2015 Films: #13. We Are Still Here

This was an On Demand viewing on a Saturday night September 20th. This picture was released on June 5th and received a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Screenwriter Ted Geoghegan wrote this film and makes his debut as a director on it as well. Taking place in 1979, the Sacchetti's move to a New England town in the dead of winter after their college aged son dies in a car crash in hopes of getting some closure. Weird things start to happen and Anne (Barbara Crampton) thinks it's the spirit of their dead son. Her husband Paul (Andrew Sensenig) isn't quite convinced but that doesn't stop Anne from inviting over her alleged psychic buddy (Lisa Marie) and her Jack Nicholson-esque husband (Larry Fessenden).

Things start go bad when the Lewis's son and girlfriend are brutally slain at the house while everyone is in town having dinner. When they arrive back at the house, the men have a seance while the women are grocery shopping. Here's where things heat up, Jacob Lewis gets possessed and eventually kills himself. It turns out that the spirit that Anne thought was her son, is in fact the spirit of a family murdered in the house back in 1859. Every thirty years, a new family needs to be sacrificed in order to appease the demonic family (the demonic family was murdered by the townsfolk in 1859 after an incident where they should've only been run out of town and since they were wrongfully slain, the patriarch of the group put a curse on the town). In order to ensure the sacrifice takes place the townsfolk charge the Sacchetti house and things get messy.

By messy I mean the walls are literally painted with blood.

This picture is simplistic and very minimal until the end where the walls of the Sacchetti house are literally painted with blood. The picture runs 84 minutes long and it never drags (a lot of the action takes place in the last 15 minutes or so). Geoghegan does a nice job with the lighting when there are shots of creepy things moving around in the basement and keeps the demonic family under wraps until the big reveal at the end.

Surprise everyone!

There's not a lot of original thinking here but it works. Geoghegan seems to take some ideas from John Carpenter's The Fog and numerous other films of this genre. This was a fun film to watch with some good scares. A 94% rating seems high to me but it was good and I'd recommend over a lot of zombie films that I mistakenly took the time out to watch.

2015 Films: #12. Straight Outta Compton

September 4th in Indianapolis, IN. This picture has gotten a lot of hype since its release a few eeks ago. Suffice to say the hype is well deserved. With a 90% rating on Rotten tomatoes, this is a really good film. Veteran director, and former Compton resident, F. Gary Gray does a great job of weaving the history of N.W.A. within in the tapestry of the origins of hip-hop (it was called rap throughout the 80's by the way). The film isn't fast paced per se, but it moves along at a nice pace and flows very well. The real flaw was that the picture has a running time of 2 hours and 24 minutes and could've gone through the editing room one more time. That's not to say that the film was too long or I lost interest, on the contrary, it still would've been just as good about bout 2:05. The actors were near brilliant in their performances. The standouts were O'Shea Jackson, Jr. as Ice Cube,  Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E and R. Marcos Taylor as Suge Knight.

In most "based on a true story" films the re's usually a little poetic license but from the very little I've seen, there were more omissions than exaggerations.  Glaring omissions. The film takes place from 1986 to 1995, from when Dre, Ice Cube and Eazy-E 1st got together, along with Wren and Yella, to Eazy-E's death. Back in the day I always felt that Dre and Cube were the creative force behind N.W.A with Eazy-E being less talented. As it turns out Eazy-E had quite a bit more to do with the group than I thought (the fact that the film was produced by Eazy-E's widow along with Dre and Cube made sure that he got a place in the trinity). After the guys release Eazy-E's single Boyz in the Hood, Eazy-E is approached by Jerry Heller to manage the group. Heller gets them the studio space as they put together the seminal album, Straight Outta Compton and the tour that followed.

Things start to slowly unravel as their album gets more and more popular. Police departments don't like them, the FBI threatens them, Dre's little brother dies and Jerry is seen as a bit of a snake to Cube and Dre. Eventually the strain is too much and the cracks become full blown breaks. Cube leaves over what he feels is mistreatment from Jerry and goes solo, much to the chagrin to the rest of the group. Soon, even Dre becomes disenchanted with Jerry, meets Suge Knight and leaves Ruthless Records to start Death Row with Knight. Things go back and forth between the trifecta (Cube, Dre & E), each dealing with success and failure. Dre and Cube continue a meteoric rise while E struggles with the responsibility of running Ruthless, culminating in a break with Jerry once he learns of how Jerry managed him (a fate that many artists have suffered from). We see Dre working with Snoop Dogg while recording The Chronic, his work with Tupac and his inevitable split with Knight. The three reconcile and there's talk of an N.W.A. reunion but the dream fades when Eazy-E passes away from an AIDS related death.

As I stated before, this was a really good movie that's worth seeing, especially if you're my age. I was around when all this went down (on the East coast) and I knew nothing about West Coast rap. The only LA based rap artist that I knew prior to going to college in 1988 was Ice-T. It was amazing to see the forefront of a genre that didn't really exist and struggled with being taken seriously. Not the case anymore.

N.W.A was also involved (whether directly of indirectly) in a very historical and turbulent time and the film did a very nice job of reminding me of that. The members of N.W.A are seen as hassled by police at any time (I don't know how much of this was true per se but it's pretty much fact that a young black male in the mid to late 80's was considered a gang member and subject to being searched by police) for just being black and young (sadly things don't seemed to have changed all that much). This part of the film was not lost on me and I wanted to mention that.

2015 Films: #11. Zipper

August 30th in Chicago. It appears that I managed to view two films over the weekend that both began with the letter Z that was On Demand. What are the odds. To be honest I thought this was a sexy political thriller but there weren't enough thrills, plenty of sex though, it moved a bit slow at times and despite being only 103 minutes, my attention faded in and out.Which stands to reason  because Rotten Tomatoes gave it a rating of 19%.

The film was written & directed by Mora Stephens and has a pretty good cast that includes; Patrick Wilson, Lena Headey(Jeannie), Ray Winstone (Coaker) and Richard Dreyfuss (whom I thought quit acting). Yet somehow the film just isn't that good maybe not as bad as a 19% rating but not that good.

Wilson plays US Attorney Sam Ellis, a no nonsense prosecutor who appears to be the ultimate family man. He's such a family man that he's got issues with porn. The issue being he likes it. A lot. When deposing a witness who happens to be an escort, Sam is not only turned on by the lovely escort but his interest is piqued about  escort services. Eventually Sam grows tired of masturbation and decides to give an escort service a try (predictably so) when his wife and son leave for the weekend. I will never understand where the workaholic male protagonist in film gets the time time to have extra-marital affairs and who has a beautiful wife at home whom he feels the need to go out and cheat on despite the fact the wife gives no indication that she's not interested in sex...

 It must be so such a difficult life. I can totally see why Sam would want to step out n Jeannie.

Sam has 2nd thoughts during his first "appointment" but eventually he caves in and even goes as far as becoming a regular customer. Sure enough, Sam becomes so obsessed with escort sex and he maxes out his credit cards. Things come to a boil when he spots a surveillance van outside the hotel and gets hits by a car when he aborts his "appointment." Sure enough, his wife Jeannie gets jealous and sends Coaker, a political reporter who's a family friend, to do some digging. Sam dodges a bullet when the investigation that he could have gotten snagged in comes up empty. But before he can breathe a sigh of relief, Coaker confronts him with his infidelities. Sam is ready to come clean, give Coaker the story he's drooling for, resign his position in the Justice Department and give up his political career. Before Coaker can publish the story, Jeannie makes a last minute deal with Coaker and he changes the story to what a great politician Sam would make. Try and guess what Jeannie offered to get Coaker to change his mind...

Coitus. The physical act of making love.

Fast forward to where Sam is now a US Senator and he's meeting with Richard Dreyfuss and Dreyfuss tells him that he needs to get his"zipper" problem under control. Same tells him that its no longer an issue but the last scene sees Sam in a hotel, taking off his wedding ring about to knock on the door.

It would appear that the moral of the story is that sex addicts will remain sex addicts. I guess. The film tries to be a sexy political thriller but it fails It's not even a cautionary tale because Sam doesn't change (the parallels to Eliot Spitzer are pretty heavy handed). In the end, I didn't really care abiut any of the characters. None of them were redeeming. Sam is a cheating husband, Jeannie wants the image of a politicians wife (she comes from a politically powerful family and has delusions of Jackie Kennedy) and Coaker is the sleazy reporter who compromises his integrity to sleep with Jeannie.

The film essentially hits a fly ball that you think has a chance to be a home run but it doesn't have enough to make it the warning track. Pass on this.