If Meg 2: The Trench does nothing else—Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t—it should at least have the salutary effect of finally convincing the small-but-inexplicable fan base that British filmmaker Ben Wheatley has developed over the last few years that he is indeed a hack of the lowest order. Of course, you would think that between his cataclysmic fuck-ups of J.G. Ballard’s High Rise and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and his equally tedious original projects, these people would have figured that out for themselves by now but apparently some of them are taking longer to learn that lesson—hopefully this excruciatingly idiotic follow up to the hit 2018 adaptation of the Steve Allen best-seller will serve as a particularly brutal summer school in this regard. Here is a film that is not only reduced to ripping off bits from the markedly inferior sequels to its most obvious inspiration, Jaws, but fails to improve on any of them to any noticeable degree. That’s right—if I had to pick between this or the infamously terrible Jaws 3-D, I would have to go with the latter over this barely coherent bilge.
For reasons that I presume are related to contractural obligations or a massive payday, Jason Statham returns as two-fisted expert diver Jonas Taylor, this time serving as an eco-warrior gallantly beating the crap out of meanies dumping barrels of toxic waste (helpfully labeled as such) into the ocean in the service of a high-tech research group. While on a dive with some fellow scientist, they are forced into the trench where the massive megalodon was discovered the first time around and discover not only a couple of other MEGs but an illegal mining operation. Alas, in the ensuing skirmish, the three MEGs, not to mention a number of other bizarre and deadly prehistoric creatures, are released and begin heading towards a resort island in time to hit the human buffet. After freeing himself and his cohorts from certain underwater doom, Jonas races to that same island in order to take the creatures out via explosive-tipped spears while at the same time fighting off an especially focused member of that mining operation who is determined to get rid of any loose ends.
Like most of us, I suspect, I am a sucker for a silly shark movie—I even gave a decent review to the original MEG for containing just the right amount of cheerful silliness to make it sort of work as a goof—but MEG 2 blows way past “silly” and into the realm of “painfully idiotic.” The screenplay is a strangely bifurcated mess in which the only thing the two halves have in common is that they are both virtually unwatchable. In the case of the first half, that is literally true as the mostly underwater locations add an eye-straining murkiness to what eventually develops into a poorly done take on Aliens withe weird creatures popping out to attack our heroes from the darkness every few seconds. The other section does lighten things up considerably, at least from a visual standpoint, focusing on the attack at the resort and shifting the tone from reasonably straightforward (if always implausible) action to outright camp—alas, this section fails to make much of an impact either, partly because pretty much all of the most outrageous bits have already been seen in the trailer and partly because of Wheatley’s determination (no doubt fueled by contractural obligations) to eschew the over-the-top gore and violence that he has gleefully dispensed in his past films in order to secure an all-important PG-13.
Then again, why should the script bother to work when nothing else in the film does? This may not be Wheatley’s worst outing as a director—if there is ever to be a cinematic equivalent of the Hague Court, he should be brought before them in shackles for what he did to High Rise—but it is certainly his dullest—whatever traces of an individual cinematic vision he demonstrated in his earlier efforts have bee so thoroughly sanded away her that he makes Jon Turtletaub, the director of the first MEG, seem like Terrence Malick by comparison and matters are not helped by the fact that the whole thing drags brutally for nearly the entire first half before shifting to a more rushed gear that is just as ineffective. I’m a fan of Statham, who usually does good in over-the-top spectacles that are always teetering on the edge of ridiculousness (which presumably comes from getting his start in film working with Guy Ritchie), but this time around, he just seems bored throughout as he goes through his numbing paces. (Here, it is the audience that is in dire need of shots of adrenaline to keep them going.) You want to know just how bad MEG 2 really is? Well, as the result of professional obligations, I have actually seen every Sharknado film made and I promise you that several of those are actually better than this and the rest of them are not that far off.
Gentle reader, have you ever found yourself sitting around and wondering what No Country for Old Men might have been like if it didn’t contain the deft writing and directing of the Coen Brothers, the superlative performances across the board from the entire cast, the gripping visual style, the nerve-wracking tension, the jet-black humor or the genuine sense of moral inquiry that kept it from become just an exercise in empty nihilism? If so, then Mob Land is the movie of your decidedly peculiar dreams. Set in a small Louisiana town where fatal drug overdoses are so common as to hardly be noticed, amateur drag racer Shelby (Shiloh Fernandez) is a man who is simply trying to do right by his wife (Ashley Benson) and their adorable moppet daughter. At a particularly low financial point, brother-in-law Trey (Kevin Dillon) comes up with the idea of solving their respective money by robbing a local pill mill. Shelby agrees, the plan goes gruesomely wrong and the two flee with a lot of mob money, leaving behind some dead bodies and a couple of witnesses. To make matters worse, a vicious-yet-philosophical mob hit man (Stephen Dorff) soon arrives in town and causes an immediate uptick in the local body count while the local sheriff (John Travolta) tries to get to the bottom of it all while dealing with some bad news of his own.
Directed and co-written by Nicholas Maggio, Mob Land so overtly wears the influence of No Country for Old Men on its sleeve that it is impossible to watch it without thinking of that film and since that one remains one of the great American films of the 21st century to date, such comparisons do not do it any favors. There are a couple of intriguing ideas scattered here and there—such as when the hit man finally comes across Shelby and finds himself feeling odd pangs of sympathy towards a guy that he recognizes is not the criminal type that he usually deals with—but they tend to get buried in a film that too often feels like one of those fake movies they would mention on Entourage, a sensation inevitably highlighted by the presence of Dillon in the cast. Maggio goes heavy on hand-held camerawork as a way of demonstrating a gritty and realistic style but while it is somewhat effective in the early going, it eventually begins to feel like an affectation and a particularly irritating one at times. The one aspect of the film that does work is the performance by Travolta in a role not nearly as big as the ads suggest. While all the other actors are striving endlessly to come across as cool and soulful, Travolta just does it in his handful of scenes and they are the only ones that comes close to actually conveying the sense of human drama that Maggio is trying to put forth. This may have been a film that Travolta did as a quick paycheck gig in exchange for a few days of work along the lines of what Bruce Willis was doing before his retirement (you can even imagine Willis in this role without stretching too hard) but you never get the sense that he is coasting. Ultimately, his performance isn’t enough to make Mob Land worth watching but those who find themselves forced by circumstances to do just that will no doubt appreciate his efforts regardless.
Even those of you with a long memory regarding cinematic obscurities of the 1980s may find themselves drawing a blank when it comes to Tokyo Pop, which came out—barely—in 1988, almost immediately fell into obscurity as it was removed from the shelves of video stores bold enough to carry it in order to make room for the 64th copy of Run and has been nearly impossible to see since. On the occasion of its 35th anniversary, it has been granted a 4K restoration and is returning to a few theaters and while it may not reveal itself as an unsung masterpiece of the, the low-key charms that those lucky enough to have caught it back in the day happily still ring true. Carrie Hamilton (the daughter of Carol Burnett) stars as Wendy, a New York-based singer who, frustrated by her inability to get noticed in the Big Apple as the backup singer in her jerk boyfriend’s band and inspired by a Mt. Fuji postcard sent by a friend living in Tokyo, impulsive decides to head to Japan to crash with her friend and try to make it as a singer there, as the Japanese are said to love American singers. Things don’t start well once she arrives—she discovers the friend has taken off for Bangkok and the job she gets as a hostess barely earns her enough money to survive. Soon, she meets a guy named Hiro (Diamond Yukai) who has a struggling band of his own that she winds up joining as the singer. Inevitably, the two fall in love and just as inevitably, she and the group become stars and the film follows her and Hiro as they negotiate both their relationship and their current celebrity, especially in regards to the question of whether they can make either one last beyond their seemingly limited shelf lives.
The directorial debut of Fran Rebel Kuzui (who would go on to helm the screen version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Tokyo Pop is not exactly a groundbreaking original in terms of its screenplay (co-written by Kuzui and Lynn Grossman)—there is relatively little dramatic conflict throughout (both the relationship between Wendy and Hiro and their sudden fame just sort of happen for arbitrary reasons that the script prefers not to dwell on) and there are long stretches where it essentially just becomes a travelogue of the sights in Tokyo circa the mid-1980s. That said, the film has a cheerfully funky and infectiously buoyant spirit to it that is reminiscent at times of Desperately Seeking Susan while at the same time offering hints—especially in its observations of the difficulties of pursuing both art and love and the way that it presents the offbeat nature of Tokyo, at least as seen through the eyes of an outsider, without delving into cartoonish caricature—that Sofia Coppola may have used it as a model for Lost in Translation (right down to casting Yukai as the director of the whisky commercial that Bill Murray’s character is there to shoot). The best thing about the film, then and now, is the presence of Hamilton (who passed away in 2002) in a role that might have brought her real stardom if enough people had seen it back in the day. Throughout the film, she is funny and charming and develops a rapport with Yukai that is convincing thanks to the strength of their personalities, as opposed to what was on the page. At the same time, she develops some genuine poignance later on as she finds herself paradoxically like more of an outsider the longer she stays in Japan and forced to confront these feelings in order to move on with her life and career in a more personally satisfying manner. Ultimately, Tokyo Pop is as much as a trifle now as it was 35 years ago but it remains a lovely and likable one that more people will hopefully be able to discover for themselves.