While one of his earliest films, Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965) is unquestionably his masterpiece. Billed as science fiction upon its release, Alphaville is in reality packed to the brim with influences as disparate as Argentinian fantasist Jorge Luis Borges, American science fiction moralist Philip K. Dick, Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, and the surrealist movement spearheaded by Spanish nationals turned French citizens Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel.
We fade in to Alphaville, a possibly futuristic city located (or perhaps comprising) a distant planet, located in a distant galaxy. And yet, Alphaville appears no different than Paris circa 1965, and the void of space that our hero crosses to get here resembles nothing more than a lonely highway at night. But do not be alarmed; these are not amateurish mistakes born of a shoestring budget. The similarities are quite intentional, not only to make the distinction between Alphaville and Earth (here grouped with planets of other galaxies and simply called "The Outlands") that much more difficult to grasp, but also to ground a scifi film in the more gritty banality of the French New Wave style.
From the get-go, the noir-ish feel of the film is palpable, as we are treated to not one but two voice-over monologues. One, that of our hero, Ivan Johnson, a reporter from New York sent to Alphaville to scoop a story on the city's mysterious leader, Professor VonBraun. The other voice, deep, stilted, gutteral, we soon learn is the artificial voice of Alphaville's central supercomputer, Alpha 60.
And like any good noir, the film remains almost impenetrably complex through most of the running time. What is somewhat apparent is that Alphaville boasts itself as a technocracy and logicocracy. The city is ruled by a logic of cause and effect delineated by the problems and solutions generated by Alpha 60. There is no past, there is no future, there is only the present, which is the logical conclusion to the problem of existence. Alpha 60 and VonBraun indoctrinate the populace through the strict control of language, which is the form of logic. Any illogical behavior is grounds for banishment or execution.
It is in this milieu that Johnson must confusedly make his way, and by being confused, he is of course illogical, which gets him in a whole lot of trouble with Alpha 60, which nevertheless is experiencing its own crisis of faith... or rather, logic.
Godard's film is rife with moralistic undercurrents, including obvious analogies of Alphaville's logicocracy to America's capitalism and Russia's communism. There are warnings about the folly of logic taken to extreme, and the dangers of wedding meaning to form, or constituent parts to a whole. Ultimately, Godard warns that the world is undoubtedly what we have made it, and yet, our ideologies will continue to replicate beyond our intent or control, simply because that is what ideologies do.
It would do well for a viewer to practice patience with this film. In the end, it is as dense as poetry, but as rewarding to those with the patience to understand.
Storyline & plot: 8/10
Cinematography & effects: 10/10
Music & mood: 9/10
Performances: 8/10
The Reverend says: 9/10
Monday, April 26, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Shutter Island
Martin Scorsese is undoubtedly a talented filmmaker. Some might even say legendary. Through a career spanning almost 40 years and and over 30 feature films, Scorsese has solidified himself as a cinema giant, master of hard-hitting realism featuring violence, madness, and just sometimes, redemption. Scorsese has also been known to return to the same actors time and again. In his early career, his favorite was Robert DeNiro, with iconic roles in Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1982), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), and Casino (1995). As DeNiro has aged and his roles have diversified, Scorsese has turned to new blood as his pet actor. Starting with 2002's Gangs of New York, Leonardo DiCaprio has taken up the reins that DeNiro laid aside, including starring turns in The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), and this year's Shutter Island. In my opinion, this has accompanied a downturn in the quality of Scorsese's work. Let's face it, DiCaprio is no DeNiro. Not even close. I'm not quite sure what Scorsese sees in DiCaprio, because all I see when I watch him onscreen is that scrawny autistic teenager from What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), or worse, flashbacks to that monumental waste of three hours of my life: Titanic (1997).
The casting of DiCaprio is the first strike against Shutter Island. The film is set in the early 1950s and opens on US Marshals Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) on the ferry to Shutter Island, an imposing little speck of land isolated in Boston Harbor. The island houses the foremost corrections institution for the criminally insane in the United States, a deceptively garden-like facility overshadowed by the cold and massive walls of an old Civil War fort. The fort houses the most dangerous of the inmates, or as the facility's lead psychiatrist Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) prefers, "patients."
The Marshals have been called in to investigate the inexplicable disappearance of one of the inmates, a woman convicted of drowning her three small children in a lake. As the investigation begins in earnest, Teddy and Chuck find themselves up against a recalcitrant staff and paranoid patients. After several avenues of investigation have petered out or been stamped out by Dr. Cawley's firm insistence, the Marshals begin to wonder why they were called in to investigate. Does Dr. Cawley really want them to find the escaped patient? Does she even exist at all? What goes on in the windowless fort housing the most dangerous inmates? And what goes on inside the island's lighthouse, surrounded by electrified fence and heavy guard night and day? As the investigation deepens, Teddy struggles with vivid flashbacks and visions, both of his time in the army at the liberation of Dachau, and of his wife, recently killed in a fire set by a man who may or may not reside as a patient within the walls of the fort.
My main complaint about Shutter Island is the predictability. Even within the first few minutes of the film, the setup might lead a viewer to easily guess the eventual twist waiting at the film's climax. And if you hadn't guessed within the first few minutes, then the use of surreal and dream-like visuals by a director known for his hard-line realism might tip you off as well. On the other hand, having guessed the twist so early, I was free to take in more of the excellent things this film has to offer, such as the incredible visuals, both of Shutter Island and its environs, and the various dream-sequences the audience is led through. The color palette in use here is wildly over-saturated, making almost everything stand out like a hallucination, an apt delivery considering the film's setting.
Despite its negative aspects, what really shined through for me was the excellent casting choices, and the great acting. With the exception of the aforementioned DiCaprio problem, the supporting cast is phenomenal. From Mark Ruffalo's calm and centered answer to DiCaprio's rage and mania, to Kingsley's joyfully mysterious Dr. Cawley, to Max Von Sydow's understated menace as an experimental psychiatrist with possible Nazi ties, the supporting roles truly steal the scene here. Also worth mentioning are Elias Koteas as the hideously scarred pyromaniac that haunts Teddy's dreams, and Jackie Earle Haley as a frightened inmate of the fort (and possibly the voice of Teddy's conscience). My personal favorite is Ted Levine (better known as Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs) as Shutter Island's warden. Who else could deliver this line not only with a straight face, but with a hint of mocking aplomb: "If I were to sink my teeth into your left eye right now, could you stop me before I blinded you?"
So, yes, there's a whole lot of exposition from a cavalcade of bit part players, and a whole lot of wandering around the island without getting much done. I didn't say it was a great movie, and it's certainly not Scorsese's best, but it does show that he's still got the talent to make a decent movie nearly 40 years into his career, and that's not bad at all. My verdict: skip the theater, but put it on your Netflix queue.
Storyline & plot: 5/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 8/10
The Reverend says: 6/10
The casting of DiCaprio is the first strike against Shutter Island. The film is set in the early 1950s and opens on US Marshals Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) on the ferry to Shutter Island, an imposing little speck of land isolated in Boston Harbor. The island houses the foremost corrections institution for the criminally insane in the United States, a deceptively garden-like facility overshadowed by the cold and massive walls of an old Civil War fort. The fort houses the most dangerous of the inmates, or as the facility's lead psychiatrist Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) prefers, "patients."
The Marshals have been called in to investigate the inexplicable disappearance of one of the inmates, a woman convicted of drowning her three small children in a lake. As the investigation begins in earnest, Teddy and Chuck find themselves up against a recalcitrant staff and paranoid patients. After several avenues of investigation have petered out or been stamped out by Dr. Cawley's firm insistence, the Marshals begin to wonder why they were called in to investigate. Does Dr. Cawley really want them to find the escaped patient? Does she even exist at all? What goes on in the windowless fort housing the most dangerous inmates? And what goes on inside the island's lighthouse, surrounded by electrified fence and heavy guard night and day? As the investigation deepens, Teddy struggles with vivid flashbacks and visions, both of his time in the army at the liberation of Dachau, and of his wife, recently killed in a fire set by a man who may or may not reside as a patient within the walls of the fort.
My main complaint about Shutter Island is the predictability. Even within the first few minutes of the film, the setup might lead a viewer to easily guess the eventual twist waiting at the film's climax. And if you hadn't guessed within the first few minutes, then the use of surreal and dream-like visuals by a director known for his hard-line realism might tip you off as well. On the other hand, having guessed the twist so early, I was free to take in more of the excellent things this film has to offer, such as the incredible visuals, both of Shutter Island and its environs, and the various dream-sequences the audience is led through. The color palette in use here is wildly over-saturated, making almost everything stand out like a hallucination, an apt delivery considering the film's setting.
Despite its negative aspects, what really shined through for me was the excellent casting choices, and the great acting. With the exception of the aforementioned DiCaprio problem, the supporting cast is phenomenal. From Mark Ruffalo's calm and centered answer to DiCaprio's rage and mania, to Kingsley's joyfully mysterious Dr. Cawley, to Max Von Sydow's understated menace as an experimental psychiatrist with possible Nazi ties, the supporting roles truly steal the scene here. Also worth mentioning are Elias Koteas as the hideously scarred pyromaniac that haunts Teddy's dreams, and Jackie Earle Haley as a frightened inmate of the fort (and possibly the voice of Teddy's conscience). My personal favorite is Ted Levine (better known as Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs) as Shutter Island's warden. Who else could deliver this line not only with a straight face, but with a hint of mocking aplomb: "If I were to sink my teeth into your left eye right now, could you stop me before I blinded you?"
So, yes, there's a whole lot of exposition from a cavalcade of bit part players, and a whole lot of wandering around the island without getting much done. I didn't say it was a great movie, and it's certainly not Scorsese's best, but it does show that he's still got the talent to make a decent movie nearly 40 years into his career, and that's not bad at all. My verdict: skip the theater, but put it on your Netflix queue.
Storyline & plot: 5/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 8/10
The Reverend says: 6/10
Thursday, February 18, 2010
The House of the Devil
Easily the two most polarizing horror films of 2009 were Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity (reviewed here previously), and Ti West's The House of the Devil, a little slice of horror nostalgia about a very strange time in America's collective subconcious. An odd marriage of permutated Cold War anxiety and a burgeoning psychoanalytic movement gave birth to an entrenched national fear of satanic individuals, cults, and particularly the alleged ritual abuses they enacted. Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) is the obvious early cinematic statement on the matter, but the cultural fervor lasted well into the early 1980s.
The premise for The House of the Devil is refreshingly simple: looking for some extra cash to make the deposit on a new apartment, college sophomore Samantha responds to a mysterious ad for a babysitter. Unfazed by her potential employer's odd telephone etiquette, Samantha agrees to take the babysitting job at a sprawling country home in an unspecified area of upstate New York. Little does Sam know that the job is not exactly what it appears, and that somewhere inside the Ulmans' country estate lurks a series of grisly and demonic secrets. Faced with the unsettling Ulman family, the disquieting house, and threats lurking both within and without, Sam's night slowly descends into terror.
I suspect that West's choice of an early '80s setting was initially nothing more than a plot device to eliminate the inconvenient reality of the vast and instant communication network available to us now through cell phones and the internet. Which, to many, would seem like cheating. But this simple plot device blossomed into a meticulous and fun homage to the late '70s/ early '80s horror vibe. Not only this, but West's anti-technology choice is a welcome counterstrike to a horror market glutted with thematically stale iterations of technophobia. To wit: Stephen King's novel Cell, South Korea's Phone (2002) and America's dreadful pseudo-remake One Missed Call (2008), and the Japanese Pulse (2001) and its even more ridiculous American remake of the same name from 2006. As the subtle exclamation point to his techno-bivalent statement, West inserts several telephone conversation scenes (many with rotary phones!) to serve as intermittent communication fulcrum points in a film otherwise marked by a profound sense of isolation.
The House of the Devil's detractors (and there are many) fall into two main categories: those who think the film's subject matter is misplaced for a 2009 release, and those who balk at the film's somewhat unconventional pace. It's true that modern technocratic America has very little use for fears over satanic cults. Most of these fears have long since proved unfounded. Accusations of satanic abuses were grossly exaggerated. Psychoanalysis is now met with heavy skepticism. The Cold War is over. We now have too many real wars accompanied by too many real atrocities. Why invent satanists to take the fall? Besides, Satanism is now a recognized and protected religion. Satanists are your neighbors. Satanists are your friends.
But remember: Rosemary's Baby wasn't really about satanism. It was about the claustrophobia and paranoia bred by urban living. And about the tenuous nature of trust in a new marriage. Satanism was just the supernatural icing on the cake. West just inverts Polanski's urban claustrophobia and comes out with rural isolation. And then doubles up on the isolation theme with an obviously withdrawn and lonely protagonist. Sam hates her current roommate, has no family to speak of, and has only one real friend to talk to. Critics who decry the slow pace of the film's middle may not realize that it perfectly accentuates Sam's physical and emotional isolation, all while slowly injecting a sense of profound dread. Punctuating this are intermittent slices of brutal violence, made all the more shocking by the relative silences that precede and follow. When the film's furious climax comes, it's almost a letdown, because the reality of violence is less intense than the dreading of the previously unknown.
All in all, I believe the criticisms directed at The House of the Devil are largely misplaced, but I understand that Ti West has created a film that may have a limited audience of genre fans that appreciate a nostalgic romp through old fears. Aside from a mid-movie Walkman dance sequence (that was still oddly compelling), the film stays grounded in serious filmmaking instead of reaching directly for the easily accessible over-the-top cheese.
Storyline & plot: 6/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 9/10
Performances: 7/10
The Reverend says: 8/10
The premise for The House of the Devil is refreshingly simple: looking for some extra cash to make the deposit on a new apartment, college sophomore Samantha responds to a mysterious ad for a babysitter. Unfazed by her potential employer's odd telephone etiquette, Samantha agrees to take the babysitting job at a sprawling country home in an unspecified area of upstate New York. Little does Sam know that the job is not exactly what it appears, and that somewhere inside the Ulmans' country estate lurks a series of grisly and demonic secrets. Faced with the unsettling Ulman family, the disquieting house, and threats lurking both within and without, Sam's night slowly descends into terror.
I suspect that West's choice of an early '80s setting was initially nothing more than a plot device to eliminate the inconvenient reality of the vast and instant communication network available to us now through cell phones and the internet. Which, to many, would seem like cheating. But this simple plot device blossomed into a meticulous and fun homage to the late '70s/ early '80s horror vibe. Not only this, but West's anti-technology choice is a welcome counterstrike to a horror market glutted with thematically stale iterations of technophobia. To wit: Stephen King's novel Cell, South Korea's Phone (2002) and America's dreadful pseudo-remake One Missed Call (2008), and the Japanese Pulse (2001) and its even more ridiculous American remake of the same name from 2006. As the subtle exclamation point to his techno-bivalent statement, West inserts several telephone conversation scenes (many with rotary phones!) to serve as intermittent communication fulcrum points in a film otherwise marked by a profound sense of isolation.
The House of the Devil's detractors (and there are many) fall into two main categories: those who think the film's subject matter is misplaced for a 2009 release, and those who balk at the film's somewhat unconventional pace. It's true that modern technocratic America has very little use for fears over satanic cults. Most of these fears have long since proved unfounded. Accusations of satanic abuses were grossly exaggerated. Psychoanalysis is now met with heavy skepticism. The Cold War is over. We now have too many real wars accompanied by too many real atrocities. Why invent satanists to take the fall? Besides, Satanism is now a recognized and protected religion. Satanists are your neighbors. Satanists are your friends.
But remember: Rosemary's Baby wasn't really about satanism. It was about the claustrophobia and paranoia bred by urban living. And about the tenuous nature of trust in a new marriage. Satanism was just the supernatural icing on the cake. West just inverts Polanski's urban claustrophobia and comes out with rural isolation. And then doubles up on the isolation theme with an obviously withdrawn and lonely protagonist. Sam hates her current roommate, has no family to speak of, and has only one real friend to talk to. Critics who decry the slow pace of the film's middle may not realize that it perfectly accentuates Sam's physical and emotional isolation, all while slowly injecting a sense of profound dread. Punctuating this are intermittent slices of brutal violence, made all the more shocking by the relative silences that precede and follow. When the film's furious climax comes, it's almost a letdown, because the reality of violence is less intense than the dreading of the previously unknown.
All in all, I believe the criticisms directed at The House of the Devil are largely misplaced, but I understand that Ti West has created a film that may have a limited audience of genre fans that appreciate a nostalgic romp through old fears. Aside from a mid-movie Walkman dance sequence (that was still oddly compelling), the film stays grounded in serious filmmaking instead of reaching directly for the easily accessible over-the-top cheese.
Storyline & plot: 6/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 9/10
Performances: 7/10
The Reverend says: 8/10
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Phenomena
Phenomena (1985), perhaps more appropriately known as Creepers in the US, is undeniably a Dario Argento film. While lacking the subtly complex script of Argento's debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), or the technical mastery of Suspiria (1977), Phenomena brings together many of the Argento hallmarks. The blistering soundtrack includes sonic experimentation from Argento's pet band Goblin, bombastic gloom metal from the likes of Motorhead, Iron Maiden, and Andi Sex Gang, and strange folksy interludes from Bill Wyman (of The Rolling Stones). Capitalizing on her burgeoning popularity in Italy after her film debut in Sergio Leone's gangland epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Argento secured then 15-year-old Jennifer Connelly as his star and snagged veteran character actor Donald Pleasance to play her paraplegic mentor. Argento, as always, builds upon a core of giallo horror, adding his personal cinematographic touches to slowly transform Phenomena from a ho-hum Italian slasher into something quite unexpected.
American Jennifer Corvino (Connelly) is the new girl at a private boarding school buried in a little corner of the Swiss Alps. Jennifer is soon marked for death after she witnesses a murder at the school. With the aid of a reclusive entymologist (Pleasance), his trained chimp, and her own peculiar power over insects, Jennifer aims to track down the killer before it's too late.
Look, this film is nowhere near perfect. The dialogue is stilted, the English dub is poor, the editing is atrocious, and there are plot holes that you can drive a truck through. But the movie sure is fun, bursting with Argento's typical campy humor and ludicrous situations, not to mention his considerable eye for color, sets, lighting, and distinctive camera style.
What Phenomena loses with its somewhat meandering and slow beginnning, it more than makes up for with the last 25 minutes. Whatever you do, DO NOT miss the end of this film. It doesn't make sense. Don't even try to understand it on a logical level. Instead, give in to its visceral insanity, its cavalcade of bizarre, including poison pills, maggots, killer bees, underground tunnels, a pool of blood and body parts, one fucked up little kid with a monster face, a maritime explosion, a surprise decapitation, and a straight razor-wielding primate. Yeah, it just may be the greatest ending to any movie ever.
Storyline & plot: 5/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 6/10
The Reverend says: 6/10
American Jennifer Corvino (Connelly) is the new girl at a private boarding school buried in a little corner of the Swiss Alps. Jennifer is soon marked for death after she witnesses a murder at the school. With the aid of a reclusive entymologist (Pleasance), his trained chimp, and her own peculiar power over insects, Jennifer aims to track down the killer before it's too late.
Look, this film is nowhere near perfect. The dialogue is stilted, the English dub is poor, the editing is atrocious, and there are plot holes that you can drive a truck through. But the movie sure is fun, bursting with Argento's typical campy humor and ludicrous situations, not to mention his considerable eye for color, sets, lighting, and distinctive camera style.
What Phenomena loses with its somewhat meandering and slow beginnning, it more than makes up for with the last 25 minutes. Whatever you do, DO NOT miss the end of this film. It doesn't make sense. Don't even try to understand it on a logical level. Instead, give in to its visceral insanity, its cavalcade of bizarre, including poison pills, maggots, killer bees, underground tunnels, a pool of blood and body parts, one fucked up little kid with a monster face, a maritime explosion, a surprise decapitation, and a straight razor-wielding primate. Yeah, it just may be the greatest ending to any movie ever.
Storyline & plot: 5/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 6/10
The Reverend says: 6/10
Thursday, November 19, 2009
High Noon
High Noon (1952), more than most other movies, lives in two worlds. And unlike so many others, it manages to be a watershed entity in both worlds. First and foremost, High Noon is a film. And a damn fine one at that. Director Fred Zinnemann employs a little-used (for the time) crisp black-and-white palette, an excellent score, a group of very talented actors, sparse sets, and a richly layered backstory. His film rightly deserves any and all accolades it has received. Quite simply, it's one of the greatest films ever made. While often standing as the epitome of the classic Western genre, paradoxically, High Noon is also said to be a Western for people who don't like Westerns. Believe me, it doesn't matter if you like Westerns or not, you will love this movie.
Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is the very recently married and even more recently retired marshall of Hadleyville, New Mexico Territory, 1876. Kane plans to take his young bride (a very young Grace Kelly in one of her first feature roles) away from the rough-and-tumble frontier town, and set up a storefront somewhere a little quieter. But Kane hasn't counted on Frank Miller and his gang, just released from prison and on the noon train bound for Hadleyville. Frank's looking to take back the town he used to run and get revenge on the man who put him behind bars, Marshall Kane.
What follows is a frantic 90 minutes (almost, but not quite, corresponding to real time), as the clocks tick away toward noon, and Kane looks for any allies he can find to help him defend the town. The best he'll find are the old, the young, and the infirm. The worst he'll find is open disgust and hostility from those loyal to the old days, when the Miller gang ran things. Frank Miller isn't the only ghost of Kane's past that will surface this day: he'll also have to contend with his fiery ex-deputy (Lloyd Bridges), and his even more fiery ex-lover, Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado). As his friends and fellow townspeople abandon him like rats fleeing a sinking ship, Kane holds out hope that his pacifist bride will fly in the face of her religion and stand by his side.
There are so many great aspects of this movie, so I'll just single out a few. The cast is incredible. We have aging stars (Gary Cooper and Lon Cheney), we have rising stars (Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, Harry Morgan), and we have an amazing breakthrough performance for a foreign star (Katy Jurado). The acting is all exemplary, crowned by Cooper's quiet desperation and deep betrayed sorrow.
The character of Will Kane is unfamiliar territory for the likes of Gary Cooper, used to being the dashing, macho, easy hero. While Will Kane is a hero in his own right, there's nothing easy about him. He meets little more than apathy and hatred from the town he long protected. Betrayed, saddened, and scared shitless, he quietly awaits his doom, unable to flee for reasons he himself can't even fathom. And yet, there's no surprise in his eyes at the behavior of the townfolk. Deep down, it's as if he knew it would someday come to this. Abandoned. Left to die defending a town that was no longer his own. There is no surprise. Only a profound sadness and exhaustion.
Remember how I said High Noon lives in two worlds? You thought I'd forgotten about that, didn't you? Well, not quite. As a piece of cinema alone, it's an awesome achievement. But High Noon is not merely a movie. It's an extended metaphor for a transformation that was taking place in Hollywood at the time. It was the early 1950s. World War II was a recent memory, and the Cold War had settled on the globe. McCarthyism had taken hold of America, and the entertainment industry was no exception. Suspected communists and sympathizers were being rooted out and blacklisted, barred from making films in Hollywood. Brilliant screenwriter and producer Carl Foreman refused to go quietly, exposing many of his colleagues (including John Wayne) as McCarthyist hate-mongers. Foreman penned High Noon as a semi-autobiographical allegory, modeling Will Kane after himself: a lone man, beset by hatred and betrayal on all sides, yet continuing on in spite of it.
High Noon stunned Hollywood, and helped stem the tide of McCarthyism there, but sadly, it was too late for Carl Foreman. Producer Stanley Kramer removed Foreman's name from the credits, and shortly thereafter Foreman was blacklisted and thrown out of Hollywood by the likes of Kramer, John Wayne, and Ward Bond. Foreman continued to write, albeit anonymously or under pseudonyms, including the screenplay for 1957's The Bridge on the River Kwai. Throughout his illustrious career, High Noon remained his boldest work, his masterpiece.
Storyline & plot: 9/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 9/10
Performances: 10/10
The Reverend says: 10/10
Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is the very recently married and even more recently retired marshall of Hadleyville, New Mexico Territory, 1876. Kane plans to take his young bride (a very young Grace Kelly in one of her first feature roles) away from the rough-and-tumble frontier town, and set up a storefront somewhere a little quieter. But Kane hasn't counted on Frank Miller and his gang, just released from prison and on the noon train bound for Hadleyville. Frank's looking to take back the town he used to run and get revenge on the man who put him behind bars, Marshall Kane.
What follows is a frantic 90 minutes (almost, but not quite, corresponding to real time), as the clocks tick away toward noon, and Kane looks for any allies he can find to help him defend the town. The best he'll find are the old, the young, and the infirm. The worst he'll find is open disgust and hostility from those loyal to the old days, when the Miller gang ran things. Frank Miller isn't the only ghost of Kane's past that will surface this day: he'll also have to contend with his fiery ex-deputy (Lloyd Bridges), and his even more fiery ex-lover, Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado). As his friends and fellow townspeople abandon him like rats fleeing a sinking ship, Kane holds out hope that his pacifist bride will fly in the face of her religion and stand by his side.
There are so many great aspects of this movie, so I'll just single out a few. The cast is incredible. We have aging stars (Gary Cooper and Lon Cheney), we have rising stars (Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, Harry Morgan), and we have an amazing breakthrough performance for a foreign star (Katy Jurado). The acting is all exemplary, crowned by Cooper's quiet desperation and deep betrayed sorrow.
The character of Will Kane is unfamiliar territory for the likes of Gary Cooper, used to being the dashing, macho, easy hero. While Will Kane is a hero in his own right, there's nothing easy about him. He meets little more than apathy and hatred from the town he long protected. Betrayed, saddened, and scared shitless, he quietly awaits his doom, unable to flee for reasons he himself can't even fathom. And yet, there's no surprise in his eyes at the behavior of the townfolk. Deep down, it's as if he knew it would someday come to this. Abandoned. Left to die defending a town that was no longer his own. There is no surprise. Only a profound sadness and exhaustion.
Remember how I said High Noon lives in two worlds? You thought I'd forgotten about that, didn't you? Well, not quite. As a piece of cinema alone, it's an awesome achievement. But High Noon is not merely a movie. It's an extended metaphor for a transformation that was taking place in Hollywood at the time. It was the early 1950s. World War II was a recent memory, and the Cold War had settled on the globe. McCarthyism had taken hold of America, and the entertainment industry was no exception. Suspected communists and sympathizers were being rooted out and blacklisted, barred from making films in Hollywood. Brilliant screenwriter and producer Carl Foreman refused to go quietly, exposing many of his colleagues (including John Wayne) as McCarthyist hate-mongers. Foreman penned High Noon as a semi-autobiographical allegory, modeling Will Kane after himself: a lone man, beset by hatred and betrayal on all sides, yet continuing on in spite of it.
High Noon stunned Hollywood, and helped stem the tide of McCarthyism there, but sadly, it was too late for Carl Foreman. Producer Stanley Kramer removed Foreman's name from the credits, and shortly thereafter Foreman was blacklisted and thrown out of Hollywood by the likes of Kramer, John Wayne, and Ward Bond. Foreman continued to write, albeit anonymously or under pseudonyms, including the screenplay for 1957's The Bridge on the River Kwai. Throughout his illustrious career, High Noon remained his boldest work, his masterpiece.
Storyline & plot: 9/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 9/10
Performances: 10/10
The Reverend says: 10/10
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
After Hours
After Hours (1985), sandwiched as it is between the more successful films The King of Comedy (1982) and The Color of Money (1986), is an oft-overlooked gem from legendary director Martin Scorsese. As he has so many times throughout his long career, Scorsese returns here to his old stomping grounds with another tale from the Big Apple, this time mining it for black comedy.
The script from rookie screenwriter Joseph Minion is a triumph: complicated, but smooth and never forced. He keeps all the plot point balls up in the air (and there are quite a few) until the very last moment, and only then does he let them fall into place. Minion and Scorsese succeed in giving us a portrait of NYC in the waning of the 1980s: a post-punk wasteland of the scary, the gritty, and especially, the crazy. There are, of course, undercurrents of the age-old uptown/downtown dichotomy and the class distinctions underpinned by such a comparison. Scorsese has touched on such broad social commentary in previous films such as Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), but After Hours represents his most comprehensive analysis. Scorsese and Minion also explore the changing face of employment at the time, a transition to more soulless, computer-driven cubicle desk jobs, rendering After Hours a bleaker and far more subtle take than Mike Judge's classic Office Space (1999).
Social commentary notwithstanding, Scorsese largely eschews his political slant here in favor of the more personal. At its core, this film is an extended character study, not of our ostensible lead (Griffin Dunne), but of the city itself: Soho, the wee hours of a night much like any other night, filled with suicides, serial burglars, vigilante mobs, tortured artists, and lonely waitresses.
Uptown office word-cruncher Paul Hackett (Dunne) takes up the offer of a mysterious coffee shop acquaintance (Rosanna Arquette) to join her at her friend's (Linda Fiorentino) Soho loft in the early hours of the morning. Thinking it'll be an easy score, Paul readily agrees, and heads downtown with high hopes. But things take an irreversible turn for the worse when Paul loses all his money in the cab downtown. Furthermore, Paul's "date" with Marcy does not go at all as he planned after she unloads a mountain of emotional baggage. Eager to get away from Marcy and her weirdly kinky sculptress friend, Paul takes the first opportunity to bolt into the Soho night. Problem is, he's got no dough to get home. Paul spends the rest of the night bouncing around Soho, desperately trying to get home, but landing himself in the middle of an epic string of bad luck that plummets him into a surreal NYC nightmare.
The performances in After Hours are all superb. I'd expect nothing less from a film helmed by Scorsese. Griffin Dunne leads the way with a tight-wire act between composure and utter despair, maintaining a baseline of cool calm, but swinging randomly and wildly toward full-blown paranoid apoplexy in the face of the night's meltdown and very real threat of imprisonment or death. Joining Arquette and Fiorentino in a solid supporting cast are John Heard, Catherine O'Hara, and Teri Garr. The cast is rounded out by hilarious cameo appearances by Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong as a very CheechandChong-ish pair of petty thieves.
If you've ever wondered just how wrong a single night can go, Scorsese gives us a pretty good idea, with a little help from influences as far flung as Franz Kafka, John Landis, and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (if Hopper had been on a coke and booze bender at the time of painting).
Storyline & plot: 10/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 7/10
Performances: 9/10
The Reverend says: 9/10
The script from rookie screenwriter Joseph Minion is a triumph: complicated, but smooth and never forced. He keeps all the plot point balls up in the air (and there are quite a few) until the very last moment, and only then does he let them fall into place. Minion and Scorsese succeed in giving us a portrait of NYC in the waning of the 1980s: a post-punk wasteland of the scary, the gritty, and especially, the crazy. There are, of course, undercurrents of the age-old uptown/downtown dichotomy and the class distinctions underpinned by such a comparison. Scorsese has touched on such broad social commentary in previous films such as Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), but After Hours represents his most comprehensive analysis. Scorsese and Minion also explore the changing face of employment at the time, a transition to more soulless, computer-driven cubicle desk jobs, rendering After Hours a bleaker and far more subtle take than Mike Judge's classic Office Space (1999).
Social commentary notwithstanding, Scorsese largely eschews his political slant here in favor of the more personal. At its core, this film is an extended character study, not of our ostensible lead (Griffin Dunne), but of the city itself: Soho, the wee hours of a night much like any other night, filled with suicides, serial burglars, vigilante mobs, tortured artists, and lonely waitresses.
Uptown office word-cruncher Paul Hackett (Dunne) takes up the offer of a mysterious coffee shop acquaintance (Rosanna Arquette) to join her at her friend's (Linda Fiorentino) Soho loft in the early hours of the morning. Thinking it'll be an easy score, Paul readily agrees, and heads downtown with high hopes. But things take an irreversible turn for the worse when Paul loses all his money in the cab downtown. Furthermore, Paul's "date" with Marcy does not go at all as he planned after she unloads a mountain of emotional baggage. Eager to get away from Marcy and her weirdly kinky sculptress friend, Paul takes the first opportunity to bolt into the Soho night. Problem is, he's got no dough to get home. Paul spends the rest of the night bouncing around Soho, desperately trying to get home, but landing himself in the middle of an epic string of bad luck that plummets him into a surreal NYC nightmare.
The performances in After Hours are all superb. I'd expect nothing less from a film helmed by Scorsese. Griffin Dunne leads the way with a tight-wire act between composure and utter despair, maintaining a baseline of cool calm, but swinging randomly and wildly toward full-blown paranoid apoplexy in the face of the night's meltdown and very real threat of imprisonment or death. Joining Arquette and Fiorentino in a solid supporting cast are John Heard, Catherine O'Hara, and Teri Garr. The cast is rounded out by hilarious cameo appearances by Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong as a very CheechandChong-ish pair of petty thieves.
If you've ever wondered just how wrong a single night can go, Scorsese gives us a pretty good idea, with a little help from influences as far flung as Franz Kafka, John Landis, and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (if Hopper had been on a coke and booze bender at the time of painting).
Storyline & plot: 10/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 7/10
Performances: 9/10
The Reverend says: 9/10
Friday, October 30, 2009
Night Watch
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
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
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
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Volver
Pedro Almodovar, Spain's reigning king of cinema, has made a very long and fruitful career out of subverting and subtly lampooning traditional morals, religion, sexuality, and family values. It seems implausible in today's more open political climate, but Almodovar was once an underground revolutionary when Spain still toiled under the thumb of the despotic rule of Francisco Franco. The director was a wanted man, as much for his subversive films as his open homosexuality. He has long been the champion of Spanish women, frankly portraying their secret pleasures, misdeeds, and heartbreaks. While the subject matter of his films has been considered worthy, his methods often are not. Displaying a joyous fondness for campy delivery, Almodovar has at times come under fire for his hyperbolic style, derided as amateur. I dunno, maybe his critics have a point. As for myself, I have been a fan of Almodovar's films, amateur delivery and all, for some time. Say what you will, critics, but no director aside from Krzysztof Kieslowski has ever wielded a camera with such complexity and raw devastation as Almodovar.
Volver (2006), like all Almodovar films, is principally concerned with sex and death, and the far-reaching effects those two can have. And like all his films, events are set in motion by sudden and violent tragedy. Like the trigger of a gun, 14-year-old Paula's accidental killing of the man she believes to be her father sets in motion an explosive chain of events that just might rip her mother Raimunda's (Penelope Cruz) family apart. Right on cue, Raimunda's mother Irene (beloved Spanish screen legend Carmen Maura) appears to Raimunda's sister Sole (Lola Duenas) to dispense some wisdom and clear up a few facts about the family's past. Problem is, Irene's been dead for four years, immolated in the same housefire that also took her husband's life. Is she a ghost? A hallucination? Or something else entirely?
While Raimunda revives the business for a struggling restaurant, and keeps everyone away from the nasty secret hiding in the freezer, Irene's spirit takes up residence in Sole's apartment. When Augustina, an old family friend, faces a diagnosis of terminal cancer, her own search for answers disturbs the skeletons in Irene's family closet. Faced with an agonizing decision, Irene's spirit is forced to divulge a devastation secret. Like any good secret, its revelation sheds more light than intended, and Raimunda's own sad story is finally revealed as well.
I know, I know. That's all very vague. But the film's power lies in its slow unraveling, until no stone is left unturned. Every frame of the film is packed with meaning, and Almodovar's skill is drawing it out one bit at a time. The ghost of Irene is really just the personification of the director's literary motif: misdeeds thought buried will eventually resurface, like a ghost returning to its old haunts. The title itself is a subtle double entendre: "volver" means "to return," much like Irene's spirit and the troubles of the past. But "volver" can also be the verb in "volver loco," meaning "to go crazy," which is of course the final result of a past never laid to rest.
While not as emotionally powerful as his All About My Mother (1999) nor as visually creative as Talk to Her (2002), I would argue that Volver is Almodovar's best film. Abandoning the campy aesthetic of his previous films, Almodovar goes right for the gut with his most gritty and realistic effort to date. He gets some help from a terrific ensemble cast, including an Oscar-nominated Penelope Cruz doing the greatest work of her career. As good as Cruz is, she's upstaged by Carmen Maura's portrayal of the multi-faceted Irene.
While Almodovar fans may be wondering where his trademark fantastic visuals and subtle surrealism have gone, I urge them to let Volver grow on them. Believe me, it is no less complex for being realistic and linear. In fact, I believe this allows Almodovar's story, his exploration of themes very close to his heart, to shine through in a way it never quite has before.
Storyline & plot: 10/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 8/10
Performances: 10/10
The Reverend says: 9/10
Volver (2006), like all Almodovar films, is principally concerned with sex and death, and the far-reaching effects those two can have. And like all his films, events are set in motion by sudden and violent tragedy. Like the trigger of a gun, 14-year-old Paula's accidental killing of the man she believes to be her father sets in motion an explosive chain of events that just might rip her mother Raimunda's (Penelope Cruz) family apart. Right on cue, Raimunda's mother Irene (beloved Spanish screen legend Carmen Maura) appears to Raimunda's sister Sole (Lola Duenas) to dispense some wisdom and clear up a few facts about the family's past. Problem is, Irene's been dead for four years, immolated in the same housefire that also took her husband's life. Is she a ghost? A hallucination? Or something else entirely?
While Raimunda revives the business for a struggling restaurant, and keeps everyone away from the nasty secret hiding in the freezer, Irene's spirit takes up residence in Sole's apartment. When Augustina, an old family friend, faces a diagnosis of terminal cancer, her own search for answers disturbs the skeletons in Irene's family closet. Faced with an agonizing decision, Irene's spirit is forced to divulge a devastation secret. Like any good secret, its revelation sheds more light than intended, and Raimunda's own sad story is finally revealed as well.
I know, I know. That's all very vague. But the film's power lies in its slow unraveling, until no stone is left unturned. Every frame of the film is packed with meaning, and Almodovar's skill is drawing it out one bit at a time. The ghost of Irene is really just the personification of the director's literary motif: misdeeds thought buried will eventually resurface, like a ghost returning to its old haunts. The title itself is a subtle double entendre: "volver" means "to return," much like Irene's spirit and the troubles of the past. But "volver" can also be the verb in "volver loco," meaning "to go crazy," which is of course the final result of a past never laid to rest.
While not as emotionally powerful as his All About My Mother (1999) nor as visually creative as Talk to Her (2002), I would argue that Volver is Almodovar's best film. Abandoning the campy aesthetic of his previous films, Almodovar goes right for the gut with his most gritty and realistic effort to date. He gets some help from a terrific ensemble cast, including an Oscar-nominated Penelope Cruz doing the greatest work of her career. As good as Cruz is, she's upstaged by Carmen Maura's portrayal of the multi-faceted Irene.
While Almodovar fans may be wondering where his trademark fantastic visuals and subtle surrealism have gone, I urge them to let Volver grow on them. Believe me, it is no less complex for being realistic and linear. In fact, I believe this allows Almodovar's story, his exploration of themes very close to his heart, to shine through in a way it never quite has before.
Storyline & plot: 10/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 8/10
Performances: 10/10
The Reverend says: 9/10
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Pandorum
Other reviewers have disparaged Pandorum (2009) for being too derivative of a plethora of other genre staples, and having little room to be unique. You know what I say to that? They're absolutely correct. Any viewer well-versed in space scifi or action thrillers will certainly get more than one feeling of deja vu. A bunch of comparisons leaped to my mind during the course of the film. The most obvious of these is Alien (1979), but this comparison only holds up as far as the fact that Alien remains the template for all horror and thriller films set in space. Other more apt comparisons are The Descent (2005) and the LotR trilogy in terms of creature design, and The Road Warrior (1981), Resident Evil (2002), and The Wizard of Oz (1939) for plot elements. These analogies are all valid. The thing is, despite being a little muddled with cliches and pulled in too many directions, the film eventually delivers on its slow build with a white-knuckle final 20 minutes and a couple of twists, one only so-so, but one that I definitely did not see coming.
Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) awakes suddenly from suspended animation somewhere in the bowels of a dying spaceship. Suffering from memory loss as a side effect of hypersleep, Bower and his commanding officer, Payton (Dennis Quaid), attempt to piece together who and where they are, as well as their larger purpose out in space. It soon becomes clear that something disastrous has happened: the ship's main power is down, there's no communication from the flight crew, and Payton and Bower are unable to reach the bridge.
While Payton stays behind to serve as the navigation and communication link, Bower sets out for the ship's reactor, hoping to reboot the power systems and gain access to the bridge. It's here that the film gives way from subtle psychological horror to action thriller. At first Bower finds the ship a ghost town: a labyrinth of empty dark corridors. But he'll soon be running for his life from a band of hideous orc-like creatures, sticking to the shadows and racing against time to reboot the reactor before it cycles down for good. He gets a little help along the way from a rag-tag group of survivors: Manh, a member of the mission's agricultural department (portrayed by world champion kickboxer and mixed martial artist Cung Le), botanist, self-appointed keeper of the ship's biological specimens, and all-around hottie Nadia (Antje Traue), and the loathsome and mentally-unbalanced Leland, one-time cook.
During their mad dash to the reactor chamber, the survivors try to sort out the glaring questions. What are the creatures and where did they come from? What happened to the flight crew? What happened to the ship? And beyond those, what was their mission, where were they headed and where are they now?
I think this film's main problem is that director Christian Alvart is never quite sure what kind of film he's trying to make. He vacillates between psychological horror, creature scifi, and fast-paced action thriller. Any of these angles, properly developed, would have worked great, but Alvart's genre mash-up leaves something to be desired.
What Pandorum lacks in genre cohesion, though, it more than makes up for in some phenomenal sets and effects, and some very solid performances, led by the always powerful Ben Foster. The set design from Richard Bridgland and Bernhard Henrich is nothing short of amazing, intricate, and highly layered. Borrowing once again from Ridley Scott's Alien as well as The Matrix (1999), Bridgland and Henrich succeed in bringing the massive spaceship to life using an organic style, highlighting the ship's role as a living ecosystem. This set design echoes a style used to great effect in 1997's Event Horizon, another space horror directed by Pandorum's producer, Paul W.S. Anderson.
Speaking of The Matrix, another minor sin committed here is a dependence on cliched martial arts type fighting sequences, complete with jarring and confusing rapid-fire editing. I mean, come on, there's only so many times Bower can be thrown around like a ragdoll or fall off of a platform before he breaks something. Most likely his back. But, like a video game, our hero takes a licking (or several) and keeps right on ticking. It's not a huge thing, but it is a little distracting.
Pandorum definitely could benefit from more solid direction, but it's still very good, very enjoyable, and it'll make you ponder a few anthropological, ethical, and cosmological questions.
Storyline & plot: 6/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 8/10
The Reverend says: 7/10
Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) awakes suddenly from suspended animation somewhere in the bowels of a dying spaceship. Suffering from memory loss as a side effect of hypersleep, Bower and his commanding officer, Payton (Dennis Quaid), attempt to piece together who and where they are, as well as their larger purpose out in space. It soon becomes clear that something disastrous has happened: the ship's main power is down, there's no communication from the flight crew, and Payton and Bower are unable to reach the bridge.
While Payton stays behind to serve as the navigation and communication link, Bower sets out for the ship's reactor, hoping to reboot the power systems and gain access to the bridge. It's here that the film gives way from subtle psychological horror to action thriller. At first Bower finds the ship a ghost town: a labyrinth of empty dark corridors. But he'll soon be running for his life from a band of hideous orc-like creatures, sticking to the shadows and racing against time to reboot the reactor before it cycles down for good. He gets a little help along the way from a rag-tag group of survivors: Manh, a member of the mission's agricultural department (portrayed by world champion kickboxer and mixed martial artist Cung Le), botanist, self-appointed keeper of the ship's biological specimens, and all-around hottie Nadia (Antje Traue), and the loathsome and mentally-unbalanced Leland, one-time cook.
During their mad dash to the reactor chamber, the survivors try to sort out the glaring questions. What are the creatures and where did they come from? What happened to the flight crew? What happened to the ship? And beyond those, what was their mission, where were they headed and where are they now?
I think this film's main problem is that director Christian Alvart is never quite sure what kind of film he's trying to make. He vacillates between psychological horror, creature scifi, and fast-paced action thriller. Any of these angles, properly developed, would have worked great, but Alvart's genre mash-up leaves something to be desired.
What Pandorum lacks in genre cohesion, though, it more than makes up for in some phenomenal sets and effects, and some very solid performances, led by the always powerful Ben Foster. The set design from Richard Bridgland and Bernhard Henrich is nothing short of amazing, intricate, and highly layered. Borrowing once again from Ridley Scott's Alien as well as The Matrix (1999), Bridgland and Henrich succeed in bringing the massive spaceship to life using an organic style, highlighting the ship's role as a living ecosystem. This set design echoes a style used to great effect in 1997's Event Horizon, another space horror directed by Pandorum's producer, Paul W.S. Anderson.
Speaking of The Matrix, another minor sin committed here is a dependence on cliched martial arts type fighting sequences, complete with jarring and confusing rapid-fire editing. I mean, come on, there's only so many times Bower can be thrown around like a ragdoll or fall off of a platform before he breaks something. Most likely his back. But, like a video game, our hero takes a licking (or several) and keeps right on ticking. It's not a huge thing, but it is a little distracting.
Pandorum definitely could benefit from more solid direction, but it's still very good, very enjoyable, and it'll make you ponder a few anthropological, ethical, and cosmological questions.
Storyline & plot: 6/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 8/10
The Reverend says: 7/10
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Wild at Heart
So, yeah, it's true that the much-maligned Nic Cage has never been a good actor. Ever. He has come very close to being able to act on a few occasions, notably in Leaving Las Vegas (1995), Bringing Out the Dead (1999), and Adaptation (2002). But 3 out of, let's see, according to IMDB, 62 film performances is not a very good success ratio. Nonetheless, I don't hate him as much as many others. To his credit, he's starred in a number of films that, while not necessarily Oscar-caliber, are fun and quite enjoyable. To wit: Face/Off (1997), The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997). I must confess my great sin of never having seen the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona (1988), so I can't speak to that one. But here's the undeniable truth: Cage's performance as an Elvis-esque manslaughtering parole-violator in David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990) is one of the most atrocious things ever committed to film.
His lines are delivered either hurriedly, with absolutely no feeling, like he's reading it off a cue card. Or he swings the other the way and goes so over the top that you'd think he was gunning for a spot on "All My Children". And yeah, I realize that sort of soap-opera pastiche is part of Lynch's style, but come on, Nic, at least be consistently over-the-top. In fact, one of the film's major weaknesses is that its two leads often get overwhelmed (and out-acted) by the supporting ensemble cast, which includes a number of Lynch favorites: Isabella Rossellini, Grace Zabriski, Sherilyn Fenn, and Harry Dean Stanton, among others. The centerpiece of the supporting cast is Willem Dafoe as the nauseatingly skeazy John Waters lookalike Bobby Peru. Dafoe, as always, does not disappoint, and completely steals the entire movie even though he has only a few minutes of screentime.
Wild at Heart follows Lula (Laura Dern) and Sailor (Cage), a pair of star-crossed lovers on the run from Lula's momma (Diane Ladd, Laura Dern's actual mother). Lula's momma, owner of the interesting name of Marietta Fortune, is one well-connected woman. In her fury at Sailor over taking her little girl away (and once upon a time rebuffing her own sexual advances in a public toilet), she sends a veritable army on the lovers' trail towards the Big Easy. First up is private investigator and Marietta's sometime boyfriend Johnnie Farragut (Stanton). Poor schlepy Farragut has no idea what kind of monster Marietta is, or that he's not the only chip she's called in on her hunt for Sailor and Lula. Also on the case is mobster Marcelles Santos, who enlists a whole slew of crazy characters: a cajun voodoo priestess (Zabriski), the proprietor of an S&M bordello, and the snake-in-the-grass ex-marine Bobby Peru. Lula and Sailor's mad sex-and-thrash-metal-fueled dash out to California is cut short when a serious lack of funds strands them in Big Tuna, a god-forsaken West Texas shithole of a town. And in Big Tuna, Bobby Peru makes Sailor an offer he can't refuse. Although he'll wish he had.
In Wild at Heart, David Lynch makes several amateur filmmaking mistakes. First off, he lets his desire for certain oddball acting pairs get in the way of making truly informed casting decisions. Cage and Dern are repeatedly upstaged by minor players. Cage's atrocious southern accent and hokey Elvis impersonations get real old real fast, and as far as I can tell, Dern's only qualification for this film is a willingness to get naked a lot. Nice body, but I could do without the face. And don't even get me started on the numerous and frankly nauseating sex scenes.
Secondly, Lynch is just throwing way too many characters out there. A few of them are completely superfluous. Johnnie Farragut is a complete waste of Harry Dean Stanton's considerable talents. Other throw-away characters include Zabriski's voodoo lady, Sherilyn Fenn's doomed car-crash victim, and the dog-obsessed OO Spool (the late great Jack Nance).
Lastly, and this is the biggest transgression, Lynch wields his Wizard of Oz symbolism like a sledgehammer, repeatedly smashing the audience in the face with similarities that are tenuous, contrived, or both. See, Marietta is supposed to be the Wicked Witch of the West, and Lula is Dorothy, and Sailor is.... um.... the Scarecrow, maybe? The point is, the only way the audience recognizes these "similarities" is because Lynch literally verbalizes the comparison through dialogue. Which is more believable, a connection that I recognize on my own or one that is literally thrown in my face with a hand-wrapped explanation? Sorry Lynch, I'm just not buying it. Go peddle your phony symbolism somewhere else.
The bottom line is, Wild at Heart is the most tepid Lynch movie I've seen. Mullholland Drive was confusing as shit, but at least it had decent acting.
Storyline & plot: 4/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 4/10
The Reverend says: 5/10
His lines are delivered either hurriedly, with absolutely no feeling, like he's reading it off a cue card. Or he swings the other the way and goes so over the top that you'd think he was gunning for a spot on "All My Children". And yeah, I realize that sort of soap-opera pastiche is part of Lynch's style, but come on, Nic, at least be consistently over-the-top. In fact, one of the film's major weaknesses is that its two leads often get overwhelmed (and out-acted) by the supporting ensemble cast, which includes a number of Lynch favorites: Isabella Rossellini, Grace Zabriski, Sherilyn Fenn, and Harry Dean Stanton, among others. The centerpiece of the supporting cast is Willem Dafoe as the nauseatingly skeazy John Waters lookalike Bobby Peru. Dafoe, as always, does not disappoint, and completely steals the entire movie even though he has only a few minutes of screentime.
Wild at Heart follows Lula (Laura Dern) and Sailor (Cage), a pair of star-crossed lovers on the run from Lula's momma (Diane Ladd, Laura Dern's actual mother). Lula's momma, owner of the interesting name of Marietta Fortune, is one well-connected woman. In her fury at Sailor over taking her little girl away (and once upon a time rebuffing her own sexual advances in a public toilet), she sends a veritable army on the lovers' trail towards the Big Easy. First up is private investigator and Marietta's sometime boyfriend Johnnie Farragut (Stanton). Poor schlepy Farragut has no idea what kind of monster Marietta is, or that he's not the only chip she's called in on her hunt for Sailor and Lula. Also on the case is mobster Marcelles Santos, who enlists a whole slew of crazy characters: a cajun voodoo priestess (Zabriski), the proprietor of an S&M bordello, and the snake-in-the-grass ex-marine Bobby Peru. Lula and Sailor's mad sex-and-thrash-metal-fueled dash out to California is cut short when a serious lack of funds strands them in Big Tuna, a god-forsaken West Texas shithole of a town. And in Big Tuna, Bobby Peru makes Sailor an offer he can't refuse. Although he'll wish he had.
In Wild at Heart, David Lynch makes several amateur filmmaking mistakes. First off, he lets his desire for certain oddball acting pairs get in the way of making truly informed casting decisions. Cage and Dern are repeatedly upstaged by minor players. Cage's atrocious southern accent and hokey Elvis impersonations get real old real fast, and as far as I can tell, Dern's only qualification for this film is a willingness to get naked a lot. Nice body, but I could do without the face. And don't even get me started on the numerous and frankly nauseating sex scenes.
Secondly, Lynch is just throwing way too many characters out there. A few of them are completely superfluous. Johnnie Farragut is a complete waste of Harry Dean Stanton's considerable talents. Other throw-away characters include Zabriski's voodoo lady, Sherilyn Fenn's doomed car-crash victim, and the dog-obsessed OO Spool (the late great Jack Nance).
Lastly, and this is the biggest transgression, Lynch wields his Wizard of Oz symbolism like a sledgehammer, repeatedly smashing the audience in the face with similarities that are tenuous, contrived, or both. See, Marietta is supposed to be the Wicked Witch of the West, and Lula is Dorothy, and Sailor is.... um.... the Scarecrow, maybe? The point is, the only way the audience recognizes these "similarities" is because Lynch literally verbalizes the comparison through dialogue. Which is more believable, a connection that I recognize on my own or one that is literally thrown in my face with a hand-wrapped explanation? Sorry Lynch, I'm just not buying it. Go peddle your phony symbolism somewhere else.
The bottom line is, Wild at Heart is the most tepid Lynch movie I've seen. Mullholland Drive was confusing as shit, but at least it had decent acting.
Storyline & plot: 4/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 4/10
The Reverend says: 5/10
Friday, September 25, 2009
Spaced
"Spaced", a British television series that ran for two seasons from 1999-2000, is the brain child of then burgeoning comic mind Simon Pegg and stage actress turned writer Jessica Stevenson. Throw in a young director with a fair amount of television experience (Edgar Wright), add a trio of well-heeled and beloved TV character actors (Julia Deakin, Mark Heap, and Katy Carmichael), and top it off with Pegg's completely inexperienced childhood friend Nick Frost, and you have the recipe for a comedic gem heavily influenced by Stevenson's penchant for sci-fi themes.
Tim (Pegg) is a lazy knockabout comic artist working in a comic-book store and looking for his big break. Daisy (Stevenson) is an even lazier freelance journalist who struggles mightily to churn out any meaningful work. On the hunt for a London flat cheap enough to fit into her minimal-work lifestyle, Daisy meets Tim, fresh from being dumped by his long-time girlfriend. Being that Tim is also on the lookout for a cheap flat, the two decide to be flatmates. Turns out, there's a perfect apartment out there for everyone, and Daisy and Tim soon find one. Problem is, the landlady (Deakin) only wants "professional couples." In a plot device as old as television (see "Ned & Stacy", "Bosom Buddies", and "Three's Company", among many others), Tim and Daisy undertake an elaborate charade in order to secure the flat. Problem is, they're both too lazy to properly keep up appearances, and in the blink of an eye, their secret is out.
Joining Tim and Daisy in their deception is Tim's childhood friend Mike (Frost), an idiot savant whose main occupation is private first class in the Terrestrial Army (the British equivalent of the National Guard, if the National Guard were filled with the developmentally and socially disabled). There's also Twist (Carmichael), Daisy's cute yet empty-headed and shallow best friend, who soon develops an interest in co-conspirator Brian (Heap), a creepy tormented artist that lives below Tim and Daisy. The show unfolds around the group of friends and their struggles to find steady work and steady play while keeping the landlady Marsha in the dark as to the true nature of Tim and Daisy's relationship.
"Spaced" marks the beginning of what would be a very funny and very fruitful collaboration between Pegg and Wright. The duo would go on to write and produce the instant classic zomcom Shaun of the Dead (2004) and 2007's underrated follow-up Hot Fuzz, a send-up of '70s buddy-cop shows and Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries. It's with "Spaced" that we first see the Wright/Pegg cinematic style, prefiguring America's "Scrubs" with a penchant for extended flashbacks, flashforwards, and fantasy cut scenes. Influenced by Jessica Stevenson's love of science fiction, the show abounds with sci-fi parodies, send-ups, and references. From Romero's Living Dead movies to Lara Croft to "The X-Files" to The Matrix, everything's up for grabs. Hell, let's throw in a little Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, and JRR Tolkien for good measure.
And don't even think about trying to casually watch this series. From trying to decipher the sometimes thick London accents and British slang, to following the fast-paced jumpcuts and timeshifts, to being on the lookout for the next sci-fi pop culture reference, "Spaced" will definitely keep you on your toes. Aside from simply referencing science-fiction, the series has a decidedly sci-fi style and ambiance. Guy Pratt's original music is great, taking inspiration from a wide spectrum of genre staples and fusing them. Pratt is partial to the heavy and high strings of such classics as Psycho (1960), Halloween (1978), and Friday the 13th (1980), and he uses them to great effect. Wright makes great use of lighting and filters to impart an appropriately spooky vibe to the scenes. And with a wide array of genre props and set-pieces, the style is perfected.
The bottom line is, it's a really funny show, particularly to those who can catch and appreciate most of the pop culture and scifi references. And at a whopping 14 episodes, it's not going to require a huge commitment on your part. The series can be viewed over a weekend.
Storyline & plot: 8/10
Cinematography & effects: 10/10
Music & mood: 8/10
Performances: 9/10
The Reverend says: 9/10
Tim (Pegg) is a lazy knockabout comic artist working in a comic-book store and looking for his big break. Daisy (Stevenson) is an even lazier freelance journalist who struggles mightily to churn out any meaningful work. On the hunt for a London flat cheap enough to fit into her minimal-work lifestyle, Daisy meets Tim, fresh from being dumped by his long-time girlfriend. Being that Tim is also on the lookout for a cheap flat, the two decide to be flatmates. Turns out, there's a perfect apartment out there for everyone, and Daisy and Tim soon find one. Problem is, the landlady (Deakin) only wants "professional couples." In a plot device as old as television (see "Ned & Stacy", "Bosom Buddies", and "Three's Company", among many others), Tim and Daisy undertake an elaborate charade in order to secure the flat. Problem is, they're both too lazy to properly keep up appearances, and in the blink of an eye, their secret is out.
Joining Tim and Daisy in their deception is Tim's childhood friend Mike (Frost), an idiot savant whose main occupation is private first class in the Terrestrial Army (the British equivalent of the National Guard, if the National Guard were filled with the developmentally and socially disabled). There's also Twist (Carmichael), Daisy's cute yet empty-headed and shallow best friend, who soon develops an interest in co-conspirator Brian (Heap), a creepy tormented artist that lives below Tim and Daisy. The show unfolds around the group of friends and their struggles to find steady work and steady play while keeping the landlady Marsha in the dark as to the true nature of Tim and Daisy's relationship.
"Spaced" marks the beginning of what would be a very funny and very fruitful collaboration between Pegg and Wright. The duo would go on to write and produce the instant classic zomcom Shaun of the Dead (2004) and 2007's underrated follow-up Hot Fuzz, a send-up of '70s buddy-cop shows and Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries. It's with "Spaced" that we first see the Wright/Pegg cinematic style, prefiguring America's "Scrubs" with a penchant for extended flashbacks, flashforwards, and fantasy cut scenes. Influenced by Jessica Stevenson's love of science fiction, the show abounds with sci-fi parodies, send-ups, and references. From Romero's Living Dead movies to Lara Croft to "The X-Files" to The Matrix, everything's up for grabs. Hell, let's throw in a little Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, and JRR Tolkien for good measure.
And don't even think about trying to casually watch this series. From trying to decipher the sometimes thick London accents and British slang, to following the fast-paced jumpcuts and timeshifts, to being on the lookout for the next sci-fi pop culture reference, "Spaced" will definitely keep you on your toes. Aside from simply referencing science-fiction, the series has a decidedly sci-fi style and ambiance. Guy Pratt's original music is great, taking inspiration from a wide spectrum of genre staples and fusing them. Pratt is partial to the heavy and high strings of such classics as Psycho (1960), Halloween (1978), and Friday the 13th (1980), and he uses them to great effect. Wright makes great use of lighting and filters to impart an appropriately spooky vibe to the scenes. And with a wide array of genre props and set-pieces, the style is perfected.
The bottom line is, it's a really funny show, particularly to those who can catch and appreciate most of the pop culture and scifi references. And at a whopping 14 episodes, it's not going to require a huge commitment on your part. The series can be viewed over a weekend.
Storyline & plot: 8/10
Cinematography & effects: 10/10
Music & mood: 8/10
Performances: 9/10
The Reverend says: 9/10
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Gozu
I gotta tell you, Takashi Miike is the only director who routinely makes David Lynch look like Walt Disney. If Lynch and David Cronenburg had a monstrous love child, it would be Miike. His films are utterly horrifying. His cringe factor is through the roof. After watching a Miike film, this is what I want to do: vomit copiously, take a steaming hot shower and scrub myself with lye, and then curl up into the fetal position and silently weep. So, yeah, his films aren't for everyone. In fact, I don't even know if they're for anyone, but I find myself watching just the same. Gozu (2003) is no exception. In fact, it may just be the gold standard Miike film. With Gozu, we find all the recurring Miike themes thrown together. We have the gangsters and extreme violence of Ichi the Killer (2001), the bizarre sexuality of Visitor Q (2001), the surrealism of "MPD Psycho" (2000), and the visceral visuals and story elements of Audition (1999).
Minami, a novice Yakuza gets his first real assignment: eliminate Ozaki, a fellow Yakuza who's come unhinged and represents a liability to the crew. Travelling west to a Yakuza "dumping" facility in Nagoya, Minami wrestles with his task. Ozaki is clearly spiralling out of control, but he once saved Minami's life, and the young man has great respect for him. But if he returns to Tokyo with the job unfinished, his life will be forfeit. But before Minami can decide, the decision is made for him: Ozaki is killed in a car accident on the way to Nagoya. But when Ozaki's corpse mysteriously disappears, Minami frantically searches for the evidence that will keep his name off the Boss's hit list. In Nagoya, Minami enters into a world of violence, sex, and bizarre events he cannot begin to fathom. On the trail of an apparently not dead Ozaki, the novice runs afoul of a host of strange locals, including a lactating hotel manager and her child-like brother, a malicious cross-dressing restaraunteur, and a member of the Nagoya Yakuza, a man who believes (falsely) that he has a skin pigmentation disease. But it's when Minami runs across Gozu, a mythical cow-headed demon, that things get really weird. Minami eventually finds Ozaki, although in several forms he would never have expected, and the two head back to Tokyo with a plan to take down the Yakuza Boss.
So, yes, I was horrified through most of the movie, particularly the unforgettable final 5 minutes. But Gozu is less disturbing than Visitor Q and has the periodic comedic interludes that Audition lacks. And when you get down to it, when you strip away all of the absurdities and surrealism, the core story is very relatable. The conflict of professional duty versus personal affections is as old as time, and the heartwrenching decision to murder one's own brother feels very Greek mythology to me. Not to mention Judeo-Christian mythology. Against my better judgment, I found Gozu to be entertaining. You just have to have a strong stomach.
Beyond the strong central story, Gozu is also a well-made film. Miike makes great use of uncut long shots to establish an atmosphere of intimate confrontation between Ozaki and Minami. Kazunari Tanaka's props and effects are all superb, except for one electrocution scene that bordered on cartoonish. The music by Koji Endo and the sound effects from Hitoshi Tsurumaki complement each other seamlessly, blending to make a subtly unnerving backdrop which serves to heighten Minami's disorientation. Miike and screenwriter Sakichi Sato put together only the main elements of the narrative and did not write any dialogue. Actors received only their character's name and occupation prior to filming to keep the improv factor in play. Unlike many other loosely scripted ventures, Gozu shines. The story is almost completely dependent on Yuta Sone as Minami, and his genuine reactions to the oddities of Nagoya are key. The improv style captures Sone's genuine horror and befuddlement at just what the fucking fuck is going on in Nagoya. Without that strong lead, Gozu falls apart.
If you've never experienced a Miike film before, and you still want to after reading this, I suggest you try Ichi the Killer first, to ease you into Miike's style, then move onto Audition. Skip Visitor Q if you like; it's a little too gross. Then move on to Gozu to see the various threads of Miike's mythology come together. Just be prepared. Especially for those last 5 minutes or so. They're a doozy.
Storyline & plot: 8/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 7/10
Performances: 7/10
The Reverend says: 7/10
Minami, a novice Yakuza gets his first real assignment: eliminate Ozaki, a fellow Yakuza who's come unhinged and represents a liability to the crew. Travelling west to a Yakuza "dumping" facility in Nagoya, Minami wrestles with his task. Ozaki is clearly spiralling out of control, but he once saved Minami's life, and the young man has great respect for him. But if he returns to Tokyo with the job unfinished, his life will be forfeit. But before Minami can decide, the decision is made for him: Ozaki is killed in a car accident on the way to Nagoya. But when Ozaki's corpse mysteriously disappears, Minami frantically searches for the evidence that will keep his name off the Boss's hit list. In Nagoya, Minami enters into a world of violence, sex, and bizarre events he cannot begin to fathom. On the trail of an apparently not dead Ozaki, the novice runs afoul of a host of strange locals, including a lactating hotel manager and her child-like brother, a malicious cross-dressing restaraunteur, and a member of the Nagoya Yakuza, a man who believes (falsely) that he has a skin pigmentation disease. But it's when Minami runs across Gozu, a mythical cow-headed demon, that things get really weird. Minami eventually finds Ozaki, although in several forms he would never have expected, and the two head back to Tokyo with a plan to take down the Yakuza Boss.
So, yes, I was horrified through most of the movie, particularly the unforgettable final 5 minutes. But Gozu is less disturbing than Visitor Q and has the periodic comedic interludes that Audition lacks. And when you get down to it, when you strip away all of the absurdities and surrealism, the core story is very relatable. The conflict of professional duty versus personal affections is as old as time, and the heartwrenching decision to murder one's own brother feels very Greek mythology to me. Not to mention Judeo-Christian mythology. Against my better judgment, I found Gozu to be entertaining. You just have to have a strong stomach.
Beyond the strong central story, Gozu is also a well-made film. Miike makes great use of uncut long shots to establish an atmosphere of intimate confrontation between Ozaki and Minami. Kazunari Tanaka's props and effects are all superb, except for one electrocution scene that bordered on cartoonish. The music by Koji Endo and the sound effects from Hitoshi Tsurumaki complement each other seamlessly, blending to make a subtly unnerving backdrop which serves to heighten Minami's disorientation. Miike and screenwriter Sakichi Sato put together only the main elements of the narrative and did not write any dialogue. Actors received only their character's name and occupation prior to filming to keep the improv factor in play. Unlike many other loosely scripted ventures, Gozu shines. The story is almost completely dependent on Yuta Sone as Minami, and his genuine reactions to the oddities of Nagoya are key. The improv style captures Sone's genuine horror and befuddlement at just what the fucking fuck is going on in Nagoya. Without that strong lead, Gozu falls apart.
If you've never experienced a Miike film before, and you still want to after reading this, I suggest you try Ichi the Killer first, to ease you into Miike's style, then move onto Audition. Skip Visitor Q if you like; it's a little too gross. Then move on to Gozu to see the various threads of Miike's mythology come together. Just be prepared. Especially for those last 5 minutes or so. They're a doozy.
Storyline & plot: 8/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 7/10
Performances: 7/10
The Reverend says: 7/10
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Onibaba
Japanese auteur Kaneto Shindo's tenth directorial effort, Onibaba (1964) is a high-concept art film fused with historical fiction and peppered with tense horror imagery. The film delivers on many aspects, including some beautiful cinematography, stunning visuals, costumes, set-pieces, and a terrific score from Hikaru Hayashi, who, amazingly, has scored all of Shindo's 44 films. The repetitive script and glacial pace, however, leave something to be desired, and the execution of Shindo's unique morality is quite heavy-handed for my taste.
Onibaba is set in 14th century rural Japan, in the midst of the Nanboku-cho period, where two imperial courts made seemingly endless upon each other. Large scale warfare meant many of Japan's young men joined an army in search wages, plunder, and fame. The fields and crops were left untended, or ravaged by hungry troops or fearsome battles. Those left behind, the infirm, the elderly, women and children, faced a meager existence, scraping out a living in any way they could. Our nameless protagonists, a middle-aged woman and her daughter-in-law, are two such individuals. Living in a small reed hut in a vast field of towering susuki grass by the banks of a small river, the two women eke out a living killing any soldiers unlucky enough to wander into their field. The soldiers' armor, clothes, and weapons are used as barter to purchase millet and other food stuffs.
One day, the pair's tenuous existence is disturbed by the return of their neighbor, Hachi. The young man returns from battle with sad news of the death of Kichi, the old woman's son and the young woman's husband. While the women deal with their grief, Hachi has his eye on his late friend's wife and on the women's business arrangement. The sexually-charged atmosphere only gets more complicated with the arrival of a mysterious samurai disguised behind a hideous demon mask.
Kiyomi Kuroda's camerawork is outstanding, if somewhat repetitive. Utilizing a deeply contrasted black and white palette, Kuroda is at his best in the shadows, while stark and harsh lighting make the scenes crackle with intensity. Yet Kuroda is equally at ease with the sweeping panoramic views, showcasing the susuki grass, giving it an epic and majestic life of its own. The rhythm of the swaying grasses carefully coincides with the intensity of the film's action, and particularly of the sexual tension between Hachi and the young woman.
The period costumes are meticulously rendered, and the costume centerpiece, the demon mask, is one of the most visually stunning pieces in the history of film. My skin crawled with revulsion every time I caught a glance of it. The mask is so memorable, in fact, that William Friedkin borrowed its design for subliminally inserted frames in The Exorcist (1973).
Composer Hikaru Hayashi's score is pure balls-to-the-wall adrenaline. It is an insane tour-de-force of furious percussion, highlighted here and there by primal screams, giving the susuki field the aspect of a haunted carnival. Or a demonic circle of hell.
Onibaba's downfall is the weak writing. To flesh out the story, Shindo resorts to repetition, recycling the same basic dialogue for several scenes. The repetition goes beyond dialogue: a scene involving the young woman running through the grass to Hachi's hut is used over and over again with only slight variation. For someone whose film is otherwise meticulously crafted, you have to wonder at such lazy filmmaking. Of course, in the light of Shindo's moral vision, this can be seen as reinforcement rather than corner-cutting. Even if this is true, it means Shindo is trying to get his point across with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face. I, for one, am a little insulted by his tactics. They bring down an otherwise technically brilliant film.
Storyline & plot: 5/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 10/10
Performances: 6/10
The Reverend says: 6/10
Onibaba is set in 14th century rural Japan, in the midst of the Nanboku-cho period, where two imperial courts made seemingly endless upon each other. Large scale warfare meant many of Japan's young men joined an army in search wages, plunder, and fame. The fields and crops were left untended, or ravaged by hungry troops or fearsome battles. Those left behind, the infirm, the elderly, women and children, faced a meager existence, scraping out a living in any way they could. Our nameless protagonists, a middle-aged woman and her daughter-in-law, are two such individuals. Living in a small reed hut in a vast field of towering susuki grass by the banks of a small river, the two women eke out a living killing any soldiers unlucky enough to wander into their field. The soldiers' armor, clothes, and weapons are used as barter to purchase millet and other food stuffs.
One day, the pair's tenuous existence is disturbed by the return of their neighbor, Hachi. The young man returns from battle with sad news of the death of Kichi, the old woman's son and the young woman's husband. While the women deal with their grief, Hachi has his eye on his late friend's wife and on the women's business arrangement. The sexually-charged atmosphere only gets more complicated with the arrival of a mysterious samurai disguised behind a hideous demon mask.
Kiyomi Kuroda's camerawork is outstanding, if somewhat repetitive. Utilizing a deeply contrasted black and white palette, Kuroda is at his best in the shadows, while stark and harsh lighting make the scenes crackle with intensity. Yet Kuroda is equally at ease with the sweeping panoramic views, showcasing the susuki grass, giving it an epic and majestic life of its own. The rhythm of the swaying grasses carefully coincides with the intensity of the film's action, and particularly of the sexual tension between Hachi and the young woman.
The period costumes are meticulously rendered, and the costume centerpiece, the demon mask, is one of the most visually stunning pieces in the history of film. My skin crawled with revulsion every time I caught a glance of it. The mask is so memorable, in fact, that William Friedkin borrowed its design for subliminally inserted frames in The Exorcist (1973).
Composer Hikaru Hayashi's score is pure balls-to-the-wall adrenaline. It is an insane tour-de-force of furious percussion, highlighted here and there by primal screams, giving the susuki field the aspect of a haunted carnival. Or a demonic circle of hell.
Onibaba's downfall is the weak writing. To flesh out the story, Shindo resorts to repetition, recycling the same basic dialogue for several scenes. The repetition goes beyond dialogue: a scene involving the young woman running through the grass to Hachi's hut is used over and over again with only slight variation. For someone whose film is otherwise meticulously crafted, you have to wonder at such lazy filmmaking. Of course, in the light of Shindo's moral vision, this can be seen as reinforcement rather than corner-cutting. Even if this is true, it means Shindo is trying to get his point across with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face. I, for one, am a little insulted by his tactics. They bring down an otherwise technically brilliant film.
Storyline & plot: 5/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 10/10
Performances: 6/10
The Reverend says: 6/10
The Midnight Meat Train
Based on a short story by Clive Barker, The Midnight Meat Train (2008) tells the story of Mahogany (Vinnie Jones) an NYC serial killer whose preferred hunting ground is late night subway trains. But that's just the beginning. It gets a good deal more complex than that, but unfortunately that's not always a good thing. The highly stylized potential this film shows at the start slowly spirals out of control, derailing into a half-hearted Lovecraftian mess.
Leon (Bradley Cooper) is a struggling freelance photographer, trying to make it big in NYC's indie art scene controlled by the brutally critical Susan Hoff, portrayed solidly here by Brooke Shields. To meet with Hoff's approval, he'll need to score some stunning photos of what he dubs "the real New York," the strange and corrupt underbelly of the city at night. Much to the chagrin of his girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb), Leon embarks on a series of night shoots, carefully tracking down his moments. But when he becomes obsessed with the disappearance of a model whose picture he snapped, his sanity begins to unravel. Stalking the man he believes responsible, the subway butcher, Leon enters into a world of death and ancient evil that he can barely comprehend.
Don't get me wrong. I love the premise. I really was hooked through the first 25 minutes or so of the film, and intermittently after that. But the script is so disappointingly uneven. The film would gain so much momentum, have me on the edge of my seat, only to bring me crashing down when the tension is utterly deflated by some drawn out, melodramatic relationship-establishing scene. Yawn. And the mythos behind our killer, Mahogany? It's such a scattered and ill-conceived mess. Poorly written and poorly executed. Why couldn't they have tried for a backstory that was a little more manageable? They tried to shoot the moon and they missed by a mile.
And speaking of poor writing, Clive Barker continues his decades-long trend of having no idea how to write convincing women characters. His critics have long denounced him as a misogynist for his literary treatment of women. I don't think I'd go that far, but he certainly has little understanding of the female psyche. He got it right once, with Candyman's (1992) protagonist Helen Lyle, but that may have been more to do with Virginia Madsen's excellent performance than anything else. At best, Barker's portrayal of women is illogical, at worst it is incredibly annoying. MMT's Maya is no exception to either of those extremes.
Oh yeah, and Bradley Cooper has been woefully miscast here. He just doesn't have what it takes to portray a complexly developing character like Leon. His transformation from a meek little photographer into a freelance criminal investigator and beyond is just not believable. In fact, it's actually kinda laughable.
As for the effects.... I can't be the only one who finds these over-the-top CGI graphics incredibly tacky and dumb. I just can't. Do the directors actually view these scenes and say, "Yeah, that looks not only realistic, but really great."? Because both those statements are patently untrue. I'm sorry, but the effects for this film (the computer effects, anyway) were just fucking silly. Ugh. On the positive side, the cinematography is outstanding. Great use of color. The subway is immediately represented as a dangerous place by a sickly gray-green-blue hue. In fact, the subway sequences are all great. Great set design, incredible tracking shots and long shots, and a richly rendered atmosphere of dread and claustrophobia.
The best aspect of the movie really is the character of Mahogany, and Vinnie Jones's great performance. The kills are inventive, the main weapon is unique among all the slasher films I've ever seen, and Jones is perfect for the role. Monstrous, menacing, yet virtually silent. The guy says literally three words the entire film, but his presence is enormous. Bravo, Vinnie. One of the best villains in recent memory. Unfortunately, it just wasn't enough to make this film anything more than mediocre.
Storyline & plot: 5/10
Cinematography & effects: 5/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 5/10
The Reverend says: 5/10
Leon (Bradley Cooper) is a struggling freelance photographer, trying to make it big in NYC's indie art scene controlled by the brutally critical Susan Hoff, portrayed solidly here by Brooke Shields. To meet with Hoff's approval, he'll need to score some stunning photos of what he dubs "the real New York," the strange and corrupt underbelly of the city at night. Much to the chagrin of his girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb), Leon embarks on a series of night shoots, carefully tracking down his moments. But when he becomes obsessed with the disappearance of a model whose picture he snapped, his sanity begins to unravel. Stalking the man he believes responsible, the subway butcher, Leon enters into a world of death and ancient evil that he can barely comprehend.
Don't get me wrong. I love the premise. I really was hooked through the first 25 minutes or so of the film, and intermittently after that. But the script is so disappointingly uneven. The film would gain so much momentum, have me on the edge of my seat, only to bring me crashing down when the tension is utterly deflated by some drawn out, melodramatic relationship-establishing scene. Yawn. And the mythos behind our killer, Mahogany? It's such a scattered and ill-conceived mess. Poorly written and poorly executed. Why couldn't they have tried for a backstory that was a little more manageable? They tried to shoot the moon and they missed by a mile.
And speaking of poor writing, Clive Barker continues his decades-long trend of having no idea how to write convincing women characters. His critics have long denounced him as a misogynist for his literary treatment of women. I don't think I'd go that far, but he certainly has little understanding of the female psyche. He got it right once, with Candyman's (1992) protagonist Helen Lyle, but that may have been more to do with Virginia Madsen's excellent performance than anything else. At best, Barker's portrayal of women is illogical, at worst it is incredibly annoying. MMT's Maya is no exception to either of those extremes.
Oh yeah, and Bradley Cooper has been woefully miscast here. He just doesn't have what it takes to portray a complexly developing character like Leon. His transformation from a meek little photographer into a freelance criminal investigator and beyond is just not believable. In fact, it's actually kinda laughable.
As for the effects.... I can't be the only one who finds these over-the-top CGI graphics incredibly tacky and dumb. I just can't. Do the directors actually view these scenes and say, "Yeah, that looks not only realistic, but really great."? Because both those statements are patently untrue. I'm sorry, but the effects for this film (the computer effects, anyway) were just fucking silly. Ugh. On the positive side, the cinematography is outstanding. Great use of color. The subway is immediately represented as a dangerous place by a sickly gray-green-blue hue. In fact, the subway sequences are all great. Great set design, incredible tracking shots and long shots, and a richly rendered atmosphere of dread and claustrophobia.
The best aspect of the movie really is the character of Mahogany, and Vinnie Jones's great performance. The kills are inventive, the main weapon is unique among all the slasher films I've ever seen, and Jones is perfect for the role. Monstrous, menacing, yet virtually silent. The guy says literally three words the entire film, but his presence is enormous. Bravo, Vinnie. One of the best villains in recent memory. Unfortunately, it just wasn't enough to make this film anything more than mediocre.
Storyline & plot: 5/10
Cinematography & effects: 5/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 5/10
The Reverend says: 5/10
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 6
Season 6 of Larry David's brainchild "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is easily the best yet. Featuring the most cogent and compelling story arcs so far, a decent midseason twist, and a parade of guest stars including John McEnroe, Tim Meadows, Tia Carerre, Phil Lamarr, and Steve Coogan, Season 6 delivers on the goods where the previous season fell flat. For really the first time in the series history, all the actors have gelled and become so comfortable with their own characters that the improvisational style doesn't feel like a hindrance. It's very nice. And very funny.
The single best change (and central storyline) for season 6 is the Davids' adoption of the Blacks, an African-American family displaced from their home by Hurricane Edna. Anytime you get Larry together with ethnic minorities, hilarity is bound to ensue, as he will find every possible way to offend without even meaning to. Vivica Fox as Loretta Black and JB Smoove as her brother Leon are the standouts here. Smoove is a fucking laugh a minute, jive-talking, ranting, giving Larry intriguing advice on anything from ladies to business, and joining Jeff Greene as Larry's right hand man. Larry himself has become more of a sympathetic figure, undergoing a subtle yet significant transformation from kind of a dick to just kind of a schmuck.
The strong writing that shines through in season 6 is not necessarily a surprise. This season marks a transition from David himself doing most of the writing and production, to David bringing on his old production crew from "Seinfeld" to help flush out the "comedy geometry" of "CYE", the art and science of fitting all the storylines together snugly and making sure each episode comes full circle. Bravo, guys, bravo.
There's not much else to say about this one. Great season, great writing, great cast, funny show.
Storyline & plot: 9/10
Cinematography & effects: 6/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 9/10
The Reverend says: 8/10
The single best change (and central storyline) for season 6 is the Davids' adoption of the Blacks, an African-American family displaced from their home by Hurricane Edna. Anytime you get Larry together with ethnic minorities, hilarity is bound to ensue, as he will find every possible way to offend without even meaning to. Vivica Fox as Loretta Black and JB Smoove as her brother Leon are the standouts here. Smoove is a fucking laugh a minute, jive-talking, ranting, giving Larry intriguing advice on anything from ladies to business, and joining Jeff Greene as Larry's right hand man. Larry himself has become more of a sympathetic figure, undergoing a subtle yet significant transformation from kind of a dick to just kind of a schmuck.
The strong writing that shines through in season 6 is not necessarily a surprise. This season marks a transition from David himself doing most of the writing and production, to David bringing on his old production crew from "Seinfeld" to help flush out the "comedy geometry" of "CYE", the art and science of fitting all the storylines together snugly and making sure each episode comes full circle. Bravo, guys, bravo.
There's not much else to say about this one. Great season, great writing, great cast, funny show.
Storyline & plot: 9/10
Cinematography & effects: 6/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 9/10
The Reverend says: 8/10
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders
You know what I missed with the last two Scooby-Doo installments? The mystery aspect of... well, the Mystery Inc Team. In SD on Zombie Island (1998) and SD and the Witch's Ghost (1999), the mystery was sort of pushed to the background in favor of good visuals and more of a straight-up horror story. Which was good, don't get me wrong. But I was starting to miss an actual mystery, where the gang finds clues and someone (usually Velma) puts them all together for some sort of crazy flashback-filled final reveal. The two previous films had twists, to be certain, but the Mystery Team wasn't so much in the business of solving mysteries as just kinda witnessing them. There was no string of clues to follow, just weird shit happening and the gang just trying to get the fuck out. With Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders (2000), writers Davis Doi and Glen Leopold have attempted to bring the mystery back to the Mystery Team.
The gang is embarked on some sort of road trip (hey, that's what ex-hippies do, man) when they get caught up in a freak sandstorm out in the middle of the desert at night. After taking a wrong turn and getting thoroughly lost, the gang spot something in the sky through the windows of the Mystery Machine. Is it a UFO? Just a jet? Something else? No one is entirely sure what they saw, but they are pretty sure that the van's radiator is shot, and they're going to have to hoof it into the next town. While Fred, Daphne, and Velma head into the town for an interesting night of tales of alien activity from the locals, Scoob and Shag stay back to guard the van. The cowardly duo decide to skip the alien stories and go straight for the experience, as a pair of hideous green aliens with huge segmented heads show up and chase them into town.
So, the gang decide to investigate, seeing as how they're stuck in this podunk town until the one mechanic decides to get around to fixing their van anyway. Fred, Daphne, and Velma decide to investigate the local federal installation, a SETI-like project called SALF (Search for Alien Life Forms). Meanwhile, Shag and Scoob get caught up in a whirlwind of events, including being abducted by the hideous aliens, and investigating the glow from a mysterious cave along with Crystal, a hippie-esque nature photographer, and her dog Amber. Unsurprisingly, both Shag and Scoob fall head-over-heels for their female counterparts, even forgoing food in their love-drunk state. But as events come together, Shaggy must come to grips with the fact that Crystal may not be who she says she is. Are the aliens real? And what do the SALF engineers have to do with everything? What about those two shady looking military policemen that seem to pop up everywhere?
The animation here is, if anything, even better than the two previous films. While the Japanese animation crew has maintained the modern-looking computer animation, they've managed to retrofit it, to give it a certain retro stylistic flair without sacrificing quality. More than any other SD film so far, this one looks and feels the closest to the original series, and to me that's a good thing.
Once again, Casey Kasem declined to reprise his role as Shaggy, but Scott Innes has only gotten better with some practice. His imitation of Kasem's Shaggy was so spot-on that I had to check IMDB before I was sure who the voice was. And speaking of vocal talents, I think we need to recognize Frank Welker here. He has been the voice of Fred from the very beginning, a span of over 30 years at the time of Alien Invaders' release. Throughout, Fred has been understated. Kinda the square to Shaggy's groovy dude. But honestly, Fred really shined in this film, delivering most of the movie's wry humor. Well, Fred got a little help from a really weird and really hilarious musical montage sung in an off-key warble by Shaggy. And on a sadder note, Alien Invaders is the last SD film to feature Mary Kay Bergman as the voice of Daphne. Bergman, who was also the original voice of almost every single female character on "South Park", took her own life in November of 1999.
Alien Invaders is a cool, fun, Saturday morning type of Scooby Doo flick. So make some pancakes and have a seat. Enjoy.
Storyline & plot: 6/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 7/10
The Reverend says: 6/10
The gang is embarked on some sort of road trip (hey, that's what ex-hippies do, man) when they get caught up in a freak sandstorm out in the middle of the desert at night. After taking a wrong turn and getting thoroughly lost, the gang spot something in the sky through the windows of the Mystery Machine. Is it a UFO? Just a jet? Something else? No one is entirely sure what they saw, but they are pretty sure that the van's radiator is shot, and they're going to have to hoof it into the next town. While Fred, Daphne, and Velma head into the town for an interesting night of tales of alien activity from the locals, Scoob and Shag stay back to guard the van. The cowardly duo decide to skip the alien stories and go straight for the experience, as a pair of hideous green aliens with huge segmented heads show up and chase them into town.
So, the gang decide to investigate, seeing as how they're stuck in this podunk town until the one mechanic decides to get around to fixing their van anyway. Fred, Daphne, and Velma decide to investigate the local federal installation, a SETI-like project called SALF (Search for Alien Life Forms). Meanwhile, Shag and Scoob get caught up in a whirlwind of events, including being abducted by the hideous aliens, and investigating the glow from a mysterious cave along with Crystal, a hippie-esque nature photographer, and her dog Amber. Unsurprisingly, both Shag and Scoob fall head-over-heels for their female counterparts, even forgoing food in their love-drunk state. But as events come together, Shaggy must come to grips with the fact that Crystal may not be who she says she is. Are the aliens real? And what do the SALF engineers have to do with everything? What about those two shady looking military policemen that seem to pop up everywhere?
The animation here is, if anything, even better than the two previous films. While the Japanese animation crew has maintained the modern-looking computer animation, they've managed to retrofit it, to give it a certain retro stylistic flair without sacrificing quality. More than any other SD film so far, this one looks and feels the closest to the original series, and to me that's a good thing.
Once again, Casey Kasem declined to reprise his role as Shaggy, but Scott Innes has only gotten better with some practice. His imitation of Kasem's Shaggy was so spot-on that I had to check IMDB before I was sure who the voice was. And speaking of vocal talents, I think we need to recognize Frank Welker here. He has been the voice of Fred from the very beginning, a span of over 30 years at the time of Alien Invaders' release. Throughout, Fred has been understated. Kinda the square to Shaggy's groovy dude. But honestly, Fred really shined in this film, delivering most of the movie's wry humor. Well, Fred got a little help from a really weird and really hilarious musical montage sung in an off-key warble by Shaggy. And on a sadder note, Alien Invaders is the last SD film to feature Mary Kay Bergman as the voice of Daphne. Bergman, who was also the original voice of almost every single female character on "South Park", took her own life in November of 1999.
Alien Invaders is a cool, fun, Saturday morning type of Scooby Doo flick. So make some pancakes and have a seat. Enjoy.
Storyline & plot: 6/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 7/10
The Reverend says: 6/10
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Following
Remember the very first time you saw The Usual Suspects (1995)? And if you haven't seen it, what is wrong with you? Go. Now. Anyway, like the very first time, before the film's central twist garnered its own cult universe and a legion of followers, imitators, and parodies? Remember the sheer "holy shit that was great" feeling that crept up on you as the Verbal Kint flashback montage scene played out, and it dawned on you that the filmmakers just threw perhaps the greatest curveball in cinematic history?
Following (1998) isn't quite that good. But it's damn close. For starters, it's low-budget and low-fi whereas The Usual Suspects was epic, lovingly and meticulously rendered. Hell, a masterpiece, if we're being honest. Following's plot is a good deal less complicated, less layered than Suspects, but the sucker punch plot twists retain a raw power that rivals anything out there. Basically, I haven't been this pleasantly surprised by a relatively unknown film in a while.
So, you know Christopher Nolan? Director of the two latest wildly popular and generally kick-ass Batman films? Most Americans (myself included) got their first taste of his brand of twisted intensity with Memento (2000), the chronologically reversed tale of a short-term amnesiac in search of justice for his wife's murder. But Following, Nolan's directorial debut, came two years prior, shot on a shoestring budget in London over the course of an entire year. The actors, all Nolan's friends and all otherwise employed, were available for shooting only on Saturdays.
Nolan's debut is shot in black and white, in what appears to be a trend for film auteurs (Darren Aronofsky's Pi and Kevin Smith's Clerks, for example). Part urban ethnography, part crime thriller, Following starts out slow, introducing us to our nameless protagonist, an unemployed wannabe writer. Through voiceover narration and flashback sequences, we come to learn of the writer's peculiar habit. Initially undertaken as nebulous anthropological research for his fledgling career, the writer takes to stalking people, or "following," as he calls it. What begins as innocuous and random soon turns sinister, as one of the writer's marks turns the tables on his following game. Discovering a mutual love for illicit means of ethnographical exploration, our writer and his mark, Cobb, embark on a whirlwind burglary tour of London. But when the writer falls for a woman (known only as The Blonde) whose house they've burgled (after stealing her panties, no less!), things get a little more complicated. The writer has no idea how much danger he's in as he is drawn deeper and deeper into both Cobb's and The Blonde's worlds.
As he has shown a penchant for in subsequent films, Nolan breaks the narrative of Following apart and puts it back together all out of order. The style is disorienting at first, as I'm sure it's supposed to be. In fact, initially, it's not clear if subsequent film segments are even dealing with the same central characters. By the time the audience recovers enough to figure out what the hell is going on, the film is already well into its second act. Surprisingly, Following clocks in at just over an hour, making for a great choice if you're strapped for time or just looking for a quick watch. Despite its duration, the film in no way feels incomplete, as Nolan manages to pack the substance into a little space with an economic use of cuts and dialogue.
Following really is a gem, and an insightful look into the early career of a superstar director. It's terse, tense, eloquent, and brings forth a sparse beauty all its own. Highly recommended.
Storyline & plot: 10/10
Cinematography & effects: 8/10
Music & mood: 7/10
Performances: 8/10
The Reverend says: 9/10
Following (1998) isn't quite that good. But it's damn close. For starters, it's low-budget and low-fi whereas The Usual Suspects was epic, lovingly and meticulously rendered. Hell, a masterpiece, if we're being honest. Following's plot is a good deal less complicated, less layered than Suspects, but the sucker punch plot twists retain a raw power that rivals anything out there. Basically, I haven't been this pleasantly surprised by a relatively unknown film in a while.
So, you know Christopher Nolan? Director of the two latest wildly popular and generally kick-ass Batman films? Most Americans (myself included) got their first taste of his brand of twisted intensity with Memento (2000), the chronologically reversed tale of a short-term amnesiac in search of justice for his wife's murder. But Following, Nolan's directorial debut, came two years prior, shot on a shoestring budget in London over the course of an entire year. The actors, all Nolan's friends and all otherwise employed, were available for shooting only on Saturdays.
Nolan's debut is shot in black and white, in what appears to be a trend for film auteurs (Darren Aronofsky's Pi and Kevin Smith's Clerks, for example). Part urban ethnography, part crime thriller, Following starts out slow, introducing us to our nameless protagonist, an unemployed wannabe writer. Through voiceover narration and flashback sequences, we come to learn of the writer's peculiar habit. Initially undertaken as nebulous anthropological research for his fledgling career, the writer takes to stalking people, or "following," as he calls it. What begins as innocuous and random soon turns sinister, as one of the writer's marks turns the tables on his following game. Discovering a mutual love for illicit means of ethnographical exploration, our writer and his mark, Cobb, embark on a whirlwind burglary tour of London. But when the writer falls for a woman (known only as The Blonde) whose house they've burgled (after stealing her panties, no less!), things get a little more complicated. The writer has no idea how much danger he's in as he is drawn deeper and deeper into both Cobb's and The Blonde's worlds.
As he has shown a penchant for in subsequent films, Nolan breaks the narrative of Following apart and puts it back together all out of order. The style is disorienting at first, as I'm sure it's supposed to be. In fact, initially, it's not clear if subsequent film segments are even dealing with the same central characters. By the time the audience recovers enough to figure out what the hell is going on, the film is already well into its second act. Surprisingly, Following clocks in at just over an hour, making for a great choice if you're strapped for time or just looking for a quick watch. Despite its duration, the film in no way feels incomplete, as Nolan manages to pack the substance into a little space with an economic use of cuts and dialogue.
Following really is a gem, and an insightful look into the early career of a superstar director. It's terse, tense, eloquent, and brings forth a sparse beauty all its own. Highly recommended.
Storyline & plot: 10/10
Cinematography & effects: 8/10
Music & mood: 7/10
Performances: 8/10
The Reverend says: 9/10
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