Three Films Make A Post: Are you a watcher or a player?

American Ultra (2015): Stoner and slacker Mike (Jesse Eisenberg) learns that he is in fact a government super spy experiment when an overacting idiot (Topher Grace) and his gang of spy goons start burning down his home town to murder him and his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart). Despite being written by only one guy, Nima Nourizadeh’s action comedy thing is pretty much a mess of tones and forms that neither belong nor fit together. But then, that writer is Max Landis, whose own films and scripts tend to be messes (sometimes hot ones). So expect a film that wavers between Mark Millar-style cynical low-brow violence humour, nerdy playfulness, indie rom com and random crap without sense or much of a point, with acting performances that suggest a director who didn’t tell anyone in front of the camera for what he was going, and scenes that are sometimes good as standalones but never come together to form an actual film. Plus, this is a film that tries to sell me the idea that being allowed to work as a killer for an organization that tried to murder you is some kind of a happy ending. Seriously.

I Bury the Living (1958): Albert Band’s gothic and somewhat Twilight Zone-ish tale of a new part-time cemetery director - played by Richard Boone in a nice tour-de-force performance that allows his character to be rather more fragile than typical of male leads of this time - who comes to the conviction that changing the pin colours on a wall map of the cemetery kills people is for the longest time a fine low budget film. In its mood of increasing (melodramatic) dread and use of expressionist techniques and a bit of early Sam Fuller-style tackiness, it’s a film rather atypical for US genre cinema of its time, particularly those set in the contemporary USA.

Unfortunately, the status as a lost classic one could imagine for the film is badly served by a “natural explanation” so preposterous and illogical even the writers responsible for quite a few of today’s lame twist endings would be embarrassed by it.

Negative (2017): While its plot certainly isn’t terribly plausible (unless you compare it to the ending of I Bury the Living), Joshua Caldwell’s tale of a hapless photographer (Simon Quarterman) being drawn into the desert road movie style flight of a former British spy (Katia Winter) is good low budget spy movie fun. The film recommends itself with stylish and atmospheric shots of the desert, two lead characters who for once in a movie of this kind don’t fall in love but whose actors do work well together, a nice line in sarcastic dialogue, and a handful of more than decent action and suspense sequences.


It’s certainly not a film that’ll change anyone’s life (unless by chance) but it is worth watching.