post

Out in Theaters: PRIDE

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

I was reluctant to watch Pride. I’m not a huge activist when it comes to anything besides the “No-Poo Movement”, so I’m generally less inclined to endure pandering of any kind. When I read the synopsis for Pride, it seemed a little politically heavy. Perhaps it would be Dallas Buyers Club with parades. Thankfully, it was so much more than that.

Pride starts, expectedly, at a gay-pride parade in the Summer of 1984. On his birthday, Joe (George MacKay) sneaks out of his parents’ house to join in the festivities. Soon, he meets Mark (Ben Schnetzner) and his group of friends. Mark’s an energetic, delicate young activist for everyone’s rights. He’s got a massive “Thatcher Out!” banner hanging outside his apartment window. Joe gets handed a bucket and joins in on the chanting: “Lesbians and Gays for the Miners!”

The film focuses on the British Coal Miners’ strikes in the United KingdomB during Margaret Thatcher’s Prime Ministry. Mark hears about their plight and sees an opportunity to gain sympathy for the “gays’” cause. The police that used to torment the homosexual community have shifted their attention to the miners picketing and rallying. He starts L.G.S.M. — Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (they’ve got a very forthright name) — and calls upon his fellow friends to join the cause. Notably: Joe, Jonathan (Dominic West), and Steph (Faye Marsay, the “L” in LGSM).

The problem is: no one will accept their money. Mark, being the driving force that he is, decides to contact a suffering town directly and offer their help. Dai (Paddy Considine, Hot Fuzz & The Bourne Ultimatum) picks up and is more than willing to accept the money. LGSM goes up to Wales to meet him and the town, but this hardy Welsh miners’ town isn’t as receptive. Soon, a struggle erupts as LGSM refuses to let down in helping them out, while the miners reconcile help from a community that they don’t understand.

The film is one of protest and persistence. Joe’s hiding his homosexuality from his parents. His Dad mockingly calls AIDS “Anally Injected Death Sentence.” His internal struggle matches the one facing LGSM: how do we change a prejudiced perspective. As the town warms up to “The Gays as they call them” and older members like Cliff (Bill Nighy) and Hefina (Imelda Staunton) begin to advocate for them, the town faces the same rift as Joe: how are these people different? LGSM picks up more and more support, but the more vocal opponents continue trying to sabotage their efforts.

Pride is beautifully acted, unimposing and wide open. Really, it’s raucous fun. LGSM puts on a benefit concert, a parade, and constantly brings fun to the tense topics Pride highlights. The juxtaposition of gruff miners and flamboyant LGSM-ers is hilarious, and Pride has fun making fun of itself. Heavy materials are treated with the same lightness as a pride parade. It’s proud without boasting.

Old vets like Considine, Staunton and Nighy deliver soft, tender and often hilarious performances as older town-members quick to accept LGSM. They give what you’d expect from top-bill names. Their interactions are simply gold, as they mine for understanding. These old folks have never met a homosexual in their life, and now they’re surrounded by them. Their reactions are brilliant.

But Pride makes its money from its young cast, who dance and sing and enjoy every moment. They never give up and don’t take “no” for an answer. Their charisma and enthusiasm melts hearts. Ben Schnetzner is revelatory in one of his first on-screen performances. As LGSM’s headstrong leader, he’s the Billy to this film’s Elliot, the Simon to its Garfunkel. He takes the brunt of the criticism, but bounces back unharmed. He’s the group’s anchor, and he’s definitive in his charm. MacKay, Marsay and West too, are sincere, droll and flamboyant.

Ultimately though, praise belongs to director Matthew Warchus (directing his first film since 1999) and writer Stephen Beresford, who have put together something special here. Weaving in so many tales of strife without coming off as overbearing is something difficult to accomplish, but they do so with aplomb. By the end, the triumph isn’t what you’d expect either. Beresford keeps you guessing, and Warchus has you dancing in your seat. This film is based on a true story, but it seemed bigger than that.

Heart-warming, fun and eye-opening, Pride is surprisingly earnest and solid from start to finish. It bypasses prejudice and gifts you with understanding. I’m more than proud to recommend Pride. Be prepared to dance.

A

 

Follow Silver Screen Riot on Facebook
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Twitter

 

post

Out in Theaters: AUTÓMATA

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , , ,

Automata_AutomataFotopelicula6255.jpg
I hadn’t even heard of Autómata when I was sent a digital screener but with its science fiction meets thriller description and a shaved-headed Antonio Banderas at the forefront, I figured I’d give it a go. From the get go, it reads iRobot meets Blade Runner, a lo-fi crossroads between wanna-be philosophical depths and bargain FX. And from the many borrowed circuits from many better movies, Autómata scraps together a fairly watchable though ultimately robotic piece of (English-language) independent science cinema.

Banderas is a Spanish Deckard in a post-apocalyptic world whose population is down by 99.7%. Only 21 million people remain – though that population scarcity is never intelligently touched on – and those that are alive have it kinda rough. Cardboard shanties line the outside of the fortress-tall enclosure that houses the privileged – again, we don’t get much insight into the divide between the haves and have-nots – where beggars set their bots to panhandle-mode to scrimp from the occasional passerby. “Please sir, my owner is hungry,” the flat-faced bots, (obnoxiously foreshadowingly) called Pilgrims, coo. Talk about the furthest extrapolation of human laziness.

Glj4I.jpg

It’s Jacq Vaucan’s (Banderas/no, it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue) job to settle claims of broken Pilgrims. Our first encounter with him sees a poverty-stricken family claiming that a bot had malfunctioned and killed their dog. Banderas contends it is not possible. After all, each Pilgrim is built with a protocol so that they cannot harm any living thing. They’re also prevented from altering themselves. The two protocols work in symbiosis to ensure that no Pilgrim ever offs a human or, say, a dog. So obviously the family killed their own dog, Vaucan assumes, because any alternative wouldn’t be possible. Because our hero must start his journey as utterly unwilling to see the feasible cracks in his worldview. Otherwise the parabola is incomplete. We wouldn’t want to watch a character only half arc. Fella’s got to start at the bottom.

With a baby on the way and only bleakness on the horizon, Vaucan tries to right the ship at home while working as said bot-checking appendage of a totalitarian government. But when he sees a robot, gasp, self-altering his entire world goes up in smoke and he’s forced to hit the road to upend the truth.

automata.jpg

Along the way, there’s some frightfully bad acting. Wife Rachel (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) is a trying actress who slurps through her lines like a kid with a juice box. Clocksmith Dr. Dupree (Melanie Griffith) one ups her in the awful actress department though, assuming the time-worn craft of acting is little more than emphasizing every other word and making an symmetrically enticing O-shape with her mouth when she’s not babbling. She too closely resembles a starlet on her knees trying to secure the “role of a lifetime”. Attempting to hack her way through technical jargon, she’s offensively bad. Even Dylan McDermott treats his role like a chew toy, slobbering all over it like he’s in a hurry to collect the paycheck to buy some more coke. Banderas is the only one trying to make it worthwhile so thankfully it’s mostly a one man show.

To his credit, Gabe Ibáñez knows Banderas is his strength and tries to pull him out of the ring of fire that is his acting counterparts as much as possible. Problem is, it takes him too long to figure out just where to put him. Accordingly, the pacing is all over the place and doesn’t really ever settle into something that feels relatively comfortable with itself into well into the back end of the second act. A scene where Vaucan drunkenly dances with a pink wig-wearing, doll-faced Pilgrim is maybe the best in the whole movie. It’s basically fan fiction between Deckard and a pleasure model Replicant. It’s weird and hollow and oddly affecting.

Automata.jpg
When stripped back to Zacarías M. de la Riva‘s percussive soundscape and a dusty gun battle, Autómata excels. When Pilgrim after Pilgrim refuse to fight back against the wanton violence of man, a honest note of emotion rings out. Sadly, those moments are numbered and often boxed in by wooden acting of the nth degree.

In a movie that’s supposedly, subtly about evolutionary superiority, it commits some Darwin Award worthy movie sins. Brutally convenient encounters between characters – waiting to die until in the arms of another character, everyone is always in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time, etc. – but these faults are almost less offensive than the punishingly poor acting in some key moments. Autómata wants so badly to be an adult rehash of dystopian themes but it’s undone by that can’t-put-your-finger-on-it spice of amateur acting. I’m a stickler for performance and nothing throws me off more than a couple really bad ones. Having said that though, I have to admit, the robots themselves are pretty dope. Now whether I congratulation the art department or the special effects department on that one is the real mystery.

C-

Follow Silver Screen Riot on Facebook
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Twitter

post

Out in Theaters: KILL THE MESSENGER

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Kill-The-Messenger-movie-1.jpg

Kill the Messenger is a magic bullet meant to assassinate – or at least tarnish – the reputation of the CIA for their uber illegal association with Nicaraguan Contra rebels. Their anti-communist war effort was funded in part by *gulp* distributing crack cocaine to Central LA ghettos, a network Webb contends the CIA was complicit – or at least complacent – in facilitating.  And like the projectile from any effective firearm, the path it travels is straight and narrow. Lead Jeremy Renner is monstrous good as big-in-his-britches San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb, an ambitious journalist who sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong and ends up getting stung by the barbs of a well executed smear campaign, but director Michael Cuesta never lets the work truly take off. It’s a competent, A-to-Z biographical picture that misses the moments to really get in the head of a man pushed to the brink or elevate his tale into a thing of true artistry.

Cuestra spends the first half of the movie setting up Webb’s pending investigation and eventual damning story “Dark Alliance” that would win him the Bay Area Journalist of the Year Award, a celebration that lacked the fanfare he had once envisioned. Stumbling upon the trail without meaning to, Webb (Renner) is tipped off about a local drug kingpin with ties of the CIA. Upon digging into the shadowy association, Webb begins to connect dots that go deeper than he could have ever imagined and proposes that in order to wage an anti-Communist war that Congress had already voted against, Reagan and his inner circle conspired to fund the Nicaraguan Contras by knowingly allowing cocaine to be smuggled into the US and sold without penalty in underprivileged neighborhoods. According to Webb, this significantly worsened the crack cocaine problem that had become pandemic in African American communities in the 1980s.

hr_Kill_the_Messenger_22.jpg

Racing to find proof of this heinous allegations, Webb leaves behind wife Sue (Rosemarie DeWitt) and children to solidify sources in the thick of Central America. Not surprisingly, few officials are wont to rush forward and those that do aren’t necessarily in great standing (being drug dealers, slimy bankers or others involved in the black market lifestyle.) Upon publication of Webb’s record-setting article, outrage explodes across African American communities and general populations equally, until the spotlight is turned on Webb by a CIA scurrying to discredit everything about the man.

With a background in political slowburners like Homeland and Elementary and bloodlusters like Dexter and True Blood, Cuesta understands storytelling but has not adapted his style from the small screen to the big one perfectly. To get the bulk of the narrative onscreen, he’s simplified events done to the meat and potatoes version. We hit on each major point like SparkNotes, never really getting the time to dive into the intricacies that make everything so compelling. At just under two hours, it either feels too short or two long. An HBO miniseries would likely have been a better avenue. Without Renner’s captivating turn as Webb, the story would feel too much like a moving document; the cold hard facts of a national outrage turned media circus.

kill-the-messenger-image-jeremy-renner.jpg

But in a time where the US has seemed as internally adversarial as ever (look at the recent outcry at Ferguson and prevailing Us vs. Them mindset of nationwide citizens and police forces), Cuesta’s telling of Webb’s story is worth remembering for the cold hard facts alone. Since his death – two gunshots to the head, deemed a suicide – Webb’s allegedly falsified charges against the CIA had been vindicated. While his controversial point ended up proven to be true, he wasn’t there to see his day of salvation. And this is the most important story of all: truth being met with brutality and the ease of which such can be covered up with the wave of a wand. Cuesta goes to show how the mere mention of conspiracy can sometimes be enough to transform an expert newsman into a theorist crackpot. That’s the tale here: man finds conspiracy, man validates conspiracy and man goes down in flames for it. It’s the equivalent of Loose Change confirmed ten years from now. Definitive proof that the moon landing was a hoax.

And yet for all the controversy Webb’s story whipped up, the end result is a man lying penniless in a hotel room with two bullets in his skull. Years later, official validation of Webb’s controversial story came and went like a summer breeze. The hive mind of Americana had moved onto a new scandal. Oval office blow jobs triumphed over one of the most damning government cover ups of all time. This is the story that Cuestra should have been telling, not something to leave until an end credits stinger.

A living reminder of our government’s readiness to desecrate an individual in order to escape ownership of past crimes, Kill the Messenger is a wake up call for a slacktivism-obsessed generation of American citizens. It’s a film about caged justice, about evil actually prevailing and the lengths to which our once great nation will go to validate each and every transgression of their past.

hr_Kill_the_Messenger_21.jpg

The picture this paints is not a pretty one. It’s one of deception distributed wholesale, of a blindly lead populace, of a mastermind behind the curtain pulling levers and blowing smoke to scare people into submission. Were the meek to inherit the Earth, we’d have a nation owed many inheritances. And the most frightening aspect of all is that the one behind the curtain is seemingly calling the shots unchecked. America the Great is as desperate, deranged and unpredictable as Oz. The fungus of corruption has infected her immune system. Nothing is left untarnished.

If she were a best friend, you’d send her kicking and screaming to a mental institution for delusions of granduer. If they were your employee, you’d fire them for flagrant misconduct. As a governing body that represents the will of 300 plus million people, truth, integrity and basic human values – the pillars upon which a nation should stand – have been relegated to the lowest wrung of the totem pole. The right to life, liberty and happiness comes with a big, blaring asterisk. The sad truth, when one man’s honest zeal is pitted against the reputation of one of the secret-coveting countries in the world, you better believe he’s going down in flames. This is the ugly picture that Kill the Messenger paints and the million discussions it will warrant afterwards. Though deceptively straightforward in its telling, it’s the aftermath of Michael Cuestra‘s film that should matter most.

B-

Follow Silver Screen Riot on Facebook
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Twitter

post

Out in Theaters: DRACULA UNTOLD

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Let me tell you an untold story: a bunch of studio execs crowd in a room. The air is thick with the fumes of aged (pronounce age-ed) scotch, the carpet stamped in the cookie cutout of a Louis Vuitton heel. The unpaid Lambo payments and hefty beachside mortgages are palpable. “How can we play the franchise game without shelling royalties to a greedy parent company?” The question all kids dream of answering someday. The words hang. Their answer is a lightbulb: unlicensed public property characters. Like Hercules! Or Frankenstein! Pump out films about characters that’ve been around for infinity because easy money. There’s literally no one in that Wolfman family tree coming forward to claim a check when Benicio dons a hairy mask. “I know! What about Dracula?” Penny saved, penny earned. This seems about the extent of thought that birthed this (dis)passion project that is Dracula Untold. In the petri dish that is the studio system though, this revisionist take on a monster movie classic actually (amazingly) transformed into something half-worthwhile; an appropriately enjoyable bad movie. Read More

post

Out in Theaters: THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , ,

the_two_faces_of_january_2014_pic01.jpg
The Two Faces of January is a classical told crime caper centered around a pair of on-the-lamb scalawags and the one vixen they both are vying for. Directed by Drive scribe Hossein Amini and starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac, January is a film that relies entirely on engaged, rapturous performances and, while much more slow burning than edge of your seat, delivers on that front mightily.

Here, Mortensen is Chester MacFarland, a wealthy con artist with a thick billfold and a handsome wardrobe, chased through the din of countless European cities by shadows and connected private detectives. He’s a cautious charmer. A snake undoubtedly. From his designer shades to the first-rate cut of his gib, he’s a man who demands admiration. At least, at first glance. Getting to know Chester is part of the game that Amini plans. Seeing the depravity to which he lowers himself, part of the tragedy. As Chester drains bottles, the man as suave as seersucker fades into an angry mule of a man, kicking aimlessly at the world around. Like with any role, Mortensen commits entirely, crafting a petty, often cowardly man that still isn’t beyond the reach of sympathy.

the-two-faces-of-january05.jpg

Dunst as Chester’s lovably rosy – though ultimately dim and complacent – wife is better suited as a fatted calf than a partner in crime. Don’t take that as a knock on her performance – which actually is quite solid – but a statement on her character. She’s the gold prize awarded on the pedestal somehow caught up amongst the peloton. She’s a trophy to be enjoyed after the victory lap that has found herself thick in the sweatfields of the race. Suited to costly champagne and shiny bangles, their recent life on the run is undoubtedly getting to her.

When an American traveler living as a Athenian tour guide, Rydal (Isaac), mistakes Chester for his own father, he offers his services as a guide of all trades. Immediately taken with Rydal, Dunst’s Colette accepts empathically, a union that intensifies when Rydal mistakenly witnesses Chester killing, err man slaughtering, off the PI hot on their trail. Matching Mortensen jab-for-jab, Isaac showcases his own knack for understated ferocity, bringing another misunderstood – though less misanthropic – character to life.

10-15-12-Actors-VIGGO-MORTENSEN-and-KIRSTEN-DUNST-during-the-filming-of-the-movieThe-Two-Faces-of-January-inside-Parthenon-at-the-Acropolis.-1125x750.jpg
With their paths incontrovertibly tangled, the party seeks passage to a nearby country – any nearby country – and a brighter tomorrow. This narrative turn necessitates a fundamental move in something as basic as the nature of the film’s genre and makes for a much more flatlined stretch.

Once Chester, Colette and Rydal escape Athens, January turns from a broiling Hitchcockian thriller to a turgid road movie. And though their languishing trip over rail, bus lines and cobbled streets is imbued with gorgeous cinematography courtesy of the Greek coast and Marcel Zyskind‘s penitent eye, the affair quickly bores. As any train passenger would agree, train-side has the potential to be occasionally stunning but the repetitive character all but serves as nature’s Ambien. In those tedious middle minutes, I caught my head sinking into my chest and my eyes fluttering closed. It isn’t until the group begins to properly implode on themselves that things begin to heat up and intensify, leading to a fully satisfying though not unfamiliar final third.

The-Two-Faces-of-January-DI.jpg

Bearing no resemblance to some other projects he worked on (Drive) January proves the Iranian Amini has no desire to be written into a corner. Totally missing is the stylized, progressive zest of Drive, replaced by a humbled, deferential, even old fashion stance towards filmmaking. This isn’t a man trying to reinvent the wheel so much as marvel at the perfection of it.

What it does share in common is a collected sense of muted, disquieting scene work. His characters are flawed, moody but not without their charms. As Colette and Rydal’s flirtation turns from simmer to boil, Chester’s wavering acumen is a synonym of circumstance. As a writer, Amini confirms that more can be said by not saying anything at all. Though he doesn’t set out to affirm that all men are redeemable, in a roundabout way, he has. But the bumps along the road are many and the emotions are as fair-weather as often as they are belligerent. If I had a nickel for every time someone let a scowl slip across their face, I’d be 85 cents richer.

The-two-faces-of-january-oscar-isaac-viggo-mortensen.jpg

The film is deliberately set to the pace of Alberto Iglesias‘ smart score. His jumpy sonatas offers an appropriate overture for Amini’s drab thriller, giving it life in spots, taking it away in other. A somber, reflective romp like this almost demands Iglesias’s score to channel such an exacting and hectic mood. As further evidence of the monotony of the sagging middle parts, Iglesias’s musical touch fades to melancholic whimpering. Oboes croon like a large dog pining for attention. It’s not until his strings dash forward and the notes crescendo that the film does again.

With more in common with the films of the 1960s than the films of 2014, The Two Faces of January has a tendency to turn the pot to a low broil and lean on the actor’s oft mesmerizing performances to guide it through the humdrum elements. Nevertheless, there’s much to love about Amini’s effort and even more to admire. Top to bottom, January is an uncommon romantic thriller; a pretty picture cemented by actors on top of their game.

B-

Follow Silver Screen Riot on Facebook
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Twitter

 

post

Out in Theaters: GONE GIRL

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

still-of-ben-affleck-and-rosamund-pike-in-gone-girl-2014-large-picture.jpg
I knew a guy in college who was accused of rape. He was a few years older than me and confided the tale over a joint and some cheap whiskey. The case didn’t go to court nor did he see the inside of a jail cell but the accusation alone stood as a scarlet letter. He became a bit of a pariah; an un-dateable. His side of the story admittedly painted a dubious picture – both of them were drinking, they fooled around, two weeks later it was reported as a rape – but I nonetheless felt uncomfortable swilling from the same bottle of Seagram’s 7 as him.

Like he had unintentionally Inceptioned me, the inkling of suspicion was planted, the possibility that this guy had physically and emotionally scarred a woman swarmed my mind and grew into an unpleasant garden of doubt. It almost didn’t matter who was guilty. The blood was in the water. So what if he were innocent? The idea had still taken hold. So what if all it took to break a man down to the studs was one simple, four-letter word? Tawana Brawley set a judicial precedent with her 1988 court case of such a nature, Crystal Mangum and the Duke Lacrosse Team proved such an occurrence was no novelty. You better believe that acquitted or no, none of those chums are going to be the next contestant on The Bachelor. And then what if we dial that up to murder? How many Grand Trial Juries see a case in which a wife is murdered and immediately assume the husband’s involvement? Gone Girl harnesses that destructive power of accusation, plants us in the eye of the storm and dares its audience to keep up with each and every turn, no matter how subtle or seemingly easy to dismiss. Brace for impact, it’s a hell of a ride.

gone-girl-ben-affleck-kim-dickens-patrick-fugit.jpg

Adapted from Gillian Flynn‘s Best Seller of the same name, Gone Girl is a movie I knew I was going to love from the opening credits, which is no short surprise for movie maestro David Fincher. The names of associated talent blip in bright white words to fade unnaturally quickly from focus. They supernova. In the background, staccato shots of perfectly framed suburban residences attack the audience, underscored by Trent Reznor‘s pulsing, foggy soundtrack. Mimicking the volcanic rumble of a natural disaster or, worse yet, demons trying to escape from hell, his gothic, almost science fiction-like soundscape rolls over all like a fiery wave. As if on a timer, the blue house with white trim jolts to a four-bedroom with a red door. A low synth note sustains. Suburbia never looked so menacing.

Day one, morning of. Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) enters a bar; his bar; The Bar. It’s only 11 but he fixes a whiskey, neat. Sister Margo, played with gusto by Carrie Coon, joins him. It’s his fifth anniversary. The “wood” year. Appropriate seeing that’s what his marriage now resembles. Margo makes disparaging remarks. Nick grants them. His wife’s a bitch. “Amazing Amy” is a farce.

gone-girl-rosamund-pike.jpg

A side story breaks in without warning. In swooping penmanship, Amy’s (Rosamund Pike) diary takes us back in time. In flashback, life looks promising. A storybook. Reznor’s tracks get playful, as if they’re played on a kiddy xylophone. Nick and Amy spar verbally, the flirtation of the intelligentsia, before kissing in a sugar storm. Their meeting is an Ivy League daydream. As a girl, Amy’s life had been massaged and melded into a popular kid’s series penned by her mother, “Amazing Amy”. Amy’s amazing counterpart always made the varsity team. She was a shoe-in for valedictorian. She had a dog because it made her relatable. Amazing Amy was a tough act to follow. But in the potpourri of a sugar storm, the crusty side of life is easy enough to forget.

Day one, afternoon. Nick returns home to find a bouquet of smashed glass and no Amy. After finding a trace of blood splatter, Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) is quick to rule this a missing persons case. The hunt for Amazing Amy begins. As the vigil lights spark, the curtain comes up on Amy’s ill-standing in the community. Even before her disappearance, she was a ghost. A New Yorker with her nose too high in the air to notice the Missouri (she pronounces the word startlingly like “misery”) locals around her. Nick registers as unfazed to the social community at large with TV personalities and town’s people alike taking turns to knock his untimely playboy grins and unbefitting calm.

1280x720-osz.jpg

By Day Seven, the incident has unraveled into a full scale media circus and Fincher’s direction chases the rabbit down the hole. Nick’s wrapped up in a chess game played with power sex and won by carnal obliteration. Staring into the furtive abyss of the death sentence, Nick associates with a high status defense lawyer, played by a surprisingly great Tyler Perry, as he tries to mount a case that goes beyond just proving he didn’t kill his wife. In the age of social networking, you also have to win Twitter. The murderer becomes a Bachelor contestant. Womankind nationwide have to get their jollies if he stands a chance at an acquittal. Nick’s a pawn, moved unwittingly across the board by a mastermind the likes of Bobby Fisher and Fincher knows exactly when, where and how much to show. Just watching is stressful. Alleviating yourself by sucking down Coca-Cola or smacking popcorn is self-defeating. You don’t even dare to take a bathroom break.   

In large part thanks to the massively enticing performances, Gone Girl threatens to slack your jaw so low it could fall off. Though unlikely to see much award fanfare, the oft underrated Ben Affleck is perfectly on mark. He’s not the hero you want but he’s the one Fincher’s picture deserves. Above him, below him and all around him, Rosamund Pike is an explosion. She’s breathtaking. She’s the remnants of a shattered China Doll, self-repairing into a new, frightening form. Like Chucky. She’s brilliant. She’s my current front runner for Best Actress. If not at the Oscars, in my own awards. A scene in which Amy undergoes a fluid-soaked transformation is as startling as it is perfect. The phoenix rises from the ashes. The devil is in the details. Fincher’s camera eats it up like pudding. Like everything else in her life, Amy owns her scenes.

c6e2d9a622bf5a64_gone-girl-DF-04280_04333_COMP_rgb.xxxlarge_2x.jpg

Let’s break down one bit in particular. Ex-boyfriend Neil Patrick Harris fantasizes about octopus and scrabble on the Greece coastline. Like Amy, the octopus feeds through a hidden maw. A cavernous web of teeth. Impossible to predict, its arms are a slippery tangle of deception. Before you even see the octopus coming, you disappear in their cloud of ink. They’re inconspicuous predators. Similarly, the best Scrabble players can find meaning in a mess. In that cloud of ink, they thrive. They whip things to their advantage, trading up for better letters. For better standing. For a better Amy. Octopus and scrabble. His fantasy is his undoing. He feeds right into Amy’s manipulative maw.

Gone Girl deals in accusations and historical gender circumstance. It’s a 21st century battle of the sexes; a tennis match played with grenades. Amy and Nick’s affair depends entirely upon existing gender roles. It festers because of the wobbly stature between mankind and womankind. It’s not feminist. It’s emasculating. It’s not progressive. It’s the end of times. It’s a pedagogical treatise on the anatomy of a broken marriage. Or maybe all marriage. Who can tell? And I guess that’s the point. It’s always going, going, gone (girl). David Fincher absolutely hits it out of the park. It’s one of the best, and darkest, visions he’s ever dished up. Always one step before the action, Fincher demands we race to catch up. Each shot ends just marginally too quickly. His vision is frantic by design. Things get lost in the dark that are never recovered. You just have to pretend along with it. Case in point, I never got to the bottom of that college guy’s story. And in the end, his reputation never really hinged on the truth at all. Just what people thought.

A+

Follow Silver Screen Riot on Facebook
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Twitter

 

post

Weekly Review 57: KILL, HOS2EL, SACRAMENT

by Posted in Weekly Review Tagged , , , , 1 Comment

Weekly Review

Three more horror movies at home this week were joined by screening of Gone Girl, Men, Women and Children and Annabelle. With a fair amount of work on my platter and a barrage of visitors, my at home viewing wasn’t what it’s been lately. Nonetheless, I present a short selection of great, good and bad. Let’s get down to some Weekly Review..

KILL LIST (2012)

Kill_List_2.jpg
Part crime thriller, part imploding family drama, all visceral horror, Kill List is an experience in unchecked fear. Perfectly paced and brilliantly directed, what begins as an ambiguous exercise in tension building unfolds into a bloody road trip before exploding into a full blown panic attack. Questions pile up and answers are few and far between but Kill List is a movie that lends itself to deconstruction and theoretical questioning. Is it a religious parable about a modern day angel of vengeance? A commentary on an impending cultural apocalypse? Is it the devil’s coming of age tale? Or is it just threateningly vague to intentionally get you all in a tizzy? With music that is surely the soundtrack of Hell, Kill List burns itself into your subconscious, threatening to strike at the darkest hour. (A-)

HOSTEL: PART 2 (2007)

image013.jpg
Sadistic and artless, Hostel: Part 2 is an antagonistic sequel that adds nothing to Eli Roth‘s gorily groundbreaking first installment. Meant to satisfy BDSM perverts, this unnecessary second addition is a xenophobic venture through Eastern Europe; home place of the sexually depraved; a backpackers sadomasochistic nightmare. Character motivations are as thin as “I like to kill” or “I’m annoying, so kill me” and nothing adds up to a satisfying or slightly original conclusion. The obvious red herrings are more noxious than clever, especially with a to-be murderer who has a sudden change of heart before turning on a dime again. Like the deluded fantasy of a sick and twisted rapist, Hostel: Part 2 is the kind of movie that’s made purely to show a guy getting his dong cut off with a rusty pair of scissors. That is, it’s pure snuff. (D)

THE SACRAMENT (2013)

1-the-sacrament.jpg
The Sacrament is Ti West‘s stab at revisionist history. He amends the 1970s to now, asking what if VICE had documented the downfall of Jonestown. This time round it’s called Eden’s Parish and Jones is lovingly referred to as “Father”. Their just over 100 population is only a fraction of Jonestowns 918 fatalities and yet I don’t know if I could have stomached another 800 bodies. As much in a particular wheelhouse as West’s two prior efforts, The Sacrament is the horror auteur’s take on found footage. Starring AJ Bowen and Joe Swanberg as a team of VICE documentarians who enter a guarded cult-like commune to bring their story to the world, The Sacrament takes you to the edge of darkness and will bring you to the edge of your seat. Add a haunting performance – down to the saggy jowls and nighttime sun glasses, Gene Jones (coin toss guy from No Country for Old Men) is Jim Jones. He speaks in seduction, his weapon is Christ. – and you have something that feels frighteningly like real life.  Witnessing the downfall of Eden is haunting in its realism. It feels like we’re in Jonestown. And what a bummer that is. (B)

Follow Silver Screen Riot on Facebook
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Twitter

post

Out in Theaters: ANNABELLE

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , , 1 Comment

annabelle-to-be-released-by-mezco-as-a-living-dead-doll-9e4fd155-f4bb-494c-a652-e863bc029114.jpg

When all it took to turn a harmless doll into a demon possessed conduit was a drop of blood, I had already written off Annabelle. Poised as a spinoff of the critically acclaimed and totally terrifying The Conjuring, this fast-tracked prequel is, like most dolls, the product of industrialization. It’s horror by assembly line; an unholy congregation of uninspired pieces. With an economic cast willing to underwhelm at every turn, a rushed-feeling script laden with humdrum exposition and only one scene that conjures up any scares, Annabelle is DOA.

So who is Annabelle and where did she come from? Attempting to connect the dots for those who had forgotten the kickoff of The Conjuring, Annabelle opens with essentially the same tie-in: a handful of young adults bring the accursed object to professional demonologists claiming that shit been getting cray. But, once again, that’s not the story we’re told here, as the film then leaps back a year in time, in the hopes to save these supple young nurses and their Annabelle woes for a later installment down the line.

annabelle_a.jpg

Instead we’re treated to the tale of Mia and John, two inconspicuous baby boomers who thumb wrestle in church and are expecting a baby. On the boob tube, news reports about Charlie Manson and his occult followers stir up a frenzy. John, played by Ward Horton (who you might remember in The Wolf of Wall Street as Rothschild Broker #3), turns off the tv. He soothes something to the effect of, “You don’t need this garbage rattling around your brain. Now go watch your soaps and sew another sweater.”

That’s kind of the character Mia (Annabelle Wallis who you’ll recall from Snow White and the Huntsman as Sara (uncredited) or from X-Men: First Class as Co-Ed) is. Easily controlled, even more easily manipulated. Bed rest, you say? YOU GOT IT! When a pair of scraggly cult members cloaked in mental patient white come a knocking in their neighborhood, Mia gets a knife to her prego belly as her beloved collector’s doll collects a curse. A drip of cult-member blood seeps into Annabelle’s eye and she animates. The amount of time the camera subsequently spends hanging on Annabelle could be counted by abacus.

Director John R. Leonetti (career DP and director of The Butterfly Effect 2) provided some astoundingly frightful cinematography for The Conjuring. He filled those haunted halls with atmosphere. His shadow play was alive. The darkness housed the unknown and the unknown was deathly unnerving. The setting here feels like a rehash of Mia Farrow‘s pad in Rosemary’s Baby, except nondescript. The camera work is shoddy at best, often seeming to only capture scary moments by accident. Add to that cheap-looking digital cinematography and sketchily rendered CGI and you have a movie that’s as visually flat as it is wholly non-frightening.

Annabelle-5.jpg
That’s not to say it’s entirely without scares. But they’re not the psycological horror that’ll hang with you after, just cheap bumps that sneak up and steal a shudder. Two sequences in particular will inspire a jump. 1) A young girl appears and runs towards the camera before turning into something else 2) A basement elevator that won’t move between floors in the pitch dark. If the eerie mood of the later had been maintained throughout, we might have had a really decent, fiscal thriller. As is, everything is baked in Leonetti’s excessive sunlight, too obvious and predictable to warrant even a pity watch.

The added disappointment of serializing a film whose horrors were without bound, Annabelle sullies the good name of the Warren’s demonology franchise. Peddling in doll stares and wanna-be ominous monotony, it’s a total waste. Leonetti’s makeshift product is a fundamentally defunct follow-up that squanders what could have been in order to churn out a low-budg crowd pleaser of the basest variety. Judging by the audience’s boisterous reaction last night, I’m left to assume this will work for some leagues but I can’t easily hide my contempt for this lazy, plodding prequel.

D

Follow Silver Screen Riot on Facebook
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Twitter

post

Out in Theaters: TRACKS

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , , ,

20140919-tracks-09.jpg
Tracks sets out to prove how disgusting the camel really is. Like a teenager at their peak awkward years, the camel is unnaturally gawky, looming over others like Shaq on a Little People, Big World special. Sporting a kind of tattered t-shirt, the camel wears a patchwork of umber skin with the look of a shag carpet that mated with sandpaper. Even grosser, their patchy coat flakes off in massive strips of brown, furry dandruff.  Factor in the disquieting amount of spittle gobs involuntarily weeping off the camel’s drooping lower lip and that’s enough to call the Camelus Dromedarius easily one of the grossest creatures ever. But since Tracks is a movie about shedding your skin and proving you can be more than people expect, we have to give some credence to these oafish beasts (and the unexciting movie that contains them): they know how to hold their water. (It’s a double entendre, gettit?!)  

But enough on the camels. (The utterly disgusting camels.) Tracks, directed by John Curran, is a movie about overcoming adversity that very little adversity to overcome. Curran and scribe Marion Nelson assume that Robyn’s 1,700-mile unmanned trek through the West Australian desert will exert enough natural drama to make the voyage interesting but, against the odds, there is just so little to rise above. There’s a few feral bull camels that need to be shot. She loses a crucial item every once in a while (only to recover it shortly thereafter). But the danger is always 100 yards away and never in her personal space. The thought that she might not actually make it never crosses our mind and because of that the tension is so limp that even a fully dreaded slackerliner couldn’t cross it.

_TRA7080.jpg

Let’s rewind and break down the story a little more. Mia Wasikowska is Robyn Davidson, a real life new-age explorer who journeyed nine month’s across some of the least populated stretches of the Australian desert with three and a half camels (babies count as halves right?) and her faithful sidekick Diggity the dog. After months shmoozing and working for “the man” in order to learn how to own and operate camels, Robyn plans to embark on her once in a lifetime crusade but doesn’t quite have the capital to make it feasible. Enter Rick Smolan (Adam Driver), National Geographic photographer, and a grant from his parent company and Robyn has the means to make her trek a reality. The only thing is she now has to meet up with the culturally heedless Smolan to complete photoshoots every month or so and she had wanted to do the whole thing alone. Pouty face.

The trouble is, Smolan or Nosmolan, Robyn runs into peps all up and down her journey. For someone who apparently spent months to years planning out this journey, she should have known that uninterrupted solitude was never an option. Every time the weight of isolation begins to pressure down on her though, when that creeping thought of giving up takes hold, something comes to talk her out of it. Whenever her stock runs dry, the magical bushman or a pair of salt of the earth farmers or Smolan appear to fill up her tank.

TRACKSFILM.jpg

Surely, the monotony of her pilgrimage weighs on her mental state but the only way that Curran communicates that thematic, non-visual mental degradation is by making the film’s proceedings laterally monotonous. She walks, she unpacks, she makes camp, she sleeps. She walks, she unpacks, she makes camp, she sleeps. There’s a moment where she confides in one of her humped beasts that she doesn’t know why she keeps doing this. And we, the audience, don’t really know either. Something about her dad’s failings (both as an Outback explorer and as a father) and definitely something about a deep-rooted connection to the local animalia (you’ll learn why in act three). She’s the kind of person who says she hikes to find peace but I’m not convinced she’s not out there to put something to rest. Like a Tim O’Brien soldier, she lays one foot in front of the other, humps on and tries not to think.

But for how gross the camels are (and by God are they gross) and how tedious the narrative becomes, Wasikowska is always rock solid. She’s as strong as a camel is nasty. In a role that requires very little talking and often proffers even less sympathy, Wasikowska plays a misanthrope who you can feel for, even through the levy that is her tough exterior is never quite broken down. Sun-kissed and filthy, Wasikowska’s got a twinkle in her eye that sells Robyn’s trait to connect more with animals than humans as genuine and without her first-rate performance, the film would be without nearly as much worth. Though a drummed up psuedo-romance with Driver doesn’t fit the narrative in the least, the Girls star continues to show just how much he brings to the project he’s involved in.

tracks-1.jpg
The other undeniable star of the show, cinematographer Mandy Walker, may have a history shooting sandy Outback sprawls (she worked on Baz Luhrman‘s Australia) but her shots her are hypnotizing and mirage-like, ushering some stunningly desolate imagery out of the otherwise barren landscape. Her use of lighting frames the infinite against the finite and colors the vacuous sky into stunning oil paintings. In another more interesting movie, she top-notch work would stand out even more.

One thing is for certain: you won’t find more camel drool in any other movie to come out this year. And even though the journey doesn’t ever conjure up the emotional impact that such a tale of triumph should, it’s a film that’s easy to respect. The moment when the thematic elements come together involves Robyn trekking across a sacred stretch of land with a non-English speaking bushman. Though they can’t understand each other, he talks on and on, babbling about this and that without subtitles. It makes for some great scenes and really gets to the heart of who Robyn is but the language barrier is symptomatic of the project as a whole. It’s got a message but is speaking in another language. You can admire it from an emotional distance but won’t likely fall for it. And that’s really what Tracks comes down to: it’s a film that inspires much more admiration than love. Ironically, that will likely also be its undoing.

C

 Follow Silver Screen Riot on Facebook
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Twitter

post

A Flawless, Expert, Foolproof Ranking of David Fincher’s Films

by Posted in Lists Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Seeing that Gone Girl screens here in Seattle tonight, I’ve taken it upon myself to go through and rank the films of auteur filmmaker David Fincher. Fincher is simply one of our generation’s greatest filmmakers, offering dark, twisted and thrilling dramas riddled with psychological horror and saddled with a tone so black, it’d make a crow look pale. He’s got a visionary’s eye, a penchant for working with great actors (including a close working relationship with Brad Pitt) and a knack for technical perfection, contributing some truly amazing films to the last two centuries of film cannon. Counting down his works in anticipation of the public release of Gone Girl, these are Fincher’s films ranked for your convenience. Read More