STOKER (2013)

Stoker is a delightfully malicious movie.  I haven't seen a movie this joyously, terrifically evil since Hitchcock gave us the killer-in-the-potato-wagon sequence in Frenzy.  It proves that Park Chan-wook is as excellent a director of American thrillers as he is of Korean ones.

India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) is an introverted young girl who's just lost her father (Dermot Mulroney) on her 18th birthday.  Her relationship with her mother, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman), is not ideal, and their tension is exacerbated when her estranged Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) shows up at the funeral and becomes, shall we say, a little too cozy in her father's house (and clothes, no less).

I won't reveal the slightest bit more about the plot.  The screenplay, by actor Wentworth Miller, is not the most original, but it finds genuine life in its three lead characters.  What sets the movie apart is director Park's attention to detail.  Note how he toys with characters' statuses in his framing by having some appear taller than others.  How recurring images are meant to bring certain occurrences to mind.  How he uses shoes to suggest the passage of time.  How he makes the Stokers' gigantic mansion into a labyrinth-like setting in which characters disappear to one side and enter from another.

Wasikowska is perfect as India, and gracefully balances innocence, curiosity, and malevolence as the story progresses.  Kidman has a difficult role that might have seemed inauthentic from a less talented actress; when the entire plot has been revealed, we look back at her performance and realize she hasn't missed a beat.

However, the most chilling memory the movie brings is of Goode as the mysterious Charlie.  He is deserving of an Oscar for his work here, though the Academy may not remember this film at the end of the year.  Park makes even his clean-cutness into a warning sign, kind of like the two invaders in Funny Games.  Though it's a while before we figure out his aim, there's always a little bit too much of him for comfort.  He's always present, observing, offering India a little too much help.  The way in which Park shows him casually seducing both mother and daughter, simultaneously and in different ways, is brilliantly understated.  If you're a Hitchcock fan, you know that the character's name is no coincidence.

**** out of ****

NOTE: I usually post the trailer along with my reviews.  In this case I suggest you avoid it and just see this film.  The trailer gives away too much.

The Nicolas Cage Roulette Challenge, Part 2: TRESPASS (2011)

I suppose it was a coincidence that the first two Nicolas Cage movies to come up for Nicolas Cage roulette are thrillers of the caliber that usually go straight to video, but somehow have above-average production values, a veteran director, and an A-list cast.  Here is Trespass, starring Cage and Nicole Kidman, both of whom have won Oscars.  The director is Joel Schumacher: not the most beloved, especially among comic book fans, but still the man behind some truly memorable films (The Lost Boys, Flatliners, The Client).  The producer is Irwin Winkler, who produced Goodfellas, Raging Bull, and Rocky.  The cinematographer is Andrzej Bartkowiak, who shot Speed, The Verdict, and Terms of Endearment, and as a director has delivered a few fun actioners like Doom.

And now they have all collaborated as a supergroup on Trespass, with one of the dumbest screenplays ever deemed worthy of shooting.  It's a plain old home invasion thriller that aims to mine its suspense from the leverage chess game between the invaders and the hostages, kind of like The Desperate Hours.  But there are no stakes involved, no characters to care about, no reason to be invested in the family taken hostage or in the hostage takers, and no believable reason that the hostage situation should last more than ten minutes.

The movie's most believable moments come at the beginning, before the crisis begins.  Our first image is of Kyle Miller (Cage), a diamond dealer, fast-talking his way through a sale as he arrives at his palatial new home.  His wife Sarah (Kidman) is bickering with their daughter Avery (Liana Liberato) about the young girl going to a party.  The early family scenes are formulaic but genuine, thanks to three good actors.

Then four burglars show up and take the family hostage.  They all wear tattered ski masks.  One of them speaks more than the rest, and appears to be in charge.  In the mask he looks like Gary Oldman, but when he takes it off we realize he is in fact Ben Mendelsohn.  Another one represents the brawn of the group, and is very quick to resort to violence so that we know he's going to be the amoral one.  In the mask I could have sworn he was played by Will Patton, but it turns out he's Dash Mihok.  The third, good-looking and bland, is instantly recognizable as Cam Gigandet, who's been good-looking and bland for years in such films as Twilight and Priest.  The female burglar (Jordana Spiro) is a hot-tempered and reckless drug addict.

Naturally, the robbery doesn't go as planned, partially because Kyle has something up his sleeves, partially because all the burglars are inept enough to shame the Lavender Hill Mob.  They point their guns at Kyle's and Sarah's heads without firing so many times that I was wondering if the guns fired at all, or if they were poor lonely souls stuck in a Sartrean hell where they have guns but can never muster up the will to pull the trigger.  As the movie progresses they feel less like hostage takers and more like parents threatening their misbehaving children with a count to three, which is then delayed with endless fractions (two and a HALF... two and three QUARTERS...).

The acting is, well, pretty good.  It ought to be; Schumacher's no novice and his cast is top-notch.  Cage delivers at least two classic meltdowns that are sure to be tacked onto the famed "Nicolas Cage Loses His Shit" video.  Kidman tries with all her might to make her character believable, but the screenplay's insurmountable plot twists put her through the blender to the point where playing this part is impossible.  I enjoyed Mendelsohn too, in a rare villainous role, and he relishes a ridiculous scene in which he does a perfect impression of Cage on a call from the family's home security company.

A good thriller, even one with a twisty-turny plot, is not allowed to cheat.  This one does, particularly in a sub-plot involving the Gigandet character and his relationship with Sarah.  Did she have an affair with him?  Is he merely infatuated with her?  Differing flashbacks seem to suggest both.  In a movie with this many security cameras, it ought to have been easy to clear up.

We can also never quite be sure what the burglars' motive is.  Just what they're after is shifted so many times that I began to suspect I was watching a Pinter-like drama in which the characters represent archetypes and their present actions and motivations don't matter. (In fact, there was one of those: when Harold Pinter rewrote Sleuth in 2007.) The biggest twist that the movie provides is that the four criminals are not masterminds as we originally thought, but very, very stupid.  The Mendelsohn character appears to be the smart one, but we know that at one point he thought, "I have a big heist to pull off.  I'd better bring along a big thug who just wants to hurt people, my drug addict girlfriend, and a guy who's in love with the wife."

A good version of this movie has already been made.  It's called Panic Room, it was directed by David Fincher and starred Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart.  It has pretty much the same plot as this one.  The villains are the same type: the thoughtful leader (Forest Whitaker), the young hotspur (Jared Leto), and the violent thug (Dwight Yoakam).  But it was cleverly written and played fair by its own rules.  There's no real reason for Trespass's existence, other than that Joel Schumacher can now rightfully claim that Batman & Robin was not his worst movie.

* out of ****

Caginess factor: Moderate.  About Con Air level, but nowhere near Face/Off.  (Raise the factor to "High" when you realize that Cage delayed production for a day and insisted that he switch roles to play the villain.  Note that Liev Schreiber was approached to take over Cage's role.  This must have been Kidman's call, as he's married to her best friend Naomi Watts.  Further evidence of her going above and beyond to hold this godawful movie together.)

EVIL DEAD (2013)

If the new remake of Evil Dead proves anything, it's that there's really no point to remaking old horror movies.  Sam Raimi's original classic The Evil Dead has been given a slick update, donating its "the" to the new Wolverine movie and adding enough blood to keep the Cullen family sated for  millenia.  While watching the film, I felt the desire for two things: to rewatch the original, and to see director Fede Alvarez’s next film. While skillfully made and heaping with gore, Evil Dead has little life in it.

The plot is the same in structure, if some of the characters are different. Mia (Jane Levy) ventures to the cabin in the woods with her estranged brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) and their friends (Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore, Lou Taylor Pucci). Mia, an addict, has decided to dump her drugs and go cold turkey while her friends look after her at the cabin. They happen upon a ritualistic collection of dead animals in the basement, as well as a strange book with mysterious incantations and numerous warnings not to read them. Naturally, one of these lunkheads reads one, and all hell breaks loose.

While there are a few good scares at the beginning, the midsection of the movie is predictable. It doesn’t have the constant rollercoaster of invention that the original did; it’s content to have certain characters wander into rooms and meet their respective ends in ways that are less shocking than we expect.  The attack scenes are particularly sloppy; a word of advice, kids: when someone attacks you with a crowbar or nail gun, the best thing to shield yourself with may not be your hand.

The drug-recovery plot, while it gives the characters a legitimate reason to stay in the cabin, also gives the movie a lame cookie-cutter redemption arc. In my day kids used to go into the woods to do drugs.

The acting is unexpectedly mediocre. It’s not bad enough to be campy; it’s just bad. In a movie that tries to be kinetic, the performers seem strangely sedated. Even Pucci, who was so good in Thumbsucker and whom I believe is designated as the resident wisecracker here, barely registers above zero.

The tone is just about right. Alvarez begins with an earnest, somber mood and gradually ramps up the ridiculousness until blood is literally falling from the sky and severed limbs are flying across the screen. I can see why Raimi is happy with the film; it stays true to the kind of movie he was trying to make. While it’s more professional-looking and loses a bit of the low-budget charm of the original, the gore is so incredibly over-the-top that it becomes enjoyably campy anyway.

It’s only in the third act, when the movie has shaken itself free of its drug-addiction and family-forgiveness plot, that it begins to take shape as a true Evil Dead film and a memorable horror movie in itself. The blood flows a little more freely and the energy picks up considerably. A character’s response to the demon threat “I’ll swallow your soul!” is completely appropriate.

A few things about the film are worthy of the madness of Sam Raimi’s original trilogy. I loved Roque Banos’s wild score, which sounds like Danny Elfman on steroids. I like the way the demon shouts expletives and insults at the characters, as if it’s seen The Exorcist. Alvarez effectively lifts the speeding-through-the-woods camera motif from Raimi’s original. And there’s still a soft spot in my heart for any scene where a character reads aloud mysterious ancient chants from an old book.

** 1/2 out of ****

NOTE FOR FANS: Stay through the end credits.  Trust me. 

R.I.P. Roger Ebert

As a lover of films, I’ve had a bug in the back of my mind for the past few years that would occasionally ask, “What happens when Roger Ebert doesn’t review anymore?” It was one of those questions I’d rather not have answered, like what happens when Letterman’s not on TV anymore or when Mel Brooks is no longer around. I always figured it would leave a void in the movie world that would not be easily filled. Ebert was a unique soul.

It’s not that there’s no one left who knows how to write about film, but I don’t think there’s anyone, save maybe Quentin Tarantino, who outright loves movies as much as Ebert did. His thumbs-up reviews far outnumbered his thumbs-down ones, not because he was too connected to the movie business to be impartial, but because he gave every film the benefit of the doubt.

His negative reviews are so famous because every movie he hated had to work pretty hard to earn his hatred. Many of his bad reviews are memorable because the movies in question are not merely bad; they have betrayed him, whether it be morally (the exploitative and artless rape-revenge thriller I Spit on Your Grave) or artistically (his review of A Place for Lovers is an all-time standout). I never did quite understand his outrage at Rob Reiner’s North, which seemed to me a benign failure, yet prompted what is probably his most famous putdown (“I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie.”).

Ebert taught me how to watch a movie, more than any critic or writer on film has ever done. He was a keen observer of the things that make movies into movies, and I have cited his movie glossary liberally. I’m especially grateful for the Law of Economy of Characters, which has been the key to solving every lazy mystery thriller ever made. Aside from criticism, Ebert wrote one of the funniest satires I’ve ever seen, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which was not quite a trash film, not quite a parody, but a gleeful celebration of every ridiculous convention of exploitation filmmaking at its finest.

He was adept at seeing a movie on its own terms, according to the filmmaker’s logic rather than conventional logic. He understood that a movie needs only to play fairly by its own rules (and that many movies even fail at that). He was the sort of critic who could convincingly give a four-star review to Abel Ferrara’s Body Snatchers remake right alongside Goodfellas.

Even after making a life out of watching movies—he claims to have watched 500 last year—Ebert never seemed to grow weary, even of the bad ones. He was a movie lover first, and a critic second; he didn’t so much pick apart the movies as he did teach us how to love them in the same way that he did, if they were worth it. He fought for cinema as a medium of great art when it has been constantly in danger of falling to the makers of “accessible” mass-produced junk. He’d often quote an exchange with a moviegoer about Bergman’s Cries & Whispers:

Ebert: “I think it is the best film of the year.”
Moviegoer: “Oh, that doesn't sound like anything we'd want to see!” 

He’s been a staunch defender of great films that might otherwise have been off-putting to the general public, or might be labeled “long” (read: over two hours) or “depressing” (read: a movie without a happy storybook ending). “No good movie is too long,” he said. “No bad movie is too short.” He also believed that “no good movie is depressing,” while “all bad movies are depressing.” His work may be part of the reason why intelligent movies like Django and Argo are making the most money nowadays, while brainless supposed crowd-pleasers are gradually marginalized.

His editor, Jim Emerson, reports that the last review he submitted was of Terrence Malick’s new film To the Wonder (“which—spoiler warning—he liked quite a lot”).  Ebert leaves behind him a guide for the entire 20th century of film, and I believe he’s written everything we need to know about the 21st too. But when that Malick review comes and goes, for every film to come there will be an empty space where Ebert’s review used to be.



Below is a collection of his work that I found particularly inspiring, insightful, or just plain amusing. I’ve left out many of the bad reviews, since those have already been helpfully collected in three very entertaining books (along with the bizarre saga of his feud with Vincent Gallo over The Brown Bunny). This is what Roger Ebert was to me:

Speed 2: Cruise Control.  I believe Ebert was the sole dissenter on this one.  I didn't agree, but his reasons for liking it are better than the movie itself:

I love going into a theater for a sneak preview of a summer movie and buying popcorn and settling back in my seat and enjoying a movie containing:

* A chainsaw.

* An explosive device with a red digital read-out that nobody will ever be able to see (this one is concealed inside a fake golf club).

* A villain who travels with jars of leeches, to suck the copper poisoning from his blood.
...
Movies like this embrace goofiness with an almost sensual pleasure. And so, on a warm summer evening, do I.  

Basic Instinct 2. I suspect that this might be the most fun he ever had writing a review, and his opening paragraph denotes what is pretty much the thesis of this blog.

Here is a movie so outrageous and preposterous it is either (a) suicidal or (b) throbbing with a horrible fascination. I lean toward (b). It's a lot of things, but boring is not one of them. I cannot recommend the movie, but ... why the hell can't I? Just because it's godawful? What kind of reason is that for staying away from a movie? Godawful and boring, that would be a reason.

feardotcom.  Here is a Ringu rip-off that was shot, canned and released in a hurry to beat the American remake to the box office, with a screenplay that doesn't make sense.  But the director is William Malone, who's a supremely talented but mostly unrecognized veteran of the horror business.  Ebert is perceptive enough to see greatness even when the film is pretty good at hiding it.

This is a movie that cannot be taken seriously on the narrative level. But look at it. Just look at it. Wear some of those Bose sound-defeating earphones into the theater, or turn off the sound when you watch the DVD. If the final 20 minutes had been produced by a German impressionist in the 1920s, we'd be calling it a masterpiece.

The Case Against David Lynch.  Ebert was a notable detractor of the early work of Lynch, who's one of the greatest cinematic artists working.  I can't find a review of Eraserhead, but he refers to it favorably in other reviews.  He hated The Elephant Man (as did I), as well as Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart (I did not).  He summed up his disappointment with Lynch as such:

"Wild at Heart" is a cinematic act of self-mutilation, a film that mocks itself. Show-biz executives have a cynical shorthand formula for commercial success: "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll."
...
If Lynch were merely providing us with these commodities, he would merely be an exploitation filmmaker. But he is not a minor talent; he is a gifted director with a strong sense of style. If he allowed himself a more positive vision - if he dared to believe in people - he could be a great film artist. But he is infected with self-doubt and cynicism, and he believes the worst of his audiences, so he makes films inspired by his despair.

I generally disagree with Ebert here; while Velvet and Wild are certainly satirical and for the most part fairly emotionally distant, I believe that's the point, and they're still notable and compelling films in and of themselves.  But what's interesting is that Lynch seemed to take his advice.  His later work has proven to be his warmest and most emotionally connected, and his best: what we remember is not the absurdity or the violence, but the desperate need for escape from Bill Pullman in Lost Highway, the betrayal of the mysterious brunette in Mulholland Dr., the vulnerability of Laura Dern in Inland Empire.  Two of Lynch's more recent films, The Straight Story and Mulholland Dr., received four-star reviews.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

Some movies are obviously great. Others gradually thrust their greatness upon us. When "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" was released in 1987, I enjoyed it immensely, gave it a favorable review and moved on. But the movie continued to live in my memory. Like certain other popular entertainments ("It's a Wonderful Life," "E.T.," "Casablanca") it not only contained a universal theme, but also matched it with the right actors and story, so that it shrugged off the other movies of its kind and stood above them in a kind of perfection. This is the only movie our family watches as a custom, most every Thanksgiving.

This is my favorite movie, for the same reason.  Ebert is also right about its late star, John Candy, who's never been better than as Del Griffith, the overbearing but genuine shower curtain ring salesman.  He describes his impression of the real-life Candy:

People loved him, but he didn't seem to know that, or it wasn't enough. He was a sweet guy and nobody had a word to say against him, but he was down on himself. All he wanted to do was make people laugh, but sometimes he tried too hard, and he hated himself for doing that in some of his movies. I thought of Del. There is so much truth in the role that it transforms the whole movie. [Director John] Hughes knew it.

The movie's final image, which simply consists of John Candy smiling, is permanently etched in my mind.

Ikiru.  Kurosawa's best film, the story of an old man meditating on the meaning of his life as he is dying of cancer, mourning the emptiness of his life, and finally, gaining the determination to make something of it.  It's the most insightful film that's ever been made about death.

It is not so bad that he must die. What is worse is that he has never lived. "I just can't die -- I don't know what I've been living for all these years," he says to the stranger in the bar. He never drinks, but now he is drinking: "This expensive saki is a protest against my life up to now."
...
The scenes of his efforts do not come in chronological order, but as flashbacks from his funeral service. Watanabe's family and associates gather to remember him, drinking too much and finally talking too much, trying to unravel the mystery of his death and the behavior that led up to it. And here we see the real heart of the movie, in the way one man's effort to do the right thing can inspire, or confuse, or anger, or frustrate, those who see it only from the outside, through the lens of their own unexamined lives.
...
I saw "Ikiru" first in 1960 or 1961. I went to the movie because it was playing in a campus film series and only cost a quarter. I sat enveloped in the story of Watanabe for 2 1/2 hours, and wrote about it in a class where the essay topic was Socrates' statement, "the unexamined life is not worth living."' Over the years I have seen "Ikiru" every five years or so, and each time it has moved me, and made me think. And the older I get, the less Watanabe seems like a pathetic old man, and the more he seems like every one of us. 

SEEKING JUSTICE (2011) and the Inauguration to the Nicolas Cage Roulette Challenge

Nicolas Cage Roulette

Nicolas Cage occupies a curious role in pop culture, I think unlike any celebrity around.  Never has an actor been so simultaneously adored, hated, admired, and mocked.  He has a reputation for never turning down a role, but rarely is he ever forgettable even in the dullest piece of garbage.  He's infamous for giving big loud performances in big loud action movies, and he's known to have an ego to match, but good filmmakers (Werner Herzog, in particular) profess to have enjoyed working with him.

He also tends throw his weight behind movies that, I think, he just really wants to see made.  The films he appears in and produces are usually interesting and unique, if not always very good.  He drove Drive Angry, a sublimely trashy '70s throwback action movie which I loved, into production.  He was a force behind Shadow of the Vampire, which featured Willem Dafoe as the "real" vampire who played Count Orlock in F.W. Murnau's original Nosferatu.  He unfortunately also spearheaded the lousy Neil LaBute remake of The Wicker Man, which was unsuccessful, but it at least featured the unforgettable image of Cage in a bear suit punching out women in a Three Stooges fashion for much of the third act.

So it's understandable that Cage has a cult following.  He has a subreddit dedicated to him called r/onetruegod, which is more reverent than you would think.  It's where I found Nicolas Cage Roulette, a program designed by Scott Luptowski.  Click and it brings you to a random Cage movie on Netflix Instant.

And so the challenge is on.  I'll be watching random Cage movies until there are no more.

The first one to come up was Seeking Justice.

 

Seeking Justice breezed through theaters alarmingly quickly considering its A-list cast and veteran director.  Though no one would label Roger Donaldson an auteur, his considerable resume includes some actual good films, like the Cuban Missile Crisis thriller Thirteen Days, and some enjoyable trash, like the gore-and-nudity-filled Freudian alien opus Species.  He's also been responsible for some memorably awful movies, like Cocktail, which featured Tom Cruise juggling Tanqueray bottles and reciting poetry for bar patrons who ought to have been getting impatient for their drinks.  Donaldson may be no Scorsese, but he's not a nobody either.

I have to assume he simply got a kick out of tackling a ridiculous action thriller like Seeking Justice, kind of like Richard Rush must have taken on Color of Night as his only film in 14 years just for giggles.  Seeking Justice doesn't have the nerve to be as loopy as that film, but it does feel similarly pieced together from spare parts.  Donaldson and his cast are game, and everyone does an earnest job, but boy, the writing has really done this movie in from the beginning.

When his wife is raped, mild-mannered high school English teacher Will Gerard (Cage) is approached by a mysterious man named Simon (Guy Pearce), who professes to be from a secret organization of vigilantes.  He offers to find and kill the rapist before the police can.  No payment will be required, though Simon alleges that he may call on Will for a favor or two sometime in the future.  With little hesitation and only a few seconds of patented Nic Cage facial distress, Will agrees.  The rapist is dispensed with and all is well.  But after a few months--you guessed it--Simon calls and demands that Will pay up, in some undesirable ways.

Looking at the plot description beforehand, I thought for sure that the movie was a screed on vigilanteism.  After seeing the film, I have to assume that that was screenwriters' original intention, but that Donaldson realized that the screenplay was too silly beyond belief to be taken seriously, so he filmed it as a brainless action thriller.  The movie's no more about the morality of vigilanteism than The Wicker Man was about the process of honey production.  It's more interested in traveling down the rabbit hole of a conspiracy theory plot, with goofy twists and turns along the way.

Once the movie launches into its unlikely plot, it's easy to forget that it actually started with a woman being raped.  A movie that begins with such a thematically weighty occurrence is asking to be taken seriously, and Seeking Justice doesn't hold up its end.  For what is supposed to be the movie's instigating force, the rape is pretty much forgotten by the 30-minute mark, and the rest of the film goes off on the tangent of Will performing tasks for Simon's organization, police getting involved, and so on.  As the wife in question, January Jones is appropriately disposable.

Cage, as usual, is a trooper.  He runs through all the usual action movie tropes, and does the whole Innocent Man Wrongfully Accused rigmarole--the escape from jail, the multiple chase scenes, the amateur sleuthing--with a straight face.  Still, no actor could be convincing as a character this boneheaded.  Pearce is a delightfully smarmy villain, and usually fun to watch, especially when he's shouting meaningless orders to Cage just to make sure he's on board. ("Go into the store.  Buy a pack of gum.")

Harold Perrineau turns up as Will's best friend, though how his character fits into the story is difficult to buy.  Blink and you'll miss Jennifer Carpenter as another confidante.  The dude who played T-Dog on "The Walking Dead" turns up as a henchman.  Xander Berkeley is a welcome presence as a streetwise detective, though it's impossible to figure out his role in the movie's grand scheme.  Is he a cop?  A higher-up in the organization?  A double agent?  His actions in the third act are pretty inscrutable in all of those scenarios.

Seeking Justice certainly isn't dull, though it's unacceptable as a thriller.  Donaldson actually manages a few neat action sequences, the most interesting of which involves a foot chase between Simon's men and Will across a New Orleans highway.  Even so, there have been more ridiculous thrillers that have been more fun.  Seeking Justice doesn't cut it.

* 1/2 out of ****

Caginess level: Mild.  Somewhere between National Treasure and Gone in Sixty Seconds.