R.I.P.: Karen Black (1939-2013)

Karen Black was in the right movies at the right time to guarantee herself at least a footnote in film history.

Indeed, you could argue that Black – who lost her long battle with cancer Thursday at age 74 -- earned her iconic status as a screen queen of the New Hollywood era just on the basis of three roles: A skittish prostitute who takes a very bad acid trip (along with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper) in a New Orleans cemetery in Easy Rider (1969); a coolly glamorous country music star who stokes the paranoia of an unstable rival (Renee Blakely) in Nashville (1975); and, most important, an emotionally clingy waitress who loves not wisely but too well when she falls for a classical pianist turned white-trash rowdy (Jack Nicholson) in Five Easy Pieces (1970).

But wait: There was more.

Black also brought captivating shadings of intelligence and vulnerability to stock-issue “girlfriend” roles opposite George Segal as a hairdresser turned junkie in Born to Win (a flawed but fascinating 1971 drama widely available in DVD editions that emphasize then-unknown co-star Robert DeNiro), and Kris Kristofferson (in his movie starring debut) as a down-on-his-luck musician exploited by a crooked narc (Gene Hackman) in 1972’s Cisco Pike.

And yes, I’ll admit it: As a hormonally inflamed teen-ager, I briefly but intensely nursed a crush on Black way back in the day after seeing her play a sweetly spirited young woman who proves to be Miss Right for a fellow library employee (Peter Kastner) too easily distracted by a crazy/sexy Miss Wrong (Elizabeth Hartman) in You’re a Big Boy Now (1966), a pre-Graduate coming-of-age comedy that hardly anyone – not even its director, Francis Coppola – ever has nice things to say about anymore.

(How much did I – do I – love this flick? I still have an original vinyl LP of the soundtrack album – featuring “Darling, Be Home Soon,” the title tune and other songs by the Lovin’ Spoonful – and a Warner Archive DVD of the film itself.)

Black earned two Golden Globe awards as Best Supporting Actress during her ‘70s heyday, for Five Easy Pieces and the 1974 filmization of The Great Gatsby. (In the latter, she was perfectly cast as the doomed adulteress Myrtle Wilson.) And she made another bid for inclusion in the film history books by playing an ice-cold femme fatale in Alfred Hitchcock’s final film, the deftly seriocomic and criminally under-rated Family Plot (1976).

She also made a lasting impression – though probably not the kind she would have wanted – for her inadvertently campy turn as a frantic stewardess who must take control of a damaged airliner in Airport – 1975. Yep, you guessed it: This is the film that triggered the oft-quoted, much-parodied line: “The stewardess is flying the plane!”

Black remained active in movies and television long after the ‘70s, with credits ranging from neo-grindhouse horror movies (House of 1,000 Corpses) to quality series TV (Law & Order: Criminal Intent) to freewheeling indies (The Independent, in which came off as a very good sport while playing a spoofy version of herself).

She also appeared in The Trust, an excruciatingly maladroit 1993 low-budget drama about the life and death of philanthropist William Marsh Rice, founder of Rice University, which was filmed on location in Houston and Galveston. But to say anything more about that unfortunate career choice would be needlessly unkind.

Suffice it to say that Karen Black was a thoroughgoing professional. And like many other thoroughgoing professionals, she occasionally gave movies much more than they ever gave her. 

OK, did I miss the announcement that they're already shooting Sharknado 2?

Or is this really from the long-awaited Weekend at Sharkie's? (Hat-tip to Gothamist.com.)

Why did The Lone Ranger wind up on Boot Hill?

According to Johnny Depp and Jerry Bruckheimer, The Lone Ranger was ambushed by those mean and nasty film critics. No, really: Audiences stayed away in droves because -- are you ready for this? are you sitting down? -- potential ticketbuyers read bad reviews of their revisionist Western. Read all about it here.

With all due respect to the late Michael Ansara, it's hard to forget (no matter how hard you try) The Manitou

It’s the sort of flaky coincidence I would dismiss as a transparent contrivance if I encountered it in a movie: Just a few days before the passing of Michael Ansara – the Syrian-born actor who credibly and creditably played dozens of Native American characters in movies and TV shows during the 1950s, ’60s and ‘70s – I just happened to be talking with a colleague about The Manitou, a cheap-and-cheesy 1978 horror flick in which Ansara maintained an admirably straight face while co-starring as a modern-day medicine man.

I respectfully refrained from mentioning The Manitou when I wrote an obit for Ansara this past weekend – just as I avoided listing it among the deceased’s credits back when I wrote an obit for Tony Curtis, the film’s nominal star. But as my colleague and I agreed, The Manitou is hard to forget – for all the wrong reasons.

One of several supernatural disasters that provided easy paychecks for fading stars and eager up-and-comers in the wake of The Exorcist, the movie deals with a 400-year-old Indian shaman – Misquamacus by name – that returns to the land of the living in the form of a fetus unnaturally attached to the back of an innocent young woman. Susan Strasberg gamely plays the hapless host for the fetus, Stella Stevens (decked out in dark body makeup even less convincing than said fetus) does an embarrassing cameo as a fortuneteller stuck with rather unfortunate dialogue – “What’s we’re dealing with here is… black magic!!! ” – and Tony Curtis chews up his lines, the scenery and a few unlucky bit players as a phony spiritualist accidentally involved in the battle to smash Misquamacus.

Ansara earns a chuckle here and there during early scenes while expressing scornful suspicion of Curtis' motives. ("What does a white man want with Indian magic?") During the jaw-droppingly ridiculous climax, however, when Curtis and Ansara call upon the wonders of modern electricity to combat the ancient shaman’s “manitou” (spirit), it's Curtis who gets the biggest laugh of the movie, sounding much like a Bronx barroom brawler preparing to flatten some loudmouth when he indignantly snarls: “Awright, Misquamacus – I’ve had enough of this! Who d’ya think you are?”

No, really, I’m not making that up: Just look at this video around the 1:31 mark. You might also want to watch the rest of the movie while you’re at it. But trust me: It isn’t any better.

(By the way: Ansara doubtless would prefer to be remembered by sci-fi and fantasy fans for his iconic portrayal of Kang, the Klingon commander he first played in the original Star Trek, and later essayed in episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager.)

Spike Lee: Essential cinema

Spike Lee includes two Francois Truffaut classics -- The 400 Blows and Day for Night -- and several other worthy choices, including Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and North by Northwest, on his list of must-see movies. I would add Do the Right Thing to his list, because he's much too modest to do so himself.

Holiday cheer from Spike Lee

@JoeLeydon Joe,You Are Too Funny. Spike

— Spike Lee (@SpikeLee) July 30, 2013

As I Tweeted back to Spike: Actually, we tried to see Ali together on Christmas Day 2001 -- but it was sold out. So we're long overdue to spend a holiday with one of his joints. (And this one, I must say, is a flick I'm looking forward to.) Besides, maybe the delay will give him more time for fundraising.

R.I.P.: J.J. Cale (1938-2013)

Can't say I fully appreciated the artistry of J.J. Cale -- the singer-songwriter who gave us "Cocaine" and "After Midnight" -- until I saw Jorg Bundschuh's fawning but fascinating To Tulsa and Back: On Tour With J.J. Cale at the 2006 Nashville Film Festival. As I noted in my Variety review:

Belying his standoffish reputation, Cale is surprisingly forthcoming — if a tad feisty — during discussions with Bundschuh between gigs. He seems mildly surprised that, after years of various excesses, he made it to 65. But he insists he’s not losing his edge. And he doesn’t want anyone to draw faulty conclusions from his relaxed singing style. “I’m not laid back,” he warns, only half-jokingly.

Well-shot performance sequences — including a duet with Clapton during the latter’s Crossroads Guitar Festival in Dallas — are satisfying showcases for Cale’s trademark fusion of blues, jazz and country. Pic is most amusing as Cale and long-time bandmates acknowledge the demands (including early morning radio interviews) of a concert tour. They pointedly note that the night after they performed for 60,000 at the Crossroads Festival, they appeared at a Houston club for an audience of 125. Even so, judging from the concert footage, they played for keeps at both venues.

You can order a DVD of the documentary here. And while you're waiting for it to arrive, you can savor Cale's 1979 Los Angeles session with Leon Russell (hat-tip to OpenSource.com) here.
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My week online: Raising Hell, praising Swoopes, previewing The World's End

Photography: Frank Ockenfels/Courtesy AMC

For all you Joe Leydon completists out there -- all three or four of you -- here's what I was up to this week:

Springsteen & I -- My interview with the director of the "crowd-sourced rockumentary," which will be back in theaters Tuesday.

Joe Leydon: Badass Critic -- I have a new title, thanks to the people who made Bad Kids Go to Hell.

Dennis Farina -- R.I.P.

Hell on Wheels -- Anson Mount and Common (above) are back in the saddle again.

The World's End -- I previewed the new Edgar Wright film -- but I couldn't say anything about it.

Longmire -- No, not that Robert Taylor. This Robert Taylor.

QFest -- They're here, they're queer, and they're screening all over the Greater Metropolitan Houston area.

The Attack -- Director Ziad Doueiri talks about the Arab League ban of his film -- and considers the subversive potential of bootleg DVDs.

Swoopes -- I talk to a couple of hot babes -- WNBA legend Sheryl Swoopes and ESPN host/correspondent Hannah Storm -- about the movie they made together.

As my dear, departed father might say: Hey, at least it keeps me out of the poolhall.

Before there was Anthony Weiner, there was Mystikal: "Danger! Danger!"

OK, I can't be the only person who thought of this once the whole Carlos Danger thing broke, right?

Glad to see there's someone else out there who likes Hollywood Ending

There was a long stretch when I feared my favorable review of Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending was every bit an outlier as... well, my review of The Adventures of Pluto Nash. So I was happy to see today that Nick Schager of The Onion's A.V. Club also had some things to say about the flick.

Don't worry, Edgar Wright: I won't spill the beans about The World's End

Went to a private screening of The World's End last night -- real private, in the sense that I was the only person in the theater besides the enthusiastic publicist, who laughed almost as much I did -- and a funny thing happened when I walked into the lobby: I was handed a personal note from my close, personal friend, director Edgar Wright:

To Whom It May Concern:

Thank you for coming along to the screening. We would love the audience to experience this film as you do and would really appreciate it if you didn't reveal some of the surprises, twists and actors that do not feature in the trailers. Forgive me for asking, as I know you would never dream of doing such a dastardly thing. Thanks for your co-operation and I hope you enjoy the movie.

Edgar Wright

Well, OK. Mind you, the major plot twist that kicks in after the first half-hour has already been revealed in the trailer, most of the summer-preview feature stories (including my own), and, oh, I dunno, about 30 or 40 trend-spotting articles that have included it among the summer's crop of  "Apocalypse, Wow!" movies. But never mind.

I plan on driving to Austin this weekend to interview Wright, co-star and co-writer Simon Pegg, and the lovely and talented Nick Frost. (And, of course, while I'm there, I'm going to visit The Original Hoffbrau, one of my favorite steakhouses in the whole wide world.) So far be it from me to reveal that Rosebud turns out to be a sled, everybody stabs the victim in the sleeping car, Pegg's character is lying about his mother being alive in the back of the motel, Sean Connery makes a cameo appearance as King Richard, and...

Oh. Wait. Damn. Think I'll quit now while I'm behind.

Just call me Joe Leydon: Badass Critic

Thanks @JoeLeydon for the #BADASS review of Bad Kids Go to Hell @Variety #CultClassic http://t.co/1elH0nGi5K pic.twitter.com/o1JN2dbL2Y

— Bad Kids Go To Hell (@BadKidsGoToHell) July 23, 2013

They like me! They really like me!

He's gotta have it: Spike Lee needs my money (and yours) to make his movie

Just when I think the movie business can't get any more whack, I hear the director of Do the Right Thing, 25th Hour, When the Levees Broke and Clockers feels compelled to use Kickstarter to raise funding for his next flick. This is just so wrong, for so many reasons -- not the least of which being, as Spike Lee himself says in this video while pointing to his list of credits, "This is a mother-fuckin' body of work here." (Hey, if I had credits like that, I'd still have a full-time gig reviewing movies.)

Unfortunately, I don't have  an extra $10,000 lying around, so I won't get to attend a New York Knicks game with Spike. (Which is probably a good thing, since my son, an avid Houston Rockets fan, would never forgive me -- even though, oddly enough, he's an admirer of Spike's Miracle at St. Anna.) But I do feel compelled to cough up a few bucks.

On the other hand: I wonder if he might have raised more money a lot quicker by selling tube socks.

Hail and farewell to a natural-born actor: Dennis Farina

Between his early career as a Chicago cop and his recent gig as Xfinity Internet pitchman, Dennis Farina, character actor par excellence, amassed an impressive resume of distinctive performances in movies (including Get Shorty, Out of Sight and the under-appreciated Sidewalks of New York) and TV dramas (including Law & Order, the cult-fave Crime Story and last year's undeservedly short-lived Luck). He was a personal favorite of mine -- yep, I was a fan as far back as Manhunter -- and I was unabashedly delighted when, during the 1988 New York junket for Midnight Run, I had the opportunity to speak with the gentleman. Dennis Farina passed away today at age 69. To celebrate his life, I offer this reprise of my original '88 interview. 

When Dennis Farina smiles, he's the next-door neighbor you'll invite over for barbecue, or the guy on the next barstool who doesn't remain a stranger very long.

But when Farina frowns, he's someone you wouldn't want to meet in a brightly lit alley, never mind a dark one.

With his craggy features, his dark hair and thick eyebrows, Farina, 45, looks a little like a cartoonist's caricature of a tough customer. Still, there's an ingratiating warmth and good humor to the man in private conversation. In films, plays and TV productions, he has averaged, by his own estimate, ''a 50-50 split'' between good guys and bad guys. At either extreme, he doesn't have much trouble establishing credibility.

In the newly released Midnight Run, Farina turns the art of scene-stealing into grand larceny, playing a quick-tempered mobster who menaces, and occasionally upstages, Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin. Before Midnight, Farina was best known as Lt. Mike Torrello of Crime Story, a neon-colored fantasia of pre-Miranda crimebusting and garish early-'60s Americana. Farina was exceptionally well-trained to play the top cop in the recently cancelled TV series: For 18 years, he was a proud member of the Chicago police force, serving as detective for the department's Special Investigative Unit.

Farina first stepped before the cameras in 1980, when a friend got him a small role as a murderous thug in Thief, a stylish thriller directed by Michael Mann (who would later produce Crime Story and, not incidentally, Miami Vice). In the movie, shot on location in Chicago, Farina gunned down James Belushi, and was in turn gunned down by James Caan. Farina enjoyed himself immensely.

 ''I'll never forget it,'' Belushi says. ''Dennis came up to me on the set one day, and says, 'You know, Jim, this is kinda fun. What do I do to make a living off this?' And I gave him the same speech I give everybody: 'Well, first you get an 8-by-10 glossy, and a resume, and find an agent...'"

Farina took Belushi's advice, and found a Chicago casting agent who helped him begin what he calls ''a great part-time job'' as an actor. He soon had some impressive credits on his resume: Stage roles with Chicago's prestigious Steppenwolf Theatre. Screen roles opposite Chuck Norris in Code of Silence, and Richard Pryor in Jo-Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling. The resume is all the more impressive when you consider that, until Thief, Farina had never acted before in any medium. He never even took a drama course while attending St. Michael Central High in his native Chicago.

''Well, there was a high school play,'' Farina recalled during a recent interview. ''But even prior to the rehearsal process,'' he added with a chuckle, ''a friend of mine and I were asked to leave.'' Farina didn't go near a stage again until years later, when, after launching his part-time acting career, he wound up playing a small role in the TV series Chicago Story. His co-star for the 1982 episode was a quietly intense actor-director named John Malkovich, famed for exploits at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre.

''John and I struck up a conversation,'' Farina said, ''and he said, 'Look, I'm doing this play, A Prayer for My Daughter, written by Thomas Babe -- I'd like you to audition for it.' And I said, 'Yeah, OK, sure.''' A few hours later, Farina was at his favorite bar -- not for drinks, but for advice. The bartender, his friend, was a professional actor when he wasn't serving beers. Farina told him of Malkovich's invitation, then posed a pressing question: "How do I audition for a play?"

Fortunately, Farina had a week before auditions, so his friend was able to coach him through basic stage movements. (They rehearsed on the stage of another friend's comedy club.) Fortuitously, Farina was hired as an understudy, then took over a lead role when another actor left the show. On opening night, Farina was on stage at the Steppenwolf. On the morning after, his name was in the papers.

That his good fortune bordered on the miraculous never really fazed him.

"Believe me, I don't want to minimize what's happened to me,'' Farina said. ''But it never really hit me.

"But, again, I was surrounded by these guys who really knew what they were doing... Malkovich was the guy who really took a chance. See, at the time, I had nothing to lose. If I fell on my face, the people in the theater, in the papers, they'd just say, 'This guy's just a cop, he doesn't know what he's doing, forget about him.' But John, and the Steppenwolf company, they would have been the people to suffer.

''I was doing something else, I had a job. If they had said, 'This guy's no good,' well, hey, I'll just go back to work next week.''

Encouraged by his early success, Farina continued to divide his time between the make-believe of acting and the dead-seriousness of police work. He also remained active in Chicago theater, appearing in a production of David Rabe's Streamers that eventually was presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In 1985, Farina took a leave of absence from the Chicago Police Department for a brief Los Angeles sortie to find TV jobs. He renewed his acquaintance with producer Michael Mann, who cast him in two episodes of Miami Vice. Then, in 1986, Farina was forced to make a fateful choice about what he would do with the rest of his life.

''It took a while for me to make up my mind,'' Farina said, ''because I really liked being a policeman. I enjoyed my years on the police department.

"But the decision was finally made for me when Michael Mann asked me to do a part in the movie Manhunter, and at the same time started doing the groundwork for me to do Crime Story. I thought those were two opportunities that I really couldn't pass up.''

So in barely more than five years, Farina moved from untrained amateur to hard-working Chicago stage actor, then from movie bit player to network TV series lead. It's a Cinderella story that could drive some drama school graduates to despair.

Tony Award-winning actress Joan Allen (Burn This), who also appeared in Manhunter, thinks Farina is ''a natural actor . . . very self-confident.'' Director Martin Brest (Beverly Hills Cop) wanted Farina and no one else for the role of the mob boss in Midnight Run. ''It just struck me, the moment I met him,'' Brest said, ''that he had a sort of star presence. A very powerful presence. And, as you can see in the movie, he held his own with De Niro. He even got in a couple of shots in their scene together.''

Farina accepts these compliments with gratitude and unaffected graciousness. ''I was at ease around De Niro,'' he said, ''because he put me at ease. I walked onto the set, and within 10 seconds, I felt like I had been around that guy for my whole life . . . And Charles Grodin was very helpful, giving me little deadpan looks that only he can do.''

Any major disappointments in his career so far? Well, Farina regrets that Crime Story was axed by NBC. He suspects the show would have found a larger audience in a better, more permanent time slot. ''But I'm pretty philosophical about it. I think, it's over, OK, for two years I was very proud to be a part of it. I thought it was a very good show . . . But, frankly, I'd rather have the show end now, with people clamoring for more, than to go back on.''

Between movie and TV jobs, Farina continues to live in Chicago, "in a neighborhood where all this gentrification is going on.'' (He politely but firmly refuses to talk about his marital status.) He counts among his closest friends, and harshest critics, the policemen he used to work with. He doesn't think he has been affected much by his success as an actor: ''I was 36, 37 years old when I started doing this, so I pretty much think the same way I always have.''

Indeed, he often appears to be keeping his career at arm's length. He doesn't watch himself in movies or TV shows. And he rarely reads his reviews. ''I get my satisfaction just from the doing of the work,'' he said. "And in thinking that I did my best, that I contributed all I could.'' Farina remains modest, and even a little wary, about discussing his accomplishments. "I don't want to get maudlin or anything, but I believe, yeah, there's somebody, like, watching over me or something. I have to believe that. Someone who has taken very good care of me.

"I don't question it, and I don't look into it too much. Because I don't want to, I don't want to analyze it. So I just kind of accept it.''

A choice Dennis Farina moment from Midnight Run:

The human side of Godzilla

According to The Wrap, Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston told the assemblage of journalists and fanboys at Comic Con this weekend that he was reluctant to accept a role in the much-hyped Godzilla reboot -- until he viewed director Gareth Edwards' Monsters. "There was a character-driven component you felt for these people [in Monsters] that was great," Cranston said. Well, hell, I could have told you that.

Wait a minute: I already did tell people that.

Review: Fruitvale Station

Although he has a real-life story of relatively recent vintage to tell in Fruitvale Station – one that, in light of the Trayvon Martin killing and its frustrating aftermath, is enthrallingly relevant to our times – writer-director Ryan Coogler chooses to begin his exceptionally accomplished debut feature with a storytelling device that recalls, of all things, classic film noir of the 1940s and ‘50s.

Borrowing a page from such fatalistic melodramas as D.O.A., Detour and Double Indemnity, Coogler begins more or less at the end, when his lead character’s fate is irreversibly sealed. Then Coogler proceeds to detail the events that took his protagonist to this point, retracing his steps in such a way that – because we know what awaits him at the end – the journey feels less like a series of arbitrary incidents than a riveting progression toward a tragic inevitability.

For the makers of film noir, this sort of narrative structure served well to enhance the suspense as their anti-heroes were methodically undone by poor judgment, cruel coincidence, or both.

But Coogler has a different aim. 

In the opening minutes of Fruitvale Station, the filmmaker backhands us with eyewitness video of an actual killing that occurred in Oakland, California, during the early hours of New Year’s Day 2009. We see Oscar Grant, one of four young African-American men detained by BART police officers, lying on his stomach, unarmed and handcuffed, when he is shot in the back by a white cop.

Then the cellphone-captured footage gives way to fact-based dramatization, and the narrative jumps back 24 hours, so that Coogler can show us the final, fateful day in the life of a man who has no idea what a terribly unjust quietus awaits him.

And because we know how that day will end, we can’t help responding to each scene that unfolds with varying degrees of pity, fear and helpless, hopeless, slow-burning anger.

Please don’t misunderstand: Fruitvale Station is not a simplistic story about a slaughtered innocent. Coogler is too intelligent and truthful a storyteller to try stoking our outrage by deifying Oscar Grant. Instead, he presents the unfortunate young man as recognizably human and undeniably flawed, unhappy about his past and uncertain about his future.

Played affectingly but unaffectedly by Michael B. Jordan (of TV’s The Wire and Saturday Night Lights), Oscar is a 22-year ex-con who wants to quit his small-time drug dealing — but maybe won’t, or can’t — and occasionally cheats on his lovely Hispanic girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz), the mother of his young daughter, even though he appears to genuinely love her.

He’s reflexively helpful to a young woman he meets at the food store where he used to work, to the point of calling his grandmother to give her some cooking tips. But then he runs into his former boss, and the confrontation very nearly turns ugly as Oscar, barely able to contain his fury, learns there’s no way, absolutely no way, that he’s getting his old job back. At that point, you can’t help wondering whether his chronic tardiness wasn’t the only reason he got fired.

At another point, there’s a flashback to Oscar’s prison stretch – specifically, a recollection of a visit from his loving but not infinitely patient mom, Wanda (Octavia Spencer, whose performance is an achingly precise thing of beauty). The conversation starts off amiable, if slightly strained, then erupts into angry recriminations, and ends with Wanda departing in a huff, and a suddenly vulnerable Grant crying out, in vain, for her embrace. (His plea is echoed in a later scene that has the impact of a gut-punch.)

The good news: Oscar and his mother obviously went on to patch things up, because he’s eager to celebrate her birthday — on New Year’s Eve — at a family gathering that is by turns warm-hearted and wryly funny, and occasionally both at the same time.

The bad news: When Oscar says he and Sophina are going over to San Francisco to watch fireworks and party hearty, Wanda worries about his possibly driving while intoxicated – so she makes him promise to go there and come back on the BART.

And so it goes, one seemingly unrelated event interlocking with the next, moving steadily, relentlessly, to the final destination. Coogler plays the role of the unobtrusive observer, so that Fruitvale Station often has the flavor of a cinéma vérité documentary as cinematographer Rachel Morrison nimbly employs a hand-held camera to achieve compellingly persuasively degrees of intimacy and verisimilitude. (Much of the movie was shot in the Bay Area neighborhood where Oscar Grant once lived.)

Only one scene, involving a singularly unfortunate dog, comes across as too suggestive of schematic contrivance, or too obvious in its loaded symbolism. Otherwise, naturalism is the keynote of this low-key stunner. There is a frightful lurch from serendipitous camaraderie to steadily mounting conflict and chaos in the climactic scenes. But the very abruptness of the brutality is part of what makes it all too believable.

And in the end, as the lights come back up and you slowly rise from your seat and head for the lobby, you may find yourself charged with alternating currents of profound sorrow and seething rage as you contemplate this story – and, yes, other stories like it.

Review: R.I.P.D.

R.I.P.D. isn’t nearly as bad as its near-deafening advance buzz indicated – though, really, what movie could be? – but that doesn’t mean the laughs and gasps are satisfyingly abundant in this loud and clunky sci-fi fantasy action-comedy. As expensive and useless as something you’d buy in a duty-free store, it appears to be the work of filmmakers who saw Men in Black at an impressionable age, slapped themselves on their foreheads, and exclaimed: “Hey! We can do that!” Unfortunately, they can’t – though not for any lack of trying.

Based on a graphic novel – the same sort of source material that, not coincidentally, also inspired MiB – R.I.P.D. imagines a secret organization of undead law-enforcers charged with controlling (and, in extreme cases, destroying) human-disguised demons who are said to haunt the entire planet, but appear to congregate primarily in Boston.

Ryan Reynolds stars as Nick Walker, a Beantown police detective who shuffles off this mortal coil after being fatally shot by his corrupt partner during the chaos of a drug raid, and then gets a shot at redemption (or, failing that, rejuvenation) when he’s enlisted by an outfit known as the Rest In Peace Department (R.I.P.D.). He spends most of the movie behaving as someone intent on living down a terrible mistake -- like Green Lantern, perhaps? -- but his humorlessness is, strangely enough, more ingratiating than not.

Mary-Louise Parker is a deadpan delight as Proctor, the R.I.P.D. bureau chief who first recruits, and then commands, Walker. Indeed, her off-center line readings are funny even when the actual lines are not, and there’s something nicely, subtly wacky about the way her character’s coiffure and attire – along with the never-explained (or even acknowledged) presence of a vintage Fresca bottle on her desk – suggest that Proctor met her own demise sometime in the mid-1960s.

Roycephus Pulsifer – who’d really rather you call him Roy, and I’ll gladly comply – died even further back in time; specifically, the Wild West era, give or take a decade, when Roy rode tall as a sheriff before he, too, was waylaid by a treacherous partner and drafted into R.I.P.D. (A running gag – well, more like a plodding joke – involves Roy’s unpleasant memories of seeing his own corpse violated by hungry coyotes.) There’s nothing at all deadpan about Jeff Bridges’ portrayal of Roy. Hell, I would venture to say that his performance – basically a feature-length send-up of his Oscar-nominated turn as the cranky-swaggering Rooster Cogburn in True Grit -- could define whatever might be considered the polar opposite of deadpan. Still, much of this shtick is mildly amusing, especially when director Robert Schwentke (Red) and scriptwriters Phil Hay and Matt Mafredi put the silly plot on pause while Bridges’ cantankerous galoot and Parker’s monotone martinet define the contours of a drolly weird love-hate relationship.

The relationship that forms between Roy and Nick – who, naturally, are paired as partners – is rather less interesting, since the bonding comes off as less a parody of buddy-cop movie clichés than a rote rehashing of same. And while it seems modestly clever at first that they appear to onlookers as different entities while they roam among the living – Roy is a drop-dead beautiful woman (Marisa Miller), Nick is an elderly Asian gentleman (James Hong) – the joke remains, like too many other things in R.I.P.D., lazily under-developed.

Unfortunately for all parties involved, the sporadic flashes of oddball lunacy are increasingly overshadowed as the movie progresses by all the big-ticket sound and fury we’ve come to expect (if not dread) in a wanna-be summer blockbuster. The plot has something to do with a plan by demons to rebuild an ancient talisman that could literally unleash hell on earth, and something else to do with the threat posed to Nick’s widow (played – with a thick accent almost as mysterious as the aforementioned Fresca bottle – by Stephanie Szostak) by his former partner (played by Kevin Bacon in such way that a “surprising” plot twist isn’t surprising at all). But the scenario serves mainly as an excuse for a great deal of third-act CGI overkill – which is presented in 3D, by the way, but that doesn’t make it any less tediously repetitious.

Still, as I noted at the outset, R.I.P.D. is by no means a total disaster, and its minor pleasures are sufficiently pleasurable to make it bearable, if not laudable. Put it like this: When a publicist asked for my opinion as I walked out of a preview screening, she seemed pleasantly surprised when I replied, “Well, it didn’t suck.” Evidently, she was expecting something worse. Frankly, so was I.

And if you thought Sharknado was funny.. Here's Fox News

Wait, what's that you're saying? This wasn't supposed to be funny? Are you sure? I mean, can't you imagine this as the premise for a new SyFy movie? Maybe I need to access my screenwriting software... Or get the Ayslum folks on the phone. (Hat-tip to Crooks and Liars.)

BTW: You do know that SyFy is repeating Sharknado at 7 pm ET/ 6 pm CT Thursday, right?

And now, in the grand tradition of Sharknado... Ghost Shark

And the beauty part it... SyFy is premiering this on my freakin' birthday!!!!

Godzilla is coming! Godzilla is coming!

Gareth Edwards -- the same filmmaker who knocked our socks off with his (partly filmed in Galveston, Texas) Monsters -- is promising to show the folks at Comic Con in San Diego some neat advance footage of his Godzilla reboot for Legendary Pictures. But even if you can't attend the convention, you can track the progress of the Original Gangsta Lizard by clicking here.

And remember: Godzilla is never going down.