5/25/15: Zom-Beavers Wander By the Lake

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Al Kaplan, Bill Burr, Brent Briscoe, cabins, cheating boyfriends, cinema, Code Monkeys, Cortney Palm, dark comedies, dark humor, directorial debut, Ed Marx, electronic score, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, girls only weekend, goofy, gory films, horror, horror-comedies, Hutch Dano, isolation, Jake Weary, John Mayer, Jon Kaplan, Jonathan Hall, Jordan Rubin, Lexi Atkins, Movies, multiple writers, Peter Gilroy, Phyllis Katz, practical effects, Rachel Melvin, Rex Linn, Robert R. Shafer, silly films, sorority sisters, toxic waste spill, Troma films, writer-director, Zombeavers, zombie films, zombies

There’s a point in Jordan Rubin’s ridiculously fun Zombeavers (2014) where our hapless heroes need to execute one of those standard “shoring up the defenses” scenes that’s as much a fixture of siege films as the actual siege itself. Working together, the group goes through all the familiar motions: moving dressers against doors, nailing boards across windows, frantically working to keep what’s outside from coming inside their small, isolated cabin. Despite their best efforts, however, it seems to be a losing battle, the gist of which isn’t lost on one of the exasperated survivors: “You do realize that the whole point of a beaver is it chops fucking wood, right?”

It’s an astute observation but, more importantly, it’s a damn good line and pretty much par for the course in a debut feature that’s always more intelligent than it seems, never quite as crass as it means to be and an easy step above similarly goofy horror-comedy fare. Writer-director Rubin comes from a long background as a writer on TV comedies (most notably the crude but effective Crank Yankers and several late night shows, including Craig Kilborn and Carson Daly) and his script (co-written with Al and Jon Kaplan, who also handled the fabulous score, just as they did with the criminally under-rated Code Monkeys) is consistently smart, if constantly silly. The biggest coup? Rubin and company manage to take a fairly dumb concept (zombified beavers) and inject just enough genuine tension and action to keep the whole thing from floating away into the ether. Zombeavers may be the class cut-up but it sure as hell ain’t the class dunce.

Kicking off with a fantastic gag involving a heavily disguised John Mayer and comedian Bill Burr as less than attentive truck drivers, we immediately get the nuts and bolts of the tale: a mysterious barrel falls off the truck, proceeds down a river and winds up at a beaver dam where it’s inspected by a couple of cute beaver puppets. If you grew up in the ’80s, you probably know what mysterious barrels that fall into rivers do and, by Jove, that’s just what happens here: exit the cute, friendly little beavers…enter…the zombeavers!

Our cannon fodder, in this case, consists of a trio of sorority sisters, Mary (Rachel Melvin), Zoe (Cortney Palm) and Jenn (Lexi Atkins), who’ve headed into the woods for a “girls only” weekend. Jenn has just seen a photo of her boyfriend, Sam (Hutch Dano, grandson of Royal), canoodling with a strange girl (or, at least, the back of her head) and Mary and Zoe want to help take her mind off her misery. Or, to be more accurate, Mary does: for her part, Zoe is the kind of amazingly snarky, sarcastic and just plain shitty character who can either make or break a film and she’s a complete blast.

While they settle in, the girls meet a local hunter, Smyth (Rex Linn), who flips the tired, old “leering redneck” cliché on its head by admonishing the young ladies’ skimpy bathing suits and “weird tattoos” rather than wolf-whistling. They also find the beaver dam from the beginning, although it’s now covered in neon-green “beaver piss,” so they keep their distance. As the “friends” play Truth or Dare, a pounding at the door begins as a fright but culminates in that other, great slasher film cliché: the crashing of the girls’ night out by their loutish boyfriends. Seems that ultra horny Zoe can’t go a weekend without screwing her equally horny boyfriend, Buck (Peter Gilroy), so she secretly invited him, along with Mary’s boyfriend, Tommy (Jake Weary) and good, old, cheatin’ Sam.

With our crew assembled, it’s only a matter of time before the zombeavers rear their vicious little heads and, before they know it, our young lovers are knee-deep in ravenous, dead-eyed little dam-builders. When the group is forced to split-up, it seems that tragedy is looming ever nearer over the horizon. As they must deal with not only the very real outside threat but their own internal struggles, a new wrinkle emerges: this is a zombie film, after all, and we all know why it’s a good idea to keep those fellas at arm’s length. Will our plucky heroes be able to pull together and kick beaver ass or have they just been dammed?

On paper, Zombeavers is a thoroughly ridiculous, silly concept, akin to something like Sharknado (2013) or FDR: American Badass (2012): after all, this is a film about zombified beavers…gravitas might seem slightly out-of-place, here. Thanks to a pretty great script, however (it’s probably one of the most quotable newer films I’ve seen), Zombeavers functions as more of a high-concept parody/homage than a lunk-headed bit of SyFy fluff. While it’s not in the same vaunted company as the stellar Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010), Zombeavers is pretty equitable to Mike Mendez’s fun Big Ass Spider! (2013) in that it mixes fun, dumb gags with more clever, subtle marginalia. One of my favorite bits in Zombeavers is a throwaway gag that features a teenage fisherman wearing a “#1 Dad” ball cap: it works on a number of levels but, most importantly, it’s the kind of absurd detail that makes the film’s world feel so much more complete than it could have, something akin to the immersive worlds of Troma films.

Rubin and company throw a lot of schtick at the screen (particularly once we get to the last act “twist” that introduces a whole other, outrageous element to the proceedings) but most of it actually sticks, unlike something like the obnoxious, tone-deaf Sharknado. Part of this has to do with all of the aforementioned nifty little details but the whole thing would collapse if there wasn’t an incredibly game cast propping it up. Luckily, Zombeavers is filled with actors who perfectly understand the razor-thin line between “campy” and “stupid” and manage to (mostly) walk it with ease.

While the central trio of Melvin, Palm and Atkins are set-up as rather feather-headed (particularly Melvin’s Mary), they have tremendous chemistry together: their scenes have such a quick, snappy pace to them that they handily recall films like Mean Girls (2004) or, to a lesser extent, Heathers (1988). While Melvin’s exquisite comedic timing and Atkins’ slightly ethereal bearing fit like a glove, the real standout is Palm’s Zoe. Time after time, Palm manages to swipe the film right from under the others, whether it’s the bit where she gleefully doffs her bikini top only to cover herself up when a bear looks at her or any of her perfectly delivered bon mots (her deadpan rejoinder of “Maybe you should try going down on me more often,” to Buck’s “I’ve never seen a real beaver before” is so perfectly delivered that it hurts).

As befits their characters, the guys are pitched as pretty unrepentant, obnoxious horn-dogs but it works, for the most part, although Dano never seems to connect with his character in any meaningful way: his delivery always seems awkward and slightly off. Although Weary’s Tommy doesn’t get as much to do, Gilroy’s Buck is another highlight, just like his equally churlish girlfriend. While Gilroy’s delivery doesn’t always work (there are some definitively odd things that he does, beat-wise), he almost hits an Andy Kaufman-lite vibe when it does. His “my dick is asleep” bit starts out irritating but becomes oddly amusing (and weirdly charming) but moments like his bizarrely energetic sex scene (screaming “You’re way too hot for me!” as he enthusiastically humps away) or any of his great throwaway lines (“Who the fuck is crying on vacation day?!”…”I’ll see you in the bone zone!”) are all but essential to the film’s overall vibe.

And back to that vibe: one of the most notable things about Zombeavers is that, despite the assumed crudity of the concept and execution, the film is anything but a collection of stupid “beaver” jokes and frat boy humor. If anything, Rubin’s script constantly pushes against those stereotypes, walking a fine line between embracing the clichés and setting them on fire. This isn’t to say that Zombeavers is wholesome family fare (penis-chomping, eye-gouging and Zoe’s boobs abound): it is to say, however, that Rubin and crew are smart and savvy enough to know that raunchy humor doesn’t have to be braindead…there’s nothing in this film that comes close to approximating the inanity of the aforementioned SyFy tripe, no matter how hard they try.

As should be plainly obvious, I was quite taken with Zombeavers: as a directorial debut, it’s even more impressive. While not everything worked, the elements that really worked tended to soar: the last fifteen minutes of the film are so damned perfect that I, literally, cheered. Since the film ends with a direct, clever set-up for a sequel (there are other things in the woods besides beavers, after all), I’m hoping that Rubin can capitalize on what worked here and come roaring out of the gate on the next one. After all: any guy that can see the inherent, soul-shattering evil of those flat-tailed, buck-toothed bastards…well, he’s pretty alright in my book.

5/22/15: Doin’ It For the Kids

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7th Floor, Abel Dolz Doval, Adrian Garcia Bogliano, Alfred Hitchcock, alternate title, Argentinian film, Belén Rueda, Buenos Aires, Charo Dolz Doval, cheating husbands, cinema, custody issues, divorced parents, film reviews, films, foreign films, Guillermo Arengo, husband-wife relationship, infidelity, Jorge D'Elía, kids in peril, Lucas Nolla, Lucio Bonelli, Luis Ziembrowski, missing children, Movies, mysteries, Osvaldo Santoro, parent-child relationships, Patxi Amezcua, Ricardo Darín, Septimo, set in Argentina, Spurloos, suspense, The Lady Vanishes, The Vanishing, thrillers, twist ending, writer-director

For parents of young children, there can’t be many more terrifying nightmares than having them vanish, seemingly without a trace. Despite how careful and attentive parents might be, they’re not omniscient deities: even the best parents can let their attention stray for a moment, become complacent with friendly surroundings, take their eyes off their precious charges for the barest of moments. As we find out all too frequently these days, it doesn’t take more than a moment (sometimes only a few seconds) for tragedy to strike.

Argentinian writer-director Patxi Amezcua’s Septimo (2013) deals with just this parental nightmare and, for over half its 88 minute running-time, it’s quite the razor-sharp, white knuckle thriller. Coming off as a grim combination of Hitchcock’s classic The Lady Vanishes (1938) and George Sluzier’s Spurloos (The Vanishing) (1988), Amezcua puts his characters (and his audience) through the wringer, giving us a front-row seat to the mounting terror that an estranged husband and wife feel as they desperately search for their missing children. Once the mystery comes into sharper focus, however, the film loses much of its inherent tension, playing out towards a rather predictable ending, right up to the fourth act “twist.” At the end of the day, however, half a Hitchcock ain’t too shabby.

When we first meet newly divorced criminal lawyer, Sebastian (Ricardo Darín), it’s pretty obvious that the guy is a dick: we watch him shrug off his anxious sister’s concerns about her potentially abusive ex and see him rage against the “old lady” who keeps parking in his designated spot at his apartment building. After the kindly super, Miguel (Luis Ziembrowski), explains that the old lady is almost blind, Sebastian snorts and replies that he’ll happily have her towed, anyway: if she can’t see, sell the damn car. George Bailey, he’s most certainly not.

Once Sebastian gets up to his seventh floor apartment (hence the film’s Spanish title, as well as its alternate title, 7th Floor), we meet his adorable kids, Luna (Charo Dolz Doval) and Luca (Abel Dolz Doval), as well as his put-upon ex-wife, Delia (Belén Rueda). There’s still lots of simmering tension in the relationship, mostly due to the fact that Sebastian is a pompous ass who’s constantly running late, although more for the fact that he steadfastly refuses to sign the paperwork that will allow Delia to move herself and the kids to Spain (they all currently reside in Buenos Aires), so that she can take care of her ailing father. Sebastian is, above all else, a deeply selfish man, however, and he has no intention of making anything easy for his ex.

On the day of a particularly high-profile case, however, Sebastian’s life hits a bit of a speed-bump. Humoring his children, the lawyer lets them race down the stairs while he takes the elevator, the exact same “game” that Delia has previously complained about being “too dangerous.” Beating them to the lobby, Sebastian waits around until he gets a troublesome notion: the kids aren’t coming down. From this point, Luna and Luca’s father flies into a mad frenzy of activity, frantically searching his apartment building for any sign of his kids, all while trying to avoid alerting Delia to the present crisis. Enlisting a resident police office, Rosales (Osvaldo Santoro), for help, Sebastian questions his neighbors, many of whom seem to be decidedly odd, suspicious people. As the clock continues to tick down, the obnoxious lawyer must learn to rely on the help of others, even as he seeks to unravel the mystery of his kids’ disappearance. Is this related to his high-profile case? Does Rosales know more than he’s letting on? And, most importantly: will Sebastian and Delia ever see their children again?

Up until the midpoint revelation, Septimo is an endlessly tense, nail-biting bit of cinema, easily comparable to the work of fellow Argentinian Adrián García Bogliano (there are bits and pieces of his Cold Sweat (2010) and Penumbra (2011) littered through Septimo’s DNA). The acting is uniformly solid, with Darín and Rueda being easy standouts as the parents. There’s a real art-form to playing an asshole character (too much on either side and the character becomes either completely unbearable or thoroughly unrealistic) and Darín hits the bulls-eye with what seems to be studied ease. It’s all in the margins for the character: we get enough casual exposition to establish Sebastian’s more douche-bag tendencies (his infidelity with Delia’s best friend, his casually dismissive interactions with anyone “below” his station) but he fills in the spaces with some truly subtle mannerisms that are almost subliminal. We can see that Sebastian is an asshole but, more importantly, we can feel that he’s an asshole: as far as I’m concerned, that’s great characterization, right there.

For her part, Rueda’s Delia is a massively complex character, made more so by the fact that we spend so little time with her compared to Sebastian: like Sebastian, we pick up much of our impressions of her from the margins, with the added benefit of the surprise “revelations” of the mystery format. There’s a subtle sense of downplaying that really works with Rueda’s performance: she dials it back enough that, when Delia needs to let loose, her outbursts actually come with a little punch. Call it the benefit of knowing when to turn the knobs to 11 and when to exercise a little restraint.

The rest of the cast does equally admirable work, albeit in much smaller doses. Osvaldo Santoro is extremely charismatic as the gruff, no-nonsense police officer, while Luis Ziembrowski manages to make the character of the landlord seem kindly, sympathetic and a tad bit sinister. Perhaps most impressively, the Dovals do fantastic work as the children, Luna and Luca. Oftentimes, child performers are the weak link in any production: it pretty much comes with the territory. In this case, however, Abel and Charo hit every single required beat, managing to walk a tight line between adorable urchins and actual flesh-and-blood people.

If I have any real complaints with Septimo, they lie more with what is being expressed than how it’s being expressed (although I’ll freely admit that the midpoint resolution and resulting “twist” ending did nothing for me and actually knocked the film down a peg or two, in my mind). While I won’t give away the final revelation (astute viewers will probably be able to piece at least part of it together well before the final act), suffice to say that it felt more than a little misogynistic and casually cruel, at least to this viewer. It seems that Amezcua went out of his way to establish Sebastian as an unrepentant cad throughout the film, only to suddenly end up in his corner by the finale. It feels a little unfair, sure, but it also feels as if it blatantly disregards many of the subtle points that have been raised throughout the rest of the film. I’m not sure if Amezcua was making an actual point or whether I just read a bit too much into it: regardless, this ended up leaving a distinctly bad taste in my mouth that impacted my overall impression.

Slightly muddled message aside, there’s an awful lot to like here. As stated earlier, the first 40+ minutes of the film are some of the tightest, most tense and atmospheric that I’ve seen recently: I don’t throw that Hitchcock stuff around lightly, after all. When Darín is frantically racing around his apartment building, barging into locked residences and alternately cajoling and threatening anyone who crosses his path, there’s a sweaty, adrenalized sense of panic to the proceedings that are pure cinematic bliss. Perhaps it was asking a bit much for Amezcua and company to sustain that fever pitch for the entirety of the film but I still can’t help but feel a bit disappointed. Here’s to hoping that, next time around, Amezcua lets us all twist on the hook just a little longer.

5/21/15: The Tale Lost in the Telling

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Ben Shenkman, Brian Cox, Burgess Jenkins, Carol Kane, cinema, con artists, Coupling, crime thriller, Darren Genet, directorial debut, dramas, film noir, film reviews, films, flashbacks, gangsters, golfing, grifters, Hugo Weaving, husband-wife relationship, independent films, insurance fraud, insurance salesman, Jack Davenport, Josh Noyes, Josh Pais, Judy Greer, Movies, period-piece, Peter Himmelstein, Robert Miller, scam, set in 1970s, split-screen, stylish films, The Key Man, writer-director

For my money, nothing beats a simple tale told well. Sure, there’s plenty of joy and value to be found in complex structures, eye-popping visual feasts and all-or-nothing editing extravaganzas: spectacle and cinema will always go hand-in-hand. There are times when there’s nothing finer than getting lost in the sturm und drang of a good, ol’ special effects bonanza, while, sometimes, you just want to see a film so complex and involving that it makes your forehead throb. There’s nothing wrong with big films but they’re also only half of the coin.

The other half of the coin, of course, are the smaller, subtler films: the quietly provocative indie dramas…the sparse, spare experimental films…the incisive character portraits and razor-sharp crime thrillers that don’t require flashy editing, huge explosions or pounding metal scores to make their points. These are films stripped down to their bare components, left to sink or swim by those old-fashioned standbys: absorbing characters, dramatic tension, smart dialogue and genuine emotional resonance. I may enjoy huge, noisy and stuffed-to-bursting event pictures but my heart will always belong to the same part of town that you’re most likely to find me hanging out: the quiet side.

Writer-director Peter Himmelstein’s The Key Man (2011) is a small, quiet film trapped inside a much flashier, more vapid one, the cinematic equivalent of one of David Byrne’s comically over-sized suits. At its heart, all of the components are in place for an effective, if modest, noirish crime thriller, something akin to a more po-faced Fargo (1996). Thanks to the ridiculously heavy-handed editing and visual flourishes like endless split-screens and out-of-place time-lapse photography, however, Himmelstein’s directorial debut ends up collapsing under the weight, burying the effective core under tons of pretty but useless rubble.

The film’s set-up is almost “Indie Crime Film 101” in its simplicity and familiarity: a down-on-his-luck insurance salesman with a wife and kids to feed gets involved with a pair of grifters and their scam to buy the Red Sox. The insurance salesman, Bobby (Coupling’s Jack Davenport), isn’t a bad guy but he is a desperate one: he’s just lost his oldest client right at the time when his wife, Karen (Judy Greer), is pushing to finally settle down and buy a home. Into his despair strides Vincent (Hugo Weaving) and Irving (Brian Cox), a pair of fast-talking, golf-playing con-men who want to enlist Bobby’s aid in a bit of insurance fraud: namely, they want to take out a “key man policy” on Vincent’s old partner, Charles (Burgess Jenkins), in order to bump him off and use the insurance payout to purchase their sports team.

As often happens, however, nothing goes quite according to plan and Bobby soon finds himself in way over his head. More and more people end up involved in what was supposed to be a fairly low-key event and Vincent and Irving gradually reveal themselves to be both unstable and dangerous, by turn. Will Bobby be able to see everything through to his big pay-day or will his conscience kick in and spoil the party? Most importantly: are Vincent and Irving the kinds of business partners that take “no” for an answer?

Deep down, at its heart, The Key Man is a decent, often quite effective, little noir/heist film, albeit one prone to particularly on-the-nose, expository dialogue. The acting is effective across the board, although Weaving’s flamboyant, sleazy Vincent will, undoubtedly, be the performance that sticks in the mind the longest: Davenport is fine, if rather vanilla, as Bobby, while Cox gets a few over-the-top blow-outs that tend to lessen the final impression of his otherwise impressive Irving. Greer’s Karen is a bit less effective, although that’s never due to the performance: her motivations always seem a bit off, however, making the character play out more as a plot element than actual flesh-and-blood person.

While the particulars of the scam aspect were a bit foggy to this particular viewer (insurance fraud sounds sexier than it really is), everything fell into place with a nice sense of purpose and irony that often felt perilously close to approximating a Hitchcockian vibe. Several scenes, such as the one where Bobby races home only to find Vincent acting the perfect gentleman with his family or the one where Vincent does a bit of impromptu Shakespeare, have nicely realized senses of tension that yield fairly thrilling payoffs.

Indeed, all of the pieces are in place for The Key Man to be a real sleeper, the kind of low-budget micro-masterpiece that coulda/woulda/shoulda been a contender. Practically from the opening credits, however, the film is almost completely hamstrung by one crucial element: the overly busy, fussed-with editing and over-used tricks like split-screens tend to drown out every other aspect of the film.

The biggest offender here is the damnable split-screen, an effect that’s used so much as to approach the level of SNL-type parody. Truth be told, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that uses as many split-screens as The Key Man does: hell, even the above poster art is set up as a kind of split screen…it’s practically wired into the film’s DNA. When used in moderation (or for an actual purpose), there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with a split-screen: it’s just another filmmaking tool like any other. When the split-screen begins to call attention to itself outside of the actual film framework, however, this feels a bit like the cart dragging the horse. There’s one instantly memorable moment where multiple split-screens fly around the central frame until to unite into one screen that becomes Vincent’s face: it’s silly, flashy and, ultimately, very pointless, the very definition of style for style’s sake.

While the split-screens are the biggest offenders, they’re not the only ones. There are also numerous instances of needless time-lapses, in-camera focus changes, out-of-focus images, you name it, that tend to pull attention off of what the film is trying to say and puts it squarely on how the film is saying it. There are certain films that can employ an “everything and the kitchen sink” approach – Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Wrong (2012) come immediately to mind – and work spectacularly, allowing the medium and the message to come together in complete harmony. The Key Man is not one of those films. Here, the low-key, engaging crime thriller aspect is completely over-shadowed by the flashy editing and the split-screens.

Perhaps the split-screens are by way of helping to sell the era (the film takes place in 1975) but that also becomes a bit of an issue: rather than feeling organic, the time-period in The Key Man always feels forced, as if the filmmakers need to constantly remind us of where we are. Karen reads a copy of Jaws, they watch Johnny Carson on TV, outfits get almost as much screen-time as actors, the score is the kind of jazzy funk that underlined a million ’70s-era cop shows…over time, it feels less like we’re immersed in an actual era than an Ikea showroom dedicated to more “happenin'” times.

There’s no doubt that Himmelstein has some skill behind the camera, both directing and scriptwise. While the dialogue was often too obvious, the actual setup had enough twists and turns to justify the above Hitchcock reference, even if infrequently. There’s something about a good grift/heist film that’s almost irresistible and The Key Man often scratches that itch quite ably. In fact, I daresay that a no-frills, stripped-to-the-bone version of this same film would score quite a bit higher on my personal meter: there’s a lot to like here, despite how infuriating much of the over-stuffing becomes. Ultimately, it’s easy to look at this as a case of “first-time-around-the-block-blues”: as a debut, The Key Man has a lot to recommend it but it also fails in some pretty fundamental ways. Here’s to hoping that, the next time around, Himmelstein and company go a little easier on the frosting and give the actual cake a chance to shine.

5/14/15: Don’t Go Stabbin’ My Heart

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'80s slasher films, 1980s films, Alf Humphreys, Canadian films, Carl Marotte, cinema, Cynthia Dale, Don Francks, film reviews, films, Friday the 13th, George Mihalka, Gina Dick, gory films, Halloween, Harry Warden, heavily-edited, Helene Udy, horror, horror films, horror movies, Jack Van Evera, John Beaird, John McDermott, Keith Knight, Larry Reynolds, Lori Hallier, love triangle, masked killers, miners, mining disaster, Movies, My Bloody Valentine, Neil Affleck, Patricia Hamilton, Paul Kelman, pickaxe, psycho killers, Rob Stein, Rodney Gibbons, Sean Cunningham, set in Canada, slasher films, Stephen A. Miller, Terry Waterland, Tom Kovacs, Valentine, Valentine's Day

While most folks probably feel that the insane killers are the determining factor in slasher films, I’d wager to say that there’s another factor that’s just as prominent and important: those kids just don’t listen. Time and time again, the youthful fodder in slasher films are given a handy set of rules to remember (“Don’t go in the woods,” “Don’t go in the cabin,” “Don’t have sex,” “Don’t look in the basement,” “Don’t split up,” “Don’t turn your back on it,” “Don’t feed it after midnight”) and, time after time, they just blow a raspberry and do their own thing. Doesn’t matter how many crotchety old men, sinister gypsies or age-old legends get thrown in their faces: these kids are here to party…and, of course, die.

The “rule” that the kids break (and pay for) in Canadian slasher classic My Bloody Valentine (1981) is the same one that Sir Kevin Bacon would rail against a scant three years later in the tap-dancing epic Footloose (1984): they just wanna dance, dammit, and they could give a hoot what any old psycho killers say. When the psycho killer in question just might be the pickaxe-wielding, cannibalistic and Valentine’s Day-hating sole survivor of a mining disaster, however, well…maybe the kids really should have listened.

20 years ago, in the town of Valentine’s Bluff, negligent mining officials paid more attention to the rockin’ Valentine’s Day dance than the mine and the resulting cave-in produced only one survivor, Harry Warden, who would proceed to murder the offending officials with his pickaxe. Leaving behind bloody heart-shaped boxes, Harry would also leave a parting directive: no more Valentine’s dances, ever. After heeding the maniac’s orders for two decades, the town’s young folks decide to throw caution to the wind and get their boogie on. The one guy not invited to the party? Harry Warden. Turns out ol’ Harry’s the kinda guy who doesn’t need an invitation, however: when he gets wind of the planned bash, the malevolent miner takes his weapon of choice out of retirement and starts to cut a (very) bloody swath through the unknowing town.

As the bodies pile up behind the scenes, a love triangle takes center-stage: T.J (Paul Kelman), the wayward son of the town’s mayor/mine owner, has returned home and attempted to rekindle his romance with Sarah (Lori Hallier), the girl he left behind. Only problem is, Sarah has hooked up with T.J.’s former best friend, Axel (Neil Affleck), a pompous, abusive lout who doesn’t take kindly to his ex-bestie popping up in the picture. As the two alpha males butt heads and strut around, Sarah and her friends decide to take the party into the mine, proper. Led by cheerful Hollis (Keith Knight) and goofball Howard (Alf Humphreys), the ladies descend into an area of the mine that’s been out of commission since the days of Harry Warden. As they’ll come to find, however, not all old, dead things stay buried…and, sometimes, the killer you don’t know is far scarier than the one you do.

George Mihalka’s My Bloody Valentine fits neatly within the ’80s slasher boom, coming less than a year after Sean Cunningham would scare us out of the summer camp with his now iconic Friday the 13th (1980), right in the middle of a rather impressive glut of like-minded films. While many (most?) of the ’80s slasher boom would end up being rather forgettable carbon-copies of better films, there were plenty of them that stood out on their own due to various degrees of individuality: My Bloody Valentine certainly stands proud with these.

While the acting is the same kind of thing fans of the subgenre should know to expect (in some places, it’s so broad as to approximate a ’50s beach movie), the performers are all personable and none of them, including Humphrey’s “oh so zany” Howard, ever wear out their welcome. While the film’s central love triangle ends up being rather overheated and corny, it does provide a reasonable measure of dramatic tension, along with leading to the inevitable moment where the feuding beaus must join forces to save their (shared) beloved. The adults in the film, namely Don Francks’ Chief Newby and Larry Reynolds’ Mayor Hanniger, are all largely ineffectual but, then again, that’s also par for the course with the majority of ’80s slasher films, as is the de rigueur first-person POV shots and heavy breathing on the soundtrack.

Atmosphere-wise, Mihalka and crew make the very best of their mine location, providing plenty of suitably creepy shots and tense moments, highlighted by the showstopper where the masked miner slowly strides down a tunnel, smashing lit bulbs with his pickaxe: it’s a truly glorious moment and one that’s been replicated several times in the 30+ years since it (presumably) creeped the living shit out of audiences. Speaking of the miner: all slasher films live and die by their main creepazoid and My Bloody Valentine’s villain is one of the greats. Silent, hulking and prone to imaginative kills, ala Jason, the miner is a simple but massively effective construct: more’s the pity that this (and the 2011 remake) were his only moments in the sun (so to speak).

Despite being hailed as a minor classic within the subgenre, My Bloody Valentine is equally notorious as being one of the most heavily edited films of the era. Whether due to societal issues of the time, an increased focus on censorship or the blowback from other violent films, the vast majority of the film’s creative kills are edited almost to the point of nonexistence: in an ironic twist, My Bloody Valentine is both one of the most AND least gory of the ’80s slasher boom. While I detest censorship, in general, the edited version of Mihalka’s film ends up being its own curious kind of beast: with the geekshow factor of the excessively violent kills removed, leaving only snippets of the aftermath, the focus is put back on the actual film. As such, the edited version of My Bloody Valentine is a rather lame gore flick (the worst shot in the edited version is the seconds-long image of Mabel’s burned body) but it’s actually a very effective suspense/horror film, similar to the first Friday the 13th or, to a much lesser extent, Hooper’s unbeatable Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

While a restored version of the film from several years back added in some of the censored gore, the version that most folks will probably see is the more readily available edited version. After seeing both, I still find myself leaning towards the edited one a little more, perhaps because the “restored” version is still edited: it’s kind of like cleaning off one spot of a filthy window while leaving the rest dirty. At the very least, the fully edited version has a sense of unity that’s less jarring than the re-added footage, even though some of the setpieces are so gloriously loony as to warrant the added attention (the scene where Helene Udy’s Sylvia gets turned into a human water faucet manages to handily one-up the meat hook scene in TCM, while recalling some of the more gonzo giallos).

As a big proponent of film history and its more unsung chapters, I’ve always enjoyed My Bloody Valentine, even if it’s nowhere near the creme de la creme of the movement. The film is fast-paced, fun and endlessly inventive, however, even if it occasionally winks so hard in the direction of Cunningham’s originator that it gets a severe eye cramp (in particular, the character of Jack Van Evera’s Happy is just Walt Gorney’s Crazy Ralph with a different Social Security number). I’m willing to wager that most fans of slasher films (or just horror films, in general) will already be familiar with this little export from America’s Northern neighbors. If not, I heartily suggest rectifying that little omission: in order to know where horror is going, you have to know where it was. Back in the dawning years of the ’80s, this is where horror was. If your only experience with holiday-themed horror is John Carpenter’s pumpkin king, set a date with My Bloody Valentine next February: the movie has a lot of heart…and it just might win yours.

5/10/15: A Real Wild Child

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2015 Academy Awards, 87th Annual Academy Awards, abusive childhood, Art Alexakis, based on a book, based on a true story, Best Actress nominee, Best Supporting Actress nominee, brother-sister relationships, casual sex, Cathryn de Prume, Cheryl Strayed, cinema, Dallas Buyers Club, dead mother, director-editor, dramas, drug addiction, dysfunctional marriage, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, Gaby Hoffmann, grief, hiking, infidelity, isolation, Jean-Marc Vallee, Keene McRae, Kevin Rankin, Laura Dern, Martin Pensa, memoir, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, multiple editors, Nick Hornby, Oscar nominee, overcoming adversity, Pacific Crest Trail, Reese Witherspoon, self-discovery, self-help, self-improvement, set in 1990s, sex addiction, Wild, Yves Bélanger

Author C.S. Lewis once described grief as “like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” While this is certainly a poetic and serene way to look at it, I’ve always equated the emotion with something older and a bit more mythological, personally. As far as I’m concerned, grief is a hydra: cut off one head and numerous ones sprout up to take its place. In order to truly overcome grief, one needs to get right to the heart of the matter…trying to tackle each individual feeling, each moment of pain, sorrow and heartbreak is as pointless a task as Hercules trying to sever each individual head, only for two more to grow back. In order to truly overcome grief, one must confront the inciting incident head on: emotional honesty, no matter how painful, is the only true way out.

When Cheryl Strayed started out on her 1,100-mile trek down the Pacific Crest Trail, from Mexico to Canada, she was motivated by grief: after losing her beloved mother to cancer, Strayed spiraled into a mess of drug addiction, marital infidelity and self-destructive behavior, culminating in the realization that she either had to get better or risk a complete and total meltdown. Her intensely arduous undertaking (difficult for an expert hiker, all but impossible for a complete novice like Cheryl) would begin as a way to find some sort of peace in her life but would end with her finding something more important: herself. In the hands of French filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallee, Strayed’s journey comes to vivid life with Wild (2014), based on her memoir of he experience. While the story is an interesting rumination on grief, the film ends up being disjointed and rather rote, a decided step down from Vallee’s previous effort, the similarly Oscar-nominated Dallas Buyers Club (2013).

Employing a flashback structure, Wild starts us in the “present day” (June 1995), as Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) is just beginning her incredibly long hike, before jumping us backwards to get a sense of the events that led up to her decision. We see her relationship with her hard-working, single mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern) and younger brother, Leif (Keene McRae)…we see Cheryl and Bobbi taking college classes together…we see Bobbi diagnosed with a particularly vicious form of cancer…and, of course, we see Cheryl’s life collapse around her after the death of her mother. Falling into a toxic combo of drug addiction (first smoking, then snorting, finally shooting smack), casual sex with strangers (particularly troublesome given her current married status) and self-hatred, Cheryl seems doomed, burning alive by the intense heat of her own grief.

After hitting rock bottom, Cheryl makes the spur of the moment decision that would end up changing her entire life: she decides to hike all 1,000+miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone, with no previous hiking experience. Her (now ex-) husband, Paul (Thomas Sadoski), is cautiously supportive. Her best friend, Aimee (Gaby Hoffmann) thinks she’s nuts. Regardless, Cheryl sets out on her journey with no idea of what she’s doing, a pack that’s at least five times heavier than it should be and more determination than a small city. Along the way, Cheryl will see plenty of natural beauty, run into a few natural hazards and meet lots of interesting folks, including fellow hikers, a kindly farmer, a reporter for the “Hobo Times,” sinister hunters and a Grateful Dead cover band. She’ll learn to rely on herself and the kindness of strangers but she’ll also learn an even more important lesson: no matter how white-hot the pain of grief may be, life does, in fact, go on. Sometimes, all we can do is go along for the ride and see where it takes us.

As a story, Wild has an almost irresistible pull: there’s something primal and inherently satisfying about watching a damaged, fractured human being take a healing journey, especially when the backdrop is the awe-inspiring beauty of the great outdoors. Witherspoon does a great job bringing Cheryl to life, making the cinematic version feel like a real, flesh-and-blood person as opposed to just a character. As usual, Witherspoon is an all-in performer: in order to fully appreciate Cheryl’s redemption, we need to see her degradation and Witherspoon holds nothing back, whatsoever, resulting in one of her rawest roles since Freeway (1996). While I didn’t think that her performance in Wild was the very best of last year, it certainly deserved the Oscar nomination and proves, if nothing else, that she continues to defy the expectations imposed on “mainstream” Hollywood starlets by the industry, as a whole.

While Witherspoon’s performance is typically strong, however, the film is a lot more problematic, in general. My biggest complaint comes via Vallee’s flashback structure, which ends up doing two things, neither of which seems desired: it tends to make the narrative unnecessarily confusing (in particular, the timeline seems all over the place) and makes the film feel like more of a series of vignettes than a cohesive whole. For the most part, the film breaks down thusly: Cheryl walks around, flashes back to drug use and orgies, meets interesting folks, lather, rinse, repeat. In short order, Wild begins to seem distressingly formulaic, which certainly robs the film of much of its tension: even during presumably high-stakes moments like the redneck hunters, Wild seems constrained by its structure.

There’s a sparse, spare quality to much of the film that’s both lovely and thematically important (Cheryl is, after all, desperately searching for some sort of stillness within herself, the same stillness echoed by the natural landscape) but this spare quality is constantly dashed by the endless flashbacks. Perhaps if the peeks into the past had felt more organic and motivated, as opposed to part of a regimented structure, they would have retained more impact and had less (negative) effect on the film’s tone. As it stands, however, Wild ends up feeling more disjointed and piecemeal than it does cohesive.

I also had a problem with the relationship between Cheryl and her mother, at least as depicted in the film. While I’m not familiar with Strayed’s actual memoir, I have to assume that the intense connection between her and her mom is better delineated on the page than it is on the screen. As depicted, however, we really don’t get a clear sense of this devotion: Bobbi seems quirky, positive and fun-minded, sure, but the flashbacks to her and Cheryl don’t seem to hint at an on-screen relationship that’s any more intense than any other cinematic mother-daughter pairing. Losing her mother seems to be the catalyst for Cheryl’s spiral into a drug and sex-fueled hell but, prior to her death, the pair just seem to get along okay: for me, at least, this ended up being a bit of a disconnect from the film.

Acting-wise, Wild is full of good performances, although the vast majority end up being short, bite-sized little bits as opposed to more substantial scenes: this is very much the story of Strayed and Witherspoon is, for the most part, always the focal point. Despite garnering a Best Supporting Actress nomination, I wasn’t particularly impressed by Dern’s performance as the doomed Bobbi: despite being a big fan, her transition from happy-go-lucky to hair-pulling felt too abrupt and nothing really stuck out for me. Ditto for Gaby Hoffmann, who ends up with a few minutes of screen time as Cheryl’s friend, which seems a bit of a waste given Hoffmann’s ability to handily steal focus. Kevin Rankine is personable as Greg, the hiker that Cheryl keeps bumping into on the trail, but Keene McRae is fairly awful as brother Leif…it’s a real “six of one, half-dozen of the other” scenario.

Ultimately, I enjoyed Wild but was never blown away: considering how great I thought Dallas Buyers Club was, this definitely struck me as a bit of a disappointment. While I think the core story is a fascinating one (if the notion of a complete novice hiking over a thousand miles to “find” herself doesn’t strike you as fascinating, the core issue definitely doesn’t reside with the movie), the actual film never really clicked for me. To each their own, of course: while the actual film ended up being a bit of a let-down, Strayed’s story is interesting enough to make this worth a watch, even if it’s decidedly more run-of-the-mill than it could have been.

5/6/15: Blurring the Lines

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Alexandria Fierz, backwoods folk, based on a true story, Bert Wall, cinema, David Z. Roberts, dead father, Devil's Backbone, Devil's Backbone Tavern, Devil's Backbone Texas, directorial debut, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, found-footage films, ghosts, Haley Buckner, haunted houses, horror, horror films, isolated estates, Jake Wade Wall, James Carrington, Jodi Bianca Wise, mockumentary, Movies, screenwriter, supernatural, twist ending, Unsolved Mysteries, writer-director-producer-actor

If the whole point of mockumentary/found-footage horror films is to obscure the dividing line between truth and fiction, freely mixing the “real” with the “fake” until audiences are too dizzy to know the difference, then Jake Wade Wall’s debut, Devil’s Backbone, Texas (2015), just might be one of the most successful yet. By interweaving the actual story of his horror writer father’s experiences on the titular patch of land with the kind of traditional found-footage aspects that we’re used to seeing (the Blair Witch Project (1999) is an obvious inspiration), Wall is able to come up with a virtually textbook example of the subgenre. If Devil’s Backbone, Texas is less successful as an actual film, well…let’s chalk that up to growing pains: there’s enough good ideas here to make Wall someone to keep an eye on in the future.

The concept of the film, as mentioned above, cleverly blends the real-life story of Bert Wall, a writer/rancher who lived in the area of Texas known as Devil’s Backbone, with the usual “running through the woods with a camera” found-footage schtick. Wall’s ranch came to fame via a mid-’90s segment on Unsolved Mysteries that detailed the massive amount of ghostly activity that he claimed to witness on the land, including everything from ghostly monks to ghostly Native Americans. Wall’s real-life son, Jake (the film’s writer/director/producer/lead), uses this as the basic setup and then jumps us 20 years into the present. After his father has died, Jake’s mom asks him to take his ashes to his old homestead and perform the “ash ceremony” that Bert always wanted.

Seeing this as a great opportunity to explore stories of the area, Jake takes the ashes and a small passel of his best friends, a group which features the usual mixture of believers and non-believers. As Jake interviews the locals, in order to get a better picture of his estranged father, he also begins to uncover hints of the strange doings in the area: there’s even stories about a mysterious German POW camp on the ranch, providing yet another possible source for the region’s “hauntings.” As things gradually become stranger, Jake’s friends want to pack up and leave, especially after they keep bumping into a strange pickup truck that, for all intents and purposes, shouldn’t be there. Jake has become obsessed with getting to the bottom of his father’s death, however, as well as the legends of Devil’s Backbone and he has no intention of backing out. Will Jake’s stubbornness lead to the ultimate revelation of the Devil’s Backbone’s secrets or will his poking around spell the doom for everyone he holds dear?

One of Devil Backbone, Texas’ greatest strengths (perhaps its single greatest one) is the way in which it ingeniously melds fiction and reality within the framework of the film. To be honest, I wasn’t actually aware that there really was a Bert Wall: I assumed that the Unsolved Mysteries segment was a clever mock-up and that the whole film was an entirely fictionalized account of a real area/phenomenon. Imagine my surprise, then, when a little research revealed that not only does Bert Wall actually exist (along with that illuminating Unsolved Mysteries segment from 1996) but that Jake is his son. This sort of (gently) blew my mind, as it managed to recontextualize much of what I had just seen, especially considering the familial angle. Any film that can actually fool me gets big props, in my book, and Wall definitely deserves props.

The main problem with the film doesn’t really have much to do with the story, although it does end up feeling a bit musty, in places: in general, Wall throws plenty of good ideas around and many of them end up sticking, even if nothing is explored in as much depth as it should be (in particular, the German POW bit is so under-developed as to be mystifying). The big problems with the film, unfortunately, all stack up on the actual production side of things: while Wall has plenty of intriguing ideas, the film that contains them is, at best, rather average.

As the lead, Wall has a tendency to swing between an effective, upbeat kind of understatement and a much more ineffective hyper-emotionalism: when Jake really gets wound up, his character tends to come across as whiny,  shouty and altogether unpleasant. Found-footage films have a history of leads like this, of course (think back to Blair Witch’s insufferable Heather), but that doesn’t make it any more tolerable here. If anything, I found myself constantly wishing that Wall had stayed behind the camera: while his character definitely has moments, I found my suspension of disbelief shattered a few times too many for comfort.

The rest of the cast does decent work, although I’ll admit that the only one who actually left any kind of impression on me was the fella who looked sort of like Hugh Jackman: he had an easy-going delivery and charisma that was quite effective. Other than that, however, the group seemed like the usual crew of interchangeable types. As with similar mockumentary films, Devil’s Backbone, Texas, also features various interviews with academics, experts and towns’ folk: this all help with the film’s verisimilitude immensely, even when the acting from the cast becomes just rough enough to notice.

Ultimately, Devil’s Backbone, Texas is a decent debut, albeit one hampered by a shaky lead, slight lack of focus and a rather dreadful twist ending (not to put too fine a point on it but the lazy “surprise” finale is easily the dumbest part of the film, hands down). That being said, there’s something about the film that still got to me: perhaps it was that initial blurring of real and fiction or Wall’s very obvious enthusiasm for the film and subject. Perhaps it was the genuinely creepy location or the standout bit of atmosphere where we see teeming masses of spiders all over the walls of Bert’s abandoned home (as a lifelong arachnophobe, this practically had me crawling out of my skin). Whatever the reason, I walked away from Wall’s debut entertained, which is quite a bit more than I can say for many micro-budget indies. As such, I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

4/27/15: An Army of One

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1960s cinema, action films, auteur theory, Bill Mullikin, Bob Newhart, Bobby Darin, cinema, dark films, Dirty Harry, Don Siegel, dramas, Escape From Alcatraz, Fess Parker, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, frontline, G.I.s, Harold Lipstein, Harry Guardino, Hell Is For Heroes, insubordination, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, James Coburn, Joseph Hoover, Leonard Rosenman, Mike Kellin, Movies, Nick Adams, nihilistic films, power struggles, Richard Carr, Robert Pirosh, set in 1940s, set in France, Steve McQueen, The Killers, war movies, World War II

Filmmaking is a lot like cooking, if you think about it: give five different chefs the exact same ingredients and you’re likely to come up with five very different dishes. Ditto for filmmaking: give five different filmmakers the exact same tropes, conventions, themes and scenarios and you’re going to end up with five very different films. Case in point: action auteur Don Siegel’s Hell Is For Heroes (1962). On the outside, the film looks much like many other World War II-set action films: big cast of well-known actors…intense front-line action sequences…dramatic interplay between the soldiers. Digging deeper, however, it’s easy to see that this particular war film bears more than a passing resemblance to similarly dark, paranoid films in Siegel’s canon such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Killers (1964). The result? A tense, nihilistic and constantly odd study in hubris, obsession and heroism, courtesy of the guy who would, one day, gift us with Dirty Harry (1971).

We jump right into the action on the front-line of the Allied offensive, in France, circa 1944. A small American squadron, led by Sgts. Larkin (Harry Guardino) and Pike (Fess Parker aka TV’s Daniel Boone), has been charged with holding the line against the German offensive. As the squad, which includes motor-mouthed Pvt. Corby (actor/singer Bobby Darin), laconic Cpl. Henshaw (James Coburn), Pvt. Kolinsky (Mike Kellin) and Pvt. Cumberly (Bill Mullikin), celebrate their upcoming return home, they receive a new member: Pvt. Reese (Steve McQueen). Reese is a sullen, surly, standoffish badass who seems to have a past with Sgt. Pike and a problem with the bottle.

While Reese lugs several steamer trunks’ worth of emotional baggage with him, his appearance also foretells a bit of bad luck for the squad: not only aren’t they going to get to go home but military brass has decreed that the squad be split, stretching the already thin crew to a breaking point. While Pike takes most of the men further down the way, Larkin and his tiny six-man crew are charged with holding the line all on their lonesome.

The problem, of course, is that a far larger German force is camped out just over the rise, patiently waiting to bomb the ever-loving shit out of the stragglers. As the extremely unpleasant but eminently capable Reese butts heads with Larkin over their next course of action, the rest of the team are caught in the crosshairs. When Reese comes up with a brazen, impossibly dangerous plan to take out the nearby German pillbox, however, he sets in motion a series of events that will test the squads loyalty, their resilience and their very wills to survive.

Despite its familiar trappings, Hell Is For Heroes is a decidedly odd duck. For one thing, the evocative black-and-white cinematography (courtesy of Harold Lipstein) frequently calls to mind film noir and German Expressionist filmmaking: full of hard, deep shadows and an overwhelmingly sinister atmosphere, there’s something intensely unsettling about the film, even during its lighter moments. There’s also the film’s rigid, almost stage-bound sense of blocking: combined with the sharp dialogue (legendary screenwriter Robert Pirosh wrote the film, along with Richard Carr), the movie often feels like a stage play, although this ends up working to its benefit, heightening the eerie sense of unreality.

Siegel, as expected, is a deft hand with the action sequences (the film’s final 20 minutes are one long, sustained battle that’s a masterpiece of chaos and carnage) but the connecting tissue is where the film really stands out: the midpoint sequence, which consists of the G.I.s setting up an elaborate “early warning system,” is almost ludicrously detailed and leisurely paced, yet still manages to be impossibly tense and pulse-pounding. The human-level drama is even better: McQueen’s thoroughly unlikable Reese swings wildly at any and everyone around him and the audience soaks up the benefit.

In fact, I’m hard-pressed to recall another performance of McQueen’s that is quite this unpleasant and cold: even the flinty-eyed Frank Bullitt had a basic degree of humanity that seems to be lacking in Reese. Obsessed with proving himself right, completely dismissive of authority, misogynistic and arguably misanthropic, Pvt. Reese is, perhaps, one of the single most unqualified heroes in the history of the biz. Look closer, however, and McQueen’s world-weary eyes almost (almost) tell a different story. His latter-half heroism isn’t so much a last-minute Hail Mary as it is the natural culmination of his inherent stubbornness: Reese is more than willing to die to prove himself right.

While McQueen is a reliable marquee draw, the rest of the Hell Is For Heroes cast is a veritable embarrassment of riches. Guardino and Parker are both excellent as the guys (grudgingly) in charge, with Parker possessing the absolutely perfect blend of authority and down-home humility. Nick Adams turns in a slightly goofy, if likable, performance as the tag-along Polish soldier, Homer, while Coburn is great as the reserved Henshaw: you know a film has a fantastic cast when an actor of Coburn’s stature is, effectively, relegated to second-tier status but he brings an easy warmth to the proceedings that are completely expected and always appreciated.

The two big surprises, however, end up coming on the lighter side of things: Bobby Darin’s conniving, perpetually scheming Pvt. Corby is a classic character and Darin plays him with complete gusto. At times approximating Lou Costello, Darin provides much of the film’s comic relief and never wears out his welcome, high praise for the type of character that normally gets under your skin, fast. The other surprise is Bob Newhart’s delightful performance as the bumbling, over-his-head Pvt. Driscoll. From his entrance (crashing into a tree with his jeep) all the way to the show-stopper where he commandeers a German phone line and proceeds to feed the enemy fake intel, Newhart is sheer perfection, his timing pitch-perfect and his hang-dog, malleable face so essential to the film’s (occasionally) deeply-set sense of humanity. Driscoll often reminded me of the similarly bumbling Radio O’Reilly, making me wonder if this might have served as inspiration for Gary Burghoff’s iconic character: the mind practically boggles!

Ultimately, Hell Is For Heroes is a continually surprising film, a feat which certainly stands as one of its greatest assets. From the opening all the way through to the purposefully ambiguous finale, which skips the expected emotional payoff and gives us something decidedly more open-ended, Siegel’s film defies conventions and arrives at an altogether more interesting destination. Less interested with easy definitions of “heroism” than he is with the reality of the situation (depending on the angle you view it from, Reese’s actions could easily fall under the umbrella of “insubordination,” “insanity” or even “manslaughter”), Siegel turns in another complex, nuanced and disturbing examination of the evil that men do, even when they do it in service of “the greater good.” In other words, just another day at the office for one of the all-time greats.

4/26/15: Man’s the Only Animal That Foreshadows

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Aaron Staton, actor-director, camping, Christopher Denham, cinema, Cody Saintgnue, dysfunctional marriage, feuding brothers, fight for survival, fighting back, film reviews, films, Home Movie, hunting humans, hunting trip, isolation, lost in the woods, masked killers, Michael Chacon, Movies, Nick Saso, Pablo Schreiber, Preservation, PTSD, survival of the fittest, survival-horror, thrillers, Wrenn Schmidt, writer-director

You know that guy at the party who says something “clever” and then spends the rest of the evening elbowing you in the ribs, saying “You get it? You get it?” until you want to throw him off the nearest roof? Well, Christopher Denhams’ Preservation (2014) is an awful lot like that guy: the film spends the first 20 minutes hammering its main theme into the ground (“Man is the only animal that kills for fun” isn’t just the film’s tagline: it’s practically its mantra) only to have the rest of the film follow in such a predictable manner as to induce feelings of deja vu. On one hand, though, you really have to hand it to Preservation: it promises one thing and then delivers it. Over and over and over again, rinse, wash, repeat.

Our trio of protagonists are Wit (Wrenn Schmidt), her husband, Mike (Aaron Staton) and Mike’s gruff brother, Sean (Pablo Schreiber, perhaps best known as Orange is the New Black’s odious “Pornstache”). The group have headed deep into the woods so that the estranged brothers can relive one of their long-treasured childhood hunting trips, dragging Wit along even though she’s a vegetarian who’s uncomfortable, to say the least, with killing animals. “I don’t think I can kill,” Wit tells Sean, to which he knowingly replies, “You’d be surprised what you can do when it’s fight or flight.” Remember all that hammering-home I mentioned earlier? Get used to it, buckaroos, cuz it ain’t going anywhere.

Faster than Sean can say “Just because you can’t see ’em doesn’t mean they’re not there” and that old chestnut “Man’s the only animal that kills for fun,” our heroes seem to wander into an exceptionally strange situation. Waking from the previous evening’s festivities, the group realizes two things right off the bat: all of their possessions, including their packs, supplies and tents, have been taken while they slept and they each have a large, black “X” drawn on their foreheads. There’s a little bit of finger-pointing and blame-gaming thrown back and forth between Mike and Sean before we get to the revelation that should, presumably, surprise no one: the group is being actively hunted by a group of masked, heavily armed psychos.

From this point, the film hits all the standard “survival-horror” tropes, culminating with the realization that Wit must become everything that she abhors in order to survive: she’s going to have to get her hands dirty and fight to kill. Who are the mysterious assailants? Why are they pursuing Wit, Mike and Sean? Will Wit be able to make a final, desperate stand or will the silent, isolated woods become her ultimate resting place? When the game is self-preservation…there are no rules.

Despite having a more than capable cast, Preservation ends up being more than a little shallow, silly and, to be honest, rather obnoxious. The script is fairly awful, full of ridiculously on-the-nose dialogue and contrived sequences: there’s no point where any of the actors feel genuine, mostly because it’s difficult to take anything they say seriously. Schreiber, in particular, is saddled with some of the clunkiest lines I’ve come across in an indie horror film in some time: anytime he talks, it feels like he’s ticking points off a script breakdown. Schmidt and Staton have zero chemistry which tends to reduce the stakes on many of their scenes together: it was rather difficult to believe that these two even knew each other, much less genuinely loved each other.

Even stripped to its core survival-horror elements, Preservation falls well short of the mark. The majority of the action/violence occurs off-camera (sorry, gorehounds) and the handful of action scenes are poorly blocked, rarely amounting to more than a flurry of chaos and motion. While the film does build up a reasonable amount of tension, at times, it never really amounts to much, probably because everything is so familiar: if you think you know how any particular scene will progress, chances are you’re right. While horror films have a long history of predictability (just think back to the veritable oceans of anonymous slasher flicks that flooded video store shelves in the ’80s), Preservation does absolutely nothing whatsoever to mess with the formula. Even the film’s big “twist” reveal is so hackneyed and clichéd that careful (or even non-comatose) viewers should be able to figure it out after the very first appearance of the villains: needless to say, it’s difficult to be shocked, surprised or amazed by anything when we always seem to be five steps ahead of the film, itself.

To be honest, I was actually surprised by how slight and silly Preservation was for one very simple reason: writer-director Denham’s previous film, Home Movie (2008), is one of the most disturbing, well-made and haunting indie horror films I’ve ever seen. His found-footage portrait of parents coming to terms with their two unbelievably evil children is one brick to the face after another, culminating in the kind of harrowing finale that can, literally, haunt dreams. Home Movie completely blew me away when I saw it years ago and I’ve been eagerly awaiting a follow-up ever since: suffice to say that Preservation couldn’t have disappointed me more if it had actually been made with just that express purpose.

Despite this disappointment, however, I haven’t quite given up on Denham (goes to show just how impressed I was by his debut). While Preservation’s script is dreadful, Home Movie’s was quite good: ditto on the scenario end of things. As such, I’m deathly curious to see which direction his third film (whenever it appears) will take. Here’s to hoping that the next wait will bear much more delectable fruit than this most recent excursion. When your film has a problem making a life-or-death Port-a-Potty battle between Pornstache and a masked assailant interesting, well…it might just be time to pave over this preservation and put up a parking lot.

4/25/15: The Fixer-Upper From Hell

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Adam Thomas Wright, Altar, Antonia Clarke, British films, British horror, children in peril, cinema, film reviews, films, ghost whisperer, ghosts, haunted house, haunted houses, hidden mosaics, home renovations, horror, horror film, horror films, horror movies, husband-wife relationship, isolated estates, isolation, Jan Richter-Friis, Jonathan Jaynes, Matthew Modine, Movies, Nick Willing, Olivia Williams, parent-child relationships, possession, Rebecca Calder, Satanic rituals, set in England, sins of the past, Stephen Chance, Steve Oram, supernatural, twist ending, UK films, writer-director

If we go by the conventions of horror films, one of the single most dangerous occupations out there is home renovation. Sure, law enforcement, fire fighting and high-rise window-washing might seem more dangerous, at least on paper, but we know the truth: anytime someone tries to fix up a creepy, old, decaying country estate, there’s a roughly 90% chance of something terrible happening. If those were Vegas odds, Sin City would have gone the way of the dodo generations ago.

Writer-director Nick Willing’s Altar (2014) is but the latest in a long line of haunted house films precipitated on the above notion: a family moves into a creepy, isolated country manor in order to renovate it, runs into long-buried secrets and ghostly presences and must survive the sinister residence’s sustained assaults upon their persons and psyches. In this case, Meg Hamilton (Olivia Williams) is the renovator who, along with her artist husband Alec (Matthew Modine) and children, Penny (Antonia Clarke) and Harper (Adam Thomas Wright), move into the creepy abode. Faster than you can say “Jack and Wendy Torrance,” the family are dealing with ghostly manifestations, Alec’s obsession with suddenly crafting a life-like clay figure and Meg’s discovery of a strange, vaguely pagan floor mosaic. If you guessed that “possession” factors into the proceedings, you’d be right but Willing has a few tricks up his sleeve that help take Altar in a slightly different (even if barely so) direction from the rest of the herd.

As far as atmosphere and location go, Altar is strictly top-notch: there’s a genuine sense of foreboding that lingers over every scene, thanks in large part to the exceptionally creepy location. Quite simply, Radcliffe House is the kind of evil, Gothic edifice that can make or break a haunted house film: in this case, it goes an awful long way in stocking up good will for the (occasionally) rough going. Willing goes light on the obvious jump scares, allowing for the whole thing to feel much more organic and old-fashioned than similar films (obnoxiously loud musical stingers are, thankfully, few and far between) and cinematographer Jan Richter-Friis’ camera-work helps to subtly play up the creep-factor.

The acting is uniformly good, which is another important factor in this kind of film: when a movie relies on mood and atmosphere, nothing spoils the party quite as effectively as over-the-top, amateurish or stilted acting. Williams is excellent as the mother/renovator: her extremely expressive face always seems to be reflecting some new measure of fresh horror, amping the psychological horror to an almost unbearable level. Modine, who’s had an almost ridiculously varied career over the past 30+ years, doesn’t fare quite as well as Williams does, mostly because his character is saddled with a few more eye-rolling traits than hers is. That being said, Modine and Williams have good chemistry together: until things go completely off the rails, it’s easy to imagine these two as a (once) loving couple, which is certainly more than you can say for many horror film duos. As the beleaguered children, Clarke and Wright are quite good, although they don’t get quite as much to do as their parents: at the very least, neither one wears out their welcome which, again, is more than you can say for many young actors in horror productions.

If anything really lets the air out of Altar’s sails, it’s definitely the hum-drum, overly clichéd ending: while the plot has plenty of holes (especially in the later going), the film manages to glide over most of them pretty effortlessly until it crashes headfirst into the chasm that is the film’s final “revelation.” While I wouldn’t dream of ruining the ending (perhaps because I understand it so imperfectly), suffice to say that faithful genre devotees will have seen this exact same thing done many, many times in the past…and done much better and much clearer, might I add. It’s a pity, really, since the film has some fairly intriguing ideas about transmogrification that are completely lost in the muddle. However unique the film begins, it ends in territory that is, to be kind, well-worn.

Ultimately, Altar is a good, if not great, entry in the crowded “family in peril” subgenre of horror films. When the atmosphere and mood are allowed to develop at their own measured, glacial pace, Willing’s film stands tall above the pretenders, buoyed by its own sense of stately grandeur. When the film becomes overly familiar and middle-of-the-road, however, it sinks right back into the teeming masses, indistinguishable from any one of two dozen other similar films.

4/24/15: A Boy, A Girl, A Jungle, A Gem

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'80s adventure films, 1980s films, action-adventure, action-comedies, adventures, Alan Silvestri, auteur theory, Back to the Future, blockbusters, cinema, damsel-in-distress, Danny Devito, Dean Cundey, Diane Thomas, Film auteurs, film franchise, film reviews, films, Forrest Gump, jungles, Kathleen Turner, kidnapping, Manuel Ojeda, Mary Ellen Trainor, Michael Douglas, Movies, odd couple, priceless jewels, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ransom, Robert Zemeckis, romance writer, romances, Romancing the Stone, stolen treasure, The African Queen, The Jewel of the Nile, treasure map, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Zack Norman

What, exactly, would you get if you were able to somehow crossbreed John Huston’s indelible The African Queen (1951) with Spielucas’ (patent pending) Raiders of the Lost Art (1981)? If you performed this bit of alchemy nowadays, I’m guessing that you’d probably end up with something that bore a pretty close resemblance to Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) or its ilk. If you did this back in the ’80s, however, it’s pretty much a given that you’d come up with Robert Zemeckis’ Romancing the Stone (1984). Equal parts odd-couple romance and globetrotting adventure yarn, Romancing the Stone is the box-office blockbuster that, effectively, kicked off Zemeckis’ career, directly leading to some little indie film about race cars called Back to the Future (1985). As they say: a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step…for Zemeckis (Used Cars (1980) notwithstanding), that journey began right here.

Best-selling romance writer, Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner, in only her third full-length film), may write about passionate, sexy, self-assured and ass-kicking heroines but life definitely doesn’t seem to be imitating art: in reality, Joan is meek, nerdy, awkward and chronically single, spending her days with her cat (Romeo, natch) while she waits for the flesh-and-blood version of her hunky leading man, Jesse, to swirl into her life and spirit her away to fun, adventure and love.

Adventure (albeit of the less than desired kind) makes its way into Joan’s life after she receives word that her sister, Elaine (Mary Ellen Trainor), has been kidnapped by miscreants (Zach Norman and Danny DeVito) in Columbia. The kidnappers demand that Joan head to South America and bring the treasure map that Elaine mailed to her, a map which purports to show the location of a fabled, priceless jewel. When Joan gets to Columbia, she immediately finds herself pursued by the sinister, murderous Zolo (Manuel Ojeda), a corrupt military leader who will stop at nothing to acquire the jewel.

Just as things look grim, Joan is saved by mysterious, handsome and wise-cracking Jack Colton (Michael Douglas), an American ex-pat adventurer who could, quite literally, be the very personification of Joan’s beloved “Jesse.” Jack spirits Joan away and she enlists his aid in rescuing her captive sister. As the kidnappers decide to take matters into their hands and pursue Jack and Joan, our heroes must also out-maneuver Zolo and his men, who are never far behind. Will Joan finally find her knight-in-shining-armor? Will Jack be able to put aside his more avaricious impulses and inherent dislike of Joan’s needy, city-slicker ways long enough to fall in love with her? Will our plucky heroes succeed in finding their massive emerald or will the jungle serve as their final resting place?

In many ways, Romancing the Stone is a prototypical ’80s adventure film: bright, silly, full of decidedly antiquated notions on gender politics (Joan is never much more than a hapless damsel-in-distress and Jack is often so macho as to become completely cartoonish), lots of engaging setpieces (Joan and Jack’s tumble down the river rapids is an easy highlight, as is the evocative bit where they stumble upon the treasure, complete with a skeleton in a crashed plane) and as little common sense as necessary to propel the storyline to its designated conclusion.

What really helps to vault Romancing the Stone above the competition (aside from the involvement of adventure auteur Zemeckis) is the stellar performances and chemistry of the three principals. Romancing the Stone would be Douglas’ first major foray into blockbuster entertainment (although some might argue that The China Syndrome (1979) really got the ball rolling for him after the success of The Streets of San Francisco (1972-1976)) and the role fits him like a glove. By turns smarmy, sly, genuine, put-upon and roguish, Douglas’ Jack Colton is the dictionary definition of a kickass “antihero” and definitely deserves his place in the action flick roll books. For her part, Turner is outstanding: never less than imminently likable and empathetic, Joan Wilder is a real hoot and Turner has a blast bringing her to cinematic life. Douglas and Turner have tremendous chemistry throughout, recalling nothing so less as Bogie and Hepburn’s performances in the aforementioned African Queen: any of their scenes together are smooth sailing but the parts where they lock horns, like stubborn rams, are pretty unforgettable.

On the villain side, DeVito (as usual) is an absolute scene-stealer: the bit where he wrestles with the extremely tall lady is a complete riot and his interactions with the dastardly Zolo hint at the sarcasm-etched wrecking ball that the future Frank Reynolds would become. Here, we get DeVito just as he was transitioning from the small-screen madness of Taxi (1978-1983) into his unforgettable big screen career. While there’s way too little of DeVito in Romancing the Stone, the producers rectified this by bringing DeVito, Douglas and Turner back for a sequel, The Jewel of the Nile (1985), that featured quite a bit more screen-time for good ol’ Ralph. Years later, the principals would once again reunite when DeVito directed Douglas and Turner in the absolutely essential The War of the Roses (1989), a re-teaming which managed to frame the earlier relationships in an entirely different light.

Silly, cute and lots of fun, Romancing the Stone is the kind of breezy entertainment that’s perfect for lazy weekend viewing: while it’s far from amazing (or even particularly original), Zemeckis’ romantic adventure is a perfect example of what made ’80s films so great. For younger generations, the film stands as a perfect example of a simpler, more innocent time, a time when comic book entertainment was still pulpy, goofy fun. In an era where heroes spend an awful lot of time frowning, Romancing the Stone reminds us that this wasn’t always the case: as far as I’m concerned, our modern era could use a little more Jack and Joan. After all: smiling is pretty good exercise, too.