It Came From Netflix Instant: THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF ROSALIND LEIGH (2012)

The presence of Vanessa Redgrave is enough to give any movie a certain gravitas, all the more so when she appears second-billed on a little-known low-budget Canadian ghost story.  Usually when renowned stage actors do genre work, it's for the money.  Here, that doesn't seem to be the case.  For one thing, there doesn't appear to be any money; though the movie is professionally shot and looks great, it's limited to one setting and features mainly one actor for much of its screen time.  For another, Dame Vanessa doesn't merely recite her lines and run.  As the title character of The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh, she is a presence deeply felt throughout the film.  Her performance is marvelous and haunting, with subtleties that most genre filmmakers are afraid to embrace.

Oh, and she barely appears in the film.  The character of Rosalind Leigh is glimpsed occasionally at certain moments and may be played by a double; I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter.  Ms. Redgrave's performance is pretty much entirely given in voice-over.  She delivers the last will and testament to which the title refers throughout the film, as the framing device for its story.  All of the movie's complexities, all of its tension, all of its sadness, are there in her voice.  She's not a narrator, but rather a character whose role in the story is gradually revealed as her testament continues.  It's certainly one of the best voice performances of all time, and one of the best performances in all horror films.

In a lesser horror film her performance would stick out like a sore thumb, but The Last Will, the feature debut of Rodrigo Gudiño (editor of the horror magazine Rue Morgue), earns her effort.  It's an eerie and thoughtful character study, along the lines of Shirley Jackson's novel and Robert Wise's film The Haunting.  Beneath its traditional haunted-house premise is a quite sad exploration of loss and responsibility.

After his mother's death, Leon Leigh (Aaron Poole) returns to her home for the first time in many years, intending to sell it.  It's implied that he and his mother had had a falling out for religious reasons: she wanted him to believe, and he just didn't.  But while spending a long night in his mother's expansive, iconography-laden mansion, Leon begins to suspect that her spirit may still be there... or maybe something else.  As the nature of his relationship with his mother is gradually revealed, we slowly find out why the two were so estranged, and why she desperately needed him to come back.

Gudiño creates an effectively hallucinatory atmosphere in which each scene feels a bit too quiet, too calm, too settled.  His long establishing shots, often coupled with a foreboding voice-over in the foreground, suggest that a disturbance is always just around the corner.  And when, quite unexpectedly, some creepy-crawlies begin to emerge, he introduces them so subtly that we're not even sure what we've seen.

I'd say the movie has a surprise ending, but I'm not quite sure that it does.  It does, in a sense, pull the rug out from under the story we think we've been watching... or maybe it doesn't.  The movie doesn't reverse its plot, but merely suggests that we may be seeing it from a point of view that's different from the one we thought.  And it reminds us that though Poole is the one with the most screen time (and he's very good), it's Redgrave who anchors the film and has guided it all along.

*** 1/2 out of ****

THE SPOILS OF BABYLON (2014): The greatest work of fiction ever written is perfectly and intricately translated into a beautiful TV miniseries by its very author, literary giant and wealthy philanthropist Eric Jonrosh

The business of writing bestselling novels is a cruel one.  Simply witness the travails of Eric Jonrosh, author of many successful epic novels, including The Spoils of Alabama.  His attempt to create a TV miniseries from his greatest work, The Spoils of Babylon, was constantly in danger of being thwarted, whether by studio interference or actor disobedience.  Even though filming was completed in the 1970s, the miniseries has only become releasable this year.  Jonrosh wrote, adapted, directed, and edited his original 22-hour cut carefully into three hours, and claims it is a masterpiece.

He is correct.  The legendary tale of the Morehouse family's rise to and fall from grace, captivatingly depicted on the page, has now been breathtakingly beamed to the TV set.  With this work, Jonrosh finally establishes himself as the king of both the printed word and the television screen.

Of course, it's all bogus.  IFC's The Spoils of Babylon is an uproarious deadpan parody of "epic miniseries," like The Thorn Birds and Rich Man, Poor Man, common in the '70s and '80s.  Each episode is introduced by Jonrosh (a heavily made-up Will Ferrell), in sequences not-so-subtly inspired by the infamous Orson Welles wine commercials of 1979 (as well as the notorious outtakes).  What follows is a straight-faced work of such deliberate and unbelievable smugness and self-importance that it's amazing that director Matt Piedmont and his co-writer Andrew Steele can sustain the deadpan atmosphere.  They can, and do.

Jonrosh's tome chronicles the story of the Morehouse family, narrated in the last moments of his life by Devon Morehouse (Tobey Maguire).  An orphan, Devon was adopted by oil prospector Jonas Morehouse (Tim Robbins).  When Jonas strikes it big, the family is thrown into disarray, especially when Devon develops feelings for his adoptive sister Cynthia (Kristen Wiig).

Babylon's only sin is that the entire premise is borrowed without credit from a British series, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, which hasn't largely caught on in America yet, save for a brief run on Adult Swim.  That, too, was a deadpan sendup of a TV trope (Twilight Zone-type sci-fi mixed with General Hospital-style soap) headed by an egocentric auteur who vastly overestimates his talent.  Babylon would be impeachable for this almost-plagiarism if it didn't do well by that premise, but it does, to the point that it should attract new fans to Darkplace, and vice versa.

The series-within-the-series is brilliantly conceived, and the performances from the exceptional cast are carefully realized.  The actors (all in character as phony actors from the '70s) do not merely give purposely bad performances, but craft believable characters who give bad performances.  Piedmont allows his actors to be serious rather than clownish, and they avoid the "so-bad-it's-funny" distinction by giving intensely committed performances of bad material.

Maguire's performance in particular is among the actor's best.  He finds what a hammy actor might seize upon in the character of Devon and plays it, and holds his seriousness as the series hurls him through several genres.  Robbins is also exceptionally good, playing the part of an acclaimed British actor taking on a southern accent to play the Morehouse patriarch.  The closest the series comes to going off the rails is Wiig's purposely histrionic performance, which threatens to break the series's deadpan tone several times, but Piedmont reins her in, and much of her heavyhanded acting is meant to be in character (the actress she plays is meant to be Jonrosh's ex-wife, who divorced him during production).

Rounding out the cast are Haley Joel Osment as Cynthia's loose-cannon son, Michael Sheen as her fey, Rhett Butler-like husband, Val Kilmer as a corrupt Army general, and Jessica Alba as a rival for Devon's love.

Keeping this sort of thing from becoming tired for three hours couldn't have been an easy task, but Piedmont and Steele manage it.  Jonrosh is set up as the kind of egomaniac who would attempt to master every genre, so each episode tackles a different one, from western to political intrigue to corporate melodrama to sci-fi, to a monumentally awful emulation of William Burroughs.  It's to the credit of Piedmont and Steele, who also collaborated with Ferrell on the underrated Spanish-language melodrama sendup Casa de mi Padre, that the series's tone is maintained for as long as it is.

If you've got cable, the entire series is viewable at IFC.com.  The entire series of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is available on YouTube.

CURSE OF CHUCKY (2013)

After efforts to reboot the Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Scream, and Texas Chain Saw series have fallen through pretty pathetically, it's good to see that Chucky is still Chucky.  The killer Good Guy Doll™ has still got it.

While many horror series pass through different hands and different approaches, Curse of Chucky benefits from familiarity and limited ambition.  It sticks with what has worked about the concept.  The series thus far has had the same producer and writer, and Brad Dourif has voiced the titular killer in each one.  Curse continues the tradition by keeping things spare, lean, and simple.

Nica (Fiona Dourif, Brad's daughter), bound to a wheelchair, lives with her mother Sarah (Chantal Quesnelle) in an old, decaying mansion that looks carted in from a James Whale film.  One afternoon she receives a strange package from an unclear sender.  Inside: well, you know.  Terror is soon pursuing Nica and Sarah in their labyrinthine house, as well as Nica's sister Barb (Danielle Busutti), her husband Ian (Brennan Elliott), their young daughter Alice (Summer Howell), and their au pair Jill (Maitland McConnell).

None of what happens here is groundbreaking, but writer-director Don Mancini creates believable characters with real relationships that exist for reasons other than to be chopped up.  They have real family troubles that are connected to the impending Chucky massacre, and not artificially built like many horror films' stabbing fodder.  The performances are also exceptionally good: the younger Dourif makes for a tenacious heroine, and Elliott a likably boorish male foil.  A Martinez also appears as the family's priest, and factors into one of the movie's more gleefully nasty scenes.

Mancini, in his second feature as director, shows a sure hand at suspense.  He makes great use of the setting, which helpfully includes a leaky roof, a winding staircase and a creaky old elevator.  Even though he's been with the series for six entries now (and has only written two screenplays that aren't Chucky-related), he doesn't seem to have grown tired of it.

The elder Dourif, too, is a major reason that Chucky is still as effective a presence as he is.  Chucky's voice has a unique clownish menace that can be at once enticing for children and disturbing.  It's also nice that Dourif gets to appear on screen this time around, too, as Chucky's former human self, serial killer Charles Lee Ray.  And if his appearance was not inspired by Tommy Wiseau, it should have been.

The movie sags quite a bit in its third act.  Its climax is diluted by backstories and flashbacks which don't contribute much to the story.  The little girl disappears for a long stretch for no particular reason.  And it ends a few too many times: I think you'll agree that there is one perfect moment where it ought to have cut to black, but it continues on for a few extraneous scenes, including one after the credits which strangely seems to negate the one that came before it.

*** out of ****

AN OKAY YEAR AT THE MOVIES 2014, Week 1

1. The Bay (2012): Jan. 2
2. Texas Chain Saw (2013): Jan. 2
3. The World's End (2013): Jan. 2
4. Upstream Color (2013): Jan. 3
5. The Apparition (2012): Jan. 3
6. I Saw the Devil (2010): Jan. 5
7. Stiches (2012): Jan. 6
8. 2012 (2009): Jan. 7
9. The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010): Jan. 10
10. Tower Heist (2011): Jan. 10

The Bay (2012, Barry Levinson): ** 1/2
An interesting experiment in eco-horror: a found-footage Paranormal Activity-style mockumentary in which the pollution of Chesapeake Bay leads to horrific results.  Its heart is in the right place, and the environmental message is urgent, but Levinson's shaky hand with the genre is evident, and many of the scares don't land.  Still, the point of view (compiled from various first-person and journalist accounts) is flawless, and there are a number of creepy crawlies that are good for a shock or two.

Texas Chain Saw (2013, John Luessenhop): **
Reboot of the legendary slasher series ignores the above-average 2003 remake as well as the below-average 2006 prequel, and aims to be more of a direct followup to the original film.  Results are middling, scares are few, though blood and gore is plentiful.  Oddly, its biggest success is making the saw-wielding Leatherface into an antihero, something at which Rob Zombie failed with his two Halloween movies.

The World's End (2013, Edgar Wright): ***
The closing chapter of the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg Cornetto Trilogy, in which the not-quite-recovering alcoholic Gary King (Pegg) reunites his old school buddies (Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman) for a night of drinking and debauchery in their hometown.  Like its predecessors, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, it has a genre side-plot, this time influenced by apocalyptic actioners like They Live and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that ties into the characters' relationships and exacerbates each one's troubles.  But the character work is so good, and the performances so charming, that it might have just been about the reunion of five friends without all the action-movie business.  Still, it's consistently hilarious.

Upstream Color (2013, Shane Carruth): ***
This is a love story that, at the very least, has never been told before.  A woman (Amy Siemetz) is attacked, brainwashed, and has her memories stolen.  Soon she meets a man (writer-director-composer Carruth) whom she suspects has had the same thing happened to him, and may have some of her memories.  Hypnotic, strange, and engrossing, told from a dreamlike first-person point of view inspired by David Lynch and Terrence Malick.  Only problem: its puzzling, difficult framing device can be tiring.

The Apparition (2012, Todd Lincoln): 1/2
Uninvolving ghost story is the type of film that's usually lazily ripped from Asian horror; this time it's an original dud.  Kelly (Ashley Greene) finds out that she's being haunted by a malevolent ghost that her boyfriend (Sebastian Stan) and his buddy (Tom Felton) awakened years ago.  Filled with half-baked ideas and empty scenes that are meant to be eerie but are just boring.  Two redeeming qualities: (1) the final shot is an effective rip-off from the 2005 Korean film Cello, and (2) the 82-minute running time includes ten minutes of end credits.

I Saw the Devil (2010, Ji-woon Kim): ** 1/2
After his fiancee is murdered, a federal agent (Byung-hun Lee) tracks down the killer (Oldboy's Min-sik Choi) to take his revenge... but simply killing him would be too easy.  Long, bloody, and brutal, and director Kim takes the revenge thriller to an extreme degree, though Lee's revenge plan is too much of a movie concoction, and his descent to the same level as the killer is predictable.  Choi is memorably ruthless and sadistic as the amoral, seemingly invincible murderer.

Stitches (2012, Conor McMahon): **
After he's accidentally killed at a child's birthday party, a cantankerous clown (Ross Noble) returns from the dead to take revenge on the now-teenaged kids who caused his death.  The shabby, drunken, foul-mouthed Noble is never as scary as a regular well-behaved clown, but the movie is at least populated by awful, annoying brat teenagers who we're happy to see killed in comically graphic ways.

2012 (2009, Roland Emmerich): ***
I've got a soft spot for Irwin Allen, so this movie was music to my ears.  An all star cast including John Cusack, Oliver Platt, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, and Woody Harrelson battles the rising oceans and shifting earth crusts after the Mayan prophecy of 2012 is proven to be true.  Not the tightest of storytelling, but no one does this sort of thing better than Emmerich; the special-effects scenes of the world's destruction are spellbinding.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010, Jon Turteltaub): ** 1/2
Pleasant and usually fun, if disappointing, reunion of the star and director of National Treasure.  Nicolas Cage is Balthazar, student of Merlin, who's reawakened in modern-day New York to stop an evil wizard (Alfred Molina) from world domination.  He's got the help of a college student (Jay Baruchel), whom he's taken as his apprentice.  Some fun special-effects sequences set in realistic New York locations, and likable performances from Cage as the frazzled hero, Baruchel as the awkward apprentice, and Molina as the flamboyant villain.

Tower Heist (2011, Brett Ratner): ***
A heist movie for the Occupy Wall Street era: formulaic but entertaining, with a surprisingly potent economic message.  The manager (Ben Stiller) of a Trump Tower-like condo building in New York invests his employees' pensions with his billionaire penthouse resident (Alan Alda); when the billionaire is arrested for fraud, the employees have to find their money, and steal it back.  Never more than predictable, but consistently likable, with a terrific ensemble of performers.  Alda is exceptionally sleazy as the Bernie Madoff-like scam artist, and Eddie Murphy and Matthew Broderick have their best roles in years as a career burglar and a disgraced businessman, respectively.

THIS IS THE END (2013): Hollywood is Damned, Seth Rogen is Redeemed

Seth Rogen must have had the urge to take the easy way out with This is the End, his directorial debut with his partner Evan Goldberg.  It stars most of his friends and frequent collaborators--James Franco, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride--and pretty much everyone in the movie plays himself or herself.  It must have been in danger of becoming a giant inside joke in which the cast has a lot more fun than the audience, like, say, the original Ocean's Eleven, or James Franco's gig as Oscar host.

This is the End is not that.  In fact, it's the opposite.  It's Rogen's best film to date, in front of or behind the camera, and it's an antithesis to much of what has been so off-putting about him so far, as an actor and a writer.  On his best day, he's endearing, as in the underrated Zack & Miri Make a Porno and Take This Waltz.  On his worst, he's irritating and self-serving, as in Superbad and The Green Hornet.  A movie in which he and his friends all play themselves and improvise much of their dialogue is in danger of becoming a self-indulgent bore.

That the movie avoids self-indulgence is only one of its victories.  This is the End is a brilliant piece of work.  Though much of the dialogue has a spontaneous feel, it's not merely a party for the cast; it's a real film, put together carefully and expertly by its directors.  If the cast and directors weren't working hard, it would be a disaster; because they take it seriously, it's hilarious and oddly moving.  As far as high-concept action-comedies go, it might be the best of its type since Ghostbusters.

Though each cast member plays a slightly removed or elevated version of his or her own public persona, they're not "playing themselves." The movie rightfully does the heavy lifting with its characters rather than depend on us to know the actors' pop culture identities.  Seth Rogen is Seth, hometown Canadian boy turned Hollywood superstar: once a regular guy, Seth has now been absorbed into the L.A. lifestyle.  His childhood friend Jay (Baruchel, his co-star on "Undeclared") is visiting him for the week, but shows little interest in hanging out with Seth's L.A. friends, most prominently James Franco, who's recently built a gaudy house in which to have gaudy Gatsby-like Hollywood parties.

In the early scenes each actor perfectly sets up his or her own facade that very thinly masks a superiority complex.  In the first scene we see Seth waiting at the airport, barely tolerating greetings from fans passing by.  Franco's smarmy attitude, labyrinthine house, lavish party and garishly awful art signifies an art student at his most pretentious.  Even Jay, who's not quite the celebrity that his friends are (though one reference is made to his very good performance in Million Dollar Baby), feels a constant false superiority to those around him.

Franco's party is an impressive creation, worthy of comparison to La Dolce Vita or Blake Edwards's The Party.  It paints a large, elaborate portrait of Hollywood debauchery, and features a gargantuan cast of celebrities showcasing their worst sides.  I won't reveal who appears, though Michael Cera's performance as a coke-addled misogynist in a tracksuit--the only character purposely developed to clash with the actor's real persona--is uproariously off-putting.

Once the party begins, something happens.  I won't say exactly what it is, but it involves explosions, the reduction of Los Angeles to a burning wasteland, a monster or two, and a group of celebrities (Rogen, Franco, and Baruchel, along with Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, and Danny McBride) holed up inside Franco's house, awaiting help.  Help doesn't arrive, but a few other things do.

The celebrities' egos immediately clash with one another, which naturally makes it increasingly difficult for them to stay in the house together.  Hill in particular creates a terrifically phony personality; his obnoxiously fake niceness gives way to reveal a nasty person underneath, and his ultimate fate is just as deserved as it is unexpected.  McBride, playing a version of himself related to his "Eastbound & Down" character, is a purposely irritating and unwelcome presence, but is the only one who wears his obnoxiousness on his sleeve.

The key to the film's success is that it takes its horror-movie situation at face value.  Like Ghostbusters, it doesn't approach its apocalyptic scenario from a right angle, but accepts it and takes it seriously, and depends on its character work for laughs.  The hellscape that its Los Angeles gradually turns into is brilliantly realized by Rogen and Goldberg along with cinematographer Brandon Trost (who also shot the year's other descent into hell, Rob Zombie's The Lords of Salem).  And the movie surprisingly avoids ironic distance and nihilism, and presents us with an earnest and heartwarming conclusion... along with a surprise cameo appearance at its sendoff which I wouldn't dream of revealing here, but which strikes the perfect final note.

**** out of ****

Have Yourself an Evil Little Christmas, Part 1: BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)

(Warning: video contains obscene language.)



Though Halloween gets most of the attention when it comes to grisly teen murders, witchcraft, and other general supernatural happenings, Christmas doesn't lag far behind.  The difference is that it's a lot harder to make a horror film set around Christmas without seeming cynical.  Any movie featuring a serial killer in a Santa Claus suit is merely using the holiday ironically as a platform for disturbing imagery.  However, there are films that manage to avoid that pitfall.

Bob Clark's Black Christmas, which predates Halloween by four years, is the foremost example.  I'm surprised that it's not widely counted among the best horror films ever made, because it certainly is.  Though it's not the first of its type (Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood pioneered the genre), it set the trend for the American stalker/slasher film.

The setup is intricately played.  A group of sorority girls is preparing to celebrate Christmas.  Some are going home, others are staying at the house, some are clandestinely staying with boyfriends.  A phone rings.  It's an obscene caller, and it's made clear that the call is not out of the ordinary.  Gradually the call transforms from sexual to threatening, and future calls become more and more psychotic.  Then a girl goes upstairs to the attic and never returns.

It seems strange at first that Clark would go on to direct the funniest, most endearing Christmas movie of all time, A Christmas Story (not to mention Porky's, and lamentably, Rhinestone and Baby Geniuses), but the two holiday films are not worlds apart.  Both are held together not primarily by plot but by character.  Clark toys with our expectations, not through the lazy whodunit game of which-one's-the-murderer, but through subtle character development and imagery.

The police, led by Lt. Fuller (genre stalwart John Saxon), are well-meaning but of limited help.  A high school girl reported missing at the same time is both a warning and a distraction.  At a time when many college girls are disappearing to undisclosed locations with boyfriends, no one is sure what to suspect.

At the center is Jess (Olivia Hussey), one of the sorority girls, who is the victim of most of the obscene calls.  She is pregnant and unsure if she wants to keep the baby, which disturbs her boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea) to the point where he exhibits destructive behavior just as the killing begins.  Surely suspicion falls upon Peter, who is a credible suspect.  Or is he?

Clark doesn't rely on gore.  In fact, there is barely any blood in the film. He sometimes uses non-graphic but unsettling images (e.g. a dead girl wrapped in plastic rocking back and forth in a rocking chair) to drive the horror element of the film. The rest of the time, he uses suggestion, often cutting away before anything gory happens. He knows that people are scared most by what they can’t see and what they don’t know; he carefully shows us some things and obscures others, and tactically reveals to us some things of which his characters remain unaware.

The obscene calls that punctuate the film are a masterwork of oddball terror.  It sometimes sounds like there are multiple speakers on the other end.  They soon escalate beyond mere sexual harassment and into madness.  The calls are wild and disorienting; no overt threats are made, but the voice on the other end is wild and disorienting.  No sense can be made of the killer's ramblings, but they have a definite urgency that makes them threatening.  By the end of the film a certain amount of lucidity can be deciphered, as if the calls reveal an alternate story that makes sense to the killer but no one else.

The movie works largely because, like A Christmas Story, it feels authentic.  The sorority setting is believable, and the girls who inhabit it are likable and complex.  Margot Kidder in particular is dynamic as a foulmouthed, brutally honest sister who refuses to be victimized.  Even the cops, usually a stereotype in movies like this, aren't written off but are given real personalities: Douglas McGrath is particularly memorable as Sgt. Nash, a slightly boneheaded policeman (who incidentally ends up blurting out the movie's most memorable warning, plagiarized five years later by the far inferior When a Stranger Calls).

The conclusion is sure to disappoint many, since there really isn't one.  People often look for some sort of catharsis at the end of a horror film, which Clark and his writer Roy Moore refuse to provide.  There's only the tension left hanging there; it never releases.  The final tracking shot seems to tease some kind of certainty, but there is only a final line: four words which make no superficial sense, but are as taunting and crushing as anything I've ever heard spoken in a movie.  And a ringing phone.

**** out of ****

HAVE YOURSELF AN OKAY LITTLE CHRISTMAS!

There have been joyous ones and somber ones, but I believe that 'N Sync's "Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays" is the first and only Christmas song to use the word "okay." Whether you're excited or bitter about the holidays, the term "okay" usually doesn't fit.  Kudos to 'N Sync for blanding it up '90s style!




Have a Totally Okay Holiday!