Movie Reviews: This Is It, Boondock Saints II, Gentlemen Broncos, The House of the Devil

BOONDOCK SAINTS II: ALL SAINTS DAY The Boondock Saints filmmaker Troy Duffy certainly makes for an easy target — at least his former friends thought so when they made the 2003 doc Overnight, a rise-fall-and-turnaround portrait of Duffy’s hubris and recklessness during the making of his first and only film. To his credit, not only did Duffy get his 1999 crime thriller made for less than half of the Weinsteins’ promised budget, but its crippled release still found an excitable cult following from VHS to Blu-ray. Here, then, is the inevitable sequel, and if you don’t already know about the devout Irish Catholic twins McManus (Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery) who deliver vigilante justice to Boston’s underworld with the help of a rogue FBI special agent, don’t sweat it: That’s also the plot of Boondock Saints II’s childish daydream. Willem Dafoe’s gay fed is out, replaced by his sexed-up protégée Julie Benz, and the Saints are joined by Clifton Collins Jr. as a goofy but loyal Latino brawler who helps them find a mysterious priest killer and tries to look badass while walking in slow motion. John Woo outgrew stylizing movies like this in the ’90s, but Duffy is still chasing his perfect slide-and-shoot, except now with more self-satisfied posturing, awkward pop culture referencing, casual homophobia and racism, and the most vulgar co-opting of religious iconography this side of Dan Brown. (Selected theaters) (Aaron Hillis)

THE FALL It’s really hard to make William Devane look bad. The venerable Knots Landing actor has survived countless made-for-TV movies, as well as Battle of the Network Stars, but even a seasoned pro like Devane is tripped up by John Krueger’s dreary directorial debut, The Fall. Devane plays a blind judge in a murder trial in which a hotshot gubernatorial candidate (Frank, blankly played by Scott Kinworthy) represents his brother (Tony, a brooding Benny Ciaramello), who is charged with killing a Catholic priest. If that isn’t enough melodrama, Krueger also throws in subplots involving drug-dealing cops, videotaped sex and church pedophilia. Everything is equally unconvincing: The legal scenes suggest the writer has never been inside a courtroom (let alone seen an episode of Law & Order), the prison scenes are laughable, and the relationships between the brothers and the women in their lives are just plain creepy. (A sex scene featuring Frank and his wife includes this howler: “Let’s make a fucking baby, Mr. Governor!”) Krueger’s film is so loopy and nonsensical that at times it verges on The Room–esque, so-bad-its-fascinating camp. But for those who stick around long enough to hear poor Devane bark, “Justice isn’t blind!” (remember, he’s a blind judge), it’s clear that The Fall is really just a dull, poorly acted courtroom drama with glossy, autumnal cinematography and an implausible twist. (Sunset 5) (James C. Taylor)

GENTLEMEN BRONCOS Nothing if not consistent, Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre director Jared Hess again presents adolescence as a depressive, outsider experience; makes light of the working class for being, well, poor; and nearly bests the Brothers Coen when it comes to drawing all of his characters from the shallow end of the gene pool. There are moments in Hess’ third self-conscious cult film, Gentlemen Broncos, that exude a fetishistic, low-fi splendor, as Hess envisions the Buck Rogers–meets-Barbarella fantasy world of an introverted Utah teenager (Michael Angarano) writing a pulp science-fiction opus. But both Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years and the life of its author are subject to so much projectile vomit, animal flatulence and innumerable plays on the word anus that even first-graders may find their tolerance tested. “You took my nads!” and “Eat the corn out of my crap” vie for their place in the catch-phrase canon, and an animatronic deer fires missiles out of its ass, though its Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement, who handily steals the show as a bestselling fanboy scribe sky-high on his own pomposity. Hess deserves credit, I suppose, for so effectively channeling his inner 7-year-old. I preferred spending two hours in the company of Spike Jonze. (ArcLight Hollywood) (Scott Foundas)

GO  THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL The Devil, apparently, lives in an out-of-the-way gingerbread Victorian, just past the cemetery, where college sophomore Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) is lured for overnight house sitting by an elegant, forbidding couple (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, both queerly overly intimate). Though its poster and opening title freeze-frames threaten ’80s kitsch, The House of the Devil drops the quotation marks quick, lingering over wet autumn atmosphere in a couple of well-scouted locations (underpopulated campus; cold, quiet house). Pumping the audience with inhale-exhale zooms and out-of-the-way close-ups, director Ti West’s ratcheting of suspense in this alone-in-an–empty-house tale is proficient if not psychologically piercing in the best Let’s Scare Jessica to Death fashion. What makes House stand out above the bad crop of October horror is Donahue, who commands the frame as soon as she is left alone by her out-of-tune best friend (and mumblecore alum), Megan (Greta Gerwig), who oppresses every scene she plays with strenuous cutesiness and sticky line readings. Gravely gorgeous in the style of a storybook Snow White, Donahue gives eloquent reaction shots, and nails West’s pièce de résistance, a bounding, Walkman-soundtracked Jazzercise dance through the house. Would that this scene’s control had carried into the finale, which panicks into videocam illiteracy just as a steady hand is needed most. (Sunset 5) (Nick Pinkerton)