-esque $3m for spec script Bright, about cops in a world where orcs and fairies live among humans (that sort of concept worked really well for R.I.P.D., after all). With that and the Adam Sandler deal, their original movie programming isn’t exactly off to a persuasive start.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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Duffy. That old tangerine hipster.

Duffy (1968) (SPOILERS) It’s appropriate that James Coburn’s title character is repeatedly referred to as an old hipster in Robert Parrish’s movie, as that seemed to be precisely the niche Coburn was carving out for himself in the mid to late 60s, no sooner had Our Man Flint made him a star. He could be found partaking in jaundiced commentary on sexual liberation in Candy, falling headlong into counter culture in The President’s Analyst , and leading it in Duffy . He might have been two decades older than its primary adherents, but he was, to repeat an oft-used phrase here, very groovy. If only Duffy were too.

You know what I sometimes wish? I sometimes wish I were ordinary like you. Ordinary and dead like all the others.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) (SPOILERS) Bryan Forbes’ adaptation of Mark McShane’s 1961’s novel has been much acclaimed. It boasts a distinctive storyline and effective performances from its leads, accompanied by effective black-and-white cinematography from Gerry Turpin and a suitably atmospheric score from John Barry. I’m not sure Forbes makes the most of the material, however, as he underlines Séance on a Wet Afternoon ’s inherently theatrical qualities at the expense of its filmic potential.

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh ), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the wretched main arc when the show returned, although the writing was truly on the wall with Season 9 finale The Truth . For the most part, though, I found 8 and 9 more watchable than, say 5 or 7. They came up with their fair share of engaging standalones, one of which I remembered to be Via Negativa .

A ship is the finest nursery in the world.

A High Wind in Jamaica (1965) (SPOILERS) An odd one, this, as if Disney were remaking The Swiss Family Robinson for adults. One might perhaps have imagined the Mouse House producing it during their “Dark Disney” phase. But even then, toned down. After all, kids kidnapped by pirates sounds like an evergreen premise for boy’s own adventuring (more girl’s own here). The reality of Alexander Mackendrick’s film is decidedly antithetical to that; there’s a lingering feeling, despite A High Wind in Jamaica ’s pirates largely observing their distance, that things could turn rather nasty (and indeed, if Richard Hughes’ 1929 novel had been followed to the letter, they would have more explicitly).

You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (SPOILERS) Hitherto, I was most familiar with Jeremiah Johnson in the form of a popular animated gif of beardy Robert Redford smiling and nodding in slow zoom close up (a moment that is every bit as cheesy in the film as it is in the gif). For whatever reason, I hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to check out the 1970s’ The Revenant until now (well, beard-wise, at any rate). It’s easy to distinguish the different personalities at work in the movie. The John Milius one – the (mythic) man against the mythic landscape; the likeably accentuated, semi-poetic dialogue – versus the more naturalistic approach favoured by director Sydney Pollack and star Redford. The fusion of the two makes for a very watchable, if undeniably languorous picture. It was evidently an influence on Dances with Wolves in some respects, although that Best Picture Oscar winner is at greater pains to summon a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans (and thus, perversely, at times a more patr

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

I tell you, it saw me! The hanged man’s asphyx saw me!

The Asphyx (1972) (SPOILERS) There was such a welter of British horror from the mid 60s to mid 70s, even leaving aside the Hammers and Amicuses, that it’s easy to lose track of them in the shuffle. This one, the sole directorial effort of Peter Newbrook (a cameraman for David Lean, then a cinematographer), has a strong premise and a decent cast, but it stumbles somewhat when it comes to taking that premise any place interesting. On the plus side, it largely eschews the grue. On the minus, directing clearly wasn’t Newbrook’s forte, and even aided by industry stalwart cinematographer Freddie Young (also a go-to for Lean), The Aspyhx is stylistically rather flat.

Just wait. They’ll start listing side effects like the credits at the end of a movie.

Contagion (2011) (SPOILERS) The plandemic saw Contagion ’s stock soar, which isn’t something that happens too often to a Steven Soderbergh movie. His ostensibly liberal outlook has hitherto found him on the side of the little people (class action suits) and interrogating the drugs trade while scrupulously avoiding institutional connivance (unless it’s Mexican institutional connivance). More recently, The Laundromat ’s Panama Papers puff piece fell fall flat on its face in attempting broad, knowing satire (in some respects, this is curious, as The Informant! is one of Soderbergh’s better-judged films, perhaps because it makes no bones about its maker’s indifference towards its characters). There’s no dilution involved with Contagion , however. It amounts to a bare-faced propaganda piece, serving to emphasise that the indie-minded director is Hollywood establishment through and through. This is a picture that can comfortably sit alongside any given Tinseltown handwringing over the Wa

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