Coming down from the nice high of Star Trek

Time to take a break from Relapse, which I'm seriously on the verge of playing out a mere five hours after it leaked----I'm loving the record that much.



One of the latest television commercials for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek featured a critic's quote to the effect of "This year's Iron Man!," a claim that actually underplays how great of a time Trek is, how well it welcomes newcomers while giving longtime Trekkers plenty to love. Iron Man, basking in the undeniable-cool of Robert Downey, Jr., had all the potential in the world to not alienate those who didn't grow up with the superhero's comic books; Star Trek, on the other hand, with its mostly B-list cast and polarizing source material, could've left crossover audiences in a solar dustball. Totally not the case. Not being a Trek head myself, how would I know that the film so successfully pledges allegiance to the franchise's loyal minion? By the enthusiastic applause and feminine squeals elicited from the souls of the middle-aged fanguys crowding the AMC this afternoon. The truly impressive part: I was right there with them joy-wise, wrapped up in every Enterprise missile battle, James Tiberius Kirk one-liner, and inexpressive emotion delivered so effectively by Zachary Quinto (Heroes) as half-Vulcan/half-human Spock.

Star Trek is, bottom line, a fast, loose, smart two-hour spectactle that washes over your senses while you're in its presence, and then, unless you're an uber-fan wearing a "Live Long and Prosper" t-shirt, leaves your memory bank without damaging anything. Breakneck fun, popcorn goodness. The plot involves an evil Romulan named Nero (played by an unrecognizable Eric Bana) who is out for revenge against Spock, who, decades later in the future, will inadvertently cause the destruction of the Romulan's homeland. Nero and his space-thugs are sent time-traveling through a black hole, first to do battle against the Starfleet's (Star Trek's version of the military) ships under the brief command of Captain George Kirk and then again 20-some-odd years later as Kirk's son, Jim (given tons of charming snark by Smokin' Aces co-star Chris Pine, surely bound to explode thanks to his work here), is a Starfleet cadet alongside a same-aged Spock and several other hotshot students on the U.S.S. Enterprise vessel.



If that's all a bit cloudy, it's most likely because you're entering this film's lexicon with little or no Star Trek mythology knowledge (or, I just explained the film terribly, either or). Which is fine, because Abrams and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (also the scribes behind Transformers) keep the franchise's narrative complexities at bay here, sprinkling the movie with tons of Easter eggs references and homages while ultimately reeling in Trek virgins with sheer visual pleasantry. The pace is snappy, the dialogue witty and lighthearted. The performances click on all cylinders from a cast of quite-likeable familiar faces (Harold & Kumar's John Cho, Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg, Alpha Dog's Anton Yelchin, Tyler Perry randomly). Even the potentially-confusing time travel plot device is far more tangible than expected.

And then there's the special effects, where Abrams and his behind-the-camera team excel. Each exterior spaceship shot looks unlike a video game, a stroke of CGI wizardry that thankfully comes only a week after the sketchy effects seen in the even-sketchier X-Men Origins: Wolverine. One minor moment, in particular, feels bone-crunchingly real----in an effort to save his family back on Vulcan as Nero is sending the land into a black hole of evaporation, Spock "beams" (Trek's means of body transportation from one location to another, the original Jumper trick decades before that shitty movie) back to Vulcan and corrals his parents, but as they're fleeing from a cave, we see a large pillar-statue falls to the floor on top of a running Vulcan man, and the impact is brutal. Blink and you'll miss it, but, if you catch it, the impact pummels.



Star Trek isn't without it's flaws, though. Pegg is totally underused as "Scotty," unfortunately stricken with marginally-humorous comic relief lines for the few scenes he does have, and the Nero character doesn't register enough on the "intimidating nemesis" scale. Nero isn't given much to do other than look aggravated and snarl fiery commands to his generic Romulan henchmen. He's a serviceable foe that operates more as a plot-mover than an actual living, breathing opposition that the audience fears. Orci and Kurtzman's script handles the U.S.S. Enterprise's crew so well, though, that the ho-hum nature of their enemies isn't a lasting party foul.

With Star Trek, the summer movie season has officially kicked into motion. That Wolverine flick made bagloads of money last weekend, sure, but the film itself isn't one that'll be praised for months, if not years, to come; Abrams' Star Trek most certainly is. It's made a believer out of yours truly....hell, I'm intrigued enough now to toss the entire Trek filmography into the Netflix and play catch-up. Millions of so-called "nerds" should now feel vindicated, the bullies and cool kids who once slapped them around both apologizing and requesting to borrow their former punching-bags' DVDs and VHS dubs.

Thanks to Abrams and company, we're all nerds this summer. And that's just wonderful.

Let's take a stab at discussing Martyrs, shall we?

There's a very thin line between being pretentious or intelligent. Beat your ideas over my head long enough and I'll slot you into the former adjective's lane and tune off. Try to pass off something that's really little more than sadistic manslaughter on screen as some form of high-art and I'll promptly laugh before shaking my head in disgust.

Which is why Pascal Laugier's Martyrs (2008, from France, but just released on unrated DVD here in America this week) is such a fascinating film, still bouncing around in my head a mere 16 hours since watching it for the second time last night, this time amongst daring friends. The film's second half is a true sucker punch, a midway tonal shift similar in the thinnest sense to that of Eli Roth's Hostel, when Roth's sick mind turned a funnier, raunchier Euro Trip clone into dare-to-watch torture. The switch-up in Martyrs is much beefier, and, frankly, vastly superior. A detour from a breakneck hybrid of elements of both supercharged Japanese-cinema horror elements and blood-drenched home invasion flicks into a somewhat-existential, slower-paced experiment in transfiguration.



Many who have seen Martyrs hate the latter section, feeling that the film jumps the shark once the tempo hits the brakes for more-patient anarchy. That opinion is horseshit to me, but understandable horseshit. Polarizing films aren't meant to please the world. Laugier, as proven in his pre-movie DVD introduction, never intended to make a crowdpleaser; the man had some truly compelling ideas about life, death, and humanity and went for broke with them. Does it all gel? Not exactly, but the overall product is so daring and unlike anything you've ever seen before that I can't see anybody declaring Martyrs anything less than a success. Even if you can't endure and shut it off before its devastating coda.

"Plot" is pretty meaningless in Martyrs, but for those wondering what the hell this film that I'm mentally invested in is about, here goes: 15 years ago, a little girl named Lucie escaped from a seedy, nightmarish building in which she was being held prisoner and tortured. Once she was discovered afte the escape, Lucie was placed in a home for troubled children, where she made only one friend, Anna. Flash-forward to the present, Lucie (played as an adult by the stunning and intense Mylene Jampanoi) bumrushes the family she believes to be responsible for what happened in her childhood and dispatches of them. Anna comes to help her cover up the scene, and from this point on the two girls unexpectedly ride a downward spiral into Hell.



Again, though, the plot here is merely a driving force for Laugier to tackle some deeper ideas, brutally cyncial thoughts that I won't delve into too deeply here (Martyrs is a film I want that I really want people to watch so we can discuss). The theme is right there in the film's title, however---martyrdom. Not the type of martyr you read about in books of religion, the people who killed themselves or were voluntarily murdered for a greater good. Laugier is concerned with a martyr as a "witness," as believed in Greek history. A person who, after enduring unfathomable degrees of pain and suffering, sees something that nobody else can.///// That's as far as I want to go, for now. I've got the feeling that after I watch this flick for a third time I'll want to write down my post-game thoughts here, spoilers and all. A sort of mental exercise, a one-man debate.

Where myself and some others who've seen Martyrs differ is that I never felt that Laugier's script was talking down to me, slapping my better judgment with pretentious bullshit. The IMDB.com message boards are loaded with commenters violently angry at this film, either labeling it "pure garbage" or that p-word again. Opinions are like the assholes who sign online just to comment negatively on something to start a message board pissing contest, of course, so I can't totally knock those folks. Completely disagree with them, though, is something I can do at will. Martyrs deserves respect and admiration off of sheer ballsiness alone, not to mention topical originality and visual panache.


Pascal Laugier

Some have argued that the characters in Martyrs are quite underdeveloped. Facet-less pawns in Laugier's game of sick chess. If any scene in the film counters this point with conviction it's Anna's attack on the unsuspecting family's quiet house. The insanely-massive shotgun blasts aren't shown in slow-motion; they're presented in real time, dropping the audience right headsmack into the scene with little set-up. That's exactly the degree of immediacy that Laugier, in my opinion, is trying to convey with the film as a whole. Putting us uncomfortably in the moment, so that we're susceptible to whatever he throws our way. A few flashbacks into Lucie's pre-teen captivity stint are intertwined, but even those are quick and unflinching. Also important, since these flashbacks explain everything about Lucie's present-day state that we need to know. And isn't that what character development is supposed to do?

The first time I watched it, Martyrs fucked with my head something proper. When I thought the story was heading in one direction, Laugier's script gave me the head-fake and headed for an uncontested touchdown. Confidently zigged when I expected it to conventionally zag. There's a plot turn signaled by Anna (played by exceptional actress Morjana Alaoui), who, by the way, is gorgeous in a total Dania-Ramirez-lookalike way) and a bathroom mirror that a million guesses never would've predicted. Later, as one character is repeatedly beaten down to a bruised, catatonic pulp, a line of any-other-filmmaker-would-stop-this-brutality-right-now is crossed and left in mushroom clouds of dust. By the time we're presented with a lightshow no doubt inspired by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Martyrs pushes itself beyond simple "horror." I won't say that it becomes an example of brilliant art, but the film does qualify for deserved post-viewing intellectual deliberation. The final scene is one of the more awesomely inconclusive things I've seen in I-don't-know-how-long.

Whether anybody pulls their trigger and seeks Martyrs out or not, I really can't concern myself with, or stress. It just pains me when people's only exposure to what horror films can truly accomplish is limited to that holding-your-hand-in-anxiety reaction their significant other emits while seated in a dark theater watching The Haunting in Connecticut. Give foreign genre films the likes of Martyrs a fair shot and you'll see just how thought-provoking and fearless this type of filmmaking can get, if created with no corporate interference and by skilled hands.

Having finally seen Martyrs, I'm feeling like a deer in headlights.

My own personal cinematic Holy Grail has been seized, experienced, endured. No more obsessive anticipation, no more worries that my expectations would go unmet. A mere three hours after purchasing this bad-boy, I've just watched Martyrs, and, I must say for the record, I don't know what to write. An instant kneejerk reaction seems ludicrous for a film this unrelenting and sense-cutting. I'm sure that I'm now an honest fan of Martyrs, but do I genuinely "like" it? I'm quite eager to show it to friends to get their responses, but do I really want to make my pals see me in some sadistic light?



Too much to mull over, sleep on. Honestly, I'm not going to delve into Pascal Laugier's film until after a second viewing. Hell, maybe not even until post-third time. I can confidently say, though, that no film had me questioning my own keen desire to watch it all the way through quite like Martyrs, wondering if there's something truthfully disturbed about me. That feeling crept up after first seeing Inside, but Inside (also a hardcore product of France's new wave of horror madness) is a film that I knew from jumpstreet that I really do love, a flick that I'll defend forever and lavish with critically-celebratory praise. Martyrs is so beyond the good-taste barrier that I don't feel right saying the same for it. At least not after having only seen the film once.

In continuation of that point, I can say that, for disclosure's sake, I like Inside much more than Martyrs, but that's not a slight against Martyrs at all. Martyrs isn't a film that you "like"; it's one that you experience, ponder, and then subsequently lose hope iin humanity over. And that, my friends, is what a balls-to-the-wall horror film is supposed to do.

But, man, that scene with the nailed-in helmet being ripped off the sacrificial, sliced-and-diced corpse-lady's head is absolutely rough stuff. And the post-title-card home invasion sequence is a sucker-punch of immense power. As for that third, and final, act.....did I really just watch that? Some dude actually came up with such insanity, and somebody let him film it? I'm impressed. Startled, and a little sickened, but really impressed.

Something tells me that I'll be rewatching this one before week's end, and then I'll have a long-winded, overly-wordy brainstorm session right here, for anybody's reading pleasure. Stay tuned.

The Guilt of an Incomplete Nerd

I'm getting more and more excited to see both X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Star Trek by the day, but I'm also feeling a bit bandwagon-rider-ish as a result. Thinking way too much about this, obviously. Just go watch the movies and be entertained. Spend your time and mental energy on more substantial matters, like becoming a millionaire.

Sorry....this is the questionable path that I've chosen.



This must be how all of my friends felt back when Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake came out in March of 2004, a time when you'd have regularly heard me preaching the lessons and facts surrounding George A. Romero's original film and its other installments. I was speaking on either deaf or disinterested ears, yet I still rambled endlessly. And those around me went to see the film, loved it, but came back to me with a "I felt like I wasn't fully enjoying it, though, since I'm not as schooled on the backstory as somebody like you is." The same can be said of my overdone obsession with Grindhouse during its unfortunate theatrical run. I was informing everybody with arm's reach on what "grindhouse" means exactly, and why the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino passion project was full of grainy shots, choppy editing, and wall-to-wall camp. Most could care less, while my main concern was to give heads the complete picture so that the Grindhouse experience could be appreciated to full capacity, rather than merely in-the-moment.

It's a bit like walking into a final exam with little-to-no knowledge on the content, only to find out that the test is open-book and a brainless chimp could ace that shit.

A great film is simply that: a great film. A piece of cinema that can be appreciated on a pure surface level. Deeper affinity is inevitable if you're an expert on the film's background or respective mythology, but such know-what isn't necessary. Dawn of the Dead was a live-wire thrill coaster in its own right, but I hold it closer to my heart than others because it pulled off the difficult task of paying reverential homage to Romero's work while creating its own believable world. I caught the "Gaylen Ross" store name reference while others may not have, and the quick cameos from Tom Savini, Ken Foree, and Scott Reiniger made me smile even though others didn't react.

I know the nuts-and-bolts of the X-Men/Wolverine history, but I'm nowhere close to being a "fanboy." So, before seeing the new Hugh Jackman-starring film this weekend, shouldn't I go on a reading binge at my local comic book store and become a true know-it-all? I feel like that'd make the viewing experience all the more fulfilling, and less of a pedestrian enterprise. And speaking of enterprises, I know infinitely less about the Star Trek legacy, yet I'll be first in line to see J.J. Abrams' franchise relaunch next Friday. Sure, I'm the exact type of person that the filmmakers' are hoping to attract----a non-fan who is attracted to popcorn excitement and badass special effects, as well as Abrams' good name. Guys like me are the ones who'll turn Star Trek into the money-making behemoth Paramount Pictures is hoping for.

Still, though, I can't shake this "impostor" feeling. A guilty sensation that will hit its fever pitch if I see even one audience member wearing a Captain Kirk t-shirt, or fake Spock ears. Worst case, I'll contort my fingers into the "Live Long and Prosper" hand-sign, since any dumbass can do that with ease. But I'll feel totally uninitiated. The way I'm feeling about the film right now, I wouldn't be surprised if I give my spot up on the ticket line to somebody who is clearly more of a Trekkie than I, which I'll discover thanks to incognito eavesdropping. "I can't wait to see if they truly capture the essence of the Klingons" would be one surefire giveaway. "Something tells me that this Anton Yelchin fella won't hold a candle to Walter Koenig" an even bigger clue.

What will somebody more like myself say? "I hope Zoe Saldana shows some skin!"

Odds are, I'm in the miniscule minority with this train of thought surrounding Hollywood's franchise reboots and remakes of genre classics. I'm perfectly fine with that. The most this reasoning will ever get me is a nod of respect from the geek community anyway. Such respect and $12 could buy me a Star Trek movie ticket, so who cares? Now, if I were currently dating a fangirl I'd really have a problem on my hands.

Netflix Fix -- Laid to Rest (2009)

As much as I consider myself to be a real "horror movie head," I also pride myself on the fact that I'm a realist. Not jaded by the trappings of the industry, and able to separate the good from the good-because-others-say-so-and-it-was-made-by-friends-or-colleagues. I get it, though. Working at a major lifestyle magazine for five years gives you a pretty clear perspective on politics and the influence of opinion. Doesn't make it right, but it's a reality that won't adjust itself any time soon.



For months now, I've read a slew of positive pre-release-buzz about a new slasher flick called Laid to Rest, written and directed by makeup effects veteran Robert Hall. The early word waa that the film was the next great slasher flick, one that'll reinvent the wheel and breathe new life into the stagnant horror subgenre. Similar to Adam Green's Hatchet back in 2007e major difference being that Laid to Rest is a straight-to-DVD release that's devoid of rampant tongue-in-cheek humor. Hatchet, on the flipside, was given a crickets-and-tumbleweeds limited theatrical run that only keen horror heads knew about. My biggest problem with Hatchet is that the tone of the film is way too hokey. Green worried so much about keeping the self-referential/'throwback-to-sleazy-'80s-slashers vibe intact that the film becomes more comedy than horror, and sadly the jokes are rarely very funny.

Hall's effort thankfully keeps the humor to a minimum. If I want to laugh, I'll watch a damn comedy; besides, not many can execute what Edgar Wright and company pulled off so perfectly with the horror/laugher hybrid Shaun of the Dead. Laid to Rest does have another big thing in common with Hatchet, unfortunately, and that's the feeling of "totally overhyped" it left me with as the final credits rolled. Which pains me, because Laid to Rest's trailer was an ass-kicker, a hopes-elevator that "promised" some serious carnage and style to spare. Expectations were higher than Cheech & Chong, but sadly the film let me down quicker than a concluding flight simulator. All gore, no point. Weakly drawn characters, and very little scares. A scorching-hot main girl (Bobbi Sue Luther) and a cool-looking, intimidating masked killer (called Chromeskull, a slightly-goofy yet memorable tag). Random characters wander in only to be killed off within minutes, which is fine for a slasher film but only when the entire proceedings are handled well. On the whole, Laid to Rest is not.

Chromeskull



Laid to Rest, while loaded with hardcore bloodshed and dismemberment, drops the ball more times than it scores. A few sudden murders did catch me off-guard, particuarly the death of actor Jonathan Schaech thanks to a thrown jagged-knife that splits his skull open from mouth to forehead. But nailing a few stomach-churning scenes isn't all that Hall was trying to accomplish; as heard on the DVD's "Laid to Rest: Postmortem" making-of special feature, he was looking to create a nostalgic '80s-slasher-revisited film full of intriguing characters and a strong mystery (Who is this girl who woke up in a coffin? What's her big secret, and why is Chromeskull so focused on killing her?). Could've fooled me. Laid to Rest feels more like a Saw entry than anything made two decades ago. And there wasn't one point where I genuinely cared enough about Luther's character to ponder her true identity. I'm glad I didn't, too, because the "reveal" that Hall's script cooked up is the lamest. "That's it?!" material. A tepid, forgettable ending.

It's a shame, because the moments that work in Laid to Rest show that Hall is more than capable with raw horror. Hopefully, he'll give the genre another try sooner than later and capitalize on the potential seen here.



As for this flick sparking the resurgence of the slasher genre.....mission failed. Isn't it sad that the best example of that subgenre in recent memory is Eli Roth's fake Thanksgiving trailer seen in Grindhouse? Barely two minutes long, yet Roth encapsulated all of the '80s-mood that these other full-lengths features can't completely manage. If Roth actually does make a feature-length Thanksgiving, that could be the great modern-day slasher movie that we've all been waiting for. Well, at least that I've been awaiting.

Bonus Thought: How about today's filmmakers concentrate on simply making a good slasher flick, rather than obsessing over this unnecessary need to reinstate the '80s? It's becoming such a crutch for otherwise-marginal films. Something's got to give.

The BW List: When Lame Movies Happen to Good Talent

Considering my current state of being, I'm the last person who should criticize somebody for "taking a paycheck." Accepting a gig that does little for his/her artistic sensibilities but goes a long way financially. We all need to pay the bills, keep the lights on, pad the bank accounts, rob our country blind. I get it. But for the objective onlooker, seeing people you respect do this never fails to sting. Disappointment is inevitable, not always branded with the unfair "sell-out" tag yet still looked down upon as a lapdog of sorts.

In the film world, this happens on a weekly basis. Actors and actresses you love pop up in shitty films, or obvious money-makers that you'd rather be subjected to a Lucio Fulci/Zombi drawn-out eye-gauging than ever voluntarily watch. Case in point: Leslie Mann co-starring in this weekend's 17 Again.



I haven't seen the film, nor do I ever plan on doing so. Yes, I'm aware that it currently stands at an unexpectedly respectable 65% on Rotten Tomatoes, but whatever. And I'm not blatantly hating on your boy Zac Efron here, either. Do I like the guy as a talent? Nope, but my total indifference to this pretty-boy-with-good-dance-moves-who-I-can't-sign-on-to-a-pop-culture-blog-and-not-see isn't the focal point of my 17 Again negativity. Rather, it's the tired, contrived Big/Vice Versa "age reversal" plotline. It's cheap, unoriginal, and, really, never that funny.



I'm sure that Leslie Mann will have some funny, or at least charming, moments in 17 Again, though. How can she not? The woman is naturally hilarious, one of Hollywood's funniest and most overlooked ladies. The rare case of nepotism that doesn't feel worthy of his/her success (she's married to comedy giant Judd Apatow). Just go watch Knocked Up again for proof, or even rewind back to Adam Sandler's Big Daddy, where her few scenes as the former Hooters girl all scored. She's someone who deserves a few leading roles in well-made films; granted, she seems to have one coming this summer with Apatow's Funny People, but that's simply another one with her husband. It's time that she stretches herself successfully into non-Apatow territory. 17 Again is a terrible place to start, despite the film's surefire prognosis. People will see her, laugh with her, root for her. But she deserves better.

Of course, I could be left with a pie in the face if 17 Again turns out to be universally loved. This is a kneejerk reaction, though, so if that does happen I'll totally admit defeat.

This all got me wondering, "What other talents that I love have appeared in films I had zero interest in ever seeing?" And from that inner thought comes this list of the examples that stand out most in my head. Worth noting: I've seen all of these films, which makes the bitterness all the more potent.



Chiwetel Ejiofor in Slow Burn (2005): Back in '05, the London-bred Ejiofor was on a nice track to stateside notoriety. His turns in the critically-hailed English films Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and Love Actually (2003) put him on the radar, leading to his hardly-recognizable villain work in John Singleton's well-received Four Brothers. But then came Slow Burn, a poorly-executed attempt to modernize the old "sleazy, sexy crime thriller" genre with a slumming-it Ray Liotta and LL Cool J trying out In Too Deep material again. Nothing in the film worked, and Ejiofor's "Ty Trippin" character suffered from more than just a terribly stereotypical name. As evidenced by his great work in 2006's Children of Men and 2007's American Gangster (not to mention his strong lead work in last year's slept-on Redbelt), Ejiofor has bounced back nicely. But his one major fuck-up still burns slowly in my brain.



Paul Rudd in Over Her Dead Body (2008): This one has tons in common with Leslie Mann's 17 Again. Rudd, like Mann, is an Apatow regular who always brings the goods, clocking in scene-stealers in everything from Anchorman to The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Even going back to the guy's rookie days with Clueless, Rudd has always been that co-star you can't get enough of and hope can one day become the leading man. Unfortunately, his agent agreed at the wrong time and sent him the script for Over Her Dead Body, an abysmal high-concept romantic comedy that actually co-stars American Pie's Jason Biggs, who has become a skidmark for every bad rom-com he's starred in over the last decade. In an effort to make Eva Longoria a movie-star, this piece-of-dung existed, and Rudd was its most painful-to-watch casualty. Like Ejiofor, thankfully, the man has recovered, proving he is in fact capable of picking strong lead role material with Role Models and I Love You, Man. If I were him, though, I'd find every existing print of Over Her Dead Body and stage a bonfire. Some things are best left forgotten.




Elisabeth Banks in Meet Dave (2008)/ Rosario Dawson in The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002): Signing on to a modern-day Eddie Murphy comedy has become the ultimate "taking a paycheck" job for some of Hollywood's most gifted comedic actresses. Later this year, the divine Kerry Washington will be the guy's latest victim, thanks to his next Brian Robbins-directed turd A Thousand Words. Until then, the worst example of Murphy's magnetic suck is a tie between Elisabeth Banks and Rosario Dawson, two ladies of equal awesomeness who couldn't avoid the pull. Dawson has the misfortune of being associated with Murphy's first genuine shitshow Pluto Nash, a science fiction debacle so atrocious that the mere mention of it inspires both guffaws and gagging. Six years later, Banks' Meet Dave bombed at the box office, a sacrificial lamb meant to remind us just how far Murphy's comedy has fallen. The sad part was that Meet Dave came at a high point in Banks' career, the same year as two of his biggest roles to date (Laura Bush in W. and the second title name of Zack and Miri Make a Porno). One can only hope that Murphy seeks out Katherine Heigl for his next project and leaves the likeable women alone.

Reconsidering Observe and Report again....somebody stop me

A second viewing of Jody Hill's Observe and Report is on the horizon. I can feel it. Any comedy that leaves me questioning certain scenes and debating within myself over what was real and what wasn't deserves some more business, especially considering that I can't recall any other comedy that has had such a puzzling, fascinating effect on me.



Am I overthinking this film a bit much? You could say so, but then you'd be a bit off in your assumption. Hill has gone on record about his direct intention to leave the audience confused as to what was meant as "funny" or "disturbing," so he'd surely smile at this. Besides, when is ever a bad thing to overthink a film? Even shit ones? Okay, paying too much mind to Beverly Hills Chihuahua would be a waste. I'll give you that. But Observe and Report is so unique and line-snapping in its tone that the viewer almost has to enter the theater with a free mind and a punching-bag of a brain.

While I'm still unsure as to why I found so much comedic pleasure in a scene where a naked man is gunned down at point-blank distance, it's the entire section of the film that includes the shooting that has me wondering. [POSSIBLE SPOILERS WARNING] Once Ronnie Barnhardt gets out of jail and reads the postcard from his former partner Dennis, Observe and Report strangley goes from Debbie Downer to visceral triumph, which I found myself a bit angry about the other day. But now, after taking into serious account Hill's praise-filled name-dropping of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, I'm asking myself, "Were the final ten minutes of Observe and Report even real, or just some fantasy commencing in Ronnie's twisted mind?"



Like the final moments of Taxi Driver, there's no clear details seen that answer this question in Hill's film. I'm not exactly sure if that's something to compliment Hill for, or to criticize the guy for some lack of clarity. The tone of the film shifts so drastically during Ronnie's redemptive visit to his old workplace that it's impossible to not think that what we're seeing is a dream. Similar to how one could question Travis Bickle's survival after the shootout with Harvey Keitel's pimp and his goons. The crowd I saw Observe and Report with cheered during the final minutes, which must make Hill happy. The conclusion is totally designed to elicit some hooting and hollering, but it's still morally reprehensible enough to unsettle the more conscious filmgoer.

I doubt that this question will be answered after a second Observe and Report intake, though. The only way to ever get a closure-providing statement on the matter would be to ask Jody Hill himself, and I'm willing to be that he'd pull a David Lynch and leave his work open-ended and enigmatic. Even if you attack Hill for the film's tonal contradictions or blurry intentions, I'm subscribing to the belief that you got to respect the guy for applying such a non-comedy approach to the comedy genre. And (depending on your personal opinion, though mine is obvious) succeeding, at that.

The overthinking will never end.

Observe and Report's ending, reconsidered

I've been thinking about the end of Observe and Report for the last few days, bouncing back and forward with my opinion. Ultimately, I've decided that I actually don't like the final resolution, though I won't spoil it here for those who haven't seen the film, since it's opening today and it's hardly 3pm.



When people do see it, though, assuming some will, I'd love to pick the last couple of minutes apart. The problem I'm having is that the entire tone of the film (despicable guy rapidly descending into self-destruction and public endangerment) is kicked to the curb for a last-second reversal of fortune that doesn't feel right. Feels cheap, out of place, pandering to the same conventions that the rest of the film so knowingly spits at. There's a scene that involved a fat flasher/pervert approaching a major female character in slow motion before being gunned down at point blank range, and that's where the film should've ended and credits should've rolled. Or, if an additional moment or two was necessary, writer-director Jody Hill would've been better served to make this scene's aftermath one of imprisonment, not fulfillment. It's a shame, since the slo-mo flasher sequence is damn great, and its climax is sudden and bloody good.

If anybody out there sees Observe and Report this weekend, please hit me so we can engage in a wee bit of debate. I'm still a big fan of the film, though. And I must warn the masses----this isn't a LOL comedy. In fact, I didn't let out a hearty laugh once, but I was engaged throughout and totally down for the cause. It's something different, and hopefully an important change-of-course for studio comedies.

All that being said, I must close this with a confession: I really want my own "Nell."



Cute as hell, sweet and personable. Pure. A smile that could melt a homicidal fool's heart. She's total "wife material." Well played, Collette Wolfe.

A Night with Vinyan; A Buck-Shot to the Senses

I wouldn't call it a beautiful mind exactly. More like a grotesquely-attractive one. A thoughtbox that has twice now managed to leave me in a slightly comatose state after being subjected to its creative, visual, and narrative sides, all at once, twice now. The guy has only made two films, but both shatter all conventional genre tricks, taking their time to stack up the dread and astonished confusion to Jenga Champion heights.

The fella's name is Fabrice Du Welz, a Belgian filmmaker, and I've finally seen his sophomore head-raper Vinyan, after nearly a year's worth of anticipation.


Fabrice Du Welz

After I watched his debut, Calvaire (The Ordeal), early on in my Netflix lifespan, I couldn't shake the cold, distant-from-reality feeling the film left me with. Some idiot writers have dubbed Calvaire the "Gay Chainsaw Massacre," due to its sporadic homo-psychotic scenes and the plot's skeletal cloning of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While those jackasses trivialized it into a heap of puns, I fell right in Calvaire's existential malarchy trap, knees deep and loving every fucked-up second. At not one point did Du Welz take an expected plot turn, stage a seen-that-before scene. Even when the images made no sense and felt bizarre simply for bizarre's cheap sake, I couldn't help but love the shit. Like this random folk dance sequence, which I'm sure is meant to show the audience that the townsfolk in Calvaire aren't the most trustworthy, but really just comes off as some inexplicable hypnosis. You'll either laugh at the absurdity or be left in unease. Myself, a fascinating mixture of both:



Du Welz won me over with Calvaire, no doubt, so once word spread that the writer-director's next one, Vinyan, is a stylistic leap forward, I instantly become enthralled with the chance of some day soon seeing it. Of course, the film played well at the film festival circuit last year and had heads talking due to its eccentricity and holy-shit final act, which naturally meant it would linger in release purgatory before hitting DVD shelves with zero fanfare. Other than to those such as myself who put ourselves in "the know." All I had to work with was this mesmerizing underwater opening credit sequence, a "Huh" slice of coolness that leaves me with the same bewilderment that the opening credits of Gaspar Noe's Irreversible does:




So what did I get out of Vinyan? A viewing experience that made that of Calvaire seem only satisfactory. Where to begin? With the film's plot, perhaps: Paul and Jeanne (actors Rufus Sewell and Emmanuelle Beart, both quietly dynamic here) are on a vacation near Burma when they come across a tourist video that features a little jungle-living kid that Jeanne swears is their son Joshua, who was lost at sea during the 2004 tsunami and presumed dead. After some debate, Jeanne wins, and the couple doles out their entire life savings to hop on a sketchy boat to the Thai-Burmese border, where the video was shot. As the trip continues into a downward spiral of dead-ends and growing bleakness, the boat's guide gets lost and docks on a nondescript, dark, creepy isle full of silent little naked kids covered in hardened mud and preying around the jungle in stalker-mode.

The little bastards look like children straight out of a National Geographic issue guest-edited by the team from Fangoria. And once the couple's boat becomes off-course and stranded, Vinyan turns into Apocalypse Now crossbred with Who Can Kill A Child? scripted and directed while on an acid trip. That's a seriously twisted and potent elixir, and I'm not fibbing when I say that the final 15 minutes of Vinyan had me paralyzed to my couch. The paralysis first kicked in during this dream sequence that Jeanne has; she's been mentally deteriorating throughout the film, and by the time they're stuck on the tribal island, aka the Fifth Circle of Earthbound Hell, she's totally gone. A walking slab of jelly, only motivated by the sad, tragic hope of finding her obviously-dead son. In this dream, she's surrounded by a group of kids wearing the same red shirt her son wore on the day he was taken by the tsunami wave. Only, the kids' faces are all stretched-out and mask-like, and the camera zooms sideways and in-and-out rapidly as faint screaming sounds (the same ones heard at the tail-end of that above Vinyan opening credits). It's unsettling along the lines of that nightmarish Aphex Twin video for "Come to Daddy." Heebie jeebie central.




Vinyan isn't a film I'd honestly recommend to too many people. I'll be delicately picking and choosing who gets the "You should really watch this" heads-up. If your attention span is that of a pencil and a simple growling stomach makes you stand up and leave the room while a DVD is playing, do yourself a favor and stay the fuck away from this one. It's not meant for you; go watch The Love Guru or something. Du Welz moves this thing along at a snail's pace, but in a good way. I never lost interest, and was rewarded by Vinyan's haunting final act, but the only-marginally-patient watcher will most likely tune out or get bored by the 20-minute mark. If so, I'm sorry. You can't win them all. Only people like me who love this kind of bizarre shit. And also, lovers of intense, stark, gorgeous cinematography and some of the best jungle scenery presentation since Francis Ford Coppola and the already-referenced Apocalypse Now.

It takes some balls and some truly disturbed sensibilities to dream up and then so strongly execute Vinyan's final 15 minutes. But this dude Du Welz has done it rather convincingly. I'd really love to see him get the green-light for an American studio film, just to witness either his un-compromise or disappointing descent into studio politic bend-over bulldonkey. Because there's no way in Hell that he'd get away with making a film such as Vinyan on an American studio's watch.

Unfiltered DVD releases of international cinema, bless y'all.

Vinyan trailer (that actually makes the film seem much more accessible than it is, believe me. Don't be fooled, this is only to give a sharper feel for the film):

Joke or not?

I honestly can't figure it out. If there wasn't an actual IMDB page for this, I'd think it was some Funny or Die like joke. But such an IMDB page does exist, so I'm just left befuddled.

Gooby



It's like Teddy Ruxpin and Fozzy Bear were kidnapped by some mad scientist, sliced into feathery pieces, thrown into some mass-expanding life machine, and cast out into the world of tongue-in-cheek family cinema.

God I love the limitless of film.

Another reason for me to hate what the Internet has become....

And it has begun.

Honestly, I thought it wouldn't ever hit the movie world, but I guess I was just living in my often-all-too-comfy dreamworld. I've long subscribed to the theory that seeing a film, whether it be a dollar-sign-packed blockbuster or a frugal independent exercise, on the big screen in a packed movie theater is the best way to experience cinema. That's why I'm known to see flicks that I love multiple times in theaters, regardless of the money spent. And every time I try to sit down at home and watch a DVD with family or friends, I'm constantly in a state of unease, knowing that the slightest cell phone ring or growling stomach will beckon my co-watchers away instantly. Short attention spans, be damned. In a theater, though, it's just you, darkness, and that massive projector.



Obviously, I'm in the minority of thought. Earlier today, some crafty scoundrel leaked a clear-quality, DVD-pictured copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine onto the Internet. The problem: the film doesn't hit theaters until May 1, and it's this summer's first major tentpole entry. This is unheard of, quite possibly the most significant example of cinematic piracy ever. Or at least in recent memory. This is the exact early-exposure leakage catastrophe that has sent the music industry (namely on the hip-hop side) into its current downward spiral. But up until now, Hollywood has been practically immune. True, movies manage to appear online not long after their theatrical release dates, but never an entire month prior.

Several theories are floating around. There's little doubt that somebody got their hands on a screener copy that was being circulated amongst studio heads and other must-see-people, post post-production, but as for exactly "who," some ideas are out there. One speculates that the person who uploaded the film did so as a "fuck you" to Wolverine's distributor, Fox; Fox is the company that nearly sabotaged the release of Watchmen for Warner Bros. when they took Warners to court over a decade's old rights issue. A second notion, this one hugely paranoid, thinks that the film was deliberately leaked by Fox themselves, as some sort of defense mechanism against a film (Wolverine) that they fear will be tank financially and be met with scathing, negative response. By leaking it themselves, they can gauge people's responses early, and turn this fiasco into a "woe is me" scenario is the movie flops. There's a heavy fear within the movie realm that the film is going to blow, but this theory seems to be a bit too conspiracy-ish for my tastes.

Me? I'm guessing that it was some overzealous asshole who was involved in the screener-disc handling process, with an axe of some kind to grind. Whatever the case, I have zero intentions of finding the online copy and watching. X-Men Origins: Wolverine isn't high on my must-list in the first place, so my curiousity factor isn't as high as most. But regardless, even if I were to see the film, I'd want to check it out on the large screen, not the tiny, grainy laptop one I'm looking at now as I type. I'd want some overpriced popcorn and a Slushee within my grasp, not a watered-down Bud Light that's been sitting in my fridge for weeks already. Especially considering that this is a special effects orgy of a film----imagine watching Cloverfield for the first time on your laptop. Or, hell, T2: Judgment Day. Or Transformers. This same stance applies to why I never buy or watch bootlegged DVDs that heads buy in subway stations. I want to see a film in its best possible sense. What do I know, though? I'm the same obsessed movie-lover who watches two DVDs a night just on carnal instinct alone.


His middle finger must be the only one sticking upward today.

Will this X-Men Origins: Wolverine leak signal more of its kind, resulting in a domino slide for future films and ultimately a similar meltdown like that of the music industry? My better sense says "Nope." I'm confident that the majority of folks are smart enough to realize the difference between downloading a movie and dloading music----regardless of whether you bought a CD or pirated mp3s, you're just going to listen to them on the same machinery; but with movies, there's always the option of seeing a film larger than life in a theater. It's a matter of whether you feel the necessity to drop $12 on the richer experience. I know I am, now and forever.

Of course, if it were, say, Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell that leaked, or, imagine this, Scorcese's Shutter Island, would I be reacting with the same won't-watch defiance? Shit, no. I'm man enough to admit it. But I'd still pay to see those movies in a theater on opening night. That's the difference between film and music for me these days. I haven't bought a CD in over two years, yet I've downloaded every damn album out there during that time. Yet I'd act in totally different, money-dropping fan fashion if Inglourious Basterds sprung a regrettably premature leak. No monetary questions asked.

How about you?

The BW List: My Four Favorite Car-Starring Movie Scenes

For a moment there, I was actually considering the task of writing a “review” of sorts on Fast & Furious, which I was able to check out a couple of weeks back. My outline was in place, positive and negative points spread out over the course of what would’ve been an inevitably overlong six paragraphs. Some puns and one-liners were waiting in the vocabulary wings. But as I started writing the outline into a fleshed out piece, a brutally-honest fact dawned—there is absolutely no point in putting together a critical analysis of Fast & Furious. It’d be a waste of time. Words hanging in thin air, unable to influence or deter. Purely futile.



Four films into the franchise now, the Fast & Furious series is well established. You’ve either been waiting impatiently for this new entry, or you could give to shits less. The gear-heads and adrenaline junkies can’t get enough of the terrible dialogue, subpar acting, over-the-top CGI car chases, and gorgeous Latin women wearing miniskirts and midriff-bearing tank tops. I’m partial to that last aspect (and, trust me, the female sexiness is amplified in this new flick), but otherwise these films don’t do much for me. Was I quite entertained by Fast & Furious? Yes, but that’s only because I’d made a mental decision prior to the ludicrous opening setpiece that I’d go shamelessly along for the goofy, glitzy ride. As Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and random newcomer Tego Calderon attempt a three-car takedown on an oil truck in the Dominican Republic, the ridiculousness is set in motion before the film’s title even appears.

If that opening sequence, complete with enough computer graphics to have Michael Bay cheering, doesn’t make you laugh, then the rest of Fast & Furious should please. Besides, you’ll have plenty more chances to giggle at the film’s stupidity. My favorite moment of idiocy? There’s a part where Vin Diesel’s character literally beats Paul Walker’s face in for a good two minutes, but once Diesel stops his pulverizing, all Walker has to show for it is a drop of blood under his nose, which he quickly wipes off. Just Incredible. And asinine. Or, just ass.

Enough of about Fast & Furious itself, though. Like I said earlier, I really don’t see any purpose in a critique. This is one of those films that caters specifically to its demographic and cares about nobody else. And I’m all for movies that know their roles. Just as I know my role—I’m the furthest thing from a car lover, or a grease monkey. Admiring Michelle Rodriguez’ chiseled hotness far outweighs whatever model of automobile she’s driving. I couldn’t even name one car type featured in the film.

While watching, however, I couldn’t but think of some random car-starring scenes from much better movies that I love. Which brings me to this list—--my four favorite film scenes prominently featuring cars. Some are from legitimate auto-centric films, and others merely use the wheels as window dressing. Last week’s “Based on a true story” list was my first-ever of its kind, so I admit that I overlooked a couple films (David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers and Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek) and suffered a few other kinks. I’m working on that. Hopefully this list is a step in the right direction.

[In no particular order]

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry’s Open Road Race Against the Police Chopper (1974): Admittedly, I had never even heard of Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry before seeing Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof. Ever the cinephile, Tarantino gave his nearly all-female cast a vast knowledge of cinema, specifically of the “car chase films” 19702 subgenre. Days after seeing Grindhouse, I purchased both Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and Vanishing Point (1971) just off the strength. This one is mostly a forgettable bore, unfortunately, wasting a super-cool leading man (Peter Fonda) in a stew of sluggish exchanges and too few actual car chases. Two huge redeeming moments in the film’s concluding act manage to salvage some of the wreckage, at least. There’s the abrupt, tragic “shock” ending (which I do love), and then there’s an all-real-machines pursuit that’s pretty awesome. Our three criminal protagonists continue to flee from the law in their lime-green whip, even as the coppers amplify the pressure with a chopper that hovers mere feet above. The sheer ballsiness of the scene alone makes it worth a peek.



Christine, the entire movie (1983): If you’ve never seen a 1980s-made John Carpenter film before, remedy that with the quickness. The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing, and even the fun-yet-hokey They Live—--they’re all great. The one that is nearest to my heart, though, is the Stephen King adaptation Christine, mainly because it’s one of the few movies my older brother (an avid car appreciator) and I watched together as wee lads. I still see tons of my younger self in Arnie, the nerdy, socially awkward teenager who becomes tragically infatuated with “Christine,” a demonically-possessed red 1958 Plymouth Fury he buys for dirt cheap. Of course, once Christine starts killing Arnie’s bullies with extreme force the comparisons between us cease. But that’s when the film kicks into overdrive, becoming a slasher flick where four wheels replace a machete. You get an annoying fat guy crushed into a wall, and a John Travolta-wannabe chased down a dark, empty highway by an enflamed Christine (a visually-grand sequence). The best scene, though, is much more subtle—Arnie’s best friend tries to break into Christine, when suddenly Little Richard’s “Keep A-Knockin’” starts playing on the radio. Pretty damn clever.



Death Proof’s Fatal Four-Way Crash (2007): Or, as I like to call it, “the best car crash scene ever.” Considering all of the unique touches of creative genius found within Quentin Tarantino’s portfolio, it’s a bit odd that this scene from his half of the criminally-underappreciated Grindhouse has become my all-time top QT moment. “To each his own,” they’ll say. From the moment that Jungle Julia’s requested jam “Hold Tight” (by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich) kicks in and the girls rock out, everything about it gleams like the sinister duck on the hood of Stuntman Mike’s fatality-proof ride. I’ve spent many nights rewatching this scene, taking such a guilty pleasure out of Tarantino’s morbidly-brilliant decision to go for broke and show the deaths of all four women. I swear, there should’ve been a camera on my face as I sat in the theater and basked in this for the first time; the open-mouthed amazement must’ve been
priceless (I’m sick like that). The special effects-free car chase that closes Death Proof is also a stunner, but my money rests on the vehicular homicide extravaganza.



High Tension’s Chainsaw-Through-Windshield Massacre (2003): This one requires a stretching of “car scene” preconceptions, since there isn’t any actual moving automobile to be seen. Rather, you get a stalled vehicle that’s excessively sprayed with blood in one of the grisliest kills of recent years. Alexandre Aja’s Haute Tension (known as High Tension here in America) pulled in strong business out in France, so Lionsgate Films awarded the damn-good horror flick a miniscule stateside release. Besides myself and about ten other people, though, nobody had a clue, and it suffered an early box office demise. At least they didn’t just remake it. It’s a shame, really, because High Tension is infinitely better and more ghastly than any American-made horror film of the last five years. A lazy, ill-conceived plot twist almost spoils the film, but that’s all forgiven once the final, show-stopping spot of gore kicks in—our killer jumping on the hood of a poor stranger’s shitty car, cutting through the windshield, and slicing the guy’s chest open. Red stuff rains over our heroine, frozen with fear in the backseat. As if only showing her blood-splattered face wasn’t enough to drive the 50-second-long carnage home, Aja then provides a close-up of the blades ripping through flesh. It’s the small details that mean the most.



To see that High Tension, click here

(Lack of) Food for Thought

Pride may not be the real issue here, but there's a certain amount of stock I hold dearly within my fortitude to handle films that "go there." That leave no image of brutality unseen, drop the gauntlet of good taste down fast in order to leave it shattered on the sticky cineplex floor. My stomach is deep, full of room for such harsh visions. So whenever a movie sneak attacks me and leaves me feeling queasy, I have no choice but to stand up and salute. Wave the white flag in the filmmakers' direction. The only time I can recall actually closing my eyes during a scene was when I first saw Inside at Lincoln Center, specifically the infamous-in-these-parts scissors scene at the end. One eye was half open, the other's lid pressed firmly atop the socket, unable to look away. It was a truly harrowing experience.


Steve McQueen

Having just watched Steve McQueen's unbelievably raw Hunger at the IFC Center, I can now shamelessly say that a movie has left me feeling nauseous like I've never felt before, regardless of the setting or my physical/health state. One sequence in particular had this effect, a single take tour-de-force that places the viewer in the midst of some of the fiercest, most inhuman police brutality imaginable. In a TKTK prison in Northern Ireland, back in 1981 (Hunger is based on true events), the British government has imprisoned dozens of Irish "political terrorists" who refuse to obey the Brits' law. The prisoners are on a "no wash" strike, meaning they're all filthy by choice, the walls of their cells caked in hardened, smeared feces. In an effort to enforce their methods with blunt precision, a slew of cops in full armored suits line in a hallway, shields before them and nightsticks in hand. In a bit of ritualistic pounding, they all begin to beat their sticks on the shields. Then, each prisoner is yanked out of their cells, naked, and thrown through the gauntlet of cops, who all take violent swings with their nightsticks as the nude inmate crawls through for survival. Once at the end of the hell-way, each beaten man is violated anally and then left to rot on the floor.



McQueen shoots the scene in one long take, and it's pretty breathtaking. Until this point, Hunger is a rather subdued, controlled film, moving along patiently with little dialogue and plenty of drawn-out in-cell scenes. That's why this police-imposed, one-sided riot is so unnerving. McQueen swoops the camera from prisoner to prisoner throughout the scene, erratic with his hands. Whatever feeling of ease the viewer has had is immediately swallowed up and spit out as if a T-Rex is doing the oral flinging.

I felt the bottom of my throat give out a bit, and the scene wasn't even halfway over. Crazy.

For a first time filmmaker, McQueen achives nothing short of a gargantuan effort with Hunger. Scene after scene, the film is an exhibition of the man's visual gifts. Directly after that aforementioned prison beatdown setpiece, we follow one of the prison's high-ranking officers as he visits his sick mother in a nursing home. It's obviously an attempt to make the viewer sympathize a bit with the mongrels in blue. But then, like the robber who sucker-punches McLovin in Superbad, we're hit with a point-blank execution that I totally didn't see coming. At all. As a result, McQueen had me second guessing his every subsequent move. I was basically the guy's puppet, a plaything that he could trick and blindside however he pleased cinematically.

Fortunately for my senses, the remainder of the film is devoid of random violence. Well, actually, "fortunately" isn't the right word. While never less than stunning, the final act of Hunger is tough to watch without cringing a tad. At this point, our lead, Bobby Sands (played amazingly by Michael Fassbender, who impressed in Eden Lake and will surely impress in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds; the guy is one to watch), has decided to kick his freedom-fighting into high gear by organizing a hunger strike within the prison, which 74 other inmates agree to. Now, I'm not sure if what we see from here on out is actually Fassbender, or just some incredibly realistic trickery by McQueen and his cohorts. But if you thought Christian Bale looked sickly in The Machinist, you haven't seen a damn thing yet. Fassbender turns into a breathing skeleton, rib-cage sticking out, every other bone excruciatingly visible. Sands lasted 66 days before succumbing to the emaciation, and if dying of hunger is even half as unbearable and painful as seen on Fassbender here, I'm taking my ass to Outback for lunch tomorrow just to make sure I'm well fed. Damn, does it look like almighty hell.


Michael Fassbender, pre-hunger pains

It's films like Hunger that remind me why I'm so infatuated with cinema, which makes it all the more shameful that it's only playing in one theater in this area. Going largely unknown, looked over, outside of film buffs and critics. Something this delicately made, richly acted, and historically significant deserves a chance, so whenever the DVD streets I highly recommend giving it a go. You might toss up your cheeseburger while watching, but there's no doubt in my mind that you'll finish the film feeling floored. Pedal to the emotional metal.

Put it this way: any film that can turn an overlong scene where a guy mops an entire prison hallway into an intensely hypnotic event isn't fucking around.

The Pain I Felt (While Watching Adventureland)

There's a scene towards the end of Greg Mottola's Adventureland that rampaged my gut harder than I ever expected the film to, and I've been grappling with "why" since I saw this last week.



It's a heartbreaking moment clearly staged with every intention to ring a few tears from the audience, though let's be clear that I didn't cry, at all (I'm a man, dammit! Actually, that defense is moot, since I recently nearly shed some eye water while watching Dear Zachary, thus proving movies can do it to your boy at times). James Brennan, the film's curly-haired, cool customer despite his somewhat dweebish demeanor (played to the nice tee by Jesse Eisenberg), has learned some world-shattering secrets that bring his summer love Em Lewin (Twilight's Kristen Stewart, here proving that she's a solid actress and much more than what that shitty vampire series makes her out to be). Crumbling inside despite his best efforts to hide the exterior pain, James confronts Em on the street in front of her side-guy's house. The scene, lasting no more than a minute, features some wonderful non-verbal emoting by Stewart, her face cringing and contorting in shame and sadness, while Eisenberg rips into her with PG-13-compatible force.

And then it's over, and I was left in a state of sorrowful confusion. As if, I was James, and I was experiencing the first catastrophic heartbreak of my freshly-in-post-college-stage life. A week removed from seeing Adventureland now, I'm pretty sure I know why the scene slugged me as harshly as it did, and the answer lies in Mottola's Superbad follow-up's overall success---how he captures that cliched, rarely executed properly "real life" aesthetic. There's no doubt that Mottola himself (he wrote Adventureland, as well as directed) went through a painfully similar emotion-devastation in his younger years, probably not unlike the scene that plays out between his James and Em characters. Every note rings true. So much good will has been earned for the characters up until this point of collision that watching their blooming love crack is akin to helplessly seeing a best friend go through the relationship ringer. James needs a beer, that you'd gladly buy for him, but that's not a possibility. You're stuck in the theater, and he's trapped in that damaging big screen scene.



On the whole, Adventureland is a pleasant surprise. In no way as hilarious as Superbad, but that's the film's biggest attribute, how it goes for the natural laughs over the sophomoric, sight gag types. How the central romance between James and Em tries with very little effort yet is ultimately better and more believably-plotted than any on-screen romance I've seen in recent times. Sure, the great duo of Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig is totally underused, and that juvenile "Tommy Frigo" friend of James' brings nothing more than obvious "sight gags" that are thankfully minimal but always tone-trivializing. Adventureland isn't without its flaws, and those who fall victim to the "from the guy who brought you Superbad" marketing campaign may leave the film a bit peeved that they weren't served any penis drawings or McLovin-like larger than life characters (though Martin Starr's incredibly awkward "Joel" does try his damndest to be that guy). If you go into the film with an open mind and a a willingness to ride shotgun with Mottola down his memory lane, you'll exit with those warm, fuzzy stomach-knots, reminded of that first or second love and all the ups and downs he/she brought with him/her.

As for that breakup scene in the street, I can't help but be reminded of a certain Senior Year high-school heartache of my own. Mine took place on the phone, while lying on the floor of my bedroom, so it wasn't as publicly vulnerable as that in Adventureland. But it sliced my arteries just as much, if not more, for reasons I'll leave to myself, for now. I'm guessing that those who see the film will have love-less, sucky memory of their own drudged up.

You'll have Greg Mottola, Kristen Stewart, and Jesse Eisenberg to thank for that therapy bill.

Dan Akroyd: "Hey, do you wanna see something really scary?" Me: Yes, dammit!

The odds of this new The Haunting in Connecticut scaring me in any way, shape, or shriek are slimmer than Nicole Richie's waist, yet I'm still seeing it later tonight. When it comes to horror flicks that my better judgment says will be mediocre at best, I'm a total masochist. Minus the ball strapped into my mouth, or hands tied behind my back. Instead, overpriced fountain soda in hand, significantly leaner wallet in pocket. The main problem I have with modern-day "haunted house films" is that they never, ever steer clear of convention, jacking scenes and set-ups from the infinitely superior classics. It's best to accept that no film of this ilk will ever come within a peachfuzz-hair-strand of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, or 1963's The Haunting---both stellar in all facets. Hell, these new flicks don't even stand a chance of topping the original, not-as-good-as-those-two-greats Amityville Horror, even when they're blatant moving-photocopies (see The Haunting in Connecticut).



Yet, I'll continue to spend hours upon hours in darkly lit theaters watching these latest attempts, because I'm sucker for horror-love. I can't help but feel pounds of inner sadness, though, at the dreadful feeling that it's become nearly impossible for a new ghost story to give me the shivers. Have me frozen in my seat, overpriced fountain soda poking at my bladder in a state of "Let me out, man! This shit is freaking me out, too! And I'm liquid nothingness!" Maybe I'm too seasoned of a viewer. Or perhaps I'm putting too much stake in a film's necessity of at least bringing fond memories of The Shining to mind for all the right, effective, successful reasons. It's not even a matter of a PG-13 rating, either. Initially, I cringe at that teeny-bopper-targeted rating for a horror flick, but when I sit back and think clear of prejudice, I realize that something as wonderful and simple as The Haunting, if released today, would very well earn a mere PG rating, no 13 required. Scares can be scored without gore or wanton violence; it's all about the execution.

Which brings me to a little rarely-seen-by-most United Kingdom TV movie from 1989, The Woman in Black. I forget which cable channel it was that I first saw this film on, back when I was barely out of grammar school. But boy, did it treat my mind like a cow's ass being branded.

IMDB'S plot synopsis: "When a friendless old widow dies in the seaside town of Crythin, a young solicitor is sent by his firm to settle the estate. The lawyer finds the townspeople reluctant to talk about or go near the woman's dreary home and no one will explain or even acknowledge the menacing woman in black he keeps seeing. Ignoring the towns-people's cryptic warnings, he goes to the house where he discovers its horrible history and becomes ensnared in its even more horrible legacy."

A couple years ago, I came across it for cheap on Amazon.com and immediately threw it into my DVD arsenal, and wouldn't you know it.....The Woman in Black still scares the piss out of me. I've long tried putting my finger on exactly why it frightens me on par with The Shining and those classics, maybe even more so in ways. There's no question that the Woman in Black herself carries the lion's share of the blame; speechless, motionless and with those piercingly-dead eyes, she's the epitome of "scary old lady." Pad her presence with the film's overall bleak Gothic tone (courtesy of director Herbert Wise), and you have a recipe for minimalist success that today's filmmakers wish they could pull off.



Two scenes in particular have done wonders for my insomnia over the years. The first is something of an infamous "Oh shit!" moment amongst horror heads in the know, deservedly so----the lawyer is shuffling about restless in bed, standard nocturnal practice. Like most of us do, he concedes defeat and sits up, but unlike all of us, he is met with the Woman in Black hovering over his bed. A shock moment if there ever was one. The second is the film's final moment, a denouement that bleeds with tragic macabre----not to entirely spoil it (though, chances are none of you will have the opportunity to see this flick unless it's on my watch, which is unfortunate), but it's the unhappiest of endings, taking place on a lake after the lawyer thinks he's escaped the Woman in Black's clutches forever. While on a little rowboat with his wife and infant child, he learns that the scary old bitch isn't done with him yet. I remember distinctly just how bruised and gut-punched this final scene left me the first time I watched. Just devastating.


watch the picture behind him at the 1:02 mark

Part of me thinks that I should just go home and re-watch The Woman in Black tonight, rather than drop coin on The Haunting in Connecticut. I'd surely fulfill my want-to-be-scared-this-evening quota. For free, too. That's not going to happen, of course, and I'll soon be exiting the 34th Street AMC theater with equals droplets of annoyance and frustrations.

Despite the fact that I neglected to bring an extra pair of clean underwear with me today, I'd totally pay an extra $10 for the Woman in Black to appear as a theater usher tonight. While the attention-deficit, manufactured-Hollywood-crap-garbling audience around me wouldn't even bat an eyelash, I'd be intensely shook.

"Actual Facts," But Not Really

Whipped up a list of my favorite "based on a true story" gimmick-y horror flicks for the latest entry in my "Theater of Mine" column over at the KING site. Check it out, if interested. Timed with this week's latest Amityville Horror knockoff, The Haunting in Connecticut, which I'm very likely catching tonight.

Initially, The Haunting in Connecticut's trailer lulled me into a premature sense of optimism, most likely due to those slick organ notes at its end. I'm a sucker for Gothic-y, atmospheric scores. But the more I've seen from it and read about it, I can't shake the feeling that it'll ultimately be a forgettable slop of PG-13 jump scares and shrieky-music cues. And those never do anything more than irritate.

At the least, the flick provided an excuse to write up this list, which was pretty fun and relatively effortless. Whether that's good or bad, who knows? Made me happy, and that's the M.O. [LINK BELOW THE PIC]

The list includes a cameo from my boy "Tarman," from 1985's so-damn-good Return of the Living Dead, which is reason enough alone to give it a go, no?


And, really, every post should have some Tarman. "Moooorre.....braaainnnss!" *followed by a smile*

This is the first list of this kind I've ever done, so there are some kinks that'll be ironed out next time, and more the time after. I have some future list ideas in the works, so I'll give myself plenty a chance to improve. For one, I forgot about a few films that should've made the cut (Wolf Creek, David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, David Fincher's Zodiac even); and two, a commenter pointed a choice-of-word error regarding Ed Gein, who only killed two people, making my use of "several" a bit improper. Like I said, a work in progress.

LINK: My Nine Favorite "Based on a True Story" Genre Films

Who loves me, man?

It feels so long ago, I keep forgetting that I've already seen the film, but early this past December I was able to get myself into a very-early screening of the new Paul Rudd/Jason Segel comedy I Love You, Man, which hits theaters this weekend. As I expected, the film was/is a winner, capturing that same nice-cutesy humor of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but with tons more effective supporting character actors elevating their respective scenes. You get J.K. Simmons (too briefly, frankly) going line-for-line with Andy Samberg, who plays Rudd's personal-trainer gay brother who happens to be more manly than his straight bro. There's the should-act-more Jon Favreau doing his best douchebag-ery as the husband of Rudd's fiancee's (Rashida Jones, aka "Ms. I Make Freckles Super Sexy") best friend (blonde jackpot Jamie Pressly). And then you even get an attractive new face, Sarah Burns, complete with slick comic timing and ample charm, leaving a lasting impression and begging the question, "Will she get more work? Because I'd really like that."


Pressly, Jones, Burns

Rudd as a leading man is as foolproof as you'd suspect, and Segel is much better here than he was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a high compliment since "Peter Brenner" was one of my favorite characters of 2008. In I Love You, Man, Segel does a great job of never showing his Ace card---is he a con artist, or simply a fun-loving, unassuming sweetheart? The chemistry between the two leads is a clear product of a tight off-screen friendship, an added bonus that gives their banter a naturalism that's impossible to dislike.

Chances are highly likely that I'll see it again this weekend, or one night next week. So I can both refresh my memory, and enjoy some good-natured entertainment in light of my recent theater-going choices: I've seen The Last House on the Left twice now, as well a double-viewing of Watchmen, and neither comes even centimeters near uplift. I have a feeling that this Clive Owen/Julia Roberts flick, Duplicity, will be a smile-friendly trip, and I'll be seeing that tomorrow, actually. Could this be a total reversal of film tone for yours truly? Not quite---I also plan on catching that new Nicolas Cage end-of-the-world flick Knowing this weekend, despite the fact that its a Nicolas Cage flick. The action scenes look good enough to bypass Cage's recent suck-a-thon streak. Which is going He-Man-strong.

Back to I Love You, Man, though, and it's central idea of a "bromance." No need to explain what that terms means; it's pretty self-explanatory. Besides, that brain-numbing sign of televisial apocalypse MTV's Bromance with Brody Jenner conveyed enough bad will to soil the expression into your mind like fossilized feces. I Love You, Man should rectify that manure-taste, thankfully, and give guy/guy interactions of the heterosexual stance a good name.



The question I've ben posing to myself, in relation to the film, is this: would one of my boys and I see this together? As in, would any of my boys be comfortable in self enough to make it a "movie night" with me, possibly even buying my ticket (okay, that part is a stretch, but was worth wondering about). Back in the days of high school and less "must enter at least one bar this weekend" requirements, I'm sure myself and a good five other dudes would gladly buy tickets and sit seat-by-seat for something like I Love You, Man. Times were much more innocent. Girls somewhat-less of a top priority on weekend evenings. This was a time when me letting a friend know about party approaching for a college friend or work acquaintance wouldn't have immediately been met with "Will there be any hot girls there? If not, I'm good, man. I'll pass." Call that selfishness, or shallowness, or just regular-old lameness. Whatever the case, the times of casually kicking it at the movies with my boys is fading away slowly. Which sucks, especially for a movie-addict such as myself, who'd gladly spend every weekend night at a cineplex over a bar.

Grabbing dinner with just one guy friend always feels acceptable. I'm all for it, and typically my other friends mirror the sentiment. Even showing ID at a bar's entrance before knocking back some Coronas is welcome consistently. So why not a movie? Is it the darkly-lit setting? Confusion as to whether we should sit at least one seat apart or not, assuming the theater isn't too crowded?


The Brokeback Mountain reference brings this pic to an out-of-context-to-my-post field, but some pics are too funny to avoid.

This isn't to say that none of my friends would be down to have a bromantic evening this weekend in front of I Love You, Man. Laughing alongside Rudd and Segel as they attend a Styx concert, or Segel foolishly picks a fight with Lou Ferrigno, or Rudd awkwardly coins the term "Slappin de bass." It's just that, honestly, I can only think of two such friends. Thus is the reality of growing up and becoming more bromantic with Johnnie Walker and/or Jack Daniels. I've accepted it. Moved forward. I get the feeling that movie-nights are seen as "childish." "Missed drunken-hookup-with-sloppy-bar-maven opportunities." That's hogwash to me, but I'm willing to gamble that I'm in the minority.

I'm ready to see I Love You, Man alone. Well, I do love myself, so maybe I'll be inventing a new male-faux-pas term in the process: Self-Love Story. Minus any necessary "Pause" or Billy Idol song allusions, of course.

The "early Wes Craven was a hack" analysis

Whether you worship at the altar of the filmmaker's respective filmography or not, genre cinema's icons coast by on wheels of admiration, and rightfully so. Where would horror be without the early work of fellas such as John Carpenter, Dario Argento, George Romero, Joe Dante, and so on, so forth?

I wonder, though, if casting a veteran director in such a light doesn't cause people to overlook the possibility of his/her inferior skills. Case in point: Wes Craven. Earlier this week, in preparation for Dennis Iliadis' vastly-effective, better-than-your-favorite-mainstream-critic-not-named-Roger-Ebert-is-declaring The Last House on the Left remake, I rewatched Craven's 1972 original. The plan was to compare and contrast the two after I'd seen this new one, but as I sat on the train home from the early screening, all I could do was beat Craven's predecessor down peg after peg. What I officially realized while giving the DVD another go was just how shitty of a film that '72 entry is, and that even the more visceral sequences have lost chunks of their force. Sitting through them back in the early '70s must've been one hell of a right hook to the senses, and a few scattered spots throughout the desecration-in-the-woods setpiece still pack a significant punch. But too much surrounding those punches is trite, meandering, and foolish. First off, Craven's decision at the time to cut back-and-forth from the rape images to two dumbass hick cops totally undermines the power of the girls' plight, a truth that's been hailed ad naus by all film critics and lovers. It's all the more obvious while watching Iliadis handle the sequence, though, showing just how damaging the viewing experience can be when you're at the mercy of an uncompromising, widely-talented visual filmmaker. Something that Craven was not.



Disclaimer: No, I do not enjoy watching rape. Chill. What truly makes the rape sequence in this new Last House soar through the roof, for me, though, is the way Iliadias and screenwriters Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth preface it. From the moment the four on-the-lam deviants encounter the two innocent gals in their hotel room, the tone of what transpires improves greatly over that of Craven's film. In Craven's the four criminals are insulting, coarse assholes with zero redeeming qualities, at times coming off a bit cartoonish. So when they toss the girls into the trunk of their car, there's zero mystery about what's going to happen. When the rape scenes comes, same with the murders, it's more of a climax than a revelation. In this remake, however, the only reason why this section also resulted in a climax is that I know the source material in and out; If I were a casual moviegoer, though, with no knowledge of the original, I would've been unsure as to the villains' intentions. There's a great scene in their SUV as they're driving the kidnapped, scared girls to God-knows-where that's as much a showcase for Iliadis' directorial chops as it is a testament to the remake's superiority. You can't tell what's going to happen, if the villains are going to kill the girls, or just one of them. Krug, the crew's ice-cold leader, shows a morsel of respect toward Mary, the stronger of their prey, and you think, "Maybe he'll let her go." But then Mary acts a bit too impulsively, fucks up any hope of salvation, and the villains have a diesel motive to move ahead with rape/murder.

The Last House on the Left 2009 has a slew of narrative changes such as that, and they're all for the better, which isn't to say that tweaks in the script are my justifications for proclaiming Wes Craven to be a hack director. There just wasn't even one facet of this remake that felt lesser than its original. And I recalled myself thinking the exact same thing about Alaexandre Aja's awesome Hills Have Eyes remake. So many flaws and missed-the-mark moments are abound in Craven's 1977 Last House follow-up that Aja, like Iliadis, was given ample room for improvement.



The point surfaces: the only early Craven film that is near flawless is A Nightmare on Elm Street, but otherwise there's not a "undeniably great" film in his lot. Each is spotty, uneven. Worth merit more for its after-effects than for its actual quality. Scream, of course, is great, but I consider that a rebirth for the guy, thus rendering it "out of contention" here.

On second thought, didn't he have a hand in writing that recent Hills Have Eyes 2, or as I like to refer to it, Worst Horror Sequel of the Last Ten Years? Pretty positive he did. "Rebirth, schrebirth," I guess, unfortunately.

Lest we forget that Craven directed a little piece of shit called Deadly Friend, too, a mess only saved by the quintessential death-by-basketball scene in film history. Or that he was responsible for Eddie Murphy's Vampire in Brooklyn, a laugher-for-the-wrong-reasons that explains itself in title alone. Blacula it was not.



And back to Aja's Hills Have Eyes real quick.....look no further than the trailer-attack. One of the most intense, stomach-twisting, perfectly-paced and scored sequences in recent memory, all to the credit of Aja. I not-too-long ago watched both that scene and its companion piece from Craven's '85 flick back to back (because that's the kind of thing I like to do on my spare time, yes), and it was quite staggering just how immensely more insane and devastating Aja's is, in the context of modern filmmaking advances or not. Neither scene is particularly showy in terms of effects, so the time-frame argument feels meaningless. Aja now is just a way better filmmaker than Craven then. That simple.

Listen....I respect Craven immensely, and I'm wholly aware of how much his contributions mean to my beloved genre. I'm just the type who tries to call a spade "a spade" as often as possible. Until some well-informed film head can break down the technical prowess of Wes Craven "the director," I'm sticking to my rifles. Ironically, the person most responsible for my realization is Wes Craven himself---he produced both the Last House and Hills Have Eyes remakes, and hand-picked eye-opening foreign filmmakers to commandeer the ships. So for that, I can admire the man even more. Who knows, maybe he'd agree with me that his early career wasn't the best of skill-flashing. He's repeatedly admitted that he had no clue what the hell he was doing while making his Last House on the Left. Just sucks that it shows more than ever now.

Craven's best at what, then? As a producer, clearly. He has an impeccable eye for talent, as seen in his picks of Aja and Iliadis. The versions of his stories that he's behind-the-scenes instead of the camera for thrive much more on character and delicate pacing. The guy knows what makes for good horror, and knows how to pull it out of others. Shame that he can't do the same for himself.

I'd be lying to myself if I didn't give early Craven kudos for this, though.....from 1985's foul-tasting Hills Have Eyes 2, comes..... a dog flashback!!!: