The best things I can say about Night Watch (2004) are that it had some very unique and fun visuals, and a pretty good lead performance from Konstantin Khabenskiy. The rest, well.... superfluous, silly, or downright stupid. For every sweet and artistic visual (e.g., Zavulon extracting his own spine and wielding it as a bitchin' sword), there was an equally tired and lame one (the Nightwatch's utterly stupid souped up, flame-spewing yellow truck; Tiger Cub's ridiculous transformation into, well, an incredibly cheesy-looking tiger). The ubiquitous CGI crows, dark clouds, and lightning also contribute to a mood that is just a bit too laughable. The film gets pulled in too many directions and follows too many pointless plot sidetrips in favor of cramming more hit-and-miss visuals into an already overloaded visual palette. Night Watch gets stuck somewhere between epic fantasy and urban techno thriller, and the result is just not pretty.
Night Watch is the story of an ancient and epic battle (or rather, an avoidance of a battle) amongst a group of superhumans called the Others, some of whom have chosen Dark and some Light. The forces are so evenly matched that a true battle would result in total and pointless annihilation. Deciding this is a bad idea, the Others make a truce and erect a sort of underground bureaucracy wherein Light kinda rules the roost and issues permits to Dark to "legally" carry out their vampiric tendencies within certain limits. All of which makes an epic battle between good and evil about as riveting as the tax code.
We are told that every Other has a unique power that they must discover, but the group presented to the audience is pretty homogenous. The side of Dark seems to be largely, if not entirely comprised of vampire-like creatures (yawn). In Light's corner, we have two shape-shifters (Bear and Tiger Cub), who we only see in action once, and the special effects there are dubious at best. We also have two Light Others who seem to have no special powers at all: one of them just drives a truck around and the other appears to be a simple computer nerd. Wow. Stunning. Then there's Olga, who first appears as an owl, but transforms into a human-formed sort of all-purpose sorceress, all the while vaguely spouting about being imprisoned within the form of the owl for some sort of unspeakable crimes. That subplot, which actually seemed intriguing, goes where most of the scattered fragments of this movie go: nowhere. Finally, there's Anton, our hero (or antihero, if you will). I actually like Anton. Khabenskiy does a great job of bringing Anton's multi-layered, gray-area character to life. In fact, Anton is the only character that feels complete, sufficiently fleshed out, and believable. Plus, he actually has powers! He has the power of precognition, and if he drinks some delicious blood beforehand, he can kinda morph into a vampire for a short time and go hunt down some Dark side baddies.
The plot centers (well, I use "centers" very loosely here) on Anton's attempt to keep 12-year-old Yegor, a burgeoning Other, out of the hands of a crazy vampire bitch who wants to drain him in retaliation for Anton killing her lover. Oh yeah, and Zavulon, the lord of Darkness, seeks Yegor as the fulfillment of some arcane prophecy. And there's an extremely tenuously related sideplot about an evil vortex that springs up around a cursed virgin. Seriously. Oh yeah, somehow related to this is an airplane that's about to crash land in Moscow, but yet magically is okay for like 3 hours until the plot moves along sufficiently to cut back to the doomed airplane. And there's an explosion at a power plant that sends Moscow into darkness (just in time to create a great atmosphere for Anton's showdown with the cursed virgin!). The point I'm getting at here is that director Timur Bekmambetov flits around from plot piece to plot piece like a freaking hummingbird on coke. Most of this stuff is extraneous and unnecessary, and then left to straggle out into a dead end. It's sloppy filmmaking, plain and simple.
I can't recommend Night Watch in good conscience. It's the first film in a trilogy, and maybe they get better, but I just can't see mustering the desire to put myself through another one to test it.
Storyline & plot: 3/10
Cinematography & effects: 5/10
Music & mood: 3/10
Performances: 6/10
The Reverend says: 4/10
Friday, October 30, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Paranormal Activity
After watching Paranormal Activity (2007), you might be tempted to say that director Oren Peli had learned nothing from breakthrough found-footage film The Blair Witch Project (1999). After all, some of Blair Witch's negative aspects are carried right over into Paranormal Activity. The biggest offenders are the non-scary filler scenes. Peli takes his cue from Blair Witch directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, sprinkling these daytime scenes with banalities, cliched trivialities, and the kind of petty bickering that made Blair Witch's characters so universally hated.
Upon further review, however, it's clear that Peli has indeed learned from the mistakes of Myrick and Sanchez. Not only does Peli downplay the most criticized aspects of Blair Witch, but he accentuates the things that did work. Love it or hate it, Blair Witch was easily one of the most genuinely frightening films from a decade that is infamous for its listless and tepid horror cinema. '90s horror was clean, polished, sterile, over-processed, and just downright unentertaining garbage. Then along came a little lo-fi indie digital masterpiece that taught everyone in the industry to remember that less truly is more. Following the trail blazed by such genre classics as The Haunting (1963), The Innocents (1961), and The Changeling (1980), Myrick and Sanchez cranked up the terror with little more than insinuation and circumstantial evidence. With found-footage cinema, there's not even any help from an artfully crafted score.
In Paranormal Activity, Peli sticks to the gameplan laid out by Myrick and Sanchez. Through episodic encounters in the dead of night, the audience learns the true nature of the being that stalks the San Diego home of Micah and his girlfriend Katie. The disturbances start small. A barely-heard jangling of keys from downstairs. Nothing more. A few nights may go by with nothing of note. Then, a faintly perceptible shadow. A garbled voice captured on specialized audio equipment. But slowly, never too slowly, but never jumping the gun, the tension is escalated. The jangling keys become scrapes and bumps in the night. The faint shadow becomes too obvious to deny. Sleepwalking, unexplained breezes, demonic voices. Each night, the disturbances become more pronounced, more sinister, more threatening. And yet, we never actually see much of anything. Peli plays off of the deep-rooted fear of the unseen and the unknown. But that's just the low-hanging fruit. He also deftly manipulates our fear of intrusion. What Micah and Katie experience is not just a simple haunting. It's not even a more insidious demonic possession. Katie is cursed. And not in the epic fantasy "the curse will be lifted when the chosen one finds the amulet of power" way. Truly, deeply cursed. A curse that is random, vicious, and will never ever be lifted.
Another Blair Witch trap that Peli and Paranormal Activity manage to avoid is the marketing campaign backlash. I'll say it right now: the decision to market Blair Witch as real found footage was genius. Unfortunately, it was doomed from the beginning. Eventually, the truth would come out. The filmmakers were just hoping that it wouldn't make a difference. But the backlash was vicious, eventually making a joke out of a film that deserved much better. Peli and Paranormal's eventual distributor, Paramount, thankfully make no pretenses about this being anything other than a work of fiction (despite a guy in the theater last night loudly proclaiming to his girlfriend that the film was a true story; I can only hope he was joking).
Unlike Blair Witch's herky-jerky shaky cam free-for-all, Peli's cinematography is tightly controlled. While the tripod-mounted bedroom cam that dominates the film's screentime feels like a deliberate (and less adventurous) snub to Blair Witch, when viewed on the big screen of a theater, the shot reveals Peli's genius. The wide angle encompasses Katie and Micah's bed on the extreme right. To the shot's extreme left is the open bedroom door, revealing the relative darkness of an upstairs hallway and the main stairs descending to the first floor. These positions on a theater screen mean all but the most wall-eyed of viewers will not be able to take both halves of the picture in at once. This forces the viewer to continually scan the screen for minute movements, shadows, or subtle changes in lighting. In to this atmosphere, Peli adds extended sequences of non-action, stretching the tension so thin that the slightest perceived movement elicits excited screams from the audience. When the demonic manifestations become more pronounced, a sudden sound from downstairs is enough to send the crowd into hysterics.
As far as Micah being really annoying and basically a humongous douche, well, he kinda is. This hyperbolic characterization is deliberate. Micah is the film's foil, the obvious ritual sacrifice. We are never meant to empathize or identify with Micah. He sets up a contrast to Katie, the true main character. We have to understand why the psychic disturbances surrounding Katie have escalated, and Micah is the obvious answer. I suppose an argument can be made about creating an entire character as a stand-in for a plot device, but found-footage cinema is limited in what it can reasonably show onscreen.
In Paranormal Activity, we finally have a worthy successor to the cinematic niche that Blair Witch carved a decade ago. I would echo a sentiment already put forth by other reviewers: Paranormal's greatest achievement will be in making you rethink what happens in your house in the dark after you've gone to bed. Good luck getting back to sleep.
Storyline & plot: 7/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Mood (no music): 10/10
Performances: 8/10
The Reverend says: 9/10
Upon further review, however, it's clear that Peli has indeed learned from the mistakes of Myrick and Sanchez. Not only does Peli downplay the most criticized aspects of Blair Witch, but he accentuates the things that did work. Love it or hate it, Blair Witch was easily one of the most genuinely frightening films from a decade that is infamous for its listless and tepid horror cinema. '90s horror was clean, polished, sterile, over-processed, and just downright unentertaining garbage. Then along came a little lo-fi indie digital masterpiece that taught everyone in the industry to remember that less truly is more. Following the trail blazed by such genre classics as The Haunting (1963), The Innocents (1961), and The Changeling (1980), Myrick and Sanchez cranked up the terror with little more than insinuation and circumstantial evidence. With found-footage cinema, there's not even any help from an artfully crafted score.
In Paranormal Activity, Peli sticks to the gameplan laid out by Myrick and Sanchez. Through episodic encounters in the dead of night, the audience learns the true nature of the being that stalks the San Diego home of Micah and his girlfriend Katie. The disturbances start small. A barely-heard jangling of keys from downstairs. Nothing more. A few nights may go by with nothing of note. Then, a faintly perceptible shadow. A garbled voice captured on specialized audio equipment. But slowly, never too slowly, but never jumping the gun, the tension is escalated. The jangling keys become scrapes and bumps in the night. The faint shadow becomes too obvious to deny. Sleepwalking, unexplained breezes, demonic voices. Each night, the disturbances become more pronounced, more sinister, more threatening. And yet, we never actually see much of anything. Peli plays off of the deep-rooted fear of the unseen and the unknown. But that's just the low-hanging fruit. He also deftly manipulates our fear of intrusion. What Micah and Katie experience is not just a simple haunting. It's not even a more insidious demonic possession. Katie is cursed. And not in the epic fantasy "the curse will be lifted when the chosen one finds the amulet of power" way. Truly, deeply cursed. A curse that is random, vicious, and will never ever be lifted.
Another Blair Witch trap that Peli and Paranormal Activity manage to avoid is the marketing campaign backlash. I'll say it right now: the decision to market Blair Witch as real found footage was genius. Unfortunately, it was doomed from the beginning. Eventually, the truth would come out. The filmmakers were just hoping that it wouldn't make a difference. But the backlash was vicious, eventually making a joke out of a film that deserved much better. Peli and Paranormal's eventual distributor, Paramount, thankfully make no pretenses about this being anything other than a work of fiction (despite a guy in the theater last night loudly proclaiming to his girlfriend that the film was a true story; I can only hope he was joking).
Unlike Blair Witch's herky-jerky shaky cam free-for-all, Peli's cinematography is tightly controlled. While the tripod-mounted bedroom cam that dominates the film's screentime feels like a deliberate (and less adventurous) snub to Blair Witch, when viewed on the big screen of a theater, the shot reveals Peli's genius. The wide angle encompasses Katie and Micah's bed on the extreme right. To the shot's extreme left is the open bedroom door, revealing the relative darkness of an upstairs hallway and the main stairs descending to the first floor. These positions on a theater screen mean all but the most wall-eyed of viewers will not be able to take both halves of the picture in at once. This forces the viewer to continually scan the screen for minute movements, shadows, or subtle changes in lighting. In to this atmosphere, Peli adds extended sequences of non-action, stretching the tension so thin that the slightest perceived movement elicits excited screams from the audience. When the demonic manifestations become more pronounced, a sudden sound from downstairs is enough to send the crowd into hysterics.
As far as Micah being really annoying and basically a humongous douche, well, he kinda is. This hyperbolic characterization is deliberate. Micah is the film's foil, the obvious ritual sacrifice. We are never meant to empathize or identify with Micah. He sets up a contrast to Katie, the true main character. We have to understand why the psychic disturbances surrounding Katie have escalated, and Micah is the obvious answer. I suppose an argument can be made about creating an entire character as a stand-in for a plot device, but found-footage cinema is limited in what it can reasonably show onscreen.
In Paranormal Activity, we finally have a worthy successor to the cinematic niche that Blair Witch carved a decade ago. I would echo a sentiment already put forth by other reviewers: Paranormal's greatest achievement will be in making you rethink what happens in your house in the dark after you've gone to bed. Good luck getting back to sleep.
Storyline & plot: 7/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Mood (no music): 10/10
Performances: 8/10
The Reverend says: 9/10
Monday, October 5, 2009
A change in format
My life has gotten pretty busy lately, and in order to free up some time, I'm going to scale back the Netflix Q. Instead of reviewing every damn thing I see, I'm going to do a Review of the Week sort of thing, where I write on one film per week that really gets to me (good or bad).
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Zombieland
Alright kiddies, let's take a trip in the way back machine. Okay more like the not quite that far back machine. Back in April of this year, Woody Harrelson accosted a photographer in an airport after the paparazzo pushed a camera in Harrelson's face. Apparently the actor smashed the cameraman right in the face. Harrelson's explanation? He thought the guy was a zombie. Yes. You read that right. Harrelson had just wrapped shooting for Zombieland (2009), and apparently he was having trouble shaking his character. I knew from that moment on that I had to see the film that made Woody Harrelson punch a dude in the face because he thought he was a zombie. I mean, even if the actor's coverstory is complete and utter bullshit, it's still a genius advertising tactic. Hell, maybe they even staged the whole thing and the photographer walked away with a couple grand in his pocket and Harrelson's knuckle imprints on his nose. Either way, I say bravo. Mission accomplished.
Zombieland follows in the great trail originally blazed by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead (1981) and more recently updated admirably by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright in Shaun of the Dead (2004). After an outbreak of Mad Human Disease (the people equivalent of Mad Cow Disease) decimates the population and leaves most as hungry raging encephalitics, a timid 20-something with OCD (Jesse Eisenberg) ventures from Austin, TX towards Columbus, OH in search of his parents or any other survivors. He is soon overtaken by a Cadillac-driving, snakeskin jacket-wearing, sawed off shotgun-toting wildman (Harrelson). Adopting their destinations as codenames to avoid getting too involved, Columbus and Tallahassee enter into a tentative alliance.
While Columbus has managed to survive via an obsession with a complex set of numbered survival tactics, Tallahassee plays it fast, loose, and reckless, seemingly spurred on every day by only his overwhelming desire to find and consume a delicious Twinkie, and his joy at killing zombies in creative ways. Soon Tallahassee and Columbus are joined by a pair of sly sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) with some serious trust issues. The seemingly randomly named Wichita and Little Rock assume de facto control of the group and point their bright yellow Hummer (Tallahassee's Caddy having given up the ghost) west, toward Los Angeles, where it's rumored the MHD outbreak hasn't reached.
Overall, Zombieland is pretty great, and definitely fun, which I assume is the major quality the filmmakers were going for. But there were a few detractors. Nothing that would be a deal-breaker. Just a few things here and there.
First off, Jesse Eisenberg's performance proves that Adventureland (2009) was no fluke. The kid went to the Michael Cera school of acting, apparently. I'm wondering if maybe they're actually the same person. Same mannerisms, same halting way of speaking, same geek chic. I'm sorry, Eisenberg. It's not that you're a bad actor. You do fine. It's just that we can only have one Michael Cera at a time, and well, he was here first and he does it a little better than you. We're gonna have to let you go. No hard feelings, champ.
Despite one of my esteemed colleague's assessment that Abigail Breslin was great in this movie, hot even (BTW, ewwwww, man.... she's 13! But I digress....), I found the development of her character to be lazy, and her performance tepid and precocious. Yeah, we get it. She's young. So therefore she's never seen Ghostbusters, and she doesn't know who Willie Nelson is, and yada yada yada. How many times do we have to come back to the same joke before we move on?
And speaking of coming back to things, this movie kinda does it a lot. We are constantly reminded of Columbus's rules for survival. Constantly. The presentation of these rules at first was done in a cool way, but it got old real fast. And it feels like the director is trying a little too hard to make this movie "quotable." Look, if a film has good one-liners, then it has good one-liners. By definition, these catchphrases are said once, and they're so awesome that they are memorable and quotable long after you've seen the film. You can't force-feed the audience a catchphrase, like they try to do here with "Nut up or shut up," repeating it at least 4 times at opportune moments throughout the film. A much better quotable quote is Columbus's epic "Fuck you, clown!" during the movie's awesome climax.
Rounding out my pet peeves for this film are a few factual inaccuracies, such as why the hell is the power still on everywhere and how do they keep getting gas for their (gas-guzzling) vehicles? I think the answer to those is who gives a shit because the movie is a lot more fun without having to explain those things. I accept that answer because Zombieland really is a whole lot of fun. I cannot believe that this movie isn't directly based on a video game, because that's what it feels like. There is definitely an aspect of first-person shooter, particularly in the film's action-packed theme park finale. This is the movie that all those films based on games wish they were, before they lost all their fun and took themselves too damn seriously.
Woody Harrelson freaking makes this movie. Yep. He is nothing short of amazing. Hearkens back to Kurt Russell's heyday as the coolest motherfucker around in films like Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and The Thing (1982). The bottom line is, Zombieland is a good old fashioned high-energy shoot-em-up zomcom with a passable storyline and a great cameo performance.
Storyline & plot: 6/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 7/10
Performances: 6/10
The Reverend says: 7/10
Zombieland follows in the great trail originally blazed by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead (1981) and more recently updated admirably by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright in Shaun of the Dead (2004). After an outbreak of Mad Human Disease (the people equivalent of Mad Cow Disease) decimates the population and leaves most as hungry raging encephalitics, a timid 20-something with OCD (Jesse Eisenberg) ventures from Austin, TX towards Columbus, OH in search of his parents or any other survivors. He is soon overtaken by a Cadillac-driving, snakeskin jacket-wearing, sawed off shotgun-toting wildman (Harrelson). Adopting their destinations as codenames to avoid getting too involved, Columbus and Tallahassee enter into a tentative alliance.
While Columbus has managed to survive via an obsession with a complex set of numbered survival tactics, Tallahassee plays it fast, loose, and reckless, seemingly spurred on every day by only his overwhelming desire to find and consume a delicious Twinkie, and his joy at killing zombies in creative ways. Soon Tallahassee and Columbus are joined by a pair of sly sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) with some serious trust issues. The seemingly randomly named Wichita and Little Rock assume de facto control of the group and point their bright yellow Hummer (Tallahassee's Caddy having given up the ghost) west, toward Los Angeles, where it's rumored the MHD outbreak hasn't reached.
Overall, Zombieland is pretty great, and definitely fun, which I assume is the major quality the filmmakers were going for. But there were a few detractors. Nothing that would be a deal-breaker. Just a few things here and there.
First off, Jesse Eisenberg's performance proves that Adventureland (2009) was no fluke. The kid went to the Michael Cera school of acting, apparently. I'm wondering if maybe they're actually the same person. Same mannerisms, same halting way of speaking, same geek chic. I'm sorry, Eisenberg. It's not that you're a bad actor. You do fine. It's just that we can only have one Michael Cera at a time, and well, he was here first and he does it a little better than you. We're gonna have to let you go. No hard feelings, champ.
Despite one of my esteemed colleague's assessment that Abigail Breslin was great in this movie, hot even (BTW, ewwwww, man.... she's 13! But I digress....), I found the development of her character to be lazy, and her performance tepid and precocious. Yeah, we get it. She's young. So therefore she's never seen Ghostbusters, and she doesn't know who Willie Nelson is, and yada yada yada. How many times do we have to come back to the same joke before we move on?
And speaking of coming back to things, this movie kinda does it a lot. We are constantly reminded of Columbus's rules for survival. Constantly. The presentation of these rules at first was done in a cool way, but it got old real fast. And it feels like the director is trying a little too hard to make this movie "quotable." Look, if a film has good one-liners, then it has good one-liners. By definition, these catchphrases are said once, and they're so awesome that they are memorable and quotable long after you've seen the film. You can't force-feed the audience a catchphrase, like they try to do here with "Nut up or shut up," repeating it at least 4 times at opportune moments throughout the film. A much better quotable quote is Columbus's epic "Fuck you, clown!" during the movie's awesome climax.
Rounding out my pet peeves for this film are a few factual inaccuracies, such as why the hell is the power still on everywhere and how do they keep getting gas for their (gas-guzzling) vehicles? I think the answer to those is who gives a shit because the movie is a lot more fun without having to explain those things. I accept that answer because Zombieland really is a whole lot of fun. I cannot believe that this movie isn't directly based on a video game, because that's what it feels like. There is definitely an aspect of first-person shooter, particularly in the film's action-packed theme park finale. This is the movie that all those films based on games wish they were, before they lost all their fun and took themselves too damn seriously.
Woody Harrelson freaking makes this movie. Yep. He is nothing short of amazing. Hearkens back to Kurt Russell's heyday as the coolest motherfucker around in films like Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and The Thing (1982). The bottom line is, Zombieland is a good old fashioned high-energy shoot-em-up zomcom with a passable storyline and a great cameo performance.
Storyline & plot: 6/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 7/10
Performances: 6/10
The Reverend says: 7/10
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