31 Days Of Horror: Day 16: Let Me In

Confession time. I never really “got” Let The Right One In. Oh it was very pretty and austere looking, but it didn’t touch me viscerally or emotionally. It was just a reasonably clever reworking of the vampire mythos.

Let Me In is the equivalent of a fantastic cover song, that brings forth the values and qualities inherent in a work, but makes them visible in a way they simply weren’t before. This is the “Hurt”, of movies, Let Me In is simply put, a phenomenal piece of work. I had an argument with a fellow member of the message board, who fairly argued that just because Let Me In was clearer then Let The Right One In, didn’t make it better. Normally I would agree, I would point out though, that narrative clarity and thematically ambiguity are two different things. And Let Me In is articulated in its themes in a way that Let The Right One In just wasn’t.

Let Me In, is of course the story between a young boy, Owen and a vampire… well “girl”. The boy is picked on at school, and is being torn apart in a custody battle between an Alkie mother and asshole father. The relationship between himself and a centuries old bloodsucker ends up being the healthiest Owen has. He’s a monster in utero, saved and damned by a monster incarnate.

Of course that relationship exacts a terrible toll. One we don’t fully see in the course of the film, except etched on Richard Jenkin’s face. His haunted eyes and hangdog features have seldom been used to better effect. And whose garbage bag mask is one of the creepiest things I’ve seen in a horror movie in a long while.



Of course it’s Kodi McPhee Smith and Chloe Morentz who have the key roles here. Morentz, is fantastically believable both in her bloodlust and sorrow. McPhee has a fish faced strangeness and innate sweetness, that serve him ably, both as victim and enabler. He's less sociopathic then Oscar in In. More understandable in his desperate need to be liked by somebody. Hell anybody. The film is shot in a wintry haunting hush. The snow creating a haunting Sepulchral silence that I never would have thought Matt Reeves capable of.

I try to think of a single scene that works better in the original then in the remake, and my mind draws a blank. The hospital combustion. The tunnel scene. The pool scene. The revelation of Abby’s gender, played on a long unblinking shot on Owen’s face, rather then a gratuitous crotch shot. None hold up.

Hell the scene in which Richard Jenkin’s takes the longest car ride of his life, alone is now worthy of Hitchcock. Up to and including a car wreck so disorienting and jolting I find it hard to believe it’s not the best I’ve seen filmed.

Even the decisions I don’t understand like why it’s a period movie really really work. (Also when did “They Don’t Write Them Like That Anymore" become the song for 80’s throwbacks. I mean yeah it’s a good pun but lets not over milk this one)

There are a few flaws in the film. Though the practical makeup and effects are absolutely top notch, the CGI that augments the attacks is near bargain basement. It’s purposeful, to make Abby seem otherworldly. But in this it succeeds too well, making her look like nothing so much as the world’s most malevolent Stretch Armstrong Doll.

Still these are minor quibbles, if this is where the new Hammer horror is going, bravo. And if this indicative of what Matt Reeves (who I’ll admit I wrote off as a one hit wonder following Cloverfield) is capable of, then he is a filmmaker worthy of considerable attention.

Let Me In, is horrific and achingly human. That Abby’s love is very much real makes her more, not less monstrous and terribly pitiful.

It really hammers home the terrible nature of what’s happening in a way the original doesn’t. There’s no happy ending here, in fact same thanks to Jenkins, we know exactly how unhappily this story is going to end.

After all “Eat some now, save some for later.” Who’s to say who has the worse fate?

Legend Of The Guardians

Lets get this out of the way. I have a real soft spot for Zack Snyder. The things that everyone finds so annoying about him are exactly the things I find endearing about him. The fact that he shoots like Ridley Scott, and wants to be John Carpenter. The fact that he’s seemingly making films based off of the doodles in his eigth grade notebook. His perma magic hour sheen. That normal then slow mo technique that pisses everyone off so much. The fact that he seems to think that subtlety is a rare fish found only in the Indian Ocean. The EVERYTHING MUST BE EPIC ALL THE TIME aesthetic.

I pretty much like all those qualities, right across the board.

Lets face it, the product of those working within the studio system has become more and more homogenized. And within that restrictive frame work Snyder has been able to carve a real creative identity for himself. Not just the look, but with films focused around the power and importance of storytelling, corrupt bureaucratic authority and the definitions of heroism. He's a definite auteur. That alone should earn him more consideration then he gets. You might not like what he’s doing, but he is unquestionably the muscle behind his own films.

Legend Of The Guardians, is exactly what you think an animated film about warrior owls directed by Zack Snyder would be. It’s both sillyly majestic and majestically silly. It’s the kind of movie I would blame exactly no one for not liking, but which I couldn’t help but like an awful lot.

Tonally the closest I think it comes to is the ultimate Don Bluth film Bluth never made. Alternating between animation that is truly awe inspiring, and scenes that are unabashedly some goofy shit. A film that is unabashedly a children’s film in a way I didn’t quite expect, but contains owl on owl violence so lovingly detailed that it actually earns the hoary old criticism of being pornographic. Helen Mirren voices an evil owl.

The story follows Soren, a young owl who along with his brother is pressed into service, by an evil gang of slaver owls. Escaping with an unusually flat secondary cast (The exception being his girl Friday Gelfie, who is ten pounds of adorable in a one pound bag. A sentence I didn’t expect to write about an animated owl when I woke up this morning) they seek a clan of warrior owls out of legend. And yeah, it’s all just about as goofy as it sounds. But Snyder never winks. Never comes close. I don’t think he has a winking bone in his body. It's his saving grace, his secret weapon and Achilles heel all in one. It’s the reason he can make something as melodramatic and broad as 300 really work. And also the reason why, though it’s intentions were noble and sections of it brilliant, Watchman did not. He lack’s Moore’s dark irony, but has Miller’s true believerism. Indeed Snyder is perhaps the most deeply unironic filmmaker working today, and I for one find it his most endearing quality and why I feel comfortable going to the mat for him as more then a journeyman hired gun.

It’s visually stunning. Narratively sweeping. And thematically simple. It’s a Zack Snyder film. You dig em or you don’t.

Boardwalk Empire

How fitting, just the other day I announce my intentions to watch ever film Martin Scorsese ever made and in a Christmas in July bit of serendipity, a new one fell right into my lap.

Now yes, I know that Boardwalk Empire isn’t "really" a movie, it’s just a pilot for the new HBO series Scorsese is producing. About the empire of Nucky Thompson a city councilman and general “power behind the throne type.” Who found himself the perfect middleman between the gangster’s of New York and Chicago, and the vast thirsty market that was the Eastern Seaboard.

There are a few moments that unmistakably perform the business of setting things up for an ongoing series, most notably Michael K. William’s agonizingly brief appearance. And the digital backlot screams “high end TV” even though Scorsese makes it all magic hour dream light. But make no mistake bookended the opening and closing irises is a complete artistic statement in the way that something like “Mirror Mirror” just isn’t.

No matter how good or bad the rest of the series is (And I’m guessing it’s going to be pretty fucking grand) this stands both intricately connected and completely apart. A seventy three minute movie about a man staring responsibility in the face.

The film can be summed up with the contrast between two scenes. In the first, Steve Buscemi as Nucky Thompson, sits patiently in the audience of a woman’s temperance movement as a stereotypical old dowager reads a hysterical (in every sense) poem “Owed To Liquor.” Nucky gets up, relates an even more sanctimonious and shameless anecdote, then excuses himself from the proceedings, laughs off the dowagers, takes a hearty sip from his flask, and that night at the raucous party being thrown in celebration of Prohibition he lifts his glass and toasts, to “Well meaning morons.”

Nucky laughs. We laugh. It’s funny, Boardwalk Empire is perhaps the funniest thing that Scorsese has ever directed (“Stop calling me cowboy.”)

But later, Nucky is confronted by the poem, in much less cheerful circumstances. As he learns of the terrible consequences brought about by a half assed act of charity, furthered by an ill timed act of rage, and fueled by yes as ridiculous as the upright citizen brigade looks, his liquor. The one soft point we’re aware that Nucky has is exploited, terribly. And we know from the shattered look on Buscemi’s face, that no matter how terrible the fallout is it won’t erase the stain of his guilt.

We’re in Scorsese territory after all.

Oh and for the record, the fallout is fucking terrible.

This is the closest we’re every probably going to see to an NC-17 Scorsese film. Its bloody, its absolutely brutal, and it has so much sex and nudity in it that I think that every sitting member of the MPAA had a stroke just from this thing playing on the airwaves (if only we were that lucky).

Buscemi stands at the center of it, radiating his own brand of charisma, Scorsese surrounds him with great underused character actors. Including Michael Pitt, Kelly McDonald, Michael Shannon and most of all the great Stephen Graham, playing Al Capone with a mixture of the innocence of a mean little boy and the glee of a sociopath.

Scorsese fills it with set pieces that memorize with his trademark detail, including the obligatory LAT (Long ass tracking shot), two scenes of Buscemi peering through a storefront that have an almost Lynchian intensity, and a wash of mesmerizing period detail.

But all that stuff in a Scorsese film is just that. Detail.

What’s fuels each Scorsese film is that sense of responsibility, of yes Catholic Guilt. The film ends with the old age of the romanticized “Mustache Petes” being blown away (quite literally) to make room for the new tyros fed by the opportunity provided by prohibition. And Nucky. It’s doubtless that before the series ends, he will pay harshly because of that.

Consequences.

The Town

Ben Affleck is a great director.

Not good, not promising. Great. And while we’re at the list of things I didn’t think I would ever say.

Ben Affleck is a fucking badass.

But we’ll get to that later. I knew I liked, perhaps even loved Affleck as a director going into The Town. But it was something I knew on a detached intellectual level. As the record states I hold Gone Baby Gone in the highest possible regard. But it was something I knew only on an intellectual level. Some part of me was still expecting the star of Jersey Girl and Gigli to be a flash in the pan. To prove to be the big dumb lug who wasted his modest talent starring in one of the biggest runs of dreck on record from a major star from 1998 to 2006. But low and behold The Town not only lives up to high bar set by Gone Baby Gone, it clears it. Because while half of Gone Baby Gone’s success can be layed at the feet of its superlative source material, The Town took a mediocre airport crime thriller and somehow turned it into the greatest crime film since Heat.

This film should be taught in classes as the gold standard of how to adapt a book to film.

He slashes the distracting and cheesy love triangle that lay like a poison pill at the novel’s center, exponentially strengthening the film’s two core relationships in the process, gives real heart to the conflict at the center of the film, and really nails our hero in a beat that the novel lets him completely off the hook for.

In short he took a book that was by the numbers and made it thrum with real passion. Took the flaccid robberies and soaked them with adreniline, including a ridiculously prolonged car chase, that for my money surpasses the running gun battle in Heat. One that ends with a beat so perfect I wanted to cheer.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The Town thrives on the clichés of “The Criminal pulling one last job.” And “The bad man redeemed by the good woman.” The difference is that unlike Hogan Affleck turns them into grand archetypes, while still keeping them true to life.

Part of what crippled Prince Of Thieves is that Chuck Hogan cannot write women to save his life. If the woman’s not a vengeful harpy, she’s a blank slate who will probably end up “in the fridge” so to speak. This is problematic when you base the entire crux of your narrative around the fact that a woman is so wonderful that no one doesn’t want to love her, protect her, or kill her, and said woman as written is kind of a narcissistic drip. Its like he came up with Bella five years early.

Affleck cannily solves the problem by having only himself fall for her, thus eliminating a good 75% of the cheesy ridiculous inherent in the “Cop and Crook fight for love!! And The Street!” Inherent in the book. And thanks to Hall’s performance, it’s possible to see what someone would actually see in her. This also ramps up the vehemence between Hamm and Affleck, culminating in a scene that soaks in gasoline and lights afire fifteen years of “Cop and Criminal share grudging respect” perpetuated by Heat, in about two minutes.

It's just one piece of the movie’s crackingly dialogue (“Whose car we gonna take?”) credited to Affleck and Peter Craig. I’ll say it now. If The Town isn’t the best film I’ve seen this year, it’s the certainly best written.

And its here that Affleck’s talent really lies. He has an eye for composition, and a definite sense of energy. But it’s his writer’s ear for dialogue and his actor’s sense of timing, coupled with an uncommonly good eye for casting that keep his film’s thrumming with such unique energy.

Like Gone Baby Gone, he casts the film with lots of local color including Slaine who if there’s any justice in the world get a shit load of character work for his turn here as Gloansy. When there’s a short scene in an AA meeting, it populated with folks who look like they actually belong at AA meetings. He also gets good use out of Hamm pure masculine righteous menace. Renner, bringing the character a charisma not in the text. Hall as mentioned does fine work in a crucial role. Chris Cooper knocks it out of the park with a one scene roll. And Pete Postelthwaite horrifies as a profound figure of moral and physical rot.

It was Affleck’s final confrontation with Postlethwaite that convinced me that no matter how silly he looked in Daredevil, Ben Affleck was a bonafide badass. And it made me recall another Badass who American filmmakers didn’t know how to handle in his youth. Yes it's be premature to compare Affleck to Eastwood. I know that. And I know he has to make something like The Beguiled or Bird before he can really claim that right. But if he keeps making movies like this, I see no reason why he couldn’t be. I’d certainly hold The Town in as high regard in the badass cinema pantheon as The Outlaw Josey Welles.

Machete

Machete stands as a tribute to nothing more or less then just how much fucking fun the movies are.

Yes perhaps it overstays its welcome but its never for lack of trying. And even if like eating an entire package of mini candy bars it leaves you with a hell of a sugar headache, well it was fun while it lasted. A giddy raspberry of a movie, it cements Rodriguez’s status as the king of neo grindhouse.

Machete is the story of Danny Fucking Trejo (Given name) who when he… aw hell you know what? Just watch this.

Looks awesome don’t it? Machete opened Grindhouse for a reason, its such a concentrated gauntlet of insanity, such a relentless rush of exploitation fan id, that by the time Rose McGowan and her go gos hit the screen the crowd was already well warmed up. You could have shown slo mo footage of puppies frolicking in the field after that and still have the crowd go wild.

But of course that’s half of (OK a good 7/8ths of) the fun, the compression of it all. And while Machete can’t quite keep that brutally relentless pace going for its entire runtime, it damn well tries. From the opening where Danny Trejo quarters a man’s head and a woman pulls a phone from her vagina, before Steven Seagal in a truly deranged performance gives a long rambling monologue that sounds like it was culled from the outtakes of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. To the climax where Lindsey Lohan shoots Robert DeNiro, and a man is crushed by a low rider, Machete is wall to wall insanity.

Rodriguez’s secret as a director has always been the way he takes the sting out of his carnage through sheer audacity and creativity. In another movie the sight of a man’s genitals rotting off, (or for that matter being pulled off) or being ripped apart limb from limb by a pack of wild beastial vampires, might be distressingly grim. But Rodriguez always makes it clear that he’s just as shocked as you are by these horrendous turns of events. There’s an odd sense of, well innocence to the whole thing. He can’t believe he’s getting away with it either.

His other, perhaps even more underrated aspect has always been his skill with actors. He might not be a traditional actor’s director, but in both his adult and children films he’s not just able to create these worlds. He’s able to get people to act as if they’re in them. Which is no mean feat considering the crazy shit he likes to pull. Machete is no exception, I’ve already praised Seagal, who is seriously like Missouri Breaks crazy in this thing, but this is the first time I’ve seen De Niro look awake since Ronin. It might not be a great performance but at least it looks like he knows a camera is there and the accent(s) is a hoot. Lindsey Lohan embraces the spirit of things, though grrr… that body double gets annoying. Yes I know its part of the joke, but must it be at our expense? Don Johnson rips into it as a walking bag of sleaze. Michelle Rodriguez has never been hotter proving herself to be, along with Milla Jovovich one of the last genuine B Movie Queens. And Jessica Alba is completely adequate!

But towering above them all is Danny Trejo as Machete. What more can I say. Words are inadequate, the poetry is all there in his face.

There he goes, the last of The Warren Oates, to remind us all what a hard man looks like. The end cockteases the promise of Machete Kills, and Machete Kills Again (Though it misses the great opportunity to end with a fake trailer, what began as a fake trailer).

I’m holding you to that Rob.

Winter's Bone

“Last night I played a game with my Sister.”

“Poker?”

“Yeah I hit her too.”

-“Horse Apples” Wonder Showzen

“Now the district Attorney said he might have forgiven/
You had lots of reasons to turn out that way/
But you’ll both go to jail for them four little babies/
You made and delivered along the way/

Last night you had a dream about a lord so forgiving/
He might show compassion on a heathen he damned/
You awoke in a jail cell alone and so lonely/
Seven Years in Michigan…

The Deeper In, The Drive By Truckers.

…

There’s something about works about the South, and southern writers in general. In Southern literature the wounds run deeper, and the pain from them hits the marrow.

The Southern Gothic is perhaps the hardest form to write in. At its best, it simply is the best that American literature has to offer; The Faulkners, O’Conners, Mc Cartheys, Capotes, Percys, Twains, Williams, Lees, and Morrisons, all sons and daughters of the southern vernacular.

At its worst the Southern Gothic becomes a kind of car wreck. Devolving into a honkey faced minstrel show. Displaying a grotesque mixture of poverty porn and the implicit smug moral superiority of the viewer over the smug brain dead hicks on display like petting zoo animals. Or as Noel Murray so succinctly summed it up, “yet another set of college dropouts in nudie suits and bolo ties, singing songs about mining disasters in affected accents.”

While it’s always a slippery slope playing the card of “authenticy” particularly as I'm not from the region in question. But there is perhaps no style in which its absence is more immediately noticeable then the southern one.

This is all my long winded way of saying that Winter’s Bone is definitely NOT one of those pathetic works. It’s a bone hard film, weary, with a bruised heart that stands as one of the greatest crime films in the past decade (which has been a damn good one for crime films) one of the greatest works of the southern gothic in the same time period, and as far as I’m concerned the best film of the year.

The story of a Ree, young girl basically the head of her family given that her mother is insane, and her father has disappeared with no one really expecting him to turn up again. This would be less of a problem had her father not made his last act to sign over their house as collateral for his bond. And as his court date approaches it seems more and more likely that they’ll be turned out of their house, where for all the talk of southern hospitality, it looks as if their friends and neighbors will more or less leave them to die.

But the girl’s smart and tough, a survivor. So she goes searching for her father, or at least what remains of him. Asking increasingly dangerous questions of increasingly dangerous people, as we the audience sit there helpless, the bottom dropping out of your stomach a little more with each encounter.

Winter’s Bone is one of those movies that etches its characters and place in sharp unforgettable detail. The mountain of the woman who sings faux obliviously while Ree questions her Father’s mistress, every other eye in the room upon her. The new garage door that shuts on an old barn in a shot that feels like the end of hope. The burned husks of trailers and cars that dot the landscape. The film knows what it’s talking about.

It’s a character driven movie, and a damned good one, people who get one line (“If you have something to say. Now’s the time to say it.”) are deeper drawn then the main characters of most films. And the ones who are actually invested in, like Ree’s Uncle Teardrop; the greatest dead eyed, lunatic, ax wielding, tweaker anti hero you’re likely to come across this side of Under The Dome, are simply unforgettable. Teardrop, played by John Hawkes, in the performance of the year as one of the most complex, fascinating characters I've seen in a movie in ages. He looks like the rotting corpse of Harry Dean Stanton, acts with the frazzled half sparked, perversely logical, thinking of a real meth head, and is motivated by a love as genuine as it is profoundly fucked up. If Hawkes doesn’t win an Oscar, which he won’t because he’s you know a fifty year old character actor not a movie star, it really will prove the system a more or less complete sham.

But even he pales in comparison to Ree. I can’t remember the last time I became so invested in a character. The night before I saw Winter’s Bone I saw Machete, during which I saw heads chopped off, intestines used as rappel ropes, and gun shot wounds without number, all generating no more reaction then, “Well that looked neat.” If anything Winter’s Bone proved that I am not desensitized to violence, merely its presentation, because there’s a scene here in which a cup of lukewarm water is thrown in Ree’s face, and I damn near screamed in the theater.

Winter’s Bone is one of those movies, that makes you realize just how assembly line, borderline worthless, and lazy, most other films are.

The Last Exorcism

Suspension of disbelief is such a funny thing. Once you have it, once you make an audience believe that what you’re telling it is real, man you can do anything. ANYTHING. But at the same time its so utterly fragile, and if you lose that suspension of disbelief, if you somehow break that trust once earned? God help you, because your movie is about to fail.

Which is exactly what happens with the The Last Exorcism, a film so effective it became easily my favorite horror film since The Strangers. Until an ending so bad, it breaks the movie. That’s the only way I know how to describe it that the movie is completely broken by it, with a suddenness like someone flipped a switch. Its such a stunning left turn into dreadful, with such jaw dropping thoroughness, that it just has to be seen to be believed.

All along in the theater I was composing my review, a much happier review then the one I’m writing now. I was going to praise the movie for its slow burn of suspense, for its commanding and eerie atmosphere, for the dedicated performances of the leads, for its practical effects and scary sequences, for its structural daring leaving the question of the supernatural open for almost the entire film, for its skeptical, yet respectful treatment of religion. And then the ending comes along and completely negates it.

I’m having trouble even verbalizing what pisses me off so bad. It’s so compulsory, almost like an allergic reaction. One of the phrases that I perhaps over use is the metaphor of film as a tightrope walk. But here it fits, because you see this movie walk this exact tone for ninety minutes, and then watch it swan dive and dash its brains on the on the ground in the last possible second.

But lets take a step back here. Cotton starts off as charismatic fundie preacher, who doesn’t actually believe in God, but is too charming ever to come out and say it. Undergoing a crisis of conscience he decides to allow a camera crew to come with him. True to form, The Last Exorcism does genuinely feel like one of those “quirky individuals” docs like Slasher or Best Worst Movie. It then develops it into a pretty effective satire of religion, with a hefty helping of southern gothic (which made it a very interesting double feature with Winter’s Bone, let me tell you). It grounds itself in the detail of the place, one of my favorite touches is how whenever Cotton introduces himself as being "From Baton Rouge" the person he's talking to reacts in suspicion, as if that teeming metropolis isn't Southern enough. More importantly it grounds the characters so that when things start to turn into a very effective little horror film, we actually care what happens to them. The film manages to keep the demon/psychosis, argument in the air for almost its entire runtime. The movie generates a huge amount of tension, without ever once resorting to one of the standard Exorcist movie tricks (until its second to last, and very effective confrontation about 80 minutes in). Whether its psychosis or Satan a homely, over friendly teenage girl, turns into a blank eyed figure of terror, and things are set up so the situation keeps getting worse.

Then comes the ending, which does not merely lack the courage of its convictions, but lacks the courage to lack the courage of its convictions. Its not that the film is anti climatic, it's just non climatic. Shying away from resolution in a way that’s not ambiguous or clever, but lazy.

I’ll I can say, is that if the ending of House Of The Devil bothered you? I don’t even know how you’d give this shit a pass.

Piranha 3D

Piranha 3D takes place in what I can only take as a literal Fratboy heaven. A douchebag Valhalla wherein every righteous bro is rewarded with mandals, a poker visor or backwards baseball cap, and bitchin tribal pec tat. And every rocking bitch is free to totally off dem boobs and bitching tribal tramp stamp. Every grill is smoking, the natty light and blunts flow freely, and auto tune pumps off of every available speaker, or at least every one not currently engaged by The Dave Matthew’s Band. It hits such a critical mass of douche baggery that it eventually just turns hypnotic.

Piranha 3D is either the most openly venal film ever made, or it’s a blistering Bunuelian commentary on the crassness of American lust and conspicuous consumption. I don’t know if I will ever be entirely sure of which.

Piranha 3D hums along on that same “I’m not sure whether or not he’s fucking with us.” Vibe. This is a movie with everything, a cute little girl with whom to play “Will they or won’t they feed her to the Piranha’s?” Boobs in 3D, Eli Roth’s exploding head and a Penis being eaten in 3D.

The film follows Sheriff Elizabeth Shue (“You know from Dreamer, the fucking horse movie!”) and Deputy Ving Rhames as they tries to clear Fratboy Valhalla before a pack of murderous prehistoric Piranhas can turn them into mulch. Meanwhile her children end up on the sinking boat of sociopath coked out pornographer, Jerry O’Connell (long story) and then Eli Roth gets decapitated doing what I think his detractors just assume he does every day.

I can’t quite recommend Piranha 3D with the same gusto that many of my blogger brethren have. For one thing its 3D has that cheap diorama look that I get with every 3D system that’s not Disney’s. The lack of light as a result of the 3D process also ends up being a big issue. This is not exactly surprising given that it take place underwater where its tough enough to coherently show action. A few of the attacks are downright incomprehensible. Most problematic those that are clear are powered by a real ugly sense of sadism and cruelty, a hallmark of Aja’s that clashes with the fun tone. For every OOT shot of O’Connell having his penis bit in half there’s a strangely lovingly depicted one of a woman getting her scalp and half her face torn off by a boat propeller.

Still I can understand why Piranha 3D is getting the response its getting. Its rare enough to see a horror film nowadays whose automatic setting is not “dour”. Its got blood, its got boobs, it has some truly trashy 3D, and Christopher Lloyd screaming about Fish Genitals (not a typo). In short it promises a lurid unseemly time at the movies and it more then delivers on that account.

The problem is. I can’t tell if Piranha 3D is the most dishonest film I’ve seen this year or the most honest one. Or indeed, which answer I would prefer.

Scott Pilgrim VS. The World

( A Quick Note: I apologize for the lack luster posting schedule. A busier then usual personal life, a punishing work schedule, and an internet connection that has decided its only going to work when it damn well feels like it and even then not very well (thanks NETGEAR) have all conspired to keep me from getting anything up. Still all but the Connection are now under control, so the normal pace should now resume.)



Scott Pilgrim might not be a perfect film, or a perfect adaptation. What it is, is a perfect version of itself.

Whatever Pilgrim loses in the way of emotional depth or narrative ambition in the transition from thousands of pages and panels to two hours or so of celluloid, it more then makes up for with its sheer exuberance. It’s a film that hits the ground running, from the second its energetic to the point of avant garde credits explode on screen, it has the wonderful air of a film that can simply not contain itself.

But its one thing for a film to be satisfied with itself, and another to get the audience to be satisfied with it as well. And Scott Pilgrim is one of those wonderful exceptions that has the power to bring the audience along with it. The audience I saw it with erupted into spontaneous applause at no less then three parts in the film. And this wasn’t a midnight show of rapt fanboys either, but a 2/3rds full early evening show.

Because whatever else Scott Pilgrim is; generous, warm, witty, stylistically audacious, its most importantly FUN. In a summer that has been all but devoid of that precious commodity. Even the Summer’s one other unqualified success, Inception stands lower then Pilgrim in this regard. Not that Inception wasn’t an enormously entertaining film, but both the critical squabbles and the thud of Christopher Nolan’s dick hitting the table distracted from it. In other words, Inception was even at its popcorniest a very weighty film, while Scott Pilgrim remains, almost defiantly based on the tremendous amount of work evident in its making, a lark. But a lark that embraces all the freedom and fleetness that that designation allows.

Wright’s eye for casting is impeccable. I had serious doubts about Cera, but by dropping the prickly intelligence that always seems key to his persona, he taps into a wholly unexpected daffiness that makes the role work. Christopher Evan’s and Brandon Routh both turn in performances that I wouldn’t hesitate to call comedic genius. Routh in particular is revelatory (but not that revelatory, he proved in Zack And Miri he has some serious comic chops) and his wildly inappropriately non chalant “Its not a big deal” got the single biggest laugh in the film for me (Wright also gives Routh an action his character didn’t have in the book and boy does it pay off. Minor Spoilers, when you see a guy Brandon Routh’s size with biceps like Canned Hams hit a five foot tall 90 pound Asian girl as hard as he can, you wince no matter how cartoony it is). Mary Elizabeth Winstead makes an effective and affecting Object of desire, even if she doesn’t have the depth of her paper counterpart. Jason Schwartzman on the other hand makes his character ten times what he was on the page. As for Allison Pill I suppose all I can say is its going to be very hard not to stalk her (Note to various Law Enforcement agencies and Ms. Pill’s lawyers, joking). If there’s any justice in the world Ellen Wong should be getting the exact same kind of buzz Carey Mulligan got off of An Education, thanks to her role (If the film has a flaw its that Wright and Wong invest so much in Knives that we end up rooting for her over Ramona) And we haven’t even gotten to Anna Kendrick and Kieran Culkin yet.

But it’s still Edgar Wright upon whom this all rests. He’s aided here by Bill Pope’s quietly mind blowing work. And a soundtrack that swings from Earthy Proto Punk (Provided by Beck and Broken Social Scene) and Techno Decadence (Courtesy of Metric) and stopping everywhere in between from Bollywood to Frank Black. Believe what you’ve heard, this movie is a fucking musical.

But despite the invaluable aid by Cast, crew and music, its all Wright. I don’t know if it was when an army of demon fire throwing hipster chicks materialized out of thin air, or if it was one of the characters punched a hole in the moon, but there came a point where all I could do was lean back and marvel “Fuck he’s really going for it.” Wright swings for the fences. Wright is one of the few directors working in what is legitimately his own space. Even if you don’t like what he does, I don’t see how you could not concede that he does it very well. Personally, he creates films I want to curl up in. Moments like Simon Pegg’s first run through Stanford, set to “Village Green Preservation Society” or his and Edgar Wright’s post break up break down in Shaun Of The Dead, hell even Vulva’s art show in Spaced, aren’t just favorite scenes from films, but cinematic headspace that I can go when I feel wounded.

Despite the ravenous zombies, NWA’s, and Nega Verisons, Wright’s cinematic universe remains an appealingly friendly one. And despite the lackluster designation that may entail it is never a dull one.

So yes, perhaps this review has been little but raving superlatives, But damn it, if no film can move a film writer to blathering superlatives, he is in serious trouble. The movie Is Scott Pilgrim. He’s 22. His Rating is awesome. But you already knew that.

(Fun Fact: This Post took an hour and a half to get up. This is after it had been sitting on my computer for two days. So if you hear the sound of someone on the west coast screaming before they punch a hole in the internet, that's me. Seriously Netgear. Fuck you. Fuck you so hard.)

Christopher Nolan Blogothon Day 7: Inception

Well I guess it’s a bad year for Leonardo DiCaprio having nightmares about his wife.

Inception may not quite hit the lofty heights presented. It might not be the transcendent experienced promise. But only just.

There are plenty of critics whose opinions I highly respect who are saying that Inception is nothing more then an above average blockbuster. I can’t help but disagree, Inception is too audacious a film. A blockbuster? Yes. An entertainment? Yes. Small sighted? No. The audacity (the only word that really fits) is just too stunning. Brian DePalma for all his slow motion, for all his motherfuckery, never made a moment so devilishly sustained as that forever moment in time that that van falls. Terry Gilliam for all his seductive visions has never painted a dream like this one, which drags its audience right down to the bottom with it like a millstone tied to someone’s leg then tossed into a lake.

But I’m getting ahead of myself aren’t I?

By now you most likely know the plot of Inception. A tale of dream thieves recruited to plant an idea into a subjects mind. Beyond that I will say no more except to say
It plays like the ultimate William Gibson novel as envisioned as the ultimate Terry Gilliam film.

What makes Inception so exciting is that it feels, not perhaps like Nolan’s ultimate work, but a kind of final crystallization of said work.

THERE ARE MAJOR MOVIE RUINING SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH


Di Caprio’s character isn’t simply unable to move on from his trauma. His life IS Trauma he’s ensnared by it. Like a fly in amber. The personalities are not merely codependant but literally dependant upon DiCaprio believing that they are real for their survival.



END MAJOR MOVIE RUINING SPOILERS.

It’s a movie from which half of the excitement comes from a filmmaker finding the perfect instrument to say what he wants to say how he wants to say it. The other half of course comes from the sheer audacity (the word that keeps running through my mind) and grace with which he brings that world to life. There’s so many images that sent my mind reeling, things that I have literally never seen before. (Note the way that Nolan even responds to the Kubrickian comparisons with a cheeky Bathroom scene)

And Nolan anchors it all in a broken perfectly human story. Partially due to Nolan’s underrated gift at casting. Ellen Page, as adorable and vulnerable as a wet Puppy. Who is multiplied with Joseph Gordon Levitt for an event horizon of precociousness. Tom Hardy makes a hell of a heavy, Cillian Murphy brings it as always. And even Pete Postlewaith brings it with his limited role. But DiCaprio anchors it, as indeed he must, bringing a real weary soul to the film. Sometimes Leo’s reach exceeds his grasp when it comes to the hardbitten heroes he likes to play. But there’s a doomed romanticism with Cobb (A name Nolan seems to like a lot) that he’s perfect for.

This review is a bit shorter then my usual (“Thank God,” I can hear some muttering). But that is because there is some stuff I’m still genuinely unclear on. What for example to make of the ending? I think its pretty clear what’s happened but for those of you who have seen the film I think its definitely up for debate as to whether Cobb has been in the dreamstate from the beginning or fallen into Limbo.

I want to catch it on my next viewing. And I’m sure that on the viewing after that I’ll be looking for something else. And the one after that. And the one after that. Nolan makes films that don’t give up all their secrets at once, and that makes him rare and valuable.

Toy Story 3

Perfection has its own perils. Pixar has become so synonymous with quality that when it falls anywhere short of perfection it hard not to be a little too hard on them. Take Day And Night, the new short. Its all concept, all experimentation, a blend of 2D and computer animation that was clearly made just to see if it could be done. What its not is quite the comic masterwork that Pixar’s last two shorts were (Presto in particular is a literal gem. Like a lost Buster Keaton short remade by Chuck Jones and then computer animated). But still there’s that core of greatness there, that’s easy to forget. The fact that there’s a studio out there still willing to throw money at a pure experiment is tremendously exciting.

So when I say that for me at least, Toy Story 3 doesn’t quite reach the dizzying heights of Part 2, its because very few movies do. Toy Story 2 is a perfect storm, a beautiful, meticulously written film with a metaphoric perfection at the heart of its narrative that is simply boggling. Not because of any flaw in this excellent concluding part (And to be fair I felt the same way about Up, and multiple viewings have certainly raised my opinion on that film). Pixar once again demonstrates its artistic alchemy that borders on actual magic. And for all the complaints about the many flaws of the modern day movie landscape, I cannot help but feel anything but truly lucky every time I watch a Pixar film. To be a film fan here and now, and get to experience so many wonderful films, it’s a blessing.

Toy Story 3 is gold. It’s a film with so many great narrative turns that it feels unfair to spoil any of them. Pixar’s eye for casting remains impeccable (Ned Beatty in particular here), its script’s sharp and its artistry breathtakingly beautiful. And that’s really all you need to know. Any quibbles I have with the film are minor ones, and pretty unfair. For example (and I’m being purposefully vague here) at one point we visit another child’s gang of toys, and they’re so appealing I was sorry that we didn’t get to spend more time with them. Like I said, I know its unfair, there would really be no story driven reason for the film do to so. Its basically punishing Pixar for writing such an appealing cast rather then a bunch of bland placeholders, and filling their roles with the likes of the always welcome Bonnie Hunt, Timothy Dalton (who I have a tremendous amount of affection for since Hot Fuzz ) Jeff Garlin, and a freaking Totorro.

The other area of unease is the absence of John Lasseter. Now once again this isn’t fair, Lassetter is in no position to direct the film, what bothers me more is that no one really seems to care. While Brad Bird, Pete Doctor, and Andrew Stanton all get heaps of praise (rightfully). People always seem a bit stingy with Lasseter. Eager to write him off as the guy who made Cars. Never mind the fact that when taken in the context of his other work Cars is an immensely personal film. Never mind the fact that Lasseter created Pixar. And has fought tooth and nail to both make and keep the company what it is.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that Pixar keeps moving people into the directors chair. Its very smart in the long term, and means that Pixar won’t have to face the problem that Ghibli is rapidly approaching, the fact that once Miyaziki and Takahata die (Ideally in about a billion years or so) they won’t have anyone there who can actually make films.

Still, if Lasseter’s absence from the project means he never will direct a film again then the world of animation has lost a unique and vital voice. And it’d be nice if that could be acknowledged.

Still these are all in the end minor problems. Given how lionized they’ve become it’d be easy for Pixar’s films to become airless, its kind of incredible how loose they are, and how much weird energy they allow in. Michael Keaton is a FREAK in this movie, giving a performance as the fetishtic Ken easily on par with Beetlejuice or any of his other early comedy work (And lets not even talk about "The Monkey").

But still, that doesn’t make Toy Story 3 light weight. And I’m not just talking about the heavy emotional buttons the film hits. If the central metaphor doesn’t have the perfect simplicity of Part 2 (Allow yourself to be played with or broken or seal yourself away). Its no less thought provoking.

As anyone who has a bit of a collector’s streak (OK a whole lot of a collector’s streak). There’s a lot of reasons I do what I do. There is of course the superficial level of enjoyment. I love having a huge amount of Books and films and comics I love on hand.. But there’s a little something deeper. So much of the culture is so inconsequential that there’s something beautiful about being able to choose what is of consequence. Because if you keep this book, or this film, or this music, then you get to keep it alive. And you get to pass it on. You might do it at a yard sale, or you might do it after your death at your estate sale. But every time you pick something up consciously or not, you are saying “This should continue.”

It might sound silly but everyone who cares, really cares about film, or literature, or music, becomes a living ark. Like the people at the end of Fahrenheit 451, we become the books.

But there comes a tipping point, where curating becomes hording. And that becomes poisonous. It can make you a little bitter. It can make you a little crazy. But worst of all it defeats the entire purpose, as the only way this stuff really works is if it gets out into the world.

And that’s what Toy Story 3 made me want to do, and what I think I will do. Get a big box full of my stuff and find some worthy hands for it.

Anything else would just be a waste.

Iron Man 2 (A Brief Non Robin Hood Related Interlude)

I thoroughly enjoyed Iron Man 2. Its been on the receiving end of some negative, oddly petulant reviews. And yet I don’t expect to see as fun and character driven a film in what is looking to be an increasingly dire summer.

Part of it could be that I simply wasn’t as taken with Iron Man as everyone else. My first viewing of the film felt underwhelming, having already rediscovered Robert Downey Jr. in his one two three punch of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, A Scanner Darkly, and Zodiac. It took a few viewings for me to get in tune with the film’s conversational charms. A charm I found all too evident in this new film.

Robert Downey Jr. and Mickey Rourke are both actors I find intrisacly enjoyable to watch (as is Scarlet Johansen for, ahem, different reasons). The parallels between those two careers have been noted already, I will just point out that both where actors I had little interest in until well after their “primes”. Downey’s weight of experience gives him gravitas even when he plays the goofball. He forever seems like someone making up for lost time. Rourke is one of those actors who doesn’t “act” hard but is hard, and I am have convinced that sometime in 2004 he was simply possessed by the ghost of Warren Oates. He adds a sinister heft to his role, and looks forever as though he is willing and able to send Downey to the hospital.

The supporting cast gamely keep up. The afore mentioned Ms. Johansen gets some of the film’s best lines and action scenes as Molotov Cockte- The Black Widow. Gwyeneth Paltrow continues to be more appealing then she perhaps ever has been onscreen (outside of Margo Tenenbaum of course) and her relationship with Faveru (giving himself a bigger role this time out, and all the better for it) and Tony has the easy intimacy of people who actually know each other (As a result Tony’s “I Guess I lost both kids in the divorce. Is one of the funniest lines in the film). Sam Rockwell brings the full and considerable powers of his smarm to bear in his roll as Justin Hammer the eternal Goofus to Tony’s Gallant. With his spazzy energy and idiotic attempts at grandeur, Rockwell fully captures how dangerous a dumb person who thinks they’re smart can be.

The film’s one miscasting is in Don Cheadle. Who while certainly a step up from Terrance Howard, fails to carry over the sense of history the two had from the first film (Also I think Howard’s and Downey’s had better chemistry together). Its obvious that Faveru didn’t quite know how to handle the situation, both shunting Cheadle off to the side and trying to make him the heart of the movie in a way that is, to say the least, awkward.

The other complaints about the movie I frankly don’t get. The supposedly over stuffed subplots, really balance themselves out. Its supposed to feel as though Tony is being attacked from all sides, but it never feels as though a subplot or two is being deliberately overpowered ala Spiderman 3.

As for the supposedly truncated action sequences. I have no idea. The movie takes its time getting to its first one (as did the first movie). But that’s really about all you can say. (Minor Spoilers) I mean I can understand the complaints one might have about the final Vanko battle. But that comes after a solid HALF AN HOUR of Robots fighting, not to mention The Black Widow laying waste to Hammer Industries. Really how much more Robot fighting do you need?

Still what I like most about Iron Man is the unabashed sense of wonder it has in the possibilities of the future. In an age of anti intellectualism it is perhaps Iron Man’s greatest quality that it makes Science sexy. Tony Stark assuredly knows how fucking magnets work.

Zoe Saldana: The First Post Racial Movie Star?

Terms like Post racial don’t seem to be much more then empty buzzwords to me. But with Zoe Saldanaa, there seems to be quite a bit of truth to the term. No two ways about it she’s had one hell of a year and if she keeps doing great work in great films, there seems to be no reason why she can’t become the type of crossover star that Angela Basset, or even Thandie Newton was unable to become.

I saw two very different sides of her talent in the theater last week, where she ended up the bright spot in two very different films. But in both cases she proved herself a funny, exciting presence, a singular lanky look, with no small amount of sex appeal and charisma to burn, equal parts likable Tomboy and glamour girl.

Which really sums up the whole of the cast here. The film’s characters are none too deep but coast by on a likable mixture of charm. Chris Evans, like James Marsden (hey!) Proves once again to be one of Hollywood’s secret weapons. Jefferey Dean Morgan, who I’ll admit I’d never noticed before his flawed (I still think the role needed someone older) but committed turn as The Comedian in Watchmen, holds things together, with a mix of machismo and flat out charisma. He’s like a less annoying Burt Reynolds (or maybe its just the righteous stache). Jason Patric channels Sam Rockwell with all his might as The Loser’s nemesis. The only odd man out is Roque who displays non of the intellgence and danger that he did as Stringer Bell on The Wire, and instead just comes off as kind of dumb.

Its by no means a great film, or even that great of an action film, I can’t think of another Popcorn movie that so strenuously removed the consequences of violence from the screen. Everyone always has a reason not to die, despite the Losers firing their many many rounds of ammunition. And when shit finally in the parlance of Michael Bay, Gets real. Anything disturbing is kept conspicuously in long shot.

The whole thing has the agreeable air, and deliberately small scale of a classic Programmer. One could easily see Sam Fuller or Walter Hill cranking this out in (an off?) days gone by (though it would most likely be a more memorable affair). Still the director of freaking Stomp The Yard aquits himself well here. And even if I’m not exactly chomping at the bit for him to make Ronin, that has more to do with the fact that I don’t think anyone whose name is not Alejandro Jodorowsky could bring Frank Millar’s lunatic vision of Escape From New York, meets Sword Of Doom, crossbred with norse Mythology, Nanotech nightmare to the screen, then anything personal.


There is however, a lot I take personal in the Neil Labute’s risible remake of Death At A Funeral. Oddly enough I’m usually something of a LaBute apologist (if not a fan). I feel like people are too eager to use the worthlessness of some of his later films, to discredit Your Friends And Neighbors and In The Company Of Men, because those films frankly make them uncomfortable. But this any more like this and I might have to join the choir.

Because say what you will about him, but LaBute is not a funny man. And he takes what I genuinely think is one of the best comedies of the decade and wrings all the laughs out of it with a thoroughness that is nearly neurotic.

It’s a stupefying poorly done film, any laughs in it purely residual. Chris Rock (who should have directed), Tracy Morgan, James Marsdan, and of course Ms. Saldana are all talented performers. But they just don’t find any fun or interesting way to tackle the material. Even the ever dependable Pete Dinklage overplays in his second turn as the character. The film also fails to land any of the movies big emotional beats.

On the whole the film has the joyless rote feeling of a vaudvielle company on the hundreth night of a tour, staring at the audience with contempt.

It would be the worst movie of the year so far, had it not been for Nightmare On Elm Street.

Long Week On Elm St.: Part 9: Nightmare On Elm Street

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that I gave this movie a moments free publicity not to mention over a weeks worth. I’m sorry that for one moment I thought that Platinum Dunes could perhaps produce something decent, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. I’m sorry I defended and doubted. I’m sorry that I entertained the hope this could be worth a shit. And most of all I’m sorry to you. If I for one second got you excited or hopeful or interested in seeing a new Nightmare On Elm Street Movie. I’m sorry.

I fucked up.

This is one of those frustrating movies where all the elements are brought together for something that could be decent and nothing comes of it. Jackie Earle Haley is obviously trying here, but he has no material to work with. Wesley Strick provider of said material, can obviously write a good horror film, or for that matter a remake of a horror film that manages to be unique and interesting while still fundamentally respectful to its source. But nothing ever comes from this anemic movie. Its stuck on second gear.

I could treat this like a normal review; go into the problems and shine a light on the (very) few bright spots. The flaccid script, utterly unlikeable cast (how Nancy despite the fact that she has a delightful Sarah Vowell gurgle of a voice and is in all honesty just my type derived no sympathy for me) the utterly mind boggling leaps in logic that the story makes (some would accuse me of over analyzing but really is that the point where we’re at? Where we just genuinely don’t give a fuck about logic and craft?) but that would be raging at the cure and not the disease. Which is precisely what this movie is. It’s a fucking disease.

Look say what you will about Rob Zombie’s Halloween, but at least there’s some kind of vision there. It might be a vision you detest, but there’s an idea there. Like The Depressing Friday The 13th remake the vision all too self evident. “Lets stick this fucker on autopilot, remove all the charm, and hope these dumb fucks give us their money.”

I can’t even get rightly mad at Michael Bay and his stupid fucking Morlocks at Platinum Dunes. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times and you fully deserve to think I’ll get fooled again.

But I won’t. I’m done. I’m out. I’m never giving my money to these fuckers again. And whats more, unless there’s some excellent evidence that there’s a reason to, I’m never watching a remake again. We can bitch and we can moan but the fact is, that as long as we put up the money and give them the attention. The studios have no reason to stop shoving these down our throats.

So stop doing it. Stop going. Just stop.

What a waste. What a waste of time, and talent and fans passion. What a depressing useless waste. This movie is utterly bankrupt.