31 Days Of Horror: Day 18: Wrong Turn 2

My main problem with Hatchet (of many) was while the tagline bragged about being “old school American horror” precious little that actually felt like, well “Old School American Horror.”

Instead, Hatchet felt like some very new school horseshit. With it’s mountain dew pacing, non stop barrage of mythology, boobs, and way OTT gore, it felt much more like your sugar addled friend in Jr. High relating a slasher movie to you the night after he snuck a peek on HBO. It had about as much in common with the slow burn punctuated by incredible lapses in taste style that make up the pacing of actual eighties slasher film as it did with The Russian Ballet.

Wrong Turn 2 On the other hand does feel like Old School American Horror. It’s not perfect, there’s a long dead zone after the first kill, and are long stretches that assume an investment with the plot and character that simply doesn’t exist. And it serves up tasteless scenes with more vigor then John Waters. Does it include a fucked up Dinner Scene ripping off The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? What do you think?

But if those aren’t hallmarks of the old school slasher experience then I don’t know what is. Its detrements all work as boons. By paradoxically, by being a much more boring film than Hatchet, Wrong Turn 2 becomes a much more entertaining one.

Henry Rollin’s plays a retired Army Colonel who hosts a reality show. Which is a little like having Noam Chomsky play Michael Steele in a biopic. Still it doesn’t matter, as Henry Rollins is intrinsically awesome. And him doing his best impression of Arnie in Predator as he hunt's inbred mutant hillbillies is more so.



Rollins is leading a crew of spoiled twenty some things into the woods, to compete on the “ultimate survivor” (geddit?). Unfortunately as they have picked the one woods in Virginia that is also the territory of cannibalistic super mutants (presumably) and said cannibalistic super mutants don’t find location scouts tasty, the cast finds itself splattered all over the woods.

(Your reaction is the correct one)

What follows is surprisingly pretty good. Taking the time to include little grace notes that I forgot I missed in horror (No I didn’t) like having at least three characters other then Rollins who weren’t intentionally designed to be hateful fodder. A plot twist I didn't see coming. It contains expositional and character building scenes, that manage to not be even more grim and joyless then the kills. It even includes one scene, set during a “birthing” that breaks through the genial air of nostalgia to approach something like real fright.

The film mostly eschew’s the dread CGI gore shot, well except for the case of an egregiously bad “Ax To the head” shot and a fucking terrible “arrow to the head” shot. Which would have been a lot easier to ignore had it not occurred at the two most crucial scenes in the film.


You do get to watch a mutant masturbate though…

…It’s weird.

So yeah, Wrong Turn 2 might not be anyone’s idea of a masterpiece, but if modern films occasionally make you wonder why you like horror in the first place, Wrong Turn 2 might feature as a nice surprise.

It goes down smooth.

Almost as if it were simple undemanding “Old School American Horror” you might say.

(Special thanks to Emily, without whom I wouldn’t have seen the film)

31 Days Of Horror: Day 17: Wrong Turn

(Warning: Movie not as cool as foreign poster)

I never saw Wrong Turn, despite it’s minor cult following and Stan Winston effects. It always just kind of seemed like a minor movie made at the tail end of the second slasher boom.

But I’ve heard the good things about Wrong Turn 2, and fearing that I would miss the deep threads of narrative and thematic material the two would certainly share I decided to watch Part one first.

It turns out it is a minor movie made at the tail end of the second slasher boom! Though albeit one with some cool special effects by Winston, and blessedly free of CGI gore.

The problem with Wrong Turn is it’s just kind of there. It’s never bad, but at the same time it’s not particularly good. It’s not really that tense (aside from it’s admittedly ingenious opening scene), that funny, or that gorey. It’s just a programmer, without even that sense of craftsmanship you can get out of a really good programmer to recommend it. It’s basically a duller less creative version of Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes remake.

The only thing that makes it stand out is its vaguely hilarious gender politics. Wrong Turn definitely wants to have its “Eliza Dushku is a strong female protagonist” Cake and eat its “Now watch her get tied to this bed and get molested by Drooling hillbillies” too. Mostly she just kind of seemed bored. Giving the kind of performance that serves as a reminder of why her performance in Dollhouse was such an effective shock.

Wrong Turn follows a young medical intern, who unwisely takes a detour and ends up stranded with a group of campers. Soon the unlucky trio come across a pack of deformed hillbillies who bake them a cake try to kill and eat them. Much running and screaming ensues. As well as an unexpected slasher version of the tree fight in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Things progress at a pretty good clip, and the not final girl proves herself to be annoying. No seriously annoying. Like she deserves to be mentioned alongside the likes of Shelley and Franklin bad.

There are a few clever gore shots (I did mention Stan Winston produced this right?) and in all fairness I can understand why this movie has wormed its way into the heart of more then one horror fan. It’s old school, but in a very specific way. It doesn’t feel like a conscience throwback to the slasher genre like The Screams and Urban Legends of the world did. It just feels as if the genre never ended.

But call it over saturation, call it being a cranky old man. But this time I just couldn’t get myself that excited for more of the same.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 15: The Mist

Frank Darabont just plain gets it. I’m not just talking about Stephen King, though I’d be hard pressed to name a filmmaker who gets King's particular style better.

But even outside his work with King, Darabont is just one of those filmmaker who I trust intrinsically. I may not like every movie Darabont has been involved in. But I know at the very least there will be more thought and care in each one of his films then there is in the average Hollywood quarter. In other words I may not like ever Darabont film. But I respect every one of them.

And there’s not a one I respect more then The Mist. Both as a superb piece of craftsmanship, and the fact that it exists at all. It’s an old school movie in the best sense. Taking it’s time to develop it’s characters and tension. Disturbing in its implications, ruthless in its execution.

It's fitting that I spent the first week of this 31 Days covering John Carpenter, as The Mist reminds me of nothing so much as The Thing remade as one of Carpenter's siege flicks. Indeed I'd argue any day that it's the best straight up monster movie since The Thing.

And you all know how much I love The Thing.

The Mist of course is the Stephen King story about a small town supermarket grocery store that is cut off from the rest of the world (assuming the rest of the world still exists) by a supernatural mist. Though the monsters that prowl in the mist are threats, it’s the human cast put under pressure in a confined space that are the true threat. It takes the same basic formula as King’s great "Under The Dome". Take a group of people. Eliminate hope and escape. Watch them eat one another.

The focus is on Thomas Jane, as a father desperate to protect his son, by any means necessary. And Marcia Gay Harding as a crazed church lady who makes Piper Laurie look like a disinterested Protestant, and whips the survivors into a frenzy. There was some controversy over the treatment of her character. Particularly since Darabont’s script changed her more general “Crazy Ass Old Backwoods Lady” archetype to a “Crazy Ass Christian Archetype”. But unlike Laurie’s performance in Carrie, the film humanizes Harding and one can’t say the satire isn’t unearned. In one of the films most effective moments, the yokel who initially disparaged Harding the loudest is shown praying most fervently out of her congregation. The target of the satire isn’t so much Christianity, as the way that when people are truly desperate for an answer, they aren’t too particular about what that answer is.

The film is a master class in structure, slowly building it’s chacters and tension, and filled with tension like the devastating, perversely beautiful, hypnotically paced final drive through the mist and pitiless end twist that are simply unforgettable.

The Mist was made on the cheap. And in the weightless CGI it shows. Sure it perhaps can’t create the world’s most realistic looking monsters. But its uses the power of suggestion to scare. And the behavior of humans to terrify.

And yet thanks to Darabont’s skill, his limited means never once feel like a detriment. The film’s most effective scene uses the simple jerking of a rope to suggest unimaginable horror. The second most effective involves some Spider webs and the types of fake limbs one sees at a community theater’s haunted house. You want to talk pure cinema? The Mist is pure cinema. Every moment that works (AKA most of the movie) in it is a testament to how well Frank Darabont understands how to make movies.

31 Days Of Horror Day 12: 1408

All right, let’s get this out of the way…

“I’m tired of all these Motherfucking Ghosts IN MY MOTHERFUCKING HOTEL!!!



1408 stars Cusack as the author of a series of gimmicky haunted house books, the type seen at every book store impulse rack. When he’s tipped to the haunted room 1408, he pulls some serious strings to get there, and very quickly wishes he hadn’t.

1408 is a pretty great little horror movie, well structured and paced. Taking time to build tension and character. The rumor of 1408 is allowed to build gradually. It’s nearly fifteen minutes into the film before the room is even mentioned. Forty before anything untoward happens. 1408 uses this time to build characters who you actually care about, and would like to see not die. I know crazy right? It also actually build it’s tension rather instead of dissipating it at every possible opportunity with cheap boo scares. Bizarre.

This technique climaxes with the conversation Cusack and Jackson (at his best and most understated. Only giving it the full "SAMUEL JACKSON" once) have in Jackson’s office. It’s a top notch piece of work. Exposition as entertainment in a way you rarely, if ever, see. By the time Jackson leans in and gravely intones “It’s an evil fucking room.” It’s like reaching the peak of a roller coaster and feeling a rather agreeable turn of the stomach as we wonder if the drop is really as far down as it looks.

Like Secret Window it practically becomes a one man show (Len Cariou also carries over in an effective one scene role). And Cusack proves more then up to the task. And he’s given very good material to work with. Able to work in his trademark dry humor and charm, whilst still freaking the fuck out.

While Pet Semetary took a book with an angry core of grief and loss and drained it of all it’s richness. 1408 takes the opposite approach and takes a story with virtually no subtext and fills it with an aching human core. The Short Story "1408" collected in "Everything Is Eventual", is a efficient, functional little ghost story. But doesn’t really rise above OK. It was originally a few disconnected passages used as an exercise in "On Writing". And it’s the result more of King hating to leave stuff half done then any real passion for the story. There's is little to recommend it past the neat central conceit that the haunted room is not a den of vengeful spirits, but a kind of temporal venus flytrap.

1408 isn’t just creepy it’s creative, never resorting to boilerplate haunted house imagery, instead coming up with sickly personalized ways to torment Cusack. Both as a character and an actor. In the film’s most darkly funny moment, a hotel created doppleganger gets to employ that Lloyd Dobbler puppy dog sincerity based charm that has so long been his bread and butter for a remarkably sinister effect. Hell we’re talking about a film that makes the Carpenter’s "We've Only Just Begun" creepy (one can imagine some maid with a transistor radio pushing past 1408 and the haunted room thinking “Bloody hell. That’d be Perfect!”)

Look 1408 isn’t what you’d call traumatizing, no one’s ever going to confuse this for Martyrs. But sometimes you don’t need that. Sometimes what you need is a little, but genuine, scare. And 1408 more then fits the bill. 1408 isn’t just one of the better Stephen King Adaptations, it’s one of the few that actually improves on it’s source material.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 10: Secret Window

"Secret Window Secret Garden" originally appeared in the novella collection "Four Past Midnight". Sandwiched in between the appealingly weird “The Langoliers”, the fucking bizarre "The Library Policeman" and the underrated, surreally horrific "Sun Dog", Secret Window is the kind of story that gets overshadowed in its own book.

Modest might be the best word for it. David Koepp wisely plays to that modesty. Instead of trying to artificially pump the book up, he creates a stealth bomb of a movie. It’s a creepy, character based, seventies throwback style of filmmaking. It may not be in a hurry to get any damn where, it definitely walks that fine line between “slow burn” and slow. But it is surprisingly, almost shockingly effective filmmaking. It’ll creep up on you. If given half a chance.

Secret Window follows Mort Rainey, a novelist reeling in the wake of his wife’s affair and devastated by the messy divorce. Rainey is wallowing in the aftermath, rummaging about the house in a dirty bathrobe, taking long naps, playing with his dog, and half heartedly playing around with the key board. Indeed the movie seems to be threatening to turn into The Bryce Wilson Story, before John Turturro, as an epoch of cracker menace shows up and accuses Depp of stealing an old story. And then goes around doing anti social things like jamming a screwdriver through people's heads.

Much of the movie is basically a one man show starring Johnny Depp (not an unappealing proposition). It’s one of Depp’s last, crucial, pre Jack Sparrow performances (Even though it was released after Pirates it, like Once Upon A Time In Mexico, was shot before). I’d argue that the period between this and Sleepy Hollow is one of the most interesting to watch Depp in. Even if contradictorily it doesn’t have any of best performances in it. It’s in that five year period that he went from “Johnny Depp, chameleon like character actor” to, “Johnny Depp… FUCKING JOHNNY DEPP!” Though by the end of the film he is manifesting a disappointing amount of the “bug eyed quizzical stare” that has become his equivalent of “HOO HAH!”. Most of the performance is a reminder of what a vital actor he was before he remanded himself to caricature (not that the caricature isn’t a whole lot of fun.

But he’s matched ably, particularly by Turturro who you can tell relishes the chance to star in a movie that utilizes his talents to a fuller extent then “target for Robo-Pee”. He and Depp play wonderfully off of each other. Particularly smart is Turturro’s decision to play up Shooter’s vulnerability. He seems genuinely horrified by the idea that Depp didn’t plagiarize the manuscript. Maria Bello, Charles Dutton and Timothy Hutton (whom for reasons too complicated to explain I am no longer able to think of in terms other than “Princess Timothy”) also do strong work.

Koepp’s direction is effective yet subdued. Capable of creepy, yet understated imagery such as the mirror that impossibly well “mirrors” Depp’s actions in the real world right before the climax.

The movie hums along more or less perfectly. Until the overly literalized climax which features Depp literally superimposed over all of Shooter’s action thanks to the magic of cross fade. A disappointedly lowest common denominator “Gettit?” move from a film that heretofore treated its audience with a heapin helpin of respect.

Secret Window does redeem itself with its admirably stark ending. It’s a good movie, but I don’t know that its reputation will ever grow past the modest respect that it seems to be afforded today. And I don’t know if it would be half as effective if it ever did.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 6: Cigarette Burns

(This is of course part of Radiator Heaven's Excellent John Carpenter Blogothon).




I would hardly be the first person to note that film is a drug. Neither for that matter would Cigarette Burns. But rarely have I seen a film, that articulated the idea quite so well as Cigarette Burns. That understands that junkie’s quest, the way a film that’s just out of reach can dance around the backend of your subconscious, the way the hunt becomes just as much a part of the experience of the film itself. In the bit torrents era this isn’t quite the same anymore, but for those who remember the experience of hunting down that last elusive film in a director’s run, Or a film like The Holy Mountain, or Salo in The VHS era, the film will ring true.

And the hook, oh man what a hook. The idea that out there is a film, that will provide both the ultimate film going experience, and the end of all film going experiences. Can any of us who have devoted a good chunk of our lives to film going honestly say that we wouldn’t at least consider looking? I know I for one would be sorely tempted. To stand before something that is truly unlike anything else ever made, the rumored ultimate form of the art… could you just walk away? Leave without ever knowing what was hiding in those reels, waiting for the light to bring out. After all, you know how terrible the price is, but not how wonderful the rewards could be.

And yes, I know that to even consider watching such a film, is stupid, dangerous, and borderline insane. To which I can only reply, that is the nature of addictions.

As disinterested as Carpenter seemed in his post In The Mouth Of Madness films (I may not like that title but he is trying.) is how engaged he seems by Cigarette Burns. Though the film’s scale is small, it wrings the maximum amount of tension from its set ups, and through it’s subtle use of location (including somewhat brilliantly shooting Vancouver as Vancouver), manages to give the production a much larger sense of scale then it actually has.

The small scale also helps drive up the tension. There’s no room for a big climax of The Thing style showdown. But what Carpenter can do, is put you in the frame of mind for something like the infamous snuff sequence, that anything can happen, a skill he’s always had. You’re never safe in this film.

The cast is equally engaged, even the usually unappealing Norman Reedus. Udo Kier in particular makes the most out of his small role as Bellinger, the man behind the madness.

Any horror film can make scare you, the best horror films scare you because of their ideas, and what’s more, your reaction to those ideas.

For cinephiles I would argue that Cigarette Burns is among the best of horror films. Where the scariest thing about it, is despite the dark places in which it treads, it remains unabashedly, a twisted sort of valentine.

BONUS FEATURE:

(For my Senior Project In College I had the opportunity to talk to Drew McWeeny (Writer of Burns) for a documentary I made about Fandom. As a great admirer of both his films and his criticism (I would certainly count him, along with Roger Ebert, and Nathin Rabin as my most formative influences as both a critic and filmgoer) it was quite a treat. I found Mr. McWeeny to be a personable and generous, and we ended up having quite a long conversation. And I ended up with more footage then I could use.

So when I decided to write about Cigarette Burns, I thought I’d edit some of the Cigarette Burns and John Carpenter related outtakes together for this. Hope you enjoy:)

It Might Get Loud

It Might Get Loud is too timid of a film to be a great one. But if it falls well short of its potential, it certainly spies some interesting things on the way down. It Might Get Loud gathers Jack White, Jimmy Page, and The Edge for an epic jam session, which is the kind of thing you can do for shits and giggles when your last name is Guggenheim.

The idea of these three titans of rock together in the same room is enough to send a pleasurable shiver down any music fan’s spine. After all, we are talking about three men who are responsible for some of the loudest rudest most exciting music to surface in the mainstream. So why is it then that the movie feels so, diligently well… polite.

It Might Get Loud doesn’t just avoid conflict, it makes mind boggling contortionist like movements to do so. Just as an example, The Edge is a guitarist who incorporates more effects work and distortion into his playing then just about anyone else. We cut from to a shot of The Edge demonstrating his techniques and vast array of equipment to one of Jack White, ranting (as Jack White is want to do) about how technology is the devil and destroys music. Now, perhaps as these two diametrically opposed players are about to be in the same room, it would not be too much to hope that they will discuss their opposing view points. They never do. Not even mentioned.

Now look, I’m not expecting Jack White to suddenly hit The Edge with a chair, or for The Edge to start reading choice excerpts of “Hammer Of The God’s” to Page in a mocking tone. But some acknowledgement, let alone discussion of their differing philosophies, might have made the movie, well interesting. While the joint interview is something of a bust (Not entirely, I mean sometimes interesting things happen by accident, its just the probabilistic result of putting these three in the same room) the film fairs much better in its portrait of the three musician’s as individuals.

Intercut with the group interview, are profile pieces which allow the musicians to tell their stories in their own words, and end up feeling as personal as the group interview feels aloof. Page’s gives a moving telling of his journey from bored and rich session musician to Rock God. The Edge anchor’s U2’s music in the heart of the Irish Troubles, reconnecting the music of U2 with its soul, which can often get lost in all the messianic posturing of Bono, and bombast of the group as a whole. And Jack White gets the opportunity to spin an unbelievable amount of blarney. White is as good at self mythologizing as he is at playing music, if not better. And he’s damn good at playing music. At the end, the differences in style, era, and philosophy, mean the three principles of It Might Get Loud, can do little other then stare politely at one another. As a summit it fails. But as an intimate look behind the personas, it succeeds much better then expected.

Somebody Asked Me To Be An Expert In Something Part 6: Gone Baby Gone

(Previous Somebody Asked Me To Be An Expert In Something were part of a Film Noir and then Neo Noir series that I was asked to help program and host. Starting with this entry, I am now the sole programmer, and the films will no longer be just crime films. Once again this is written for speech so I apologize for any irregularities of cadence)

(I'm not going to lie its been pretty f-ing cool seeing these around town)

Dennis Lehane has gotten unusually lucky with his adaptations. Clint Eastwood did a fine job bringing his Mystic River to the screen, and just this year Scorsese delivered a fantastic adaptation of his Shutter Island. And yet I’d argue that out of those rather heavy hitting directors Ben Affleck has done the best job of bringing Lehane’s singular tone to the screen.

Unlike the other films made from his work, Gone Baby Gone is an adaptation of one of the Kenzie and Genarro books that make up the core of Lehane’s fiction. The five novels follow the two private eyes through the Boston underworld with a uniqueness of both setting and character that manages to set them apart from the glut of Private Eye novels.

Patrick Kenzie isn’t a bruised white knight like Phillip Marlowe. He’s not a smooth operator like Dashell Hammet’s continental op. Nor is he even a particular brilliant detective. He’s a smartass, whose managed to keep his good heart despite all the evidence the world has shown him. Casey Affleck gives nepotism a good name, bringing him to life with all of his conflict and wit intact. As does Michelle Monaghan as Genaro. Though if the film has a flaw its that its more of a Kenzie film. Mostly for narrative reason’s a slight change is made to series mythology and Genarro is made something of an outsider, so there’s someone there to have exposition delivered to. The problem is that it ends up making her feel a little less then a full on partner and sidelines her for far too much of the runtime.

On the whole though casting is one of the film’s strongest suits. Ed Harris gives one of his strongest performances in years, Morgan Freeman playing not so much against type but to it gives a great twist on his normal persona, Amy Ryan gives a career best performance. And perhaps most gratifyingly the under used Amy Madigan finally gets a role to sink her teeth into. Much of the rest of the cast is filled out by natives, which lends the film a realism that makes other gritty Boston crime films like The Departed, feel glamorized. No matter how intense Scorsese got, when you see an old man smoking through his tracheotomy is the type of image that you don’t get from central casting.

Most of these novels aren’t “who dunnits”. That’s not to say that Lehane doesn’t write some excellent mysteries into them. But the center of the books are always around a moral question. The question at the heart of each Dennis Lehane novel isn’t “Who kidnapped the heiress?” Or “Who has the money” but “How can I wake up and look at myself in the mirror?”

The fact that Ben Affleck has the talent, or even the inclination to address such a question may be surprising to those who know him best as the dopey would be matinee idol he was at the beginning of the decade, and not the talented character actor he has proven himself to be before and afterwards. It’d be easy enough to credit this to the fact that Affleck grew up in the neighborhoods and around the people that Lehane writes about. His familiarity and eye for people certainly adds a certain lived in feel to the film and his second film The Town coming out in a couple of weeks, returns him to this comfortable territory. But that’s certainly not the only thing Affleck brings to the table. Without giving away too much of the plot, there are scenes in here that could come out from a horror film, and scenes that could come out of a buddy comedy, and the way Affleck is able to juggle these tones both the grotesque and the light proves him to be a versatile skilled director. Though his next film The Town is based upon a much weaker novel, I’m looking forward to seeing what Affleck can do with it.

While this is the most recent film that we’ve shown so far in this series, Gone Baby Gone feels like a film from a different era. It’d be easy to imagine it as a lost film of the seventies from someone like Michael Ritchie or William Friedkin. It’s a dark film that asks hard questions and doesn’t bother with easy answers. In other words it treats it’s audience like adults. And a filmmaker whose willing to do that is a valuable one indeed.

This is a dark film, but its an honest one.

Christopher Nolan Blogothon Day 6: The Dark Knight

This review was delayed by unavoidable, Inception based detours. I hope you'll forgive me.


Lets get this out of the way. The Dark Knight is a pretty terrific film that has inspired some pretty dreadful film criticism. I hardly need to reiterate the “Shut up! No You Shut Up!” tenor that the debate around The Dark Knight took. I will only note that, the old maxim that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” Has proven true. And if the arguments or lack there of around The Dark Knight where vaguely disheartening, the storm in a teacup brewing around Inception has been down right depressing. Showcasing film criticism at its most solipsistic and least helpful. Less like watching a snake eat its own tail. More like watching a snake chomp down on another snakes tail only victim bite down on the attackers tail. A brutal ugly neverending loop that you just wish some sensible person would come in and stop.

Its one thing to have a considered oppositon to a movie, and I certainly begrudge no one for it. But when you build a review on posturing, and then a review of the review that was based on posturing. Well that way lies madness.

Still a movie like The Dark Knight should invoke passion, as all great works of art should. And yes I just said it. Call it fanboy hyperbole if you want but I will maintain that The Dark Knight is a legitimately great film. A superlative case of big budget filmmaking, with a grace and economy of storytelling, something real on its mind, and style to spare. Like all great movies it burns with something to prove.

There’s a lot to talk about. While Batman Begins was firmly a comic book movie, I’m certainly not the first to point out that The Dark Knight plays a lot more like Heat or The Departed then it does say Sam Raimi’s Spiderman or Bryan Singer’s X-Men. Those films for all the “realism” of their leather suits and “genetically altered” rather then radioactive spiders, take place in at the very least a heightened reality. Raimi really embraced the comic bookiness of it, and if you take a shot each time there’s a shot of a concerned citizen framed in a dutch angle, pointing off screen shouting “Look there’s Spiderman!” you will get very drunk, very quickly.

Nolan’s Gotham is a place which despite its flourishes, we can readily accept as real. Which puts us in a very different head space indeed. And so setting aside for a moment, the fantastic set pieces, The Mephistophelian dilema’s, and great character work by Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, and er Eric Roberts (?) and Tiny Lister (?!?!??). Lets take a look at the what Nolan does with this realism.

Over the course of my revisitation of Nolan’s career I’ve noted that all of his films revolve around two personalities who though magnetically opposed end up defining each other. The other thing that I had less formed in my mind at the beginning of the rewatch, is Nolan’s love of symbols. He loves to drop things in casual conversation, signifiers that seem small but turn out crucial. His characters carry totems, revisit places and things in almost fetishtic ways. And The Dark Knight is his grand statement on that.

In a much less long winded way, If Batman Begins was a film that featured Iconography, The Dark Knight is about Iconography. I touched on this in my Batman Begins review, but if Batman is a symbol, what does he symbolize. There are those who read The Dark Knight as an apologists case for the Bush Administration. But he’s hardly a straight up symbol of the right. Witness him beating the ever living tar out of Reagan’s America (as symbolized by Superman) in The Dark Knight Returns. Something tells me that Grant Morrison, giving that he’s a Chaos Magick practioner who advocates recreational drug use would have very little to say to Karl Rove at a cocktail party. And lets not forget that Glycon’s number one adherent himself Alan Moore penned what many consider THE definitive issue about the two.

My point is everyone from Sean Hannity to a man who worships a snake see something in Batman. He’s a big enough symbol to encompass multitudes of interpretation.


And if Batman is a big enough symbol to encompass everything. Well then that makes The Joker a big enough symbol to negate everything.

The thing that makes the Ledger’s Joker so amazing is the way he manages to encompass just about every aspect of a character who has been interpreted so many different ways its almost impossible to keep count. Is he Grant Morrison’s persona shifting chameleon (Note the way he mocks Nolan’s obsession with trauma, providing multiple choices)? Yes. Is he Jack Nicolson’s sadistic clown? Yes. Is he Alan Moore’s tragic figure, striving and failing to prove he’s not alone in his desperation? Yes. Is he Frank Miller’s great other, the unstoppable force to Batman’s immovable object? Emphatically Yes (I think if you read Dark Knight Returns, you’ll see this as the most direct antecedent). Anything that anybody has ever had to say about the character is somehow embodied in Ledger’s performance. And he does so with a hypnotic swagger.

But Its not the swagger that makes The Joker great. If Nihlisitc verve, was all there was to the film, then The Dark Knight would be as shallow as its harshest critics make it out to be. What makes Ledgers performance incredible are those two or three lone moments when that mask slips just a little, and true madness, and true desperation slip through. The way he stops mid monologue at the mafia meeting and says “I’m not crazy.” That “Look AT ME!!!” during his newscast, and most of all that look of desperation bordering on sorrow, when the citizens of Gotham make the most out of their only turn to prove him wrong. The pain that comes when he realizes that a bit of good and morality can hold sway. Well its frankly Miltonesque.

And yes, I said that about a comic book movie.

Christopher Nolan Blogothon Day 5: The Prestige

I reviewed The Prestige last year as one of my ten best of the decade. And everything I had to say about it, still stands. So instead I decided to focus on the film's remarkable opening sequence which I consider a personal all time favorite. There's so much information packed into it, I see something new each time I watch it.

The opening line of The Prestige is as much a challenge as a question. "Are You Watching Closely?" So much of modern cinema is an almost aggressively passive experience, dedicated to going down as smoothly as possible. This is not Nolan's cinema, he wants you out of your default mode. Are you watching closely? You had better...

Because here comes the detail. Even in a shot as simple as this there are many layers. Look at the way it echoes the final shot. Particularly given the fact that we later learn that all these birds are being kept for death. The more times you watch The Prestige the more you find that Nolan was really being upfront about what was going on all along. The themes of doubles, is present from the beginning and echoed in about every story line in the film. Which of these birds will be "The one in the box." and which will be the one on the stage.

In his review of Inception, Ebert mentioned that Michael Caine now appears wiser then everybody else in a film just by appearing on screen. He's the perfect man to anchor such a tricky film.

If I may once again borrow from Ebert, "The Law Of economy of characters" here's the first clue you really miss. The law of economy of characters states that since actors are expensive, if an actor is featured in a shot they must be important. Therefore this little girl must be important. And yet by the time the implications of Caine sharing a scene with her should sink in. Say an hour into the film, you've completely forgotten about her. Its a neat sleight of hand, introducing the key to the whole thing, and then moving it out of sight knowing you're about to be distracted.

Our first look at Angiers. In a cruciform from the beginning. More symbols more coding. If there's a more obvious symbol for self sacrifice it doesn't come immediatly to mind. And you miss it. Again.

Our first look of the stars sharing the space. I just think that's a hell of a shot.

Our first disguise which becomes one of the main motifs of the film. Once again, a prime example of Nolan playing fair. We know Borden is a master of disguise from the beginning, and yet we just miss it.

This too is just one hell of a image.

Once again you've got to give it Nolan. I don't think anyone sees anything except precisely what Nolan wants you to see here. But when you watch the scene with context later, the same actors and the exact same reactions produce a hugely different effect. There's no cheating here.

(So now we're leaving the opening proper, but I would like to peek a head just a few minutes to marvel at the economy of The Prestige).

Seriously, that's the sequence of shots. I mean that's just down right brazen. And people STILL miss the implications of Caine with the girl.

Nolan does have true grace as a storyteller. I mean here we are in a flashback contained in a journal being read in a flashforward, and not for a second are you ever lost in that labyrinth.

And the last piece of the puzzle, the double life. Borden basically comes out and explains what he's doing. And you don't see "The Prestige" until Nolan wants you too. And I mean just look at that shot, just look at it. There's so much detail so much information. There's a wealth of detail in Nolan's shots that would make Gilliam jealous.

Christopher Nolan Blogothon Day 4: Batman Begins

In many ways Batman Begins is a victim of its own success. I clearly remember being absolutely enthralled by it on my first viewing and one needs only to look back on the enthusiastic reviews to see just what a chord the film struck.

And yet, the film is doomed to be over shadowed by its younger brother. The Dark Knight is a film in which genre cinema itself is pushed to its very breaking point. Incorporating real moral and ethical dilemmas, as well a thorough deconstruction of its characters in the quickest two and a half hour film ever made. Batman Begins, on the other hand, is a film in which Batman fights a bunch of ninjas.

With Batman Begins the mission was clear, restore dignity to The Dark Knight, after Joel Schumaker and company made him look a little less classy then a fifty year old floorshow dancer from Reno. All glitter turned rancid.

And at this task Batman Begins succeeds with flying colors. I think part of the reason is that Begins shows a Batman who American filmgoers had genuinely never seen before. While the West Batman drew clearly on the goofy ass silver age comics, and the Burton films drew partially off of the Frank Miller/Denny O Neil era (Though to be fair I think you can basically draw a direct line from Miller’s Batman to Ledger’sBut more on that later…_). Nolan’s Batman draws heavily on Grant Morrison’s interpretation of the character.



For those not currently reading monthly comics (and lets face it you’re not missing a lot) Morrison is in the middle of doing what he has openly admitted he hopes will be the definitive Batman story. And to give credit where its due, despite the problems I’ve had with just about everything else Morrison has written, he’s doing a pretty damn good job of it.

To the question of who is Batman? A question that has had plenty of answers from the grim avenger of his early days, to the psychedelic adventurer of the fifties and sixties, to the globe trotting swashbuckler of the O Neil era, to the Nietzchien strong man of Miller. Morrison provides a simple answer.

Batman is the man who thinks of everything.

Like I said, I’m summing up in a sentence what Morrison has been exploring the implications of for hundreds, if not thousands, of pages. But damned if its not convincing. To a certain extent it has always been at the root of the character, think even to the West days with The Bat Shark Repellent. But Morrison takes it to a new level. Painting Batman as a kind of zen warrior, so dedicated to his ideal, that he has turned his own personality into a living weapon.

And while Nolan’s Batman is still green enough to get caught unaware. It seems clear that he’s well on his way to achieving such status, experiencing things that take him far beyond the level of human endurance both physically and mentally.

The difference between the two takes is that Nolan sees where this might be a bad thing.

Because if Nolan’s heroes are defined by their inability to move on in their life. Always shaped by a single event in the past well then brother, Batman is basically the definitive version of that.

Also surviving the transistion is the villain versus society motif, this time with the villain literally wanting to destroy said society on a literal rather then metaphorical level. As well as the dependant relationship between the two. Bruce finds in Ras a true father figure, and its clear that Ras sees in him a true successor. When Bruce refuses at the last moment, the hurt that Neeson displays has a realness, to it that sticks to the film, one that is unfortunately not as well capatilized upon as it should.

Because even without looking at its younger brother Batman Begins is a flawed film. There is of course the weak central performance by Katie Holmes. The action is far too influenced by the Greengrass shaky cam style, and Nolan is clearly uncomfortable employing it, as it lacks all the clarity and genuine propulsion of his style. And while the need to scale back is understandable after the gaudy nightmare wrought by Schumaker, and for the most part Nolan does a commendable job of it, there are a few cases where the film backs down just a bit too much, as in its depiction of the Scarecrow. Which based on some of the Akiraesque production design that leaked out, was originally conceived as a whole lot more ambitious. Though it should be noted that Cillian Murphy does a more or less perfect job as Dr. Crane. Cold enough to do terrible things, but smug enough to get a real sense of enjoyment out of doing so.

Still despite its flaws and occasional missteps Batman Begins remains one hell of a watch. And a firm reclaiming of a potent myth, with a real understanding of what makes it work. Of course, on his next time out Nolan would push things much further.

Christopher Nolan Blogothon Day 3: Insomnia

The first film for a major studio is a hurdle that has left many a promising young filmmaker broken and bloody at its base. There are bodies among that foundation, and the pressure of that first film with money, and studio executives have destroyed more promising talents then drugs, alcohol, and money combined.

Navigating the waters of a major studio picture for a first timer can make the Strait of Messina look easy to navigate (Lit Nerd humor… so sorry). You have to keep your idenity and still prove you can play ball. Turn in a saleable product that’s not just rote boilerplate. Engage yourself with material you didn’t develop. Prove you’re enough of a professional to make something for hire. And yet prove you’re enough of an artist so it doesn’t look as if you did.

The most shocking thing about Insomnia is how much of a piece it looks with his other work. Its a remake of someone else’s work, true. And as a star vehicle made from a respected foreign source, its pretty much the definition of a safe bet. So some might take my claims as just auteurist wankery. But Insomnia remains instep with every aspect of Nolan’s signature that we’ve been discussing. And if nothing else, the material turns out to be wildly suited to Nolan’s particular talents.

Briefly like all Nolan protagonists Will Dormer, a cop investigating the murder of a yong girl in Alaska, in is unable to move on from, in this case two central events. The first the planting of evidence which is fueling a Internal Affairs investigation against him back on the main land. The second, comes when he first shoots then covers up the death of his partner. Who Dormer just happened to have learned was cooperating with said Internal Affairs investigation. Was the shooting accidental? Not even Dormer seems to be sure, though Nolan certainly gives him more of the benefit of the doubt then the Swedish version does. The only person who does seem sure, is the murderer who Dormer is hunting, and witness Dormer kill his partner.

The Killer is of course Robin Williams, who burns up so much good will with all the “Old Dogs” he stars in, that when he does turn in a genuinely good performance, he tends to be underrated. You can see Nolan beginning to play with some of the ideas he brought to his take on the Joker. As Dormer remarks during his the autopsy scene, Williams has “crossed the line and didn’t even blink.” He’s passed beyond not beyond, as the old cliché goes “good and evil” but pettiness. To quote another Nietzchian chestnut, he’s a man who the abyss has stared back at. All he lacks is the Mephistolian swagger that Ledger gave the Joker. Williams and Nolan paint him as a pathetic little man. Who just happens to have an actual monster just under the skin.

And once again, Nolan brings the theme of codependency between the two. While the symbiosis between Cobb and The Young Man, in Following, and Teddy and Leonard in Memento, was at least partially consensual. Granted with one half of the partnership holding much more information then the other. The “partnership” in Insomnia is one in which the two parties are continuously trying to turn the tables on one another. The mystery in Insomnia is solved less then halfway through the film. The question the film then poses is not so much “Who Done It?” but “Who can live with it?”

And to Nolan’s credit, he leaves it up in the air as long as he can.

Though not as personal of a film as Memento, Insomnia does act as a showcase for Nolan’s strengths. As in all of his films he comes up with some arresting imagery. Most startling the reoccurring motif of the juxtaposition of an extreme close up of a piece of fabric being stained with blood, and the wide open vistas of the Alaskan wilderness. His work as a stylist comes through in more subtle ways as well. The way he heightens the Foley and the lighting, making everything more abrasive, but just this side of noticeable, in all but a few key scenes. It also shows Nolan’s gift for geography, used best during a log chase, that proved well before The Dark Knight that Nolan could direct a hell of an action scene.

Also showcased is Nolan’s underrated eye for casting. There is the coaxing of the aforementioned great performance by Robin Williams. But also the use of the great Nicky Katt, the underused Maura Tierney, as well as one of the few Hillary Swank performances that doesn’t totally miscast or misuse her. Harnessing her boyish “Golly Shucks” persona better then just about anyone not named Clint Eastwood or Kimberly Swank.

Standing in the center of all of this is Al Pacinio. Who I have somewhat conspicuously not mentioned much. This is, shall we say, the least embarrassing of Pacino’s performances once the “Hoohah’s” really sunk their teeth into him. Which is yes I know just about the very definition of faint praise. Still in all fairness there are couple of scenes where he absolutely brings it and only one, where he takes a girl he’s questioning on a joyride, where he actually embarrasses himself.

Insomnia has plenty of detractors, some who accuse it of watering down its harsh source material (some what valid), acting as a star vehicle (less valid) and squandering Nolan’s talents (invalid).

Still for all its flaws, Insomnia marked Nolan as someone all too rare. A filmmaker fully capable of making a film worthy of serious consideration inside the Hollywood studio system.

Christopher Nolan Blogothon Day 2: Memento

It was Paul Schrader who (in)famously stated that “Film Noir should be viewed as a set of aesthetics.” And this is a message that the Neo Noirs, both the sun drenched films of the sixties and seventies, and their more hyperactive brethren that sprouted in the wake of Pulp Fiction, have embraced fully.

The statement has always struck me as more then a little bunk. Film Noir is more then a grouping of shadows, overripe women, and cigarette smoke. Should any doubt arise just compare the likes of Chinatown which is plugged directly into the root of Noir’s dark power, and something like The Long Goodbye, which merely cheekily comments on it. Take something like U Turn, which for all of its fun, is at the end of the day merely playing with some iconography and compare it with Memento and you’ll get the same difference. The difference in short, between art and exercise.

You can see it in films like Out Of The Past, The Set Up,The Naked Kiss its more then style, there’s a deep wounded heart at the core of each of these films.

As it is in Memento.

Memento is at its core a film about people who are profoundly broken. Not just Leonard, the damned protaginist, who spends his days like Sissyphus with that damn boulder of amnesia crushing him again and again, but Carrie Anne Moss’s damaged barmaid, and Joe Palantino’s vile Teddy. All are people so badly fractured is it any wonder that the film they star in becomes fractured as well?

I mentioned before that all of Nolan’s protagonists are defined by their inability to move on from one central event. Leonard is the epitome of this. In Leonard’s case this is literal as well as figurative. Memento tells the story of a man unable to make new memories after a brutal attack on himself and his wife, which left her dead. Or so he tells himself. He drifts through the land like an angry ghost. His quest for the truth is almost absurdist, its easy to think of the type of film say Bunuel would have made about a detective who can’t remember. But Nolan is too much the humanist, to see the joke in the absurdity, and combined with Pierce, creates a character whose truly haunting. Leonard is a grieving monster, more then he can know. And there are scenes that just break your heart, as when he recreates, his dead wives presence with a crack whore, so he can get literally one second of respite.

Memento is of course most famous for its non linear structure. But far from the gimmick it is sometimes written off as, it’s a brilliant way to communicate what Leonard experiences. When compared to Following, whose non linear technique was clearly being used just to keep crucial bits of information unclear, it becomes clear that Memento could truly be no other way.

Memento is brilliantly written, beautifully shot, and skillfully directed. And yet it’s a film that stolidly refuses to stop at the surface. In the fearless way it follows through on its implications, Memento becomes a film that aims at the heart. And it hits its mark.

Memento is more then a mere set of aesthetics.

Its great noir.

The Secret Of Kells

(Myself while watching The Secret Of Kells)

Really I don’t have much more to say then that.

The Secret Of Kells is pretty freaking mind blowing.

A beautiful, painstaking film, that manages to take most of the things I love, Catholic theology, pagan mythology, 2D animation, Irish History, and blend them into a finished product so beautiful that it actually makes my eyes hurt.

The Book Of Kells, for those who don’t know. Is a Copy of the New Testament that is frankly one of the greatest things western civilization has ever produced. A work of such painstaking detail and beauty that it boggles the mind. You have to remember that this was when the practice of “writing shit down” was itself, considered a novelty. The Secret Of Kells, acts as a kind of secret origin for that work. Telling the story of a young monk, Brendan, living in Ireland during the time of the Viking raids and his troubled apprenticeship to the holder ot the book. As the Vikings draw nearer, the film follow’s Brendan out into the woods as he gathers materials for the books making. And encounters many of the spirits of the pagan spirits of the woods, both good and evil.

The Secret Of Kells is one of those films that’s damn near impossible to write about, because to appreciate its technique you just have to see it. Just as an example; I’ve heard many compare this to the work of Gendy Tartakovsky. There are some concepts like the animalistic Vikings that are very much in this school. So on a very superficial level I can see how you’d think that.





But in motion that’s not what the film looks like at all. Its one of those blessed rare cases where the style lends the film substance. Incorporating the ruthlessly two dimensional style and brutal lack of perspective of pre Renaissance Medieval art in a way that looks like something that I can confidently say, you’ve never seen before. It's representational art in only the most rudimentary sense, Really its iconography and its beautiful.

It’s the sort of thing that could ONLY be done in 2D animation. As much as I love Pixar, there’s a certain spontaneity and life that can only come from 2D animation. And the eagerness with which people are discarding it saddens me. Even something like Princess And The Frog is at its heart a nostalgia piece. Its behind glass atop a Lucite block. The Secret Of Kells lives and breaths.

To call the film beautiful is not enough. Every corner of every frame is filled with the sort of detail and grace that makes a veteran animation fan weep.

Calling the film merely hypnotic would be doing it a disservice. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a completely beautiful visceral experience that as an animation fan made my brain go “SQUUUUUEEEEE” the whole way through. But its much more then that. It’s a startlingly weighty meditation on Cultural Heritage and Responsibility. It’s a film that provides no easy answers. No cut and dry villains, no morals. The Book Of Kells is content to be what it is, a beautiful, utterly stunning experience.

Match Point

And while we’re on the subject of Ripley, as far as I’m concerned the closest anyone has come to capturing him on film. Staying very true to his elusive character. This Despite the considerable handicap that Match Point is not a Ripley Adaptation.

Match Point like Ripley is a tale of relentless social climbing and John Rhys Meyer is the perfect climber. And in his relentless violence, hunger, elegance, and above all his serenity, he makes the perfect monster.

Chris is a blank slate giving off only an air of faintly reptilian malice. Note his love of Opera and classic literature he always reads, and the frustration he exhibits with both. Is he trying to better his taste? I don’t believe so I think it is much more likely that he is trying to appear like he is bettering his tastes so that when the time comes “He can have the most interesting talk about Dostoevsky.

Match Point’s critical reputation has never been sturdy. It was hailed as a return to form at its Cannes release and then quickly discarded as “Just another Woody Allen film.” (Though I have a lot more tolerance for latter day Woody Allen then most) It was criticized as too long, too reminiscent of Crimes And Misdemeanors, and too Allen. I still think its the best thing he’s done in years.

There is a key difference between Crimes And Misdemeanors and Match Point. Landau’s ordering Huston’s death is so removed from him that it’s an abstraction, and crucially the death is used to keep the status quo. Huston threatens Landau’s status, his respectability, and the quiet comfortable life he has built up for himself. His actions are defensive, while Chris is definitely on the offensive, like Ripley he kills not out of passion, or revenge, or in defense, even defense of something as shallow as one’s image, he kills because it is terribly convenient for him to do so.

Match Point is also very much a post-Theistic film for Allen, God and religion are given merely a few derisive shots. Crimes and Misdeamors on the other hand is Bergmanesque (right down to the title) in it’s preoccupation with God and his silence. As Ebert puts it in his excellent analysis of the film “

In this darkest and most cynical Allen comedy -- yes, comedy -- he not only gets away with murder but even finds it possible, after a few months, to view the experience in a positive light. If as he says, the eyes of God are on him always, what does that say about God?

” again

“..Match Point, which premiered at Cannes 2005. The new film resembles Crimes and Misdemeanors in the way it involves a man who commits murder to cover up an affair, but Match Point is more firmly a film noir, and Crimes is frankly a complaint against God for turning a blind eye on evil.”

Again

“Judah discusses his problem with his brother Jack (Jerry Orbach), who has connections with the Mafia. "They'll handle it," Jack tells him. Handle? "I can't believe I'm talking about a human being," Judah says. "She's not just an insect to be stepped on. ..."Yet he steps on her.” And finally “The implications of Crimes and Misdemeanors are bleak and hopeless. The evil are rewarded, the blameless are punished, and the rabbi goes blind.”

Yet Match Point if nothing else is even bleaker. While Judah is a man who is pushed into evil, and finds he’s more comfortable there then he thought he would be, Match Point is about a man who never quite leaves the pool. Even in the relatively benign beginning of the film he has the air of someone who is always “on” and as with Ripley we are never sure if what is behind the mask, if there is indeed anything there at all. Note Chris’s reaction when he shoots the old lady, one could read it as despairing and remorseful, but to me it reads more like someone who thinks that at this moment they “should” be despairing and remorseful and is going through the motions of it, even if there is no one to go through the motions of it to. His reaction is not unlike that of a man going through the after effects of a tremendous adrenaline rush and while Crimes and Misdemeanors toyed with the idea that God is watching everything and is keeping silent for his own reasons, Match Point in its marvelous denouement (the bit that really makes it a masterpiece in my book) jettisons the notion entirely. First with Chris’s conversations with the “ghosts” in his kitchen when he coolly brushes off their proclamation of doom, and secondly when it seems that divine intervention actually has occurred when one of the policemen investigating the case has an epiphany only to have it brushed under the rug by good old human luck.

This film is a marvel to view a Swiss watch of a movie where each piece on its own is a work of art. To quote Ebert yet again “One reason for the fascination of Woody Allen's Match Point is that each and every character is rotten. This is a thriller not about good versus evil, but about various species of evil engaged in a struggle for survival of the fittest… Even sweet little Chloe basically has her Father buy Chris for her.”

Allen’s eye for casting has always been one of his most underrated attributes as a director, and Match Point is one of his best cast films. Not just Rhys, and Allen’s muse of the week Johanson, whose languid sensuality has never been put to better use and whose youth and vulnerability Allen uses to startling effect. But the bored upper class brood they attempt to prey on is equally excellently cast. From Brian Cox’s doddering yet powerful patriarch, Matthew Goode’s charming mixture of aristocratic disdain, entitlement and alcoholism, Emily Mortimer’s spoiled sweetness, and Penelope Wilson’s hell bitch, shocking after her turn in Shaun Of The Dead.

Allen steps up his game as well. Shooting things at a formalist, nearly Kubrickian reserve, though getting his fingernails surprisingly dirty when it comes to sex and violence, two things he’s always been oddly shy about showing onscreen (A sex scene set during a rainstorm is down right steamy). Its Allen’s most sensual film by far. Aided and complimented nicely by Remi Adefarasin beautiful but understated cinematography.


















One key difference between Ripley and Match Point, is while Ripley argued that American’s had far surpassed our European cousins in our ruthlessness and corruption, Match Point argues that the Europeans still retain the crown in this particular field. Nola like so many visiting girls in Henry James novels cannot survive when the British start to move in on her, despite her reasonable prowess. Look as well, to the construction of the film, it is Allen’s longest and many critics groused that it was too long. I disagree there is not so much as an ounce of fat on this script it’s propulsive and economic. Look at the first meeting between Nola and Chris the entire movie is summed up in under a minute of screen time. Two predators meet and size each other up, only one has horribly underestimated the other, and soon suffers the consequences. It is nothing short of brilliant. Just like the film.