FILM REVIEW OF ''BAD SANTA 2" (2016)

If you thought “Bad Santa” (2003) was a hoot, you’ll holler at “Bad Santa 2.”  Like its vulgar, politically-incorrect predecessor, this rude, crude, lowest common denominator, gross-out sequel scrapes the bottom of the toilet for bowel humor that may make you gag.  Oscar-winning Billy Bob Thornton of “Sling Blade” reprises his role as lascivious, blasphemous, alcoholic, safecracker Willy Soke, who masquerades as Santa Claus and listens to children’s gift requests on his lap.  Nevertheless, despite its contrived, often predictable, by-the-numbers monkeyshines, “Bad Santa 2” (**** OUT OF ****) is an audaciously sidesplitting saga, with corrosive dialogue that may either incinerate your soul or prompt you to laugh with such vigor that you will cough at the same time.  After a thirteen-year hiatus, not only has Thornton shown up for the sequel, but also teensy Tony Cox and chubby Brent Kelly have also returned respectively as Marcus and Thurman.  Lest we forget, Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer of “The Help” appears briefly again as Opal the prostitute from the original. The latest character to wade into this cesspool of hilarity is Willy’s low-class, repugnant mother.  Kathy Bates never stops surprising us as Sunny Soke, a sleazy, silver-tongued, ex-con wreathed with biker tattoos who wants to steal thousands of dollars.  Sadly, Sunny has grown so decrepit she cannot control her Parkinson’s and requires somebody with steady fingers to crack a safe.  Bates could easily have stolen “Bad Santa 2” with her outlandish portrayal.  Instead, Brent Kelly steals the show as simple-minded moron Thurman Merman who keeps on obliviously weathering Willy’s vile torrents of profanity about his shortcomings.  Miraculously, Kelly maintains a look of deadpan stupefaction throughout these rants that would have reduced a less disciplined actor to ripples of belly laughter.  Indeed, “Mean Girls” director Mark Waters and freshman scenarist Johnny Rosenthal with “Whip It” writer Shauna Cross spurn good taste repeatedly.

“Bad Santa 2” opens with Willy (Billy Bob Thornton of “Fargo”) admitting that his life has been a travesty.  He never succeeds for one reason or another with his suicide attempts.  He is dangling from a ceiling lighting fixture when Thurman, the grown-up kid from the original movie (Brett Kelly of “Unaccompanied Minors”), strolls into his apartment and cannot fathom what Willy is doing.  Eventually, Willy abandons all efforts to hang himself, chiefly after Thurman empties a bag of money onto his table.  As it turns out Willy’s treacherous, accomplice from the first film, the vertically-challenged Marcus Skidmore (Tony Cox of “Beetlejuice”), has invited Willy to join him at a local restaurant so they can discuss business.  Of course, Willy doesn’t trust Markus because the latter tried to murder him in the original.  Marcus hasn’t been out of prison long, and he needs the money.  He explains that Willy’s mom has a plan to rob a high-profile, Chicago-headquartered charity that will bulge their pockets with loot.  Eventually, Willy meets his estranged mother, Sunny (Kathy Bates of “Misery”), again.  She briefs him about the heist.  You’d think any reunion between mother and son would be a joyous, sentimental occasion, but it is far from it.  Willy has no fond memories of his mom.  We learn during one of their conversations that Willy took a fall for her at age eleven and did time for Sunny’s crime.  She confirms in her own words what an unfit mom she was.  Sunny cherishes the memory of Willy’s birth: “Hell, I didn’t even know I’d given birth until I’d tripped over him.”  Willy sidesteps old animosities and pitches in with them to rip off the children’s charity.  As it turns out, a well-to-do married couple who are for all practical purposes estranged conduct the charity.  The charity resembles the Salvation Army.  Diane Hastings (Christina Hendricks of “Drive”) and her husband Regent (Ryan Hansen of “G.I. Joe: Retaliation”) make it easy to contribute to the cause.  You can text your donation to it!  What Diane doesn’t realize is Regent is cheating on her with another employee.  Initially, Willy is not pleased that he must don a Santa Claus suit and solicit donations on the street.  At one point, he clashes with another Santa who claims that Willy has stolen his spot.  The two tangle on the curb, and Willy lands in jail.  Diane has the police release him and she allows Willy to keep his Santa gig if he will accompany her to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.  Reluctantly, for the sake of Sunny and Marcus, Willy follows her, and the two become sexually involved with each other.  Meantime, Willy doesn’t entirely trust his murderous, old nemesis Marcus.  Remember, Marcus tried to kill Willy in the original “Bad Santa.”  Sunny convinces Willy to let bygones be bygones.  If things weren’t tense enough for Willy, he discovers that Thurman has embarked on a journey to search for and surprise him.  Now, Willy must contend with this clueless klutz who wants nothing more than to make him sandwiches. He arranges for Thurman to lose his virginity to Olivia. Before she can accommodate him, Thurman flees in abject terror.

Basically, “Bad Santa 2” regurgitates the same essential plot of the original, but it delivers greater volumes of profanity and sexuality than the former.  The F-word is used 180 times here rather than 130 in the original.  Meaning, the raunchy “Bad Santa 2” lives up to its R-rating “for crude sexual content and language throughout, and some graphic nudity.”  Waters and his two writers have exercised such an extreme lack of good taste that “Bad Santa 2” qualifies as a guilty pleasure. Incidentally, the filmmakers do refrain from depicting murder this time around. You may cringe in retrospect that you sank to such shallow depths of the sake of rib tickling glee.  Some of Sunny’s lines will keep you to cackling. If you indulge in this nonsense, your demented soul will crave the prank in the end credits. Unlike any other movies showing now, “Bad Santa 2” may provide you with some desperate relief from all the Yuletide cheer.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE KILLER SHREWS" (1959)

“Giant Gila Monster” director Ray Kellogg’s low-budget creature feature “The Killer Shrews” is a claustrophobic saga that grossed almost nine times its budget and has become a public domain masterpiece.  “Creation of the Humanoids” scenarist Jay Simms spend most of his career writing episode for television series such as “Laramie,” “The Rifleman,” “Rawhide,” “Have Gun, Will Travel,” “Laredo,” and “Gunsmoke.”  Before he graduated to less science-fiction, horror-oriented material, he wrote this chiller, and he must have been channeling H.G. Wells’ “The Island of Doctor Moreau” to some extent. James Best portrays the hero in this shoe-string budget thriller, and Ken Curtis—who produced the film—cast himself as a drunken scientist.  Aside from some footage of a boat on the ocean and scenes inside a scientist compound, “The Killer Shrews” (** OUT OF ****) could have been shot anywhere on its reported $123-thousand budget.  Best and Curtis give the best performances hands down, while everybody else looks a little embarrassed by all the baloney that they try to make sound believable.  According to the Internet Movie Database, the full-sized shrews were played by coon dogs, and the close-ups of the shrews were puppets. Wikipedia points out that “The Killer Shrews” was lensed in Dallas, Texas.

An isolated island in the middle of the ocean is the setting for this science-fiction/horror movie where a team of scientists have been conducting experiments on tiny animals called shrews.  The most outlandish aspect of this movie is the reason that prompted Dr. Marlowe Craigis (Baruch Lumet of “The Pawnbroker”) to embark on his privately funded research.  He intends to shrink humans to half our current size so he can ease world hunger.  Craigis figures that when the human race is that reduced physically in size, people consume less and lengthen the Earth’s food supply. Inexplicably, their science project gets out of hand.  By the time that Captain Thorne Sherman and his first-mate ‘Rook' Griswold (Judge Henry Dupree of “My Dog, Buddy”) arrive with supplies, the shrews have grown to the size of dogs.  Dr. Craigis explains that shrews must eat their bodyweight in anything alive to survive.  The first half of “The Killer Shrews” is spend with Craigis delivering a plethora of expository information about these devilish critters.  One of Craigis’ scientist, Jerry Farrell (Ken Curtis of “The Searchers”), is particularly upset by this point by the escape of some shrews.  Furthermore, his lack of vigilance regarding the escaped shrews has prompted Dr. Craigis’ gorgeous daughter, Ann (Ingrid Goude of “Never Steal Anything Small”), to call off her engagement with Farrell.  A hurricane batters the island, and Thorne decides to stay in the compound with the scientists after Ann reveals everything about the murderous mutants. This doesn’t suit Farrell because he thinks that Thorne is making moves of his former finance. 

About 20 minutes into the action, Thorne’s first mate encounters the ravenous shrews.  He runs in panic and struggles to climb a tree to elude the hungry beasts, but several of them leap at him and kill him.  Meanwhile, three other starving shrews dig under the gates to the stable and eat a helpless horse, and then they start searching for a point of entry to the compound.  One shrew gains access to the compound when a shutter on a window is damaged by the high winds.  The animal slips in, and Thorne and Craigis’ hired help Mario (Alfredo de Soto of “The Big Steal”) confront the beastly thing in the basement where the food is stored.  The dog-like creature with huge fangs bites Mario, and the handy man dies from poison that was put out on the island long ago to diminish the population.  Not only did the poison fail to work, but the shrews have absorbed into their system with suffering any ill effects.  Thorne and Jerry trudge through the woods to the shore.  Thorne whistles up Rook who is supposed to be aboard the yacht.  Rook is nowhere to be found until Thorne stumbles onto his remains.  Earlier, the jealous Farrell threatened to kill Thorne since he kept making eyes at Ann.  Thorne disarmed Farrell.  After they find Rook’s empty revolver, Thorne and Farrell hear the hunger shrews approaching.  They charge back to the compound.  Farrell arrives before Thorne and tries to lock Thorne out of the compound to prevent more the shrews from invading the premises.  Thorne scales the wall and beats up the frantic Farrell.  Bristling with rage, Thorne almost dumps Farrell’s unconscious body over the wall.  At the last moment, he relents to everybody’s relief.  No sooner than everybody believes they are out of harm’s way than they realize that more shrews have sneaked into the compound.  Ann is poised to make coffee when she opens a door to another room, and a shrew dashes out. The animal attacks Dr. Radford Baines (producer Gordon McLendon), and he perishes from the poison in the animal’s bit. However, he survives long enough to type out every symptom of his behavior before he keels over.  Thorne guns down the shrew.

Thorne, Ann, Farrell, and Dr. Craigis evacuate themselves from the house portion of the compound after the shrews tear apart the plaster and burrow into the adobe. Farrell appropriates the automatic shotgun that Thorne pitched over the wall before he scaled it.  They find some drums later enough to each of them to crawl into and duck-walk across open ground to the shore.  Farrell refuses to join them and climbs atop the roof as the shrews assemble for the final feast.  Thorne uses a torch to cut oblong viewing holes in the drums.  They lash three drums together and remotely open the patio gate.  The shrews scramble in and tear at the view slots while our heroes laboriously make their way across uneven terrain to the shore.  Believe it or not, a sequel entitled “Return of the Killer Shrews” was released in 2012, and James Best reprised his role as Thorne.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN" (2016)

“Training Day” director Antoine Fuqua’s bloodless, bullet-riddled remake of the classic western “The Magnificent Seven” (1960) lacks both its prestigious predecessor’s ultra-cool pugnacity under fire and its complex character development.  Nevertheless, while it doesn’t eclipse the first-class Yul Brynner & Steve McQueen shoot’em up, neither does the new “Seven” embarrass itself as some remakes such as “Ben-Hur.”  Loaded for bear, with a triple-digit body count, and rawhide performances by Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, and Ethan Hawke, Fuqua’s “Magnificent Seven” (*** OUT OF ****) qualifies as an entertaining, above-average, horse opera.  Shunning a scene-for-scene rehash of the original, “True Detective” scenarist Nic Pizzolatto and “Expendables 2” scribe Richard Wenk have shifted the setting from Mexico to America, as well as created fresh characters in no way related to anybody else in the three earlier “Magnificent Seven” sequels.  Interestingly, in changing the physical setting, Fuqua’s film resembles the short-lived CBS-TV series “The Magnificent Seven” (1998-2000) where the seven defended a frontier town against outsiders. Similarly, in both the television show and Fuqua’s version, a woman is responsible for recruiting the seven.  For the record, director John Sturges’ “The Magnificent Seven” was itself a remake of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s landmark film. If retooling a samurai saga as a sagebrusher sounds bizarre, consider this: Sergio Leone’s groundbreaking Spaghetti western “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964) with Clint Eastwood was a remake of another Kurosawa samurai slash’em-up “Yojimbo” (1961) again with Toshirô Mifune.  Furthermore, later in 1964, American director Martin Ritt adapted yet another Kurosawa yarn “Rashomon” (1950) into the Paul Newman & William Shatner western “The Outrage.” Incidentally, science fiction aficionados should know that George Lucas has said that Kurosawa’s film “The Hidden Fortress” (1958), served as inspiration for his own historic “Star Wars” franchise. 

The original “Magnificent Seven” took place in Mexico.  Seven mercenaries who were down on their luck accepted a gold eagle--$20--for six weeks to safeguard a destitute farming village from the depredations of marauding banditos.  Calvera and his bandits would strike during harvest, but leave the farmers with adequate food to survive until they returned to plunder anew.  The “Magnificent Seven” reboot relocates the action to a traditional American western town.  Malignant capitalist Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard of “Black Mass”) plans to buy up all the property in the town of Rose Creek to mine gold.  As the story unfolds, Bogue visits the townspeople at their church where they have assembled to settle this intolerable predicament.  The mustache-twirling Bogue offers them $20 each for their land parcels.  Furthermore, he stipulates that they have three weeks either to accommodate him or suffer the dire consequences.  Were this miserly offer not insulting enough for the settlers, Bogue draws first blood and shoots some of them in cold blood.  Bogue’s Native American sidekick derives special relish from burying his hatchet in the back of a fleeing woman.  Bogue blasts one dissenter, Matthew Cullen (Matt Bomer of “The Nice Guys”), at point blank range without a qualm. After grieving over her husband, Emma Cullen (Jennifer Lawrence lookalike Hayley Bennett of “Hardcore Henry”) approaches bounty hunter Sam Chisolm and implores him to help her fellow townspeople thwart Bogue’s ambitions. “Sir,” she addresses Sam. “I have a proposition. We're decent people being driven from our homes. Slaughtered in cold blood.” Decked out head to toe in black on a black horse, Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington of “Unstoppable”) queries Emma: “So you seek revenge?” The widow replies,” I seek righteousness. But I'll take revenge.”

Sam recruits a nimble cardsharp, Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt of “Guardians of the Galaxy”), who cannot seem to avoid trouble or its consequences.  Clearly, Pratt’s character is forged in the mold of Steve McQueen’s character. These two spout a similar story about a hombre who jumped off a hotel roof. As the gent plunged past each window, spectators heard him say: “So far, so good.”  Fuqua gets more mileage out of this story than the John Sturges film imagined.  Fuqua appropriates one of original villain’s best lines for Bogue, who philosophically ponders the fate of the townspeople. “If God had not wanted them sheared, he would have not made them sheep.”  This seven amounts to a rugged multicultural outfit: an Asian gunslinger Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee of “Terminator Genisys”) wields knife with deadly grace; a lethal Comanche archer (newcomer Martin Sensmeier) never misses; a flinty Hispanic pistolero Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo of “Term Life”) displays enviable marksmanship skills, a Grizzly Adams mountain man Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio of “Full Metal Jacket”) likes to work in close with a hatchet, and a former Confederate sniper Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke of “The Purge”) struggles to conceal the nerve that he has lost.   Robicheaux combines the characters of Lee and Harry Luck from the original film, while Billy Rocks is the James Coburn character.       

Some abhor remakes more than sequels.  I saw “The Magnificent Seven” during its initial theatrical release in 1960, and I’ve seen it so many times since I can recite its many quotable lines, savor the slap and draw six-gun scene, and hum the evocative Elmer Bernstein title theme.  Happily, as the end credits roll, Fuqua cues Bernstein’s two-time Oscar nominated orchestral score.  Leathery tough “Magnificent Seven” fanatics will applaud this homage.  Hollywood had been pondering a remake of the Sturges’ western for almost decade.  Initially, the thought of such a remake filled me with dread.  Anybody who suffered through the abysmal remake of “Ben-Hur” (2016) knows the kind of blasphemy that can occur when a remake goes sideways.  The Charlton Heston version of “Ben-Hur” has withstood the ravages of time and nothing Hollywood can conjure up will surpass it. Fortunately, while it doesn’t contain as much clever, incisive dialogue as its predecessor, “The Magnificent Seven” remake isn’t the disaster I feared.  Indeed, Fuqua’s ensemble shootout ranks as one of the best westerns since the Coen Brothers’ “True Grit.”  Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke stand out in a gifted cast. Peter Sarsgaard scores as a repulsive villain, but he doesn’t boast the cutthroat humor that the original “Magnificent Seven” villain Calvera (played by Eli Wallach) had.  Nonetheless, what Sarsgaard’s villain lacks in dimension, he compensates for with murder.  Altogether, despite some idiotic comic relief, the remake of “The Magnificent Seven” is worth saddling up to see.