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Talking with Kimberly Peirce of CARRIE

by Posted in Interviews

The name Kimberly Peirce is most closely identified with Boys Don’t Cry, her award-winning independent debut that saw an Oscar win for star Hillary Swank. Just as much as Boys Don’t Cry is a real life horror story, the Stephen King classic Carrie is grounded in issues of schoolyard bullying and overbearing parents. I sat down with Kim to discuss her take on the Carrie story, how she physically and emotionally transformed Chloe Moretz and Julianne Moore, the use of visual effects in storytelling, and her favorite Stephen King movie adaptation.

 


What was it like for you to work on a Stephen King story?



Kimberly Peirce: It’s an honor. I’m a huge Stephen King fan. I was in a book club so I read the book as a kid. I was a literature student at the University of Chicago so  I read it when I was in college and then, of course, I re-read it when they came to me to do the movie and I was just blown away by how amazing of a story teller he is. It’s a classic tale that is incredibly timely to his era but it’s also incredibly timeless and is more relevant today than it was then. The things that blew me away about it when I went back to it was that I always love a good central protagonist. It’s what I love about movies. I love Carrie White. I love that she’s this misfit and this outcast who wants love and affection, which is what we all want. She’s up against huge obstacles. Certainly the girls at school don’t want her to have it and when she’s at home, her mother is also constantly feuding with her because her mother thinks that she’s the seed of sin. She represents the mother’s sin of having sex and enjoying it and so they’re locked in a love affair in a feud right in the very beginning, in the new scene that I added. That escalates all the way through and then I amplified the climax so that that’s even stronger.

The other thing we give you that’s extraordinary is that, at the end of the day, it’s a superhero origin story. Carrie discovers she has super powers and those super powers make life, which is largely intolerable and painful, acceptable. Talent makes life bearable and that’s what these superpowers do. I love that she explores it and doesn’t have control of it. She doesn’t understand the magnitude of it. When she goes to prom, we don’t know if it’s gonna come out. I absolutely love that it’s a Cinderella story.  What does she want? Love and acceptance. When the handsome boy invites her out, one, Sue should not have asked Tommy to ask Carrie out. Sue should have said, “I’m sorry.” Sue is doing what rich people do. She’s relying on charity. Charity doesn’t always solve problems. Tommy comes Carrie’s way and Carrie can’t say no. The most handsome boy in the school, why is he there? There’s something up. But the desire to have the Cinderella night and to wear the beautiful dress and go to the ball and dance with the handsome boy and have the night that we all dream about having, she just can’t say no. We can’t say no. We fall in love with being the Cinderella.

I’ve debated about this with people, and you can agree or disagree with me, but we want to take her to the height of the Cinderella night but then we crave seeing it turn on its head. I think we want to see it all go badly. When it goes badly, we stare, because we’re glad it’s not happening to us. We’re glad the blood is not on us. Then I think what’s amazing is that we desperately want her to get revenge on the people who did this to her. We all want to get even with the bad guy. That’s amazing to me. To me, the equation was: we had to fall madly in love with Carrie White and only by being madly in love with Carrie and wanting to see her succeed would we ever support the revenge tale. If we do, then it’s a blast because everyone loves a revenge tale.

One of the things that really distinguishes this version from earlier version of the story is the visual effects that you’re using. How did having access to advanced visual effects alter your approach to telling the story?

KP: I think what it did was empower me. When I read the book, I see in my mind’s eye this largely entertaining, using superhero powers and the world being affected by Carrie and her powers. She can move books but then she loses control. In particular, at the prom, when she wants to get revenge on somebody, she can move them out of the way, she can throw them into a door. The scene with Chris going through the windshield took a lot of time to think through because I had this vision where it was “let the punishment fit the crime.” The beautiful girl Chris is a total narcissist so what’s her punishment? We’re gonna eff up that face. Well how do you eff up that face? She had to go through the window. What’s fun about my job is how do you put someone’s face through a window? You can’t put an actor’s face through a window. You can put an actor’s face through sugar glass or you can put an animation through fake glass or an actor can fly forward on a green screen, so that’s a series of a ton of composites, which was really a blast for me. It’s a real actor, it’s an animated version of the actor, it’s real glass, it’s fake glass, it’s drawn glass. That’s really state of the art because there are all these layers and you’re using animation to visualize it and then you’re affecting the speed of it. There’s a lot of work on how fast she hits and how slow she comes out the other end. It’s all expensive so the more precise you are, the better. I direct the CG the same way that I direct the actors, which is what is the story, what’s the need, what’s the action? It was fantastic. It was really fun also having the car crash into an invisible wall. You can’t have a car hurling towards a human being, certainly not a minor. There are no invisible walls that I know of.

In this film, the revenge sequence is much more drawn out and taken beat by beat than, say, Brian De Palma’s version and that is largely due to the available effects. It’s hard to not enjoy getting more visual about that whole revenge portion.

KP: Good, that was my whole goal. I wanted you to have the most satisfaction and the most enjoyable. The whole movie, I was building up to how do I make this really fun. What I love is the Chris and Billy relationship. Chris has Billy wrapped around her finger and she’s calling her dad, and he’s like, “What the hell are you doing?” and she’s like, “Well what the hell are we gonna do?” and he says, “We’re gonna leave town.” The question is: is she willing to leave town with him. When they get trapped, I just love when she says, “It’s Carrie” and they’re hurling towards her and she says, “Run her down” and he looks at her in disbelief and is thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not gonna kill someone for you.” “Run her down. Run her down. Run her down.” That’s their whole relationship. Again, you’re supposed to get reignited by them being jerks and therefore Carrie really having a right to punch it to them. If you notice, Carrie doesn’t though. She lets Chris destroy herself. For the revenge tale, it was vital that that worked.

How many times did you guys have to film the pig’s blood scene?



KP: Twice. I was actually told that I could only do it once because the clean up on it was huge.

Getting it off her skin must have been brutal.



KP: Well one, it’s a whole rig. Two, it’s gonna splatter all over the stage, because it’s a wide shot. Three, if it hits her and it’s on her, she’s a minor so I could only do it once in a day because I would lose three hours for her clean up. I was told, “If you can do it in one that’s great.” So I said, “How many cameras can I get?” and they gave me three. I got three and put them at all the best angles. I would have gotten more but I didn’t. The first time, I was a nervous wreck because I didn’t think it was gonna work. We did all this R and D and sometimes it hit, sometimes it missed, but it hit perfectly and then of course, the DP said, “I gotta do it one more time” so we did it one more time. That was it though, we couldn’t afford more because of the clean up time. You don’t think about it but with a minor, they can legally only go so many hours so that is that.

For me, one of the scariest parts about the movie is Carrie’s mother’s devout Christianity where she believes that everything she does, including attempted infanticide, is for God and blessed by Him. I’m wondering how you think devout religion can such a scary thing these days?

KP: I want to make it really clear that Margaret (Carrie’s mom) has her own religion. She was in a recognizable religion at some point but she had sex with her husband, she got pregnant, she defined it as a sin because she enjoyed it and then skewed off into her own religion. That religion is something that she defines and she has her own iconography. As Carrie says, she changes things in the Bible to mean what she wants and as Julianne will tell you, she’s delusional. In her mind, her utmost responsibility is to protect her daughter. She believes that she protects her daughter by using corporal punishment and by repressing her. At the end of the day, her daughter is her evil and she exposes her sin by infanticide.

You did a great job at disguising Portia Doubleday in this film, she has such a different look and character type usually. Same goes with Julianne Moore who is equally playing against the loving, if spunky, persona she usually inhabits. It’s interesting to see these performers playing against type here.

KP: What I told Chloe when I hired her, “You are an incredibly talented, precocious star. You have a family around you who always loved you. You could not be further from Carrie White.” She has to be a misfit, has to be fragile, has to be scared, has to be timid and broken down. For me the fun is moving Chloe from her to her, very much like I did with Hilary Swank to Brandon Teena and even Channing Tatum to the solider, which is now a role that he plays a lot. That transformation ins everything for me. Not for the sake of transforming but generally, you start with a person who is her and a character who’s here, and at the end of the day, the character is generally the original person plus a big change. Chloe had to be fragile and timid and scared and have a lot of hostility at home, which she doesn’t have in real life, but when she gets to prom, then you see glimpses of the Chloe Moretz that you know. The same with Julianne. I knew that Margaret White is going to be fiercely devoted to religion, I know that’s she’s going to use corporal punishment., I know that’s she’s a scared woman, so then I hired Julianne Moore who is warm and charismatic and brilliant and beautiful and loves her children because when she makes that transformation, then there’s subtext. There’s all that stuff underneath. Yes, they’re transformed but I want them to leak through. I want you to say, “That’s the Portia that I love and know,” not, “I don’t even see Portia in there.”

With Julianne, beneath the intense religion fundamentalist woman who’s willing to use corporal punishment, you have that warmth there to draw from. One of my favorite lines in the movie is one that Julianne and I picked out of the book. She says, “I’ll be the preacher, you be the congregation” and Chloe just surrenders down to it because Carrie surrenders. Carrie just really wants her mother’s love, and thinks she’s gonna get it, and does, because the mother is tortured.

Were Chloe and Julianne always your first choice for these roles?

KP: Yes. For Chloe, we looked at a easily a few hundred girls throughout the states and throughout the world, because now you can get test tapes from all over. Myself and the brilliant Avy Kaufman were casting it and she was my first choice once I’d seen everyone who was out there. Really, I’m very much a structuralist so I knew that you needed to fall in love with Carrie White and want to adopt her. The movie didn’t work unless you loved her. Chloe has the ability to make you love her. I wanted to adopt her. You needed that. It’s an amazing thing that she has that ability onscreen to make you feel that way because if you look at her roles onscreen, Let Me In; she’s odd and dark and strange; in Huge, she’s beguiling, and then Kick Ass. It’s really a testament to her that once we defined what make the character tick, that she was able to bring that to life.

Other than the prom scene and the crash scene, do you have a favorite scene that you worked on?

KP: I would say I love the sequence where Carrie comes home. She’s got blood all over her and crying, “Momma, momma, momma.” I wrote that in because I wanted her to regress to being a little girl again. I also love the bath scene. She’s looking at her hands and saying she’s sorry, she’s crumbling back to being a vulnerable girl. I almost cried when she was doing that. It’s beautiful. She’s just a child. I love when she gets up, she really thinks there’s a chance. “Momma and I are clean. I can forget about the prom. I didn’t want to pray at the beginning but, you know what, screw you and your religion, I’ll pray. I’ll pray all you want.” That scene was like going to prom, you’re like, “You must be kidding? You’re gonna go to prom with the most handsome boy? That girl’s got it out for you,” it’s the same thing here. This woman, since you’ve been born, has been feuding with you and loving you. Relationships don’t change but she still surrenders because she so desperately wants love and acceptance. To me, I always love to stay on point and it’s a continuation of what we set in motion from the beginning. I love their fight. I amplified that and I love how we see the cuts on the legs and on the arms. I wanted that to be as violent as I could make it.

It comes out of this tender moment that they’re sharing which makes you realize that even though Carrie has powers, she is still very much the child to her mother.

KP: Yes and her powers protect her. When the mother does that to her, the powers shoot out and subconsciously  protect her.

Stephen King is an undisputed master of horror and has really touched on every area of fear. What is it that scares you the most?

KP: Certainly the dark in the specter of something coming out of nowhere and attacking me. It’s absolutely terrifying. If I’m watching a scary movie at my house and the drapes are not drawn so you can see out of the window out into the night, I don’t like that. The unknown. It’s interesting as a filmmaker because it’s showing restraint. I love horror films and I love when they can scare me or when I don’t get scared. I love when I’m with friends and I’m being tough because I didn’t get scared but I’m betraying myself. I’m a filmmaker so it’s easy to not get scared so then I’m like, “Get scared.” I love when your friends are watching or you’re on a date and they’re clutching you and you’re feeling brave. Scary movies are great because there’s something so human about it. We’ve been scaring ourselves and have been afraid of the dark forever, telling ghost stories and whatnot. It’s fun to be part of that and having audiences wanting to go to your movie and get scared.

In the final scene, much like in the original, there is this foreshadowing element where the crack runs up the gravestone that leaves it somewhat open-ended. Is doing some sort of follow up something that you may be interested in pursuing?

KP: I certainly couldn’t tell you the answer to that question outright but I can say that if this movie is successful, we love Carrie White and we love who she is and what she wants and her powers. Her powers have a yearning to want to stay in the world either with her or somebody else. It was honoring our love of Carrie and the mysterious and the magical and the unknown.

What advise would you give aspiring filmmakers just getting into the field or pursuing that career?

KP: Make sure you really love the job. I find a lot of people will say that they want to be a director but I think a lot of people think that it’s glamorous, and there are moments when it touches a kind of glamour, but the bottom line is: you have to love character and story and work. When my family comes and visits set, they go, “Oh my God.” It is 100 hours a week but what it is is an obsessive attention to the love of character and the love of creating them. Every detail is under your purview so I just feel like I love it. All hours of the day I’m thinking about it. But not everyone would love it. If you do, take the time to take the right classes and study with the right people. I was lucky enough to go to Columbia University and study filmmaking and writing and directing and I studied acting for years, I also went to Sundance and studied there. If you have talent, it’s not enough. You have to work really hard and study a lot and also really have to love story and character. If you do, you can create great things. It’s a great, great business but it’s a lot of work, but it’s good work. You’re always telling your story and then protecting it. Just dive in and tell your own stories. If you’ve got some crazy family, then tell that story. If you’ve got a great story about race, religion, gender identity, whatever your way of moving through the world is, you’re probably gonna have a life experience that other people don’t have and that could be interesting.

Carrie aside, what’s your favorite Stephen King movie adaptation?



KP: It’s obvious.

It is. 



KP: I’m just gonna say it. The Shining.



Yeah, obviously.



KP: It’s a perfect movie.

It’s one of my favorites.

KP: But it’s also what I love about this which is an amazing main character. Even when Jack Torrence is doing bad, I love him. I love the house. I love the family drama of it. I love the red. I love the introduction of Steadicam. I used that Steadicam quite a lot in this movie pulling Carrie through the house. Also just his love of character and story. I would aspire to be as good as Stanley Kubrick. And his thoughtfulness and his sense of humor and his oddness. He’s fantastic.

Agreed. It had to be The Shining.

KP: I do love Misery too. It’s amazing that that worked and I love what Kathy [Bates] did. I do think what Brian [De Palma] did with Carrie was phenomenal too. It’s really amazing if you think about the fact that he was the first one to do it and his understanding of camera angles and casting just made for great stuff.

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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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First Poster for Wes Anderson's THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

by Posted in Movie Posters Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

grand-budapest-hotel-poster.jpg

As an obsessive Wes Anderson fan, I relish in any piece of his inspired artwork, so while most posters don’t really get me excited, this one for The Grand Budapest Hotel does for all of its Wes Anderson-esque goodness. While I rather enjoyed his last film, Moonrise Kingdom, it was hardly one of my favorite of his and I’m excited to see Anderson return to the adult world. As always, he’s got a cast and crew to be oogled with season Anderson loyalites Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton and Adrien Brody will join Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Saoirse Ronan, Mathieu Amalric, Lea Seydoux, F. Murray Abraham, Tom Wilkinson, and newcomer Tony Revolori.

Although little is known about the film, the plot description per IMDB details:

“A famous hotel’s legendary concierge strikes up a friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé.”

For me, Anderson’s best films come from with exploring themes of wounded humanity. Films like Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Darjeeling Limited are as deeply tragic as they are comedic and I’m hoping for something of the same from his latest without quite as much snarky childhood wist as his last two, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom.

With this first poster debut, we can hopefully expect a full synposis or trailer in the near future.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is directed by Wes Anderson and stars Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Saoirse Ronan, Mathieu Amalric, Lea Seydoux, F. Murray Abraham, Tom Wilkinson, and Tony Revolori. It will hit theaters sometime in 2014.

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Weekly Review 28: ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, OCEAN'S TWELVE, DOG POUND, MOVIE 43, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

by Posted in Weekly Review Tagged , , , , ,

However inconsistent Weekly Review might be at this point, I’m trying to revitize it…especially since I’m sick at home and have nothing better to do. In the theater this week, I relished the much awaited fall season with screenings of the excellent Dallas Buyers Club and Captain Phillips. Fluffy popcorn flicks (Ocean’s Twelve, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) met with serious dramas (Dog Pound, Life is Beautiful) and big name sketch comedy (Movie 43) and I ended up doling out the very rare, very elusive A+. Find out what grabbed the most coveted grade in this week’s edition of Weekly Review.

Ocean’s Twelve (2003)

Like the bachelor too interested in being suave to realize that that he has dirtied toilet paper stuck to the sole of his show, Ocean’s Twelve is all frills with little of substance making the wheels turn. Unlike the well-oiled machine that was the original Ocean’s film, this one clomps from one plot point to another either not realizing or not caring that it stomps on any sense of cohesion that precedes the scene that we’re in. Too caught up trying to pull a number on its audience, Ocean’s Twelve fails to satisfy those trying to connect the dots as they plot towards a hurried and pale-brained conclusion. All the stars that lend their talent to this massive ensemble still work their tempestuous charm and Steven Soderberg‘s eye for framing is consistently satisfying but they are just wind up as buttercream icing on a rotten cake.  

C-

Dog Pound (2010)

Although some of the characters are sketched a little thin and the ten-dollar guitar score is dependably awful in this Canadian drama about an American juvenile detection center, the narrative is occasionally gripping and always cloaked in thoughtful sentiment. Beginning with the origin of how three new inmates earned their incarcerations, Dog Pound proceeds to examines prison politics from a perspective of lost youth, revealing that no matter what age, prison is hell. Here emotional breakthroughs are as rare as fleeting moments of peace, leaving everyone as a shade of a monster. As a Canadian production laser-focused on American dealings, it can’t escape its own heavy-handed judgement-doling nor will it debunk any common understandings of the U.S. penitentiary system.

C+

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

In a world where the existence of vampires has dictated real world events for centuries, Abraham Lincoln is not only the 16th president of the United States but an axe-wielding scourge of the undead. Sepia tone aside, the aesthetic palette used to tell the story used confuses inconsistency for irony. Over-saturated but thrifty CGI in the big spectacle shots take away from director Timur Bekmambetov‘s otherwise nifty stunt work. A fat-lipped script leads clunky storytelling and pigeon-toed acting to an ineffective adventure story that provides one big step in the wrong direction after Bekmambetov’s exciting big debut, Wanted. For some inexplicable reason, the people here – from the actors to the composer – seem to actually be taking themselves seriously. I guess it turns out that history and vampires don’t blend after all (at least outside of those bestselling books.)

D

Life is Beautiful (1997)

What starts as a quirky, colorful Italian comedy reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin‘s “tramp as talkie” changes gears to become one of the most slyly devastating films of all time. Director Roberto Benigni stars as Guido, an unassuming vagabond champion. He spends the first chapter of the film courting the apple of his eye; a well-to-do beauty known to him only as “princess”. Always one to manipulate souring circumstances to his best advantage, Guido charms his Dora (Nicoletta Braschi) with false serendipity and an uncompromising heart of gold. As their affection for one another grows, so do the antisemitic undertones occupying the political scape closing tighter around them. When WWII breaks out a few years later, Guido’s family is sent packing to an Nazi death camp. Wanting to shield his young son from the true unblinking horror of their situation, Guido convinces him that the whole thing is an elaborate game. Holocaust films are devastating by nature but Benigni’s vision of blind hope brings new meaning to heartbreak. An astounding, towering feat of acting and directing, Benigni finds humor in hopelessness, beauty in bleakness.

A+

Movie 43 (2013)

http://www.chlomo.org/chan/chloe/src/1354316415510.jpg

Essentially SNL with big name stars – if SNL had more of an obsessive focus on ball sacks – Movie 43 is a menagerie of bizarro sketch comedy inlaid with some high highs and really, really low lows. Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts share a twisted homeschooling bit that manages to cull some hearty laughs while real life husband and wife Chris Pratt and Anna Farris “poop on me” scene is painfully unamusing and eyebrow-raisingly childish to boot. But the clunker king of these shorts is the mid credits “Bezel the cat” video with Josh Duhamel and Elizabeth Banks. The scene is truly an embarrassment for all involved. As an entire piece, Movie 43 is boldly scatological, racist, sexist, and purely disgusting but lazy execution and   an elevator of comedic quality really do make it a bad film. And good god did it leave on a poor note.

D-

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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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Second MONUMENTS MEN Trailer Confirms High Oscar Odds

by Posted in Trailers

In George Clooney‘s latest starring and directing vehicle, he plays George Stout, a WWI veteran and esteemed Harvard art conservation expert. As Hitler and the Third Reich sough to destroy hundreds of years of irreplacable art, Stout played a key role in helping to secure a team to extract these priceless pieces before they were met with flames. 

Under his command, served fellow soldier and art enthusiast James Rorimer (Matt Damon) alongside a ragtag group of art historians turned quick soldiers played by giants like Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville and John Goodman.

The official synopsis for The Monuments Men reads:

Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action-thriller focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners.  It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys – seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 – possibly hope to succeed?  But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind’s greatest achievements.

While the first trailer caught some off-guard with its amplified sense of comedy, this second edition focuses more on the dramatic gravitas, nudging it further into its Oscar contender slot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTBSKrW4K-E

The Monuments Men is written, starrings and directed by George Clooney. It also stars Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville and John Goodman. It hits theaters in the thick of Oscar season on December 18.

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Talking with Jim Mickle of WE ARE WHAT WE ARE

by Posted in Interviews
Jim Mickle’s We Are What We Are offers a hard-boiled look at a family ruled by dated religious fervor and twisted idolatry. From their human meat munching table, Mickle brings these characters to life and took a minute to speak with me about that process.

 

If you haven’t already, take a look at our review, or read the following snippet to get an idea of our thoughts:

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 penitent 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.

From why he doesn’t like remakes, to ideas for prequels and sequels, and his thoughts on his favorite film endings of all time, Jim spilled the beans on what made We Are What We Are worth making.


Why did you choose to remake this film for an American audience?


Jim Mickle: Well I didn’t really choose to really. It was brought to me and originally I was very much not excited about the idea. I’m not a big fan of remakes, I’m not a big fan of US remakes of foreign films. I feel that they’re usually done poorly and didn’t want to become part of the problem so I had avoided them in the past. I was approached by a couple of producers who had the rights to do an American version of this, not necessarily a remake, and hemmed and hawed about it for about a good month and Nick Damichi, the guy who wrote the film, the two of us sat down early on. I think I had mixed feelings about it but ultimately I think we approached it in a way to make an original film out of it, to make it based on our story. We both really liked what the original film did and themes and the structure and what it was trying to say. I thought it was really interesting and pretty bold for a horror film and that was the kind of thing that I wanted to do. He found a way to honor the original film but also make something that was our own.

What about this cannibal story makes it so that it needs to be told in a modern day context? How was the time period an essential part?


JM: Well I think that the basis of the original and what made it so cool was this idea that they were a family just like any other family. The original film is set in a really gritty city in Mexico and part of the allure of it is that it is everyday seeming. It’s happening right under your nose. And that was one of the pulls of the original. At the end of the day though, it’s really not about cannibalism. It’s more about tradition and faith and family values and what gets handed down and I think that to do that, we wanted to create otherwise normal seemingly people. The first film I think kept its distance a little bit from the characters and we wanted to put you in the family or have you feel like you can understand what was going on and relate to them. We thought to make them common, the better.

In my review, I talked about how the most horrifying part for me is just this idea of parents having total control over their children, to the point where they can just spoon feed them human meat and they’ll eat it. What horrifies you the most about this story?


JM: I mean, just that. Not necessarily the eating human meat thing but deep absolute faith. To me, it’s terrifying when people follow something so closely and so literally that they sort of turn a blind eye to pretty obvious mistakes. That can be pretty scary and I think that is what we wanted to draw comparisons to. Doing anything in the name of a higher power.

Going off that, what frightens you the most in real life situations? Is there anything from spiders to tight spaces?


JM: I’m very claustrophobic. It’s a pretty universal fear but I’m not a big fan of flying and then, kind of in line with the movie, organized religion. Those are my big three fears

One of the things I was thinking as the movie going along is that we don’t know too much about Bill Sage’s Frank character. I was wondering if you ever conceived of an origin story for him and how he was indoctrinated into this tradition and whether he went along with it pretty easily or if he was hesitant and rebellious like his own children were?


JM: We’re actually working on that write now. Nick is writing a screenplay off of that backstory.

Oh very cool, can you tell me anything about it?


JM: It’s in the middle of the process right now but there’s a concept there and stuff that is pretty interesting. There’s no real foundation put in place yet though.

So the whole atmosphere of the movie is so gray and rainy and bleak and downtrodden and there really is no place for comedy in it. Why did you take this really hard-nosed approach without any of the camp and asides. Why did you feel that that was the appropriate way to approach this film?


JM: I think because we’re taking our themes really seriously. I am a fan of horrors but I think a lot of times horror movies apologize for themselves by being campy and going “ha ha” but I really appreciate that our movie had the courage to draw comparisons to bigger issues and take it straight on. At the end of the day, we wanted it to be taken seriously. We’ve done two other films and those are horror films but both have sociological things and political things and bigger issues that they’re tapping into. There’s a big level of the b-movie to both the films but it was really fun to play with. Here we had something where the characters were strong enough and the story was strong enough that we didn’t have to let it breathe or go “Ha ha, it’s just a movie”. We really wanted to give it a feel of a drama. People do a lot of absurd things but one of the themes of the movie is that people do do a lot of absurd things in life. We’re just so used to our perspective that we don’t always see it.

The only time that I really laughed at the film, and I don’t want to spoil the moment, was the final confrontation within the family because it’s just so over the top and so absurd and you just don’t really see it coming. Obviously you need to honor the original, why did you feel like in the context of your story, it need to end like that?


JM: Well it didn’t end like that in the original. That whole film is very, very, very different. It has a similar opening scene but then it goes a really different direction and fundamentally they’re really different. We flipped all the genders, the original story is about two brothers who lost their father and there’s very little cannibalism, if any, that you actually see and the ending is all ours. Just for that reason, we wanted that ending. It’s a huge story and I guess thematically in terms of what is being said comes down to three or four characters sitting around a table setting but thematically, the consequences of what is going on is so huge that we wanted an ending that would kind of capture that. I think anything else would have felt unearned or undeserving of the rest of the story. To me, that ending is beautiful character-wise and it’s also fun to see the reaction from people in the audience because people either love it or hate it. I think a lot of it is that we keep the audiences down in sort of a dark, dingy, repressed place and then finally give the characters and the audience have a bit of a release, which I really enjoy. It’s a magic ending and will divide people forever, but I think those are the best kind of movies.

For me, it was my favorite part of the movie. Going off that, what do you think are some of the best move endings of all time that do pull that final punch and really make the whole thing great.


JM: Good question. For some reason what comes to mind is La Haine, the black-and-white French film from the 90s with a very young Vincent Cassel. That had a great ending and I took that with me. Another great ending is Sleepaway Camp. That’s got a great ending. John Carpenter’s The Thing is also amazing with Keith David sitting there by himself.

As the movie caps off, we see the kids driving away and you hint that they might be continuing down this path because they’ve taken this old book which is a relic of their past with them. Just as you’ve considered what Frank may have been doing before this story, have you asked yourself what you think this kids will be doing from this point on?


JM: I have my ideas but I kind of like that people can interpret it differently. I think one of the best things is hearing people talk about their interpretations, and all of them are right. I think it’s something that’s really fun to just let people come up with their own ending. I have my ideas but those are best left unsaid. After our ending, the original director, Jorge Michel Grau, he is at the moment shooting a film and then working on a sequel to our film with our characters.

That’s a cool system of passing the material back-and-forth that you guys have going on. Right now, you’re filming Cold in July with Michael C. Hall and Vinessa Shaw. Can you tease some of that for us and tell us what it’s about and what it’s been like making it?


JM: I’m actually editing it right now. We wrapped about a month ago. It’s set in the 80s, it’s sort of a Texas kind of revenge story/thriller. It’s a little bit uncharacterizable plot-wise, which I like. It’s a sort of fast, serpentine story and you never know where it’s going. It’s based on a Joe Lansdale novel who does these great southern-fried noirs. He does these kind of contemporary noirs that don’t really follow any structure, which I really love. It was really different from We Are What We Are which is fun. It’s got a lot of humor in it which is fun to get to do.

How was it working with Michael C. Hall?


JM: Amazing, he’s unbelievable and I’m just getting to the point now where I’m sitting down to edit and seeing his performance. Onset there’s so many things going on so  I really didn’t fully realize how great he is until the editing room. It’s gonna be great for him, I hope, because it’s really different from Dexter and Six Feet Under and really shows a side to him that even I didn’t expect out of him so I think audiences will have a lot of fun with it when it comes out.

Very cool. He’s definitely just emerging into the film world after his 12 year stay on premium television. Finally, is there anything that you have already planned in the future after you wrap up editing and post on this or are you just gonna take a breather?


JM: I think take a breather. Whatever comes comes. For a long time, we’ve been trying to work on Cold in July because we’ve had the rights to the book and have been working on it and trying to pull it together between other things and this time, we actually got to shoot it. It’s kind of a crazy moment for us because we shot We Are What We Are last year, and premiered it very quickly after that, and then shot Cold in July after that very quickly and am editing that very quickly. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next after all that. I’m psyched to see what opportunities will come from making these two incredibly different films.

Check out the trailer for We Are What We Are right here:

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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

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

“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