FOUR FILMS - MR JONES, BLUE RUIN, BASTARDS (LES SALAUDS), DEVIL'S KNOT

MR. JONES

Hollywood seems to have gotten the hang of the found footage film.  This is just great storytelling with a well laid-out plot and lots to discuss afterwards.  The nature of not only reality as the last montage shows but time as well makes this a satisfying narrative.  It’s relatively big in scope and also scary, a ten on the creepymeter.

BLUE RUIN

Macon Blair’s performance as an unlikely revenge hero is front and center of this excellent, tense thriller full of creatively staged action scenes and with a batty cameo by Eve Plumb of the Brady Bunch.  One is tempted to compare this to a Coen Brothers film like FARGO but that film is much more light hearted than this one.  The money quote that ties this involving story together “I could forgive you if you were crazy but you’re not crazy, you’re just weak”.  Worth seeing.

BASTARDS (LES SALAUDS)

Poor pacing hurts this intricately plotted noir-ish thriller with a real CHINATOWN type vibe.  It does have a good story and the presence of Vincent Lindon whose tired hang dog face  brings to mind Robert Mitchum and perfectly suits this dark story.  However, it’s far too relaxed – This dark story needed more of an edge in how it was told.

DEVIL'S KNOT

Anyone familiar with the case of the West Memphis Three already knows this story.  This poorly organized puff piece leaves out key points and fudges others.  The presence of Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth and director Atom Egoyan’s arty touches can’t save this turkey.  Thumbs way down. 

FIVE FILMS - CAPTAIN AMERICA:THE WINTER SOLDIER, PROXY, OCULUS, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2, THE RAILWAY MAN

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

One of the better comic book movies of the recent glut of such of the last several years.  Despite Bucky not being such an important character in the first film as opposed to basically Captain America’s Robin in the comic book, the movie is able to fashion a credible plot about Bucky’s return as the Winter Soldier.  Also like the pointed criticism of the surveillance state.  This film is the opposite of the fascistic Iron Man films.  Plus the action scenes are a lot fun and it’s cool to see Robert Redford as a villain killing people and hailing Hydra.

PROXY

I liked the different things this film was trying to say – The neediness of people who must have attention, the revenge as sick obsession.  I also liked the performances very much and the four main characters were superbly written.  There is a huge twist halfway through and perhaps the film drags slightly in the second half but not much.  Deep, intelligent, and disturbing.

OCULUS

Mike Flanagan’s first film ABSENTIA is one of the better horror films of the last decade – A genuinely original and creepy masterpiece.  OCULUS, with a larger budget and more well known actors, treads carefully between the dark fatalistic horror of ABSENTIA and more commercial sequel generating fare.  I liked this film specially the grim ending but it did have an air of predictability about some scenes.  I agree that mirrors are creepy.

THE AMAZING SPIDER MAN 2

I give the makers of this film props for dealing with Gwen Stacy in a way not too dissimilar from her fate in the comic book but I found all the side plots about Peter Parker’s father and Oscorp confusing and dull.  The main villain, Electro, isn’t that interesting and reminded me of Jim Carrey as The Riddler in BATMAN FOREVER.  The Harry Osborn Green Goblin was also a bit of a letdown. There are fun action scenes in places but ultimately it’s all forgettable.

THE RAILWAY MAN

The true life story of Eric Lomax, a British POW tortured by the Japanese during World War II, who confronts his torturer years later in the early 1980’s, is interesting and powerful.  However, this movie is not.  The set-up scenes at the beginning are poorly directed and dull notable only for Nicole Kidman who looks like her face is made out of silly putty (bad plastic surgery to say the least).  By the time Colin Firth playing Lomax gets to Thailand it’s all anti-climatic.  It is worth noting that the main torture Lomax received was waterboarding.  Yes waterboarding is torture.  This film is a boring disappointment, a form of torture itself- too bad!

FIVE FILMS - AFFLICTED, LUCKY BASTARD, THE MACHINE, THE UNKNOWN KNOWN, SKULL FOREST

AFFLICTED

Like the film WER (which I reviewed on this blog last month), THE AFFLICTED attempts to use found footage to recast a horror movie archetype.  In this case, it’s the vampire and unlike WER this film succeeds because it incorporates just enough of vampire mythology with a fast moving action film.  Nicely plotted with great fight scenes and a likeable main character.  A good film all around that also doesn’t skimp on gore.

LUCKY BASTARD

After complaining about found footage films over the last couple of years, here’s another one that works.  I’m not sure the director had in mind making such a strong statement on the pornographic voyeur culture we’ve become but this film contains much pointed criticism and has great dialogue.  It also contains a very good performance by Jay Paulson as a scary psycho who wins a contest to have sex on a pornographic website.

THE MACHINE

The first 2/3’s of this variation on BLADE RUNNER are quite good.  A decent imagining of a not so distant dystopian future including a cold war with China and creating robots for warfare.  However, the last 1/3 which contains most of the movie’s action is far too genteel and predictable. 

THE UNKNOWN KNOWN

Erroll Morris’s usual documentary bells and whistles (cool graphics, stock footage, various oddities such as dictionary definitions flashing on screen while someone is speaking) fail here because his style of yelling questions from off camera and leaving the rest fail to achieve their goal; exposing Donald Rumsfeld.  Instead, we get Rumsfeld pontificating at length in the most arrogant of tone without a sense of right or wrong (basically he’s a sociopath).  The only thing Morris succeeds in pointing out is Rumsfeld’s deliberately confusing use of verbiage.

SKULL FOREST   

Trying to cover up bad filmmaking as a grindhouse homage with details such as excessive gore, nudity, odd characters, shaky camera shots etc. is coin of the realm these days.  This film is just another example as four women on a camping trip tussle with rich people who hunt humans.  The only thing commendable is there is nudity from the type of women we don’t often see in films like this – middle aged and roly poly. 

FOUR FILMS - THE BORDERLANDS, SAVAGED, STAGE FRIGHT, GALLERY OF FEAR

THE BORDERLANDS

Anybody who’s read my film blog knows that I think the found footage gimmick has been overused.  It’s become good only for headaches and confusion and cheap scares.  However, this is the rare found footage film that is actually pretty good.  Maybe it works because some of it comes from stationary cameras or maybe it works because it’s a slow burner horror filled with creepy moments and a few real scares. The story is about two Vatican investigators plus a technical (sound and video) guy investigating a supposed miracle in a Welsh church in the middle of nowhere. They find something far different.  A truly satisfying in a horrible way twist ending.

SAVAGED

Sometimes a movie benefits from lack of ambition.  This film has a simple premise – Victimized girl is brought back from the dead and coupled with a Native American spirit also seeking vengeance.  Excellent action scenes, very well paced, groovy gore, and bullies who hate everybody (Deaf people, Native Americans, African Americans).  A fun adrenalin ride.

STAGE FRIGHT

There are really two parts to this film.  One part is a satire on Glee and other recent singing teen movies and shows.  That part is very funny (I burst out laughing during the “we’re gay, we’re gay” song).  The other part is a slasher film with an unknown murderer picking off kids at a camp for musical teens.  That is not as successful.  The killings are poorly spaced out (everything happens towards the end) and it is very easy to guess who the killer(s) is/are.  Still, I give it kudos for the funny parts and the presence of Meatloaf as the camp director/owner.

GALLERY OF FEAR

This horror anthology film utilizes its low budget as a strength going for a deliberately goofy look and feel but an overly long last story and a dumb wraparound story make it very uneven.  The second story is the highlight about a put upon loser who is befriended by a monster who lives in the sewers.  Really reminded of the Stephen King story The Crate as seen in CREEPSHOW.

FIVE FILMS - LET THE FIRE BURN, SPARKS, WER, 13 SINS, MARA

LET THE FIRE BURN

The best documentaries allow the stories to tell themselves through archival material (interviews etc.) and whatever framing devices are necessary for the audience to understand what they are being shown.  The best documentary filmmakers are those that stay out of the way of the story.  On these grounds, LET THE FIRE BURN succeeds admirably.  Told through hearings held after the fact, interviews new footage etc., we get the complete picture of what happened in 1985 when the city of Philadelphia overreacted while attempting to remove the cult-like organization MOVE from the neighborhood where they were staying ending in a bombing and a fire that killed people and destroyed property.  It’s a riveting story well told and I like how the filmmaker will show the testimony of someone and then show evidence that contradicts it – Something great documentary filmmakers do.

SPARKS

Superhero noir, a SIN CITY/WATCHMEN type mash-up that never goes too far as far as explicit sex (some violence though).  The complex, well thought out story (from a graphic novel source) drives this film and makes it an in interesting watch despite the relatively low budget.  Lots of crazy characters doing crazy things in funny outfits.  Good fun.

WER

I had high hopes for this film as I’ve always felt that there are not enough good werewolf films.  For every THE HOWLING, THE BEAST MUST DIE!, CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF is a hundred other dumb b movies.  Sadly, despite a few exciting and scary scenes, this film is a disappointment ruined by a combination of irritating found footage sequences and SPOILER a new look for werewolves that involves people becoming the creatures without physically changing much (how cheap is that).  Also why this film takes place in France with American characters I have no idea.

13 SINS

Yet another watered down American version of a foreign horror film.  Here it’s the Thai film 13; GAME OF DEATH that gets the commercialized USA treatment.  The original is not a masterpiece but is quite fun in a rough, gross, nihilistic way.  The American version is weak.  The challenges the protagonist must undertake to win money are not as bad (or as interesting) as the original film and the ending is a huge cop-out.

MARA

The relatively short running time of this Swedish psychological horror film (70+ minutes) makes this feel more like an episode of a horror anthology show than a film.  Completely unremarkable in every way with a confused ending.  Only thing worth mentioning is the attractive female lead Angelica Jansson.     

SNOWPIERCER

There is so much going on in Bong Joon-ho’s SNOWPEIRCER that I feel it is hard to do it justice in a review.  The idea of a perpetual motion train travelling around the world continuously carrying the survivors of an accidental freezing over the world (that happened when combating global warming) as a microcosm of class struggle is a clever one but to fill this idea with great performances, bizarre visuals, and the train as a perfectly realized set piece turns a clever idea into a great, great film.

Ostensibly about a revolution of the poorly treated people in the tail section, the poor, who are abused by the police force working for the wealthy in the front of the train led by the mysterious Wilford, the man responsible for building the train, SNOWPIERCER has a number of great action sequences but they are not the main focus of the film.  A serious Marxists dialectic is at work here and the film does not water it down or throw in too much Hollywood fluff to obscure it.  It helps that this film was not made by a big Hollywood studio.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the main ingredients of this film which is the great performances.  There are a number of good supporting turns by John Hurt, Octavia Spenser, Go Ah-sung, and Ed Harris but they are secondary to three even bigger greater performances.  Chris Evans , who one might write off as a pretty boy Captain America, as the leader of the people from the tail section is given more to do than just action scenes.  A monologue he gives towards the end of the film about why he hates the people in the front of the train and Wilford in particular is amazing.  Tilda Swinton as an evil, duplicitous representative of the front compartment committing all sorts of evil acts and made up with thick glasses and false teeth and a thick Yorkshire accent, and the great Korean actor Song Kang-ho who is his usual inscrutable, slightly menacing, slightly heroic self also chew up the scenery with wild abandon.

This film works because it’s able to do a lot of different things without sacrificing the plot and the flow of the film.  I liked everything about this film – Good meaning, good action scenes, and good visuals (Especially liked how they go from car to car as they head towards the front of the train and the engine and each car is something new like an aquarium, a bathing room, a club with music etc.). Truth is  I don’t think Boon-Joon-ho has ever made a bad film.

  

     

FOUR FILMS - VERONICA MARS, MUSCLE SHOALS, CHEAP THRILLS, HAUNT

VERONICA MARS

I review this movie more as a fan of the TV show than as a movie review(and you do need to know the TV show to fully understand the movie).  On those grounds, it is very satisfying, a success.  The whole thing felt seamless, like time had not passed, like this was just another episode of the series.  The murder mystery is credible and it is nice to see all the characters back again even if some of them had very small amounts of screen time.  The secondary plot of police corruption perhaps wasn’t fleshed out enough (there wasn’t time) but I’m hoping there will be another movie to sort that out or even better a miniseries.  Pay attention, Netflix!

MUSCLE SHOALS

This documentary on the famous recording studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, while entertaining, never dull, full of cool interviews and wonderful music, digresses wildly from point to point making it hard to follow.  The best parts – Muscle Shoals founder/owner Rick Hall’s ongoing description of his hard life and hard road to success, the segments on Wilson Pickett, Duane Allman, The Rolling Stones, and Traffic.  The worst parts – The part where a group of musicians open a second rival studio nearby Muscle Shoals and then it goes back and forth between the two but as far as what music is being made – I lost track of who did what, confusing.  Also too much Bono – A genuinely self-absorbed asshole who spouts gibberish about “magic mud” being responsible for the good music vibes.

CHEAP THRILLS

More like torture porn than a horror movie with scares and a flowing storyline.  Reminded me a lot of WOULD YOU RATHER? which is a much better film with a much better plot.  A so so movie.  Best part of this film was David Koechner.  Always sensed some degree of menace in the comic dumb guys he plays and he is terrifying here.  He’s actually a very good actor.

HAUNT

This film is a mishmash of horror films starting with the recent spate of haunted house movies THE CONJURING especially but also INSIDIOUS, THE OTHERS, THE EXORCIST, the list goes on.  Feels pieced together, stitched haphazardly.  The ending is jarring and makes little sense.