Celluloid Moon

All My Blogs Come Home to Roost*

2011-09-23T10:19:00.001-04:00

(Upon review I kinda buried the lead. Moving to a new blog: Stranded Below Nirvana. Thanks. Keep reading.)

Sometimes you take a break without even knowing you needed it.

The last few months were spent enjoying the things I've been writing about for years, on this blog and others, without the feeling that I was under some sort of self-imposed deadline to get it down, to cogitate and consolidate my thoughts on a movie, a novel, or music into some semblance of structure for publication.

It was nice.

I've always suffered from the problem of wanting to write about too many things, and thinking I needed to compartmentalize those thoughts into different blogs. One one blog became two, two became three, and combined with writing gigs for other web zines and it got to the point where I wasn't enjoying what I was seeing, or hearing, and the act of putting words down lost its passion. Here at Celluloid Moon it became particularly hard, since it's been this blog more than many others where I've come to find and share thoughts with dozens of good and decent people who love movies with the same verve and enthusiasm I do, and better yet, can write like a bunch of muthafuckers on fire about the French New Wave, Italian giallo, the New Hollywood of the 70s and the tent-pole spectacles of today with a fierce intelligence and spark that rallied me to be a better writer, and moreover, a better viewer, of films.

It was that better viewer that sat down over the summer delighting in equal measure things like CAPTAIN AMERICA and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, the astonishing Blu-rays of Lucas's STAR WARS and Cocteau's ORPHEUS, and perhaps my favorite memory, the feeling of my son sitting in my lap as we watched our first movie in the theater together, the fantastic WINNIE THE POOH. But this feeling of delight didn't end with films, the experience of reading books - any books - again without worrying about when the review was due or if it fit with the audience's tastes at the web zine I was writing for was exhilarating. And music? Music sounded better than it had in years: it felt like everything old was new again, and everything new was hitting just the right spots to make it my favorite album for however long I was listening to it until the next most amazing thing ever blasted from my speakers.

And in the middle of it all, the itch started to come back. Not all at once, but was a simple prickling near my ankles grew, became more agitated, until I started looking at all the places I had been writing, and decided to just start fresh, with a place I could ramble about anything I wanted to, whether it was the new batch of DVDs and Blu-rays sitting forlornly in my binders, the waiting books on my nightstand, both physical and virtual, and the literally dozens of albums from every genre imaginable straining to jump up and be heard.

So starting officially and approximately October 1st (though there is five years of content nestled and waiting), I'll be writing pretty regularly about everything under the sun over at my new home, Stranded Below Nirvana. Those who know me will say, "hey, that looks like your old site Geek Monkey." And they'd be right. I didn't want to waste the site, and I really enjoy the extras that come with a Squarespace account, so a fresh coat of paint later and there you are.

If you were kind enough to link to Celluloid Moon, I hope you'll make the switch and point over to Stranded Below Nirvana. I still plan to talk (probably a lot) about the movies I see and love, but also about a lot more. For those I link to here, fear not: Stranded Below Nirvana has a links page where you'll all be linked to once again.

Thanks for reading. See you all soon. I'm sure there's something we can talk about.

* Title bastardized from the excellent short story by Harlan Ellison, "All the Birds Come Home to Roost"

Winter's Bone (2010)

2011-03-06T14:53:00.003-05:00

Despite the great performances, the first thing I thought about WINTER'S BONE after the credits rolled was just how economical it was. A shade under 100 minutes, the film wastes very little time driving you into the heart of the story - 17-year old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) has to find her father, a crank cooker named Jessup awaiting trial who put the family house and land up for his bond. Knowing he'll never show up for court, and having to raise her younger brother and sister alone (her mother spends most of the film in a trance-like state), holding on to the the house and land is the only thing keeping Ree and her family from disintergrating.

Everything you need to know about Ree, her family, and the various players who will fade in and out of the story come from this search, and it's a beautiful piece of storytelling from writer/director Debra Granik and her writing partner and producer Anne Rosellini. Set in the Ozark region of Missouri, WINTER'S BONE takes a very simple premise (daughter searches for lost father) and imbues it with a haunting, otherworldly atmosphere by grounding everything in a reality that few mainstream moviegoers are familiar with. The poverty and familial culture represented in the film feels almost classical at times - Jessup Dolly, the missing father; the mysterious Thump Milton, who runs the crooked kingdom of drugs that the town turns a blind eye to; and of course the vengeful, outcast Teardrop, Jessup's brother and Ree's eventual partner in the search for Jessup, who may not even be alive.

I know it was a foregone conclusion that Christian Bale was going to get the Oscar for best Supporting Actor, but John Hawkes as Teardrop turns in an amazing, subtle and brooding performance, alternating between physically terrifying and introspective, holding every scene he's in with a haunting stare that is captivating to watch. It's as much as transformative performance as Bale's especially when compared to the first film I saw him in, ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW, where he played a lovesick nebbishy shoe salesman whose arm catches fire. Here he has a presence similar to Dennis Hopper, and the climactic scene where the town sherrif pulls Teardrop over is incredible: one of the best fight sequences of the year (Alison Willmore brought this up in her 2010 wrap-up on the IFC News Podcast) without a single punch.

It feels like Jennifer Lawrence sprung out of nowhere to give life to Ree Dolly, a young girl forced to grow up much faster than anyone should have to, raising her siblings and caring for her mother all while to trying to keep food on the table and the influences around her from infecting herself and her family. Her voice is worn with experience, tired and tough, with no room for negotiation or excuses. In a film where every face is lined with a million stories, it's impossible to turn away from hers, and Lawrence manages to be carry the plot of WINTER'S BONE without having to rely on anything other than her determinedness, her drive to find her father and save her family.

Filmed with a striking grace, with a tight screenplay anchored by two excellent Oscar-nominated performances, WINTER'S BONE may have been the big surprise at the awards ceremony this year (it scraped up four nominations including Best Picture), but to anyone who saw the film it should have come as no surprise at all. Great movie, and definitely one of the best of 2010.

Time Flies Right By

2010-12-22T10:15:00.000-05:00

Wow. has it really been that long since I posted that METROPOLIS review? I blame the holiday season, which seems to just suck the time right out of you.

Lots of interesting films watched, including BLACK SWAN, VALHALLA RISING, the stunning Criterion Blu-ray editions of CRONOS and selections from AMERICA LOST AND FOUND: THE BBS STORY, which gets my prize for best DVD release of the year, and in a few short hours I'm off to see TRUE GRIT, where I'll probably be thinking as much about my father as I will about the film itself.

But before all that I'm wrapping up my contribution to The Spielberg Blogathon, jointly hosted by Icebox Movies and Medfly Quarantine. The post should be up by tomorrow, and takes a look at the intersections Spielberg's films have had in my life. It's a bit more personal than simply reviewing or analyzing the man's work, and because of that it's taken a bit more time.

After that it'll be back to regular programming here at Celluloid Moon, including reviews of some of the above-mentioned films, all of which I enjoyed to one degree or another. Until then, go watch something with someone you love, huh?

Metropolis Restored (1927, 2010)

2010-11-29T21:44:00.001-05:00

I suspect many of us knew METROPOLIS before we ever had a chance to actually see it. I know my first exposure to it as a complete (or as close as it was considered to be then) film came some time in the early 90s, with the color tinted, Giorgio Moroder version, edited and scored by the electronic music pioneer. But the images - those stark, expressionistic cityscapes rising to the heavens, the iconic "Other" Maria sitting under an inverted pentagram as rings of electricity pulsed around her and, perhaps for me, the brand most burned upon the brain: a solitary man fighting to maneuver two rods attached like the hands of some nightmarish clock (with only ten hours to squeeze in an extra work day I'd learn years later), vainly aligning them to flickering bulbs that never stay for more than an instant -these images that have been etched in my movie memory far longer than I have any right to claim to them.

Watching the new "complete" version of METROPOLIS on Blu-ray, featuring over 30 minutes of additional footage recently unearthed in a vault in Buenos Aries, and boasting a gorgeous 5.1 recording of the original score brings those images vibrantly back to life, feeling as new and striking as the memories I hold of them. The difference being that those singular visual memories are now tied together in a coherent structure, acting as signposts on a road where the story, long held to be a shortcoming of the film, comes to the forefront. Running just under two and a half hours, it's surprising that METROPOLIS actually feels shorter, as the additional footage brings a depth to the story that engages the viewer as much as the overall design and effects did in the past.

The Epigram that starts METROPOLIS reads: "THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN BRAIN AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!" and this message, seemingly so on the nose for 21st Century viewers, echoes the tone the rest of the film will take. The colossal city of Metropolis is actually two cities: the sprawling, dreamlike upper city where the white collar executives (the Brain) run everything, building gargantuan gardens and stadiums for the delight of their young, brash sons, and the underground city of the the workers (the Hands), who sweat and starve and toil to keep everything running for those privileged who live above. The city is run by Joh Fredsersen, who has no time for anything other the running of the city, much to the dismay of his son Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), who after meeting the saintly Maria who intrudes with a mass of children into the Eternal Gardens to introduce Freder to the plight of his "brothers" below decides to head into the Underground to see for himself how the city lives and breathes. He finds that Maria is the one thing holding the workers in check from rioting, and his heart goes out to both the workers and the beautiful woman who hopes for a brighter future. Throwing a wrench into the works is Joh Fredersen, who likes things the way they are, and he enlists the assistance of the evil Dr. Rotwang, who uses his newly created Machine Man to take the form of Maria, and incite the workers to revolt, thereby allowing Fredersen the leeway he needs to put the workers down once and for all.

Although the earlier cuts of METROPOLIS were more than enough to show the visual genius of Fritz Lang, the restored, complete version takes his directing prowess to another level entirely. Entire subplots are revealed, showing a deft hand at parallel storytelling and artful cross-cutting between events. We see the fate of Worker 11811, the poor man at the clock machine who Freder replaces. He takes Freder's place, only to fall prey to the vices Freder himself is escaping. We see the mysterious Thin Man (most assuredly not Nick Charles), hired by Joh Fredersen to find out where his son is and to expose what's going on with the workers. The climactic flooding of the underground Worker City is much more substantial, and as Lang cuts from one set of action to another we that METROPOLIS is not only the progenitor of much of our now classic science fiction imagery, but it also works as a phenomenal action film, ratcheting up tension as fine as anything that would come a quarter of a century later from more modern masters like Alfred Hitchcock (who was reportedly a visitor to the set, according to the excellent documentary that is included with the DVD/Blu-ray).

I mentioned earlier how much better the restored film plays as a whole, even though it's substantially longer than it was before. This comes at a small cost to some viewers: due to the conditions of the newly found footage (a 16mm reduction taken from an original 35mm print) the new section are very rough - no amount of digital re mastering can take away the lines of age and missing section of the frame due to size. Small price to pay, however, to see a true film masterpiece as close to its original format as we can get - there's so much in METROPOLIS that stands out throughout the language of cinema - the excellent documentary included on the disc opens with the direct influence the film's architecture had on Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER. Roger Ebert, in his Great Movies essay on the film, remarks on influences as far reaching as DARK CITY, BATMAN, and even DR. STRANGELOVE. And after watching the stunning Blu-ray transfers of the BACK TO THE FUTURE films, I can't help but see some of mad Dr. Rotwang in good ol' Doc Brown.

In its truncated form, METROPOLIS was a grand achievement in filmmaking. Seeing the crisp, clear images now, being able to grasp the story as a whole, and reveling in the sheer joy of the technical effects on display, what was a towering work is made even more colossal, even more grand and enormous. And even better, the storytelling on display is as fresh, as engaging, as it must have been to people experiencing its like for the first time, over 80 years ago.

* The complete restored METROPOLIS is available in HD on Netflix Instant Streaming service.

In Lieu of Reviews (returning shortly), My Movie Thought of the Day

2010-11-24T10:16:00.000-05:00

Having spent an evening watching the in-depth documentaries The Beast Within and Superior Firepower on the ALIEN ANTHOLOGY Blu-ray set, I've come away even more impressed with Ridley Scott and ALIEN, and even less impressed with James Cameron and ALIENS.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Welcome to My Surreal Nightmare: House (1977) in Images

2010-11-06T10:39:00.001-04:00

Being a (belated) Film #12 in Hail Horror 5.

I actually watched HOUSE, the 1977 Japanese freak-fest by Nobuhiko Obayashi before either HABIT or SOMBRE, picking it up the day it was released in a typically gorgeous Criterion edition. The back of the DVD describes the film, a truly inventive visual tour de force by Obayashi (who after a series of similar in aesthetic short films got his start in crazy commercials like the infamous MANDOM spots with Charles Bronson) as "An episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava" and that's not too far off the mark. Seven quirky school girls travel into the country to stay with lead girl Gorgeous's aunt, who has been alone in her house with just her cat ever for years. Turns out Auntie is more than just an eccentric spinster, and the trip turns into a surreal nightmare complete with man-eating pianos, flying decapitated heads, musical numbers, animation, some terrific matte painting and martial arts.

The best comparison I can make is to Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD 2, a "horror" film that was so exuberant and fun you were smiling more than you were screaming. So rather than go into more detail, here are a few shots to whet your appetite:

Seriously deranged and delightful, if you haven't caught up to HOUSE yet, do yourself a favor and check it out, if only to see a man transform into a bunch of bananas.

Sombre (1998)

2010-10-31T14:28:00.003-04:00

Being Film #11 in Hail Horror 5. Thanks to Leaves for the recommendation.

Extra Note: One week later this movie still sits like a bad meal in my gut, proof (perhaps) that there's more to the film than my experience and consequent write-up get across. Leaves came back with a lengthy comment that goes into detail why he thinks the film works, and it's a great counterpoint, so I link to it here and heartily recommend checking it out.

SOMBRE, the debut film by experimental artist Philippe Grandrieux, eschews straight narrative, opting instead to provoke visceral reactions in the viewer. It succeeds in its goal. Everything is dark and oppressive, even in daylight. Images are either ramped up or slowed down to such a degree that even the most innocent activity - children being delighted by a puppet show - turns into a Lynchian nightmare. The story centers on Jean, a serial killer who preys on prostitutes until a chance encounter with two women in a broken down car on the highway provides a new diversion and a chance to consummate the act whose failure seems to drive jean to his murderous acts. There is the barest hint of fable in this, but its glow is dampened by enough abuse and violence to take any artistic message SOMBRE has and leave it by the film's end abandoned on the side of the road.

Or at least that's my impression. I knew after about 15 minutes I was going to hate this movie, although part of that reaction could conceivably be Grandrieux's whole point. Unlike the stylized (though equally brutal) acts of violence perpetrated by Mario Bava or Dario Argento, there's a depravity and bluntness to Jean's sadistic acts that leaves you sick in the stomach. This feeling is only enhanced with numerous dead scenes of driving on highways, evil looking children, and sickly pale yellow light when there's any to be found.

So, yeah...not a movie I even remotely enjoyed or recommend. However I'm open to the chance that I'm just not the target audience for this kind of thing (my tastes running more classic Universal, Hammer, and giallo) so in the interest of fairness there's an in-depth review of the film available at d+kaz which really picks the film apart. I can definitely see all its points, but it doesn't do anything to improve the experience I had with SOMBRE.

That's it. One more quick review done in pictures, and then a final 13th review for one of the most anticipated horror television series in a long time...

Habit (1995)

2010-10-28T08:03:00.007-04:00

Being Film #10 in Hail Horror 5. Thanks to J.D. at Radiator Heaven for the recommendation.

You ever keep hearing about someone, a director or a writer, someone that people keep telling you to check out, and you want to, only somehow it never seems to happen? And then when you finally do you can't understand what took you so long to do it?

Well, for me that's Larry Fessenden, and HABIT, his 1995 re-working of an independent video he shot back in 1982 is kind of an indie revelation. Fessenden wrote, directed, edited, and stars in HABIT as Sam, a lost soul in New York City - a witty, nice enough guy who unfortunately is so far down in the drink his entire life is a crumpled heap. All of this is communicated in a few short sequences as Sam arrives at his friend's Halloween party, "costumed" as a vagabond Cyrano de Bergerac. It's there that he meets Anna, a mysterious beautiful woman with who he shares an immediate attraction. She seems to come and go, leaving him after a party in the street but suddenly behind him a few days later at a street fair. Their first night together leaves Sam in a daze the next morning in a park, his lip bloody...

So is Anna a vampire or not? The incredible thing about HABIT is that it doesn't matter very much. There's certainly enough in the film to suggest it - Anna and Sam's love making in the park end with her sucking on his lip as he begins to go numb. Later he has visions of being chased by something in the air; he has a craving for rare meat, and the sight of a dead roach on the floor of the bar he manages almost puts him in a trance. Anna for her part doesn't make it easy. Played by Meredith Snaider (who played the same role in the 1982 version, as did Fessenden) with a cool understatement, Anna's only real power she uses over Sam is that she listens, and seems to care about him in a way he desperately needs. She's sensual and passionate, but her draw is not the typical vampire allure (she may be the only vampire in the history of cinema to buy her victim a barbecue), and it's one of the many things that stand out in the film.

But the real star of HABIT is Fessenden, who besides giving a remarkable performance as Sam but displays a very keen eye as a writer/director. The dialog and performances all around are very naturalistic and have an improvisatory feel. The cinematography is superb for such a low-budget feature: filmed on location in New York gives everything an authenticity lacking in other, larger budget pictures. There a dozens of little things that bring Sam's existence to life: from his enormous set of keys shown locking his door in the beginning of the film to shots of sinks filled to the brim with dirty dishes and change on tables. As Sam falls more under the spell of Anna, Fessenden begins slowly unraveling the world he so completely put together in the first hour of the movie. Clocks spin backwards, voices begin to echo. He doesn't know if he's hung over, sick, or just overly sensitive to light. Do we take him at his word? Or are these just more effects of his drinking? Fessenden keeps it ambiguous up to the end, and even then you can argue equally for both viewpoints.

So. A vampire movie that may or may not be about vampires at all, but is about those things we associate with vampires because we don't want to think about it in any kind of realistic fashion. And that's insatiable need, hunger...base desires more comfortably expressed creatures of the night. Fessenden knows this, and has crafted a genuine gem of a film.

Survival of the Dead (2009)

2010-10-26T08:54:00.001-04:00

Being Film #9 in Hail Horror 5. Thanks to Sean at Spectacular Views for the recommendation.

Is there a horror fan left on the planet that isn't at least familiar with George A. Romero's DEAD films? Both NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD influenced entire schools of horror, and established the rules by which hundreds of zombie films adhere to. Romero's game - both in his zombie movies and in his other films like MARTIN, KNIGHTRIDERS and THE CRAZIES - is to address larger societal themes under the guise of horror, more often than not showing the real horror to be the "normal" folks trapped in whatever scenario Romero devises for them.

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, Romero's sixth investigation into the world of the living dead, brings us back to the beginning of the outbreak, and is a sequel of sorts to 2007's awkward DIARY OF THE DEAD, a point of view movie about a group of college film students who are there at the onset of the reawakening of the dead. Deciding to use the event as fodder for a film they're creating, one sequence has them coming up against a group of soldiers turned thieves, out to save themselves and find someplace safe. SURVIVAL is the story of those soldiers, where they go, and what they find.

What they find is Plum Island, seemingly a perfect to wait out a zombie apocalypse. Unfortunately, this particular island has a good old fashioned Irish blood feud between the Muldoons and the O'Flynns. In the beginning of the film we learn that Old Man O'Flynn was kicked off the island because it was his belief that the family and friends coming back to life on the island couldn't be saved, and that a shot to the head was an act of mercy. Shamus Muldoon and his clan think otherwise, believing that if they can get the zombies to eat something other than human flesh, there's a chance they can be saved. O'Flynn's daughter Janet is in agreement, so exile it is until he meets up with the soldiers and comes back to settle the score.

Romero is right in his element here, and where DIARY was often stilted and a little ham-fisted due to the way it was shot, SURVIVAL works much better (despite some narration that just falls flat - has no one learned from BLADE RUNNER?). Both Muldoon and O'Flynn no longer whether or not their point is correct: all they want is for the other to admit that they were wrong, something neither is willing to do until it's too late. Romero's still got some fun gags up his sleeve, and his flesh-eating ghouls get exploded by a fire extinguisher, combusted from the inside by a flare, and in one case hung from a rope, a poor cowboy on the other end fighting to stay away from the snapping jaws. Taking a cue from LAND the zombies still have some semblance of their past lives, and we're treated to some great visuals like one poor zombie mailman chained to a mailbox, slowly shambling back and forth the length of the chain as he delivers the same mail again and again. The effects are mixed - there are some horrible CGI effects, particularly in the beginning of the film, but there's also some decent shots, and enough practical gore to give everything an even keel.

There's not a real scares to be had, though, so if you're looking for something truly frightening you'd probably have to go back to 1968's original film. I'd argue though that Romero hasn't been interested in scares for quite some time; he's more intent on having a good time and throwing scenarios and situations into a world of his own making, one that reflects in its own goopy and gory way our own. The biggest surprise I came away with was how much fun SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD actually is, and that it looks like Romero's still got a couple tales left up his sleeve to tell in this world.

A world with just slightly more zombies than our own.

Don't Look Now (1973)

2010-10-25T11:51:00.004-04:00

Being Film #8 in Hail Horror 5. Thanks to Tony Dayoub of Cinema Viewfinder and Captain Blake of The October People for the recommendation

Cut away the non-linear structure, the running visual cues and kinetic editing, and DON'T LOOK NOW would probably still be a good, if fairly predictable movie. But fortunately for us we don't have to do that, and the fact is that Nicolas Roeg in only his second feature as a director has crafted a masterpiece of mood and tone, and DON'T LOOK NOW stands as an achievement of the presentation of pure dread, and a stunning example of how a director can directly engage the audience in his vision.

Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie star as John and Laura Baxter, a couple who in the opening of the film tragically lose their young daughter in a drowning accident. The sequence, cutting back and forth between the Baxters calmly working in their cottage and their young daughter Christine playing outside near a lake is a superb lesson in film making. Christine's bright red raincoat is shot reflecting in the water as she runs outside, and the image of water, as well as the color red serve as markers throughout the film. In fact, the actual shot is doubled later in the film to wonderful effect. Actions in the house are mirrored outside, and in some instances are perfectly edited to be a continuous motion between the two, such as a ball tossed in the air cutting to John tossing a pack of cigarettes to Laura. A quick shot of Laura covering her mouth, instantly cutting to Christine doing the same. A dropped ball echoes a glass dropping, cutting John's thumb (which echoes his young son's cut finger outside) causing blood to smear across a slide of a church window, specifically on the image of a red hooded person sitting in a pew. The blood slowly moves across the slide, and it's then that John gets a sense that something's not right outside.

I could go on and on just analyzing the opening of this film. It sets up everything we can expect from Roeg throughout the rest of the film. An indeterminate amount of time later the setting shifts to Venice, which captures the crumbling state of affairs between John and Laura. I've never seen Venice look more depressed and decayed on film. John is restoring an old church, trying to escape from the death of his daughter in his work. In a restaurant they come across two older women, sisters, one of whom is psychic and tells Laura that she can see young Christine sitting right next to them, happy but trying to tell them them something. Laura collapses, and awakens later finally at ease with events, ready to believe the best and resume their lives. John, however, is strictly rational, refusing to buy into anything other the solid reality of the walls and windows he fights so hard to bring back from their own state of decay.

When Laura learns that Chrstine's message is actually a warning to leave Venice before it's too late, and that the message is for John, who whether he wishes to believe it or not is capable of some psychic insight himself, DON'T LOOK NOW moves with a dreadful pace to its horrible and inevitable end. But the manner in which it does so is so remarkable, and so visible to the audience that Roeg elevates the story to classic status. He's ably assisted by Sutherland and Christie, who turn in one of the most believable portraits of marriage I've seen on film. So much has been said of the pivotal love-making scene, cutting between the unbridled intimacy of the act itself and the distant dressing afterward, but beyond that what makes John and Laura's relationship so believable is in the little things: the constant interruptions in each other's conversations that never escalate into arguments but rather feel like this is how they've always talked. The small touches and brushes into one another on the bed before the lovemaking, in the restaurant, and the jogging steps John takes as he runs to touch Laura's hand one last time before her boat leaves. In a film surrounded by so many odd supporting characters (the sisters, the supremely odd police chief) John and Laura are utterly grounded in reality, and it makes the fantastic events that occur all the more tragic.

The last thought I wanted to get out about DON'T LOOK NOW is how deliberate Roeg's direction is. Typically in a horror movie the directions a film takes align up with the perspective of the main character. You the audience learn something because the main character is learning something. Roeg does the exact opposite in DON'T LOOK NOW - he uses dissolves, flash-backs, genius editing and color to explicitly alert you - not John - to what's going on in the film. In one particular set-piece John is matching a newly cut tile to see how it matches against the original tiles for a mosaic high on a church wall. He stands on a rickety scaffold, and the camera constantly cuts back and forth from sets of eyes: on the mosaic, on pictures aligning a sheet of glass, and all of this cuts back to the cataract eyes of the psychic sister who heard the warnings to leave Venice before it was too late. Roeg doesn't rub your nose in it; rather, he very purposefully presents his cues and guides you through to the climax of the film. It's an incredibly assured job (not surprising considering some of his past work with David Lean and Roger Corman), and indicative of the visual themes he would continue to pursue in films like THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and BAD TIMING.

DON'T LOOK NOW is a modern horror classic, not because it's particularly horrific or frightening (although in its dreadful way it is both of these things), but because of its maturity, a film firmly grounded in genre that isn't afraid to be art as well.

Splice (2010)

2010-10-22T20:23:00.003-04:00

Being Film #7 in Hail Horror 5

There comes a point about three quarters of the way through Vincenzo Natali's SPLICE, his 21st century cross-bred homage to the Frankenstein story that significantly changes the stakes of what you've seen up to this point. And you're going to make a split-second decision in your head as to whether you can accept that this is actually happening and carry on, or if you think a line's been crossed and you turn it off. There's a small chance that you might think, "What's the big deal? That's not so bad," and just keep watching, never giving it a second thought.

If you're one of those folks (or even if you're not), I urge you to read the always-awesome Vern and his review of the film, which goes into a lot of spoiler details addressing this moment. Then think again about what you just watched, and either marvel or cringe at what Natali and company got away with in a mainstream summer release.

SPLICE is the story of Clive and Elsa, an aptly named pair of punk rock hipster genetic scientists played by Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley. I want to stress this description because the beginning of the film is fairly distracting and just a bit silly: Brody attends meetings dressed in slick checkered suits and ironic t-shirts. Polley wears knee high combat boots and both work in lab coats covered in faux military patches. I don't know what Natali's trying to get across with this, except to say, "Hey, look at us! We're young and cool and brilliant and utterly incapable of knowing our limits!" Actually, that's probably exactly what he was trying to get across based on what happens to them, but it seems so out of place at first, and then basically gets lost in the shuffle as the movie goes on. Clive and Elsa have just successfully spliced together the genes of different animals and come up with Fred and Ginger, two phallic worm creatures whose proteins can be the basis for a number of medical vaccines and potential cures. Great job, and for them the logical next step is to mix a little human DNA into the mix.

From here on in we're treading some familiar territory, as what happens is a twisted version of the Frankenstein myth, although instead of a lumbering, shunned gargantuan, we're treated to Dren, a delicate female with the legs of a bird and a tail with a nasty stinger. What SPLICE does exceptionally well with this conceit is to have Clive and Elsa, whose relationship is on edge due to the whole child issue, come face to face with their problems in the form of the newly created life. Yes, it's an experiment that was never supposed to come to term, but now that it's here, what are their responsibilities? Where does the experiment end and being a parent begin? Natali does a great job in the second act asking these questions and giving Brody and POlley enough room to really address these questions both as scientists and as new parents, as Dren ages in short order from a tadpole-looking "thing" straight out of David Lynch's mind and into an exotic, beautiful young woman.

Lest you think this is another case of MONSTERS, where the promise of horror is nowhere to be found, rest assured: one thing Natali knows how to do is wring some genuine horror and suspense from a scene. Early on in the film Clive and Elsa are summoned to the lab in the middle of the night: the experiment has come to term and is ready to be born out of a synthetic "womb". It's a terrifically intense sequence, no one being sure exactly what's going to come out of the rapidly expanding bag. Another, later sequence goes even further as Elsa and Clive, thinking they're about to kill the experiment before anyone finds out, soon discovers it's missing, having evolved into something entirely different. The eventual unveling of Fred and Ginger and the effects of that is both horrific and utterly hilarious, not least because the scene has Brody and Polley dressed like rock stars addressing a science community of tuxedo-clad aristocracy.

The effects for Dren in all stages of her life are remarkable for such a small picture, and go a long way to making SPLICE a worthwhile experience - it's refreshing to see see something so alien, so different than what we've come to expect from a film of this type. In her adult form Dren is played by Delphine Chanéac in an eerie, cat-like performance. As she gets older and begins to express the questions and desires of any normal young person, the film gets better and better until the aforementioned pivotal moment in the picutre, where something you suspect might happen does indeed happen, with a gusto and relish that's horrifying...

...and then the film backs down. As much as I enjoyed SPLICE for it's originality and willingness to address some interesting issues, instead of taking those questions further after, the film devolves into a "let's kill the monster" climax. It's a little unsettling to see how quickly the unnamed sequence is glossed over to make way for a generic chase in the woods and the now I see it coming from a mile away ending. It's almost like Natali was stopped from exploring the themes he was interested as soon as the film was picked up for major distribution. What happens in its place isn't necessarily bad, just a bit too traditional for what could have been a truly creepy and substantial movie. SPLICE is still a movie I would recommend for any horror fan looking for something different, and at the very least to provoke discussion as to what Natali was shooting for, how we feel about it, and what's left to do in a modern horror film.

Oh, that's right...THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE. We've come so far...

The Stendhal Syndrome (1996)

2010-10-20T11:09:00.003-04:00

Being Film #6 in Hail Horror 5

Before writing this I went back and read the previous reviews I've written on Dario Argento films (for those curious, TENEBRE, PHENOMENA, and FOUR FILES ON GREY VELVET), and the same theme crops up again and again: even when things don't make a lick of sense, Argento is such a visually striking director it becomes easy to fall into his films and enjoy the ride. So far I've been lucky in my selection of his work: besides the above, I've luxuriated in the saturated colors of SUSPIRIA and marveled at the ingenuity on display in works as early as THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and the Godfather of giallo films, DEEP RED. But that was the trick; Argento has a large enough discography you can bounce around and find classic after classic and take a while before you bump into a clunker like THE MOTHER OF TEARS. The general rule seems to be, stick to the early stuff - anything in the last twenty years and you're in danger of some serious crummery.

But I had heard a lot of good things about THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, the first Italian film to use CGI, and it certainly didn't hurt that Argento cast his lovely daughter Asia as the lead, and since it was available in HD on Netflix Instant Streaming I curled up in bed Saturday morning and checked it out.

Boasting another great score by Ennio Morricione, THE STENDHAL SYNDROME stylistically feels right at home alongside his other great giallo films of the 70s and early 80s. Asia Argento is Anna Manni, a policewoman from Rome recently arrived in Florence to compare notes with the local law about a vicious rapist who has lately started murdering his victims with a shot through the head. She receives a call from a stranger stating the killer is indeed in Florence, and will be at the world famous Uffizi Gallery. Anna goes on her own to see if he's there, but becomes entranced by the sheer volume of art on display, and falls prey to the Stendhal Syndrome, a real-life affliction where the person becomes faint and can even hallucinate at the sight of beautiful or large amounts of art. In Anna's case, she falls into a painting of an ocean where an enormous fish promptly swims up and begins to make out with her.

Yeah, so right away we're kind of back in Ken Russell territory, but the scene, surreal as it is, serves as the template for Anna's condition, and is used as an indicator for her sanity throughout the film. Anna, now slightly amnesiac, is helped up by Alfredo, a young man who witnesses the event and helps her with her belongings. She returns to her hotel room, still dazed by what happened and is confronted by another painting which opens up as a doorway, allowing her to travel back in time to the scene of the crime that brought her to Florence. While the remarked-upon CGI is a little shoddy in certain places (there's an odd scene of Anna swallowing some pills that we watch travel through her system), when it comes to the paintings coming to life and transporting her it's surprisingly effective. After walking through the doorway and reliving the events that prompt her police chief to send her to Florence, Anna walks back to her room and regains her memory. It sounds crazy, but these sequences find Argento perfectly in his element, using his signature dream logic to give everything a spaced-out feeling.

But as soon as she returns to reality things take a startling turn as Alfredo appears in her room, now revealed as (surprise) the killer and has been tracking her ever since she left Rome. I'm used to violence in film, and in particular to violence in Argento films, where everything takes on a surreal, fetishistic tone. THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, though, pushes the envelop for what I'm comfortable with: Alfredo, unmasked so early, brutally rapes Anna, cutting her lips with a razor blade he keeps in his month, and punching her to keep her screaming all the while. It's extremely unsettling, and Argento is unforgiving in the way he shoots it, using intense close-ups of Alfredo playing with the razor in his mouth, the drops of blood that stain the sheets, and the terrified, sweat-soaked face of Anna. Mercifully she's knocked unconscious, only to have the brutality kicked up another notch when she wakes up in a car next to another woman getting raped and then shot by Alfredo, who gazes at Anna through a hole in the dead woman's face:

Anna escapes, but the experience leaves lasting effects: she can't stop thinking about what happened, can't stand the thought of being so defenseless, and how that is tied into her gender. She cuts her hair severely short, begins dressing in slacks and jackets, won't let her boyfriend touch her (in another brutal scene she winds up frantically assaulting him), takes up boxing with her brother. I think the other real surprise besides the viciousness of her rape is the the amount of realistic psychological damage Argento injects into the story. In the past with films like FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET and to a lesser extent DEEP RED and TENEBRE the mental instability (for lack of a better term) of the victims or the killers seemed tacked on, used for shock effect without really diving into the grit and realism those conditions would have on the person. Here it feels much more tangible, and that realism adds to the tragedy we feel as Anna's sanity slowly starts to crumble. It should be noted that Asia Argento is fantastic as Anna, convincing us in every scene of the pain and torment she's in, whether it's having a tortuous dinner with her family or being trapped in the clutches of Alfredo...

..which happens again, halfway through the film in an extended scene that's even worse than what came before. However this time the tables are turned and Anna not only manages to escape, but to inflict some serious revenge on Alfredo (there's a truly twisted moment involving bed springs) before kicking him to his death over a cliff. The only trouble is, when the police arrive they can't find the body...

This would be the ending for most films, but we're only an hour into THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, which now takes a left turn as Anna physically transforms again, donning a platinum blonde wig and falling in love with Marie, an exchange student from France who works at the local museum. Argento always manages to make the most of his sets and locations, achieving a wonderful sense of skewered balance by accentuating different aspects of the scene. The museum where Marie works is a perfect example, the workers dwarfed by the gargantuan sculptures that lay haphazardly (but oh so carefully arranged) around the room:

Let's see: large, white stone heads and arms, all detached from bodies in a museum? What do you think the chances are those statues will be covered with blood soon?

If you said, "pretty good" give yourself a pat on the back.

The ending of THE STENDHAL SYNDROME leads you in one direction and then takes a left turn that, while not all that surprising, is still surprisingly effective and ends on a more somber note that I would have thought. It was said that originally Asia Argento was going to reprise her role in a sequel of sorts but scheduling issues changed that plan (the film was cast with another lead and turned into the not-so-well received THE CARD PLAYER in 2004). Based on what happens in THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, that would have been an interesting film indeed. But at least we have this, a surprisingly good, mature film from coming so much later in a career that seemed to have peaked 15 years before. Let's hope there's more to be had from such a singular voice in horror cinema.

Meme: 15 Directors

2010-10-19T21:33:00.004-04:00

Ah, the Internet Meme. If it weren't for the proliferation of these dastardly virtual viruses we'd probably all be a lot more productive but not nearly as entertained. I caught this particular bug from J.D. over at Radiator Heaven, who apparently was infected after seeing the kickoff over at Films From the Supermassive Black Hole and the most righteous posting over at The Dancing Image.

The easy part is coming up with the list. From J.D.'s post:

List off the first 15 directors that come to your head that have shaped the way you look at movies. You know, the ones that will always stick with you. Don't take too long to think about it.

After about a minute or so I had about 20 directors. This list is simply the first 15 I scribbled down, with the bonus 16th cleverly concealed in the image above (try and figure it out!).

The harder part was deciding how to visually present the list. I'd love to take some time and care with this and use video clips like MovieMan0283 did (seriously, his entry is a crash-course in film and should be checked out), but for now I'll follow J.D.'s steps and use simple images of the people themselves:

Michael Curtiz

Howard Hawks

Akira Kurosawa

Woody Allen

Alfred Hitchcock

The Coen Brothers

Guillermo del Toro

Orson Welles

Martin Scorsese

Jean-Pierre Melville

Jean-Luc Godard

Francis Ford Coppola

David Lynch

Terry Gilliam

Ingmar Bergman

There are, of course, others that should be on this list - Spielberg was right below Kubrick, Tarantino was below him, and John Huston just slipped my mind until I started looking for pictures. But these are the one that came to my head first, and they're in no particular order with the exception of Michael Curtiz, who doesn't get enough credit as a director, and has the distinction of directing the #1 and #2 films on my list of all-time favorites.

Over the next few months I'll come back and revisit each of these directors and shed a little light on why their films have affected the way I look at not only cinema but the world. In the meantime, enjoy the pics (I tried to keep to a certain style) and let me know who would be on your list.

My Two Cents on The Social Network (2010)

2010-10-16T22:39:00.001-04:00

It's a good movie. A really good movie, entertaining as hell and filled with great acting, spectacular direction and a score that is so perfectly attuned to the action on the screen it's almost eerie.

That being said, it's not my favorite film of the year, and I cringe a little whenever I see the words "masterpiece" or "game-changer" tossed about. Like any movie (or every movie), there are choices I don't agree with, things that are clunky or don't work, but none of that should take away from what is a excellent look at the lengths people will go to to try and connect, to fit in within a larger circle, and the things they may lose along the way.

There are many excellent reviews out there in the film blog community: I went into a lot more detail regarding what I did and didn't like in the comments on Ryan Kelly's excellent post on Medfly Quarantine. I also referenced Tony Dayoub's review from Cinema Viewfinder, equally outstanding. Clicking on the comments from both sites will lead to many more great opinions on THE SOCIAL NETWORK, some positive, some negative, but all informed, intelligent, and well worth your time whether you agree with the findings or not.

Gothic (1986)

2010-10-15T14:06:00.004-04:00

Being Film #5 in Hail Horror 5. Thanks to Tony Dayoub of Cinema Viewfinder for the recommendation.

"Russell provides you with your money's worth. Why he would have wanted to make this film is another matter. This is the kind of movie that Roger Corman was making for American-International back in the early 1960s, when AIP was plundering the shelves of out-of-copyright horror tales, looking for cheap story ideas."

-Roger Ebert, in his review of Russell's LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM (1988)

A similar thought ran through my head as I sat and "experienced" the hallucinatory nightmare that is Ken Russell's GOTHIC, a film loosely based one of the most famous events in horror history - the night poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Dr. John William Polidori, and Mary Shelley spent at Lord Byron's estate, and the challenge to create a work of horror that ultimately led to the creation of Polidori's Vampyre and, more famously, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. That thought was that this would have been perfect fodder for Corman and AIP, or even Hammer Films back in the early 60s. The pairing of this type of story, told with the visual flair and camp that is a signature of Russell's work, must have seemed to be a perfect match to the film's producers.

I wish I was as taken with the pairing. Russell wanted to portray Byron and his guests as he felt they would truly be at the time, not the refined, cultured gentleman typical of a Corman or Hammer production, but as hedonistic satyrs, consuming life with a savagery that was more in keeping with history and perhaps his own interests. So GOTHIC plays out like a campy nightmare: plenty of vibrant colors and religious iconography, twisted sexual imagery both real and imagined, and acting that veers from lethargic to histrionic in a nanosecond. Upon their arrival at the Villa Diodati, Byron (Gabriel Byrne) and Polidori (an outlandishly foppish Timothy Spall) serve their guests laudanum, and later on instead of challenging each other to write a horror story, he proposes they conjure their own horror through mysticism and séance. The results, largely viewed through the eyes of Mary Shelley (Natasha Richardson in one of her first roles), is a series of events as each person comes into contact with their innermost terrors, including snakes, leeches, suit of armor with enormous spiked codpieces, and - lest we forget - a belly-dancing robot whose nipples turn into a pair of eyes.

It's all presented in your face and with barely a pause, so watching GOTHIC for me was more of a challenge to my stamina than my sensibilities. Without a coherent plot to fall back on GOTHIC is really nothing more than a series of loosely-connected vignettes that ultimately go nowhere. The acting is all around pretty terrible - Gabriel Byrne and Julian Sands as Percy Shelley in particular both spend much of the time either crying or storming around speaking in melodramatic sound bytes (one scene even has Shelley naked on the roof during a thunderstorm proclaiming, rather obviously, that lightning is the key to life or something, with Mary looking on) I can't help but like Timothy Spall, and he has a few good moments: in the beginning he's framed in silhouette, commenting in a very dandified voice upon the arrival of the guests to what appears to be a stuffed parrot. Later on he nicks himself on the crucifix above his bed, and then later removes it to impale his hand again and again upon the nail. Richardson's beauty goes a long way to elevate her in a largely thankless, reactive role; most of the juicy female parts (ew, poor choice of words there) belong to Myriam Cyr as Claire, who winds up with a dead rat in her mouth at one point in the film.

I think if you're a fan of Russell's visual style you can forgive the poor script and simply relish in the singular madness he depicts on screen. Having only seen a few of his films (TOMMY, ALTERED STATES, LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM), I was initially taken with the pace and style but about halfway through just became disinterested. GOTHIC doesn't really touch on the points that made this momentous meeting so important, and feels instead like an opportunity for Russell to put to screen many of the mad things he had dancing in his head at the time. Not even remotely frightening, and boasting an out-of-place and forgettable score by Thomas Dolby, I was left thinking about the film's poster, and how hard it must have been to market this thing when it came out. To be honest I can't even remember what the ending was all about - I know it goes to the present, and there's a disturbing image of a baby floating in the water, but I couldn't tell you what it was supposed to mean.

Oh, well. Maybe I'm not supposed to know. At any rate, while I wouldn't recommend the film (especially in its current incarnation, a muddy, washed-out VHS transfer), I can certainly see the appeal, and maybe if I had some more of his films under my belt, there would be more to discuss. But based on GOTHIC, I don't think I'll be checking them out any time soon.

Monsters (2010)

2010-10-13T13:29:00.002-04:00

Being Film #4 in Hail Horror 5

Turns out the surprise was on me. Not because MONSTERS, the micro-budget (reportedly made for $15,000) debut from British visual effects artist Gareth Edwards is a bad movie - it most definitely isn't - but it also definitely isn't a horror movie. You wouldn't necessarily gather that from the trailers, however, which try to push the "dangerous thing hunting down the young couple" aspect a bit more than I think serves the film. Despite all that, though, MONSTERS is a incredible example of what one can do with limited funds but boundless amounts of passion.

After discovering evidence of extra-terrestrial life, a small satellite carrying samples crashes through the Earth's atmosphere, landing in Mexico where over the course of six years becomes a walled-off Infected Zone, where the organisms have grown into towering behemoths capable of ripping apart buildings and laying massive amounts of destruction in their wake. The Mexican and American governments are doing all they can to contain the menace, but all too often that involves air strikes and chemical weapons that potentially do more harm to the human populace than the aliens ever would.

Thrust into this carefully constructed world is Andrew Kaulder, a photo journalist staying in Mexico in the hopes of getting that front-page shot that will catapult him into the big leagues. After one of the aliens decimates a small town he's ordered by the magazine he works for to escort Samantha Wynden, the boss's daughter who was injured in the battle, to safety. If this sounds a bit like a clichéd set-up, where the reluctant hero has to escort the damsel in distress across a dangerous land, well, it is. But Edwards smartly stays away from the usual Hollywood action beats this type of story would follow for the most part, instead putting the focus on MONSTERS' biggest strength: the realization of a world coping with a genuine alien threat.

The film is beautifully shot, and Edwards' expertise in visual effects makes the world Andrew and Sam have to traverse look as real, as tangible, as anything budgeted upwards of $50 million dollars or having the word "Rings" in the title (You can check out a short, relatively spoiler-free video here showing how Edwards achieved some of the effects). Some criticism has been levied at the acting and the dialog, which was largely improvised, but overall I think Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able has some genuine chemistry, and sell the believability of the story pretty well. Most of their story is the travel through the Infected Zone to America, the people they meet along the way, and their struggle with their own personal issues, inflated as they grow to care for one another.

In fact, the "monsters" of the film's title are for the most part relegated to the background: there are two sequences when the threat is more direct, but for the most part they serve as the backdrop for Andrew and Sam to address their situation, both in the jungle and in their lives. However, when they are finally front and center, the effects are impressive, giving a strong sense of size and staying suitably alien: this isn't man-in-suit, bi-pedal aliens, these are truly other-worldly beings severely out of place on our planet. The climax of the film allows us our first real glimpse of these creatures, and as Andrew and Sam find out, there's much more to these beings then anyone first realized.

Sporting a deliberate, tourist-y pace to allow the viewer to become fully immersed in the world, MONSTERS is a bold take on a classic science fiction premise, and a promising debut from Gareth Edwards. There have been a lot of comparisons to films like DISTRICT 9, but I think MONSTERS benefits from never diverting from the type of story it wants to tell, and for using the most of its visual flare to tell what is at its heart a very simple story of two lost people trying to find their way out of the wilderness.

War Within the Mind: Two Looks at the Climax of Village of the Damned

2010-10-09T07:29:00.002-04:00

Being a Hail Horror Interlude, and the second of two contributions to Radiator Heaven's John Carpenter Blogathon.

Wolf Rilla's 1960 adaptation of John Wyndham's The Midwitch Cuckoos known around filmdom as the wonderful VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED remains one of my favorite SF/Horror movies, a film I can easily slide into any time of the year. Boasting a clever "what if?" premise and a gaggle of eerie children, its climax is a classic of suspense: one man's will to shield his thoughts from the evil around him, and the slow disintegration of that will beautifully interpreted as a crumbling wall.

I'd be lying if I said John Carpenter's 1995 remake fared as well. In an effort to update the threat to appeal to the audience of the time, I think it loses some of the original's grace and simplicity. That being said, Carpenter can still wring out a tense sequence with the best of them and also knows that, like Howard Hawks, if something worked the first time, best not to mess with it.

The images below can speak for themselves:

Prince of Darkness (1987)

2010-10-07T20:23:00.003-04:00

Being Film #3 in Hail Horror 5, and also one of two contributions I'll be making to Radiator Heaven's John Carpenter Blogathon. Thanks to J.D. for inviting me to participate.

"What is it?

"A secret that can no longer be kept."

Like many people, I was slightly disappointed the first time I watched John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS when it was first released to VHS (man, am I old). This was not a horror film for a 14 year old kid who grew up on larger than life monsters both on the screen and in his own head. Watching now over 20 years later I'd love to smack that 14 year old in the head, but although PRINCE OF DARKNESS hits a sweet spot for me now, I can kind of understand why I was disappointed that first time - it's a really slow build: the terror, like SESSION 9, comes from a growing sense of unease and random unexplained instances rather than ferocious, dripping monsters with tentacles and acid blood (in 1986 I was forever changed when at 13 I saw my first rated R film in the theater - ALIENS) and when you do get to the climax, instead of the titular Prince of Darkness in all his glory you get part of his hand - and even that lasts a fraction of a second.

So sorry, 14 year old me...you were probably never going to like PRINCE OF DARKNESS. 37 year old me, though? Loves it and (finally) recognizes it for what it is - one of Carpenter's boldest, far reaching ideas that manages to connect on a number of different levels, and does it on a fraction of the budget his previous film (the awesome for completely different reasons BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA) had.

In the 10 minutes the credits run, you get the entire setup: an old priest dies, his hand falling away from an ornate box laying on his chest. Later, another priest (Carpenter stalwart Donald Pleasence) finds out this was the last of the Brotherhood of Sleep, an ancient clerical order whose job it was to guard an unspeakable secret in the basement of an abandoned old church, an unspeakable something that's starting to wake up. The priest turns to Howard Birack (Victor Wong), a professor of theoretical physics, asking for his help with the object. Professor Birack assembles a team comprised of his students and fellow scientists to come to the church and study the phenomenon.

PRINCE OF DARKNESS deals heavily with the nature of God and the conflict between science and religion, pretty heady stuff for a mainstream horror film. As the team begins their investigation, images and motiffs play out across the screen: insects frenzy, a growing number of homeless people shamble like some psychotic congregation outside the church, and crosses loom everywhere: inside the church, leaning against a wall with a pigeon nailed to it, and my favorite shot - a class Carpenter framing as the priest views the run-down church for the first time, the camera slowly rising to capture the cross between the bars of a fence, perhaps symbolizing the forces imprisoned within:

Genre can make it easy to forget a filmmaker's stylistic influences, but it's hard not to note the classical nature of Carpenter's storytelling, and the strong influence of Howard Hawks and John Ford, especially in the camaraderie of the group and the running jokes ("the one with the glasses", Dennis Dun's constant quipping with the other Asian scientist), in the long takes and subtle editing, and the close-ups of significant objects. But another, more contemporary influence that shouldn't be discounted is Dario Argento, and his imprint can also be found in PRINCE OF DARKNESS, especially in the brutal death of one of the scientists, stabbed to death by a bag lady wielding one deadly half of a pruning shear. Carpenter films a perfect Argento moment: the shear perfectly lit against the backdrop of a brick wall, gliding in the hand of the woman as if she was being pulled along on a dolly (which I suspect she was):

At this point it's obvious the homeless people are there to keep the scientists from leaving, so that whatever it is inside that swirling mass of green liquid will have what it needs to do...to do...

To do what? Slowly Carpenter gives us the complete story: the swirling mass of green liquid is a form of anti-matter, a sentient life form capable of manipulating its environment. Birack explains to the priest that maybe his faith is correct: there is a higher entity, governing over all the matter in the universe. But since each particle has its opposite, there is an equal power governing the anti-matter: the Anti-God. The team finds more to dread: an old Bible dating back hundreds of years has been written over again and again, and hides differential equations. One woman bumps her arm, and begins developing a bizarre mark. Everyone begins having the same dream, one that gets longer each time they have it: a distorted television video of the front of the church, an enshrouded figure appearing in its doorway as a voice intones over static that this is a message from the future, that they must stop what is happening before it's too late: a paving of the way to bring the Anti-God to our world.

Although PRINCE OF DARKNESS has its fair share of gore - the aforementioned murder by pruning shear, one poor guy impaled on a bicycle by Alice Cooper of all people - most of the horror from PRINCE OF DARKNESS comes from the small pieces of insanity and dread, all accompanied once again by a killer Carpenter score. The possessed scientists infect each other by essentially vomiting the green liquid into their mouths. Most of these possessed are there to kill the others and make sure that the "chosen one" is left to evolve into the one who will bring the Anti-God into our world, but one man, seemingly fighting the change, stands there in front of the group, sweating and smiling and singing "Amazing Grace" as he runs a broken piece of wood against his throat. It's that moment that PRINCE OF DARKNESS really becomes bat-shit insane, and it's one of the creepiest scenes I've seen in a horror film in a long time.

If you can get past some of the admittedly dated dialog are okay with a film that takes its time to tell an intriguing story that's more than your average run of the mill slasher or monster flick, PRINCE OF DARKNESS holds up incredibly well. Great effects, a solid and unique premise, and a sense of dread and apocalypse that's hard to laugh away, upon revisiting it's turned into one of my favorites from the man. If you haven't seen it in a while, or have but was disappointed, I urge you to give it a second look - this one has the legs to go the distance.

Random Notes

Something I was mad at a a kid I love now - the lack of appearance (other than the hand, above) of the Devil. Watching now, I can't help but think how much is implied by how little you actually see - very reminiscent of Tim Curry's Satan from LEGEND.
Dennis Dun, who nearly stole the show (nearly) from Kurt Russell in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA is hilarious here. Hi-la-ri-ous.
Too bad PRINCE OF DARKNESS isn't out in Blu-ray. But, there is a great John Carpenter deal out there at Best Buy: a 4-pack of his movies for $14.99. You get THE THING (which if you're a fan you should already have on Blu-ray), PRINCE OF DARKNESS, THEY LIVE, and VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. All in widescreen, too. Awesome deal.

Session 9 (2001)

2010-10-03T23:26:00.008-04:00

Being Film #2 in Hail Horror 5

SESSION 9 is an odd, unsettling transitional film from Brad Anderson, who had a small independent hit with the romantic NEXT STOP WONDERLAND in 1998. Falling between the quirky romantic comedy of 2001's HAPPY ACCIDENTS and the paranoid thriller of 2004's THE MACHINIST, SESSION 9 is Anderson's move into darker territory, a haunted house story where the "house" in question is an abandoned mental institution and the focus is on the madness that infests a small team of asbestos workers attempting to clean out the building.

Anderson hit the mother lode when it came to his location: the real-life Danvers Mental Hospital, which couldn't look any more ominous if you had a team of production designers working on it. The tale is fairly standard: exhausted and struggling to make ends meet after the birth of his daughter, Gordon, vividly portrayed by Peter Mullan, undercuts the competition to get his small asbestos removal company the bid to clean up the old hospital with the promise of a nice bonus if he can do it in a week. Once there, he and his team start to crack under the strain of working in such as menacing environment. Of course it doesn't help that his second in command Phil (David Caruso, pre-CSI Miami overacting) wants to kill co-worker Hank (Josh Lucas) for stealing his girlfriend, his nephew Jeff is terrified of the dark and new to the job, and Mike (co-screenwriter Stephen Gevedon) , who could've been a lawyer if only..., is more concerned with the old session tapes he found in the basement about Patient #444, Mary Hobbes, admitted for a mysterious event that brought about three distinct personalities. As each day goes by the tension and paranoia grow between everyone until suddenly hank goes missing. What happened? Did he strike it rich and leave for Miami, as Phil claims? Did Phil murder him? And finally, what does any of this have to do with Mary Hobbes, and what exactly in on Session #9?

Using a variety of unnerving electronic squeals and whistles, and shooting in a very naturalistic style, Anderson manages to wring a lot of dread out of SESSION 9 without resorting to gratuitous violence: a boiling pot of of water framed in an open doorway is repeated becoming more ominous every time. Peter's increasing nervousness and desperation to take care of the job and his family slowly winds up the audience, and when the weird shit really starts to happen, Anderson continues ratcheting up the tension, cutting together more random noises with scenes that blend together almost subliminally until all (we think) is revealed in a twist ending that doesn't feel so much like a shock that just a further twist of the knife and certainty that life is just a little more horrible than we thought it was.

Despite this, and despite the generally good acting from the small cast, I left SESSION 9 feeling slightly underwhelmed. Some of this has to do with the "supernatural" elements of the film, that although appropriately creepy, take away from the real madness that's taking over from the stress and environment these people are working in. Anderson purposefully chooses to leave things ambiguous - not just the ending, but small items throughout the movie and while it adds to the unease it also leaves you feeling a little less fulfilled when the movie ends. Everything's in the right place, nothing feels like a hack job and Anderson shows that he knows what he's doing, as he would prove a few years with THE MACHINIST, a film I think takes a lot of the same themes and ideas as SESSION 9 but hold together better. So maybe chalk this up to a matter of personal preference and check it out for yourself - you might be surprised.

Horror of Dracula (1958)

2010-10-01T23:15:00.098-04:00

Being Film #1 in Hail Horror 5

Happy October, folks.

With the release of LET ME IN, Hammer Films, that wonderfully blood-saturated UK production company looks to be getting its foot back into the world of horror. To celebrate Hammer's reintroduction into the spotlight, I decided to kick off the fifth year of Hail Horror with Hammer's version of the Bram Stoker classic, DRACULA, or HORROR OF DRACULA as it was known upon its release in the United States. Filmed with lush, vibrant urgency by Terence Fisher, who was responsible for many of Hammer's best films such as THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, THE MUMMY, and THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, (the latter two films solidifying, along with DRACULA, the powerhouse pairing of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), HORROR OF DRACULA offers all of the earmarks that typify a "Hammer" film, and provides a few pleasant surprises for those familiar with the source material.

The surprises start right away: first with the voice over narration of Jonathan Harker, echoing the epistolary nature of Stoker's novel. A red leather diary opens as Harker's voice begins the story, and then dissolves to a shot of a carriage travelling through the woods. I don't know why but this, the first of many beautiful outdoor shots, served to ground the film in a weird sort of reality even as the rest of the film's sets evoked a twisted reflection of the Technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk blended with Roger Corman's lurid Poe adaptations and, even further back, the black and white Universal films that set the standard for classic horror. Take for example the lair of Dracula, and its resemblance in its columns and arches to Doctor Frankenstein's quarters in THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN:

Harker arrives to this seemingly empty stone palace, employed by the Count as a librarian. When the camera first turns to Christopher Lee in the iconic black suit and cape, it's a powerful moment - our not only our first glimpse of the Vampire in the film, but also Lee's first performance of the legendary creature of the night. Immediately a few things are evident: Lee's physicality, his imposing height and ease with his body as he comes down the stairs the strength as he takes Harker's bag and practically glides up the stairs. Lee's voice, perhaps his most recognizable feature now, is no less imposing in its youth, and the grace with which he speaks to Harker and comments on his luck in finding such a learned person to act as his librarian, as well as the concealed lust upon remarking on a picture of Harker's fiancée Lucy (one of many differences from the source material) is pitch perfect. It's his voice that's his real disguise - in fact once we see the Count for what he truly is, I don't think we ever (sadly) hear Lee's voice again in the movie - just one of many interesting moves HORROR OF DRACULA employs throughout the film.

We soon learn that Harker, far from being the naive milquetoast of other films is completely aware of the Count's true nature: he took the job to get close enough to kill Dracula. Unfortunately things don't go as planned and after being attacked by one of Dracula's brides Harker is bitten and left to die, but not before killing Dracula's female companion and hiding away his diary to be found by his partner in crime, Doctor Van Helsing.

As great as Lee's performance is in the film, Peter Cushing gets top billing and earns it as the intrepid doctor/man of action and, like Lee, imbues the doctor with a lot more physicality than is typical for the role. With his sharp features and piercing voice Cushing always made for an uncommon protagonist, at once more modern and sinister than what was considered a leading man in his day, and it's funny how his charisma works in tandem with Lee's in this and the other pictures they did together, Doctor Helsing (the movies makes his first name out to be Van) informs Arthur and Mina Holmwood that Harker is dead. Lucy, Arthur's sister, can't be told as she been sick with some sort of anemia and they fear the shock might cause her further harm. Anemia? The pace picks up as the good doctor realizes that the Vampire is already here and he might be too late in saving poor Lucy from a fate worse than death.

Having read the book and the bare bones of the story laid out so many times on film and television the constant switch-ups and surprises really work to HORROR OF DRACULA's advantage. Van Helsing and Arthur Holmwood race to stop Dracula before more can die, and what could have been a tedious chamber drama turns into something much more visceral as the two combat the growing threat of the Undead. From the moment Dracula discovers Harker's fight with the female vampire, Lee's performance is like a snarling animal: more than just the lack of any more dialog, his actions and strength bring to mind a hungry wolf more than a fluttering bat. More surprises await, and the climax involves a pretty great (if slightly predictable now) twist and a great final fight between Van Helsing and Dracula that flies in the face of what we would expect for a film made in 1958.

I think the films Hammer produced in the late 50s and 60s are too easily overlooked as dated and quaint when compared to today's jump scares and casts of 20-something actors. Combining a rich visual palette, stirring music and acting that's the very measure of English restraint even as it threatens and occasionally does break free from its prison. HORROR OF DRACULA might not be the most faithful adaptation of Stoker's novel even put to the screen, but its novelty and outstanding performances from its two leads make it one of the best.

Truer Words

2010-10-01T15:49:00.005-04:00

"I think of a good film as like a favorite record album that I might listen to time and again. In a sense, a movie is a place for me. I go there. Just as I return time and again to London, I return to "Fitzcarraldo," "Dark City," "Late Spring," and Bergman's trilogy "Through a Glass Darkly," "The Silence," and "Winter Light.""

- Roger Ebert, from his introduction to The Great Movies III

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And that, written much more eloquently than I ever could have, perfectly captures the sense of excitement, expectation and nostalgia that fills me up every time I sit down in the dark of a theater or a living room and make my compact to believe, to be transported for the duration of what it is I'm watching.

Read the entire introduction over at Roger Ebert's blog here.

Machete (2010)

2010-09-29T11:19:00.005-04:00

My life-long question of "what would a movie based on a fake trailer made for another movie look like" has finally been answered.

Now to think about whether I actually needed the question answered.

MACHETE takes the faux trailer constructed by Robert Rodriguez for 2007's GRINDHOUSE and attempts to wrap the gritty, larger-than-life sequences into an action-packed story that would fit right in as a third feature with PLANET TERROR and DEATH PROOF. Co-directed by Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis, Rodriguez's editor on the original GRINDHOUSE, MACHETE stars Danny Trejo as Machete, ex-Federale turned day laborer turned assassin for hire turned freedom fighter turned mythological figure. I could make an off-color and cliché joke about Mexicans and the number of jobs they have*, but MACHETE does that for us, making some deft points about our current attitudes toward immigration and citizenship without falling out of the rigid framework of a 70s exploitation flick. When you strip away the sex and violence that sold both the trailer and the film, it's these small pieces - a group of minor henchmen commenting on the hypocrisy of allowing immigrants into our homes but not into our country, two dishwashers in a restaurant sharing a light, comic moment over errors in each others native language, the tongue-in-cheek rallying speech at the Home Depot (although you could argue whether this scene is played intentionally bad or is merely the result of Jessica's Alba's acting chops - I prefer to think it's intentional) - that stay with me as the strongest pieces of MACHETE, and serve to elevate the film over its more humble origins.

But that's not what we're come to the theater to see, and Rodriguez knows it. We're here to see Danny Trejo, possibly the most interesting looking man in movies today, kill a large number of people with a machete, and that's what we get. Jeff Fahey plays senatorial aide Booth, who hires Machete after watching him in a back alley fight to assassinate Senator McLaughlin, a racist good ol' boy whose zero tolerance policies, Booth says, are wrecking not only the lives of immigrants but the Texas economy. Of course it's really a set-up, designed to make the senator an almost-martyr, thus guaranteeing him the election and the sway to put his anti-immigration laws into effect. They only made one mistake:

They should have made sure he was dead.

Since they didn't, the rest of MACHETE is filled with Trejo wielding a variety of weapons, including a machete the size of a man's leg, and basically killing everyone he can - when he's not getting shot, stabbed, or jumping off of buildings. Or having sex - with Booth's wife and daughter in a scene taken straight from the trailer; with She, the leader of the Network (played by Michele Rodriguez, looking hotter than she ever has and making up for everything she did in Lost), and almost with Jessica Alba, except that Machete's too much of a good guy for that, except he's really not since we literally just saw him screw two girls at once 15 minutes ago. The violence is over the top if a little too reliant on CGI, and everyone in the film dive into their roles with a good old fashioned relish - Stephen Seagal has never been more ridiculous, and looks like he's having more fun in a film than he has in years. Jeff Fahey probably comes off best, and really should be getting more and more work after this and all his scene stealing in Lost, but the treat and the shame of MACHETE is in Danny Trejo's performance. Having to carry an entire film on his shoulders is a heavy load, and I'm hesitant to say Trejo's not up to the task, because most of what he has to do is stitch together scenes in order to get to the money shots from the faux trailer.

And that's my biggest qualm with MACHETE as a full-length movie: it's entertaining in spots, and does what it sets out to do, which is to give you the movie that was promised in the trailer, but feels constrained by having to hit each of those points. When the film stretches out a bit as mentioned above, and gives us those glimpses into to the bigger issues the film wants to address, it makes for a more exciting and fun film. And while I enjoyed MACHETE, if I really want to get my kicks from schlock 70s cinema, I'd probably go back and watch PIRAHNA 3D a second time.

* I really struggled over whether or not to leave that joke in - my decision to keep it in was based on my belief (perhaps misguided) that it was keeping in the spirit of the best parts of the film for me - those brief scenes that address our perceptions of immigrants and their place in our country. I sincerely apologize to any who might read it and be offended - offense was certainly not my intent.

Hail Horror 5: Recommendations, Please!

2010-09-20T16:15:00.000-04:00

Sure, I could do this all on my own, rifling through my DVD collection, moving items up and down in my Netflix queue, checking out the shelves at my local Best Buy...basically loading up on horror films I've been interested in checking out for whatever reason.

But where's the fun in that? I know I'll eventually get around to those films in due time. No, what's really great about doing the Hail Horror thing every year are the great recommendations I get from you all out there in Virtual Land, turning me on to things I wouldn't have given a second glance to. Without your recommendations I would never have seen the twisted wonder that is Donald Pleasance's performance in RAW MEAT (thanks to Dennis Cozzalio and SLIFR), or the phenomenal Hammer classic CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (thanks to Tony Dayoub and Cinema Viewfinder) and even the mediocrity that was HATCHET (thanks to Sean over at Spectacular Views).

I already have a couple recommendations in, plus a few special entries to celebrate Radiator Heaven's John Carpenter Week, but all the same, if there's anything out there you think I should check out, let me know in the comments section. As always:

It can't be a movie I've already reviewed.
It has to be readily accessible - either at the local theater, store, rental house, or Netflix. I'm not adverse to spending a few bucks to see, rent, or purchase a film, but I'm not going to shell out $49.99 for an obscure Asian bootleg with no subtitles.

For those curious, here's where we left off after the first ~~two~~ ~~three~~ four years:

TENEBRE / MR. FROST / GRACE / PHANTASM II / MARTYRS / FRIDAY THE 13TH PART II / DEAD SNOW / BAY OF BLOOD / DEADGIRL / RAW MEAT / TRICK 'R' TREAT / THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF /THE SHINING / MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN / BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA / C.H.U.D. / HATCHET / RE-CYCLE / DANCE OF THE DEAD / THE SIGNAL / KAIRO / PHENOMENA / THE HOWLING / NOSFERATU (1922) / PHANTASM / THE HAPPENING / [REC] / THE WOODS / DIARY OF THE DEAD / THE MONSTER SQUAD / FROM BEYOND / RE-VISTING PLANET TERROR / THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) / MAD LOVE / 28 WEEKS LATER / SUBLIME / RE-VISTING DEATH PROOF / NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1990) / DEAD SILENCE / SEVERANCE / RESIDENT EVIL 3: EXTINCTION / SCANNERS / THE DESCENT / GRINDHOUSE / THE EVIL DEAD / BROKEN LIZARD'S CLUB DREAD / THE MASK OF FU MANCHU / RINGU / FEAST / HALLOWEEN (1978) / HELLRAISER / A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET / DEAD AND BREAKFAST / FRIDAY THE 13TH / THE HILLS HAVE EYES (2005) / DAY OF THE DEAD / CAT PEOPLE (1942) / HOUSE OF WAX

Looking Back While Looking Forward to...Hail Horror 5

2010-09-14T10:07:00.001-04:00

In a few short weeks the sky will once again fold in upon itself. The air will bite, the leaves will color and die, and the sun will lose a little more of its breath each day to the moon, perpetually bloated and full in anticipation of what is now, after four years without fail, an Autumn blood ritual.

Yup, it's HAIL HORROR: YEAR 5. For the fifth time in as many years I will be devoting the month of October to visiting and, in some cases, revisiting, that most visceral of film genres, horror. In what has become Hail Horror tradition I'll fail to review even half of what I see or even plan to see, but the joy is in the planning, so in the end it all shakes out.

This year feels more that a little bittersweet. Last year a few days before I was set to officially begin reviewing I received the call that my father had suffered three heart attacks in the span of about 12 hours. My relationship with my father was and is the foundation for my tastes in movies, and colors everything I see. When I wrote about it last year I mentioned how, strangely, it was horror that comforted me during the times we waited for phone calls that could deliver anything at any moment:

...That was Monday. Now it's Wednesday, and things are the same. He flat-lined yesterday, and was resuscitated. Today they're going in to see what's going on. And I've had a little time to come to grips with what's going on, and the weird thing I found myself going to the stack of horror movies sitting on top of the television cabinet...

...Maybe the real draw of horror is that at times we're compelled to wipe away the pain and terror in our lives, and one way to do that is to expose ourselves to something even more gruesome and terrifying. Maybe it's a chance to escape, to see someone handle the unknown and unexplainable so that we can better cope with our own hurdles....

This October will mark six months since my father died, and I honestly don't know how that realization will affect what films I ultimately watch or how I ultimately approach writing about those films. A few days ago I read a post from Mike Lippet over at You Talking to Me? about the extent to which we insert ourselves into what we write, and I realize that everything I write about contains in some form or another the totality of my existence. Each choice of phrase springs forth from the combination of what I've seen, read, and experiences during my 38 years on this Earth. My perception of what I watched and wrote last year could not help but be informed by the events around my father, just as this year will be done on the shadow of his absence from my life. This morning I have to take my three-year old son to an eye specialist, and the results of that will surely add as much to my perception of the films as will my frustrations at work, the intimate moments with my wife and family, and even the music playing at I gather and express my thoughts on this blog (currently The Very Best of Curtis Mayfield).

All of which goes a long way to say that my favorite month of the year is fast upon us, and we're never so much alive as in the moments when our screams are about to be ripped from our throats. Rather than go over the guidelines and archives like I tend to do every year, I'll save that for another post. I'd rather let this one stand on its own.

Quick Hit: Shine a Light (2008)

2010-09-11T02:21:00.002-04:00

It was never my intention to watch SHINE A LIGHT, Martin Scorsese's 2008 document of The Rolling Stones' show at the Beacon Theater in NYC. But life, or more specifically Netflix Instant Streaming, has a way of throwing a wrench into the works, and so after adding STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN to my queue I saw this recommended, saw it was available for streaming, clicked the Play button and wound up laying in bed watching the whole thing.

The film opens in grainy black & white as Scorsese frantically scrambles to get everything set up despite being confronted at every turn by Mick Jagger, who doesn't like the idea of cameras getting in the way of his moves and the crowd's view of the show. Scorsese is told that Jagger can't stand under the intense glare of the lights for more than 18 seconds without potentially "burning up", and by the tone of the guy telling him this I think this was supposed to be taken literally. Worst of all, the set list hasn't been decided, and in a great moment an exasperated Scorsese explains he just needs to know the first song so he knows where the cameras should be for the opening shot.

In true cinematic style he gets the set list just as the band takes the stage, the camera moves and the film jumps to brilliant color as the opening riff to "Jumpin' Jack Flash" rumbles like a freight train through the affluent audience. I make this last point because this was supposedly a benefit gig, with President Clinton both in attendance and opening the show, and the crowd seems pleased but with that polite restraint of people who just don't get out and sweat enough at a rock show. This is no way a reflection of Jagger and Company's performance - if anything, I was impressed by how much fun they still seem to be having playing on stage every night. Mixed among the obvious hits were a number of obscure songs and amazing guest appearances, most notably Buddy Guy who sings and solos along to "Champagne and Reefer," a down and dirty blues that features Jagger on harmonica and Guy giving the camera a hilarious killer stare that went on for so long I was cracking up long before he smiled and ripped into his guitar with a glee reserved for legends who've put their time in and know it.

Scorsese has a long and intimate history with live music, and instinctively knows where to put the camera so that you a part of the group rather the crowd. Everything slinks and slides like the signature licks the band's been churning out for over 45 years, and SHINE A LIGHT proves to be a joyful document of a band still bringing it home long after their peers have settled down for the evening.

Revisiting Crash (1996)

2010-09-08T11:42:00.002-04:00

Originally written for and posted on Cinema Viewfinder for Tony Dayoub's David Cronenberg Blogathon.

Discussion around the films of David Cronenberg typically fall into two categories: the early "body horror"/SF films, up to and including his brilliant 1986 re-imagining of The Fly, and the late 2000s resurgence into the mainstream, marked by 2005's A History of Violence and 2007's EASTERN PROMISES. Poke around a bit and you'll find a few places extolling the virtues of Dead Ringers (1988) and Naked Lunch (1991), which (rightly) have their devoted followings. 1998's eXistenZ has been getting a fair amount of play lately, perhaps due to the renewed argument of video games as art, but generally speaking when it comes to David Cronenberg there's talk a-plenty about his early work and almost as much about his most recent output.

That leaves a pretty substantial gap that, taken as a whole, shows a director bravely modifying his style, searching for new ways to express his obsessions and over-arching themes: the transformation of the physical body both as a response to and as a reflection of the mind, the nature and question of identity, and the fascination with the grotesque and the forbidden. The films in this transitional period like Spider (2003), M. Butterfly (1993), and the aforementioned Naked Lunch and Dead Ringers all to varying degrees show Cronenberg shifting away from straight genre where his ideas could more easily be expressed and into a more realistic universe where the trick becomes harder but, because he's working in a world we readily recognize, more effective.

Crash (1996) marks to my mind the flag in the ground, the point where Cronenberg successfully marries his vision into a narrative free from the conventions of genre that pigeonholed him as a director of "body horror" or science fiction. Adapting the notorious 1973 novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard, Cronenberg fashioned a cold, precise look at the lengths to which we go to satisfy our desires, how we are enslaved by our fetishes, and how these cravings and desires ultimately affect the way we see each other and the world around us. Deliberately paced so as to make the viewer feel like one of the millions of rubberneckers at the scene of an accident, Crash methodically explores these themes with scenes of brutal intensity, held together with lines of dialog that gleam like the lines on a new car, matched by a fantastic score (courtesy of longtime collaborator Howard Shore) that sounds constructed of angles and degrees alien to to conventional movie soundtracks yet perfectly capturing the underlying pressure of each scene.

The film opens with the infidelities of James Ballard (interesting how the two major literary Cronenberg's adapted himself have protagonists sharing the name of the real-life authors) and his wife Catherine, each thrilled more by the risk of being caught in the act than the act itself. Shortly after during their own coupling, they discuss their adulteries with a clinical detachment that echoes the feel of much of the film. James is involved in a horrific car accident, the driver of the other vehicle shooting through the windshield and coming to rest in James's own car. Helen, the driver's passenger (played by Holly Hunter), looks across the cars to James and, in a spastic fit rips off her seatbelt, breaks open her jacket and exposes her breast. It's a powerful moment, meant to shock us out of the horror we've just witnessed, but at the same time challenge us to question the appropriateness of our feelings, and whether there's such a thing as "appropriate" at all in our own minds.

James' time in the hospital is marked by the emptiness in his own life: he lies alone at the end of a row of empty beds. His wife never looks at him, even as she attempts to masturbate him under the bedcovers, intent instead on James' leg and their own empty conversation. Cronenberg's camera lingers over the metal brace that frames James' shattered leg, caressing each pin and joint with its lens in a manner realized in the flesh a few scenes later when James meets Vaughn, a man who poses as a medical photographer and examines James' scars and wounds as would a new lover. When Helen and James meet later at his wrecked car, he offers her a ride. They narrowly avoid another accident, and wind up having frantic sex in an airport parking lot. It's the second sign of being truly alive for James, and he makes the perhaps inevitable connection between the two, as Helen had done before him.

From here on in James is drawn into a world where people search for sexual euphoria in the ripping of steel and rubber, the drip of gasoline and the shatter of safety glass. Helen brings James to a reenactment of James Dean's fatal car crash. Vaughn is both ringleader and active participant, and as brought to life by Elias Koteas is mesmerizing every second he's on screen. Sensing a kindred spirit, Vaughn brings James in on his life's mission: the ultimate realization of sexual euphoria through the destructive powers of a car crash. His broken and scarred body is a map of his attempts to achieve this through the reenactments of celebrity car crashes. Nowhere is this desire better represented than in a crucial scene where Vaughn, James, and Catherine drive past a massive traffic accident. Not content to takes pictures from the car, Vaughn leads James and Catherine into the accident, where they walk ghost-like amongst the victims and rescue workers. Vaughn poses Catherine inside the vehicles, while James walks as if in a trance, exquisitely aware of what the environment is doing to him.

This is where Cronenberg shines. The accident scene ranks up with the best pieces in any of his films, as he conjures a scenario at once frightening familiar and yet completely foreign. Even as it comments on our own morbid fascination with disaster, the almost clinical way he approaches the shots act as a refusal to comment, forcing the viewer to actively engage with what they're seeing and gauge their own response. This lack of judgment is critical to Cronenberg's most successful films, and a key reason why so many people categorize his work as uneasy or amoral. It's uneasy because it refuses to tell you what or how to feel about what you see on screen. It's amoral because - especially in Crash - it refuses to provide a baseline for what its characters define as "moral" - morality has little if nothing to do with their actions.

As James becomes further entwined in Vaughn and his friends' plans, he is forced to make the same judgments the audience has to, and decide if he is willing to go to the lengths Vaughn is to achieve what he believes is the quintessential experience. The second half of the movie following the accident scene plays like a sexual jigsaw puzzle, as James and then Catherine engage in deeper and more disturbing acts, where violence, pain, and open wounds become the tools of the act. It's challenging stuff to watch, and a real credit to the performances that everything comes off as it does - in particular Elias Koteas' Vaughn, who manages to be alarmingly charismatic even during the most despicable moments, such as his brutal sex scene with Deborah Kara Unger, who plays James's wife Catherine. If there's another standout performance in Crash it's hers. Although we view the story through the character of James, it's Catherine who shows us the consequences of James and Vaughn's brushes with vehicular ecstasy. Both Holly Hunter and Rosanna Arquette turn in great supporting performances, but Crash stands firmly on the shoulder of its three leads, including James Spader as the author/protagonist exudes a quiet sensuality that's the polar opposite of Vaughn's more forward urges.

The climax, where Vaughn attempts to draw both James and Catherine into his "final ride", threatens to move into familiar territory, but Cronenberg wisely steers away from an easy Hollywood resolution, instead leaving us with a final scene that again, like the best of his work, refuses to let us off the hook, and forces us to confront the extent to which we are attached to our own desires. Equally vilified and championed by the critics upon its release, Crash took home the Special Jury Prize from Cannes, and after a flurry of controversy quietly floated into the background while Cronenberg went on to other projects. Too bad, as Crash proves to be not only a key film in David Cronenberg's development as a filmmaker, but an excellent look into the forbidden rooms we keep in our mind.

* There are some great comments on the original post, which can be found here.

The SLIFR Labor Day Movie Quiz

2010-09-06T22:56:00.019-04:00

Once again we are beset upon all sides by twisted, nefarious, penetrating queries, queries that suck the marrow from our very bones. The culprit? The diabolical Dennis Cozzalio, ANIMAL HOUSE extra and film blogger extraordinaire whose site, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, has some of the sharpest film writing this side of the Mississippi.

This Labor Day our host doffs his cap and turns his lectern over to BRINGING UP BABY's David Huxley, who in between missing dinosaur bones and missing feline of larger-than-your-typical-domestic proportions, was able to conjure up thirty questions that at this moment lovers of film all over the country (dare I say world? By George I will!) are diving into with abandon.

For the curious, my answers to some of SLIFR's previous quizzes can be found here (April '10), here (Summer '09), here (Christmas '08), here (Summer '08) and finally, here (Memorial Day '08).

But I tarry too long...to the questions!

Professor Huxley's Laborious, Licentious Leopard-Spotted Labor Day Film Quiz

1) Classic film you most want to experience that has so far eluded you.
Orson Welles CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965). How 'bout it, Criterion?

2) Greatest Criterion DVD/Blu-ray release ever
It's hard to argue with the recent restored Blu-ray of THE RED SHOES. There are films I've loved instantly (SEVEN SAMURAI), films I've come to love over time through repeated viewings (SLACKER, THE RULES OF THE GAME), but this iteration of THE RED SHOES makes me realize that despite having seen the film, I actually never saw the film before, you know?

3) The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon?
Next to CASABLANCA, there's no better Bogart performance in my mind than Sam Spade in THE MALTESE FALCON. Tough, cynical, tortured and hilarious - sometimes all in the same scene. And as much as I love THE BIG SLEEP, it suffers from a serious lack of Peter Lorre/Sidney Greenstreet awesomeness.

4) Jason Bateman or Paul Rudd?
I think Paul Rudd's got more range as an actor, but no one can turn a phrase quite like Bateman. He can make a dozen more films like THE EX and he still won't lose the good grace gained from three perfect seasons of Arrested Development.

5) Best mother/child (male or female) movie star combo
Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. Wait, whaddya mean he's not her son?! (I kid, I kid...how about Ingrid Bergman and Isabella Rossellini)

6) Who are the Robert Mitchums and Ida Lupinos among working movie actors? Do modern parallels to such masculine and no-nonsense feminine stars even exist? If not, why not?
Right now it doesn't appear like anyone out in Hollywood is even remotely interested in having or nurturing a career like either Mitchum or Lupino. Leonardo DiCaprio comes close I guess, but "close" in this case is still a long way off.

7) Favorite Preston Sturges movie
SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS (1941), though I admit my exposure is only that and ALL ABOUT EVE, which is also great.

8) Odette Yustman or Mary Elizabeth Winstead?

Mary Elizabeth Winstead just needs that "one" film and she's going to explode. One more shame SCOTT PILGRIM didn't do better at the box office.

9) Is there a movie that if you found out a partner or love interest loved (or didn't love) would qualify as a Relationship Deal Breaker?
C'mon, honestly? Of course not. Different strokes, folks...it's what makes the world go 'round. That being said, if my wife didn't at least appreciate CASABLANCA, she'd need to sleep with one eye open.

10) Favorite DVD commentary
All of the GODFATHER commentaries by Francis Ford Coppola are fantastic, as are Martin Scorsese's commentaries for older films like THE RED SHOES and THE SET-UP. So let's split the difference and say THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD, which besides being one of my favorite films features both on the commentary. Once again, all hail Criterion!

11) Movies most recently seen on DVD, Blu-ray and theatrically
DVD: MOTHER, Blu-ray: THE RED SHOES, Theater: PIRANHA 3D

12) Dirk Bogarde or Alan Bates?
Alan Bates

13) Favorite DVD extra
Kevin Smith's hour-plus presentation of deleted scenes from DOGMA.

14) Brian De Palma’s Scarface— yes or no?
Sure, though I don't have any strong feelings for it one way or the other.

15) Best comic moment from a horror film that is not a horror comedy (Young Frankenstein, Love At First Bite, et al.)
Ken Foree completely pimped out with a fur coat in DAWN OF THE DEAD.

16) Jane Birkin or Edwige Fenech?
Jane Birkin

17) Favorite Wong Kar-wai movie
CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994)

18) Best horrific moment from a comedy that is not a horror comedy
When I was a kid the rabbit in MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL scared the hell out of me.

19) From 2010, a specific example of what movies are doing right…
Crime films are getting good again, and making it to more theaters: THE SQUARE, A PROPHET, ANIMAL KINGDOM...

20) Ryan Reynolds or Chris Evans?
Chris Evans hasn't been in any shitty romantic comedies (that I recall), has been in a great Danny Boyle film (SUNSHINE), and will play my favorite comic book character. 'Nuff said.

21) Speculate about the future of online film writing. What’s next?
As more and more people find a voice online, it's going to get harder to write about film for a living, or to even get paid for it. For every fresh, articulate voice that rises with something to say and the means to intelligently express it, there will be a greater number of uninformed, ill-mannered and childish squawks that will strive to drown those voices back into the fetid stream of the underground. Let's hope they fail.

22) Roger Livesey or David Farrar?
Have you seen Davids Farrar's entrance in BLACK NARCISSUS? So ridiculous it instantly becomes awesome.

23) Best father/child (male or female) movie star combo
No jokes. Kirk and Michael Douglas.

24) Favorite Freddie Francis movie (as Director)
Shame to say I've never seen any of his films, but I just added CRAZE (1974) to my Netflix queue based on its description (Jack Palance sacrifices women to an African Doll. Anyone interested: look under Freddie Francis and add SLASHER CINEMA).

25) Bringing Up Baby or The Awful Truth?
BRINGING UP BABY.

26) Tina Fey or Kristen Wiig?
Tina Fey.

27) Name a stylistically important director and the best film that would have never been made without his/her influence.
Kurosawa may still have made it, but without the films of John Ford we might have a very different SEVEN SAMURAI.

28) Movie you’d most enjoy seeing remade and transplanted to a different culture (i.e. Yimou Zhang’s A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop.)
TAXI DRIVER transplanted to Brazil, a la CITY OF GOD.

29) Link to a picture/frame grab of a movie image that for you best illustrates bliss. Elaborate.
Rather than the obvious Christ reference, I prefer to see the final shot of Hal Ashby's wonderful BEING THERE (1979) as the visual representation of Chance the Gardener's state of mind, which seems to be as close to bliss as my admittedly tired mind can fathom.

30) With a tip of that hat to Glenn Kenny, think of a just-slightly-inadequate alternate title for a famous movie. (Examples from GK: Fan Fiction; Boudu Relieved From Cramping; The Mild Imprecation of the Cat People)
BRIDESMAID OF FRANKENSTEIN.

Goodnight, folks! Remember to tip your waitress!

Cronenberg Blogathon and a New SLIFR Quiz!

2010-09-06T14:06:00.001-04:00

Happy Labor Day, folks. Lots of interesting things going on (though you'd wouldn't think it based on how long I've been away from this site). Lots of films seen, lots of good ideas to write about.

First off, over at Cinema Viewfinder Tony Dayoub is hosting a Labor Day blogathon examining the works of legendary filmmaker David Cronenberg. He's already posted two excellent pieces: a wonderful video essay from Jim Emerson over at Scanners, and an in-depth examination of Cronenberg's adaptation of NAKED LUNCH courtesy of J.D. Lafrance from Radiator Heaven. I submitted a piece revisiting 1996's controversial CRASH, a film that's only grown in my estimation over the years which (hopefully) will be up sometime during the week, and then will find its home here. If this year's batch of articles and reviews is anything like last year's Brian de Palma blogathon, we're all in for a great week, regardless of your interest in the subject.

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An awesome blogathon carried out by a slew of top-notch writers (I'm not so arrogant or bold to include myself in that clause, BTW) during any other time would be cause enough for celebration, but couple that with another fantastic Labor Day Movie Quiz from everyone's favorite Movie Blog Dean, Dennis Cozzalio and Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. This year Dennis has brought in Professor David Huxley (pictured, right) to present Professor David Huxley's Laborious, Licentious Spotted-Leopard Labor Day Film Quiz. The only thing more enjoyable that spending ridiculous amounts of time figuring out my answers to the questions is reading everyone else's.

My answers to the quiz will be up here later today. In the meantime, check out what everyone else is writing. Comment, contribute, get engaged and have a great holiday no matter what you do!

What I Watched on Vacation Part I: Inception

2010-08-04T11:46:00.002-04:00

* Note: this was actually going to a single entry discussing three different films, but INCEPTION (surprise, surprise...) took a little more space than I anticipated. So I'm breaking it up over the next couple of days.

** 2nd Note: I didn't realize until after posting how much the picture of my son, above, matched the opening shot of INCEPTION. I love coincidence!

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...And this time I mean an actual, physical vacation, complete with airplanes, sunny beaches, greasy restaurant food and scampering kids, as opposed to the breaks I've taken from blogging. Various members of the family converged on Ormond Beach in Florida for a week-plus of no Internet, no television, and lots of sun and sand. But as much as I wanted to disconnect myself from all the techno-babble that surrounds me on a daily basis (going so far as to pack those ancient relics known as paperback books), I couldn't escape the pull of the popcorn, not to mention the stack of DVDs I brought with me (just in case, you know?), so in the spirit of that laid back week, here are a few thoughts on some of the new and old movies I caught during my time away:

Despite not being connected it was nearly impossible to get away from all the talk about INCEPTION. There are some great arguments - both for and against the film - all over the Internet and in print, but for all the arguing around the ambiguous ending, hidden meanings and metaphors, and the numerous battles over Nolan's literal-or-not interpretations of dreams and how INCEPTION stacks up as a "dream film" against others as disparate as A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, and the entire filmography of Luis Buñuel, I didn't see a lot written about what I saw as the main pleasure of the film, and that's a classic noir/heist template, similar in set-up (if not in execution) to the types of movies I grew up watching with my father. Every beat is present: broken man takes one last job in order to get home, the classic picking of the team, the plan, the new guy tagging along only to be shot later - it's all there, complete with the ticking clock and the femme fatale, in this instance plated by Marion Cotillard, looking more beautiful every time I see her.

The cast in general is excellent, especially Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon Levitt, who provide the only spots of some much-needed humor. I definitely have some quibbles: similar to THE DARK KNIGHT the editing feels a little too choppy and disorienting, not giving enough sense of space - this is especially apparent in the chase sequence in Mombassa, where I almost saw Leonardo DiCaprio jump, run against a wall and leap over a car. or maybe I didn't, since everything happened so fast. And then there's the aforementioned tone, which gives the movie the impression of taking what is essentially a crime thriller way too seriously. Each spot of humor - from the various examples of what a "kick" is, to Joseph Gordon Levitt's stealing a kiss from Ellen Page (who is wonderfully but poorly used as an exposition device in the film) - feels like a breath of fresh air, and reminded me of how much fun the movie could be. And then there's the obligatory ambiguous ending: I know that if you have a movie about dreams that you're almost required by law to end your film with "Is it or isn't it?" but I think Nolan would have made a stronger statement had he landed definitively one way or the other.

But here's the rub. Despite all that, I genuinely enjoyed INCEPTION, so much that I went back a second time, which I also enjoyed. But the questions I asked myself each time I read another lengthy essay expounding on the utter failing of the film or the evidence that points to a work of genius on multiple levels, is this: Why are we so insistent on one extreme or the other? Can it be enough to say the film is solid? It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it works enough for me to unequivocally recommend it? And am I allowed to see it simply for what the movie shows me - an inventive heist film with the shades of noir that bring me back to those weekend afternoons on the couch, devouring those black and white images that flitted across my tiny tube television?

I wonder if Christopher Nolan feels the same way.

Quick Hit: The Crazies (2010)

2010-07-21T15:47:00.000-04:00

Stripping away a lot of the more overt political/counterculture message that permeated George A. Romero's original film, the Breck Eisner re-make of THE CRAZIES is a surprisingly tense, thrilling and fun movie. Timothy "Justified" Olyphant plays David Dutten, the sheriff of a small Midwestern town that has the unfortunate luck of a having a military jet carrying a "population de-stabilizer" crash into a lake, poisoning the town's water supply. Pretty soon people start acting strange, and before you know it the town's run over by its now bat-shit insane citizens, who are compelled to kill anyone who's not (for reasons the film doesn't make clear, but who cares) a "crazy" as well.

Sounds pretty bad for Dutten, his doctor wife, his deputy and another young women who so far have not been affected, but things get exponentially worse when the government comes in to quarantine the town. The question of who's more crazy: the monsters or the military still plays into things, but takes a back seat to the intense set pieces, including a great chase through a car wash and a standoff in a bedroom that ends in a hilarious burst of violence. There's nothing in THE CRAZIES you haven't seen before, but the combination of good acting, a plot free of convolution and a tone that takes itself seriously (but not too seriously) makes this one of the big surprises of the year for me.

Snippets: Black Narcissus and Armond White

2010-07-19T15:50:00.001-04:00

The films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger have been a blind spot in my film watching for years, so when my local Best Buy slipped up and put both THE RED SHOES and BLACK NARCISSUS on the Blu-ray shelf for sale a week early, I had to indulge myself in the name of furthering my film education.

I'm still reeling from my viewing of BLACK NARCISSUS, which will be written up over the next week as a quasi-Binder Challenge (I cheated and bought something new, but it's too damn good to review in a quick write-up), but I wanted get out there that the new print courtesy of Criterion (which, btw, is having a 50% sale over at Barnes & Noble) is absolutely stunning: as much as is discussed about the erotic overtones of the film and the lush visuals, I think there's so much there that addresses the old saying, "you might be through with the past, but the past's not through with you." Just all around a great film, and one you should check out if you're unfamiliar with Powell and Pressburger's work*.

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I wonder how many people are familiar with Armond White's actions and controversies as a film critic without actually having read any of his reviews? Over the past few weeks I've been catching up on his work to better understand his point of view. At this point I'm no closer to understanding the man, although I did laugh out loud to see him favorably compare the Adam Sandler comedy GROWN UPS to Jean Renoir and Paul Mazursky. I do think, however, that he shouldn't be as easily dismissed as I often see him him be in comments and posts online. I'll be writing a little more clearly about him in the next couple of weeks, but first I'll be listening in as he's tentatively scheduled to be on the /Filmcast tonight to discuss INCEPTION. Knowing the tone of Dave Chen and the gang over at /Film (which I love), this might be the closest we get to a direct confrontation between White and those typically aligned against him.

*A lot of people might be inclined to recommend a different P&P film as a good starting place - please do so. I chose BLACK NARCISSUS for the simple reason that unlike THE RED SHOES or THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP, it's reasonably short - so if you don't like it (although how could you not), you won't feel like your day's been wasted

Techincal Glitches and More to Come

2010-07-15T13:38:00.002-04:00

A volatile combination of alcohol, rage, work on another website and a storm that knocked out my internet connect at just the right time caused me to lose the entire template for Celluloid Moon. And those two killers of free time: "work" and "family" have stopped me from really getting things back to something legible.

So apologies. I'm working on getting everything fixed over the next couple of days, and have a slew of stuff to talk about, including:

Binder Challenges #3 and #4, which are BEING THERE and BLACK NARCISSUS
Quick takes on THE CRAZIES, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, and YOUTH IN REVOLT
Articles about, among other things: critics slamming other critics, the state of film criticism from a reader's perspective (as opposed to a critic's perspective), something than manages to combine HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON and DRESSED TO KILL (really) as well as probably a lot more puerile nonsense.

We'll get there, and sooner rather than later. See you then!

Binder Challenge #3: Masculin, Féminin (1966)

2010-06-13T15:27:00.105-04:00

After two or three aborted attempts to watch CONTEMPT (a film I plan to revisit sooner rather that later) I decided to continue both the Binder Challenge and my Jean-Luc Godard education with MASCULIN, FÉMININ, his 1966 portrait of the youth culture in Paris in the months leading up to the 1965 presidential election. Working from his own screenplay, a loose interpretation on two short stories from Guy de Mauspassant, MASCULIN, FÉMININ is a flurry of different visual and aural ideas cut together and framed in a off-kilter documentary style whose purpose isn't anything like a straight narrative, but rather an empathetic if distanced view of the lives of the young men and women Godard found himself surrounded by in Paris. As my third Godard film, after the wonderful BREATHLESS and BAND OF OUTSIDERS (reviewed here and here), MASCULIN, FÉMININ feels like a change of gears - although many of the same pieces are in place from those earlier films, the intent here is more observation than to participation.

The scenes have that improvisatory ring that are a benchmark of Godard's writing style: get the idea, work it out on the spot - either right before or during filming of the scene in question. Paul is a young, idealistic kid, obsessed with revolution and the larger questions of his day, even though the majority of the movie finds him worrying and depressed because of his love for Madeleine, a sweet young Yé-yé girl who admits in an early scene that she is the center of her world, a world where her biggest concern is where her single will land on the charts. During the course of the movie Paul (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, the lead in François Truffaut's Antoine Doinel films beginning with THE 400 BLOWS, as well as a Godard regular) expounds regularly on socialism, the elitism of the upper class, and the plight of the workers, and patronizes those around him with questions that serve little purpose other than to show that people don't know as much as he does. Yet for all that, Paul's actual action seems to consist of little more than spray-painting slogans on walls and cars, and moping over his relationship with the carefree Madeleine.

In fact, most of the characters are divided according to their sex - Paul and his friend Robert talk all day of revolution and politics, thinking little of the skirts they chase - Madeleine for Paul, Elizabeth (who coincidentally likes Paul) for Robert. The girls, on the other hand - Madeleine, Elizabeth, and their friend Catherine, are hardly impressed by all the lofty intellectual talk, preferring what they can see and hear around them. But instead of this coming across as shallow, or the boys coming off as tortured and lofty, Godard sits back and observes everyone for what they truly are - kids trying to find their place in the world that makes little sense to them.

The film hammers this point home in a number of different ways. Certain scenes are punctuated with violence that springs out of nowhere. Early on, when Paul and Madeleine meet for the first time, a woman storms out of the cafe with a man and child after a loud argument. She suddenly shoots the man, drops the gun and goes off with the child with no explanation or follow-up. Later, on a train ride, Paul and Madeleine witness a woman shoot the two black passengers she's been arguing with. In perhaps the most bizarre scene, a man threatens Paul with a knife in an arcade, then without warning stabs himself in the stomach, leaving Paul to carry him off the street. These sudden bursts of violence are accentuated by piercing bangs on the audio track, and served to express (to me, anyway, I have no idea if this is correct or not) the unseen violence that was permeating the world at the time, in Vietnam, in China, in Cuba, and at home.

Then there's the matter of MASCULIN, FÉMININ's subtitle: 15 Precise Facts. Title cards with sayings are spread throughout the film, the most famous of which refers to the characters and the Parisian youth in general as "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola." It's a perfect summation of youth - not just during the moments of Godard's film but for most kids around the world - that fragile when you're armed with enough knowledge to begin the slow process of really defining who you are, a large part of which are those sweet, sugary things you grew up with - music, the movies, the boy or the girl you saw on the bus that day, or in the cafe sitting next to you. To these kids, everything - regardless of content - is vitally important to their being, whether it's the chart position of a new single, the correct aspect ratio for framing a film (in a classic moment), or the petty jealousies and insecurities about a trip to the country.

The end of MASCULIN, FÉMININ comes as a bit of a shock, as we get a small taste of Paul and Madeleine's future. There's no real resolution of any story points, since the story wasn't the thing in the first place. Is Godard commenting on the future of the generation he's observing? Does it speak to the eventual demise of the ideals and juxtaposition of, as the card says, Marx and Coca-Cola? I don't really know, and although MASCULIN, FÉMININ didn't leave me with the instant love BREATHLESS or BAND OF OUTSIDERS did, it left me more intrigued to re-visit, to see and understand the film better or, at the very least, differently than I do now. And that's a very good thing.

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When I finished writing this and began to snag some screenshots, I realized I didn't mention anything about the acting, particularly of Chantal Goya, the real life Yé-yé girl who plays Madeleine in the film. MASCULIN, FÉMININ comes off the heels of Godard's divorce from Anna Karina, the petite beauty who starred in a number of his films. Goya has much of same easy charm, although there's a depth in Karina's eyes that Goya can't replace. One of the things I've noticed watching Godard is his incredible eye for casting, particularly (again) women. I don't know that she went on to do much after this, but she,along with everyone else in the film, fits in to Godard's vision perfectly.

My Very Quick Review of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

2010-05-25T15:01:00.005-04:00

Well, yes...it was pretty awful. But not nearly as awful as I thought it would be. The action scene with Duke and Ripcord running through the streets of Paris in their accelerator suits was actually kinda fun, and Joesph Gordon Levitt's role is so over the top ridiculous that I couldn't stop laughing every time he was on the screen.

But other than that? Yeah...atrocious. It's level of unintentional silliness can best be summed up by one decision that having seen the film I can't imagine how anyone thought it could be a good idea: Snake-Eyes, the ninja who doesn't say a word the entire film, has lips molded into his mask (you can kind of see them in the image above).

Big, bold, luscious lips.

Do I ever want to see it again? No. Am I glad I saw it at least once? Not really. But it looked like it might be pretty on Blu-ray, and that was the reason I rented it.

Coming soon: having lost all reason, I rent 2012. It can't be all that bad, right?

Right?

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

2010-05-12T12:28:00.002-04:00

At its heart THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS beats with the essence of what makes Terry Gilliam stand out from his peers: a fierce, uncompromising visual palette, stand-out acting performances, and a solid foundation in mythic storytelling. And when left alone to pursue his distinctive vision, you get images that feel ripped directly from that tiny place in your brain reserved for the imagination of your youth. It's what makes THE CRIMSON PERMANENT ASSURANCE, the short film that precedes the "proper" film within MONTY PYTHON'S MEANING OF LIFE one of the most indelible 15 minutes put to film. It's what makes the best moments of TIME BANDITS and, to a lesser extent THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN stand out in our minds, capturing those afternoon daydreams as I sat on a large rock next to the house, playing pirates and cops and robbers in a universe that was wider than the borders of my yard.

But like MUNCHAUSEN, which in terms of overall tone seems the closest relative to PARNASSUS, the film struggles but ultimately fails as a complete story. Of course by now the production disasters that plague Terry Gilliam on so many of his pictures are near mythic proportions. Natural disasters and lack of funding are par for the course on a Gilliam production, and one of the biggest (but not the biggest, obviously) obstacles in the movie is how small it seems in relation to the subject matter. PARNASSUS never seems like an open world: everything is cramped and narrow; even when we're in the streets of modern London there's something artificial and askew when it comes to the scale of the environment. MUNCHAUSEN, for all its issue seems gigantic in relation to PARANASSUS. I fully realize this has more to do with funding than anything else, but even smaller pictures like TIDELAND felt larger on screen. Now this could also have been a stylistic choice on Gilliam's part, but watching it on the screen I couldn't help but feel compressed.

No review of PARNASSUS would be complete without mentioning the tragic death of Heath Ledger, and it effect on the film. His presence, and subsequent absence, leave a huge watermark on PARNASSUS that never manages to fade into the background. The idea to have his unfinished scenes performed by a trio of great actors - Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell - is inspired in theory but in execution damages things beyond repair, particularly Farrell's performance. It's fine on its own, but having to carry a significant portion of the film - including the climax - it acts as a reminder of how things could have been had Ledger lived to complete Gilliam's vision.

Normally I wouldn't lead off with my criticisms of a film, and it would be a lie if I said I didn't find a lot to like in PARNASSUS. As usual, Gilliam is inspired in his casting choices, particularly in his pairing of Christopher Plummer and Tom Waits in the lead roles. I'd be hard pressed to think of a bad Christopher Plummer performance, but here he's stretched into playing someone who's lived for hundreds of years, and damn if he doesn't make you feel every single year. Tom Waits can only really play himself but, that being said, I can't believe it took so long for someone to cast him as the Devil, or Mr. Nick as he's called here. One of the delights of PARNASSUS is watching the purposefully nonsensical way continuously meddles in the affairs of the Doctor Parnassus. Even with victory seemingly his, Mr. Nick can't help but throw it all away on one more bet, one small wager, even one he knows he'll ultimately lose. There's an entire other story here about the reason why Mr. Nick is so infatuated with Parnassus, and the way Gilliam refuses to provide the reasons (their initial meeting in the monk's temple provides no answers, merely the opening exchange) is both typical of his storytelling technique (admittedly sloppy, but I think sometimes purposely so) and a welcome change from the exposition that would have mandatory in another film.

Even when I don't like a Terry Gilliam film (BROTHERS GRIMM, TIDELAND), there's always something that leaves me breathlessly waiting for the next film. THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS is better than both those films; despite the issues there's enough wit, style, and good performances on display that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend at least one viewing. And it ultimately makes me even more excited to see how he manages to re-tool and re-launch THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE, which sounds like his personal white whale and another unique vision perfectly in place with the rest of his filmography.

Scream, Rinse, Repeat

2010-05-10T14:26:00.006-04:00

Over at You Talking to Me, my entry in the Movies That Made Going to the Movies Suck for SCREAM is up and open for comments. It's posted below with some additional thoughts.

You see, it's a lot scarier when there's no motive, Sid."

Horror was having a bad time of it in the 90s. The grisly slashers of the late 70s and early 80s were gone, and unless your last name was King or Barker, chances are most American horror up until 1996 was relegated to home video. Despite sticking to genre in 1995's IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS and 1996's CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED, John Carpenter wasn't having any success at the box office. Wes Craven was faring even worse. After trying to mix genres in THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (1991) and his return to Elm Street with WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE (1994) he hit a personal low point with the Eddie Murphy vehicle VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN. Things clearly needed to change.

Enter SCREAM.

It's hard to look back almost through 15 years of countless imitations, parodies, and direct sequels to see the original film for what it was: a clever, hip (at the time) take on the traditional slasher film, self-aware and yet completely serious in trying to build tension and suspense during its dramatic moments. Written by new kid on the block Kevin Williamson and directed with a nice pace and eye to style by Craven, SCREAM boasts enough of its share of great character moments and set pieces to qualify it as a minor horror classic - you can't put it on the same shelf shelf as HALLOWEEN, DEEP RED, or even Craven's own NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET - but to dismiss its merits would be to deny its impact (lamentable at times to be sure) on films both inside and outside the genre.

A lot of the credit goes to Williamson's sharp script, which manages to mix its horror references on multiple levels, provide more than a cursory bit of depth to its supporting characters, and weave a twisted plot that keeps everything on its toes until the climactic reveal. It also doesn't hurt that Craven makes the most of his R rating, reveling in the splattering of blood and intestines that permeate the death scenes. Watching it again for the first time in years I was surprised by how fun the movie continues to be despite knowing the "twist" ending. The Drew Barrymore opening is a ballsy homage to PSYCHO and a great introduction to the overall tone of the film, the performances are all good, with extra props to Neve Campbell and Rose McGowan, who subverts the female horror stereotype even as she falls into it. And the ending is full of great moments - Stu and Billy stabbing each other, the whole "motive speech", the copious amounts of blood - by the time we get to the first rays of dawn, everything has wrapped itself up in a tidy little package.

But now here's where things get a bit dicey. SCREAM showed studios that, with the right mix, horror can be financially viable again. Within a year Kevin Williamson was practically diving back in the well, first with I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, a script based on Lois Duncan's novel of the same name and actually written prior to SCREAM, and then with THE FACULTY - both films capitalizing on the things that invigorated SCREAM: a young well known cast from television, in-jokes and a self-aware hipster sense of dialog (in some ways Williamson feels a bit like the Diablo Cody of the 90s), and inventive if increasingly diluted violence, suspense, and horror. SCREAM 2 came soon afrer, and was unable to achieve anywhere near the same sense of fun and danger the first film had.

But they all made money, and anyone who watches the trends of the Hollywood machine knows that once you find a formula that works, you use it for all your washings. And so the cleverness and freshness that was SCREAM begat I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, which begat DAWSON'S CREEK (work with me here), which made a star out of Joshua Jackson so he could suffer along with everyone else in URBAN LEGEND,which in turn came around the bend with dreck like TEACHING MRS. TINGLE, FINAL DESTINATION, I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, URBAN LEGEND 2, SCREAM 3, and a myriad of PG-13 films starring CW and WB television that would dilute horror so much it would seem like a step backward for the genre, eerily mirroring what would happen in the 2000s with the "J-Horror" craze (a term which itself is misleading, since so many of the films were also coming out of Korea and Thailand as well as Japan).

Perhaps the biggest nail in the coffin of SCREAM's short-lived horror resurgence came from something completely outside the genre. Seeing a way to get mimic the success he had parodying films with I'M GONNA GET YOU SUCKA, Keenan Ivory Wayans took the best parts of SCREAM and other horror/suspense films and turned in SCARY MOVIE, which killed at the box office, the scent of which aroused the sleeping machine once again to take notice and repeat, again and again, thus paving the way for such gems as DATE MOVIE, EPIC MOVIE and every other kind of MOVIE that did just as much to murder the fun of going to the movies as the endless SCREAM imitations did.

Horror being the cyclical beast it is, we'd same the same thing happen again after THE SIXTH SENSE, obligating every film to have a "twist" ending. SAW, now up to its sixth sequel, paved the way for HOSTEL (and its sequel, and WOLF CREEK and TURISTAS and and....), making "torture porn" (another misleading catch-all) a viable sub-genre. And in another few years something else will come around that we'll burn into the ground through countless repetition.

Scream, rinse, repeat.

---------------------------

A quick thought I didn't think to write down when I was originally prepping this review: when I sat down to re-watch SCREAM, it was for the first time since originally seeing it in the theater. I searched and (luckily) found it available for Instant Viewing on Netflix. As I moved my cursor over to the Play button I noticed my rating of the film: two stars. Was I really that dismissive of the film originally? After seeing it again I bumped it up to four stars (although really would put it at 3.5...how my soul laments at the absence of half-stars), and can only think that the enormous pile of crap that spilled forth after the success of SCREAM not only muddied the waters of both mainstream horror and comedy for a number of years, but also unfairly maligned the very film that spawned them.

And Here is Why

2010-05-04T11:24:00.003-04:00

My earliest memories of the movies don't take place in a drive-in or a crowded theater. They're not filled with lightsabers and light-cycles, they don't have explosions, stereo sound, or even color.

My earliest memories of the movies all start with a small, brown, corduroy pillow just a little larger than my head. If I close my eyes and focus I can still smell the combination of dust and sweat that does more to remind me of my childhood than photographs I can't recall being taken, than toys I can't remember playing with.

We lived in a raised ranch in upstate New York, which means the lower level of the house was partially underground. It was split between my bedroom, the laundry room and the den, where we had an enormous television built into a cabinet that never worked except as a make-believe computer for me when I was pretending to be an astronaut or a scientist. Its other function was to hold up the smaller television that actually worked. And it was that television, and that pillow, nestled up against my father in the darkness of the den, that I recall my earliest memories of movies.

My father wasn't around very much during my childhood. His job required a lot of travel, and when he was back in town he tended to hang out at the local bar more than the house. But when he was around, there was little he liked doing more than settling down in the dark of the den and watch movies. We watched everything, my father P.T. Barnum, masterminding my exposure to all of his (and consequently) my heroes. The curtains would part, and with a wave of his whip (or beercan in this case), we both became the same age, reveling to the exploits of Bogart (our favorite), Wayne, Flynn, and Grant. I fell in love with the cool cynicism of Sam Spade, the "true grit" of Rooster Cogburn, the merriment of Robin Hood, and the suave sophistication that was the trademark of so many of Cary Grant's characters.

But more than the larger than life characters and witty rejoinders, it was the shine in my father's eyes as he watched the screen, explaining to his nine year old son who everyone was, what was going on. And all the while I soaked this in, I nestled my head in that brown pillow, that tiny pillow that was always at my father's side.

Last week after a short and sudden illness my father died. I flew to Florida to see him and say my goodbyes. When I got to the hospital they told me he couldn't really respond to me other than with some twitches in his fingers, but that he could hear me. For reasons which in retrospect seem monumentally stupid I hadn't seen or spoken to my father in about two years, and the time I had to say goodbye, to say all the things that should have been said but weren't, was simply too short. But I did the best I could, and one of the last things we talked about, or I talked about, was the movies I grew up loving because of him, and how it won't be the same seeing anything now.

Over the years my taste in films have been informed, expanded, and enlightened my many sources, some of which I'll point out in the next few weeks. But none had even a tenth of the impact my father had on me, and now that he's gone it's almost painful to sit in front of a screen and feel the light on my face, my head falling back onto a small brown pillow that's no longer there.

Movies That Made Going to the Movies Suck

2010-05-04T08:16:00.003-04:00

All month long Mike over at You Taking to Me is counting down the list of the Greatest Movies That Made Going to the Movies Suck. It's pretty much exactly as advertised: he and numerous guest bloggers (your truly included) will be talking about some great films that for a number of reasons made going to the movies afterwards an abysmal experience. There are 27 films in total being talked about: my entry, on SCREAM (1996) will be up on May 10th.

So far there are two entries up: IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934) and GLADIATOR (2000). There are a lot of fun films from all over the Hollywood timeline coming out so be sure to stop by the site daily, check out what's being said, agree or disagree, and generally have a good time.

The SLIFR Spring Break Movie Quiz

2010-04-14T16:09:00.006-04:00

Or, by its full moniker: Professor Fate's Spring-Loaded Great-Racing Spring Break Movie Quiz!

Just as I was fretting over what to choose for my eight desert island DVDs (brought to my attention courtesy of Mike Lippert and You Talking To Me), my Spring-soaked cold head's snapped by a whopping thirty-seven sanity-bending questions thanks to the nefarious Professor Fate, aka Jack Lemmon, aka Dennis Cozzalio and the always brilliant Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule.

For the curious, my answers to some of SLIFR's earlier quizzes can be found here (Summer '09), here (Christmas '08) here (Summer '08), and here (Memorial Day '08)

But enough of the stalling through linkage...let's get to the questions (pictures forthcoming)!

Growing up during a time when My Three Sons was a constant presence in the house, and for the great roles in Preston Sturges and Frank Capra's films, I gotta go with William "Uncle Charley" Demarest.

2) What movies improve when seen in a state of altered consciousness? (Patrick Robbins)
Bad ones. The good ones I prefer to see sober.

3) Favorite studio or production company logo?
As a kid I loved seeing the Tr-Star logo appear. Nowadays I love the old RKO blinking antenna tower and, if you'll allow it, the 1-2 punch of the Criterion logo followed by the Janus Films seal.

4) Celeste Holm or Joan Blondell?
Who? I gotta admit, these completely stumped me, even afgter checking out their Wiki pages. I recognize Celeste Holm, but will go with Joan Blondell based on her resume. But honestly, no preference.

5) What is the most overrated "classic" film? (Tony Dayoub)
I have zero love for GONE WITH THE WIND. Can't stand it. But I wouldn't think to argue with anyone who considers it a classic - I just personally hate it. Other than that, I don't have much use for Charlton Heston's Bible epics, so take your pick.

6) What movie do you know for sure you saw, but have no memory of seeing? (Patricia Yokoe Cozzalio)
I know (though not why) I saw POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE in the movie theater with some high school friends. I can't remember a single thing from it - does someone fall off a piano? I'm actually more concerned with why a a group of high school kids would actively go out and seek POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE. Was there nothing better out there at the time?

7) Favorite Hammer Film?
Depends on the day. either THE HORROR OF DRACULA or THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (thanks Tony Dayoub!)

8) Gregory Itzin or Joe Pantoliano?
Even when you remove all the great work he's done in the past 10-15 years, you have THE GOONIES, LA BAMBA, and EMPIRE OF THE SUN, all of which he stood out in over the higher-billed stars. Joey Pants!

9) Create a double feature with two different movies with the same title. No remakes. (Peter Nellhaus)
CRASH comes most readily to mind.

10) Akiko Wakabayashi or Mie Hama? (Ray Young)
Huh? (scratches head, goes back to sleep). Without resorting to IMBD, how's this: Mei Hama reminds me of soccer player Mia Hamm. She was kinda hot back in the day, so her.

11) Can you think of a (non-porn) movie that informed you of the existence of a sexual act you had not known of prior? (Bob Westal)
LAST TANGO IN PARIS enlightened me to the fact that hot women will have sex with old, dumpy guys. Thank God.

12) Can you think of a black & white movie that might actually improve if it was in color? (Patrick Robbins)
"Might" being the operative word here, LOST HORIZON?

13) Favorite Pedro Almodovar Film?
TALK TO HER

14) Kurt Raab or Udo Kier?
I sheepishly admit to not knowing who Kurt Raab is. Udo Kier never fails to elicit a smile whenever I see on him on screen, so he wins by default.

15) Worst main title song (Peter Nellhaus)
Damn. I'm sure there are more than a few despicable James Bond theme songs out there (the recent ones by Chris Cornell and U2 are retched), but nothing specific comes to mind.

16) Last movie you saw in a theater? On DVD, Blu-ray or other interesting location/format?
In the theater it was HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON in IMAX 3D, which was ridiculously able to throw me right back to my childhood. On a television set it was DIRTY HARRY streaming in HD thanks to Netflix. Huddled under the covers in bed with my laptop it was DRESSED TO KILL thanks in no small part to Mr. Peel's Sardine Liqueur.

17) Favorite movie reference within a Woody Allen movie? (Larry Aydlette)
The entirety of STARDUST MEMORIES, which wonderfully plays on 8 1/2, but particularly the alien confrontation where they repeat the fans' admission that they prefer his "early, funny ones."

18) Mary Astor or Claudette Colbert?
I never understood how Bogart could fall so hard for Astor in MALTESE FALCON (Effie, however...hot cha!), but as soon as COLBERT shows her leg in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT you just get it.

19) Favorite trailer (provide YouTube link if possible)?
If I had access to YouTube at work, I would link to the wonderful trailer/preview for CITIZEN KANE.

20) Oddest double bill you either saw or saw listed in a theater
Unfortunately there weren't a lot of drive-ins near me growing up, and the few I attended all made some kind of logical sense. The last drive I remember seeing was a double feature of COPLAND and MIMIC...I guess that's kind of an odd one.

21) Favoite Phil Karlson film?
I've only seen KID GALAHAD and BEN, and one of them has killer rats and Michael Jackson, so...

22) Favorite “social problem” picture?
If I think really hard something better might spring to mind (also SHOCK CORRIDOR was already chosen by others), so I'll go with a sentimental favorite: THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE. Awesome Sidney Poitier performance, and bonus points for being associated with Evan Hunter, aka Ed Frikkin' McBain.

23) Your favourite Harryhausen film/monster? (Ali Arikan)
I'd love to be different from the rest of the pack, but how can I NOT choose JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS?

24) What was the first movie you saw with your significant other? (Patrick Robbins)
THE FISHER KING in the theater. Couldn't have asked for a better first date, considering we've been together ever since (19 years).

25) John Payne or Ronald Reagan?
Despite not knowing enough about Payne, the bleeding heart liberal in me refuses to say Reagan.

26) Movie you feel a certain pressure or obligation to see that you have not yet actually seen
ANTI-CHRIST. I really don't want to see it, but feel compelled based on everything that's been written about it. I think, though, this is one pressure I won't cave into, no matter how much I want to see the Talking Fox!

27) Favorite “psychedelic” movie (Hey, man, like, define it however you want, man…)
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY looks like a trip (ba dum bum...I'm here all night, folks) to watch during a high. On the other side of the coin, I imagine a horrible LSD trip would resemble for me the TETSUO films by Shinya Tsukamoto. Some of those images still inhabit my nightmares.

28) Thelma Ritter or Eve Arden?
Thelma Ritter

29) Favorite iconic shot or image from a film?
Oh, God...so many! Takeshi Shimura raising in bow in the rain in the climax of SEVEN SAMURAI, Errol Flynn approaching Prince John with a dead deer slung over his back in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, Indiana Jones coming into view over the hill as he runs away from the natives in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, the hat drifting down the path in the opening to MILLER'S CROSSING...I could keep going.

30) What is the movie that inspired the most memorable argument you ever had about a movie?
TRANSFORMERS 2 and DISTRICT 9. Not for the difference of opinion, but for the logic used. You want my blood to boil? Be sure to do one of the following when you make your case for or against a film: "None of that matters because it's supposed to be a dumb action/comedy/horror film (take your pick)" or "that's so unrealistic...aliens/robots/vampires/other imaginary thing you can have absolutely no factual opinion on wouldn't do that."

31) Raquel Torres or Lupe Velez?
Based shallowly on photographs from the web, the beautiful and tragic Lupe Velez.

32) Favorite adaptation of Shakespeare to a film?
Kenneth Branagh's HENRY V for two reasons: the amazing St. Crispin's speech (add Lawrence Olivier's HAMLET and HENRY V in my "overrated" answer) and Derek Jacobi's over the top chorus - the whole opening behind the stage is fantastic. However, if I ever get the chance to see Welles' CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT I reserve the right to change my answer.

33) Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (in 3D)-- yes or no?
Hells yes! Udo!

34) Favorite movie rating?
Anything other than PG-13, which has done more to bring the overall quality of movies down than Michael Bay and Brett Ratner combined.

35) Olivia Barash or Joyce Hyser?
REPO MAN be damned...Joyce Hyser ruined more VHS tapes through constant pausing during JUST ONE OF THE GUYS when I was kid than any other film. I unabashedly love that movie.

36) What was the movie that convinced you your favorite movie genre was your favorite movie genre?
MILLER'S CROSSING solidified my love of Film Noir. Yeah, it's a gangster/crime film first and foremost, but you can't deny the Noir elements peppered throughout the movie.

37) Favorite Blake Edwards movie?
What's that movie with Ted Danson and Howie Mandel? The one where Mandel acts like a dog? Not that one. If I had to choose, I would go with one of the PINK PANTHER movies, most likely THE RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER or THE PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN. Although there's a soft spot in my heart for VICTOR VICTORIA for the late, great Robert Preston.
1) William Demarest or Broderick Crawford?

Binder Challenge #2: Into the Wild

2010-04-12T11:17:00.002-04:00

Does everyone have that moment when the concrete, impossibly straight lines of our rigid lives seem too much to bear? When we come to the realization that we've lost sight of happiness, of truth and beauty in simplest purity? And then there's that yearning, the urge to break away with form, with the convention of our existence and just go away, pick up a rucksack, a tattered old paperback and just move.

Although I've known that feeling, it couldn't have been further from my mind when I first came upon the story of Chris McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, in John Krakauer's incredible piece of journalism. I was still in a euphoric blur that came with the birth of my son at the end of May 2007, it was the dog days of Summer, and I read Into the Wild sitting outside on the back porch, my ass in one folding chair and my feet propped up on another with Jack, three months old, sleeping in a tiny cradle covered with mosquito netting by my side. Chris' story - a bright, charismatic young man who donates his savings to charity and leaves home without a word, traveling the country dealing with life on unbridled terms until he makes his way to Alaska where he vanishes for good - forced its way in my head with the first page and refused to budge. And although I had no inclination to pack it up and just move, its impact on life hasn't subsided. It was one of those reading experiences where the time, place, and frame of mind mattered just as much as the words on the page.

It must have mattered to Sean Penn too, because he pours a lot of care into his adaptation, using the book and interviews with McCandless's family and people he met on his travels to as a springboard to imagine the life McCandless might have led. INTO THE WILD is ambitious, and probably Penn's work as a director. He has a way with visuals, and in its best moments INTO THE WILD has a grace and dignity in its images, actor and environment fusing in a raw and heartfelt marriage. His handling of actors is also fantastic - Emile Hirsch is brilliant as Chris/Alex, and the supporting cast, particularly Catherine Keener and Hal Holbrook, all feel not just realistic but real - these are people you know or have known at some point in your lives. When it all comes together there's a magic to the film that's undeniable.

It doesn't all come together, though. Not enough to make it a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, but enough so that you wonder during the good parts how they couldn't have foreseen the bad ones. The entire opening feels like a different movie, and things don't really begin to gel until Chris is on the road. The choice to have voiceover narration by Chris's sister (played by Jena Malone) adds nothing but bland observations and backstory that feel awkward, especially since there's a huge section of the film where it's abandoned, only to return near INTO THE WILD's conclusion. It's almost as if Penn didn't have enough faith in his images, and wanted the audience to be sure that nothing was left unspoken. It's a shame, because left to its own devices the film conveys the sense of wonder and loss that the book captured so well.

"...At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again."
Henry David Thoreau

Binder Challenge #1: I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK

2010-04-09T12:24:00.001-04:00

Small cheat: I actually started the Binder Challenge on my personal blog a few weeks ago, so as I get the latest one ready here's the kick-off, a smaller-seen "tweener" film for Korean superstar Park-Chan wook.

Coming off the heels of LADY VENGEANCE, the final entry in the critically acclaimed Vengeance Trilogy (the other two films being SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE and the global phenomenon OLDBOY), Park Chan-wook decided to travel off the well worn path of revenge thrillers and brutal violence and move in an unexpected direction: a romantic comedy. of course, this being a Park Chan-wook film, it's a romantic comedy filled with brutal violence and revenge.

Did you expect anything less?

I'M A CYBORG, BUT THAT'S OK is a bit of a mouthful, barely mentioned in his Wikipedia entry, and a disappointment at the Korean box office. On the surface this seems a bit odd, as the film is filled with his signature style: everything is framed wonderfully, the camera zipping along inhabiting the world as if it's its own character. Chan-wook employs a color palette, and the film is peopled by an oddball cast that are all given their small moments to develop and shine. And of course there's the violence - played for laughs, sure, but still readily apparent. So all the boxes are checked and we're on target to be blown away. But unlike his other films, and unlike the films I'M A CYBORG... brings to mind (I was specifically reminded of the works of Terry Gilliam, Stephen Chow, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet), the images and moments fade away almost as soon as the credits roll.

It's an interesting premise: Young-goon is a timid factory worker who, in the opening scene, attempts to "charge" herself by slitting her wrist, inserting exposed copper wires and then plugging herself into a wall outlet. You see, she thinks she's a cyborg (but that's OK), and needs to charge her batteries instead of eating food. It's a gorgeously choreographed sequenced, mixing the humor of the situation with a visceral punch as the blood flows down her arm. Young-goon is admitted to an asylum where, in typical movie fashion she comes across an motley crew of misfit patients, including Park Il-sun (played by SPEED RACER/NINJA ASSASSIN/Asian singing sensation Rain in his debut film), a bunny mask-wearing kleptomaniac who "steals" the problems of his fellow inmates.

The meet cute/fall in love plot-line is confounded by Young-goon's insistence that not only is she a cyborg, but that she needs to charge up so she can fulfill her mission to kill all the "white-uns" for taking her grandmother away from her. Park Chan-wook shoots a number of fantasy sequences where Young-goon's fingertips open up to display gun barrels, allowing her to blow everyone away in the hospital as her mouth spits out empty shells. Park Il-sun, barely equipped to handle his own psychological problems, uses Young-goon's delusions to keep her safe as they both fall in love.

The film comes together in a few quiet, beautiful moments, such as Park Il-sun "implanting" a food converter Young-goon's back. Even as you acknowledge the absurdity of the situation, the care and delicate movements serve what would in another film be a bland, typical love scene. Later, both are locked in confinement, and their method of communication demonstrates a playfulness and innocence that shines in even the darkest portions of Chan-wook's other films. But those moments are few and far between, and large sections of the movie go by that, while visually dazzling and "cool" (the first time you see Young-goon go into her Terminator mode it's hard not to gasp with geek delight) don't leave much of an impression when the scene ends.

Just writing about the movie makes me almost think I liked it better than I did. The problem is, for all the dazzling visuals and comedic beats, I'M A CYBORG, BUT THAT'S OK feels flat when all is said and done. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but it's missing the spark that fused his other films together, leaving this as a footnote in an otherwise exemplary career.

Greeting 2010, and the Binder Challenge

2010-04-07T11:04:00.008-04:00

Yeah so, um, I've been away from this site for a while.

I could list off a hundred different reasons, but the biggest was the constant indecision as to where to spend the majority of my time - over at my personal blog or here. In the end I kind of chose neither, and the last few months have been quite nice, as I shrugged off the self-imposed responsibility of writing and focused on the holidays, my family, my (new) job, and just reading and watching for the sheer joy of doing it, as opposed to having to don the "critical cap" every time I sat down to see something, not to mention the hassle of always carrying a notebook to theaters or pausing a DVD to jot down one thought or another.

I HAVE seen a bunch of films new and old, and even more, have collected a bunch of films new and old. This poses somewhat of a problem for me.

I know: "No shit, Dr. Jones," those of you that know me are mouthing to your monitors right now. "You have a lot of problems. That's why we tend to stay at least 50 yards away from you and carry pepper spray."

Ha ha...thanks. Now stop talking to your monitors and let's get back to the one I'm talking about.

I've talked before about the slowly growing pile of unwatched DVDs I have at the house. Despite being near a library, despite access to thousands of films online and a Netflix subscription since 2001, I can't help the impulse to actually go to a store and buy a film. New movies, old movies...a double-dip or two when a Special or Limited edition comes out...it's an addiction. And it's only gotten worse since I got a Blu-Ray player over Christmas. To save space I started buying thick leather binders and getting rid of all the plastic, space-wasting cases.

Unfortunately now I have a massive pile of thick leather binders taking up even more space than the plastic cases were.

I've got to do something about it. I've been thinking a lot about the lack of writing on the site, and about the fact that I'm wasting more money that I should feel comfortable with, especially when most of it's going to something that just sits there like a lump, unwatched and unloved. So I'm setting myself a challenge that should take care of my spending, my lack of content here on Celluloid Moon, and that ominous stack of binders glowering at me in the corner of our den. Thus is born the Binder Challenge:

Starting today, I will go through each binder and watch every unwatched film in the order they appear in the binder (the binders have zero order or structure to them).
After watching each film, I'll do some kind of write-up on Celluloid Moon (or Geek Monkey, but I'll cross-post if that's the case). More often than not this will take the form of a review, except when it doesn't.
When I'm finished with a one binder I'll move on to the next one (*duh*)

Pretty simple, right? Here are the two conditions:

Every single film needs a write-up; I can't watch another movie until I've written up the one I've just watched.
I cannot purchase another film until all the films in the binders have been watched.

There. Nice, structured...I'll force myself to save money, see a lot of films that have been neglected for far too long, and I'll be writing a lot more on the site. It occurs to me that if these are my biggest problems, life must be pretty good. And it is. I don't mean to belittle all the other things that are going on, both in the world at large and in my own personal existence. But my hope (glancing as it may be) is that doing something like this will allow me to express some things that have been, for whatever reason, reluctant to come out. Movies - perhaps even more than books - have always been a defining force in my life, and this might provide some sort of outlet for what I want to express.

If nothing else, you'll get a nice look at the type of movies that interest me. So here's to the start of a new journey, one that will echo other paths I'm taking in my life. Hope you hang in there with me and comment, share, predict, agree, argue...whatever your fancy.

Tenebre (1982)

2009-10-30T10:02:00.005-04:00

Being Film #12 in Hail Horror 4. This review is part of Kevin J. Olsen's Italian Horror Blog-a-thon at Hugo Stiglitz Makes a Movie.

Although he's made several in the years since, TENEBRAE (or TENEBRE) marks the last of Dario Argento's run of truly great giallo films, arguably starting with his debut THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE in 1970. Filled with Argento's common themes of sexual confusion, identity and vision, lushly and luridly photographed, and boasting a stellar soundtrack by 3/4 of the members of Goblin, who scored Argento's last two films (DEEP RED and SUSPIRIA) as well as George A. Romero's classic DAWN OF THE DEAD, TENEBRAE is a grisly but stylish film, serving as a great introduction to all of Argento's strengths as a filmmaker.

Peter Neal is a murder/mystery writer on his way to Rome to promote his latest book Tenebrae. Within two hours of his arrival a young woman, caught shoplifting his novel earlier, is found savagely murdered in her apartment, her body slashed and pages from the novel shoved in her mouth. It's a shocking scene, brightly lit and pulsing with the prog-rock theme by Goblin. Only the killer's hands are seen, a calling card of Argento's films:

Seems like the film at this point is going to be pretty cut and dried - the author, under suspicion of murder has to clear his own name by finding the serial killer using his books as a template. Ah, but you see, this is a Dario Argento film, and soon after the authorities (in another great quirk, Argento's investigators are a man and woman beautiful and suave, who bicker like they've seen one too many Tracy and Hepburn films) question Peter and have a brief chase when he receives a threatening call from the suspected killer, we get treated to a crazy sequence that begins with crazed screaming, shadows on a wall, and another Argento calling card: an extreme close-up of an object, this time a series of pills and a glass of water, followed by a scene seemingly cut from a different movie altogether.

A young woman teases a bunch of young, sexually inexperienced boys boys at the beach. The music is dreamlike, and the fact that everyone's in white tells you something's amiss. This is classic Argento, playing with youth and sexuality in a way the emphasizes confusion and ambiguity. We see the woman, watch her eyes hungry as she pulls her shirt down and tempts the boys, but we never see the boy's faces - they're either shot from behind or cut off at the neck. The dream quality is shattered when one of the boys slaps the woman in the face, and pays for his crime when he is held down as she savagely kicks him and then forces him to eat her shiny candy-apple red heel:

Back in the present the violence begins to erupt again: After a series of beautifully long tracking shots the killer strikes again, murdering a young journalist and her lesbian lover. Mysterious letters are appearing under Peter's door, which may or may not be connected to the murders. As Peter and his assistant Anne (Argento regular Daria Nicolodi) deal with the killer, he's also dealing with the press, all whom have varying negative views on Neal's work. Argento uses these moments to pose questions on the nature of deviancy what we identify as "normal" - for a film that takes a wicked glee in its murder set-pieces, there's a lot of subtexts running through TENEBRAE.

In the end, though, it isn't the themes and subtexts that keep TENEBRAE so fresh over 25 years alter - it's the sheer style and inventiveness on display. There are some beautiful shots, as when one young victim being chased my a mad dog wanders by a pool, her reflection captured in the water. Or the slow, pulsing tracking shots, whether it's following a victim or giving us the killer's POV. Or the extreme close-ups: one of a razor cracking a lightbulb, another of the same razor being run under running water, the blood slowly washing from it. Or even the composition of an empty room, a light bulb, and an open door:

The action ramps up as discoveries are made, even as more and more people wind up dead, including Peter's agent played wonderfully by John Saxon, who has a wacky scene early in the film concerning his love for his new hat. Argento keeps the pace tense, and although there are a few clues to give away what's actually happening, TENEBRAE manages to keep you guessing with enough twists and turns to make this a great thriller as well as a straight-up horror. The color red is used time and again, in the heels of the dream woman, the wrapping of a mysterious package sent to Peter's ex-wife, in Rome for reasons of her own. Vision plays a huge role in the film: eyes are constantly being filmed close up, the killer takes pictures of his victims, and an important clue is obscured by the trauma one man suffers after witnessing one of the brutal murders (this one an axe to the head).

When we get to the end almost everyone is dead, the meaning of the dream images comes clear, and nothing is what we thought it was going to be. While not my favorite of his giallo films (that would go to DEEP RED), TENEBRAE is an excellent companion piece to that film, and a great modern thriller.

All in a day's work for Mr. Dario Argento.

Mr. Frost (1990)

2009-10-29T20:59:00.002-04:00

Being Film #11 in Hail Horror 4. Thanks to Jason (formerly of Your Theory is Crazy) for the recommendation.

Back when I was a broke post-college graduate living in downtown Albany, I engaged in a film education event with my friend Jason, said "event" being nothing more than introducing films the other hadn't seen but that, in our infinite 20-something year old wisdom, deemed excellent. For the life of me I can't recall what film I might have recommended (probably something old...Jason, if you're reading this and remember I'd love to know), but I distinctly recall the two films Jason recommended to me: RAPA NUI, the Easter Island romantic adventure, and MR. FROST, a film whose concept seemed right up my alley but which, alas, was no longer in print. We watched RAPA NUI (decent) and never got to MR. FROST.

Fast-forward 12-13 years, and thanks to the power of Netflix's Watch Now, my fervent dreams of finally seeing MR. FROST were about to come true.

Jeff Goldblum plays the title character, a quirky gentleman living on some palatial estate (the movie, a joint France/UK production, never establishes a location; at times it looks like France, England, and inexplicably in one scene Brooklyn) when he's visited by Detective Detweiler (played by Alan Bates), there to question him about a story - two car thieves broke into his house only to run away when they discover a dead body in the vehicle. Far from protesting, Mr. Frost divulges that not only was there a body in the car, but he was just in the process of burying it next to over a dozen other victims when the detective started up the driveway. Off to the nut house Mr. Frost willingly goes, where he refuses to speak for two years.

Cut to the present, and he's shipped to a new hospital where he meets Doctor Day, the sexy (in a 1990 kinda way) female psychiatrist played by Kathy Baker. It's only to Day that Mr. Frost will speak, and he confides to her that he is, in fact, the Devil - Old Scratch himself. Seems the Devil pines for the days where the battle between Good and Evil was a little more clear-cut before the advent of science and psychology, and he's here now to prove that the rational beliefs of the modern world can't override the ancient aethetic of Pure, 100% Grade-A Evil, and he'll prove it - by forcing her to murder him.

On paper it sounds really cool - a great tug-of-war on the nature of Good vs. Evil, Science vs. Faith...something like a metaphysical David Mamet film. In fact, how cool would this have played out if written/directed by Mamet, and starring his HOUSE OF GAMES alums Joe Mantegna and Lindsay Crouse? Alas, despite my enjoyment of all things Goldblum, MR. FROST plays a lot like a Lifetime Movie of the Week. There are a few creepy moments: Frost holds a weird power over portions of the hospital's inhabitants, including members of the staff, and they follow him with a wordless devotion that's genuinely unsettling. There's also a quick dream sequence where Goldblum does a bait-and-switch that's a lot of fun.

But all too often we get really bad lighting (in some places the film's so dark you can't make heads or tails of what's going on), bad transitions, and a few unintentionally funny scenes. Alan Bates is kind of wasted as the disgraced detective looking to end Frost's terror, and I can't help but think of Kathy Baker as a television actress, even when she's delightful in films like EDWARD SCISSORHANDS. In the end I think this is a case of something my 18-year old self would have loved just for the subject matter, but the 36-year old has found this subject matter handled much better elsewhere by now.

NOTE: I'm serious about the Goldblum thing: immediately after this film he did VIBES with Peter Falk and Cyndi Lauper, EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY with future wife (at the time) Genna Davis, and the sublime THE TALL GUY - all films I have no problem saying I enjoyed. And does anyone remember that weird cop show RAINES he did a year or so ago? Man I liked that...

2ND NOTE: Weird coincidence? I was searching through the old Interwebs, and it turns out Starz is using Mister Frost in their Instant Viewing advertising. Check it out:

Grace (2009)

2009-10-24T22:33:00.004-04:00

Being Film #10 in Hail Horror 4

Being a parent means dealing with dozens of different things a day. It's confusing, ecstatic, maddening - sometimes all at once. All in the name of that tiny little life you're now responsible for. GRACE, a disturbing little horror film from Paul Solet preys on those feelings - I cringed with the weighted memories of my son at that age during some of the more graphics moments - but the film takes that feeling of being a parent further - it tries to say something about feminism, veganism, and alternative lifestyles, all while telling a gruesome story about the lengths a mother will go to for her baby. But while multi-taking and being able to handle a dozen things at once is a necessity for any parent, in a film - especially a horror film, it can be more than a bit distracting.

Madeline is a modern, liberal woman, finally pregnant with her first child. The beginning of the movie is filled with flashes of butchered cows cut next to her pouring soy milk. She and her husband Michael and looking into having their child's birth done naturally, with a mid-wife. All this goes against the wishes of her slightly off-kilter mother-in-law Vivian, would like nothing better than to have Madeline in the care of her own doctor. Both worlds collide when after a car accident that leaves both Michael and the unborn baby dead. Madeline decides to carry the baby to term anyway, and after a traumatic birth the baby girl indeed appears stillborn until she miraculously revives in Madeline's arms. "Grace," Madeline names her.

It's soon apparent things aren't normal with Grace. She has an odd odor, and attracts flies like rotted meat. It's gets worse than that, though. Grace begins to get weak and displays bloody rashes along her body. She won't eat anything - except the blood of her mother.
And there you go. Madeline tries everything, including the blood from packaged steaks and other, more brutal alternatives, but Grace wants her mommy. Literally.

The problem is that Grace the baby knows exactly what she wants, but GRACE the film is a little less sure of itself. It wants to say things about alternative medicine, about veganism and animal cruelty, and the bonds between parents and their children, but the way it goes about doing all these things is haphazard and clumsy, often a blaring news piece on television or a quick comment made in conversation. And when the focus is on the characters, they often feel like quirky sketches instead of real people with bonds to one another. If GRACE is effective at all, it comes from the small monstrous moments between Madeline and Grace. Solet, expanding his short film of the same name, reaches into the "Dead Baby" taboo bag and dumps its contents throughout the movie. Breast feeding scenes are particularly squeamish...

It all ends pretty much as you'd expect it to - there's a fairly predictable "twist" ending and a fair amount of violence, although it's somewhat surprising in where it comes from. GRACE feels very much like an expanded short film, padded out with a lot of half-baked ideas that don't come full circle. Somewhere in all of this is a joke about comparing the film to thin, watery skim milk as opposed to rich, robust and healthy breast milk. But I'm too tired beat by this film to look for it. Check it out if the concept interests you. Otherwise, I'd skip GRACE.

Phantasm II (1988)

2009-10-22T10:42:00.001-04:00

Being Film #9 in Hail Horror 4

It almost took a decade, but somehow the planets aligned, money was found, and Don Coscarelli brought the twisted horror of the Tall Man back for PHANTASM II. In large part thanks to the financial successes of 80s horror franchises like FRIDAY THE 13TH and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET Universal decided to foot the bill, betting on the iconography of Angus Scrimm's Tall Man and his nefarious metal spheres to cash in at the box office.

So PHANTASM sports a larger budget, meaning we get to see some spiffy effects, like what's finally underneath the hoods of the menacing dwarfs (turns out, some great animatronic demon faces) and some pretty spectacular explosions. All the key players from the first one (reviewed here) come back, with the exception of Jodi (who died) and Mike, who perhaps at the studio's urging is now played by James LeGros, who's not bad at all, but still feels a little off, especially when paired against Reggie Bannister, who's back and better than ever as Reggie, the ex-ice cream truck driver turned ass-kicking, flannel wearing sidekick.

If the above sounds a little more like an action picture than a horror movie, that's kind of how I felt about PHANTASM II. It's not a bad sequel by any stretch of the imagination, but it definitely plays up the ass-kicking and downplays the horror a bit. The movie picks up immediately where the first one ends - with the Tall Man breaking through the closet door and grabbing Mike. Reggie runs upstairs to save him, and is confronted by a horde of the evil imps. Reggie blows up the house, and Mike spends the next decade in a mental institution. When he's released, he finds Reggie and together they begin the long journey to revenge, intent on tracking down and ending the Tall Man's evil plans, which seem to consist of raiding the cemeteries of town along the Northwest, turning the bodies into more evil dwarfs which are then shipped back to the Tall Man's home planet, or something like that.

Really, the whole PHANTASM series gets points for being so completely out there in terms of story that at times you don't know what the heck you're watching. You have action, horror, science fiction, comedy...if I had to make a comparison it would be to Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD series (Raimi and Coscarelli know each other, having come up around the same time), specifically ARMY OF DARKNESS. Reggie is essentially the Ash character, even going to far as to engage in a wicked chainsaw battle with one of the Tall Man's minions. That's not the only homage to Raimi - there's a scene where Mike and Liz, a young woman sharing a telepathic link and prophetic dreams of the Tall Man with Mike, are chased by a new golden sphere that can break through doors, and basically mimics the door smashing scene in EVIL DEAD 2. On the more comical side, take a look at a another scene where one of the Tall Man's minions is bagging a well-known set of ashes:

All nice, sly touches in an engaging film, but the real fun comes from watching Angus Scrimm own the screen whenever he's on. There's always been something about the Tall Man that frightened me as a kid - Scrimm's features and imposing height bring to mind Boris Karloff in some of his more sadistic roles like in BEDLAM or THE BODY SNATCHER. You don't know anything about him - his history, his motives...only that he seems to know what's inside your head. There's a great moment in PHANTASM II where he confronts a drunk priest hiding in the mortuary. The priest is making the sign of the cross as he passes row upon row of interred caskets when he turns to see the Tall Man:

"They don't need your prayers," he says, right before he hangs the priest by the rosary he wears around his neck. The spheres are back as well, and this being the 80s, they're imbued with some new attachments like circular saws, blowtorches and, yes, laser beams. All of which pale when compared to one nasty little bugger that manages to burrow inside one poor clod, traveling up his torso and coming out (partially) through his mouth.

All in all a fun time, not too serious and retaining all the wackiness you'd come to expect from Coscarelli. It's amazing that PHANTASM lasted through four films with the same creative team, a rarity for a horror franchise, and I think that makes for a really fun time. Don't go in looking for real scares - PHANTASM II is more of a sit down with friends and laugh and high-five each other during all the cool parts.

Of which there are many.

Martyrs (2008)

2009-10-20T11:12:00.003-04:00

Being Film #8 in Hail Horror 4

NOTE: MARTYRS is a film that works best if you go in completely fresh. So I'm going to keep things as brief and spoiler-free as possible. The best thing to do is just stop reading this review, check out the film, and come back, provided you have the stomach for it. The movie, that is...I'm sure my review is safe.

When it comes to horror films, there are those that make you scream and laugh at the same time, and when you leave the theater you have a smile on your face. It may have grossed you out, but it was all in good fun. There are plenty of good, scary films like that, and that's perfectly okay. But there's another type of horror film, one that creeps under your skin and festers, never really going away, making you scratch and tear at your skin because it's just so unsettling.

MARTYRS is a lot like that. It deals with some pretty disturbing subject matter, a brilliant jewel of a film that constantly keeps you off balance, working as an outright horrific story, a crazed thriller, and a meditation on guilt, vengeance, and enlightenment. It's also one of the most brutal films I've ever seen, making each act of violence so gut-churning the last thing you're going to want to do is laugh.

The movie opens with a young girl, Lucie, escaping from an abandoned building where she's been chained, starved, and judging from her appearance, physically abused as well. Director Pascal Laugier immediately puts you right in the face of the unpleasantness, giving MARTYRS a very gritty but professional realism, never shying away from Lucie's abject fear as she runs half naked through the deserted industrial section where she was being held.

Once found she's cared for in an orphanage where, despite everyone's best efforts, she can't quite adjust after her horrible experience, the details of which are not revealed. She does make friends with Anna, a sweet girl who shortly becomes her inseparable twin. Through Anna we begin to see that the lingering effects of Lucie's imprisonment might be far worse than anyone thought. Something seems to be stalking her, something that has a purpose...

From there MARTYRS jumps head 15 years, and MARTYRS really begins, as we see what's become of Lucie and Anna. It's hard to say much more than that. The movie deals with Lucie's guilt and anger over what happened to her, and Anna's eventual discovery of what exactly did happen, and why. Where the film ultimately goes is a complete 180 from where you think it'll go, and it's a ton of credit to Laugier, who not only directed but wrote the film, and refuses to take any shortcuts in the story. When he kills someone in this film it is horrible, even when it seems entirely justified based on the mechanics of the story. There's no cheering as someone gets their comeuppance, Laugier wants you see the terrible impact of death, which in turn affects the latter part of the story where things begin to get truly weird.

Everything in MARTYRS has a purpose, and Laugier pays as much attention to the development of Lucie and Anna as he does to the set pieces and gore. Although, that's a pretty easy thing to do when you have some amazing actresses in the roles, and Mylène Jampanoï as Lucie and Morjana Alaoui as Anna are both revelations in the film. They carry the film on their shoulders, and I'd be hard pressed to think of a film, horror or otherwise, that asks for more from its actresses.

To continue talking about MARTYRS would be to risk giving too much away, and this is a film that works best going in without knowing too much of what you're getting into. Not for the squeamish, I'll just end by saying that this is an excellent film, well-crafted, well-acted, and terrifying to boot. Not content to leave when the credits roll, MARTYRS lingers under your skin for a long time, and is without a doubt one of the scariest and best horror films I've seen in a long time.

1 From the Past: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

2009-10-19T14:28:00.009-04:00

A busy weekend caused me to lag behind a bit on the Hail Horror marathon, but we'll be back up in no time: I have a review ready to go of Dario Argento's TENEBRAE which will make its appearance over at Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies Italian Horror Marathon, and there's a couple more sequels ready make their way here as well.

In the meantime, I'll be posting two reviews from last year that never found their way over to Celluloid Moon, starting with Kenneth Brannagh's MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN:

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Two years after the bloody, beautiful mess that was BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, Francis Ford Coppola moved into the producer's chair for MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN, handing the directing reigns over to Kenneth Brannagh, who had great success with his two previous Shakespeare adaptations, HENRY V and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. So I imagine there was a certain logic to letting him tackle Shelley's horror masterpiece, a novel about the search to become our own God, and the folly of reaching for the Eternal without owning up to the responsibility that comes with it.

Boasting an enormous cast, including Robert DeNiro as the creature, and taking a grand, operatic cue from Coppola's DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN strangely suffers from the same points that brought Brannagh's Shakespeare adaptations to such vibrant life. It's odd that what worked for for one didn't when applied to something seemingly so similar, but the in-your-face score reeks of melodrama, and an over-the-top, dandified performance by Brannagh as Victor Frankenstein, who brought such passion in his earlier roles, here strives for tortured but instead falls to slightly foppish and silly.

The screenplay follows the events of the novel very closely. It opens on the ice, as a group of explorers frozen in the Arctic comes across the world's most famous mad scientist, pulling himself along on a makeshift sled as a fearsome howl rages behind him in pursuit:

Echoing the past, Brannagh uses some of the famous images and scenes from films like the James Whale FRANKENSTEIN and even some of BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN with it's almost surreal locations, but everything is shot with an eye to being over-dramatic: scenes are filmed at odd angles and oftentimes use deep focus or fish eye lenses for effect, actors emote to the point of jumping out of the frame, and the score by Patrick Doyle screams each feeling and theme instead of implying them. Nuance is in short supply, and each beat of the movie feels like it bludgeons you on the head when sometimes a tap would suffice.But probably the most laughable moment comes during the famous "birthing" scene, where Victor finally brings his creation to life. Stripped down and greased up, Brannagh jumps and prances about the lab, flexing his muscles at every opportunity and essentially creating a moment of hilarity instead of solemnity. The one moment of true levity, when Victor continuously slips in the amniotic fluid that's spilled all over the floor as he tries to help up his creation, provides a more truthful moment that the "It's Alive!" sequence that came before it. The creation of the monster is the point where Victor marks his own destruction, but the effect here is just a chance to show off where a majority of the film's budget went. Allow the glory of YouTube to take you there:

If anything really works in FRANKENSTEIN, it's DeNiro's portrayal of the Monster. Although it won't cause anyone to forget Boris Karloff's iconic performance, it does come closer to mirroring the book than any other film adaptation I've seen. This is still a period when DeNiro was completely immersing himself in his roles, and he brings a quiet dignity to the Monster, even when he's at his most destructive. It helps that Frankenstein immediately becomes an utter prick as soon as he realizes the Monster is alive, screaming and running away, instantly abandoning the Monster to his own devices. Once the story becomes his, FRANKENSTEIN moves along at a much better clip. At its heart FRANKENSTEIN is about the doctor's folly, and the question of responsibility to what he's created. And DeNiro's Monster uses the eloquence of a Shakespearean character to drive this point over and over again to Victor throughout the movie. It's a heart breaking performance, and one that should have gotten more credit at the time.

When these scenes are occurring, Brannagh finds the soul of the film, and everything begins to work. It's here that his eye and ear for the theatrical really work for the film instead of against it. It's jut too bad there isn't more substance in the rest of the movie.

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

2009-10-16T23:47:00.002-04:00

Being Film #7 in Hail Horror 4

Five years may have elapsed since people last set foot in Camp Crystal Lake, but it only took a year in the real world for Paramount to capitalize on the success of FRIDAY THE 13TH and launch a sequel. Working on the same things that made the first such a success (scantily clad women, gory and gruesome deaths involving creating uses of various tools), FRIDAY THE 13th PART 2 is a prime example of what's become a sort of staple for horror sequels: namely, "second verse, same as the first."

For those not familiar with the first film, it's nicely summarized in a quick prologue. Alice, the lone survivor from the first movie, has a nightmare where she relives all the key moments from the original FRIDAY THE 13TH. Sweet old Mrs. Voorhees, after seeing her mentally-handicapped son Jason drown at camp Crystal Lake a few years before, the victim of camp counselor neglect, goes on a killing spree until Alice finally decapitates her with a machete. Alice retreats to the middle of the lake, where the film and her dream closes: a misshapen and very much alive Jason Voorhies jumping out of the water to pull her down.

Was it real or just a dream? The police think the latter, and Alice is inclined to believe them. Now trying to get her life back together, she's living alone with her cat, odd David Bowie-ish sketches lining her apartment. This lasts for about two minutes, when Jason creeps into her apartment and drives a thin awl into the side of her head. Cue the credits, and we're off.

It's five years later, "Camp Blood" as it's now called has been condemned, and a new batch of counselors are in training at the camp across the lake. Everyone knows the story of what happened, and the rumors of Jason, the "beast-boy" supposedly still running wild in the grounds. But hey! We're all young, sexy kids...what's the worse that could happen.

Oh, ripe, juicy pickings.

Steve Miner, the production assistant on the first film and future director of horror flicks like HOUSE, WARLOCK, and the third FRIDAY film makes his directorial debut here, and he does a nice job, using long, steady takes, misdirection, and careful lighting to give the film a nice, polished look. The script by Ron Kurz (uncredited on the first film) is descent, giving us some characters we like, a little more humor, and ample opportunities for women to take their clothes off. There's one nice transition where a screaming woman, about to be killed by Jason, is suddenly cut to a wailing guitar, being played by the band where a large portion of the campers are. They also keep most of the blood off-screen: with Tom "Man-God" Savini not doing the makeup effects this time around and some serious MPAA restrictions, a lot of the horror of the movie is implied rather than direct, often cutting away right as the violence begins.

We don't get our first real glimpse of Jason until after an hour into the movie. His arrival, under the sheets of next to one of the women he's killed (using the old "spear through the copulating couples" trick we saw back in BAY OF BLOOD a few days ago) is pretty horrific. Although missing the iconic hockey mask he's most famous for (he gets that in PART 3), he's still a towering figure, wearing dirty blue overalls and a torn white pillowcase over his head. He's fast, too - certainly not the lumbering behemoth we're used to in later films.

The climax of the movie, a prolonged chase sequence between Jason and Ginny, the heroine of the movie shows a lot of imagination. After escaping numerous attempts at death by pitchfork, Ginny makes her way to a dilapidated old shack. She goes in and finds Mrs. Voorhees head on a table surrounded by candles, an alter her son worships at. Putting her child psychology skills to use, she puts on a ratty old sweater and impersonates her, causing Jason to stop and bow down before her so she can deliver a killing blow. She misses, and the film continues on until it oddly runs out of steam, but this section was pretty unique for a schlock horror film.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 has some definite problems: The cuts imposed from the MPAA makes a lot of the editing feel a bit choppy, causing some of the kills to lack a visceral punch, and completely confusing the climax, ending the film on a deflated note. We never learn what happens to some of the characters, including Ted, the comic relief of the movie, who I assume is still drinking at the bar he was left at. But it does what it has to do: by the movie's end we have a Jason who seemingly cannot be killed, paving the way for nine movies (as of this date, anyway), and creating the template for clone after clone after clone.

Dead Snow (2009)

2009-10-15T10:34:00.001-04:00

Being Film #6 in Hail Horror 4. Thanks to Sean from Spectacular Views for the recommendation.

Nazi Zombies. Should I be disappointed or proud that it took humanity this long to make a movie featuring Nazi Zombies? And how on God's green Earth did the Norwegians think of it first?

On the surface DEAD SNOW is your run-of-the-mill "kids in the woods" movie. A group of medical students on Easter break head up to an eerie cabin in the woods where they do what any fun-loving Norwegians would do: cavort in the snow, drink beer, and make out. One night they're visited by a grizzled old camper who chastises them for not reading up on the local history: apparently a nasty regiment of German soldiers terrorized a series of towns, raping and killing and stealing all the valuables they could carry. The villagers eventually banded together and chased the regiment out into the woods, where they supposedly froze to their deaths. Or did they?

Sounds like a couple dozen other films I could rattle off the top of my head. Dig a little deeper though, and DEAD SNOW offers a subtle interplay of different themes. It's at once a meditation on...

Oh, who am I kidding - DEAD SNOW is exactly what it sounds like - no more, no less. In fact, as far as story and characters go it's a pretty generic film. But it does have one thing going for it that makes for a damn fun experience. Care to guess what it is?

That's right, my friends...Nazi F----n' Zombies.

And not just your typical Nazi Zombies (I can't believe I just wrote that) - these Nazi Zombies have no desire to shamble around feasting on the flesh of the dead. They run like they're competing in the 1932 Olympics, and instead of trying to gnaw on your bones they punch you dead in the face and stab you repeatedly with their bayonets. It's outlandish, over-the-top, and pretty much unlike any other zombie I've seen in film up to this point.

The film was directed and co-written by Tommy Wirkola, whose brief filmography seems to favor the horror/comedy mix. He peppers DEAD SNOW with the requisite horror references and stereotypes - the kids are a hodge-podge of every other horror cast, including the film geek who quotes EVIL DEAD and wears a BRAINDEAD t-shirt (actually, I gave him points for that). There's the obligatory Sam Raimi moment where the leads start to equip themselves for battle with sudden close-ups of chainsaws and knives, and the film doesn't really try to do anything other than have fun coming up with ways to kill humans and zombies alike.

Where Wirkola does excel is in utilizing the uniqueness of the environment and his creatures. Norway is a beautiful country, and he makes full use of its pristine landscapes, shooting the majority of the carnage in full daylight. And that carnage is pretty inventive: my favorite sequence involves Vegard, the rugged outdoorsy student, and his series of battles with the zombies alone on the mountains. At one point he gets thrown off a cliff with a zombie holding on to his legs, the only thing keeping him from falling being the thin line of intestines he's holding onto, which are attached to another zombie impaled on a tree. If you squint it almost looks like an extreme sports documentary.

The final showdown is suitably bloody and involves a few fun gags, including a great blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment when one of the leads sprints toward a zombie with a hammer and sickle, which he crosses together in the familiar Russian symbol that had me rolling. All in all DEAD SNOW isn't what I would call a stellar horror movie, but just based on the inventiveness of its main draw and the obvious fun the movie has with itself makes this a great group experience, and a worthwhile addition to the zombie genre.

Besides: when you're talking about frickin' Nazi Zombies, as a friend pointed out to me, what more do you need?

Quick Note: Normally, I wouldn't have used the term "Nazi Zombies" so many times in a review, but really: what chance am I ever going to have again to use it? Can someone say DEAD SNOW? Yes, please!

Bay of Blood (1971)

2009-10-12T22:06:00.005-04:00

Being Film #5 in Hail Horror 4, and a contribution to the Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies Italian Horror Blog-a-thon

Most of what I know about Mario Bava comes from reading: the grandfather of Italian Horror, creator of the giallo genre and a prime influence on generations of filmmakers, among them Dario Argento, who would go on to refine and bring the genre to a legion of fans worldwide. But my practical film experience with Bava was limited to BLACK SUNDAY, admittedly a masterpiece of mood and a great movie to boot, but not really indicative of what I was about to see in BAY OF BLOOD, aka TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE.

A twisted version of an Agatha Christie mystery, BAY OF BLOOD starts out with the death of an insect, falling into the aforementioned bay. Within the next eight minutes the other two characters we meet, a wheelchair-bound old woman and a mysterious man are also killed with no explanation. The mysterious man throws a noose around the woman's next and kicks her wheelchair out from under her, leaving her to the die as her useless legs scrape against the floor. The man's victory is short-lived, as seconds later he's stabbed multiple times and slowly dragged away from the scene by someone unseen. These two murders set the scene for the rest of BAY OF BLOOD, as the rest of the characters introduced in short order either kill or die or do both as the mystery as to who the woman was and why she died comes to light.

A lot of BAY OF BLOOD may seem familiar to someone watching it for the first time: that's because large chunks of the film have been re-cycled over and over again in the slasher films we've all come to know and love, most notably FRIDAY THE 13th (reviewed here years ago), which utilizes the killer POV, the basic setting (trading a set of houses on the bay for a camp on the lake), right down to one of FRIDAY's more audacious kills (from the second film): the spearing of two kids making love:

But where BAY OF BLOOD outshines FRIDAY is in the glee it takes with its despicable cast of characters. No one is good - everyone is after something, and murder seems to be a small price to pay to get it. The only people seemingly innocent of the whole thing is the one piece of BAY OF BLOOD that falters - in the middle of everything that's happening a group of four kids our joyriding in a car that looks suspiciously like Speed Buggy wind up at the house where the old woman was murdered and decide to fool around and explore, and are of course promptly all killed within minutes. Later on their deaths are used to make a connection between two of the principle players later, but the whole sequence feels kind of wedged in, despite being a LOT of fun to watch.

Bava, who's also credited as one of the screenwriters as well as the DP, shows a great sense of lurid style, using bright colors juxtaposed with some of the dark surroundings, and a clever (if not always successful) use of going in and out of focus, particularly when coming up to a weapon. The film may not look very expensive, but it doesn't look cheap in any way, either. There a re plenty of great moments that are reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock, including a swimming scene where one of the girls gets her leg caught on a line that's holding down a dead body. When it rises to the surface, it makes its presence known by slowly floating toward her until its decayed hand prods her on the buttocks. The deaths are all flashy and use copious amounts of bright red, but the kicker has to be the ending, giving a big middle finger and a raspberry to everything that went on before it, all to a bright, sunny soundtrack.

As a history lesson BAY OF BLOOD shows exactly where so many of the tropes we've come to expect from our 80s slasher horror comes from, and also shows that it can be executed with a sense of style often missing from its larger budgeted descendants. Factor in the sweet ending and you have a great introduction to Bava's work as well as a film worthy for any midnight marathon.

Deadgirl (2008)

2009-10-11T10:24:00.002-04:00

Being Film #4 in Hail Horror 4

You might have noticed a bit of a trend here: I'm trying to alternate between older, vintage films and some of the newer releases. I also want to try and make some of these more concise, so pardon if things feel a little awkward at first.

Although, watching DEADGIRL, a small independent film that made a splash at last year's Fantastic Fest, awkward would be a relief. DEADGIRL is an ugly, twisted film that goes to places that what passes for "Torture Porn" films like the HOSTEL and SAW movies only dream of traveling to. Rickie and J.T are two low-life high school students who decide to skip school during a fire drill to chug some beers and cause a little trouble down at the abandoned old mental institution. The name of the movie comes from what they find stuck down in the place's basement: a filthy, emaciated young woman, chained to a table and covered in a transparent tarp. She moans, moves - she's alive.

Or maybe not. The horror isn't in whether or the chained girl is alive, dead, human, or something else...the horror stems from the increasingly sick acts of depravity committed by J.T. and his friends as peer pressure combined with the allure of being able to do anything to the girl without repercussion escalates until soon what began as a secret between two friends gets out, leading to some serious awfulness.

Done on a shoestring budget, writer Trent Haaga and directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel have crafted a film that doesn't shy away from its content, but also doesn't use it gratuitously - despite the actions in DEADGIRL, this is the furthest thing from the current "torture porn" genre. The writing is smart and dead-on in the way it deals with the small moments between friends and family, and the way it plays with the zombie genre it's got its foot in. The acting is largely done by relative unknowns, but they're completely effective at making everything feel believable and rooted in the real world. Noah Segan's J.T. is one of the most twisted, sadistic people I've seen in a film in a long time, and his scenes play out so that even as you're turning away from his actions you can't. Shiloh Fernandez is Rickie, and he has a hard role as the protagonist, and as you watch the decisions he makes by the end of the film it feels both heartbreaking and inevitable.

These are the types of films we should be seeing in wider release. DEADGIRL is smart and truly frightening for showing us the horror that's within ourselves. Essential horror viewing - I can't wait to see what the team behind this movie does next.

Raw Meat (1972)

2009-10-09T14:53:00.004-04:00

Being Film #3 in Hail Horror 4. Thanks to Dennis Cozzalio of Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule for the recommendation.

Man do I miss the 70s. Remember when people wore mustaches? And I don't mean those sparse wisps of hair that look like they've been applied with dabs of saliva that are popular right now - I mean thick, Tom Selleck "I-mean-business" mustaches, the kind that will look after you in a bar fight and lend you a fiver when you're short for the next round.

Mustaches don't have a lot to do with RAW MEAT (also known as DEATH LINE), a crazy little film about a series of disappearances in a London subway system, but they're there, on the face of the first character we see, a gentleman in nice clothes and a bowler hat ducking in and out of various strip clubs while the film's score throbs like a seedy porn soundtrack that's been left in the dirt for too long, buzzing and pulsing with an ominous low-end. It's also on the face of Christopher Lee, who puts in a cameo as an MI5 operative who comes to warn Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence) off the case of the missing man, who it turns out is a powerful figure in the English government. They're there, and it's just another piece of the pie that makes RAW MEAT such a hilarious treat of a movie to watch.

The crux of the story is that almost a hundred years ago the company digging the rail tunnels had an accident - a tunnel collapsed, trapping the men and women inside (it's said that in those days men and women worked the tunnels together). Since the company was facing bankruptcy, they left the people there to die. or, as the surveyor explains to Calhoun, they also could have lived off the water and bodies of those who died.

Which is of course exactly what happened.

Not much of a mystery, especially since what's happening is explained within the first 15 minutes of RAW MEAT. But this is a movie where you don't go for the story. Nor for the two romantic leads who are pretty forgettable and whose story is utterly predictable. No. You're going into this for one reason and one reason only:

The bug-shit best Donald Pleasence performance I've ever seen.

Maybe I haven't seen enough of the man's work, but I've always considered Pleasence to be the perfect milquetoast - quiet, easily cowed when threatened, quiet and mousy if somewhat dignified, much like his roles in THE GREAT ESCAPE and HALLOWEEN. Well take that persona, flip it 180 degrees and give it a Scotch (a double, preferably) and you have his laugh-out loud portrayal of Inspector Calhoun - a man who loves his tea, likes to get drunk and make fun of his assistant (the equally funny Norman Rossington), steal liquor from a suspect's house, and basically give up on a case when he's too hungover or frustrated to care. It would be a mistake to think this was due to any flippancy on Pleasence's part regarding the role; he plays Calhoun with a vigor and relish that would imply he knows exactly what he wants to do with the character. I laughed out loud numerous times at his quips and especially his sarcasm, particularly when interrogating the male lead about the missing gentleman.

As far as the horror is concerned, there's some pretty gnarly gore - the film's called RAW MEAT after all, and there's copious amounts of rotted carcasses strewn about the cannibal's lair. It's suitably seedy, and there are a couple of slow, long pans that move from body to body, torn off hands and rotted skulls. There's also a perhaps unintentionally funny fight between three subway workers and the cannibal where we get to see a shovel cut through someone's skull and a broom handle shoved through a torso, complete with hanging bits of goo. Good stuff. The cannibal shows some signs of intelligence: when we first meet him he's trying to revive the only other cannibal, a pregnant woman too sick to move. When she dies, he files into a rage and kidnaps the male lead's girlfriend, who he hopes will take his dead love's place. Living under the subway however hasn't done much for his vocabulary; the only words he can utter is a sickly "Mind the doors" which gets creepier and creepier during the climax of the film.

Even if there were nothing else to recommend about the film, the crazy Donald pleasence performance makes RAW MEAT a must-see. But you also get a great Christopher Lee cameo and a guy who eats people. What more could you want?

In lieu of a closing picture, check out the full trailer below:

Trick 'r Treat (2008)

2009-10-09T11:52:00.001-04:00

Being Film #2 in Hail Horror 4

Mike Dougherty gets it.

It's not that he gets Halloween (although after after watching TRICK 'R TREAT it's obvious he does), it's that he gets what it's like being a kid on Halloween, the balancing act between being cool in front of your friends and falling under the spell of the jack-o-lanterns, of ghosts and ghouls and the joy of being scared out of your wits. He gets the excuse older kids use Halloween for, where keggers in the woods and kisses in the dark invite their own pagan ritualistic comparisons. And he gets the sense of jealousy so many adults feel when they can only take part as a parent, or as a joke at the office party.

But the thing Mike Dougherty really gets, the things he innately understands, is how to make a horror film that's fun without being a comedy, how to evoke the feelings that the great, inventive horror films of the 80s gave us without resorting to hipster self-referencing that winks and tries to show you just how cool it is. TRICK 'R TREAT is that rare horror movie that's as smart as it is fun, and sincere in its love of the genre.

At its core TRICK 'R TREAT is a series of connected tales, taking place on a single night in the town of Warren Valley, OH, a small town whose denizens take the celebration of Halloween very seriously. The town comes alive with parades, parties, and the sounds of children going from house to house. Time moves back and forth between four distinct stories (including one that bookends the film), each blending into the other so that something seen on the periphery in one tale becomes prominent in another. In one, Dylan Baker plays a harried school principal, frustrated at the constant interruptions from his neighbor, his son, and a feisty dog as he goes about his night's work. What that work is, and how his story ends becomes part of another's tale: Anna Paquin as the shy little sister, going out with her friends to find a young man to spend the night partying with. The other stories, one about a group of kids using an old town ghost story to play a cruel prank on a sensitive girl, and a cranky old man's (Brian Cox) battle with a horrible little trick-or-treater and his own past are also intertwined, and it's a credit to Dougherty's sharp writing that all the twists and turns the stories take to interact with one another never feel forced or stand out as pretentious.

The lynchpin that holds everything together is Sam, a pint-sized demon in ragged clothes and a burlap sack sown into a cute jack-o-lantern face. He's the spirit of the holiday, appearing each each story, sometimes to observe, sometimes playing a more active role. He's an iconic mix of cute and eerie that embodies the fun/scary tone of the film, and Dougherty wisely doesn't go into any explanations concerning his origins or motives - it's enough that the audience connects him with all the things we think of when we picture Halloween.

The direction's equally impressive for a first-time director. Doughtery keeps everything moving at a brisk pace, showing a good eye for framing and a refusal to move the camera in ways that don't feel natural. You won't find any Sam Raimi "camera on a shopping cart" techniques here (speaking of Raimi, DRAG ME TO HELL, while being more overtly comic, is another great example of getting the tone right - maybe 2009 isn't as dismal as it seems) - the visuals are enough without drawing attention to how the camera got there.

There's a little bit of everything in TRICK 'R TREAT: ghosts, serial killers, vampires, werewolves, razor blades in candy and creepy old men, all done with an eye towards a good scare and a good laugh, with the scare coming first. It's a shame that TRICK 'R TREAT got screwed by Warner Premier's inability to see what they had in their hands: in a holiday season overrun with lackluster remakes of 70s slashers and brainless SAW sequels, TRICK 'R TREAT would have been a great theater experience. As it is I'll settle for putting every year with a loud group of friends.

The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

2009-10-07T23:40:00.004-04:00

Being Film #1 in Hail Horror 4. Thanks to Tony Dayoub of Cinema Viewfinder for the recommendation.

* Lesson learned: don't name your .jpg images the same or else the next time you try exporting a post from one blog to another, you'll wind up losing awesome pictures only to be replaced by incorrect ones. Sorry!

Sumptuous colors, a lush orchestral score, passions both restrained and unhinged...THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF is horror filtered through a Douglas Sirk melodrama, a tortured psychological thriller that indulges in the vibrant red of spattered blood...in other words, the singular calling card of Hammer Films. But THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF stands out - both from its fellow Hammer productions as well as other werewolf films - by rooting its lycanthropy in religion and the base desires of human sexuality, playing up the madness and despair of its afflicted lead, and allowing the supporting cast to be more than terrified villagers.

The film is roughly divided into three sections, with the first 30 minutes dedicated to a wicked origin story that sets itself apart from the chaff. A beggar unwisely decides to ply his trade at the reception of the depraved Marques Siniestro, whose name playfully implies his twisted nature. He's thrown into the dungeons and left to rot away, his mind slipping through the years until it finally cracks with the arrival of the beautiful mute serving girl, imprisoned for rebuffing the now-ancient Marques' advances. The beggar rapes the poor girl and, having indulged in his carnal appetites, promptly dies. Upon being released with the admonition that she "apologize" the the Marques, she does so - with the pointed end of a torch holder:

It's one of only a handful of truly shocking moments, but its purpose, along with the rape and the wedding scene before it, is to set the stage for the many different conflicts the movie presents with regards to love and lust. In that vein THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF dives directly into waters only hinted at in other werewolf films (GINGER SNAPS comes to mind as a wonderful exception), exploring the concept of love holding the beast at bay while lust unleashes it. The mute woman runs away and is found and cared for by Lord Alfredo, a kind nobleman and his religious maid, Teresa.

The next couple of sequences play into the religious aspects of the curse, something new in my experience. Teresa begins to fear the baby will be born on Christmas Day, a bad omen and "an insult to Heaven" as she tells Lord Alfredo. Sure enough, a wolf's howl precedes the cry of the newborn, and the woman dies. Deciding to raise the child himself, Lord Alfredo prepares for the baby's baptism, and the discussion with the priest yields some interesting conjectures on the nature of curses. The priest's suspicion is that the horrible nature of Leon's conception allowed him to be possession by an evil spirit.

So already the story's taken an interesting couple of left turns, and the quality of the story is matched by the firm direction by Terence Fisher, who also directed some of the best early Hammer Films, including THE HORROR OF DRACULA and THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, both featuring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in their most memorable roles. There's a great early sequence where young Leon is questioned by Lord Alfredo as to whether he remembers leaving the house (he's been mysteriously shot in the leg) and the boy recalls a frightening episode/dream where he was taken along hunting and, after refusing to kill a squirrel, later begins to suck its blood, recalling how sweet it tasted. Taking this as a warning, Lord Alfredo bars the boy's windows, and we get a sense of what's in store for Leon as he rails against his confinement at the next full moon:

Despite the goodwill fostered by the script and direction, things could still fall flat if Leon isn't adequately portrayed as an adult. No worries - in a very early role Oliver Reed is fantastic, barely able to be constrained by the screen. His journey to manhood: leaving home and going to work in a nearby town is mirrored by the journey his heart takes, falling in love with the daughter of his employer, yet succumbing to his base desires by traveling to a brothel with his friend. It's there, drunk and in the arms of a whore that the first transformation takes place, and blood is spilled. But again THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF refuses to conform: rather than piling on scene after scene of rampant killing and hunting, the movie looks at Leon's gradual realization of what he is becoming, and his family's attempts to cure him through their love. The night spent in the arms of Catherine, his true love, is enough to stop the transformations, and the climax of the film where Leon is jailed under suspicion of the murders is powerful, the look of fright on his face is striking as he implores the law to allow Catherine to stay.

Of course, the film has to end as it must, with a transformation, a chase through the streets, and a silver bullet through the heart. So rather than focus on the ending, I'll just say a few words about the actual werewolf effects. While the early effects feel a little shoddy (hair tape to the young Leon's arms and palms, a hand transformation that shows a pair of obviously wooden hands slowly growing either fur or moss), the final reveal of the creature is a tour de force, sold 100% by Reed's face. It reminds me of the early still of Benicio del Toro attacking Rick Baker back when the upcoming WOLF MAN was still going to be done practically (it has since been revamped and now appears to be mostly CGI based on the trailer). Del Toro's face is devoid of make-up; he sells the beast with his face alone, and Reed, although covered in make-up still manages to put his own features forward. It's a terrific look, and is reminiscent in feel if not in actual look to the Beast in Jean Cocteau's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

I don't have a lot of experience when it comes to the Hammer Films, and although I wouldn't go out of my way to describe THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF as particularly frightening, it's a damn solid piece of film making that should be seen to see a great example of how the werewolf genre doesn't have to be so rote. Here's hoping Universal's upcoming remake furthers the trend sadly left behind by other, lesser films.

Strange Comforts

2009-10-07T09:09:00.004-04:00

It's odd how things work out.

I knew I was going to be a few days late getting to Hail Horror 4; my business trip to Texas turned out to be a lot more draining than I thought, and every day I was home turned into something that needed to be addressed with the family, whether it was my wife's grandmother's 90th birthday party, my son's first day of nursery school, and a lot of prep work for a job I'm currently pursuing that's far outside the type of work I do now. Nevertheless, I was finally at a place where I was ready to go, I had in fact ditched the first movie I saw (Werner Herzog's remake of NOSFERATU, which I liked but couldn't generate enough of a reaction to write about) and settled on another to kick things off.

When I got the call from my brother, who lives down in Florida a few minutes away from my father, he explained that my father was in the hospital. In the middle of the night he suffered a mild heart attack. He thought nothing of it, and went back to bed. He had his second a few hours later and, rather than do the smart thing and wake his wife, or call 9-1-1, he decided to drive himself to the airport.

Leaving his car he collapsed in the parking lot, his third heart attack in 12 hours. The hospital staff found him and rushed him into the emergency room.

That was Monday. Now it's Wednesday, and things are the same. He flat-lined yesterday, and was resuscitated. Today they're going in to see what's going on. And I've had a little time to come to grips with what's going on, and the weird thing I found myself going to the stack of horror movies sitting on top of the television cabinet.

This isn't the first time I've found horror to be a comfort. When my wife was pregnant with our son, she went into labor eight weeks early, and was forced to stay in the hospital for four weeks. It was early May outside, the sun shining through the growing buds on the trees, but inside it was FRIDAY THE 13TH, HALLOWEEN, and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.

Maybe the real draw of horror is that at times we're compelled to wipe away the pain and terror in our lives, and one way to do that is to expose ourselves to something even more gruesome and terrifying. Maybe it's a chance to escape, to see someone handle the unknown and unexplainable so that we can better cope with our own hurdles.

At any rate, it looks like the first entry will be up tonight, with more to come by week's end.

Delays

2009-10-06T10:29:00.003-04:00

I didn't intend to start Hail Horror 4 this late, but sometimes life decides to punch you dead in the face when you least expect it. Llast night my father had three heart attacks, and the idea of watching horror films doesn't seem so appetizing at the moment.

As soon as I know what's going on I'll be back to kick things off properly.

C.H.U.D. (1984)

2009-09-29T10:17:00.002-04:00

After reviewing C.H.U.D. last year I was afraid to re-visit any of my cherished kid movies for a while...what would happen if it turns out ICE PIRATES with Robert Urich isn't as good either?! #9 in the 3/4 done Hail Horror 4 prelude.

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C.H.U.D. is a great example of how time can play tricks on the mind. I hadn't seen the film since I was a kid, maybe 15, 16 years old. All I could remember was the unbelievably awesome acronym: Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. Which pretty much said it all, really. The only other thing I recalled was really bad, tongue-in-cheek kind of humor.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Not about it being bad; C.H.U.D. is pretty awful. But its awfulness stems from its absolute earnestness around the plot. This is a damn serious movie, despite how tacky and cheesy it is at times. And it gets even weirder when you see such stars as Daniel Stern, John Heard, and even a brief appearance by John Goodman, who can't hide his charm even when he's playing a loser cop at a diner for less than a minute of screen time.

For those of you that blocked it out of your minds, C.H.U.D. is about a group of missing persons in the city, mostly homeless people called "undergrounders," who live in the sewer systems. When a cop's wife also goes missing, he begins an investigation involving the head of a soup kitchen (Stern, in full afro mode) and a photographer (Heard) who had made a name for himself shooting a series of photo essays on the homeless. They eventually learn that a bill to move toxic waste through the city was being appealed , and in the meantime the waste has been just sitting there, underground. Slowly the Undergrounders have been turning into vicious radioactive monsters who are no longer content to remain underground. C.H.U.D. is the name given to the creatures in a classified file on the beasts.

There are som gross-out moments, mostly focusing on bodies ripped in half and one scene where a clogged shower drain suddely shoots out a geyser of blood that rivals A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET's classic Johnny Depp death scene. But the C.H.U.D.'s are very much Man-in-Suit types: you can envision where the zippers are. I read one review where they likened the creatures to Sloth in THE GOONIES, which isn't really too far off the mark. Their eyes glow like big orange bulbs, they jump out and pose menacingly before killing you, and in one bizarre case they stretch their necks out in some weird, phallic pose that's outright laughable:

Stern and Heard are both pretty decent considering what they're up against - Heard in particular tries to wring everything he can out of his scenes with his pregnant girlfriend. But that's not enough for a movie tries too hard to send multiple social messages instead of just being scary good fun.

In the end you get strangled dogs, decapitated homeless people, and lots of hands coming out of man hole covers. You find out that C.H.U.D. in fact stands for something other than Cannibalisitic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, but you won't care because in the end that's what it HAS to stand for; it's the best thing about the movie.

Hatchet (2007)

2009-09-28T15:59:00.003-04:00

A couple notes concerning my review of HATCHET, #8 in the prelude to Hail Horror 4. It was written in response to a film request from a friend of mine, and was viewed (and reviewed) while more than a little intoxicated. I decided not to revise it, as that would possibly entail me having to re-watch the film again. Writer/Director Adam Green is currently being hailed as one of the rising stars of horror, and I have to admit that his collection of shorts done with Joe Lynch (WRONG TURN 2) for this year's FrightFest are wickedly funny, so it's possible I just wasn't in the mood for this kind of thing when I saw it.

Or maybe not. It could just suck.

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NOTE: I should mention that in hindsight the character of the swamp guide was so ridiculous he made me laugh. So factor that in when you decide whether or not to see HATCHET.

This one's for Sean, who loaded up his Netflix queue with horror films he was interested in and told me to take my pick. So before I talk about 2007's HATCHET, directed by Adam Green, here is a personal message to Sean:

"Hi Sean! Hope you're doing well - Jack misses you, so stop by soon! Oh, and by the way - you have some fantastic horror films in your queue. At a glance I can whole-heatedly recommend films like ROGUE, DANCE OF THE DEAD (obviously) BASKET CASE (which I hope to review next week), the original BLACK CHRISTMAS, and GINGER SNAPS, which I adore. Please, PLEASE consider these options very carefully before taking a look at HATCHET. You've been warned..."

Why do I say that? Because the poster's tag line of "Old Fashioned American Horror" roughly translates to "low-budget 80's throwaway that stars someone who looks and acts roughly like the dude who stars in that show Chuck". And while I can understand the film as a sort of reaction to the glut of PG-13 stuff that passes itself off as "horror" nowadays, HATCHET relies on simple devices like silly music and purposeful overacting for humor that feels more tired than funny. And the horror, when it does come, is pretty much like everything else you've seen in the mid 80's, just not as scary. Or good.

In short: a motley crew of tourists take an illegal nighttime cruise in the swamps of New Orleans where they're terrorized by Victor Crowley, a deformed giant who was supposedly killed as a child when, after a childhood prank burns down his home, his father mistakenly slams a hatchet in his face trying to save him by breaking the door down. You have your lanky hero, a pair of porno starlets and their sleazy director, the hot loner chick who will eventually have a tender moment with said hero, and the obligatory black sidekick who's main role is to scream and toss off unfunny one-liners. That's it. People get picked off one by one in gore-infested ways until only one remains.

Or maybe not, because every horror movie nowadays needs that little "jump" at the end that was probably the first thing thought of by the screenwriter. And I'll admit that the ending to HATCHET is sly and kind of cool, but definitely not worth sitting through 90 minutes to get to. Very brief cameos by genre vets Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund and Tony "Candyman" Todd bring a little life but are in for too short a time to make any difference. Huge gaps in internal logic pervade every decision made in the film, the power of Victor Crowley is inconsistent and although the gore is pretty impressive for such a low-budget movie, the murder scenes are shot in an over-the-top in a way that borders on the ridiculous.

Maybe drunk with a bunch of friends who don't care about anything other than tits and blood (both are offered in copious amounts) is the way to watch HATCHET. It doesn't have any of the terror that the movies it prides itself on being a part of (e.g. FRIDAY THE 13th, etc..) have, so what promises to be a refreshing change from the typical instead finds itself barely retreading water from 25 years instead of 5.

Re-Cycle (2006)

2009-09-28T09:40:00.003-04:00

Business travel got the better of me, so pardon the lack of reviews over the past few days. I'll get a few up today, starting with this horror/fantasy from the Pang Brothers, who brought us THE EYE a few years back. #7 in our ramp-up to Hail Horror 4.

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In a weird, unsuccessful way the Pang Brothers are kind of hot in Hollywood right now. Having made a name for themselves in Asia with films like THE EYE and BANGKOK DANGEROUS, they made their US directing debut with the poorly received THE MESSENGERS, which tried to mix elements of the traditional "J-Horror" with a more Midwestern, American vibe. Both THE EYE and, more recently, BANGKOK DANGEROUS, have been given Hollywood makeovers, with the latter being adapted by the brothers themselves.

Surprise: the films tanked, and yet we still get a Region 1 release of their 2006 horror/fantasy film RE-CYCLE. Reuniting them with their EYE star Angelica Lee, I saw some incredible stills a few years ago but despaired of it ever coming around this neck of the woods. Although guilty of a few abrupt shifts in tone and editing, and some obvious CGI, RE-CYCLE turns out to be an interesting mix of ideas, taking the ghostly scares from horror and borrowing heavily from fantasy fare like THE WIZARD OF OZ and THE NEVERENDING STORY, layering fantastical images one upon the other.

Lee plays Ting-yin, a successful novelist whose new book, Re-Cycle, is a supernatural departure from her usual love stories. She begins to concoct her tale: a young woman with long hair being haunted, but writer's block and personal complications cause her to throw away her notes in frustration. Soon after she begins to notice strange things in her apartment: long strands of hair left on the counter, and movement out of the corner of her eye. The Pang Brothers shoot everything with an alarming clarity, often using extreme close-ups of everyday objects to emphasize the tension in the scene. They do well with the ghostly images as well: in one tense scene Ting-yin puts her head down to listen to odd noises emanating from her answering machine. When she picks her head back up, a blurry ghost head pick up its head a second later.

She later meets with an old lover who abandoned her years ago for another woman he got pregnant. Upset at the encounter and still freaked out over the disturbances in her apartment Ting-yin becomes lost, transported to a nightmarish world where everything deserted and abandoned winds up, and is being pursued by the remnants of the very character she tossed aside in the trash.

There are plenty of scare of the "jump" variety in RE-CYCLE, but the real fun comes in the Gilliam-esque (not really a word, but you know what I mean) images and scenery the Pang Brothers create. Seemingly right out of films like BARON MUNCHAUSIN and BRAZIL, we're treated to a basement straight of some urban version of Dante's Inferno, where evil things stutter and scream in darkened spaces, a building constructed entirely of books, a land of broken toys, and a decrepit amusement park impossibly situated between two apartment buildings:

An old man and a young girl aid her in her quest to return to the real world, and to tell you who these people are would be to spoil a large part of the movie. There's also a very disturbing section of the film where a significant abandonment issue is addressed, and we see that the implications of this episode have consequences that color the rest of the movie. Upon RE-CYCLE's release there was a lot of controversy around the film, many saying it was a thinly-veiled jab at abortion rights. But I think that's giving the film more of a reach than was intended - it feels much more like a narrative ploy to tie everything together into an obligatory "shock" ending. Which works, even if it's constructed out of ideas and images that are best taken as the stuff of dream and night terror rather than any tangible sense of reality.

From a purely visual perspective I enjoyed RE-CYCLE. There were more than couple nice scares (again, it was the "loud noise and jump" variety but that's okay) and there's plenty of eye-candy on display - Color and its conspicuous absence are used masterfully throughout the movie and everyone does a fine acting job. If you enjoy your horror or fantasy with a healthy dose of the industrial, give RE-CYCLE a try. There's more than enough there to keep you entertained.

Dance of the Dead (2008)

2009-09-23T21:31:00.002-04:00

I really like DANCE OF THE DEAD. If there is a spiritual successor to Fred Drekker and NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, this is it. #6 in the ramp-up for Hail Horror 4.

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DANCE OF THE DEAD is one of a number of low-budget horror films published under Lionsgate Film's Ghost House Underground banner, similar to the 8 Films to Die For series from After Dark Films. What you usually get with these films is a bunch of amateur, less-than-worthwhile DTV movies and maybe, just maybe, a little jewel in the rough.

Maybe it's because it hit all my teenage geek buttons, but DANCE OF THE DEAD is a fast-paced, offbeat and funny take on high school movies and zombie movies. All the beats from both genres are present and accounted for, but what moves them from simple cliche to something more is the amount of fun charm and sincerity the film offers from its (for once) age-appropriate stars, loads of ridiculous gore, and a writer/director team that knows it's all in good fun.

Is there really a need to explain what's going on in the movie? You can probably figure it out just by looking at the poster: the dead start coming back to life just in time to ruin a small town's prom, and it's up to the losers, cheerleaders, and rockers to band together and save everyone. Not a lot is made of the cause of the zombie's arrival - you just assume that it's due to the ominous nuclear power plant that's stationed right next to the town:

It's silly and that's what makes it work. Writer Joe Ballerini wrote the script while in college, and describes it as a "rock-n-roll zombie film" in the vein of things like EVIL DEAD, MONSTER SQUAD and GOONIES rather than the traditional George A. Romero zombie films. So zombies literally launch out of their graves and land at a dead run, most of the adults can't do anything, and rock and roll has the power to save the day. Again, literally. At one point zombies are about to kill a garage band who didn't get picked to play the prom and, as they back up in terror accidentally hit their instruments. The sound causes the zombies to stop, and in order to save their lives they play for 5 hours until the main heroes come to their rescue.

All the actors do a fantastic job of really playing kids. Jared Kusnitz plays Jimmy Dunn, the smart-ass loafer who finds his purpose bashing zombies and proving to his girlfriend who's Student Council VP that he's worth her time. His friend Kevin is part of the sci-fi club, and his awkward attempts to ask cheerleader Gwen to the prom with his geek friends egging him on is so dead-on it's hilarious. But the big surprise to me was that the redneck bully who (of course) turns out to be a descent guy is played by Justin Welborn, who starred in the last film I reviewed, THE SIGNAL. Here he's obviously not your average teenager, but his older look plays really well - I think we all had that guy in school who was at least 6 years older and had failed so many times it was like having your uncle in you classroom. The supporting charcaters making up the sci-fi club and the rock band are also fantastic, and play the types so well it was like 1990 all over again back in my high school.

Don't go into DANCE OF THE DEAD looking for logic. Things don't make a lot of sense, the kids throw away lines like Catskill comedians, and there's that whole rock music stopping zombies thing. But that's also what makes DANCE OF THE DEAD such a fun movie. Definitely the type of thing I'd recommend watching with a bunch of friends and a couple beers. You won't be disappointed. There's shades of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, EVIL DEAD 2, and every 90's High School starring Jennifer Love Hewitt or someone like her. See it. You'll laugh, and you'll cheer. And if you're anything like me, you'll probably sing along to "Shadows of the Night" and admit that you would gone into the bathroom with Gwen too at that age, just like Kevin did. And when what happened to him happens to you, you'll agree it was totally worth it.

The Signal (2007)

2009-09-22T23:10:00.003-04:00

THE SIGNAL is a surprising little slice of indie horror that tries its hand at a different structure than we're used to in mainstream horror, and a great fifth entry in the prelude to Hail Horror 4.

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Do films like THE SIGNAL count as being part of the "Zombie Craze" that's infected (heh!) movie studios and publishing houses over the past few years? A lot of people thought we were stretching it by allowing 20 DAYS LATER and its sequel through the door (I loved both, by the way), but here we have something else, a strange cousin to Stephen King's Cell, which was about a signal emitted from everyone's cell phone that turned all who hear into into blood-crazed lunatics. King played the novel as a laugh, albeit a cautionary one; THE SIGNAL, an experiment in collaborative film making by three writer/directors, takes a similar road with similar results.

THE SIGNAL is divided into three acts or transmissions, all centering around a mysterious signal emitted via electronic devices. Phones, radios, television... all carry a virus that turns the listener or the watcher into a cold, rational killer. And there's the hook that bypasses this from a simple 28 DAYS LATER clone and into something that walks out into a new direction - all the blood-crazed killers are perfectly aware of what they're doing - they just think it's the exact right thing to do.

The intro is a take on the schlock 70's-80's grindhouse movie - bold, bright credits and a movie-within-the-movie of two bloodied women attempted to flee from a killer in the woods. But spliced into the sequence is the signal, which draws us into the movie proper, where Mya (deliciously cute Anessa Ramsey) and Ben (maybe not as cute to me, but I'll cop to "charismatic" Justin Welborn) are cuddling after a post-coital affair. Having to return to a husband she no longer loves, he begs her to run away with him: meet him tomorrow night, New Year's Eve, at Terminal 13 at the Terminus (apropos city name) train station. He shyly gives her a mix CD, and she leaves. They both notice that the phones don't work, and the television seems to be on the fritz. Thinking nothing of it, Mya heads home.

Immediately THE SIGNAL does a fantastic job of laying the foreboding in. People wander aimlessly in the halls of Mya's apartment building, and the violence, when it finally erupts, does so after a chilling build-up where we being to suspect that, had May's husband Lewis not been triggered by the signal, he still would potentially be an insane bastard. Transmission 1 involves Mya's escape from the apartment building, and her eventual decision to try and meet up with Ben at the train station. The budget is small, but this section wrings every ounce of tension it can out of the better-than-average acting, snappy editing, and brief substitutions of logic for the sublime. Venturing out of a neighbor's apartment she's hidden out in, Mya puts on her headphones, plays Ben's mix and determinedly walks down a corridor strewn with dead bodies and blood. It's frankly ridiculous, but the way it's filmed and the way the music evokes the mood she's trying to savor, that of her night with Ben, works like a charm.

Transmission 2, ostensibly still following the story, takes a HUGE left-hand turn, becoming a black comedy, with the focus on "comedy." And it's actually really damn funny. Mya's husband Lewis takes center stage as he attempts to track her down. He crosses paths with a perky woman trying to throw a New Year's party and her landlord. Bodies begin to pile up, and as things become more and more out of hand the more I found myself laughing. This is both THE SIGNAL'S triumph and it's burden. I would love to have see a movie comprised of the first and third act. I would loved to have seen a movie comprised of just the second act. But with the abrupt shift in gears THE SIGNAL has to really fight to get the steam it built back in time for Transmission 3.

The original mood and thread of the story is picked up again in Transmission 3. Situations come to a head, we learn that the signal may or may not be able to be controlled and even channeled, and things end on a happy note. Or maybe not. Because THE SIGNAL uses flashbacks and flash-forwards like Lost on steroids. The operative word is on "flash" - the brief flashes of time sometimes are readily apparent as past or future, and sometimes things a a little harder to piece out. And by firmly focusing on a very small group of people and how they handle their situation rather than throw meaningless theories as to the nature of the signal (they do that, but it's more of a passing thought than a significant aspect of the movie), the people behind THE SIGNAL get a lot more things right than they do wrong.

You can watch THE SIGNAL just for the solid horror story and get a lot out of it. Or, you can choose to read into things a bit more (is the signal sending the violent impulses or is it just amplifying our natural tendencies?), but either way THE SIGNAL is a shining example of what horror can do without catering to a the lowest denominator or kow-towing to the ratings board. If you're into horror or apocalyptic movies, definitely check it out.

* No screen-grabs this time: I watched this on my laptop courtesy of Netflix Instant Browsing. Hooray!