THE ABCS OF DEATH (2012): U is for Uneven

Horror anthologies are, I suppose, back in style after a hiatus.  I must admit I've got a soft spot for them, having been raised on the succinct, economical horror of EC Comics, their TV progeny "Tales from the Crypt," and the works of Freddie Francis like Dr. Terror's House of Horrors and Tales That Witness Madness.  V/H/S, a collection of several 20-minute video-shot fables from different directors, was a success, and has a sequel coming soon.  In the meantime, here is The ABCs of Death, an anthology of 26 short horror films of varying types of terror and varying quality.

The premise: 26 directors from around the world are each assigned a letter of the alphabet.  They each pick a word that starts with the letter as the basis for their films.  "A is for Apocalypse," "B is for Bigfoot," etc.  Each film runs about 4-5 minutes.

The results are middling, not the least because 26 different films in row are a lot to sit through.  Also, it's a lot harder to be truly scary in under 5 minutes; horror usually requires mood and patience.  That's why many of the films rely heavily on gore and shock value for effect.  A few of the films, like Banjong Pisanthanakun's (Shutter) very funny "N is for Nuptials," in which a parrot proves to be an unreliable ally in a man's proposal, would be better off without the Death requirement.  Simon Rumley's "P is for Pressure" is an interesting montage of poverty that's unfortunately punctuated with a moment of violence that doesn't quite fit.  Most disappointing is "M is for Miscarriage" by Ti West (The Innkeepers), who's one of the best horror filmmakers working, and whose submission here is a big nothing.

A few too many films choose sex as their focus; while sexual perversity is a tried-and-true theme of the horror genre, the films' affinity for the naughty bits grows tired very quickly.  Timo Tjahjanto's "L for Libido," the film that leaves the longest aftertaste, takes place in an underworld in which men are forced to masturbate while watching increasingly disturbing performances.  This sequence knows how to disgust, but isn't particularly necessary, or good.  Noboru Iguchi's "F is for Fart," about a lesbian relationship enhanced by intestinal distress, would have benefited from restraint (although "F for Fart" sounds like an amazing Orson Welles parody).  By the time we get to Bruno Fornazi and Helene Cattet's surreal, well-made "O is for Orgasm," we're sick of sex altogether.

A few of the films are superior and worth checking out a la carte.  Xavier Gens's (Frontiers) "X is for XXL" is one of the few to balance extreme gore with real emotion.  Jason Eisener's (Hobo with a Shotgun) "Y is for Youngbuck" is a memorable synth-music-driven story of images about a young boy who gets revenge on his molester.  Marcel Sarmiento's "D is for Dogfight," told entirely in slow motion, is a surprisingly moving story.  Lee Hardcastle's hilarious animated episode, "T is for Toilet," shows us the worst potty training imaginable.  Andrew Traucki's "G is for Gravity" is an effectively realistic first-person account.  The best overall is Kaare Andrews's "V is for Vagitus," set in a Robocop-like dystopian future; it's the one that most effectively fits into the format, though it's so intriguing that we wish it were longer.  Jon Schnapp's "W is for WTF" is an enjoyably wacko stream-of-consciousness journey into a creative mind gone mad.  And I'm perplexed as to what exactly is going on in Yoshihiro Nishimura's (Tokyo Gore Police) "Z is for Zetsumetsu (Extinction)," a mishmash of nuclear paranoia, Nazi imagery, phallic symbols, and infomercials, but it isn't boring.

** out of ****

WORLD WAR Z (2013): Cowboys & Zombies

World War Z is an acceptable summer blockbusterization of the usually low-budget and quiet zombie movie, if nothing more.  While other high-profile entries in the genre, like "The Walking Dead" and George Romero's Dead series, have focused on the abandonment, loss of civilization, and loss of humanity that comes from the rise of the living dead, World War Z shoehorns zombies into the classic alien attack template.  Faceless, identity-less intruders attack humanity.  Humanity defends itself.

Which is, well, fine, if the theater is air-conditioned and it's hot out.  But those looking for something more than the average action movie diversion will be disappointed.  World War Z is well-made, well-structured, well-acted, and never boring.  It proves that Marc Forster (Stay, Monster's Ball) can direct an action movie, when it might have shown how he could elevate the action movie to his own level.  Look at what Joss Whedon did with The Avengers.

Loosely based on Max Brooks's book, which took the template of a historical document, the movie World War Z creates a hero, Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), who I believe is the first action hero ever to be named Gerry with a G.  Disaster strikes his hometown of Philadelphia very early on.  A disease is zombifying humans rapidly in the usual way, though (as in 28 Days Later) humans turn to zombies within seconds of being bitten.  Gerry and his family are whisked away to a U.N. aircraft carrier stationed in the West Indies, where the Deputy Secretary of Defense (Fana Mokoena) needs his help in finding the origin of the disease.

The everyman action hero was never Pitt's forte, and it shows here.  He's much better at playing the complex antihero than the Bruce Willis-style ass-kicker, and his work here is a waste of his talent.  In early scenes Matthew Michael Carnahan's screenplay makes him less a hero than a guy who's there when the action is happening.  The movie's plot consists mostly of following Gerry around the world as he puts the pieces together and is chased away by zombies.  Forster stages his action sequences well, and allows for a personal point of view of the chaos rather than a sweeping, grandiose Michael Bay-like approach, but Pitt's character is a flimsy hook on which to hang this huge a movie.

Much of the movie's first two acts are made up of good-looking if cookie-cutter action scenes.  Production troubles and postproduction tinkering are evident, as actors--Matthew Fox, James Badge Dale, David Morse, and most notably Elyes Gabel as a young neurologist--pass in and out of the film without much consequence.  Gerry's wife (Mireille Enos) and children are conspicuously dismissed after the first act.  We're taken on a brief jaunt to Israel, where the leadership makes an incredibly dumb mistake, though this sequence does lead to an admittedly great horror movie moment set on a plane.

Then at the halfway point, the movie ditches the global action and relocates to a W.H.O. center in Wales.  These scenes are quieter, tenser, and more believable than the disjointed first half.  We get closer to the zombies, who become more threatening than the faceless CGI masses we see in the first half.

The change in tone is no accident.  The movie was supposed to have ended with a climactic battle sequence in Russia, but budget constraints and disagreements over Pitt's character arc necessitated a complete rewrite of the movie's third act.  "Lost" writers Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard were brought in to deliver an ending that was more character-driven.  Their ending isn't more character-driven--Gerry is still a monotonous shlub--but at least for these scenes the movie sharpens its focus and the action seems to have a purpose.

There were myriad ideas for exactly what World War Z was supposed to be, and it appears that nobody quite reached an agreement.   Like Cowboys & Aliens (which also had a late rewrite by Lindelof), it's a summer blockbuster made by committee that's fun enough to half-please everyone.

** 1/2 out of ****

THE GREAT GATSBY (2013)

I didn't think that Baz Luhrmann was an ideal candidate to direct a film version of The Great Gatsby, but upon seeing it, I can't really think of anyone more suited to the job.  He deals in highly stylized, overly lavish excesses: not the sort that you'd go to for an adaptation of a well-known novel set against a real period in American history (Luhrmann is Australian, to boot).  But the style actually works, and the surprise is that Luhrmann understands the novel and doesn't upstage the material with pyrotechnics.  He also avoids the over-reverence that usually affects adaptations of well-known and popular material, and adapts it into a movie of his own.

It's not a perfect film, as no adaptation of a highly regarded novel should be expected to be.  To ensure that F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose isn't tossed aside, Luhrmann frames the film by having his narrator, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), write his account of the story to a psychiatrist.  The device works, since Nick's narration suggests that his story is told in the form of a book to begin with.  Still, the voice-over narration grows tiring, as the film depends more and more on Nick's voice than on what it shows us.  I'm convinced that the best way to adapt a book to the screen is simply to translate the story into the language of film and ditch the prose.  We may lose much of Fitzgerald's genius, but so what?  The Great Gatsby is meant to be a novel and a novel it shall remain.

Nick arrives in West Egg, the Long Island home of the nouveau riche, as a young bond salesman on Wall Street.  His neighbor, the mysterious J. Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), is the talk of the town, a thrower of gigantic open-invitation parties attended by everyone from senators to movie stars.  Nick's cousin is Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), who he learns is an old flame of Gatsby's.  Gatsby painstakingly arranges, through Nick, that they meet again, and that she might fall in love with him again.  Daisy is married to the insufferable bully Tom (Joel Edgerton), who's having an affair with Myrtle (Isla Fisher), the wife of his mechanic.

Both the movie and the novel are set not in a realistic version of 1920s New York, but in the version of Nick's memory.  Gatsby and company are meant to inhabit a grandiose, flamboyant, cartoonish world of extremes.  The Great Depression had not happened yet when Fitzgerald wrote the novel, but it makes sense for the story to be told through that lens, as a remembrance of a booming, gaudy, extravagant era that is long gone.

Luhrmann wisely doesn't portray the wild parties in a condescending way, as Jack Clayton did in the dour 1974 film.  Rather, he gives us a visual spectacle that, if it doesn't approach the parodic glitz of Moulin Rouge, gives us a reason to believe Nick's attraction to Gatsby and the identity he's created.  Nick Carraway is not what you'd call a critical narrator, and we only see Gatsby through his positively rosy lens.  The doe-eyed Maguire is perfectly cast.

Luhrmann resists the urge to make the film into a circus; though the film is hardly spare when it comes to visuals, he knows when to let them drop away.  The crowdedness and cacophony of the early party scenes makes way for a loneliness that comes later on.  The hip-hop score, produced by Jay-Z, is an appropriate representation of the jazz age in today's terms, though there is one irritating and awful Lana Del Rey weepie that wears out its welcome and refuses to go away.

As Daisy, Mulligan pins down a character that is difficult to capture.  Her heart is required to travel in so many directions that it's a task not to turn her into a squawking mess (as Mia Farrow did in 1974), but Mulligan's performance is authentic throughout.  As Tom, Edgerton is a perfect bully: loud, brutish, childish, cowardly.

Because the movie is economical in its treatment of its supporting characters, it loses some of the verisimilitude of the novel.  We see a lot of Gatsby and Nick, but very little of the people that make up their environment.  There's far too little of Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki), the sharp-witted golfer who's fixed up with Nick by Daisy and Tom.  Debicki, whose second film this is, ambles away with what little screen time she has.

There's also too little of Myrtle and her husband George, who in the novel give an idea of the rich classes' ambivalence toward the poor, as well as the corrupted American Dream represented in Myrtle's desire for Tom.  Isla Fisher and Jason Clarke are good in these roles, but Luhrmann doesn't pay them much attention.  Still, an early Manhattan party scene is memorable, and Adelaide Clemens (last seen as the apple of Benedict Cumberbatch's eye in "Parade's End") is a scene-stealer in a brief role as Myrtle's obnoxious sister Catherine.

Like Daisy, Gatsby is a difficult character to find, as he's always putting on a show for someone.  DiCaprio knows this, and gives his Gatsby two personalities: the Jay Gatsby he wants the world to know, and the James Gatz he actually is.  The elevated tone with which he utters "old sport" sounds casually false, as it's meant to.  DiCaprio ably finds the purity in a character who is rarely genuine to anyone.

Gatsby's drive captures the attention, and later the sympathy, of Nick, and Luhrmann's success is that he shows us how Nick comes to idolize him so.  It works because Luhrmann brings a restraint that's not common to his other films.  The ending, in which Nick finishes the "book" he's been writing, would be silly in a film that didn't earn it, but this one does.  The final shot, quiet and sad, is what I've always pictured the ending of The Great Gatsby to be.

*** out of ****