COLLAR ID

Opening in theaters today:

Father Stu--Stuart Long was a failed boxer in Montana who became a failed actor in L.A. who became a Catholic convert and then a seminarian and ultimately a priest. Mark Wahlberg has turned Long's odd career trajectory into a Hollywood tale, and a juicy star vehicle, with this biopic.

After hearing the story from a priest who was friends with Long, Wahlberg developed it as a film project, but the writer-director is Rosalind Ross, better known as Mel Gibson's longtime girlfriend and the father of one of his children. Early on, Ross endows the film almost with the flavor of a '70s-era friends-in-low-places comedy; it wouldn't seem out of character if Stu had Clyde the Orangutan as a sidekick.

While working the meat counter in a supermarket, like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, Stu beholds Carmen (Teresa Ruiz), a soulful local beauty, falls hard for her at first sight, and traces her to her church, where he learns she's a devout Catholic. A nonbeliever himself, he nonetheless hangs around and even converts to be near her, much to the shock of his fretful mother Kathleen (Jacki Weaver) and bitter, distant father Bill (Mel Gibson). Gradually, Stu wears Carmen down; she responds to the intensity and seriousness of his passion for her.

She's prepared to marry him when, after recovering from a hideous accident, he announces that he's decided to become a priest instead. But his sufferings don't end when he gets to the seminary; quite the opposite. The Church leadership resists his priestly ambitions, first because of his rowdy background and later, disgustingly, because they fear that the muscular illness with which he's been afflicted makes him unworthy to perform the sacraments.

Although I'm not Catholic, like the real Stu Long I went to a Catholic college. Perhaps because I didn't grow up in the church, but received the benefit of an excellent Catholic liberal education, it's possible I'm in a position to be more appreciative of the institution than my many pissed-off lapsed Catholic friends. Besides, I've read too much Flannery O'Connor and Graham Greene not to respond to this story.

But Stu winning the glorious Carmen's heart seemed like miracle enough to me; it seemed outrageous that he would then break it off with her to go to seminary. Still, my annoyance with his choice didn't make the sanctimony and hypocrisy he faced from the Church any less infuriating. In the end, I invested emotionally in his struggle; it's enough that it's what Stu wants.

There's reason, however, to suspect that the movie commits its own sins of omission. Ross's script pares down the real Stu's life to its most turbulent aspects, seemingly to make him look less accomplished, more of a desperate screw-up. It leaves out, among other things, the fact that he was a college grad before he went to seminary and spent years as the manager of the Norton Simon Art Museum before his calling. Wahlberg's portrait of him as a slovenly, drawly, dangling-cigarette barfly doesn't suggest this background.

All the same, it's an endearing characterization. Wahlberg blurts out his newfound spiritual insights with the cocksure authority of an eternally passionate novice; he's like an acquaintance that makes you roll your eyes and smile at the same time when you see him coming. Ruiz is lovely as Carmen, and Malcolm McDowell embraces his straight man role as a stuffy monsignor unable to discourage Stu. Taken on its own terms, as a peculiar, sweet yarn spun from truth, the movie is absorbing and engaging.

As for Gibson, he's rarely seemed happier; this movie puts him back in the world of masochistic hardcore fringe-Catholic body horror he so loves. His performance as Bill is potently baleful, and there's a startling moment in which he quips that Stu wanting to become a priest is like "Hitler wanting to join the ADL." That's a nervy and heavy-handed "meta" joke to put in that guy's mouth. After all, it works almost as well to say that it's like Mel Gibson wanting to join the ADL.

TRIUMPH OF THE QUILL

Opening this weekend:

Sonic the Hedgehog 2--This is the sequel to the 2020 screen treatment of the hero from the popular '90s-era video game from Sega. He's a determined-looking little goober with blue fur and quills who can run at supersonic speeds. He doesn't look all that much like a hedgehog to me, but whatever.

I never played the game and had no familiarity with the character, but I did review the first film, which I saw at a drive-in in Glendale in April of 2020; it was the last movie I actually saw at a theatre before the big shut-down began in earnest. If memory serves--the first film didn't exactly tattoo itself on my mind--this new film is better than its predecessor.

By which I mean, it's a little better. Starting with a prologue sequence set on "The Mushroom Planet" (a nod, possibly, to Eleanor Cameron's delightful "Mushroom Planet" books of the '50s and '60s?) to which the rotten Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) has been exiled, Sonic 2 is noticeably more visually rich and imaginative than the first film. Settings range from Siberia to Hawaii to oceanic temples, and the action ranges from aerial chases to avalanches to battles with giant robots to dance-offs.

Robotnik escapes his "Portobello purgatory" and returns to Earth in cahoots with Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba), a giant extraterrestrial echidna, to pester Sonic (voiced, as before, by Ben Schwartz) about a magical green emerald. Knuckles doesn't look all that much like an echidna to me, but whatever. Our hero's principal ally, this time, is Tails (voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessey), a fox with two bushy tails that allow him to fly, helicopter style. Tails does, at least, sort of look like a fox.

Along with James Marsden and Tika Sumpter, back from the first film as Sonic's surrogate parents, Shemar Moore, Natasha Rothwell and Adam Pally also pad out the cast. Carrey is at his snarkiest and wackiest, and seems to be having a good time, although he's reportedly announced his retirement.

On its own terms, all that's really wrong with Sonic 2 is that, at 2 hours 2 minutes, it's too long. It didn't seem to me that this was a movie that particularly needed to be three minutes longer than Citizen Kane.

Now streaming...

Lost Angel--This micro-budget indie debut feature by Simon Drake is set in a fictitious south England island community. As it opens, we see our heroine Lisa taking a ferry home. Her sister has died, apparently by suicide, but as Lisa investigates, she finds reason to doubt the official story.

As the plot progresses, it takes a low-key, matter-of-fact turn into the supernatural. After a slow start, weighed down by lachrymose music, the film gradually picks up a nice head of mystery-thriller steam. Drake uses the settings to generate atmosphere without it feeling forced, and the performances take hold, particularly that of the plaintive, quietly focused Sascha Harman as Lisa. By the end, Lost Angel is both gripping and highly touching.

VEIN MAN

Opening this weekend...

Morbius--Jared Leto certainly has the physique and facial bones to play the title character in this Marvel flick. His performance as the hapless vampiric hematologist is good, too; quiet and haunted yet not oppressive, tinged with grim humor. The movie, however, could use a transfusion of originality platelets.

Michael Morbius, the cadaverous "Living Vampire," was introduced in comics in the early '70s as a nemesis to Spider-Man...

...and eventually headlined Marvel titles of his own. Like Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows, he was a reluctant and tormented blood-drinker. Michael had brought on his condition, which includes superhuman strength and batlike gliding and echolocation ability, through a serum intended to cure the rare blood disease that was killing him. He craved blood but didn't want to hurt anyone, and, as with The Lizard (with whom Morbius notably clashed), Spidey empathized with him and tried not to harm him.

There are other strong performances in the film, directed by Daniel Espinosa from a script by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (the team behind 2014's Dracula Untold). Matt Smith slyly plays Milo, Michael's mega-rich pal and research patron, who suffers from the same disease and soon notices the same side effects from Michael's serum, but feels less guilt over his bloodlust. Adria Arjona has a lovely sober quality as Martine, Michael's partner and romantic interest; her gravity seems to bring out a hint of playfulness in Leto.

I really wanted to like this one; I'm fond of the comic character. And for the first half or so it cruises along enjoyably enough, though there's nothing really new to it, just standard spooky gothic flourishes. The corn is as high as a vampire's eye, too; repeatedly, when they're in bloodsucker mode, both Michael and Milo strike a scary pose and go "RAAAAAH!" like the bully kid in A Christmas Story, and after a while they seem like the performers in a Halloween haunted house.

Then, as the movie progresses, the questionable logic increases. Why, for instance, would a boat on which secret medical experiments were being conducted require a large team of heavily armed mercenaries? Why would Michael want to commandeer a counterfeiting workshop's equipment to adapt into scientific equipment?

In the later scenes, as Michael and Milo battle in the shadowy streets of New York--The Batman has nothing on this movie for gloominess--Morbius descends into an unexciting muddle. It has a truncated, cut-down feel to it, a suspicion supported by the presence of scenes in the trailer that didn't show up in the finished film.

The most disappointing of these is the paucity of Michael Keaton, as Adrian Toomes aka The Vulture; he's shown in the trailer and I figured that if nothing else worked in the movie, Keaton would at least goose a little life into it. But [spoiler alert!] he only appears very briefly at the very end, and adds almost nothing to the picture (unless I nodded off when he said it, even the line he speaks in the trailer was cut). In the sequel, if there is a sequel, I certainly hope Keaton gets a much bigger role.

FESTIES

The 18th edition of Phoenix Film Festival...

...and the simultaneous International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival...

...kick off Thursday. Check out my preview, online at Phoenix Magazine.

JUNGLE ALL THE WAY

Opening in theaters this weekend:

The Lost City--In old movies, lost cities and worlds and civilizations were often destroyed by a volcano at the end, as the explorers just barely escaped. It was as if, in the tradition of such storytelling, once westerners had laid eyes on an exotic unknown place, its destiny was fulfilled and it had no need to carry on existing.

This new adventure comedy, starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, is so old-school that it employs the venerable volcano device. Here, at least, it doesn't come out of left field, but is integrated into the plot; Bullock plays Loretta, a romance novelist who has been kidnapped and taken to a tropical island by a rich nutcase (Daniel Radcliffe) who believes she has the archeological translation skills to help him locate a treasure in a lost city he's unearthed. A nearby volcano, about to erupt, provides the urgency.

Tatum plays Loretta's cover model Alan, who engages a cool ex-Navy Seal mercenary (Brad Pitt) to rescue her, and tags along. Soon enough it's just Loretta and Alan, bumbling through the jungle on their own, struggling to elude the rich guy's goons. And, of course, bickering.

Directed by the brothers Aaron and Adam Yee from a script by a gaggle including Seth Gordon, Oren Uziel and Dana Fox, this film's pilferage goes beyond the volcano bit; it draws, directly or indirectly, on everything from Romancing the Stone to the Hope-Crosby Road pictures. It isn't necessarily all that much dumber than any of those movies; nonetheless it's pretty dumb.

Even so, it sort of works. Bits of the dialogue show flashes of wit, and Brad Pitt, employed to send up the sort of hypercompetent man of action that only exists in the movies, probably constitutes the flick's best joke, although the filmmakers can't resist spoiling it at the very end.

Above all, Bullock never sucks. She's been a movie star for three decades now, and she knows what she's doing; she can be silly without going shrill or cartoonish, and can modulate seamlessly from broad schtick to sweet, delicate moments. Even when a movie serves her poorly, she's consistently good company, and Tatum, with his amiable, logy-minded delivery, pairs well with her. It's also refreshing that, for a change, the leading lady is more than a decade and a half older than her love interest.

TO BE OR NOT TO BESPOKE

Opening this weekend:

The Outfit--This gangster thriller takes place almost entirely inside a small, classy shop in '50s-era Chicago run by an English tailor or, as he prefers, a "cutter." The Savile Row veteran makes elegant suits, largely for Chicago gangsters. He also has allowed a slotted box to be installed in his back room, from which the mobsters pick up messages. Some of the envelopes are marked with a symbol indicating that they are from "The Outfit," which causes the recipients to look at each other significantly and hurry off to who knows what intrigues.

The Cutter, whose name is listed in the credits as Leonard but to whom the gangsters affectionately refer only as "English," is played by Mark Rylance, close to the flawlessly made vest as usual. The great actor's bland, unhurried, maddeningly unperturbed line readings potently generate the sense that he's got secrets, potentially dark. He's quietly, politely paternal toward his lovely receptionist Mable (Zoey Deutch), and though she's a bit prickly at his fretting she seems to love him back. Otherwise he appears to have no life but his work. Rylance plays the role with such authority that while we watch him confidently cut and stitch and smooth fabric, we never doubt what we're seeing for second; it feels like watching a documentary.

Trouble starts when two of the hoods, who are looking for a "rat" who has been feeding information to the FBI, show up one night after a gunfight, one of them wounded, looking to English for a hideout and some impromptu field surgery. The twists and turns and bloody violence keep piling up from there, and eventually the boss (Simon Russell Beale in a fine, cliche-free turn) shows up to this messy scene and everybody starts trying to deceive and outmaneuver everybody else.

The director, Graham Moore, who co-wrote the film with Jonathan McClain, plays a lot of this for grim comedy. The style is theatrical, not just because of the single set and small cast but because of the heightened dialogue. With guns pointed at them and all manner of mayhem happening around them, the characters nonetheless launch into heartfelt, reflective monologues about their pasts. If you can accept this conceit, you're likely to find The Outfit is gripping, funny and moving.

Perhaps Moore and McClain push their luck a bit; the film has a twist or two too many. Speaking of his craft at one point in the narration, English observes that perfection, though necessary as an aspirational ideal, is never truly attainable. This movie's last ten minutes or so illustrates this perfectly, but as with one of English's suits, no one is likely to feel skimped.

WHY YOU SOV

Ever heard of "SOV Horror?" Until quite recently, I had not. It stands for "Shot-on-video horror," and refers to the gruesome, tawdry, very low-budget shockers that tended to clutter the shelves of video rental stores back in the '80s and '90s.

I was unaware that fandom of this mostly disreputable class of flicks was a thing, despite the fact that I appear (very briefly) in such a movie, one that I'm told is now well-regarded as a classic of the kind, and that I also made a (very minor) contribution to its script. The opus in question is Writer's Block: Truth or Dare 2; Playing for Keeps.

It isn't really a sequel. The convoluted title comes from the movie's vague relationship to Tim Ritter's Truth or Dare, a popular SOV gorefest made in Florida in 1986. Ritter's opus is watched obsessively by Elliot (Jeffrey C. Hawkins), the psycho killer in Writer's Block, but otherwise the movie, directed and co-written by my friend Chris LaMont, is free-standing.

The hero of Writer's Block is Jack (Joey Michitsch), a young horror novelist suffering from the title affliction. Under the opening titles, you can see Your Humble Narrator as "The Woodcutter," the title character in the movie-within-the-movie based on one of Jack's books, plodding along with an axe, in not very frightening pursuit of three lovely young ladies in bikini tops and jean shorts, out for a "midnight skinny dip." This may arguably give me the distinction of being the most obscure (and least scary) masked, axe-wielding maniac in horror movie history.

When "cut" is called on the set of the movie-within-the-movie, my pal Dave Gofstein also appears, as the assistant director who offers the cast and crew pizza. As I recall, Dave's line was more important than mine, as it was a product placement for Peter Piper. Despite the woodsy setting, these scenes were shot in central Phoenix, at Whitfill Nurseries on Glendale Avenue near 8th Street.

LaMont had also asked me, along with several other local writers, to do some work on the script. A few lines of my dialogue may be heard in the very last scene of the movie.

I had hardly thought about Writer's Block in the 27 years or so since it was made. I certainly had no idea that it had a following on VHS. But apparently it does, and now it's been released, for the first time, on DVD from SOVHorror. It was fun to hear LaMont's amusing, self-deprecating audio commentary, reminding me, for instance, that the crew blew out the power at the nursery the night we shot there. Also among the "Special Features" is a "Director's Cut," presenting the flick entirely in black and white. This was how I watched it, and it truly did look better that way.

Along with Dave, it was a jolt to see other old friends from the Phoenix-area theatre, like Jeff Hawkins, John King, Kevin Cleere and the dear, late Tim Reader, turn up in the crowded cast. It's a cliche, but I can't help it: Were we ever really that young? Somebody seems to have taken a blade to The Woodcutter's head of hair.