We know Psycho because of its famous shower scene. But do we know it for the art-house way in which it has validated the horror genre? Think of 1960 and the films from which Alfred Hitchcock had to draw its inspirations. The Blob? The Fly? Great horror films, but are they cinema? I would say not--at least not in the way that Psycho is almost universally considered to be. The differences are extreme and much more pronounced in this, one of Hitchcock's most defining, and certainly most chilling film.
The Master of Suspense has a fascinating way of getting his actors to interpret their scripts in entirely unusual ways. Take the opening, for example. Janet Leigh is Marion Crane, who begins the film in her bra talking to Sam, to whom she is very much in love. Their dialogue is angry, but all that the audience can hear is sex. The discussion revolves around their relationship and the fact that he is in debt to his ex wife. He desperately needs money, so she steals it. $40,000 1960 dollars can go a long way and is sure to be noticed, but a deeply set passion has compelled her to do something drastic.
This is the setup for what seems to be a fairly typical Hitchcock film. A person of seemingly normal state of mind does something that none of us imagine that we are capable of on the surface, but deep down know that we are the same. It would seem that the rest of the film would comprise of the fallout of her actions and the way that she deals morally with the crime that she has comitted. Running from a cop that has been following her, she finds herself at the Bates Motel.
The owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), lives alone with his mother in a dark and creepy old house up on a hill looking over the cabins of the motel. Our introduction to Mrs. Bates is heard, but not seen and thankfully so because she seems like a downright unpleasant person. He seems nice enough--lonely, under the thumb of his mother, and a bit eccentric, but nevertheless he seems to have a good heart and definitely a man's libido under the bumbling, nervous, gentlemanly exterior. Marion is convinced by the prolific way in which he talks to return the money. But wait...if she is going to appologize and return the money and eveything is going to be hunky-dory, then where is the plot going? We are only forty minutes in and I am deeply involved!
Why don't you go take a shower, Marion.
Suddenly we are sent down a dark and twisted tale of what a young man will do to protect the abominabal misdeeds of his mother. Marion's beau and sister go on the hunt to find her with the help of a P.I., and what they find leads to one of the most shocking conclusions in cinematic history. Never has there been a duo like Norman Bates and his mother, and Hitchcock knows how to play every moment of them together and alone. It takes a psychiatrist at the end to explain it all for us, and the more he talks the more the minds of the audience are sent reeling trying to place the pieces together. They fit all too well.
This type of horror is so worrying not because of the jolts of adrenaline it creates (though there are those), but because it is about the very complex inner workings of the mind and what it will do protect itself. Everyone has the ability to become Norman, and his seeming normality makes his actions much more disturbing. Doing terrible things beyond your control simply because one feels indebted to the mother is an extremely complicated mess of emotions and moralistic questions raised, and is a topic far beyond any normal horror film. This film works, and works so well not only because of the ample talents of Mr. Hitchcock put to very good use, but also because the material is so appalling.
He is the Master of Suspense. One can say this in reference to any number of his films, but I don't believe any of his work shows it better than this one. I can think of no better example to illustrate the importance of timing and buildup. He knew better than anyone that it is never about the "gotcha" moment, but always the one immediately preceding it. It taps in so keenly into our fear of the unexplainable--the human mind--but only after it has succeeded in drawing us in hook, line, and sinker into a taught story of the murderous whims of a crazy old woman.
Anyone who watches this film will find themselves surprised at the lasting impact of the film. This is not merely a great horror film, it is a great film in general. The score, the characters, the location are inspiring and haunting and will make everyone nervous of hotel showers for years to come.
4/4
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Misery (1990)
After barely surviving a car crash during a blizzard in the mountains of Colorado, famous author Paul Sheldon awakens to find himself in the care of his No. 1 fan. Annie Wilkes is a mountain of a woman, homely, Christian, and a huge admirer of Sheldon. She has something of a shrine in his honor in her living room, and has named her sow Misery, after the lead character of Sheldon's hugely popular but disgustingly commercial pioneer romance novels. She lives alone, and unfortunately due to the storm the two are snowbound in her house, but luckily Annie is--or possibly was--a nurse, and has all of the equipment necessary to keep Paul alive.
At first she seems pleasant enough, a little too conservative and old fashioned for Paul's New York tastes, but who is he to judge when she is caring for him so well? It's only when Annie reads the latest "Misery" novel and finds that at the end she dies in childbirth that Paul learns that Annie is deranged psychopath and that he is being held captive. Unable to move his legs and one of his arms, he finds himself entirely dependent on the whims of a lunatic, and he will remain there until he gets the story right.
Stephen King penned the novel on which this was based about three years before it was made into a film. Annie Wilkes is, in my not so humble opinion, the best character that he has ever written. She is scarier than Cujo, Carrie, Jack Torrence, and Pennywise the Clown, and Misery is the best adaptation of any of his works. This is probably due to the fact that there is nothing supernatural about the material, and is simply a chilling tale of a man who must be spoon-fed by a woman who both loves him and hates him, and someone who has all of the resources and the mental disconnect to kill him.
I assume the character is not so far off from a fan of King's, and is simply blown into an imaginary nightmare of a situation; this is probably very real for him. Where he goes right in this story is developing a person who, when not torturing her captive, is slightly pitiable and unwittingly hilarious. Annie likes to use words like "oogie," "dirty birdie," "poo," and "cockadoodie," instead of swears, and when Paul cunningly asks her to have a candlelit dinner with her (so that he might have a chance to drug her drink) she practically faints at the prospect as if she were a schoolgirl being asked to prom by the football captain.
But when she is angry, oh when she is angry she is the most frightening image. Kathy Bates won an Oscar for her performance which was so interesting simply because she was able to make the shift from goofy little nurse, to thunderous maniac who is much smarter than she pretends. It is so obvious how much Bates relished each line that she had, loved the part, and played every emotion with such conviction that one couldn't help but forget that she was acting. It is a part that has the potential to be overdone, but she kept it very much in check, giving it only what it needed (which was ample) but never a drop more.
James Caan played Paul, and was not very good at it. He normally has so much energy on screen, but in this film he seemed so non-committal that he almost bored me. I do not mean that he should have done so much as to upstage Bates, but he should have done enough to at least seem interested in what he was doing. Dialing it up from a 2 to a 4 would have been appreciated.
There are certainly moments when the movie lags, and many times when the film is not particularly inspired, but it is still a very solid adaptation. There are enough scenes--usually when Bates is left to do what she does--that the film really works on a gut level. Take, for example, the scene when it is raining outside and Annie comes in disheveled and blank-faced. She tells Paul that the rain gives her the blues, and her delivery is so sincere that we almost lose that she is still Annie Wilkes...that is until she pulls out a pistol. It was a perfect bit of acting and one of the powerful portions of the film that made it so scary.
There is so much more about her and her past that I wish was examined. The film is obviously told from the point of view of Sheldon (perhaps of King), but wouldn't it be fascinating to have it done from the point of view of Annie, the Dragon Lady? Perhaps it would be too hard to create a structure based on someone who does many things when her brain simply seems to snap. The things she does don't seem much sense, so I suppose a plot wouldn't either if motives are not immediately apparent. After all, why does the ceramic penguin have to face due south? No reason. It simply does.
3/4
At first she seems pleasant enough, a little too conservative and old fashioned for Paul's New York tastes, but who is he to judge when she is caring for him so well? It's only when Annie reads the latest "Misery" novel and finds that at the end she dies in childbirth that Paul learns that Annie is deranged psychopath and that he is being held captive. Unable to move his legs and one of his arms, he finds himself entirely dependent on the whims of a lunatic, and he will remain there until he gets the story right.
Stephen King penned the novel on which this was based about three years before it was made into a film. Annie Wilkes is, in my not so humble opinion, the best character that he has ever written. She is scarier than Cujo, Carrie, Jack Torrence, and Pennywise the Clown, and Misery is the best adaptation of any of his works. This is probably due to the fact that there is nothing supernatural about the material, and is simply a chilling tale of a man who must be spoon-fed by a woman who both loves him and hates him, and someone who has all of the resources and the mental disconnect to kill him.
I assume the character is not so far off from a fan of King's, and is simply blown into an imaginary nightmare of a situation; this is probably very real for him. Where he goes right in this story is developing a person who, when not torturing her captive, is slightly pitiable and unwittingly hilarious. Annie likes to use words like "oogie," "dirty birdie," "poo," and "cockadoodie," instead of swears, and when Paul cunningly asks her to have a candlelit dinner with her (so that he might have a chance to drug her drink) she practically faints at the prospect as if she were a schoolgirl being asked to prom by the football captain.
But when she is angry, oh when she is angry she is the most frightening image. Kathy Bates won an Oscar for her performance which was so interesting simply because she was able to make the shift from goofy little nurse, to thunderous maniac who is much smarter than she pretends. It is so obvious how much Bates relished each line that she had, loved the part, and played every emotion with such conviction that one couldn't help but forget that she was acting. It is a part that has the potential to be overdone, but she kept it very much in check, giving it only what it needed (which was ample) but never a drop more.
James Caan played Paul, and was not very good at it. He normally has so much energy on screen, but in this film he seemed so non-committal that he almost bored me. I do not mean that he should have done so much as to upstage Bates, but he should have done enough to at least seem interested in what he was doing. Dialing it up from a 2 to a 4 would have been appreciated.
There are certainly moments when the movie lags, and many times when the film is not particularly inspired, but it is still a very solid adaptation. There are enough scenes--usually when Bates is left to do what she does--that the film really works on a gut level. Take, for example, the scene when it is raining outside and Annie comes in disheveled and blank-faced. She tells Paul that the rain gives her the blues, and her delivery is so sincere that we almost lose that she is still Annie Wilkes...that is until she pulls out a pistol. It was a perfect bit of acting and one of the powerful portions of the film that made it so scary.
There is so much more about her and her past that I wish was examined. The film is obviously told from the point of view of Sheldon (perhaps of King), but wouldn't it be fascinating to have it done from the point of view of Annie, the Dragon Lady? Perhaps it would be too hard to create a structure based on someone who does many things when her brain simply seems to snap. The things she does don't seem much sense, so I suppose a plot wouldn't either if motives are not immediately apparent. After all, why does the ceramic penguin have to face due south? No reason. It simply does.
3/4
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
When I was eight years old my parents bought a house in Rio Rancho, NM, which was at the time very undeveloped. We were in what one might call the Middle of Nowhere, and I was terrified of that idea. The first night that we drove out through the desert to get there I was struck by the absence of light except for that coming from the moon, and was convinced that our van was going to be attacked by a werewolf. No matter the fact that there are no real werewolf myths in the Southwestern United States, the fact that I could not see further than ten feet out from the vehicle left me with the idea that a wolfman could jump at the windshield at any time.
There is something supremely frightening about the concept of a man who uncontrollably changes into a monster in the middle of the night and kills at random. There is nothing intellectual or poetic or romantic about this creature that might be found vampire lore, specters, or even Frankenstein's monster. There is simply the fear of the primal and a gruesome death at the hands (or claws) of someone you might trust and love. Of all of the Halloweenish type ghouls, monsters, and creatures, the wolfman scares me most of all because of its ancient history and its destructive view of civilization and evolution.
This film does justice to these thoughts and fears in sporadic and completely inconsistent intervals. When it does work it works very well, but when it fails it is abysmal. This is a short, sad tale of two young American tourists backpacking through Northern England who are mauled by a werewolf before it is shot dead. Only one dies leaving the other, David, in a coma for three weeks with scratch marks and bad dreams. When he awakens he falls for his nurse and seems well enough, but mentally he begins to breakdown when he is haunted--quite Dickensian in style--by the undead presence of his friend who warns him that come the full moon he will turn into a werewolf himself. His friend suggests suicide (what a guy), but how can David know that he is not simply going crazy? Leave the moon to answer that question right quick.
This is a pretty good but over-hyped attempt at genre blending, and cannot seem to find the proper balance between what it attempts to combine. It is very funny is some places, frightening in others, but there is nothing that blends the two together creating a jarring ride between comedy and horror. It seems to me that were they to create a cohesive story to go along with its good idea then it would have need at least another fifteen minutes worth of material in order to develop character relationships. Instead the jokes were rolled out until they felt it was time to be scary, then the killings began and ended to give way to more jokes.
I didn't dislike the characters; I thought they were all very sweet and well acted, but their interactions were forced, sometimes quite painfully for the audience. It also seemed like there was no ending. Many questions are raised by the idea of a werewolf prowling Piccadilly, but the audience is left with those questions at the end with only the smallest amount of information to fill in some major holes. I was disappointed, not in the very gratifying climax, but in the absence of a resolution that was desperately needed.
The one thing that everyone will appreciate and talk about after this film is the great makeup and special effects. The transformation sequences in particular had me burying my face in my pillow as I watched poor David mutate into a monster. That is the scene to remember. Lon Chaney's film had the suspense, but he was a man dressed in furs. This, on the other hand, is how one imagines becoming a werewolf to happen, and it was as horrific as I always thought it would be. The effects were great, but they could have done more not to show the beast as much as they did. After all, it was because I couldn't see outside of my van that made that werewolf so terrifying.
2/4
There is something supremely frightening about the concept of a man who uncontrollably changes into a monster in the middle of the night and kills at random. There is nothing intellectual or poetic or romantic about this creature that might be found vampire lore, specters, or even Frankenstein's monster. There is simply the fear of the primal and a gruesome death at the hands (or claws) of someone you might trust and love. Of all of the Halloweenish type ghouls, monsters, and creatures, the wolfman scares me most of all because of its ancient history and its destructive view of civilization and evolution.
This film does justice to these thoughts and fears in sporadic and completely inconsistent intervals. When it does work it works very well, but when it fails it is abysmal. This is a short, sad tale of two young American tourists backpacking through Northern England who are mauled by a werewolf before it is shot dead. Only one dies leaving the other, David, in a coma for three weeks with scratch marks and bad dreams. When he awakens he falls for his nurse and seems well enough, but mentally he begins to breakdown when he is haunted--quite Dickensian in style--by the undead presence of his friend who warns him that come the full moon he will turn into a werewolf himself. His friend suggests suicide (what a guy), but how can David know that he is not simply going crazy? Leave the moon to answer that question right quick.
This is a pretty good but over-hyped attempt at genre blending, and cannot seem to find the proper balance between what it attempts to combine. It is very funny is some places, frightening in others, but there is nothing that blends the two together creating a jarring ride between comedy and horror. It seems to me that were they to create a cohesive story to go along with its good idea then it would have need at least another fifteen minutes worth of material in order to develop character relationships. Instead the jokes were rolled out until they felt it was time to be scary, then the killings began and ended to give way to more jokes.
I didn't dislike the characters; I thought they were all very sweet and well acted, but their interactions were forced, sometimes quite painfully for the audience. It also seemed like there was no ending. Many questions are raised by the idea of a werewolf prowling Piccadilly, but the audience is left with those questions at the end with only the smallest amount of information to fill in some major holes. I was disappointed, not in the very gratifying climax, but in the absence of a resolution that was desperately needed.
The one thing that everyone will appreciate and talk about after this film is the great makeup and special effects. The transformation sequences in particular had me burying my face in my pillow as I watched poor David mutate into a monster. That is the scene to remember. Lon Chaney's film had the suspense, but he was a man dressed in furs. This, on the other hand, is how one imagines becoming a werewolf to happen, and it was as horrific as I always thought it would be. The effects were great, but they could have done more not to show the beast as much as they did. After all, it was because I couldn't see outside of my van that made that werewolf so terrifying.
2/4
Sunday, October 23, 2011
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
One of my very good friends has recently given birth to a baby girl (which I thought impossible as she probably weighs 80 lbs., but there you have it). Of course she was ecstatic; it would be concerning for her not to have been. How, in our modern world where we have every luxury presented to us a silver platter, could we possibly dislike our children when they are something wholly ours and become what we shape them? We Need to Talk About Kevin is a devastating film that refutes any ingrained ideas that its Western audience carry with them about motherhood in a way that is nothing short of mesmerizing and distressing. Whether for good or bad, this is a film that disrupts a monotonous way of thinking and very graphically presents questions of love and similitude.
Tilda Swinton gives her best performance that I have seen as Eva. I fail for descriptors to associate Eva with, because she is hardly seen outside of the context of her and her son, and when she is she is an entirely different person. Perhaps it would be best to describe her relationships then. Eva and Franklin (John C. Reilly) have a son, Kevin (Ezra Miller). From a very early age--birth--Eva and Kevin had issues with one another. To her exasperation Kevin constantly screamed when around her, but never with anyone else. There is a disturbing scene (one of many) where Eva stops in the middle of an intersection while pushing her stroller to relish in the sounds of a jackhammer as it temporarily stifles Kevin's incessant wailing.
As Kevin ages, Eva finds herself constantly agitated and angry around the silent and angry toddler. Kevin begins to act out from an early age. Eva takes him to the doctor to see if perhaps he is autistic. The doctor says he is fine. It seems that no matter how her patience is tried, to everyone else the small war being waged is all in her head. Teenage Kevin is the very face of sociopath. The casting director has done an excellent job of finding good actors to play the three ages of Kevin while maintaining the androgynous beauty of Miller which is also distinct to Swinton. By this point the war is constantly simmering, but neither even really acknowledge it. They have grown accustomed to the fact that they hate one another, and that no amount of effort will change the fact.
The two simply try to find a coexistence, but a person like Kevin is not one to let sleeping dogs lie. His room is pristine with an almost Feng Shui type feel. There is nothing left in it to signify personality except a copy of Robin Hood and discs containing computer viruses. This is a person with no regards to life or the happiness of others. The filmmaker even went as far as to pay homage to the rabbit scene of Fatal Attraction. His final act of aggression is something that we might consider unthinkable if it hadn't happened in one form or another in real life, but I will leave you to find out what. Don't spoil it for yourself.
This makes up about two-thirds of the film. When we are introduced to Eva she is alone, living a small house covered in red paint, nervous, quiet, mixing pills and wine. She goes about life day to day hiding her face when she sees someone she knows, and suffering small attacks from people in her town. What has she done to deserve cruelty almost universally from all who know her? Nothing, really, except being the mother of Kevin.
I hesitate to talk further of plot. When I left the theatre a friend asked what I thought of the film. All I could answer with was "I'm really on edge." This film was two hours of horror as we watch all conventions of the world we live in crumble in the watery black eyes of these two individuals. From the outside they look relatively normal, but there is nothing in their relationship that contains any semblance of love. Every scene was one act of retaliation followed by another, spear-headed by a boy far smarter and much angrier than those around him. By the end every little action he made had the audience cringing, and with the credits there was not even the faintest glimmer of happiness or hope to be found.
This film almost relished in the discomfort of its audience and in the dismal picture that it painted. I have thought about this film much today trying to tease out the moral of the story, but to no avail. From my point of view there are two possibilities, both stemming from the scenes of Eva's pregnancy which I think much of the audience might have forgotten about when looking at the second half of the movie: this may be a feminist film. The first shot of the film was Eva before her marriage at La Tomatina. She is paraded around in the Christ pose, in sexual ecstasy, covered in tomatoes. This was a woman with a life to live. Her pregnancy was a burden to her as she was to become confined to the shackles of responsibility. In this way Kevin might be looked at as the result of this resentment, fed through the umbilical cord.
The second message might be just the opposite. It did not appear that she tried very hard as a new mother to love and nourishes him the way that she ought to have. There seemed a general disinterest to behave the way all of the other mothers in the Mommy and Me classes acted, so perhaps what Kevin did really was her fault after all. The message may be that every child deserves your lifelong love and affection. Kevin was just...going through a phase. But I don't really believe that this is the case. I think sometimes wires are simply crossed.
I need to think on this film some more. It has really left me at a loss. For now I will give it the medium grade.
2/4
Tilda Swinton gives her best performance that I have seen as Eva. I fail for descriptors to associate Eva with, because she is hardly seen outside of the context of her and her son, and when she is she is an entirely different person. Perhaps it would be best to describe her relationships then. Eva and Franklin (John C. Reilly) have a son, Kevin (Ezra Miller). From a very early age--birth--Eva and Kevin had issues with one another. To her exasperation Kevin constantly screamed when around her, but never with anyone else. There is a disturbing scene (one of many) where Eva stops in the middle of an intersection while pushing her stroller to relish in the sounds of a jackhammer as it temporarily stifles Kevin's incessant wailing.
As Kevin ages, Eva finds herself constantly agitated and angry around the silent and angry toddler. Kevin begins to act out from an early age. Eva takes him to the doctor to see if perhaps he is autistic. The doctor says he is fine. It seems that no matter how her patience is tried, to everyone else the small war being waged is all in her head. Teenage Kevin is the very face of sociopath. The casting director has done an excellent job of finding good actors to play the three ages of Kevin while maintaining the androgynous beauty of Miller which is also distinct to Swinton. By this point the war is constantly simmering, but neither even really acknowledge it. They have grown accustomed to the fact that they hate one another, and that no amount of effort will change the fact.
The two simply try to find a coexistence, but a person like Kevin is not one to let sleeping dogs lie. His room is pristine with an almost Feng Shui type feel. There is nothing left in it to signify personality except a copy of Robin Hood and discs containing computer viruses. This is a person with no regards to life or the happiness of others. The filmmaker even went as far as to pay homage to the rabbit scene of Fatal Attraction. His final act of aggression is something that we might consider unthinkable if it hadn't happened in one form or another in real life, but I will leave you to find out what. Don't spoil it for yourself.
This makes up about two-thirds of the film. When we are introduced to Eva she is alone, living a small house covered in red paint, nervous, quiet, mixing pills and wine. She goes about life day to day hiding her face when she sees someone she knows, and suffering small attacks from people in her town. What has she done to deserve cruelty almost universally from all who know her? Nothing, really, except being the mother of Kevin.
I hesitate to talk further of plot. When I left the theatre a friend asked what I thought of the film. All I could answer with was "I'm really on edge." This film was two hours of horror as we watch all conventions of the world we live in crumble in the watery black eyes of these two individuals. From the outside they look relatively normal, but there is nothing in their relationship that contains any semblance of love. Every scene was one act of retaliation followed by another, spear-headed by a boy far smarter and much angrier than those around him. By the end every little action he made had the audience cringing, and with the credits there was not even the faintest glimmer of happiness or hope to be found.
This film almost relished in the discomfort of its audience and in the dismal picture that it painted. I have thought about this film much today trying to tease out the moral of the story, but to no avail. From my point of view there are two possibilities, both stemming from the scenes of Eva's pregnancy which I think much of the audience might have forgotten about when looking at the second half of the movie: this may be a feminist film. The first shot of the film was Eva before her marriage at La Tomatina. She is paraded around in the Christ pose, in sexual ecstasy, covered in tomatoes. This was a woman with a life to live. Her pregnancy was a burden to her as she was to become confined to the shackles of responsibility. In this way Kevin might be looked at as the result of this resentment, fed through the umbilical cord.
The second message might be just the opposite. It did not appear that she tried very hard as a new mother to love and nourishes him the way that she ought to have. There seemed a general disinterest to behave the way all of the other mothers in the Mommy and Me classes acted, so perhaps what Kevin did really was her fault after all. The message may be that every child deserves your lifelong love and affection. Kevin was just...going through a phase. But I don't really believe that this is the case. I think sometimes wires are simply crossed.
I need to think on this film some more. It has really left me at a loss. For now I will give it the medium grade.
2/4
Saturday, October 22, 2011
The Wicker Man (1973)
As we approach Hallowe'en most (if not all) of my reviews will be of the ghoulish nature. I find that there is nothing as basic, as primal, as a good horror film, and I think that there is something wickedly enchanting about that. So far in the past week we have seen a monster movie (The Thing), and a slasher film (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Now we journey into the occult with a film that is not at all scary in the jump-out-of-your-seat sense, but it a supremely chilling example of the natural human condition to turn to a deity to explain the misunderstood.
Searching for a missing child, Sgt. Howie journeys to the Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance. Upright, very Catholic, moralistic, and a virgin, the good ol' boy is repulsed to find that the entire island, maybe 200 residents, live in a backwards heathenism where they practice pagan rituals and turn to the gods of the Sun and of the orchard to pray for bountiful fruit harvests. Howie is affronted by the level of sexual content in their religion, and how blatantly people are exposed to it from childhood.
Howie finds the townspeople weird, but kind. However they are incredibly unhelpful, offering contradictory stories about the girl Rowan for whom Howie searches. In some cases she is dead, in others she is not. In many she doesn't even exist on the island. His xenophobia clouds his judgment, but as time passes and after he has met with the town's leader, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), his investigation leads him down a dark and disturbing path as the town makes ready for their May Day celebrations.
For the life of me I have not the slightest idea how this film got the budget to be made. This is not a horror film in the traditional sense, and the chills come from a place that would not at all be commercial friendly. It flatly mocks Christianity as well as more earthly-bound religions, and would not even really conform to the idea of a murder mystery. The fact that it is made must be a testament to the efforts of the filmmakers, and I am rather glad that it has happened.
This film is well written, very sharp, and always aware of its subject matter. The leads give fine performances, and the rest of cast do a good job in maintaining a mood that carries the audience's suspense even when there is really nothing to draw suspense from. This film's power comes from the fact that it is incredibly unusual material--other films about the occult generally end up having their rituals manifest into something supernatural. This film simply shows the practices, and exposes us to a culture unseen and unwanted. The very nature of a place in which everyone fervently practices beliefs that a contradictory to our Western ideals is unsettling, and to be trapped with them with their most extravagant holiday is frightening.
The end of the film is powerful enough to stay with you long after the credits roll. That final scene made me think of something that someone once said: "Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever and if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so that he can remove and evil force that it present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree." It all has to be kept in perspective, I suppose.
2.5/4
A note: this film has some really weird musical sequences that would be interesting on their own or in a less strange film, but here they seem disjointed and are really confusing. Particularly the siren's song.
Searching for a missing child, Sgt. Howie journeys to the Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance. Upright, very Catholic, moralistic, and a virgin, the good ol' boy is repulsed to find that the entire island, maybe 200 residents, live in a backwards heathenism where they practice pagan rituals and turn to the gods of the Sun and of the orchard to pray for bountiful fruit harvests. Howie is affronted by the level of sexual content in their religion, and how blatantly people are exposed to it from childhood.
Howie finds the townspeople weird, but kind. However they are incredibly unhelpful, offering contradictory stories about the girl Rowan for whom Howie searches. In some cases she is dead, in others she is not. In many she doesn't even exist on the island. His xenophobia clouds his judgment, but as time passes and after he has met with the town's leader, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), his investigation leads him down a dark and disturbing path as the town makes ready for their May Day celebrations.
For the life of me I have not the slightest idea how this film got the budget to be made. This is not a horror film in the traditional sense, and the chills come from a place that would not at all be commercial friendly. It flatly mocks Christianity as well as more earthly-bound religions, and would not even really conform to the idea of a murder mystery. The fact that it is made must be a testament to the efforts of the filmmakers, and I am rather glad that it has happened.
This film is well written, very sharp, and always aware of its subject matter. The leads give fine performances, and the rest of cast do a good job in maintaining a mood that carries the audience's suspense even when there is really nothing to draw suspense from. This film's power comes from the fact that it is incredibly unusual material--other films about the occult generally end up having their rituals manifest into something supernatural. This film simply shows the practices, and exposes us to a culture unseen and unwanted. The very nature of a place in which everyone fervently practices beliefs that a contradictory to our Western ideals is unsettling, and to be trapped with them with their most extravagant holiday is frightening.
The end of the film is powerful enough to stay with you long after the credits roll. That final scene made me think of something that someone once said: "Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever and if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so that he can remove and evil force that it present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree." It all has to be kept in perspective, I suppose.
2.5/4
A note: this film has some really weird musical sequences that would be interesting on their own or in a less strange film, but here they seem disjointed and are really confusing. Particularly the siren's song.
Friday, October 21, 2011
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Regardless of whether or not you are a horror film fan (which I am), and whether or not you like blood and guts (which I do not), there is a certain amount of tribute that needs to be paid to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the evident influence that it has had on other considerably better made and considerably bigger money makers than it, including The Hills Have Eyes, The Blair Witch Project, and even Halloween. Inspiration is evident in content as well as construction, and even though this film is lack in all sense of morality and is seemingly an exploration into the grotesque checked only by what seems to be a nonexistent budget, it is nevertheless a fantastic example of a film that draws a genuine reaction. Kudos to director, Tobe Hooper, for scary the shit out of me using only a gardening tool and a rubber mask.
The story is short and sweet: two siblings and their three friends head to the middle of Bumblescum or some such place in order to check on the grave of their grandfather, as there have been reports of grave robbers in the area. They become stranded at the old property of their family when their van runs out of gas--a property which happens to neighbor a house of cannibals. During the course of the night the five are terrorized by Leatherface, a walking mountain in a ladies wig, who squeals like a pig through his deformed mouth and kills them off using a mallet and a chainsaw. A really lady-killer.
Those who fall under the capable hand of Leatherface are lucky, though, because the rest of the family are a different piece of work entirely. There is incredibly small setup--excepting an extremely creepy van ride with a hitchhiker--for a long and relentless payoff. There are very few "gotcha!" moments, thank God. I don't think I could have handled much more than what I was already dealing with. This and Deliverance have pretty much sealed the stereotype of anyone living outside of a major city below the Bible Belt as a bunch of inbred terrors; I personally could not be paid enough to stop at Jimbo's Gas Station to take a leak, and would use a bottle without hesitation.
This has got a documentary/lost footage type feel to the camera work, a quality befitting the low budget and really adding to the sense of dread that a house like theirs could exist in some remote, backwater part of the United States, with a family ready to snatch up unsuspecting passersby and turn them into sausages. A huge difference between this film and so many others like it is that most of the characters die off within the first half of the film. We know that they will--how much fun would that be if everyone ran faster than Leatherface and his purse-carrying brother?--but I was confused how they could possibly fill an entire third act with so few players remaining. O, how I suffered for my doubts. The second half was so much scarier than the first, as dinner is served and we are met with introductions. Grandpa looks healthy.
There is something really unsettling about this film and others like Halloween, where there really seems to be little cause for gruesome, unending violence. The characters in both films had really no mental capacity to consider their actions, and therefore remained nothing more than senseless vehicles of evil. What Hooper and John Carpenter have been able to do (Carpenter much better, but that's a review soon to come) is channel that fear into something that doesn't become tedious or gimmicky, and instead remains somewhat in the realm of plausibility even though we might shrug it off as cheap entertainment. I read an article a couple of years ago about a paranoid schizophrenic on a bus who went on a rampage, stabbed a man opposite him several dozen times, stole some of his organs, and ran out into the woods. Police could not find his heart, an eyeball, and parts of lung (I think. I am rummaging about in the dark recesses of my memory). All guesses as to where they went pointed to the man's stomach. He said the man was the devil, and that God had told him to do what he did. But perhaps this man, like Michael Myers and Leatherface, are simply the channeling of the devil himself.
Enjoy the BBQ.
3/4
The story is short and sweet: two siblings and their three friends head to the middle of Bumblescum or some such place in order to check on the grave of their grandfather, as there have been reports of grave robbers in the area. They become stranded at the old property of their family when their van runs out of gas--a property which happens to neighbor a house of cannibals. During the course of the night the five are terrorized by Leatherface, a walking mountain in a ladies wig, who squeals like a pig through his deformed mouth and kills them off using a mallet and a chainsaw. A really lady-killer.
Those who fall under the capable hand of Leatherface are lucky, though, because the rest of the family are a different piece of work entirely. There is incredibly small setup--excepting an extremely creepy van ride with a hitchhiker--for a long and relentless payoff. There are very few "gotcha!" moments, thank God. I don't think I could have handled much more than what I was already dealing with. This and Deliverance have pretty much sealed the stereotype of anyone living outside of a major city below the Bible Belt as a bunch of inbred terrors; I personally could not be paid enough to stop at Jimbo's Gas Station to take a leak, and would use a bottle without hesitation.
This has got a documentary/lost footage type feel to the camera work, a quality befitting the low budget and really adding to the sense of dread that a house like theirs could exist in some remote, backwater part of the United States, with a family ready to snatch up unsuspecting passersby and turn them into sausages. A huge difference between this film and so many others like it is that most of the characters die off within the first half of the film. We know that they will--how much fun would that be if everyone ran faster than Leatherface and his purse-carrying brother?--but I was confused how they could possibly fill an entire third act with so few players remaining. O, how I suffered for my doubts. The second half was so much scarier than the first, as dinner is served and we are met with introductions. Grandpa looks healthy.
There is something really unsettling about this film and others like Halloween, where there really seems to be little cause for gruesome, unending violence. The characters in both films had really no mental capacity to consider their actions, and therefore remained nothing more than senseless vehicles of evil. What Hooper and John Carpenter have been able to do (Carpenter much better, but that's a review soon to come) is channel that fear into something that doesn't become tedious or gimmicky, and instead remains somewhat in the realm of plausibility even though we might shrug it off as cheap entertainment. I read an article a couple of years ago about a paranoid schizophrenic on a bus who went on a rampage, stabbed a man opposite him several dozen times, stole some of his organs, and ran out into the woods. Police could not find his heart, an eyeball, and parts of lung (I think. I am rummaging about in the dark recesses of my memory). All guesses as to where they went pointed to the man's stomach. He said the man was the devil, and that God had told him to do what he did. But perhaps this man, like Michael Myers and Leatherface, are simply the channeling of the devil himself.
Enjoy the BBQ.
3/4
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Blue Valentine (2010)
I first heard about this film on NPR last year around awards season. They were talking to writer/director Derek Cianfrance about his work, and the trouble that he had in getting this project off the ground. I was surprised, and a little exasperated to hear that he and his fellow writers made 67 drafts of the script over the course of about a decade or so, and then only had a "skeleton" from which scenes were to be built around. A skeleton is something that one makes in a week, not 520. This sort of "artistry" tires me, but it sounded like a compelling film, and Michelle Williams did such a fine job in Brokeback Mountain, that seeing her in leading role was something of interest to me, especially when the film was generating so much critical buzz.
A year has passed and I have only just watched it, but I remember that NPR story quite clearly. I must say that script was very much a skeleton, and that places an incredibly disappointing light on Cianfrance as a screenwriter. This film was very much a showcase for the immense talents of Williams and Ryan Gosling (then relatively unknown, but now a superstar) as a married couple whose relationship is falling apart right in front of their eyes. It is an emotional film with a gritty, indie kind of feel, but its power comes from the spontaneity of the actors and their abilities to improv, which they obviously did in the majority of their scenes.
Gosling plays Dean, an artistically talented young man with no education and no real prospects for the future. He talks like he is from the Bronx, but he is from Florida. He works as a mover, and upon helping an old man move into a retirement home he meets Cindy. One of the inspired parts of this film is the talks on sex and relationships that he has with his moving buddy, a big black guy with sex on the mind but always something interesting to say. He discusses with this man the nature of 'love at first sight', and has also come to the conclusion that men are more romantic than women. That certainly seems to be the case with Dean, for despite his rather tough-guy exterior he has a tender soul, and much love to give.
Cindy needs some wooing. She is promiscuous, but oddly guarded. Her defenses are no match for Dean's charms however, and with an unexpected maternal surprise the two are married. Dean says to Black Mover Guy that he saw her once and felt as though he knew her, to which Black Mover Guy responds, "but you don't know her." They married very quickly, but what a honeymoon period they shared. This films takes much time to examine the little moments that two people experience when they feel the rush of love, and how every small gesture can be interpreted as something beautiful. It made me think of a Humphrey Bogart film, In a Lonely Place, where he plays an alcoholic, abusive writer. There is a scene where he makes some breakfast for his love interest and tells her about writing a love scene. He says writing "I love you, I love you, I love you" does not make a good love scene, but writing a scene in which one person makes eggs for the other is. It was a beautiful and revealing scene which offers much to this sort of film which examines they way that people fall in and out of love with one another.
The good times are sure to end, and they do. This film jumps back and forth between the past and the extreme love that they showed one another, and the present where we see the final days of their marriage. We know where the film is heading from about the first ten minutes or so, but it makes it no easier to watch, and seeing them in the past we are constantly reminded of their love. We pray that somehow they will remember too, but of course they do not. There is no explanation as to why their marriage didn't work out. Somewhere along the way the magic died--for one of them anyway.
They have a young girl, Frankie, who Dean treats as both a princess and an emotional equal, and Cindy, now a nurse and the breadwinner of the family, must contend with having two children essentially. Dean's love for her has not changed, but is he wrong in trying to keep a dog alive which has been hit by a car? The two try to share one night of romance together in a sleazy sex motel, and although there are the faintest glimmers that a love once existed they only emerge after enough drinks are consumed, and then it is only a glimpse.
This film makes no statement about love. Cianfrance said that he did not know why it was that their marriage fell apart, and that is the biggest fault. Every film should have a point of view, and he was simply confused about his. He created an alternately beautiful and depressing film with no explanation for the disparate nature between the two. I will not accept that his reasoning was that sometimes we cannot know why a love fails; he needs to make a statement. Otherwise, what is the point? The audience is left no better or worse than when they entered the theater, and the filmmaker has wasted two hours that should have been used to make a statement. That is the point of art.
2.5/4 I give it as a high a score as this simply because Gosling and Williams were able to take a bunch of nonsense and form real characters of incredible depth. This film belongs to them.
A year has passed and I have only just watched it, but I remember that NPR story quite clearly. I must say that script was very much a skeleton, and that places an incredibly disappointing light on Cianfrance as a screenwriter. This film was very much a showcase for the immense talents of Williams and Ryan Gosling (then relatively unknown, but now a superstar) as a married couple whose relationship is falling apart right in front of their eyes. It is an emotional film with a gritty, indie kind of feel, but its power comes from the spontaneity of the actors and their abilities to improv, which they obviously did in the majority of their scenes.
Gosling plays Dean, an artistically talented young man with no education and no real prospects for the future. He talks like he is from the Bronx, but he is from Florida. He works as a mover, and upon helping an old man move into a retirement home he meets Cindy. One of the inspired parts of this film is the talks on sex and relationships that he has with his moving buddy, a big black guy with sex on the mind but always something interesting to say. He discusses with this man the nature of 'love at first sight', and has also come to the conclusion that men are more romantic than women. That certainly seems to be the case with Dean, for despite his rather tough-guy exterior he has a tender soul, and much love to give.
Cindy needs some wooing. She is promiscuous, but oddly guarded. Her defenses are no match for Dean's charms however, and with an unexpected maternal surprise the two are married. Dean says to Black Mover Guy that he saw her once and felt as though he knew her, to which Black Mover Guy responds, "but you don't know her." They married very quickly, but what a honeymoon period they shared. This films takes much time to examine the little moments that two people experience when they feel the rush of love, and how every small gesture can be interpreted as something beautiful. It made me think of a Humphrey Bogart film, In a Lonely Place, where he plays an alcoholic, abusive writer. There is a scene where he makes some breakfast for his love interest and tells her about writing a love scene. He says writing "I love you, I love you, I love you" does not make a good love scene, but writing a scene in which one person makes eggs for the other is. It was a beautiful and revealing scene which offers much to this sort of film which examines they way that people fall in and out of love with one another.
The good times are sure to end, and they do. This film jumps back and forth between the past and the extreme love that they showed one another, and the present where we see the final days of their marriage. We know where the film is heading from about the first ten minutes or so, but it makes it no easier to watch, and seeing them in the past we are constantly reminded of their love. We pray that somehow they will remember too, but of course they do not. There is no explanation as to why their marriage didn't work out. Somewhere along the way the magic died--for one of them anyway.
They have a young girl, Frankie, who Dean treats as both a princess and an emotional equal, and Cindy, now a nurse and the breadwinner of the family, must contend with having two children essentially. Dean's love for her has not changed, but is he wrong in trying to keep a dog alive which has been hit by a car? The two try to share one night of romance together in a sleazy sex motel, and although there are the faintest glimmers that a love once existed they only emerge after enough drinks are consumed, and then it is only a glimpse.
This film makes no statement about love. Cianfrance said that he did not know why it was that their marriage fell apart, and that is the biggest fault. Every film should have a point of view, and he was simply confused about his. He created an alternately beautiful and depressing film with no explanation for the disparate nature between the two. I will not accept that his reasoning was that sometimes we cannot know why a love fails; he needs to make a statement. Otherwise, what is the point? The audience is left no better or worse than when they entered the theater, and the filmmaker has wasted two hours that should have been used to make a statement. That is the point of art.
2.5/4 I give it as a high a score as this simply because Gosling and Williams were able to take a bunch of nonsense and form real characters of incredible depth. This film belongs to them.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Drive (2011)
Going into this film I was not aware that it won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. Having seen the movie I am not at all surprised, but had you told me a film called "Drive", whose trailer shows nothing but cars, a kiss, and some general, jerky action moves, had been nominated for the Palme d'Or, I might have held your statement with a degree of distrust. Now I believe that had Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (I keep referring back to this film, I know. It's just that good.) not come out this year, then Drive should have been the recipient of the top accolade. This is a masterful work of genre-blending, and a brilliant combination of art house and action for the above-average movie watcher.
After a breathtaking heist scene opening, Ryan Gosling's Driver is explained. His name is Driver because that is what he does--practically all that he does. By day he is a stunt driver for Hollywood films and an auto mechanic, and by night he serves as the getaway driver for small robberies. He doesn't need the money; his humble style of living shows that he does this for some other odd reason. Initially I was inclined to think that he was simply a victim of circumstance. His boss (Bryan Cranston) is a little man with a gimp who never had any luck, and spends his time with certain people where at least a little bit of luck might come in handy. I hoped that Driver fell into dealings with the mob because he was around them and was given no other choice.
The first thirty or so minutes would seem to support that theory--maybe even longer if you keep good faith in bad situations. He falls for a young woman who lives down the hall from him. Irene is played by the lovely Carey Mulligan (An Education), a girl with a troubled past, a son, and a husband soon to be out of prison. The brief time in which the two get to know each other is sparse on words, but words would get in the way. Their chemistry practically oozes out of the screen and we realize that we are watching deep, unconditional love. Both of these actors are young, but they are so far ahead of the others in their age range. Gosling is already proving to be the actor of this year, and Mulligan was rooked out of her Oscar in 2010. But I digress...
Irene's husband is let out of jail and quickly falls into debt with the mob. They threaten his family. Driver has become attached to the girl and her son dangerously fast, and he acts from the gut. He agrees to help Irene's husband get the money to pay his debt, on assurances that the family will be left alone. Like always he only agrees to drive, he carries no gun, and he gives the man five minutes to get the cash from a local pawnshop. But the heist goes terribly awry, and Driver soon finds himself with two dead bodies and a million dollars in cash. Irene's life is in terrible danger, and Driver realizes that the only way to save her is to go on the offensive.
This is not a car film as advertised. But it is a very tense action film with amazing sequences of intense violence and a pace that is methodical and unrelenting. This will disappoint some viewers going into the theater to get cheap thrills from action for the sake of action. They will find none of that here. Everything in this film happens for a reason, but is done with such a ferocity that hopefully those open to the experience will find something about it to embrace. The graphic nature of the violence will be a turnoff for some, but I found the hyper-stylization beautiful.
This film is one of those rare pieces which is able to take its influences from other films and genres without being restricted by them. The obvious 50's noir plot takes an unconventional twist by being soaked in 80's glam, saturated with purples, golds, and greens, and shot with the unconventional artistic eye that Kubrick and Tarantino would be proud of. This films imagery is powerful, and looks like pop art gone horribly, sublimely wrong.
The emotion of the first third of the film wanes some by the end. It has to, it is not a romance. But watch and remind yourself that the acts--the heinous acts--that Driver commits are all for a girl. And here we are brought back to my original thought of how he got mixed up in the business. He takes a life more than once, and he does it unflinchingly. Gosling is mesmerizing in this film, and I thought at first that I knew everything that he was thinking. By the end I had no idea who he was and he frightened me very much. Is he the good-natured guy that he is around Irene, or the savage killer he is before his enemies? Surely he can't be both. Is it right to sympathize with him? Perhaps the engine beneath that beautiful body is in need of some serious repair.
4/4
After a breathtaking heist scene opening, Ryan Gosling's Driver is explained. His name is Driver because that is what he does--practically all that he does. By day he is a stunt driver for Hollywood films and an auto mechanic, and by night he serves as the getaway driver for small robberies. He doesn't need the money; his humble style of living shows that he does this for some other odd reason. Initially I was inclined to think that he was simply a victim of circumstance. His boss (Bryan Cranston) is a little man with a gimp who never had any luck, and spends his time with certain people where at least a little bit of luck might come in handy. I hoped that Driver fell into dealings with the mob because he was around them and was given no other choice.
The first thirty or so minutes would seem to support that theory--maybe even longer if you keep good faith in bad situations. He falls for a young woman who lives down the hall from him. Irene is played by the lovely Carey Mulligan (An Education), a girl with a troubled past, a son, and a husband soon to be out of prison. The brief time in which the two get to know each other is sparse on words, but words would get in the way. Their chemistry practically oozes out of the screen and we realize that we are watching deep, unconditional love. Both of these actors are young, but they are so far ahead of the others in their age range. Gosling is already proving to be the actor of this year, and Mulligan was rooked out of her Oscar in 2010. But I digress...
Irene's husband is let out of jail and quickly falls into debt with the mob. They threaten his family. Driver has become attached to the girl and her son dangerously fast, and he acts from the gut. He agrees to help Irene's husband get the money to pay his debt, on assurances that the family will be left alone. Like always he only agrees to drive, he carries no gun, and he gives the man five minutes to get the cash from a local pawnshop. But the heist goes terribly awry, and Driver soon finds himself with two dead bodies and a million dollars in cash. Irene's life is in terrible danger, and Driver realizes that the only way to save her is to go on the offensive.
This is not a car film as advertised. But it is a very tense action film with amazing sequences of intense violence and a pace that is methodical and unrelenting. This will disappoint some viewers going into the theater to get cheap thrills from action for the sake of action. They will find none of that here. Everything in this film happens for a reason, but is done with such a ferocity that hopefully those open to the experience will find something about it to embrace. The graphic nature of the violence will be a turnoff for some, but I found the hyper-stylization beautiful.
This film is one of those rare pieces which is able to take its influences from other films and genres without being restricted by them. The obvious 50's noir plot takes an unconventional twist by being soaked in 80's glam, saturated with purples, golds, and greens, and shot with the unconventional artistic eye that Kubrick and Tarantino would be proud of. This films imagery is powerful, and looks like pop art gone horribly, sublimely wrong.
The emotion of the first third of the film wanes some by the end. It has to, it is not a romance. But watch and remind yourself that the acts--the heinous acts--that Driver commits are all for a girl. And here we are brought back to my original thought of how he got mixed up in the business. He takes a life more than once, and he does it unflinchingly. Gosling is mesmerizing in this film, and I thought at first that I knew everything that he was thinking. By the end I had no idea who he was and he frightened me very much. Is he the good-natured guy that he is around Irene, or the savage killer he is before his enemies? Surely he can't be both. Is it right to sympathize with him? Perhaps the engine beneath that beautiful body is in need of some serious repair.
4/4
Sunday, October 16, 2011
The Thing (1982)
If one decides to broaden fear into its most basic categories it can be divided into fear of the unseen, and fear of the misunderstood. Basically a lack of information causes anxiety, panic, and fear. John Carpenter's The Thing brings both of those fears disgustingly to life as a team of scientists studying something or other about the ice come across an entity beyond their comprehension.
The film opens with two Norwegians flying a helicopter through the snow trying to shoot a husky dog. For what reason could they be doing this? The dog seems harmless enough. Through a misunderstanding the two men die, leaving our American crew to wonder what sent them over the edge. Upon finding the Norwegian base the men discover that an alien craft was uncovered, and a block of ice, tens of thousands of years old, which used to contain an organism is empty. They also stumble upon a charred, mutilated, misshapen blob of a creature which looks like multiple people stirred together. Oh, and there are no surviving Norwegians. That's important.
As it happens, that dog isn't so friendly--in fact it's not a dog. What was uncovered was a frozen alien with the ability to digest its victims, mimic their DNA, and assume their shape perfectly. There are maybe ten men at the Antarctic camp, and once the thing begins to assimilate itself among the group there is no telling who is human and who is something entirely new. The men turn on each other as it becomes a witch hunt, and we are then presented with both fears: fear of the unknown, and the fear of the unseen.
When we do see the creature--which is absolutely terrifying, I would like to say--it seems an amalgam, not only of the animals and people that it has ingested (what a horrific thought!), but also resembles a combination of slugs, spiders, snakes, sea creatures, giant carnivores, and everything else we hate and are disgusted by. Each time we learn something new about it the thing surprises us in some different and sickening way.
The characters in this film are acted without too much zeal, but I forgive them because they are written without much personality. The point of them being the number that they are in the location that they are is so that characters cannot be added in, but that there are enough of them that the creature has a good long time to be able to pick them off, one by one--or so that the men can pick themselves off. But that isn't nearly as fun as watching a man's arms get bitten off by another "man"'s stomach.
The makeup and affects are really amazing. I had nightmares about the creature after watching it for the first time simply because the creatures looked so real and horrible. This is a pretty simple simple horror film, but John Carpenter knows what makes people jump and cringe, and he relishes in that knowledge. This is a great film to watch now that we are approaching Halloween.
3.5/4
The film opens with two Norwegians flying a helicopter through the snow trying to shoot a husky dog. For what reason could they be doing this? The dog seems harmless enough. Through a misunderstanding the two men die, leaving our American crew to wonder what sent them over the edge. Upon finding the Norwegian base the men discover that an alien craft was uncovered, and a block of ice, tens of thousands of years old, which used to contain an organism is empty. They also stumble upon a charred, mutilated, misshapen blob of a creature which looks like multiple people stirred together. Oh, and there are no surviving Norwegians. That's important.
As it happens, that dog isn't so friendly--in fact it's not a dog. What was uncovered was a frozen alien with the ability to digest its victims, mimic their DNA, and assume their shape perfectly. There are maybe ten men at the Antarctic camp, and once the thing begins to assimilate itself among the group there is no telling who is human and who is something entirely new. The men turn on each other as it becomes a witch hunt, and we are then presented with both fears: fear of the unknown, and the fear of the unseen.
When we do see the creature--which is absolutely terrifying, I would like to say--it seems an amalgam, not only of the animals and people that it has ingested (what a horrific thought!), but also resembles a combination of slugs, spiders, snakes, sea creatures, giant carnivores, and everything else we hate and are disgusted by. Each time we learn something new about it the thing surprises us in some different and sickening way.
The characters in this film are acted without too much zeal, but I forgive them because they are written without much personality. The point of them being the number that they are in the location that they are is so that characters cannot be added in, but that there are enough of them that the creature has a good long time to be able to pick them off, one by one--or so that the men can pick themselves off. But that isn't nearly as fun as watching a man's arms get bitten off by another "man"'s stomach.
The makeup and affects are really amazing. I had nightmares about the creature after watching it for the first time simply because the creatures looked so real and horrible. This is a pretty simple simple horror film, but John Carpenter knows what makes people jump and cringe, and he relishes in that knowledge. This is a great film to watch now that we are approaching Halloween.
3.5/4
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Annie Hall (1977)
How does one even tackle the best romantic comedy, and possibly one of the best comedies in general, ever made? I suppose at the beginning would be a good place. Woody Allen finally decided to take a step up from the slapdash comedies he was doing before and made the commitment to say what he wanted to say. It turns out that what he wanted to say was pretty damn funny. Allen writes, directs, and stars, playing the character Alvy Singer, but who should have been named Woody Allen. This man is a neurotic, paranoid, hypochondriac, intellectual, manic depressive, pessimistic, self-loathing, little Jewish comic living in New York--essentially the consummate Jewish stereotype. Allen knows who he is, his family, where he comes from, and he embraces it full force to perfect results.
It is a story about his life, and the romance that he shared with Annie Hall. What a gal. La dee dah. A ditsy, wannabe singer, crazy driver, lover of life but experiencer of none, bumbling, awkward, absolutely lovable girl, Diane Keaton plays Annie with such an easy charm. A little bit of research informs me that Keaton's actual name is Diane Hall, and her nickname is Annie. How similar the actress is to her character I do not know never having met Keaton face to face, but it is an interesting factoid. What a strange paring the two of them are, but you would never want to take your eyes away from the screen for two seconds. They are just so perfect together that it seems amazing to me that Allen could write such a couple.
The two have their ups and downs like any couple because they both have enough flaws to fill a bathtub. Alvy, for instance, has been seeing an analyst for 15 years. Annie has troubles with introductions. Their quirks and idiosyncrasies blend and rage among themselves, but at the end of the day they complete each other. This film relishes not only in the pivotal point in their relationships--the introduction at the tennis court, the first time they kiss, his proposal of marriage, the breakups--but so much of the little moments that perhaps get overlooked as being banal. One of the most famous scenes from Annie Hall takes place in a kitchen when the two of them try to cook lobster. All of their lobsters fall on the floor, and it becomes a circus trying to wrangle them into the pot. Was it necessary? No. But was it essential? Absolutely.
Apart from this there are other wonderful little bits that Allen throws in for audience amusement. Flashbacks are seen by present day Alvy, and there are moments, for instance the hilarious scene in the movie theater with Marshall McLuhan, in which Alvy addresses the audience. That scene involved taking pulling the famous communication theorist seemingly out of thin air to shut up a pedantic Columbia University professor "spitting" his opinions about Fellini all over Alvy's neck. Also, I would challenge any critic of Allen's work to watch the scene in his elementary school classroom in which the children say where they have ended up as adults, listen to the little girl say, "I'm into leather," and you tell me that this is not one of the funniest films ever made. It would never be said, unless the jokes simply went so far over that person's head that they were not even aware of them.
I feel as though this film ushered in a new form of comedic style into mainstream cinema. I can't be sure that I have come across something comparable in style before Annie Hall, and I think that that is really telling about the impact that Allen has had in the film industry. It seems that most everything that he has done has been at least 'good' if not exceptional. And because of the fact that he writes all that he directs I think that his work is taken for granted which is such a shame.
This film is an absolute cornerstone of 70's film, and a must for anyone who likes to laugh. I saw this film a few years ago and was too young to really understand the many, many references that Allen makes, and to understand the ways in which this movie excels. Watching it again seemed so fresh, and I laughed almost constantly. This is a benchmark, not only for the work from Allen--which he has been able to touch a couple of other times--but for comedy writers in general. There will be few people able to contend with something like this, as a Woody Allen or Mel Brooks comes along...well, very rarely, so that when thinking about Allen's work, both old and new, recognize the fact that he really changed the rules of the game. That is something to be inspired by and to cherish.
4/4
It is a story about his life, and the romance that he shared with Annie Hall. What a gal. La dee dah. A ditsy, wannabe singer, crazy driver, lover of life but experiencer of none, bumbling, awkward, absolutely lovable girl, Diane Keaton plays Annie with such an easy charm. A little bit of research informs me that Keaton's actual name is Diane Hall, and her nickname is Annie. How similar the actress is to her character I do not know never having met Keaton face to face, but it is an interesting factoid. What a strange paring the two of them are, but you would never want to take your eyes away from the screen for two seconds. They are just so perfect together that it seems amazing to me that Allen could write such a couple.
The two have their ups and downs like any couple because they both have enough flaws to fill a bathtub. Alvy, for instance, has been seeing an analyst for 15 years. Annie has troubles with introductions. Their quirks and idiosyncrasies blend and rage among themselves, but at the end of the day they complete each other. This film relishes not only in the pivotal point in their relationships--the introduction at the tennis court, the first time they kiss, his proposal of marriage, the breakups--but so much of the little moments that perhaps get overlooked as being banal. One of the most famous scenes from Annie Hall takes place in a kitchen when the two of them try to cook lobster. All of their lobsters fall on the floor, and it becomes a circus trying to wrangle them into the pot. Was it necessary? No. But was it essential? Absolutely.
Apart from this there are other wonderful little bits that Allen throws in for audience amusement. Flashbacks are seen by present day Alvy, and there are moments, for instance the hilarious scene in the movie theater with Marshall McLuhan, in which Alvy addresses the audience. That scene involved taking pulling the famous communication theorist seemingly out of thin air to shut up a pedantic Columbia University professor "spitting" his opinions about Fellini all over Alvy's neck. Also, I would challenge any critic of Allen's work to watch the scene in his elementary school classroom in which the children say where they have ended up as adults, listen to the little girl say, "I'm into leather," and you tell me that this is not one of the funniest films ever made. It would never be said, unless the jokes simply went so far over that person's head that they were not even aware of them.
I feel as though this film ushered in a new form of comedic style into mainstream cinema. I can't be sure that I have come across something comparable in style before Annie Hall, and I think that that is really telling about the impact that Allen has had in the film industry. It seems that most everything that he has done has been at least 'good' if not exceptional. And because of the fact that he writes all that he directs I think that his work is taken for granted which is such a shame.
This film is an absolute cornerstone of 70's film, and a must for anyone who likes to laugh. I saw this film a few years ago and was too young to really understand the many, many references that Allen makes, and to understand the ways in which this movie excels. Watching it again seemed so fresh, and I laughed almost constantly. This is a benchmark, not only for the work from Allen--which he has been able to touch a couple of other times--but for comedy writers in general. There will be few people able to contend with something like this, as a Woody Allen or Mel Brooks comes along...well, very rarely, so that when thinking about Allen's work, both old and new, recognize the fact that he really changed the rules of the game. That is something to be inspired by and to cherish.
4/4
Friday, October 14, 2011
Separate Tables (1958)
This is a lovely film about the redeeming qualities of love even when it is challenged by societies' taboos and uptightness. Set in the most peculiar location, the Beauregard Hotel, lonely souls, both resident and transient converge and desperately try to find companionship, though social politics amongst the group of about ten or so make it nearly impossible for them to do so. It is based off of two one-act plays by Sir Terence Rattigan giving it a structure that is at once its hindrance and its savior. The real prize in this film is the fantastic performances; every single one of the cast is stellar, and with a film based on the dining room table style of drama performances are almost as important as their words.
The first story is one of a rekindled romance between a failed politician played by Burt Lancaster, and his ex-wife played by the aging, but still beautiful Rita Hayworth. Lancaster is John Malcolm, an alcoholic who has lived in the hotel for a number of years. His antics are appreciated by the young folk--of which there are few--but the stuffy old ladies, Mrs. Railton-Bell and Lady Matheson (played deliciously by Gladys Cooper and Cathleen Nesbitt) are less than pleased. Mrs. Railton-Bell who is Queen Bee will stand for none of his nonsense and shameless drinking. But Pat Cooper, the owner of the hotel (Wendy Hiller), a firm woman with sharp eyes and disdain for mud loves him and is secretly engaged to be married to him.
What a mess when John's ex, the lovely, traveled, rich supermodel of yesterday comes to surprise him. The love triangle, one side practically unheard of until the end is rich, complex, and heartbreaking. Unfortunately I felt as though I loved all of the characters so a choice being made by John was very hard to watch. Hiller is absolutely wonderful as the silent watchdog of the hotel. How it must hurt her to help a woman so far beyond her in luxury and beauty, knowing full well the woman's motive for entering her hotel. Originally the supermodel is the enemy, but the thing about the Beauregard Hotel is that everyone there is a lonely spirit, and in the end my heart was melted.
The second story--which goes on simultaneously even though it was written several years apart from the other --is far more interesting, and much more complex. I do not believe that its characters were given enough time on screen to fully explore the situations or their involvements with the other people they interact with, and that is sad because the performances were so genuine and the material so intriguing. It is roughly about two misfits: the quiet, mousy Sibyl, a young woman who has been domineered into submission by her mother, Queen Bee. She finds friendship, and possibly more, with Major Angus Pollock, a retired soldier of WWII who regales her with stories of his time spent in Sandhurst and his campaigns in North Africa. But he never seems to get the story quite right.
A scandal in the paper threatens to destroy their friendship, brought to light by Queen Bee, whose stuffy, old age morals conflict with the way in which society is moving. She keeps the hotel under her thumb, but her Draconian measures can only last for so long. Sibyl is such an unfortunate character, but whose longing to see and explore and experience life gives hope to the audience, and we know that things can't possibly turn out all bad for her. She is the most unusual female lead, as opposed to Rita Hayworth's Ann Shankland, a very typical heroine of the 50's Hollywood glamour period. Sibyl's timidness, however, is what makes her so endearing, and the power play between her and her mother is absolutely fascinating.
There are so many good things about this film that it feels a shame to mention the bad. It is short--only an hour and half long, and the content suffers for it. There are too many characters and it takes such a long time to introduce all of them and what their relationships are to one another, not to mention the hierarchy of the hotel, that by the time the audience gets to sink its teeth into the content the film is over. Another ten or fifteen minutes at least would have been appreciated. Also, some of this precious time is wasted on characters that have absolutely no importance at all, except maybe brief stints of comic relief. Further, a point that this film hints at is the writer's distaste for an old-school way of dealing with topics like sex. Perhaps "hints" is the wrong word. It possibly "thumps" that point across the heads of the audience. Sometimes it works very powerfully, but other times it is simply irksome.
I think that this film would have been wonderful if it had simply focused more on the second story. The first is a quite traditional love story involving betrayal and love that never died, but the second is like Marty, it is a film with genuine, if unusual characters who try and make something out of nothing, which we have all attempted at some point or another. Lies and deceit are forgiven when motives come forth, and I think that that plot was something very special.
3/4
The first story is one of a rekindled romance between a failed politician played by Burt Lancaster, and his ex-wife played by the aging, but still beautiful Rita Hayworth. Lancaster is John Malcolm, an alcoholic who has lived in the hotel for a number of years. His antics are appreciated by the young folk--of which there are few--but the stuffy old ladies, Mrs. Railton-Bell and Lady Matheson (played deliciously by Gladys Cooper and Cathleen Nesbitt) are less than pleased. Mrs. Railton-Bell who is Queen Bee will stand for none of his nonsense and shameless drinking. But Pat Cooper, the owner of the hotel (Wendy Hiller), a firm woman with sharp eyes and disdain for mud loves him and is secretly engaged to be married to him.
What a mess when John's ex, the lovely, traveled, rich supermodel of yesterday comes to surprise him. The love triangle, one side practically unheard of until the end is rich, complex, and heartbreaking. Unfortunately I felt as though I loved all of the characters so a choice being made by John was very hard to watch. Hiller is absolutely wonderful as the silent watchdog of the hotel. How it must hurt her to help a woman so far beyond her in luxury and beauty, knowing full well the woman's motive for entering her hotel. Originally the supermodel is the enemy, but the thing about the Beauregard Hotel is that everyone there is a lonely spirit, and in the end my heart was melted.
The second story--which goes on simultaneously even though it was written several years apart from the other --is far more interesting, and much more complex. I do not believe that its characters were given enough time on screen to fully explore the situations or their involvements with the other people they interact with, and that is sad because the performances were so genuine and the material so intriguing. It is roughly about two misfits: the quiet, mousy Sibyl, a young woman who has been domineered into submission by her mother, Queen Bee. She finds friendship, and possibly more, with Major Angus Pollock, a retired soldier of WWII who regales her with stories of his time spent in Sandhurst and his campaigns in North Africa. But he never seems to get the story quite right.
A scandal in the paper threatens to destroy their friendship, brought to light by Queen Bee, whose stuffy, old age morals conflict with the way in which society is moving. She keeps the hotel under her thumb, but her Draconian measures can only last for so long. Sibyl is such an unfortunate character, but whose longing to see and explore and experience life gives hope to the audience, and we know that things can't possibly turn out all bad for her. She is the most unusual female lead, as opposed to Rita Hayworth's Ann Shankland, a very typical heroine of the 50's Hollywood glamour period. Sibyl's timidness, however, is what makes her so endearing, and the power play between her and her mother is absolutely fascinating.
There are so many good things about this film that it feels a shame to mention the bad. It is short--only an hour and half long, and the content suffers for it. There are too many characters and it takes such a long time to introduce all of them and what their relationships are to one another, not to mention the hierarchy of the hotel, that by the time the audience gets to sink its teeth into the content the film is over. Another ten or fifteen minutes at least would have been appreciated. Also, some of this precious time is wasted on characters that have absolutely no importance at all, except maybe brief stints of comic relief. Further, a point that this film hints at is the writer's distaste for an old-school way of dealing with topics like sex. Perhaps "hints" is the wrong word. It possibly "thumps" that point across the heads of the audience. Sometimes it works very powerfully, but other times it is simply irksome.
I think that this film would have been wonderful if it had simply focused more on the second story. The first is a quite traditional love story involving betrayal and love that never died, but the second is like Marty, it is a film with genuine, if unusual characters who try and make something out of nothing, which we have all attempted at some point or another. Lies and deceit are forgiven when motives come forth, and I think that that plot was something very special.
3/4
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Leaving the cinema after viewing this film I heard a woman behind me say, "My head is so full!" And indeed it was--mine was too. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy makes the assumption that its audience is there to be challenged, and presents us with a difficult and beautiful culmination of cerebral storytelling and immense performances. Here is a spy film for the intellectual film-goer; I assure you there will be minimal talking from the peanut gallery in the theatre--everyone will be glued to the screen trying frantically to keep up with spies who are far too sharp for Joe and his family, the Schmo's.
Set in a tobacco and steely gray Cold War Britain circa 1973, a semi-retired spy, Mr. Smiley, is brought back into Central Intelligence, what is known as "The Circus", to flush out a mole who has infiltrated their operations at the highest level. Five are suspect, one implausible though the thought did flash through my mind at the onset, and it is up to Smiley with all of his resources that the audience is kept wondering about to find the traitor.
This film has none of the glamour or pulse-pounding action that American spy films have, but it looses none of the taught sense of urgency that comes from Hollywood films. The difference between the latter and this very British sort of espionage thriller is that the events in this film seem far more real, and much more deadly. The men in this film have very real limitations to the intelligence, their skill sets, and the emotional strength that never seems to end with characters like James Bond. There is a scene in which a younger spy must steal some documents from a place that is guarded, but not exactly high-level security. He pulls a fast move and succeeds, but it is clear that he is shaking from nerves. Little extras such as this strip away the cliches of the genre exposing the confusion as well as the true lack of incentive to remain loyal to the democracies, which are present many other Cold War movies.
That last point is challenged in so many ways by this film, and the actors giving their explanations of their own failings as a pro-Westerner are so spot on that it is unnerving. "McCarthyism" is an ugly term, but a film like this makes it seem not so irrational. I am very much a person who looks at film in much the same way that I look at paintings, or music, or any other artistic medium that can channel the undercurrents of a time and place, and illustrate sentiments about particular historical events. Film is an area that I feel is underused when studying social views in history. Even if this film is fictionalized and is made forty years after the period in which it is set, it still represents a particular way of thinking and of viewing a dark time in the history of the United Kingdom.
This film is very much a outlet for some truly praiseworthy performances, particularly that of Gary Oldman. He is an actor that consistently produces good work to the point that he is almost taken for granted. Vehicles like this film should be seen on a larger circuit to get Oldman into the spotlight more often. As George Smiley he is icy cold, observant, and far smarter than those he deals with. He is a man of few words and fewer actions, but his fixed gaze brings him insight into the inner workings of man. If only it could be turned on himself I wonder what he would see? As one character points out he has a blind spot, and that is his failed marriage. It offers a dimension to this character that runs very deep, but is explored so briefly it's fascinating.
Everyone else was perfectly cast as well, even if I was not doing mental gymnastics fast enough to figure out their importance. Many relationships were intriguing, and I wish that they had been explored further, if for no other reason that to give its supremely talented British cast including Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, and John Hurt more time to shine. It strikes me that I watch too many movies when I can guess the outcome of a film like this while not knowing how the characters are reaching the same conclusion. I knew how it would end simply because I did, but for Smiley it was far more complex and he was not able to simply jump over the middle as I did.
Emotionally this film is distant, perhaps not even present. It presents fallible characters, but does not seem to care about them one way or the other. This is matched by how beautifully it is shot, but with a result that seems mechanical and full of shadows. I like this film very much (though I do need to watch it a second time), but unfortunately it will not resonate with a larger audience.
3/4
Set in a tobacco and steely gray Cold War Britain circa 1973, a semi-retired spy, Mr. Smiley, is brought back into Central Intelligence, what is known as "The Circus", to flush out a mole who has infiltrated their operations at the highest level. Five are suspect, one implausible though the thought did flash through my mind at the onset, and it is up to Smiley with all of his resources that the audience is kept wondering about to find the traitor.
This film has none of the glamour or pulse-pounding action that American spy films have, but it looses none of the taught sense of urgency that comes from Hollywood films. The difference between the latter and this very British sort of espionage thriller is that the events in this film seem far more real, and much more deadly. The men in this film have very real limitations to the intelligence, their skill sets, and the emotional strength that never seems to end with characters like James Bond. There is a scene in which a younger spy must steal some documents from a place that is guarded, but not exactly high-level security. He pulls a fast move and succeeds, but it is clear that he is shaking from nerves. Little extras such as this strip away the cliches of the genre exposing the confusion as well as the true lack of incentive to remain loyal to the democracies, which are present many other Cold War movies.
That last point is challenged in so many ways by this film, and the actors giving their explanations of their own failings as a pro-Westerner are so spot on that it is unnerving. "McCarthyism" is an ugly term, but a film like this makes it seem not so irrational. I am very much a person who looks at film in much the same way that I look at paintings, or music, or any other artistic medium that can channel the undercurrents of a time and place, and illustrate sentiments about particular historical events. Film is an area that I feel is underused when studying social views in history. Even if this film is fictionalized and is made forty years after the period in which it is set, it still represents a particular way of thinking and of viewing a dark time in the history of the United Kingdom.
This film is very much a outlet for some truly praiseworthy performances, particularly that of Gary Oldman. He is an actor that consistently produces good work to the point that he is almost taken for granted. Vehicles like this film should be seen on a larger circuit to get Oldman into the spotlight more often. As George Smiley he is icy cold, observant, and far smarter than those he deals with. He is a man of few words and fewer actions, but his fixed gaze brings him insight into the inner workings of man. If only it could be turned on himself I wonder what he would see? As one character points out he has a blind spot, and that is his failed marriage. It offers a dimension to this character that runs very deep, but is explored so briefly it's fascinating.
Everyone else was perfectly cast as well, even if I was not doing mental gymnastics fast enough to figure out their importance. Many relationships were intriguing, and I wish that they had been explored further, if for no other reason that to give its supremely talented British cast including Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, and John Hurt more time to shine. It strikes me that I watch too many movies when I can guess the outcome of a film like this while not knowing how the characters are reaching the same conclusion. I knew how it would end simply because I did, but for Smiley it was far more complex and he was not able to simply jump over the middle as I did.
Emotionally this film is distant, perhaps not even present. It presents fallible characters, but does not seem to care about them one way or the other. This is matched by how beautifully it is shot, but with a result that seems mechanical and full of shadows. I like this film very much (though I do need to watch it a second time), but unfortunately it will not resonate with a larger audience.
3/4
Friday, October 7, 2011
Melancholia (2011)
This is a film that I have been incredibly excited about seeing for many months, ever since it premiered and made waves at the Cannes Film Festival. Directly lined against Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life which is a celebration of the creation and evolution of life, and even death, on a micro and macro-cosmic level, Melancholia was seen as the antithesis, a film about the end of the world. We know this from the onset, from the trailer even, and so I decided to approach watching this film on a purely emotional level, something much different than what I have done in the past, as I felt that this sort of topic could only really be discussed by feeling once the initial science is tossed aside.
To give a general sense of the film, I will first list the words that I jotted down at the beginning of the film, and then those at the end, hopefully giving a broad sense of the emotional journey that this film led me down. The beginning: grandeur, operatic, primal, poetic, bleak, chaos, melodramatic, paranoiac. The end: dead, bleak, black, depressive, fatalistic, pointless. That final word is one which I would like to stress, not only because of the futility of the actions of the characters as the planet Melancholia heads for a course to Earth, but also this is a fitting word for the film in general. My hopes were crushed with this film, as this was a pretentious, lugubrious work from a man who is having some very serious issues determining how his life fits with the rest of humanity.
The plot is simple: a planet that has been hiding behind the Sun has suddenly appeared, and seems to be on a trajectory to hit us. It does, of course; the opening sequence of the film is the collision, so there are no surprises at the end. The next two hours are spent examining a new bride, Justine (Kirsten Dunst), and her relationships with her family, particularly the already strained one with her sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg), as her humours are distorted by the approaching planet. This is absolutely a topic that I should have watched and been absorbed by, but director Lars von Trier's ugly view of the human condition made watching this film a particularly unenjoyable experience.
All of the characters in this film were petty, selfish, cold people focused on money, or holding on to grudges, or seeking to advance their careers. Nobody was out to help one another so all interactions turned into confrontation. For example, on Justine's wedding night both of her divorced parents attend the service. Her mother is one of the most despicable characters that I have seen written in a very long time. She comes to the wedding in a t-shirt and mopes about, muttering cruel insults under her breath all evening because she doesn't believe marriage can work. Deciding to give a speech, she stands before all of the guests and says that their wedding is a sham and will end up like her own. How could a situation like this ever happen in real life? People are not structured in such a way that they would intentionally make an ass out of themselves like that. Von Trier takes such a simplistically negative view of people which very much drained the majesty from the content.
I cannot think of a worse way to spend my final days on Earth than with people that I do not love, or even like. Knowing right from the start that the world was going to end, it makes sense that then the director should make some sort of attempt to have his audience feel something like sympathy, or compassion, or sadness for the fact that their family unit and all that they have worked for would soon becoming to a swift and violent end. But for me it was an overlong and at times painful wait for these miserable assortment of characters to finally get their comeuppance. I can only imagine how hard it was for these actors to navigate the improbable shifts in tone that von Trier wrote in. Especially Dunst (who won Best Actress at the Cannes) who had to feel her way from blushing bride, to disillusioned, spiteful, pessimistic child, to zombie-like invalid, to resigned prophet. There were so many changes in these characters that I had trouble following the paths in which they were taking. As an actor I was very confused.
I will say that visually this film is a masterpiece. The first and last ten minutes of the film were absolutely worthy of the content. The final quarter of Melancholia was actually quite good, but a grueling first and second act, including the punishingly overlong wedding sequence, made the vision moot. This will undoubtedly strike some as a work of art, and come awards season this will be a strong contender, but I take pleasure in knowing that there was Malick's work which was its equal in scope, but its superior in execution and genuine feeling.
2/4
To give a general sense of the film, I will first list the words that I jotted down at the beginning of the film, and then those at the end, hopefully giving a broad sense of the emotional journey that this film led me down. The beginning: grandeur, operatic, primal, poetic, bleak, chaos, melodramatic, paranoiac. The end: dead, bleak, black, depressive, fatalistic, pointless. That final word is one which I would like to stress, not only because of the futility of the actions of the characters as the planet Melancholia heads for a course to Earth, but also this is a fitting word for the film in general. My hopes were crushed with this film, as this was a pretentious, lugubrious work from a man who is having some very serious issues determining how his life fits with the rest of humanity.
The plot is simple: a planet that has been hiding behind the Sun has suddenly appeared, and seems to be on a trajectory to hit us. It does, of course; the opening sequence of the film is the collision, so there are no surprises at the end. The next two hours are spent examining a new bride, Justine (Kirsten Dunst), and her relationships with her family, particularly the already strained one with her sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg), as her humours are distorted by the approaching planet. This is absolutely a topic that I should have watched and been absorbed by, but director Lars von Trier's ugly view of the human condition made watching this film a particularly unenjoyable experience.
All of the characters in this film were petty, selfish, cold people focused on money, or holding on to grudges, or seeking to advance their careers. Nobody was out to help one another so all interactions turned into confrontation. For example, on Justine's wedding night both of her divorced parents attend the service. Her mother is one of the most despicable characters that I have seen written in a very long time. She comes to the wedding in a t-shirt and mopes about, muttering cruel insults under her breath all evening because she doesn't believe marriage can work. Deciding to give a speech, she stands before all of the guests and says that their wedding is a sham and will end up like her own. How could a situation like this ever happen in real life? People are not structured in such a way that they would intentionally make an ass out of themselves like that. Von Trier takes such a simplistically negative view of people which very much drained the majesty from the content.
I cannot think of a worse way to spend my final days on Earth than with people that I do not love, or even like. Knowing right from the start that the world was going to end, it makes sense that then the director should make some sort of attempt to have his audience feel something like sympathy, or compassion, or sadness for the fact that their family unit and all that they have worked for would soon becoming to a swift and violent end. But for me it was an overlong and at times painful wait for these miserable assortment of characters to finally get their comeuppance. I can only imagine how hard it was for these actors to navigate the improbable shifts in tone that von Trier wrote in. Especially Dunst (who won Best Actress at the Cannes) who had to feel her way from blushing bride, to disillusioned, spiteful, pessimistic child, to zombie-like invalid, to resigned prophet. There were so many changes in these characters that I had trouble following the paths in which they were taking. As an actor I was very confused.
I will say that visually this film is a masterpiece. The first and last ten minutes of the film were absolutely worthy of the content. The final quarter of Melancholia was actually quite good, but a grueling first and second act, including the punishingly overlong wedding sequence, made the vision moot. This will undoubtedly strike some as a work of art, and come awards season this will be a strong contender, but I take pleasure in knowing that there was Malick's work which was its equal in scope, but its superior in execution and genuine feeling.
2/4
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
As I eat my cake and drink my tea, reflecting on Danny Boyle's award winning film, I am struck by the amount of information that I remember from the first time that I saw Slumdog Millionaire in theaters in 2008. I remember scenes with such vivacity that watching some of them for a second time was almost unnecessary. The film has so much staying power that its impact has lasted years to the extent that certain images have remained in my memory perfectly intact. This is a film with such a strong voice, and such an unjaded artistic vision, that one cannot help but be moved to such a point that it cannot be forgotten. I simply can't imagine a movie that challenges one's conceptions of a time and a place that this has done with my ignorant thoughts of modern India.
Jamal is a young man one question away from earning 10 million rupees on the Indian equilvalent of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". As a uneducated boy from the slums who serves chai tea to workers at a mobile phone company he is suspected of cheating, and is detained by the Indian police, for how possibly could a slumdog know questions that doctors and lawyers get wrong? An honest young man with an equally honest face, he suffers maltreatment and electrical torture until he agrees to go question by question explaining how he arrived at his answers. This is the foundation for a truly unusual method of story telling in which Jamal's life is presented with a series of flashbacks, each providing him with the necessary information needed to answer the game's questions correctly.
As we search for the answers, key moments in his life, such as the death of his mother, and the encounter of the love of his life as a child arevshown. The latter becomes something of the tie connecting the narrative together. The story of love which never gets to settle becomes the impetus for Jamal. He goes throughout his life, usually with his troubled older brother, searching for Latika (the eldest version of Latika, played by Freida Pinto has to be one of the most beautiful Indian women that I have ever seen) taking him from Mumbai to Bombay and back again. He suffers miseries beyond my lower upper-class, Western, Americanized brain's ability to understand, but he is steadfast, always searching for that one flicker of happiness that inevitably seems to elude him.
My ideas of India stretch from overpopulated squalor to technological wizardry. The Orient is an exotic curiosity to me, and this film both reaffirmed as well as challenged the ideas that I held about a place that I really know nothing about. Surely my assumptions will not be unique, and I therefore delight in a film like this which takes an unblinking look at the many aspects of a culture that is completely foreign to so many people while also taking the chance to celebrate life and love.
This film covers so many aspects of Indian culture from religious war to child slavery, and presents them with an intensity in its images that is stirring and shocking. Memories of a boy covered in human excrement with an autograph of an Indian t.v. personality, a child dressed as the god Rama, a singer being blinded--because blind beggars earn double--all haunted me for years after seeing the film originally, and viewing them again affirmed those lingering emotions. Danny Boyle, not out of a desire for viewers to pity India or feel bad about themselves, but simply out of a desire to paint a very real portrait of what a large chunk of over 1 billion do living day to day, has done what was evident his could do from his works like Trainspotting and 28 Days Later--he has created a work of genius.
It is up to the audience to decide what to take away from it, but it was clearly his goal to take one boy from tens of millions, examine his life with as much realism as could be allowed. But all is not bleak. In fact this movie is strangely hopeful. It wants its viewers to believe in Jamal and the idea that exceptional people need not necessarily be exceptionally smart, or talented, or privileged, or born in an industrialized Western nation. Sometimes they are simply exceptional because it is written, and that is an optimistic thought.
4/4
Jamal is a young man one question away from earning 10 million rupees on the Indian equilvalent of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". As a uneducated boy from the slums who serves chai tea to workers at a mobile phone company he is suspected of cheating, and is detained by the Indian police, for how possibly could a slumdog know questions that doctors and lawyers get wrong? An honest young man with an equally honest face, he suffers maltreatment and electrical torture until he agrees to go question by question explaining how he arrived at his answers. This is the foundation for a truly unusual method of story telling in which Jamal's life is presented with a series of flashbacks, each providing him with the necessary information needed to answer the game's questions correctly.
As we search for the answers, key moments in his life, such as the death of his mother, and the encounter of the love of his life as a child arevshown. The latter becomes something of the tie connecting the narrative together. The story of love which never gets to settle becomes the impetus for Jamal. He goes throughout his life, usually with his troubled older brother, searching for Latika (the eldest version of Latika, played by Freida Pinto has to be one of the most beautiful Indian women that I have ever seen) taking him from Mumbai to Bombay and back again. He suffers miseries beyond my lower upper-class, Western, Americanized brain's ability to understand, but he is steadfast, always searching for that one flicker of happiness that inevitably seems to elude him.
My ideas of India stretch from overpopulated squalor to technological wizardry. The Orient is an exotic curiosity to me, and this film both reaffirmed as well as challenged the ideas that I held about a place that I really know nothing about. Surely my assumptions will not be unique, and I therefore delight in a film like this which takes an unblinking look at the many aspects of a culture that is completely foreign to so many people while also taking the chance to celebrate life and love.
This film covers so many aspects of Indian culture from religious war to child slavery, and presents them with an intensity in its images that is stirring and shocking. Memories of a boy covered in human excrement with an autograph of an Indian t.v. personality, a child dressed as the god Rama, a singer being blinded--because blind beggars earn double--all haunted me for years after seeing the film originally, and viewing them again affirmed those lingering emotions. Danny Boyle, not out of a desire for viewers to pity India or feel bad about themselves, but simply out of a desire to paint a very real portrait of what a large chunk of over 1 billion do living day to day, has done what was evident his could do from his works like Trainspotting and 28 Days Later--he has created a work of genius.
It is up to the audience to decide what to take away from it, but it was clearly his goal to take one boy from tens of millions, examine his life with as much realism as could be allowed. But all is not bleak. In fact this movie is strangely hopeful. It wants its viewers to believe in Jamal and the idea that exceptional people need not necessarily be exceptionally smart, or talented, or privileged, or born in an industrialized Western nation. Sometimes they are simply exceptional because it is written, and that is an optimistic thought.
4/4
Monday, October 3, 2011
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
On my recent flight to England I though it might be fun and even a little bit exciting to watch a couple of films having to do with European cities, it being my first time across the pond. On the flight I found two such options: Roman Holiday and Midnight in Paris. I would recommend both, but I mention this only because Woody Allen, the director of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, also directed the latter of the two films. I was struck by the semblance between the two films and realized that even though both are good, and Midnight in Paris is far more incredible, the spring of ideas seems to be running at a trickle. Both films are about travelers and who embrace foreign culture in different ways. The two pairs of companions--fiances in one, best friends from college in the other--are different in their outlooks on life, and this creates tension. A stranger who typifies their culture in a very romantic sense enters the equation and opens the eyes of one or both people. Conflict, conflict conflict, and finally the central characters do not really get what they want, but they are changed for the better--more or less. This in no way affects what I think of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but I'm sure I could not possibly be the only one to notice. A side note for someone interested to observe.
This film happens to be the story of the two college friends. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is a pragmatic girl, soon to be engaged to a safe, dime a dozen man, who travels to Spain in order to do research for her degree on Catalan culture. Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), a would-be actress/director/writer/artist of some sort or another, comes along because she is being put up, and because she is open to new experiences. Who would not jump at a chance to spend a summer in Barcelona for a very nominal price? Especially someone as bursting with creative thoughts as Cristina....hmm.
The sightseeing is typical until they encounter a very atypical man (Javier Bardem). A painter, very suave and incredibly sexy, with the ability to charm the pants off of any girl (almost literally), he brings the two to the quaint, picturesque town of Oviedo--much to the dismay of Vicky--and there they drink good wine, see beautiful art, and make passionate love--though it is not at all what you might think. But I will leave some surprises for you, the reader.
It is not long before Cristina has fallen head over heals for this painter, Juan Antonio, and moves in with him. But Vicky warns her to watch out for this man. Despite his immeasurable charm, brooding genius, and poetically fatalist view of humanity and love ("Love is so transient", he says. And what an encompassing quote for this film that is), he is known throughout Barcelona for the tumultuous relationship he shared with his ex-wife. Their fights were legend--one was almost fatal--but to Vicky and Cristina he speaks of her like some untamable goddess, full of wrath, passion, and endless beauty. He says their love was nearly perfect, but something was left out of the equation.
Enter the goddess, Maria (Penelope Cruz), who is all he described and so much more. A curiouser love triangle would be hard to find, and a sexier one impossible. For inevitably love arises in so many odd places in this film, and why not have Cruz and Johansson kiss when you have the opportunity? Cruz gives a performance of unbridled emotion, worthy of her beauty and talent, and solidifying her as the premier international Spanish actress. In fact, playing opposite Bardem I believe would be the only way to achieve her full potential in an American film, as he is the best bilingual Spanish actor working. She not only inspired the viewer in me, but also the poet, the painter, the lover, the fighter; everything that Maria represented, everything Cristina hoped to be and failed at--impulsive, visionary, original--Cruz conveyed with such believability as to be comparable as an actress to Maria as a painter.
To sum it up this a film about love and the creative spirit. It does not have the usual, Woody whine that so many love, but it is about people who are unfulfilled with life. They find happiness, however transient, and continue to look for more even if all they ever wanted was being presented to them on a silver platter. It is sad to think about the concept, but it is a comedy, and a funny one at that.
This film will undoubtedly be talked about in terms of Woody Allen, and Cruz, as they are forces of cinema nature, though one is dying while the other is merely erupting. Fortunately for Cruz this will be seen as a new bench marker for her, as she has raised herself even beyond her work in Volver though her screen time is considerably smaller in this. Allen, however, will always be compared to Annie Hall, Manhattan, and his other classics, which is so unfortunate. He will never be able to top those films, and it saddens me that he will not be able to live that down even when he creates a perfectly respectable film like this one. I do like the direction of his more recent films like this one. Without his manic presence in front of the camera, and a less intellectual comedy which at times borders on pretentiousness, he has made a film that is just a small joy to watch. I may not remember it very well in five years like I will Annie Hall, but for a director in his silver years perhaps he should simply stick to making movies that offer a good night out, rather than a new phase in "art".
3/4
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Inglorious Basterds (2009)
"This is the face of Jewish vengeance!" triumphantly shouts the giant head. And so it is. Once again, Quentin Tarantino shows that he has more balls that all of the other directors in Hollywood by reviving dead styles of film making, and stirring them into one pot to create the loud, blood, and brash new war film, Inglorious Basterds. This movie deserves praise not only for the audacious way in which it has rewritten the final moments of WWII and reconceptualized the war film, but also for the fact that, well, it's really good.
The film begins with what is perhaps one of the best opening scenes in any film of the last twenty years. A French dairy farmer harboring a Jewish family beneath the floorboards of his house is met by the SS Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) who interrogates him about the Dreyfus family, the only Jewish family not yet accounted for in the area. Waving about a humorously large smoking pipe and speaking in obnoxiously long-winded, formal speech, the audience is introduced to the best written, cleverest, and most frighteningly fun villain that has hit the silver screen since Hannibal the Cannibal. He is at once delicate, cunning, menacing, and wickedly funny. The combination, perfectly played by Waltz (which earned him his Oscar), makes one smile at him, and detest oneself for being so weak as to smile. Nicknamed the "Jew Hunter", he ruthlessly kills the family of Jews except for a young woman named Shosanna, who will play a very decisive role in the coming years.
Jumping forward three years to 1944, we are met with the elite Jewish-American fighting force called the Basterds. Headed by the poorly cast Brad Pitt as Aldo the Apache, the group of eight are sent into France for one purpose, and one purpose only: killing Nazis--and cousin, business is booming. Mercilessly, unflinchingly violent, one wonders who were actually more soulless, them or the ones that they scalped. Aldo has the funny trademark of carving swastikas into the foreheads of the very few people whom they have allowed to survive (funny odd, not funny ha ha), and the "Bear Jew" uses a baseball bat to bludgeon unarmed German soldiers.
The Basterds' and Shosanna's story interweave--though they never actually meet each other--when both parties set out to topple the Third Reich in one fell swoop. The premier of Joseph Goebbels' new propagandist war film has been set to open in Shosanna's cinema to which all major Nazi officials including the Fuhrer will be in attendance. Having what the British C.O. of Operation Kino (meaning a worldwide movement of amateur filmmakers) calls "all of our rotten eggs in one basket", it is the Basterds' job to infiltrate the premier and send them all to Nazi Hell.
Garnering the help of German actress and British double-agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) Aldo and his gang have a chance to place their names in the history books. But the best laid plans of mice and men don't count on Shosanna taking matters into her own hands....not to mention Landa's supreme detective expertise.
This is most certainly a polarizing film. Well, perhaps only to critics. It is a fun, exciting movie going experience that will leave audiences wanting more. But for those who want something more than an easy adrenaline fix, there are things to be discussed. For example, the British, French, and American characters of this film are gross stereotypes. The Germans are too, but not nearly to the extent that the other nationalities, and too the point that had not Hans Landa been the comical face of evil, I might even hint that Tarantino took a sympathetic view of the Nazis. The end of the film might contradict that somewhat, but I definitely think that the argument could be made. German casting was perfection, and the way in which they are portrayed, with the exception of Shosanna, is more human and done with more finesse than all others.
Another point that will and has been brought up endlessly is the typical way in which Tarantino blends genres, pays homage, and places countless numbers of inside jokes into his film. This, I am sure many will find, has become tiresome. I can say that at times I myself get wearied of the modern edge that he infuses into material in order to get shock laughs, particularly when the laughs are trying to be pulled from material that they ought not to be. The 80's-soaked, stellar third act was appreciated and very cool, but many times earlier in the film I was annoyed by little things that he felt compelled to throw in. Sometimes it would be good for him to simply stay true to the subject matter.
As always, however, Tarantino proves himself to have an unparalleled ear for dialogue, fashioning a script should have won him his second Oscar. In fact, I think many Oscars--or at least Oscar nods--were misplaced. Melanie Laurent as Shosanna, and Diane Kruger both should have received Supporting Actress nods, as I felt that they gave better performances than at least three of the other women in the category. They would not have beaten Mo'Nique, but recognition ought to have been given. Also, despite some of my issues listed above, there were about half a dozen scenes that I believe placed this film above all others, excepting An Education, at the 2010 Academy Awards. That year was a sham anyway, but I do believe that given its competition and audience appeal, and most especially for its creativity and imaginative spirit this film should have taken home the main prizes.
3.5/4
The film begins with what is perhaps one of the best opening scenes in any film of the last twenty years. A French dairy farmer harboring a Jewish family beneath the floorboards of his house is met by the SS Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) who interrogates him about the Dreyfus family, the only Jewish family not yet accounted for in the area. Waving about a humorously large smoking pipe and speaking in obnoxiously long-winded, formal speech, the audience is introduced to the best written, cleverest, and most frighteningly fun villain that has hit the silver screen since Hannibal the Cannibal. He is at once delicate, cunning, menacing, and wickedly funny. The combination, perfectly played by Waltz (which earned him his Oscar), makes one smile at him, and detest oneself for being so weak as to smile. Nicknamed the "Jew Hunter", he ruthlessly kills the family of Jews except for a young woman named Shosanna, who will play a very decisive role in the coming years.
Jumping forward three years to 1944, we are met with the elite Jewish-American fighting force called the Basterds. Headed by the poorly cast Brad Pitt as Aldo the Apache, the group of eight are sent into France for one purpose, and one purpose only: killing Nazis--and cousin, business is booming. Mercilessly, unflinchingly violent, one wonders who were actually more soulless, them or the ones that they scalped. Aldo has the funny trademark of carving swastikas into the foreheads of the very few people whom they have allowed to survive (funny odd, not funny ha ha), and the "Bear Jew" uses a baseball bat to bludgeon unarmed German soldiers.
The Basterds' and Shosanna's story interweave--though they never actually meet each other--when both parties set out to topple the Third Reich in one fell swoop. The premier of Joseph Goebbels' new propagandist war film has been set to open in Shosanna's cinema to which all major Nazi officials including the Fuhrer will be in attendance. Having what the British C.O. of Operation Kino (meaning a worldwide movement of amateur filmmakers) calls "all of our rotten eggs in one basket", it is the Basterds' job to infiltrate the premier and send them all to Nazi Hell.
Garnering the help of German actress and British double-agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) Aldo and his gang have a chance to place their names in the history books. But the best laid plans of mice and men don't count on Shosanna taking matters into her own hands....not to mention Landa's supreme detective expertise.
This is most certainly a polarizing film. Well, perhaps only to critics. It is a fun, exciting movie going experience that will leave audiences wanting more. But for those who want something more than an easy adrenaline fix, there are things to be discussed. For example, the British, French, and American characters of this film are gross stereotypes. The Germans are too, but not nearly to the extent that the other nationalities, and too the point that had not Hans Landa been the comical face of evil, I might even hint that Tarantino took a sympathetic view of the Nazis. The end of the film might contradict that somewhat, but I definitely think that the argument could be made. German casting was perfection, and the way in which they are portrayed, with the exception of Shosanna, is more human and done with more finesse than all others.
Another point that will and has been brought up endlessly is the typical way in which Tarantino blends genres, pays homage, and places countless numbers of inside jokes into his film. This, I am sure many will find, has become tiresome. I can say that at times I myself get wearied of the modern edge that he infuses into material in order to get shock laughs, particularly when the laughs are trying to be pulled from material that they ought not to be. The 80's-soaked, stellar third act was appreciated and very cool, but many times earlier in the film I was annoyed by little things that he felt compelled to throw in. Sometimes it would be good for him to simply stay true to the subject matter.
As always, however, Tarantino proves himself to have an unparalleled ear for dialogue, fashioning a script should have won him his second Oscar. In fact, I think many Oscars--or at least Oscar nods--were misplaced. Melanie Laurent as Shosanna, and Diane Kruger both should have received Supporting Actress nods, as I felt that they gave better performances than at least three of the other women in the category. They would not have beaten Mo'Nique, but recognition ought to have been given. Also, despite some of my issues listed above, there were about half a dozen scenes that I believe placed this film above all others, excepting An Education, at the 2010 Academy Awards. That year was a sham anyway, but I do believe that given its competition and audience appeal, and most especially for its creativity and imaginative spirit this film should have taken home the main prizes.
3.5/4
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