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Out in Theaters: ALL IS LOST

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“All is Lost”
Directed by J.C. Chandor
Starring Robert Redford
Action, Drama
108 Mins
PG-13

2013 is the year of the survivor-thriller reigning supreme. In Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón explored themes of isolation amidst the inhospitable vacuum of space, using dazzling special effects to elevate a simple story to a visual masterpiece. Paul Greengrass dove into the true account of Richard Phillips and his struggle to maintain his humanity in a Somali pirate hostage situation in Captain Phillips, an excellent biopic fueled by a knockout performance from Tom Hanks. In All is Lost, J.C. Chandor pits man against entropy, testing the endurance of the human spirit against an onslaught of ill-tempered serendipity at sea. It must be time for a genre victory lap, because once more, survivor-thrillers have just crowned themselves king.

There is something about these types of films that make us want to rise from our seats and cheer. They drive us to invest, they urge us to care. They recognize the most enticing aspect of our own humanity, our un-surrendering urge to live. Unlike the cataclysmic weather catastrophe of The Perfect Storm, the humanist reckless abandon of this year’s Danish film Kon Tiki, or the global satellite calamity of Gravity, All is Lost follows a relatively meager story, one of bad odds and “Ah shit!” coincidences, but however paltry it might seem from afar, it ends up having more meat on its bones than either of the two former stories combined.

As the unnamed, gruff hero of this expedition, Robert Redford hardly utters a single line of dialogue and yet carries the film squarely on his shoulders. Even without a true spoken line, there is never a time when Redford’s weathered chops don’t convince us of the track-halting gravity of his worsening circumstance. Even while he remains collected and fine-tuned, it is clear that his situation is rather grim. But Redford’s “Our Man” goes about course correcting with the smooth confidence of a career father, trying to carry us into smooth seas, both physically and metaphorically. With his panic pushed deep down, Redford is a machine of physical efficiency, an Einstein of deep-breathed problem solving.

To be the only man credited on a cast list (there’s not even a glimpse of another face, not a whisper of another voice) is a pretty unique accomplishment, but to do so and be a serious Oscar contender is another thing entirely. Redford lays down a silent tour-de-force, reckoning those who may have called him on “phoning it in” in this later stage of his career. If there’s one thing Redford is not, it’s a hack, and even when his directorial projects land with a bit of a thud, it’s not for lack of trying.

In All is Lost, his measured passion and experienced bravado guide us through a range of emotions, however restrained and simmering they may be. But this is the most challenging, and often least appreciated, act of them all. Conveying buried emotions, those under a veneer of levelheaded collection, takes conditioned skill and requires a deeper commitment to self-exploration than those spilling over the surface in winded theatrical monologues or emotion-stricken outbursts.

The decision to put so much stock in Redford’s ability to single-handedly emote his way through a film takes a boatload of guts, to Chandor’s credit. But Chandor’s deep-seated confidence in Redford is doubled in his cool, collected approach. Evident from the blueprint of a dialogue-bereft script, Chandor obviously is a man of vision, swinging for the fences. Instead of deploying red herrings, arm wrestling the audience into a false sense of tension, everything from the very get-go is very real and very dangerous. 

 

From the opening shot that confusingly pans across a shipping container adrift at sea (I initially thought the shot was of a red dock attached to land), the sensation of something amiss comes barreling from the screen. It’s no surprise that the lost shipping container – human clumsiness and carelessness personified – is the culprit of the “Who punctured my boat?” mystery. Even worse, the salt water gushing through the boat’s gaping hole has destroyed all electrical navigation and communication equipment. From minute one, the stakes are sky high. The hole is in the boat, the boat is in the water, the water is in the boat and as it turns out, the ocean is large…very large. There’s no phoning in support, no cries for help, just a need to grab your bootstraps, yank them up as high as possible and try to start calculating your way out of the ghastly inevitability of drowning. Here, throwing in the towel means certain death.

What transcribes over the following 106 minutes is the story of a man fighting tooth-and-nail for survival against all odds, even when all is lost. Just as he patches up one problem, another surfaces, and another, and another. From sharks to lack of supplies to a crumbling mast, his very humanity dangles at the end of a rope but it’s not something he will abandon without the fight of his life.

Captured with crisp imagery from cinematographers Frank G. DeMarco and Peter Zuccarini, it’s almost hard to believe that the film was shot almost entirely on a water stage (the same one used in 1997 for Titanic actually). Though backed by a small army of digital effects workmen, the water-logged stunts have a sense of immediacy and deep-splintered truth to them largely lacking from CGI-driven films. Although Gravity elevates visual panache to a new level, it fails to hone in as acutely on the emotional isolation of its central character, giving Redford and crew a matured edge over Sandra Bullock and Co. emotionally.

The creaks and moans of the tried ship mimic the heaves and hoes of a exasperated Redford, visual cues as foreboding and understated as the hardly visible score from Alex Ebert. Each adds their own signature to the layer cake of suspense, rather than seeking glory for their own right. it’s this sum-of-all-parts attitude that really makes the film sing. Chandor’s vision is so exact and his execution so precise, that All is Lost adds up to one doozie of an experience. Finger-nibblingly exciting when it needs to be, nimbly quiet when called for, but always full of hope and tenacity, All is Lost is a whopper.

A

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Out in Theaters: THE FIFTH ESTATE

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“The Fifth Estate”
Directed by Bill Condon
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Brühl, Jamie Blackley, Anthony Mackie, Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci
Biography, Drama
128 Mins
R


The best part about The Fifth Estate was the cheeseburger I ate before the movie. The bun was nicely toasted, hugging two juicy patties each pressed with a layer of cheese, topped with caramelized onions and the gentle spice of jalapeños. It was superb. The movie though was the antithesis of that burger. It was crap. Utter, unadulterated, “pee-a-little-in-your-pants because you’re laughing so hard in its face” crap.

The dead horse-beating script is the easiest clunker to point fingers at for its “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” tactile approach, but that quick analysis fails to recognize the full scope of how truly horrendous every element of this movie is. The consistently confused directing, entirely bumbling, borderline hack acting, and total lack of vision – all backed by one of the worst scores I’ve heard in ages – each land with a thud on the lowest tier of story-telling prowess.  The Fifth Estate‘s saving grace is that it has a good shot at winning the excuse, “It’s so bad, it’s good” from more forgiving moviegoers.

Whether the intent of the movie is to herald the importance of Julian Assange and his brainchild Wikilieaks or condemn him is unclear throughout. Even by the film’s conclusion, it’s hard to decipher if those in charge support Julian’s cause or just can’t stand him – an amazing feat for a movie that stretches well over two-hours. The intention may have been to land in some kind of moral gray zone but somewhere along the line moral complication got mixed up with poor storytelling, and the result is The Fifth Estate.

Wikileak’s contributions to revolutionizing how information is shared was groundbreaking – the way in which that story here is told is anything but. For a film that celebrates innovation, it’s amazing how stale its telling is. Montages set to thumping electronic beats detail Julian typing on a computer, driving in a car, walking down the street, typing even more on his laptop, and opening doors as if it were breathless entertainment. At times, it seems as if Bill Condon bumped his head and woke up thinking he was making a Bourne-style thriller.

Condon also hasn’t quite shaken out of his vampire gloves coming out of the ring of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part One and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part Two as the Assange onscreen is a lot like Bella. Brooding and touchy, he’s a one-note nincompoop with the depth of skinny jean’s pockets…girl’s skinny jean’s pockets. Having a conversation with Assange results in hearing about one of his many accomplishments or an oddly timed confession about the challenges peppering his life.

As if the character written on the page doesn’t already show it in bright stripes, Assange feels that its necessary to inform co-conspirator Daniel Berg (Daniel Brühl) that he’s on the autism spectrum. It’s painful for all the wrong reasons. However little humanity the script affords these characters, the performance is still horrid to watch unfold.

As my friend pointed out, Benedict Cumberbatch does a great SNL impression of Julian Assange, and he really does. But don’t expect to see more than a lazy, played for laughs impression of Assange, as Benedict puts in one of the worst performances of the entire year. His dopey take on Assange is a far cry from a definitive look at a complex character (even if it does wind up being the only one). This is a man you never once feel sympathy for. He’s strange, jealous, and abusive to all those around him. The icing on the cake comes in a completely unnecessary scene in which he dances by himself in a strobe-lit club like a lanky gibbon jumped up on Adderall. Both Josh Singer’s script and Cumberbatch settle with saying, “Look at how weird he is!”

Shame on Cumberbatch for breaking the golden rule of acting. As an actor, you are not to judge your character. You seek understanding. You find what makes the audience connect to your character, not disengage from them. You’re like a lawyer preparing a case for trial. We, the audience, are the judge and the jury, not you. Otherwise, we wind up watching a paper-thin characterization, produced by someone who can’t stand the person they’re embodying. Cumberbatch’s take as Assange seeps this kind of cheap impersonation.

Like a student rushing to finish a research project, recklessly jamming every last bit of information they can on the page, hoping it will make them look more informed than they are, the choice of what to include in the film is simply dumbfounding. Important character information is blasted into the audience without context, relationships start and end hollow, and the actual accomplishments of Wikileaks become buried under a mile of silt. Instead of allowing the story beats room to breath, they fly out in our face, spring-loaded and irrelevant.

With all these scattered bits flying in from nowhere, this is filmmaking as drag-and-drop. Case and point: a romantic angle is shoehorned in. There’s no basis for it, it’s just there, because other movies do it. When the shirts pop off in the obligatory sex scene, you’ll bat your eyes, watching the congress of two stick figures with the sex appeal of listening to your parents talk dirty to each other.

Even from a technical perspective, the film is awful. The score by Carter Burwell works with the surgical precision of a sledgehammer, informing you, “This part’s exciting! This bit’s sad! Drama! Oh, it’s exciting again!” The set design is similarly off-putting as the locations these guys hang out at look inspired by the stark neon sets of Batman and Robin.

Since the 80s, filmmakers have felt that it is their duty to turn “hacking” into an exciting thing. It’s common knowledge that watching someone fire away at their keyboard doesn’t make for the best viewing experience, so they tend towards using visual metaphors to represent the pallid electrical repetition. The Fifth Estate‘s visual metaphor takes us to a giant warehouse, filled with rows upon rows of desktop computers, a metaphysical flair the producers must have thought very cool. However imaginative the sequence may have seemed at one point, the final execution is inexcusably lame, providing for some of the heartiest laughs of this straight-faced film.

With Cumberbatch and The Fifth Estates‘ once promising Oscar odds now shot to pieces, a flicker of hope remains for meat-headed political junkies, pseudo-intellectuals, and those who relish movies that are “so bad, they’re good”. Don’t get me wrong, I actually had a good time watching this, but it was all for the wrong reasons. Nevertheless, The Fifth Estate is, without a doubt, one of the worst movies of 2013.

F

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Out in Theaters: CARRIE

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“Carrie”
Directed by Kimberly Peirce
Starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Gabriella Wilde, Portia Doubleday, Alex Russell, Zoë Belkin, Ansel Elgort, Judy Greer
Drama, Horror
99 Mins
R

We all know the delightful bedtime story of Carrie and the Pig’s Blood Prom: strange, loner girl experiences first bloodbath period (literally and figuratively) at school and becomes the target of tampon-slinging ridicule from her merciless peers. Charitable popularite Sue repents and urges hot-stuff boyfriend, Tommy, to bring Carrie to the prom, where she receives an unexpected swine viscus shower and promptly employs telekinesis to exact a wrecking ball of bloody revenge. It’s squarely within the horror genre, but it’s never really been a scary movie. The subject is far more unsettling and grotesque, a step back from jumpy frights and into demented psychology. Kimberly Peirce attempts to navigate the open can of worms within that tender, twisted psyche but stops short, pursuing the studio-brandished sheen of an American Hollywood horror remake.

As the film opens, Peirce provides a new introduction to Carrie. We meet her as a slimy head emerging from her mother’s womb, met with all the warmth and motherly love of a trembling butcher knife clutched by Julianne Moore‘s Margaret – a woman convinced her child is the product of sin and, accordingly, born of the devil. This new scene solidifies the weapon-wielding, love-hate relationship between mother and daughter that will go on to become a through line of Peirce’s retelling of the story while also playing at our natural guardian sensibilities that no baby should be inches from a razor sharp blade. It invites the right type of winches and cringes from an uneasy audience desiring something fresh.
 

Securing Moore as Margaret is a move of inspired casting. Moore’s usual warmth is gone, replaced with jitterish paranoia and a penchant for closet-rearing corporal punishment. The real irony though is that in spite of all of her bible-thumping madness, she is pretty much right on the money all along. Carrie’s abilities may not necessarily be born of the devil but a very easy utilitarian argument could be made that if Margaret pulled the trigger on her infanticide instinct, she would have saved the town a lot of grief and a lot of lives. But tricky debates of this nature are tabled and left wholly unexamined.

Skirting around these deeper philosophical questions that would have made for a much more interesting movie (more of a reinvention than an outright remake) Peirce’s Carrie settles with being largely a paint-by-numbers remake, doused in a blanket of digital makeup from all the wonders of current CGI technology.

Hunched like a troll, the teenage version of Carrie is awkward like a platypus. Corner-standing and slinking seem to be her main primary hobbies around the high school she attends, so it’s no wonder she doesn’t have a Facebook full of friends. In fact, she doesn’t really seem to have a Facebook at all (gasp). 

Following her unsettling shower scene though, Carrie seems to somehow become more confident than she was before, as if her virginal menstration opened up a new chapter in the book de Carrie’s mind. But that probably has less to do with that nasty pool of time-of-the-month blood and more to do with the telekinetic powers that seem to accompany her corporeal transformation into an adult. I don’t know if Carrie’s physical coming into womanhood is supposed to be linked to the emergence of her powers but they definitely both seem to start their flow around the same moment.

At any rate, Carrie goes about wielding her new found powers with the sneakiness of a jitterbug-thumbed high-schooler texting a storm in the midst of Spanish class. That is – how the hell is no one noticing?! She screams and tampons flutter away from her, she’s visibly upset and water coolers crumble like piñatas. While this version really ratchets up the degree of foreboding in the escalation of Carrie’s powers, it fails to take into account the reactions of those around her. It’s as if they’re all used to telekinesis, like it ain’t no thang.

Conceivably, their ignorance could be a side effect of the fact that everyone at this untitled Maine school is pretty much the worst person in the world. Even the English teacher mocks Carrie between takes eye-banging his female students. While I’m sure that opening the floor to debate about the relative ease or difficulty of people’s high school experiences is another can of worms entirely, I’m a homegrown Mainer and I don’t think you could pinpoint any school, Maine or otherwise, where every single person would burst out laughing at you in the midst of the most unfortunate moment of your life. Surely, they’re the next level of “tough crowd”. I’m fully aware that this is a work of fiction and as such everything is amped up a notch for effect but this “everyone is the worst” reality really stood out to me in this version as disingenuous and irritating. 

As Hollywood’s go-to girl for teenage risqué, Chloë Grace Moretz works well as Carrie and is far easier to empathize with than the otherworldly pale Sissy Spacek from Brian De Palma‘s version. She’s more of an ordinary girl under extraordinary circumstances than a full-blown weirdo –  someone who could have been perfectly normal if she wasn’t subject to the manipulation of her Looney-Toon mama.

It’s clear to me that the main issue with this film and with the story, is that it only works if everyone, save for Carrie, is the worst. Otherwise, we’re rooting for a serial killer. Dexter may have proved that that formula can work, but only if it’s done right. I understand that we’re supposed to sympathize with poor Carrie and the ghastly deeds brought down on her but the world in her reality is just so plastic, so invented, and so aggravating. Couple that with the fact that you’re probably going into Carrie already knowing the conclusion and it’s hard to imagine that what Peirce has cooked up will satisfy those who are looking for more than mere updated special effects.

C-

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Out in Theaters: KILL YOUR DARLINGS

by Posted in Out in Theaters

“Kill Your Darlings”
Directed by John Krokidas
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, Michael C. Hall, Elizabeth Olsen, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Huston, Ben Foster, David Cross
Biography, Drama, Romance
104 Mins
R

Kill Your Darlings provides an origin story for some of the most prolific authors writing this side of the American Renaissance with a bit of a hot-blooded, cold-fingered approach. A burning sense of urgency ignites the passion of the characters onscreen – coiled up and bouncing off the walls, lunatics as they are – but that same urgency is largely absent from the film itself.

Like a budding author who hasn’t quite found his style, John Krokidas‘ film gets too caught up with being a part of the excitement to really invite others to join the fun. There’s palpable joy bubbling from the screenwriters’ research and the performer’s larger-than-life embodiments, but like newcomers to a party in full swing, we’re observers, hopelessly trapped outside the true jubilance and forced to watch through a pane of glass.

Best known for his beatnik masterpiece “Howl,” Allen Ginsberg was once a college freshman just like you, Kill Your Darlings supposes. Friendless, desperate to separate from his parents, and pining for his knack, his niche, his next big role, Ginsberg is in many ways the wide-eyed youth of our generation – filled with hope and promise, propped by all-angles encouragement, and saddled with lofty expectations. Horn-rimmed glasses and a head of greasy, wavy hair may not be a far cry from his garb of Potterdom but Daniel Radcliffe certainly experiments with a new breed of performer’s personality as Ginsberg, a refreshing break from the tired cliché of the white-bread young hero.

As a man struggling with his creative genius as well as his wavering sexuality, Ginsberg is a kettle boiling over with deep-seated self-frustration. He knows there is something worthy buried within him but struggles to access it. When he meets fellow student Lucien Carr, his world is opened to an intellectual renaissance, sexual reinvention, and, naturally, drug experimentation. After all, isn’t that what college is all about?

The Ginsberg that meets Carr is dressed in a secondhand suit literally sagging off his shoulders (a visual clue representing the idea that Ginsberg has yet to grow into himself) and is immediately transfixed by Carr, just as we are transfixed by Dane DeHaan. DeHaan as Carr is simply on fire. A conflagration of ideas breaching societal norms, Carr is a student of drunken revolution, lighting up the lives of those around him and activating something buried inside them. As it goes, Carr and Ginsberg are a match made in heaven. Manic reveler, DeHaan brings a magic quality to Carr like he brought brokenness to Jason in The Place Beyond the Pines and emptiness to Andrew in Chronicle. DeHaan is quickly becoming the most talented young actor in Hollywood and his fiery performance here just helps to solidify that fact.   

But for all the excitement born of Radcliffe and DeHaan’s circling one another intellectually, sexually, emotionally, and otherwise, the beats surrounding these beatniks are often in a downward spiral. We see the invisible magnetism of Carr but the many relationships he involves himself in are shallow and unearned. Save for a recurring relationship with kind of sketch-ball David Karramer (Michael C. Hall), the foundations upon which his web of friendships stands are shaky, if not totally crumbling. The balance between telling a succinct story and anthologizing the true characters within it have gotten the better of screenwriters Austin Bunn and Krokidas, as they carve too many side paths that fail to pay off down the line.

Beginning with a murder, of all things, sets our expectations up for a different kind of story, a more suspenseful piece than the period drama which unfolds, and for all accounts, this conceptual slight of hand is symbolic of the film’s casual failure. Like Ginsberg’s fluttering sexuality, Kill Your Darlings just doesn’t quite know what it is. Surely, the murder involved in the narrative is a critical piece towards understanding the ebb and flow of this character’s relationships, but it is more of a caveat than a central focus. Considering that the murder at the film’s introduction is more a postscript to the tale about the Beatnik generation’s roots, this tactic of putting it front and center seems like a diversion aimed to capture an audience that will clearly feel deceived by curtain time.

Better thought of as a mildly failed experiment than an abject defeat or a soaring victory, Kill Your Darlings scores big with great performances from its leads but directionless oversight from first-time filmmaker John Krokidas. Ambitious to a fault, he needs to narrow the focus and give more weight to a strong-footed narrative rather than ambling up each and every the peripheral sub-story that may present itself. With more confidence and tighter vision, Kill Your Darlings may have been excellent. As it is, it’s still pretty good.

C+

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Out in Theaters: MACHETE KILLS

by Posted in Out in Theaters
“Machete Kills”
Directed by Robert Rodrgiuez
Starring Danny Trejo, Mel Gibson, Demian Bichir, Amber Heard, Mechelle Rodriguez, Sofia Vergara, Charlie Sheen, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Alexa Vega
Action, Crime, Thriller
107 Mins
R


Machete Kills is not a work of autership. The latest in a series of grindhouse-revival films kicked off by director Robert Rodriguez’s collaboration with Quentin Tarantino, Machete Kills diverges as a sequel from the original Machete in McGuffin more than form or content. Then plotline is as raggedy and half-baked as the first and the character development and motifs are of the same post-modern cloth: entirely over-the-top, in reminiscence of actual grindhouse films while simultaneously mocking all movie premises that bear any likeness to the farces contained within. Although as one-note and as hackneyed as the original, Machete aspires to bev, and boy does it deliver.

 

Danny Trejo reprises his role as the eponymous Machete, archetypical silent action hero cum serial killer with a Mexican twist, as he continues his work of tracking down the bad guys and slaughtering them in gory fashion. More so then the original, Machete Kills’ cast is studded with stars both falling and rising, including Charlie Sheen as Carlos Estevez (as the president of the United States), and Demian Bichir as Mendez – a rouge freedom fighter and cartel hitman who’s got a nuke pointed at Washington. The rest of the cast, including Michelle Rodriguez, Sofía Vergara, Lady Gaga (in her first film role), Amber Heard, and Mel Gibson have equally topic roles that are heavy on style without too much introspection or substance, each one a vicious killer (naturally) and saddled with so many stereotypical character descriptors that it would get repetitive to enumerate them all.

Machete Kills
Much like with the characters, the movie’s plot is also a big middle finger to gradual and realistic movie arcs, going for broke from the minute the opening preview for the next Machete sequel (Machete in Space) ends, a tactic that pays off over and over again as the movie progresses. Much as the film is saturated with the camp sleaze and mindless violence, it also abounds with plotlines, starting at first with a sting gone bad – Machete’s love interest from the first movie Sartana (Jessica Alba) gets killed after a confrontation with the military, a cartel, and a gang of thugs in wrestling masks – and then crescendoing endlessly into a hit on dangerous Mexican vigilante Mendez, a race back across the border with him, and enough twists and turns to confuse even the most obsessive viewer. No plot line is too flimsy and no action is the final action as the body count grows and the sleazy action gets ever more creative. Attempting to seriously follow this windy road will leave you disappointed and, in any case, distracts from the movies true gifts: it’s sex and violence.

Like any good grindhouse movie, Machete Kills is stuffed with sleaze, radiating from every skimpy, barely more than a bikini outfit and from it’s numerous contrived excuses for grindhouse aesthetic choices, sexual innuendos, and 80’s mood music. So frequent and unexplained are these homages to blatant sexuality, which are impossible to take as serious plot developments due to their frequency, that the scenes end up being laughable sight gags and wonderful opportunities for pulp, drenched in bad taste and 70s nostalgia. Notable moments include Vergara’s multiple weaponized bras and “sex” scenes so schlocky as to make you laugh in remembrance of all the other awfully arranged trysts that movies have used over the years.

Machete Kills
This constant, humorous barrage of outdated sexuality is buffeted by nearly non-stop violence, reminding the audience that, yes, they are watching Machete Kills and thus will be treated to instance after instance of Machete killing hundreds of nameless goons with machetes, guns, and other weapons both modern and futuristic. Assassins of all stripes attempt to take Machete down, with El Chameleon’s many actors holding center stage as the tertiary antagonist du jour in this splatter fest.  At once heavy-handed comments on America’s long running obsession with firepower and Mexico’s cripplingly violent drug culture, these scenes alternate between absurd and downright creative, Machete in turns kills dozens of attackers without breaking a sweat, then pulls off truly devious fatalities, death by helicopter blade and death by speedboat propeller being some of the more obtuse but fun scenes.

There are a couple things missing from Machete Kills that were present in the original: violent, noir-gone monologues that made the original such a pleasure are missing here. The conceit of Machete trying to live an average life instead of the murderous action hero he is has disappeared completely, and some of the more tender, believable, and slower paced beats that allowed audience time to breath when watching Machete have been removed. Although a noticeable loss for the film, Machete Kills overcompensates the original film’s core competencies, and comparing fight scene to fight scene, gore to gore, and sleaze to sleaze leaves Machete Kills a more resounding, if not more enjoyable, movie experience. It has left the artistic clutching at the grindhouse aesthetic behind in favor of actually being a grindhouse movie, which when all is said and done is really refreshing.

machete3
That eros and pathos in their grimiest, campiest, and most Americanized forms dominate this film is in line with the original grindhouses of the 70s and 80s and highlights the reason their resurgence in the current era was so popular: they were honest and up front about not being junk and were not to be taken seriously. Pure food for the id, Machete Kills doesn’t pretend to have a moral or some high-minded plot that’ll challenge your views or bring you to a deeper understanding of anything. Unlike so many movies released these days that purport to be meaningful works of art while just giving their audiences more of the same, Machete Kills doesn’t masquerade for a minute. It is an indiscriminate banquet of sex, death, sleaze, and cheapness and doesn’t apologize for it, a gluttonous feast of bad acting and cheesy effects in the vein of Plan 9 and other pinnacles of trash film.

Machete Kills is not for everyone. There are plenty of things about this film that, if taken in anything less than a humorous and accommodating mood will offend many outright, offensiveness being part of the currency of grindhouse films and the reason so many of them were considered “exploitation” films. It is an easily forgotten film that doesn’t stretch it’s concept to compete with the likes of 2011’s Hobo With a Shotgun and lacks the snappy, 70’s-cool dialogue of Reservoir Dogs or Death Proof, but as far as splatter fests goes, Machete Kills stands up there with best.  The writing isn’t as terse and memorable as Machete, but Machete Kills makes up for it with sheer spectacle and grindhouse pageantry, and if that’s why you came – most people did at my screening – then you’ll go away happy.

B

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Out in Theaters: ROMEO AND JULIET

by Posted in Out in Theaters

“Romeo and Juliet”
Directed by Carlo Carlei
Starring Hailee Steinfeld, Douglas Booth, Damian Lewis, Kodi Smi-McPhee, Ed Westwick, Paul Giamatti, Stellan Skarsgård
Drama, Romance
118 Mins
PG-13

Traditionally there have been two ways to tackle a Shakespeare production. The first is a straight adaptation of the film language, with a time-period that may vary, often abridged to cut running time (take Baz Luhrmaan and Franco Zefferelli’s versions of Romeo and Juliet). The second substitutes traditional, or shall we shall colloquial, speech patterns for Shakespeare’s lofty language but follows the basic plot (think Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood). In his version of Romeo and Juliet, Carlo Carlei kind of does both. Famous lines such as “A rose by any other name…” make it into the film, but they are surrounded by mang riffs on his language that are only similar to the source material. It’s written to sound like Shakespeare, but it is not Shakespeare. The end result can only be described as Shakespeare-ish. Seen as a tactic to distinguish this version from older productions, it only draws more attention to the fact that we probably have enough Romeo and Juliet films already.

Someone who hasn’t read the play in a while or watched any of the other film adaptations may be deceived by the trailers, but the glaring changes made by Carlei are apparent immediately, when the film opens on a Capulet/Montague tournament, overlaid with an updated introduction from the chorus. There’s no thumb biting here. Instead the opening conflict begins by high tensions following the tournament. In this opening, the action scenes are quite well done. Close camera angles and fast cuts don’t quite capture the nifty chaos of the battles from older adaptations. But Carlei’s fight scenes, aided by choreography from Paolo Antonini are visceral and competently arranged to suit modern tastes.

Unlike the trend that many modern Shakespeare adaptations follow, such as Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing, Carlei’s Romeo and Juliet is set in traditional renaissance style, with gorgeous costumes and set design (the only exception is a truly awful CG wedding chapel that looks like something out of a Star Wars prequel). The aesthetic will undoubtedly draw comparison to Franco Zefferelli’s version of the star-cross lovers, as some of the set designs look pulled directly from the 1968 film.

Aesthetics aside, the frantic pacing of the film, which seems to be there as to not bore young audiences, ends up skipping over many of the plays great comedic moments, exposing the intentions of a film more concerned with beating the audience over the head with the romantic elements  and entirely skipping the actual absurdity of its events.


Stellar performances by some of the older cast members, especially Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis, bring a lot of credibility to the film, but Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth’s respective turns as the titular lovers  range from overdone to flat, demonstrating a fundamental lack of engagement with the text. “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” should be spoken in anguish, to accentuate the central conflict of the play, not with a dreamy, glazed-over look. Too often, our protagonists feel like they are reading lines at each other, which is a common trap for actors with no Shakespearian training. This, combined with forced stage directions, make this production feel very “high-school play.”

With the central performances working mostly against it, Romeo and Juliet relies on a cheesy score to try and jerk some tears during pivotal scenes, combining unnecessarily fast-paced shots to create several moments straight out of an engagement ring commercial. These scenes were receiving giggles I don’t think the film was in on (a “so bad it’s good” production of this, played straight, could be interesting and hilarious, as long as the production is in on the joke).  Scenes where Romeo and Juliet are alone suffer the most compared to the rest of the film, as if the editor was pulling his hair out to save the uninspiring performances. 

It takes a special kind of hubris to take one of the most beloved plays of all time and say, “That needs another draft.” But that’s exactly what Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes did. Romeo is shown to be a much bolder young Montague, while Lord Capulet has some of his motivations  changed entirely by Fellowes’s new script. The goal was allegedly to simplify it enough to bring Shakespeare to a new audience. A good adaptation of the material would have done this, without the edits, through context clues.


Shakespeare’s words were not only chosen for the ideas they convey, but for the sounds they make. By altering that distinct cadence, Fellowes creates a slightly easier to understand, but far more shallow play. It may serve as an apt cheat sheet for high school students who have never heard of the internet, but it surely won’t help them delve further into the text. A shallow adaptation will beget a shallow audience. And it has. Sounds of sniffling from the women in the audience, confirm the success of Carlei’s ham-fisted approach.

Zefferelli’s 1968 version of the play remains the most competent, true to source, and enduring version of the traditional play (It’s also on Netflix). Luhrmaan’s controversial adaptation broke away from tradition and brought an exciting new angle to the play, fully embracing the sometimes-ridiculous concept, while making it culturally relevant and fresh. Carlei’s film, however, faces the struggle of justifying its own existence among the pantheon of great Shakespeare productions. It succeeds as a kind of “No Fear Shakespeare” on film, but will be quickly forgotten. Twilight fans and pubescent girls may give Carlei’s Romeo and Juliet two thumbs up, but anyone familiar with the play will inevitably bite their thumb at it.

D+

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Out in Theaters: CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

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“Captain Phillips”
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Starring Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Michael Chernus, Catherine Keener, David Warshofsky, Corey Johnson, Chris Mulkey
Biography, Crime, Drama
134 Mins
PG-13

“There’s gotta be something more than fishing or kidnapping people,” Captain Phillips (Tom Hanks) pleads to his captors. “Maybe in America,” Somali pirate Muse (Barkhad Abdi) retorts musingly, “maybe in America.” Paul Greengrass‘s harrowing dramatization of Captain Phillip’s 2009 kidnapping is filled with cultural misunderstandings of this nature. Vermont native Phillips fails to understand the true scope of these 21st century Somali pirates’ desperation just as Muse and his ragtag gang of automatic weapon-clutching goons can’t grasp how ridiculous their uncompromising request for a ten million dollar bounty is. On the surface, Captain Phillips may be a nail-biting tension match on par with Greengrass’s Bourne films but these surging politic undercurrents nipping at the frayed seams of a lopsided global economy takes the film to the next level of austere greatness.

As Phillips departs home on a socked in Vermont morning, he and wife Andrea (Catherine Keener) make small talk. Opposite to expectations, their relationship has never quite acclimated to Phillip’s globetrotting work. His departure is a challenge each and every time. But besides the emotional stress that comes bundled with physical distance from his family that rolls around like clockwork, there looms a far greater threat to Phillips: pirates.

Not swashbuckling, rum-chugging, sword-swinging Captain Jack Sparrows that Hollywood has so successfully romaticized but rather pirates born and bred of desperation. There are no “pirate’s life for me” sing-a-longs, no colorful parrots, plank to walk, or skull-and-bones flags, just a ragged sense of urgent necessity fueled by a “do or die” philosophy. Greengrass scrubs any dated concepts of glamor with a lump-throated scene of “woe-is-them” exposure. Pirating is a business and like all businesses, it can only handle so many employees. In this third world enterprise, tattered Somalians are literally begging to join the bandit crew. As easy as it is to paint them as such, they are not the scum of the earth; they’re just the products of a living, breathing dumping ground, scrounging for their piece of the pie.

However you may despise the cold-eyed Muse and his radical tactics at times, there is never an instance where you don’t understand him. This finely tuned balance, achieved through tactful story telling and a deeply humanistic element, is the work of a master. Onward and upward from the utterly fantastic and heart-wrenching United 93, Greengrass has learned even more self-discipline in the past decade. With Captain Phillips, he’s managed to secure a better handle on blending tension, drama, and the cold hard facts. For the wealth of real-life drama originating from the Maersk Alabama kidnapping, Greengrass has harnessed the best elements, like a weathered jeweler cutting down a diamond, and crafted a truly moving story.

Front and center, Hanks puts in one of the finest performances of his career. For all of his great former roles, there has always been a pinch of something disingenuous. Here there’s no shoddy accent cluttering things, no slips into hammy flourishes, no reliance on melodrama to catalyze the impact of his delivery. This is 100 percent raw and real. As Phillips, Hanks delivers a master class in acting, easily revealing his most mature and finely adjusted performance, perhaps ever.

While Captain Phillips falls in a season exploring all brands of survival drama (Gravity, All is Lost), it carves its own niche and is able to get our blood boiling in its own kind of way. While Gravity explored our human fear of claustrophobia and solitude, Phillips overturns the darkest corner of human nature: the fight-or-flight survival instinct within us. Any creature with its back against the wall will battle tooth and nail for its own life, and this is the catch 22 of the Somali circumstance. They believe that they must put their lives in danger ransacking these cargo ships in order to survive, even if that means holding up vessels stocked with emergency aid for those living in Africa. They are literally Robin Hood-ing their own people under the thin veil of collective-interest while they are literally taking food from the mouths of their fellow emaciated comrade.

And while this crew may not be dying in the moment, they are literally rotting away as a result of abject poverty. Their only perceived solution is this kidnapping business – as fishing just won’t cut it in the days of cargo barges constantly scaring off schools of potential dollars. As our entrance to this “other side of the world” mindset, Muse is more than a caricature. He’s hardly more than a sack of bones but he’s downright terrifying at times, reminding us of a once-bullied school child, now clinging to notions of American grandeur that could only be the stuff of dreams. Even his nickname “Skinny” (a tag he despises) fingers poverty and false iconography as the true enemy.

The beating heart of Captain Phillips is the revolution of these two Captains around one another as they fight for their survival only as they best see fit. They both lie to each other, they both make tragic mistakes, they both underestimate each other’s ceaseless zeal but, in the end, they want the same thing and this is the true irony. Both Phillips and Muse covet the American dream. To Phillips, this means responsibility, family, and job security – basically, the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. He’s not asking for much, just what he’s been promised his whole life.

Muse essentially wants the same thing; he just doesn’t know how to go about it. Even more damning, he fails to understand that not every American is a millionaire nor can he really comprehend the value of the American dollar. Just as Phillips can’t quite grasp the grim lack of options presented to these sea-bound desperadoes, Muse can’t help but apply a paradise template to his Americano notions. Their inherent misinterpretation of what each other stands for creates a deliciously polarized character swirl that pulls the tension as taut as a guitar string.

Humanizing his villain is a bold step, especially since we’re rooting against him for so much of the picture, but it’s a skill that Greengrass and screenwriter Billy Ray boldly execute. It’s rare to see an antagonist so despicable and yet so secretly tender. Using the autobiography from the real Richard Phillips as a map, Ray has crafted a believable and yet supercharged hijacking film far and away better than the much celebrated but truly lacking Denmark film A Hijacking.

Greengrass has made a hero story that we don’t quite know how to feel about. Our alliances are set, our convictions are airtight, but there’s a sneaking feeling of something amiss in an American victory that we just can’t put our finger on. He’s not piling on the white guilt but maybe that’s the genesis of the moral frustration, the straw-on-camel tipping point of Western privilege. The one we didn’t see coming.

As a biopic, it’s uncompromising and doggedly raw. As a thriller, it defines “being on pins and needles”. As a showcase for Tom Hanks, it serves as a major highlight for his long and illustrious career. It is, without a doubt, a spectacular achievement.

A

 

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Out in Theaters: ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE

by Posted in Out in Theaters
“All the Boys Love Mandy Lane”
Directed by Jonathan Levine
Starring Amber Heard, Anson Mount, Whitney Able, Michael Welsh, Edwin Hodge, and Luke Grimes
Horror, Mystery, Thriller
90 Mins
R

*This review is reprinted from the 2013 SIFF review

How do you discuss a movie that seems to actively uphold genre trappings and makes absolutely no contribution to the film world at large or the horror subculture? You point out everything wrong with it and hope that no one makes these mistakes again. Well at least that’s what I’m gonna do. That and make fun of it.

Filmed in 2006, All The Boys Love Mandy Lane never saw the light of day (outside of a handful of horror festivals) until the Weinsteins recently picked it up for a late summer distribution and official theatrical release. Often heralded as the best kept secret in the horror genre, now that All The Boys Love Mandy Lane has seen the light of day, it’s clear that it should have stayed dead and buried.

As far as I can tell, the official synopsis is as follows: “Mandy Lane is a girl who is supposedly like super hot. She is like the hottest girl ever and like people would do anything to be with her. Her like best friend Emmet, who is a boy who is like totally not cool, is super jealous that all the boys like her so he like convinces this like super hot dude to jump off the roof into a pool to like impress her. But he like misses and dies. OMG. Months later, Mandy and Emmet are totally not BFFs anymore but Mandy is like super cool still (cuz she’s hot, duh!) and all the boys want to like get into her pants. When Mandy goes on a weekend trip with the popular kids, she like totally gets more than she asked for and bodies like start piling up. Also it’s like totally her friend Emmet.”

Embarrassing across the board, it’s hard to choose where to start digging into this lifeless pile of crap. Trying to decide what was the worst aspect is like arguing which historical dictator was the worse (my money is still on Hitler). In other words, it’s a contest of bads. The directing is flat-line, the acting supremely bottom-tier and the story is literally shocking in its complete and utter lack of originality. Like watching a pot of water boil, there is absolutely nothing interesting going on for the entirety of the film.

If anything, the “story” seems like a primer for something more; a trashed first draft that some dumpster diver found worth in and for some reason decided to make into an actual movie. It is as bare bones as you can get and fails to deviate from conventional horror plot structure to such a degree that you’re left wondering if they meant to be ironic in adhering to your each and every expectation. Cementing classic horror clichés rather than setting them up and flipping them on their heads, All The Boys Love Mandy Lane is mindlessly dull because its so awkwardly straight forward.

It’s as if there was a conscious effort to not add anything that could potentially be conceived as surprising or interesting. Even the death scenes were remarkably lame. I’m no champion of guts-and-gore but there is absolutely nothing here that is either distressing or haunting. Even when a girl gets a rifle shoved in her mouth until she starts to bleed, the practical effects and makeup are so unconvincing and juvenile that I felt like I was watching something my friends and I made in ninth grade. Not to discount our efforts… but come on people.

At the helm of this project is Jonathan Levine who is actually a fairly respectable filmmaker (this project notwithstanding). Levine’s 50/50 showed an unimaginably deft ability to blend cancer with comedy and even Warm Bodies was a mildly entertaining riff on the zombie and rom-com genre. At least Levine is not to blame for the utterly contrived script, as responsibility there goes to Jacob Forman, who, imagine that, has not had another writing credit since. Levine is, however, accountable for the utterly lifeless nature of the film. Each sepia-toned shot is as plagiarized and simple as the next and the repetitive camerawork makes this already slow movie drag its feet even more. Clearly, Levine has moved head and shoulders above this pedigree of filmmaking but it is still an embarrassment to have his name credited to his garbage.

If you’re going to make a slasher in this day and age, you need something to distinguish it from the pack. There are bins literally filled with movies about teenagers-at-an-abandoned-lake/cabin/ranch/who gives a shit and there’s a reason you find these types of movies overflowing the Walmart value bins at 99 cents a pop. They are literally piles of crap and all Levine has done is made the pile higher as there is not one distinguishing feature that makes this one stand above any of the others. In truth, this could be one of the worst horror movies ever made. If not the worst, it is certainly one of the least ambitious.

In order to get you to avoid this detestably lame sack of doo-doo, I’m going to go ahead and ruin the “twist” ending. Are you ready? Here come the final notes on Forman’s script: “It was her! She did it! She teamed up with her BFF and they were a team! OMG! Yes! Victory! Score! LMAO! Together they killed the popular kids…but now it’s time for them to kill themselves. Duped ya! Oh no she didn’t! Instead she’ll kill her BFF and totally gets away with it! Ha! Been there, killed them. Killed them all. Now it’s the end. Yes!”

All joking aside, this is literally the most poorly executed twist of all time. So it was her. Fine. It doesn’t really matter to me either way but I was ready to get to the bottom of this. Why exactly did she decide to seemingly abandon her unpopular best friend and befriend the popular kids (who’s only crime against her was really intense levels of awkward flirtation but I mean they never like tried to rape her or anything)? And just when we’re ready to get the answers and have the whole thing wrap up, it doesn’t. There’s nothing. No explanation. No justification. It’s almost as if Levine thought that he resolved everything, put down the camera, sparked a big joint and called it quits. It’s the movie equivalent of George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner: 12 years later and we’re still at war. Maybe it would have come across as ironic or, um, something if Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) didn’t have the personality of a pet rock but alas!

I’m just going to quickly breeze over the “acting” portion of this write-up because there is really nothing to talk about. There’s the jock, the popular kid, the nerd, the slut, the pretty one, and the virgin and each of them play their role with about as much bravado as an Ent (that’s me making a clever Lord of the Rings reference to call their acting wooden!) I guess the only two who are really required to do anything on an acting level are Heard and Michael Welch as Emett but dear lord are they terrible characters. When you make Friday the 13th‘s Jason look like a complex and rounded character study, you know you’re doing something wrong. Shame on you both.

All in all, this is a movie you should simply avoid. It’s not scary. It’s not funny. It’s not ironic. It’s white bread soaked in water. It’s such a dullard that it’s almost confusing. I really do think that Levine must have assumed that there was something ironic about doing exactly what we expected him to do but in reality, it works about as well as the Hindenburg. That is, it blew up in his face. Even diehard horror fans are sure to walk away feeling empty and robbed at the end of this movie so if you absolutely must, must, must see it, wait for it at the bargain bins in Walmart because that is sure to be its eventual home.

F

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Out in Theaters: WE ARE WHAT WE ARE

by Posted in Out in Theaters
“We Are What We Are”
Directed by Jim Mickle
Starring Bill Sage, Ambyr Childers, Julia Garner, Jack Gore, Wyatt Russell, Michael Parks, and Nick Damici
Drama, Horror, Thriller
105 Mins
R

In 1826, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, “Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es” (Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are). Morphing throughout time to arrive at the now common idiom, “We are what we eat,” (a sentiment mostly passed down from overprotective moms encouraging their chubby kids to lay off the potato chips and eat their damn vegetables), has never been more pertinent than in Jim Mickle‘s cannibal-horror We Are What We Are. Forced to consume a set of distressing ideologies (centered around a medieval virgin-consuming ritual) alongside their main course of human meat, the Parker family  – a sneaky riff on the uber-sterilized Partridge family – is the centerfold of this gloomy tale of distorted moral recompense and dietary wrongheadedness.

Adapted from the surprise Mexican horror hit of the same name, We Are What We Are asks what a modern day cannibalistic family living on the outskirts of a major society would look like. Surrounded by non-suspecting citizens going about their daily duties, the Parkers live a sheltered farmhouse life; an imprisoning fortress strictly guarded by patriarch Frank (Bill Sage). But Frank’s not your typical “you shall not date” daddy; he takes his role as guardian about three steps further. Not only are his children forbidden from interacting with townsfolk, but they are ingrained with his distorted biblical absolutism, poisonous to all who drink from it. 


From Bill Paxon‘s character in Frailty to the intolerable members of the Westborough Baptist Church, there is nothing more terrifying than someone who believes that their definitively antisocial behavior is blessed by a higher power. When that self-righteous attitude is so potent that you can justify consuming your fellow humans, the “blessed” is little more than a common psychopath. What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a psychopath.

But the Parker family annual tradition of capturing a young girl, keeping her holed up in a muddy basement dungeon, and eventually harvesting her for a tasty Sunday feast is thrown for a loop when the family matriarch passes out face down in a mud-ridden puddle and drowns. This foreshadow-laden event sets in motion a power shift within the family that threatens to upend their twisted tradition as the bulk of the family responsibilities are left to eldest daughter Iris (Ambyr Childers). Iris now must become the keeper and eventual slaughterer of the caged hostages, ensuring tender human meat is ready to munch down on once their weeks-long fast comes to a close.


Tense and somber, but at times prone to boredom, the most disturbing element of Mickle’s film is grounded within the idea of inherited convictions. A young child is essentially a reflection of their parents and parenting style. You can easily turn a man into a monster, a sweet child into an animal, under the wrong circumstances. Especially if they are sheltered to the point of not knowing any better options and force-fed ideology like a coma patient with a feeding tube. As this Parker family tradition is passed on from generation to generation, we see this barbarous trend that has survived for decades now threatened by the globalization rife in the modern age, as universal information inevitably seeps into the infrastructure of even the most sheltered household.

Iris and younger sibling Rose (Julia Garner) may not have iPhones but they do have a sense of moral right-and-wrong… at least more than their predecessors. Though debates over nature versus nurture stir within the scientific community, there is no denying the fact that the Parker youth have a bit of both factoring into who they have become. Although they’ve been raised under an ideology where the world is damned by God and eating a fellow homo sapien is no different from chowing down on a T-bone steak, there is something ingrained within them telling them otherwise. In the ensuing psychological exploration of his characters, Mickle suggests a Nietzchian theory about “true north” on the moral compass as an act of self-discovery. We cannot ever truly be prescribed an ideology; we must find it in ourselves through knowing ourselves. In this controversial garden, Mickle plays.


Where the film finds itself misstepping is in its despotic gloom. There is no humor to cut the acrid subject material, no sense of over-the-top camp to shower such a grim topic. Just a pounding dim that encompasses all. With such a dour attitude, it’s crosses the line of being too self-serious, denying the audience a necessary break from the domineering bleakness of it all.

Likewise, the cinematography from Ryan Samul leaves something to be desired as there is little inventive about the glum crane shots he uses. His gloomy palette and moody visual undertones are too familiar and become a touch overbearing without anything to interrupt the downtrodden tenor.

As far as the performances, Garner is impressive as little Rose but Sage as Frank is a little too one-noted to make much of an impression. Just as Gardner explores a wide array of Rose’s emotions; fear, rage, grief, terror; Sage offers little to explain the hardened state of Frank’s crumbled psyche, something that would have added paramount interest to this perverted family dynamic. As the leading lady, Childers is an ample moral compass for us to journey through the film with, but her performance is similarly nothing to rave about.

On the final leg though, We Are What We Are delivers on its foreboding sense of terror and unleashes a whopper of a finale. For all the carefully footed build up scattered through the film, the jaw-dropping conclusion is one well-earned payoff that legitimizes a watch, even if it won’t make you eager to eat meat anytime soon.

C+

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