The good: the clever set-up of the origins of the beast incorporated into the opening credits; Bryan Cranston, as the obsessed Area 51 type who devotes his life to revealing those origins and the threat; the avoidance of the evil military-industrial tropes that often infect disaster movies; the destructions of cities other than NYC and LA; an ominous, moody score; and the monster battles, which are realistic, haunting and classic instead of computer-dizzying, antiseptic and deadening. And at just over 2 hours, it is the perfect length.
The bad: the script is banal. Anything the scientists (a barely intelligible Ken Watanabe and an absolutely pointless Sally Hawkins) contribute is mush, and when they object to the military’s plan to lure other monsters from the Godzilla family with nuclear weapons (which the eat like Chicklets), Hawkins merely shakes her head, like, you know, come on . . . that’s soooooo crazy, and Watanabe produces the pocket watch his father carried . . . in Hiroshima. Heavy.
Military commander David Staitharn is merely low grade concerned throughout, with an almost “Well, thank God this ain’t no 9-11” air about him. Aaron Taylor Johnson (Kick Ass), in a role made for Channing Tatum, is as evocative as a hot dog bun sopped in tap water (The Atlantic’s Christopher Orr said it better: “As for Taylor-Johnson’s performance as Ford, the movie’s central human protagonist, it was so dutifully generic that I forgot it even as I was watching it. I have no lasting impression of him whatsoever”). There is also a child actor who is child actory, better utilized to sell Underoos than terror at the loss of his mother and/or father. Finally, this is Godzilla. I don’t need Seth Rogen toking on a bong and yukking it up, but this film has almost zero sense of humor, depicting a world that perhaps deserves a good stomping.
Francis Ford Coppola’s take on the Dracula story is wild, campy, and brisk. It also has a few scares, but one gets the sense Gary Oldman’s operatic Transylvanian count is not to be taken too seriously.
After all, Oldman appears in, by my count, 7 guises, including a nifty pile of rats, and he is just short of hammy in all. Not to be outdone, Anthony Hopkins’ Dr. Van Helsing is near giddy in his thirst for scene-chewing and vampire heads.
In its first half, the picture feels very Baz Luhrmann meets Saturday-at-the-movies serial. It settles into a more leisurely pace in the middle, as Dracula attempts to take root in London and his opposition grows. The picture is a gas, and Coppola’s rejection of an overly serious, brooding vampire is welcome. Perhaps it is not quite a rejection, as Oldman tries so hard to be otherworldly and tortured, he may be the last one in on the joke.
The film is also surprisingly erotic, as is evidenced by poor Jonathan Harker’s seduction at the hands of Dracula’s babes and the complete, sensual overload delivered to Winona Ryder and Sadie Frost as they fall under Dracula’s sway and then use all of their wiles to get at necks.
Speaking of, Harker is played by Keanu Reeves, who was then fresh off of two Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure movies. If you thought Kevin Costner had problems with an English accent in Robin Hood, you have to check out this performance (both Costner and Reeves are listed in the Top Five Most terrible British Accents, and rightfully so. Reeves can hold his accent – barely – for one line, and then, he’s one syllable away from San Dimas and “duuuude.” Then, he’s back to a dramatic and unconvincing “Carfax Abbey” only to drop it again, as if he knows how silly he sounds. Ultimately, Reeves appears so uncomfortable, he retreats into the implacably unaffected stoner no matter what Oldman and Hopkins throw at him, a treat all in itself.
The trend away from gore porn and toward chilling, moody scary movies remains welcome. Oculus is a worthy fingers-over-the-eyes addition, in the mold of The Conjuring, and sporting a clever storyline that tracks, and intersects, the childhood trauma of two kids whose house was haunted by a spooky mirror and their attempts as adults to destroy it. The execution is crisp and even ingenious, and the child actors (Annalise Basso and Garret Ryan) are superb. As to the flaws, there is one, and it is a rather big one, but I can’t reveal it without telling too much. Suffice it to say that it falls under the “Well, if X, then why the hell would they do Y?” variety. It’s a testament to the skill of writer/director Mike Flanagan (born, I shi** you not, in Salem, Massachusetts) that I was able to shelve the issue and just sit back and enjoy the film.
My son is headed off with his pals to see The Silence of the Lambs tonight, courtesy of AMC theaters’ occasional screenings of older films. I saw it with him a few weeks back and I think he’s looking forward to watching it again in the theater as much as witnessing the reaction of his friends.
Jonathan Demme’s masterpiece is one of the few films that focuses on the serial killer but doesn’t give way to excess. What we know about Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) is simple: he is locked up for eating people; he is brilliant and fascinating; and he is lethal. When a serial killer, Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) starts to plague the Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia area, FBI profiler Jack Crawford (Scott Glen) sends a trainee, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), to elicit any advice from Lecter. Starling and Lecter use each other for their own ends, engaging in a thrilling psychological dance that is one part therapy and one part mental combat; she seeks to stop Buffalo Bill while he waits for a slip-up.
The Silence of the Lambs is so well-paced and taut that on occasion, you are near-breathless. There is only one pause in the film’s very serious, unrelenting tone (when Starling is “hit on” by two geek entomologists with whom she is consulting). The pressure is not only from Lecter and Buffalo Bill, but from Starling’s lack of experience, harrowing childhood, and even her gender and diminutive physicality. The odds seem uncomfortably stacked against her.
The exchanges between Hopkins and Foster are electrifying. You can see just how dangerous Lecter is and near curse yourself for being charmed by him. Yet, you root for the seemingly overmatched Starling, and when she stumbles, you feel the sting of her awkwardness. When Lecter so easily assesses her background and her sexual desires, it is excruciating. Yet Starling comes up to speed and achieves a plausible parity. Levine is also expert as the tortured, frightening Buffalo Bill, and his transformation to “normal” when he is questioned is a chilling addition to this “monsters among us” story.
The picture is one of only three to win Academy Awards in all the top five categories: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), and deservedly so.
Few Stephen King books or short stories are successfully translated on screen, and only one is brilliant –The Shining(it speaks volumes about the author that he felt Stanley Kubrick got it wrong, so wrong he made another version, with one of the two leads from the sitcom Wings in Nicholson’s role).
Carrie, Salem’s Lot, and Misery are very good, and Stand by Me is competent, if treacly. Dolores Claiborne, 1408, Christine, and Silver Bullet are pedestrian, but have their moments. The Shawshank Redemption is a wildly overrated, ridiculous film, but deserves mention because the great weight of authority deems it a near masterpiece.
So, where does David Cronenburg’s The Dead Zone fit in? Three-fourths of this story in about a man who can see your future and your past after he touches you, I’d have ranked it just below The Shining. Cronenberg creates a creepy atmosphere made even more unsettling by the unique performance of Christopher Walken, and the bleak misery of his existence as a crippled freak stuck in a small town is haunting. Striking visuals add to the spooky feel:
Then, the damn thing falls apart due to two ridiculous storylines. First, Anthony Zerbe plays a rich man who hires Walken to tutor his son, knowing full well Walken’s gift of second sight. So, what does Zerbe do when Walken sees the boy and his friends crashing through the ice during hockey practice and warns him accordingly? Wounded that his son has rejected his judgment about skating on the pond, Zerbe conducts hockey practice anyhow, and two boys die. The decision is bananas yet in keeping with King’s low esteem for parents (the father in Stand By Me practically tells poor Will Wheaton, “the wrong kid died” like the father in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story).
Second, Walken is introduced to senatorial candidate Martin Sheen and sees Sheen’s future as a messianic president of the United States, instigating a nuclear conflagration. Sheen plays the character so oily and low it is hard to imagine anyone would vote for this cretin. And when Walken thwarts his ambition, the manner in which Sheen self-immolates is so broadly stupid the film is near ruined.
The premise is about as plausible as Escape from New York. If crime can increase so much that Manhattan must be cordoned off as a separate, lawless prison, than the nation could establish a 12 hour period annually where its citizens can “purge” and commit any crime without punishment. The purge is a mix of a social reform (by allowing one night of consequence free crime, we have no other crime the rest of the year) and patriotic-religious act. But it occurs in 2020, and as bad as either Bush or Obama has been, I can’t see that kind of institution gaining traction so quickly. Frankly, it is unlikely the government could get the website for The Purge up and running in 6 years. In the end, the filmmakers don’t really invest much in the concept, and as my son remarked, “the problem with the movie is that you didn’t need The Purge to make it.” He’s right. When the killers looking to take advantage of their wild night surround the well fortified home of Ethan Hawke and his really stupid family (note to self; on Purge night, make sure your foolish son doesn’t get all Good Samaritan and lift the security gates), they may as we’ll be zombies or Manson family members or the bad guys in The Strangers orYou’re Next.There is no reason to go high concept if you have no intention of exploring that concept.
Or maybe not. On a budget of $3 million, it made $64 million.
Guillermo del Toro’s fairy tale is a rebuke to the taming of the Brothers Grimm. His story of a young girl, Ofelia, is set at the tail end of the Spanish Civil War. She has just been brought to the camp of her new father, Nationalist fascist Captain Vidal, by her pregnant mother. The former is a sadistic, obsessive-compulsive, suicidal and the latter is simply desperate to have found a protector in the new Spain. Ofelia escapes to the nearby woods of Vidal’s headquarters, and a world of faeries, fauns and monsters who give her arduous, often terrifying tasks that offer her majesty in a fairy tale land.
Unlike del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone, the films’s forerunner, the war makes a more pronounced, visceral appearance. Vidal is cartoonishly vicious, obsessed with the birth of his son and a new Spain, bent on torture and extermination not just of his enemies, but of those who would infect the future. It borders overkill, but with with half of the deaths in the war attributed to executions and murder of the defenseless, the depiction is apt. The fate of Vidal’s son is del Toro’s rebuttal.
The film is visually stunning (it won Oscars for art direction, cinematography and makeup) and movingly juxtaposes the brutality of the war with Ofelia’s hidden place. But del Toro doesn’t make Ofelia’s choice easy. Her fantasy world can be every bit as treacherous and horrifying as the war she seeks to escape. In particular, Pale Man, who guards the quarry of Ofelia’s third task, is one of film’s most frightening visions (and has a gait similar to that of Mama, the spook in del Toro’s last film).
This is certainly the summer of James Wan. The Conjuring cost $20 million and has thus far grossed $270 million worldwide, and Insidious 2 cost $5 million and opened at $41 million this weekend.
The Conjuring is a vastly superior film, but Insidious 2 is not altogether bad. It starts off halting and awkward, and its fealty to following up on Insidious is both admirable and clunky. We pick up on the story right after Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) has returned from The Further, having saved his son in the process. As we learn at the end of the first film, however, it is not Wilson, but someone much more sinister who returned in his guise. The film then moves on three tracks – Wilson, in the house, a threat to his wife (Rose Byrne) and kids; his mother (Barbara Hershey) and her investigators, trying to identify the entity that has taken Wilson; and Wilson himself, stuck in The Further, helpless. This all takes some time to queue up, and the speed of it all makes the picture stilted. In particular, poor Byrne is reduced to actually having to try and convince Wilson of the continuation of the terror, and his “Oh, honey, you just have to ignore the evil!” rejoinders are unintentionally funny.
But once it gets rolling, the film regains its balance, delivering some very good scares along the way, and Wan’s weaving of Wilson’s childhood, the first picture and the events we are witnessing is pretty skillful. To Wan’s credit, those scares remain bloodless and gore-free (although the film is too dimly lit).
Taken on it’s own terms, You’re Next is probably a 2 star film. The story of a family of ten, terrorized and murdered one-by-one at a secluded reunion, is effective and frightening. The mystery, however, is easily deduced, and the killings themselves, which take up most of the film, are (with the exception of an inspired murder by blender) a pedestrian lot of slayings, stabbings and bludgeoning.
The film’s terms, however, are my objection. I was drawn to it by my son, who pointed out reviews noting pitch black humor, a play on the genre, a fresh twist, etc . . . I was hoping for Scream or Evil Dead 2, but this is just an abattoir with an occasional wry exchange.
From third through about sixth grade, I suffered night terrors. I was also an intrepid sleepwalker. The former malady evinced itself in my waking up, eyes wide open and fully cognizant of my surroundings, but in abject fear. That fear sent me running to the place I deemed safest. At home, it was my mother’s room, though my brothers made great sport in waylaying me as I sped down the hall screaming. If I spent the night at a friend’s house, their parents were also at risk. That I was invited back after one of these episodes is a testament to their patience and generosity. Crying and screaming, I’d burst through the door and launch myself onto their bed, hands covering my face. Something was after me, I couldn’t look at it, and I could only be coaxed out of the nightmare by soothing words and television. I watched a lot of Johnny Carson growing up.
During that same time, on other occasions but less frequently, I would sleepwalk. However, I didn’t confine my travels to the house. Instead, I would get out of bed and walk around the neighborhood. I recall the misty feel, the trance-like state, and the absolute inability to stop myself. I’ve often wondered what someone would have done had they seen me out at 2 am, on a cold December morning, ambling around like a zombie in my pajamas. But I was never spotted, always ending up in my own bed. The only proof of the occurrence was my vague recollections, dirty and/or bloody feet and the times I started the evening at a friend’s house down the block, only to be listed as AWOL by his mother in the morning. My mother would see the front door wide open, and find me in my own bed.
Insidious uses the realm of sleep to create (or, in my case, re-create) a terrifying world where, presumably, children like me go when afflicted. The son of Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids) and Patrick Wilson (Little Children) sleepwalks to the attic, bumps his head, and falls into an inexplicable coma. Only, it is not a coma. Instead, he has drifted into what is later explained as “The Further,” a dream-state that is unfortunately populated by the restless dead, who hope to capture the boy simply because they thirst for his life, and more dangerous demons, who want his body to re-enter the world and wreak havoc. Modern medicine fails, the less-conventional expert steps in, and away we go. It is revealed that Wilson suffered night terrors as a boy, and the unwanted attentions of this particular demon as a child:
Wilson is sent in to get his son.
Director James Wan’s (Saw, The Conjuring) world is creepy (the two demons in particular); the scares are initially restrained, but plentiful, and meted out in increasing doses; and the acting first-rate. As the mother, Byrne is sympathetic and appropriately destabilized, and Wilson plays the father as truly scared and vulnerable – he is gripped by initial cowardice and denial; he does not want to go back to the world that so plagued him as a child. The medium (Lin Shaye) is compelling and her two researcher assistants provide necessary comic-relief without being obtrusive – this is the same set-up as Poltergeist minus the over-the-top “This house is cleeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaan” nonsense.
The film’s primary strength is its patience. As Wan explains:
Between ‘Saw’ and ‘Paranormal Activity’, along with the ‘Blair Witch Project’, it’s been proven time and time again that the scariest movies are ones that are made outside of the studio system, where you have the control to say, “You know what? I’m not going to open the movie with a big, scary action set piece. I’m just going to slowly build characters and get you sucked into the family, get you liking the characters before things start to happen.”
If there are weaknesses, they are slight: the set-up is very derivative, the middle third is rushed, the revelation of Wilson’s demon in childhood photos is too overt, and Barbara Hershey (as Wilson’s mother) is wasted. To amp up the intrigue, Wan should have used Hershey in flashback, a helpless single mother trying to cope with her spooky son.
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