Zombeavers
Film Review by Kam Williams

If you like your horror fare with generous helpings of humor and titillation mixed in, ala the Scream and Scary Movie franchises, have I got a film for you. Zombeavers is a campy comedy relying on a combination of low production values and eroticized violence to generate laughs.

The movie marks the feature film directorial debut of Jordan Rubin, who is best known as a scriptwriter for late night talk show hosts like Craig Kilborn, Carson Daly and Larry Wilmore. He also collaborated on Zombeavers‘ screenplay with first-timers Al and John Kaplan.

The high attrition rate adventure unfolds ominously enough, when a 55 gallon drum of toxic waste tumbles into a lake in the wake of a collision between a deer and a pickup truck caused by a pair of local yokels (Bill Burr and John Mayer) recklessly driving while texting. It’s not hard to imagine that a frightening chemical reaction might soon ensue, especially given the movie’s title.

But blissfully oblivious of this development are Mary (Rachel Melvin), Jenn (Lexi Atkins) and Zoe (Cortney Palm), sorority sisters looking forward to unwinding over the course of a college break they’ve decided to take without boyfriends. Their point-of-call is a cozy lakefront cottage belonging to a cousin of Mary’s.

Upon arrival, the trio discover that there’s no cell service in the remote locale, which might very well complicate matters should an emergency arise. It doesn’t help that the only folks around for miles are a couple of creepy neighbors (Brent Briscoe and Phyllis Katz) who look like they step off the set of Deliverance.

Nevertheless, the clueless coeds decide to don bikinis and take a dip in the pond where something evil is a brewing in the swamp where the contaminated water is slowly turning beavers into bloodthirsty zombies. Also unbeknownst to the bathing beauties, their three beaus are en route, which only serves to complicate matters, since a photo of Mary kissing Jenn’s boyfriend Sam (Hutch Dano) was recently posted on Facebook.

So, after Jenn slaps Sam, Zoe sneaks off into a bedroom with Tommy (Jake Weary), while Mary tries to mend fences with her man, Buck (Peter Gilroy). But before you have a chance to take any of that soap opera drama too seriously, the real fun begins when a rabid beaver surfaces in the bathroom.

What ensues is a relentlessly-cheesy B-flick far funnier than it is frightening.

Very Good (2.5 stars)

Rated R for gory violence, crude humor, graphic sexuality, gratuitous nudity and pervasive profanity  

Running time: 76 minutes

Distributor: Freestyle Releasing

To see a trailer for Zombeavers, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7onFrBK_hKE

Growing Up and Other Lies
Film Review by Kam Williams

Jake (Josh Lawson) is finally fed up with New York after years of trying to make it as an artist in the city. So, right before he’s set to move back home to Ohio, he summons his three BFFS, Rocks (Adam Brody), Gunderson (Wyatt Cenac) and Billy (Danny Jacobs), to the northern tip of Manhattan for an impromptu gathering.

The plan is to spend the day reminiscing about their misspent twenties while traversing the entire 260 block-length of the island. The trip starts inauspiciously enough, with one of them vomiting on a train platform at 7 in the morning.

Next, another makes an offensive overture to an elderly woman sitting on a bench, asking whether she’d like to sit on his finger. Later, Gunderson goes out of his way to hurt the feelings (“I thought you’d be dead by now”) of a woman (Lucy Walters) he’d ostensibly seduced and unceremoniously dumped after a one-night stand.

The crude quartet also offers dubious, unsolicited dating advice to teenage girls attending an elite prep school, suggesting they avoid romance at all costs, since it invariably leads to having one’s heart broken. We also witness them dismantling a “Broadway” street sign, and giving a hard time (“How much for everything?”) to a working-class clerk at a farmer’s market. And Rocks (nicknamed for his huge gonads), whose fiancée (Lauren Miller) is nine-months pregnant, risks missing the birth of his baby in order to participate in the interminable, 13-mile trek down memory lane.

Co-written and co-directed by Danny Jacobs and Darren Grodsky, Growing Up and Other Lies is a meanspirited, misogynistic dramedy masquerading as a nostalgic male-bonding adventure. But this meeting of The He-Man Woman Haters Club (ala TV’s Little Rascals) merely takes delight in insulting females at every turn.   

Its lame excuse for a plot presumes to thicken when Jake learns that Tabatha (Amber Tamblyn), the ex he still loves, has just broken up with her boyfriend and is suddenly on the market. Will he still pack up and leave, or will he postpone his plans to return to the Midwest in light of this development? Unfortunately, given how unlikable a protagonist we have here, you’re more inclined to root against than in favor of a romantic reunion.

Who wants to watch four, obnoxious, testosterone-fueled slackers vent their vile on a gauntlet of unsuspecting victims?

Poor (½ star)

Unrated

Running time: 90 minutes

Distributor: E1 Entertainment

To see a trailer for Growing Up and Other Lies, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fn2vbw0120

Secret of Water
Film Review by Kam Williams

Between climate change and contamination, potable water is becoming an increasingly-scarce commodity. For instance, you might have heard that California has recently announced consumption restrictions due to a severe drought already affecting most of the state way before the arrival of summer.

If you’re one of those skeptics who still thinks that all the dire warnings about the dangers of pollution and global warming are unfounded, you might want to check out Secret of Water, an eye-opening, cautionary tale illustrating the toll that humans’ misuse of H2O might be exacting on the precious natural resource.

Directed by Jirka Rysavy, this informative documentary takes an alternatively scientific and spiritual approach to the subject, delving into an analysis that is as logical as it is metaphysical. On the one hand, the picture plausibly asserts that water is a living substance that can die if treated poorly. However, it also likens the substance to a malleable computer, going so far as to claim that it has memory and is capable of recording whatever it comes in contact with.

For this reason, it is further argued that water placed in plastic actually suffers, and that an animal will always rather drink from a natural spring than a stagnant container. One expert weighing-in opines on the importance of ionization and Ph factors, while at the other extreme of the academic spectrum we have a religion-oriented figure citing as significant the fact that the Bible never makes reference in Genesis to God’s creating water.

A cautionary, eco-expose’ amounting to a persuasive case that clean, free-flowing H2O in abundance is critical to preservation of life on the planet.

Very Good (3 stars)

Unrated

Running time: 76 minutes

Distributor: Quad Cinema

To see a trailer for Secret of Water, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOxijQjVBus  

Get Hard
Film Review by Kam Williams

Thanks to a flourishing career as a hedge fund manager, James King (Will Ferrell) is living in the lap of luxury in a sprawling, Bel Air mansion. Furthermore, the pampered multimillionaire’s stock seems about to skyrocket, given his promotion to partner and his impending marriage to the boss’ (Craig T. Nelson) daughter, Alissa (Alison Brie).

By contrast, working man Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart) is stuck on the other side of the proverbial tracks in South Central L.A. where he has to worry on a daily basis about the welfare of his wife (Edwina Findley) and young daughter (Ariana Neal). He’s eager to move them out of the ‘hood, but first needs to save $30,000 to secure the mortgage on their dream house.

As a regular patron of a valet car washing service, James has regularly crossed-paths with Darnell. Nevertheless, he mistakes him for a mugger the day he’s surprised to see a black man approach him in the office parking lot.

To add insult to injury, instead of apologizing for the hurtful faux pas, tone deaf James insensitively claims ”I would’ve reacted the same, if you were white.” Then, he rubs salt in cash-strapped Darnell’s wounds by suggesting that, “I got to where I am by hard work,” before smugly adding, “Success is a mindset.”

However, the two’s roles are reversed when James is convicted of securities fraud, and sentenced to ten years in San Quentin. With just a month before he has to report to prison, he asks Darnell to prepare him for life behind bars, based on another unfounded assumption, namely, that he’s an ex-con.

Darnell agrees, charging precisely the $30,000 he needs as a down payment on his ticket out of the ghetto. However, the jokes are all on James, since the supposed “incarceration expert” he’s just hired has never even seen the inside of a jail.

Thus unfolds Get Hard, an unlikely-buddies comedy co-starring Kevin Hart and Will Ferrell. The movie marks the noteworthy directorial debut of Etan Cohen, whose successful mix of over-the-top slapstick and subtle social satire yields a cinematic experience as silly as it is thought-provoking.

So, one moment, we might witness goofy, gratuitous nudity courtesy of exhibitionistic Ferrell who has never been shy about prancing around in his birthday suit, his Rubenesque physique notwithstanding. The next, we’re treated to relatively-sophisticated humor such as the musings of a spoiled rich kid boasting about how he built his company with his own two hands, before also admitting that he had actually relied upon an $8,000,000 loan from his father as seed money.

Provided you’re open to politically-incorrect fare ranging from racist to misogynistic to homophobic, you’re likely to enjoy this inspired pairing of the relentlessly absurd Ferrell and the motor-mouthed Hart at the top of their games.

Very Good (3 stars)

Rated R for full-frontal male nudity, drug use, ethnic slurs, and pervasive profanity, sexuality and crude humor

Running time: 100 minutes

Distributor: Warner Brothers Pictures

To see a trailer for Get Hard, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5lojEIitNw     

The Gunman
Film Review by Kam Williams

Pierre Morel’s riveting revenge thriller Taken made over veteran thespian Liam Neeson into an action star at 55. Now, the clever French director is ostensibly attempting to repeat the trick for Sean Penn, who turns the same age later this year. In The Gunman, Penn plays Jim Terrier, a hit man for hire surreptitiously operating in the Congo while posing as a bodyguard for a healthcare clinic.

The story’s point of departure is 2006, where we find him serving as a sniper on a team of assassins hatching an elaborate plan to assassinate the country’s Minister of Mining. After pulling it off without a hitch, Jim leaves the country uneventfully before vanishing into the ether, but not before asking a friend, Felix (Javier Bardem), to take care of his gorgeous girlfriend, Annie (Jasmine Trinca), a doctor also working for with the NGO.

Fast-forward 8 years and Jim returns to the Congo only to barely survive an ambush by a trio of goons. Since it’s clear that his cover must have been blown by a confederate, the startled spy abandons Africa for England to determine exactly who wants him dead. He comes out of the proverbial cold in London to confront Terry Cox (Mark Rylance), an ex-partner in crime who claims to have retired his Kevlar vest for a cushy corporate job.

Terry suggests the man Jim might be looking for is Felix, since the duplicitous backstabber married Annie in Jim’s absence. So, our jilted hero’s next port-of-call is Barcelona, the city where the cozy couple has settled down to live high on the hog.

This contentious state of affairs jumpstarts The Gunman, a cat-and-mouse caper that telegraphs its punches while featuring a dizzying mix of fisticuffs, gunplay, international intrigue and old-fashioned romance. The picture is perfectly passable as an action genre offering, yet pales in comparison to Taken, between its Swiss cheese plot and a plethora of distracting sidebars which tend to undercut rather than amp up the tension.

For instance, Idris Elba arrives onscreen late in the adventure in a red herring of a role as an inscrutable Interpol Agent. Equally wasted is Ray Winstone as a cockney-accented, former co-conspirator of Jim’s. Basically, The Gunman boils down to a Sean Penn vehicle affording the surprisingly-buff (if long in the tooth) matinee idol ample opportunities to put his pecs on display in high-impact fight sequences as well as lingering love scenes.

Good (2 stars)

Rated R for profanity, sexuality and graphic violence 

In English and Spanish with subtitles

Running time: 115 minutes

Distributor: Open Road Films

To see a trailer for The Gunman, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th-xtBzcKFA