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11/3/15: He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother

08 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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Adam Chernick, adopted siblings, brothers, Charles Manson, cinema, comedies, dark comedies, Davie-Blue, dramas, estranged family, estranged siblings, feature-film debut, feuding brothers, film reviews, films, first-time director, independent films, indie comedies, J. Davis, Jay Duplass, Leonora Pitts, Linas Phillips, Manson Family Vacation, Movies, road trips, Sean McElwee, Tobin Bell, writer-director-producer

manson-family-vacation-poster

What does it actually mean to be someone’s “brother”? Is it a purely genealogical notion, a biological distinction marked by nothing more than one’s parentage: the male offspring of your mother and father is your brother, nothing more or less? Is it a societal notion connected to a sense of deep kindred and mutual reliance: the soldiers that you live, train and die with are your “brothers,” regardless of whether you’re blood-related or not? Does biology always guarantee kinship, at some level, or do you have to actively work to achieve that kind of relationship?

What about adopted siblings? Society tells you that your adopted brother is just as much kin as a blood relation, a bond which is doubtlessly reinforced by each and every family that welcomes adopted children into their homes. But is he? Can adopted siblings ever develop the deep-seated bonds of blood relations? Can someone ever truly and unconditionally embrace their adopted sibling, take them into their heart and call them “brother” with the complete and utter conviction of one that they actually share genetic material with? At the end of the day, what does it really mean to call someone “brother”?

First-time writer/director J. Davis’ Manson Family Vacation (2015) takes a stab at this question via two brothers: straight-laced family man/contract lawyer, Nick (Jay Duplass) and his restless, nomadic, uber-hippy, adopted brother, Conrad (Linas Phillips). After Conrad suddenly pops back up in Nick’s life, while en route to a new job in Death Valley, the two brothers get a chance to reconnect and work on their often contentious relationship. At his wife’s urging, Nick swallows his own misgivings and attempts to reconnect with his estranged sibling.

When Conrad’s obsession with Charles Manson and his cult leads to the brothers touring various “murder houses,” however, Nick finds it harder than ever to see eye-to-eye with his “weirdo” brother, especially since he’s now dealing with antisocial behavior from his own teen son, Max (Adam Chernick), and is worried that Conrad is going to provide the worst sort of role model possible. When he comes in to find Conrad gleefully showing Max his favorite grisly crime scene photos from Helter Skelter, it kinda seems like he may have a point.

As the brothers check off “must-sees” on Conrad’s list, though, they find themselves settling into an uneasy balancing act that might, given time, actually blossom into something approaching “love,” if not quite “respect.” Nothing is ever quite as it seems, however, and a secret regarding Conrad’s real parents threatens to tear apart the brothers’ tentative relationship before it’s had a chance to fully heal. Will Nick and Conrad be able to put aside their differences and embrace one another or is it finally time for them to cut ties and burn all their old bridges to the ground?

Despite a gloriously goofy presence and some delightfully comic setpieces (the scene where Nick and Conrad finagle their way into the old Labianca house, under very false pretenses, is a minor comic masterpiece, for one), there’s a big, dramatic heart that beats at the center of Manson Family Vacation and some genuine emotional resonance to the scenario. This is a film that could have easily devolved into pointless whimsy and sub-Andersonian dramatics but manages to effortlessly balance the lighter and darker aspects with a particularly deft hand.

While writer/director Davis deserves no end of credit here (the script, for one, is exceptional), especially considering his first time status, Manson Family Vacation is an acting showcase, first and foremost: the film wouldn’t have nearly the impact without the combined power of Duplass and Phillips’ extraordinary performances. Watching Nick and Conrad feint around each other, coming cautiously closer and sniffing around before bolting back to the safety of their respective hard-set world views, is a pure and unmitigated pleasure, perhaps the greatest since Matthau and Lemmon made such a memorable odd couple on the silver screen.

In other hands, either character could have become a one-dimensional cliche: hell, “uptight, married lawyer in need of cutting loose” and “hippy burnout with dreams of making an impact” are practically commedia dell’arte stand-bys in the modern cinematic world. Duplass and Phillips don’t stop with the short description, however, imbuing their performances with enough nuance and shading to make them seem like real people, not production notes in the margin of a film pitch.

There’s an authenticity to their interactions that’s not only refreshing but infinitely more interesting than the usual cookie-cutter treatment of the same: while the relationship (and film) hit plenty of the expected beats, it does so organically rather than as carefully delineated points on a plot breakdown. When Nick rips the phone from Conrad’s hand during his welcome party with “the Family” and ruins his “reunion” with his father, the combined sense of jealously, pain, anger and the terrible need to lash out against someone, anyone, bursts out of the screen like heat from a blast furnace. Ditto the incredible, subtle moment where Conrad finally gets to witness his tireless devotion to Charles Manson from the inside and doesn’t seem to like it one little bit. They’re the kinds of scenes that would be standouts in any film but, here, they have plenty of good company.

Ultimately, what J. Davis and his exceptional cast (including the single most restrained performance by Tobin Bell since his delightful surprise appearance in the U.S. version of Wilfred) have done is created a cinematic Trojan horse: Manson Family Vacation’s goofy, lighthearted and slightly silly exterior hides a surprisingly powerful, deep and thought-provoking interior. While the comedic material is constantly fun and frequently laugh-out-loud funny (Conrad’s description of his travel memoir as “On the Road: Part 2” is a real gem), the dramatic material has real bite to it.

As Nick and Conrad lay their relationship out bare, rehash childhood wrongs and debate what it actually means to be someone’s “brother,” as Conrad comes closer to the father that he never knew and as Nick finally realizes the responsibility that he bears regarding his relationship with his own son, Manson Family Vacation manages to do something quite difficult and equally wonderful: it makes you absentmindedly wipe away the tear that’s traveled down your cheek, even as you guffaw at the next ridiculous situation. J. Davis’ Manson Family Vacation has real heart and I’ll take that any old day of the week.

1/25/15: The Man With Nothing Has Nothing to Lose

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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Animal Kingdom, anti-hero, Antony Partos, Australia, Australian films, brothers, car chases, cat-and-mouse chase, cinema, David Field, David Michôd, dramas, dysfunctional family, film reviews, films, foreign films, Gillian Jones, Guy Pearce, Jamie Fallon, Joel Edgerton, Keri Hilson, Mad Max, Movies, Natasha Braier, post-Apocalyptic, road trip, Robert Pattinson, Scoot McNairy, set in Australia, stolen car, Tawanda Manyimo, The Rover, The Way of the Gun, writer-director-producer

The-Rover-poster

Midway through David Michôd’s post-apocalyptic The Rover (2014), Rey (Robert Pattinson), a possibly mentally disabled young man, relates a rambling, seemingly pointless story to Eric (Guy Pearce), his captor: as Rey yammers on and on, we watch as frustration and boredom wage war across Eric’s sun-bleached, weathered face, his quick-set lips constantly suppressing some sort of cranky comeback. After Rey finishes his story, Eric regards him with something approaching contempt and snaps, “Why’d you tell me that?” The young man shrugs and nonchalantly states: “It was interesting and I remembered it…not everything has to be about something.”

In a way, that’s as good a micro-philosophy for Michôd’s film as any: indeed, if one boiled The Rover down to its essential parts, one would get a narrative that consists entirely of a man pursuing another group of men in order to retrieve his stolen car. This is overly reductive, of course, since there’s a bit more going on here than that (The Rover is definitely about “something”) but Australian writer-director Michôd, who first hit the public eye with his brutal Animal Kingdom (2010), is a master of economy and the whole thing buzzes along with the extreme focus of the best single-minded revenge flicks. Think of this as a moodier Mad Max (1979) minus the tricked-out cars, intense action setpieces and over-the-top characters and you’re definitely in the right vicinity.

We begin in Australia, ten years after some sort of ill-defined “collapse” has led to some pretty miserable conditions: everything seems sun-baked and cracked, food and water are now luxury items and every single person packs as much heat as they can possibly carry. Into this heat-mirage of failure steps Eric, as beaten-down and weathered as the landscape around him. While stopping at what appears to be a nearly empty “water saloon,” Eric kicks back for a moment of peace and quiet, during which absolute disaster strikes: his one and only possession, his beat-up car, is stolen by a trio of thieves on the lam, Caleb (Tawanda Manyimo), Archie (David Field) and Henry (Scoot McNairy). The trio have just crashed their truck and jack Eric’s before he can stop them.

Jumping into their abandoned vehicle, Eric gives chase, on the thieves’ tail like flies on cow-shit. After a suitably thrilling cat-and-mouse chase, Eric gets out to confront them, at which point he’s cold-cocked and left to wake up in the dirt. As he continues his pursuit, Eric runs into Rey, Henry’s gut-shot brother. Seems that Rey was injured in whatever heist the group was involved in and the others just left him there, rather than dragging his soon-to-be carcass around. Since Rey claims to know where the group is headed, Eric takes him along, with the stipulation that he’ll slit his throat if Henry and the others aren’t where Rey says they’ll be. From that point on, Eric and Rey travel in uneasy companionship, their relationship never as simple as “captor and captive” or “traveling companions,” but never quite as cold-blooded as Eric’s relentless pursuit of his car. As the duo get closer and closer to their destination, Rey will have to make some awfully difficult decisions about family, loyalty and doing the right thing, even as Eric continues to shave his own humanity down to the bone, turning himself into a killer as remorseless and barren as the landscape around him.

For the most part, The Rover is well-made, heartfelt and consistently interesting, albeit  a tad confusing, from time to time. The script, based on an idea that Michôd developed with actor Joel Edgerton, is lean and mean, wasting as little time as possible on anything that doesn’t propel the story (and the characters) forward. Due to this economy, we don’t get much in the way of character development whatsoever (the only backstory we receive regarding the protagonist is one extremely confusing tidbit related after he’s been captured by the military and the film’s twist ending), which tends to give the various people we meet a rather “half-formed” nature.

In particular, the scenes involving Grandma (Gillian Jones) and the strange, old man at the film’s conclusion are enigmatic precisely because they’re sort of dumped on us with no explanation as to their significance. The bit involving the old man is particularly frustrating, since it seems to involve a fundamental emotional beat with Eric that never makes much sense: he seems to have an emotional reaction to someone he’s never met, for no perceptible reason, when he’s been largely emotionless before that. There’s also zero development with the trio of thieves, although McNairy and Pattinson do get a nicely emotional bit during the climax: Caleb and Archie are never anything more than generic types, however, giving their ultimate fates next to no real importance. While many films are filled with faceless villains, this seems an odd tact to take for a film that only features a small handful of actors: a little more depth would have opened up the film immensely.

From a production-standpoint, The Rover looks and sounds great: Natasha Braier’s cinematography perfectly captures the sun-bleached desolation of the uncompromising landscape and the occasional nods to an “artier” style (the slo-mo car flying by the window as Eric sits at the bar, drinking water and listening to an Asian pop song on the radio, for example) prevent the film from ever looking too “utilitarian.” The moody score, by Antony Partos, is particularly good: there’s one supremely cool driving sequence where the score approximates the sparse keyboard squelches of No-Wave legends Suicide and I, for one, could not stop grinning. I also got a kick out of the way Keri Hilson’s “Pretty Girl Rock” (you know, the “Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful,” song) scores a key setpiece: while the film is never less than dour, it’s pretty obvious that a subtle (very, very subtle) stream of dark humor runs through everything.

Performance-wise, I was quite taken by both Pearce and Pattinson: Pattinson, in particular, turns Rey into the kind of twitchy, fidgety weirdo that seems a million miles from his usual roles and I agreed with almost all of his acting choices, although his odd, slightly slurred accent is often more than a little hard to parse. Pearce, for his part, can pretty much do these kinds of roles in his sleep and his world-weary, defeated but determined take on Eric is sturdy and feels authentic. One of the most interesting aspects regarding the character of Eric is just how poorly he fits the role of “hero”: hell, even “anti-hero” seems a bit of a stretch, at times. For much of the film, Eric is violent, uncompromising and kills at the drop of a hat, often with as little provocation as possible. The final twist makes his character more sympathetic (barely) but the road leading there is paved with plenty of “questionable” activities, as it were. It’s to Pearce’s great credit that we’re always on Eric’s side, even if it’s not always easy (or possible) to agree with his actions.

Ultimately, I enjoyed, but didn’t love, The Rover. On the plus side, the film stakes out a claim as a reasonable neo-Western, ala The Way of the Gun (2000) and that will always receive my stamp of approval. Michôd’s film looks and sounds great, slotting in nicely with similar Australian fare, such as the aforementioned Mad Max, as well as “arty” post-apocalyptic films like Bellflower (2011). There are also plenty of good performances here, including an above-average turn by Robert Pattinson in a rather non-typical role. On the downside, the film feels a little long, especially for such a streamlined narrative, and I never felt emotionally engaged with it until the final revelation, which does end up packing a bit of a punch. That being said, fans of low-key post-apocalyptic tales should find plenty to approve of, even if the final result is decidedly less than a game-changer.

12/24/14: To Grandmother’s House We Go!

30 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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Amanda Walsh, based on a short story, brothers, Byron Shah, Chandler Riggs, children in peril, Chris Browning, cinema, creepy buildings, demons, Dylan McDermott, dysfunctional family, Eddie Jones, farmhouse, feuding brothers, film adaptations, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Frances O'Connor, Gramma, grandmothers, Hastur, horror, isolated estates, Joel Courtney, literary adaptation, Mark Duplass, Matt Greenberg, Mercy, Movies, Peter Cornwell, possession, Reza Safinia, Shirley Knight, single mother, Stephen King, suicide, violence against children, voice-over narration, weeping book

Mercy_KeyArt

When it comes to filmed adaptations of literary works, the question always comes around to “How close do you stay to the original work?” As a visual medium, film is a much different ballgame than written works and not every book or short story is equally suited to adaptation. In particular, adapting short stories can present certain challenges, especially when filmmakers attempt to make full-length productions out of decidedly shorter works: when you only have 20-30 pages of the original material to work with, stretching the proceedings to 80 or 90 minutes seems to make about as much sense as a silent-film version of a Mamet play.

This, of course, becomes the first (and, perhaps, most significant) problem with Peter Cornwell’s recent adaptation of the Stephen King short story “Gramma,” here renamed Mercy (2014) in honor of the titular character. While Cornwell’s version of the story gets quite a bit right and makes great use of the creepy, isolated farmhouse locale, it also bears little resemblance to the original, save for the film’s final 20 minutes. By attempting to expand King’s original short to roughly three times its size, Cornwell and screenwriter Matt Greenberg manage to add lots of stuff and nonsense, especially concerning “gramma’s” backstory, but very little in the way of real value. In the process, the filmmakers manage to strip much of the quiet menace from King’s story, a creepy little shocker with a simple premise (little kid stuck by himself with his creepy, dead grandmother), turning it into something both more complex and, unfortunately, far less interesting.

After her aging mother, Mercy (Shirley Knight), has a stroke, single mother Rebecca (Francis O’Connor) and her two young sons, George (Chandler Riggs) and Buddy (Joel Courtney), move into her dilapidated farmhouse, in order to take care of her. Rebecca’s loutish brother, Lanning (Mark Duplass), had been taking care of their mother but he’s not quite reliable (he may also be a little crazy, come to think of it) and doesn’t really seem to care whether Mercy lives or dies. Also on the scene are Jim (Dylan McDermott) and his wife, Charlotte (Amanda Walsh), an artist who paints eerie pictures of local “haints” like the death wolf. Seems that Jim and Rebecca used to be an item, back in the day, and there appear to be a few unrequited feelings flying around on both their behalves: hell, even the kids make constant comments about “the one who got away” and keep talking about how they wish dear ol’ mom had married Jim, when she had the chance.

Via flashbacks, we’ve already had a little inkling of Mercy’s past, including her tireless efforts to conceive (she has one miscarriage after the other, at first), as well as the shocking suicide of her husband (by axe to the face which, if you think about it, is pretty much one of the most hardcore way to off yourself, ever). After her stroke, Mercy has been mostly silent, although her eyes seem ever watchful. When George gets a mysterious note that mentions “Hastur,” however, he sets off a rather dreadful chain of events when he speaks the name to his ailing grandmother. In no time, Mercy seems sharper, more alert and, needless to say, more than a little sinister (she’s given to dropping more big winks than the wolf in a Merrie Melodies short). As bodies begin to pile up around them, George is faced with the frightening notion that his beloved gramma may be both more and less than completely human: with the help of his brother and a local priest (Eddie Jones), George must get to the bottom of Mercy’s past, before he becomes her next victim.

Right from the jump, Mercy looks and sounds great: Byron Shah’s evocative cinematography really shows off the landscape and creepy farmhouse to great effect and the droning musical score, courtesy of Reza Safinia, adds immeasurable tension to the proceedings. The acting is generally pretty good, with industry vet Shirley Knight chewing a bit less scenery than she’s been known to and familiar faces like Dylan McDermott and Mark Duplass giving a little oomph to the film. Chandler Riggs isn’t bad as George, although I found Joel Courtney’s performance as his brother to be slightly off. The film moves at a decent clip and, at slightly under 80 minutes, doesn’t really wear its welcome out until the final reel.

The biggest problem, as previously mentioned, is how overstuffed Mercy’s narrative is compared to the original source material. While the need to expand on the evil gramma’s backstory makes sense, the new material ends up being rather confusing and unnecessarily jumbled: by the time we get to the climax, we’ve even been introduced to some sort of shaggy Sasquatch-demon-thing that pops up out of nowhere, sends the narrative in a new direction and disappears just as quickly. Unlike the sinister bit of foreshadowing that ends the original story (although these kind of “Or are they actually evil?” endings have been driven into the ground, as of late), the conclusion to Cornwell’s film makes little sense: the film ends happily but certain unresolved issues seem to make this an impossibility, rendering the final image as something perilously close to silly.

Despite all of the frustratingly unnecessary added backstory, I kind of liked Mercy: for much of the film, the atmosphere and tension is as thick as a New England fog and there are some genuinely interesting ideas floating around (the concept of the “weeping book” is pretty great, to be honest). While the acting can, occasionally, dip into the highly unrealistic, most of the time, Mercy is filled with some nice, dependable performances, none of which really stick out like a sore thumb. Perhaps my overall dissatisfaction with the film has more to do with my status as an avowed Stephen King fan than any more technical reason: in any other situation, Mercy would be an enjoyable,  decent-enough B-horror film. As a King adaptation, however, the film comes up just a little bit short.

10/25/14 (Part One): Where’s Howie When You Need Him?

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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31 Days of Halloween, brothers, Bryan Rasmussen, childhood fears, childhood trauma, cinema, creature feature, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Eric Stolze, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, Gattlin Griffith, Jonny Weston, Kelcie Stranahan, kids in peril, Little Monsters, monster movies, monsters under the bed, Movies, Musetta Vander, nightmares, Peter Holden, Sam Kindseth, Silent Night, Steven C. Miller, The Gate, Tyler Steelman, Under the Bed

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If there’s one fear that’s pretty universal among kids, I’d be more than willing to wager that it’s the old “monster under the bed.” For generations of youngsters, bedtime consists of a series of arcane processes – not touching the floor, staying under the covers, keeping the light on – solely designed to prevent one from becoming a late-night snack. As children grow older and get their first experiences with the “real” world, however, the omnipresent threat of monsters under the bed diminishes, replaced by the all-too real knowledge that plenty of flesh-and-blood monsters are around to worry about without stressing over the imaginary ones. For a time, however, monsters under the bed are as real as it gets for kids (just watch the mortifying Little Monsters (1989) for evidence of that) and, undoubtedly, perfect fodder for a horror film.

This, of course, leads us to director Steven C. Miller’s Under the Bed (2012), the follow-up to his excellent remake of the Santa-themed slasher Silent Night (2012). Working from a script by Eric Stolze (who also wrote the upcoming werewolf flick Late Phases (2014)), Miller turns in a glossy, rather bombastic, effort that has a similar visual style to films like Insidious (2010) and The Conjuring (2013), yet ends up being a much more violent, graphic affair. If anything, Under the Bed’s rather formidable violence is one of the film’s big issues, as it sets up a decidedly schizophrenic tone: at times, the film feels like it’s pitched at young adults, yet features a scene where someone’s head is slowly ripped into several pieces. Suffice to say, Mr. Rogers would not approve.

Under the Bed kicks off as Neal (Jonny Weston) returns home for the first time in years, coming back to his younger brother, Paulie (Gattlin Griffith) and father, Terry (Peter Holden, looking for all the world like a surly Zach Galifianakis). It would appear that Neal has spent time in some sort of care facility, apparently due to the traumatic death of his mother in a house-fire. The relationship between Terry and Neal seems to strained, indicating that the father may hold his son more accountable for his mother’s death than he lets on. When Neal returns, however, he seems to be more on edge than ever: he’s afraid that the evil he fled years ago is still there…and he would be absolutely correct.

Turns out that Neal had a run-in with an actual monster years ago, a beast which now appears to be stalking his little brother. Terry won’t listen to this foolishness, however: he’s convinced that Neal had a nervous breakdown and is now back to “infect” his other son with the same foolishness. Only Neal and Paulie know the truth, however: something hungry, evil and vicious lives under the bed in Paulie’s room. As Neal and Paulie inch ever closer to confronting this source of ultimate evil, this monster that was also responsible for their mother’s death, they find a kindred spirit (of sorts) in neighbor Cara (Kelcie Stranahan), whose little brothers think Neal and Paulie are just about the creepiest things in the neighborhood. Aid also comes from an unlikely source when the boys’ new step-mom, Angela (Musetta Vander), comes to believe them and throws her support into the ring. Will all of this be enough to destroy childhood fears made flesh or will the brothers and their allies become just more midnight snacks for the creature?

For the most part, Under the Bed is a perfectly decent, middle-of-the-road “kids versus monsters” story, albeit one told with the utter seriousness of a biblical epic. Truth be told, the bombastic, over-the-top tone of the film, reinforced by everything from the overly shouty performances (Jonny Weston, in particular, can effortlessly play to the back rafters) to the brash, loud musical score, tends to wear one down after a while: for the life of me, I found myself wishing that everyone, monster included, which just chill out and have a quiet sit-down by the time the film was rushing towards its manic climax. There’s just too much of everything here: too much shouting, too many loud musical stingers, too much “acting” when something more subtle would suffice. Under the Bed isn’t a bad film, by any stretch, but it is an extremely tedious one, which might actually be a worse sin.

Which, ultimately, is a bit of a bummer, since there’s plenty to like here. The overall storyline, about the demonic presence under the bed, is a solid one, if hammered home with way too heavy a hand and the creature/gore effects are expertly executed. In particular, the scenes where Neal goes into the “under the bed world” to save Paulie are pretty fabulous: I really wish we got to spend more time in that apocalyptic world, with ash floating through the air like snow, but the most we get are a couple fast, rather confusingly edited bits that are the equivalent of a famous actor making a quick cameo. I was also dutifully impressed by the filmmakers’ ability to kill off kids and main characters at the drop of a hat: usually, both group tend to be fairly sacred cows in films like this but there’s the refreshing notion that no one is safe, which tends to up the stakes considerably.

If anything, Under the Bed reminds me of a combination of the disappointing, Guillermo del Toro produced Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010) and the minor ’80s classic, The Gate (1987), both of which focused on demonic beasties harassing spunky kids. The film borrows its slick visual sense and tone from the former, while it gets some of its violence and story structure from the latter. This also means, of course, that the film seems to have precious little identity of its own, a matter further complicated by the aforementioned extreme violence: often times, the film is completely appropriate to younger audiences, similar to The Gate. At times, however, the violence zooms straight into Grand Guignol territory (that head-ripping bit is a real corker and this comes from a guy who’s pretty much the definition of jaded.

Ultimately, Under the Bed isn’t a bad film but it’s much less than what it could have been, especially when one considers just how great Silent Night was: the “backward” progression seems a bit worrisome, especially for a director with a relatively small body of work. With a lot more restraint and a clearer goal, Under the Bed might have been a minor classic, just like The Gate. As it stands, however, the film should appeal to monster lovers and curious horror-philes but probably won’t have much of a bigger resonance past that. Which, again, is a shame, since it came so close to being a contender.

 

8/13/14: From the Frying Pan to the Inferno

04 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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blue-collar life, brothers, Casey Affleck, Christian Bale, cinema, co-writers, Crazy Heart, drama, Film, film reviews, Forest Whitaker, Harlan DeGroat, illegal fighting, illegal gambling, Jr., Movies, Out of the Furnace, revenge, Rodney Baze, Russell Baze, Sam Shepard, Scott Cooper, small town life, Willem Dafoe, Woody Harrelson, writer-director, Zoe Saldana

out-of-the-furnace-poster-quad

Within moments of meeting Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson) at a drive-in theater, we watch him force a frankfurter down his date’s throat before slamming her head into the dashboard of his muscle car, after which he beats a wannabe Good Samaritan into a bloody pulp before physically throwing his battered date out of the car, menacing the rest of the gawking movie patrons and burning rubber all the way to the horizon. Without a shadow of a doubt, Harlan is one sonuvabitch, violence made flesh, like a rampaging, backwoods god of war.

On the other side of the rainbow from Harlan, we have Russell Baze (Christian Bale), a hard-working, salt-of-the-earth steel worker (just like his dear ol’ da) with a loving girlfriend, strong ties to the community and visions of starting a family in the near future. Russ is the kind of guy that everyone in town knows and likes, the kind of fella that’ll jump-start your car or lend you $20 (if he has it) without being asked. His tattoos hint at time spent in lockup but his attitude is all good intentions and honest attempts to walk the straight and narrow.

Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes lies Rodney Baze, Jr. (Casey Affleck), Russ’s younger brother. Rodney is an ex-Iraq War vet, full of pain, rage and the desire to do anything in life but waste away the remainder of his days in the steel mill, like his “weak” brother and dying father. He firmly believes that he did all the work he’ll ever need to do while in the Armed Forces: from this point on, the U. S. of A. owes him a living, not the other way around. To that end, he makes his money by participating in illegal bare-knuckle fights, most of which he throws, leading him to spend most of his days beat to absolute shit. When he’s not getting beat up for chump change, Rodney is blowing what little money he has at scuzzy off-track betting places, always chasing that elusive “big break,” the kind that routinely seems to pass by people like him and Russ.

The nexus where these three desperate individuals meet forms the crux of Scott Cooper’s powerful Out of the Furnace (2013), a bracing examination of the destructive power of vengeance and the haphazard way in which terrible things sometimes happen to very good people. Despite some minor missteps and a mystifying coda that raises more questions than it answers, Cooper’s film is a slow-burning powerhouse anchored by a dependably sturdy performance from Bale, a thoroughly authentic turn from Affleck and one of the scariest on-screen villains since Max Cady menaced the ever-loving shit out of Sam Bowden.

More than anything, Out of the Furnace is a tragedy, managing to fit almost every definition of the term: the film is relentlessly sad, no doubt, but it’s really about the ultimate downfall of an otherwise good (if flawed) individual. We pretty much like Bale’s Russ from the first time we see him: he’s a hard-working, no-nonsense, blue-collar guy who helps take care of his dying father, tries his damnedest to keep his squirrely brother out of trouble and seems to have a great relationship with his girlfriend, Lena (Zoe Saldana). Although he’s no fabulously wealthy world-changer, Russ seems to have it all. Since this is a tragedy, of course, that means that he’s also going to lose it all.

Russ’ fatal flaw, as it is, ends up being the responsibility he feels for younger brother Rodney. After he finds out that Rodney owes $1500 to small-time gangster John Petty (Willem Defoe), Rodney’s partner in the illegal fighting racket, Russ sets out to make things right with Petty. Stopping by to drop off part of the money, Russ happens to run into Harlan and his associate, who’ve stopped by to menace Petty over the profits from another fight. Passing each other in the doorway, Harlan gives Russ such a stink-eye that he’s prompted to ask if Harlan “has a problem with him.” “I got a problem with everybody,” Harlan snarls back, setting the stage for future conflicts and heartache.

After sharing a few drinks with the jovial Petty, Russ takes off and collides, literally, with his destiny in the form of a broken-down car on an ill-lit country road: Russ slams into the car, which appears to contain a child and, despite doing all he can at the scene, his fate is sealed. When we next see Russ, he’s in prison, forsaken by all of his friends and family save for Rodney, who still comes to visit regularly. Lena, for her part, has moved on to someone else and Russ’ father has passed away, leaving Rodney as his only connection to the old life he once had.

Once he gets out, Russ sees how much everything has really changed. Rodney is now involved with John Petty more than ever, Harlan and his thugs hold the entire county under their brutal sway and Lena is dating Police Chief Wesley Barnes (Forest Whitaker): the couple are expecting their first child and, in a particularly raw scene, Russ congratulates Lena as the former lovers sob and hold each other. Life for Russ is harder than ever but he’s still committed to making the best of things.

A life of leisure, alas, is just not in the cards for these damaged individuals. After Rodney pressures Petty to get him involved with Harlan’s underground fights (brutal affairs that make back-alley grudge-matches look like WWE events), the pair realizes that they are very small fish in a pond stuffed to bursting with ravenous sharks. When Petty is found dead and Rodney disappears, Russ is forced to try to put together all of the pieces. When Chief Barnes seems more interested in keeping Rodney away from Lena than he does in finding Rodney, Russ decides to take matters into his own hands and conduct his own investigation. Hitting the streets with his uncle, Red (Sam Shepard), Russ traces Rodney’s movements right back to Harlan and his backwoods “mafia.” When the law is unable to help, however, Russ must turn his back on “polite” society and give in to the primal rage that drives a monster like Harlan: in order to confront ultimate evil, Russ must, in a way, become that evil. Since this is a tragedy, suffice to say that no one will emerge from this unscathed.

For my money, Out of the Furnace is one of the most “actorly” films I’ve seen in some time: while the occasional action moments hold plenty of impact and the film looks and sounds great, the performances are so rock-solid that they definitely become the focal point of the movie. As usual, Christian Bale completely loses himself in his performance, coming up with something that approaches a less tortured and/or emaciated version of his Trevor Reznik from The Machinist (2004). He ends up projecting such a likeable persona that you really feel bad when his world begins to come crashing around him: Russ is no stereotypical “white knight” but he seems like a genuinely good person. For his part, Affleck gives his most affecting performance, thus far: Rodney is a character that could have across as too self-serving and obnoxious but Affleck finds the core of the character and makes him feel less a cliché than another tragic extension of Russ’ wounded blue-collar soul. The scene where Rodney flips out and starts screaming at Russ could’ve come across as too highly strung, too melodramatic but Affleck and Bale find the inherent, blistered humanity in the moment. One of the greatest compliments I can pay the two is that there was no point in the film where I ever doubted that Russ and Rodney were brothers: the performances felt that authentic.

Towering above it all, however, is the mighty Woody Harrelson. While Harrelson has made a cottage industry out of playing sweet, slightly dumbass characters, I’ve always found him to be at his best when he’s “breaking bad,” as it were, and Harlan DeGroat might be his baddest yet, leap-frogging over the bad cops in Rampart (2011) by a country mile. To not put to fine a point on it, Harrelson is absolutely riveting in the film: from his first scene to his last, it is, literally, impossible to take your eyes off him. While Harlan is bat-shit crazy and unrelentingly scary, Harrelson brings plenty of nuance and shading, as well: the bit where he butts heads with Affleck ends up saying as much about his character as it does about eager-beaver Rodney. Every good revenge film needs a good, despicable villain and Harlan DeGroat is definitely one for the record books: if you’re a fan of Harrelson’s, Out of the Furnace should be required viewing.

While the rest of the cast is quite good (especially Defoe, who seems to be channeling John Waters by way of Steve Buscemi), it was a little disappointing to see Saldana and Whitaker wasted in what amounted to throwaway roles. Whitaker, in particular, doesn’t get to do much more than show up, act mildly concerned and step off-camera: there’s no characterization, making his climatic scene even more ineffective than it might have normally been. The character of Chief Barnes could have been written out of the story and everything would have continued to hum along just fine. Other than the powerful aforementioned scene with Bale, Saldana is similarly wasted, her character seeming to exist only to inject a much-needed female angle into the proceedings: aside from seeming to take place entirely at night, Out of the Furnace also posits a world that seems to consist solely of grouchy men and a few women on the periphery.

Cooper, the writer/director of the Oscar-winning Jeff Bridges vehicle Crazy Heart (2009), brings a similarly sturdy sense of narrative to this film. Kooky coda notwithstanding (and the coda really is a bizarre one, particularly since it appears to unnecessarily throw into question the film’s timeline), Out of the Furnace is a pretty linear and relentless film, if decidedly slow going, at times. While I would have liked a little more grit in the proceedings (the opening scene with Harlan at the drive-in is shot in a washed-out ’70s-style that turns into a more contemporary look for the film “proper”), there’s precious little than I can complain about here. While the film may, ultimately, bear more weight as a particularly grim drama than a revenge film, there’s plenty of both elements to go around. Fans of any of the aforementioned actors (with the possible exception of poor Saldana and Whitaker) would be well-served checking out the film. Anyone who enjoys bravura, all-in portrayals of mad-dog-scary people, however, needs to put this one closer to the top of their list: when Harrelson is good, he’s great. When he’s scary, however, he’s the stuff of nightmares.

7/31/14: You Can’t Be Righteous With Weapons of War

28 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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based on a true story, Better Mus' Come, brothers, cinema, City of God, Cold War, crime film, Dennis Hall, drama, Duane Pusey, Everaldo Cleary, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, independent film, Jamaica, Jamaican films, Movies, Nicole Sky Grey, period-piece, political factions, political struggle, poverty, Rastafarianism, Ricardo Orgil, romance, Sage the Poet, set in the 1970s, Sheldon Shepherd, Storm Saulter, writer-director-cinematographer

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For many people who came of age during the Cold War, the threat of another world war and/or nuclear annihilation was a near constant, if ultimately theoretical, source of worry. Western-bloc school children were put through safety drills, fall-out shelters were built and political rhetoric was tossed around fast and thick from both sides. In some countries, however, the Cold War was more than just an ideological battleground: in places like Jamaica, during the ’70s, people were actually killing (and being killed) for this “battle against Communism.” For some, the Cold War was as physical and real as their often difficult living situations.

First-time writer/director/cinematographer Storm Saulter’s bracing debut feature, Better Mus’ Come (2010), examines this very “heated” side of the Cold War, wrapping the conflict up within the familiar trappings of a coming-of-age story. In the process, Saulter comes up with a film that flirts with greatness, even as it narrowly misses the lofty mark set by the similar City of God (2002). Despite not being a classic, Better Mus’ Come is a fairly extraordinary film, full of some painfully real performances, all surrounded by the inherent majesty of Jamaica’s picaresque countryside and humble shanty-towns slums. It’s a vibrant, lively, colorful place occupied, thanks to Saulter, with some truly interesting characters.

Better Mus’ Come begins in 1978, as Jamaica is in the grip of the Cold War: the slums are caught up in the often violent conflict between rival gangs working for the People’s National Party (PNP) on one side and the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) on the other. Our protagonist, Ricky (Sheldon Shepherd), is a proud Laborite: he sees himself as a freedom fighter devoted to keeping the “Communist threat” out of Jamaica. “Let them take that shit to Cuba,” he proudly sneers at one point in the film. Along with his role as de facto leader of his local gang, a crew which includes his friends Flames (Ricardo Orgil) and Shorty (Everaldo Cleary), Ricky is also responsible for taking care of his young brother, Chris, a task made exceptionally difficult by their nearly crippling poverty. Like many of the residents of their shanty-town, Ricky and Chris don’t even have access to clean, running water, much less luxuries like electricity and “real” building materials. In one of the film’s most telling scenes, Ricky complains about their lack of amenities to the corrupt local politician who employs them, only to be answered with the dismissive notion that “people shouldn’t expect that kind of stuff.” We could go back and forth on the need for electricity but clean water? That seems like the kind of need that supersedes any notions of social status or wealth: everyone, regardless of station, should have access to clean water.

In his own way, however, Ricky is like a young, impoverished Don Corleone: he practically runs his neighborhood, watching out for residents who are getting crushed by strictures like food rationing and mercurial local authority figures. Ricky and his gang make their money by disrupting PNP rallies and raiding “legitimate” construction sites in order to steal and re-sell the supplies, while still finding time to run out any “Socialists” that manage to wander into the area. When Ricky’s gang jumps and nearly kills Pauly, a nerdy young man who kind of/sort of runs with the Socialists, Ricky gets introduced to Kemala (Nicole Sky Grey) and it’s love at first sight. As with any troubled romance (think Romeo and Juliet or the Hatfields and McCoys), all signs and advise point to Ricky and Kemala staying as far away from each other as possible: Ricky’s peers counsel him to “stay away from Socialist girls,” while Kemala and Pauly are intrinsically intertwined with brutal Socialist gang leader Dogheart (Duane Pusey), a sort of small-town Napoleon who’s always “all-in to kill some fools.”

As Ricky and Kemala timidly negotiate their highly hazardous courtship, events come to a head for both the Laborites and the Socialists. Local entrepreneur Souls (Dennis Hall) wants to pay Ricky and his gang to guard the same construction sites that they’ve been ripping off, a curious conflict-of-interest that’s but one of many dichotomies in Better Mus’ Come. Ricky’s gang jumps at the offer, mostly because the $300/week (plus weapons) that they’ve been offered is twenty-times more than the $15/week they normally make. There’s a trade-off, however: working for “the man” means ceding their autonomy in the neighborhood, the equivalent of Don Corleone swapping his power for a fast-food job. It also means forcing more conflicts with the Socialists, which means the potential for more bloodshed. When Pauly tries to use Dogheart as a way to strike back at the humiliating beating he received from the Laborites, killing seems inevitable. Despite his best efforts, Ricky and his young brother are about to be dragged into the howling maelstrom that is Jamaica’s violent political struggles: in the process, Ricky will have to give up everything for the faintest glimmer of a terror-free life and future with Kemala.

I will freely, if begrudgingly, admit that my previous experiences with Jamaican cinema have been much less numerous than my experiences with other world cinemas: before Better Mus’ Come, I’d only seen The Harder They Come (1972) and Rockers (1978), two films which I thoroughly enjoyed. As mentioned earlier, however, Better Mus’ Come actually owes much more to Meirelles’ City of God than it does to either of the above two: at their hearts, both films are about the ways in which otherwise “good” youths are drawn into lives of crime thanks to the crushing poverty and inherent hopelessness of their situations. Between the two, City of God is definitely the deeper, more powerful film: while Better Mus’ Come has plenty of genuinely impactful moments, there’s also quite a bit of melodrama that wasn’t present in City of God. Meirelles’ film also seemed to get deeper under the skin of its characters than Saulter’s does, although this could also be chalked up to Saulter’s relative inexperience: this was, after all, his debut film.

While Better Mus’ Come is not, inherently, a better film than City of God, it’s still a pretty extraordinary experience. Saulter’s cinematography can be quite beautiful, at times (although it also has a tendency to be a little blown-out at others), and it really shows off Jamaica to great effect. While the musical score is a little obvious and intrusive at the beginning, it becomes much more organic and evocative by the midpoint, adding much to the film’s frequently red-lined sense of tension. While the storyline can occasionally get a bit convoluted and unnecessarily confusing (the introduction of some nefarious government agents, at the end, seems to muddy the waters a bit too much in the home-stretch), it unfolds in a fairly straight-forward way for much of the film’s running time, making Better Mus’ Come an easy film to get wrapped-up in.

Although Saulter displays some nice chops behind the camera, the real stars of the show end up being the exceptional cast. Sheldon Shepard is a real revelation as Ricky: by turns hard-headed, sensitive, biased and understanding, he’s a completely three-dimensional character. Shepard is an utterly magnetic performer, no more so than the crowd-pleasing scenes where he plays “godfather” in the slum. It’s pretty easy to see why folks would follow him which, adversely, makes it pretty easy to see why other folks want him dead. Ricardo Orgil is similarly excellent as Ricky’s right-hand-man, Flames, while Duane Pusey is so over-the-top as the reprehensible Dogheart that he often seems like a mustache-twirling silent-film bad guy. The character works spectacularly well, however, giving Ricky a suitably nasty antagonist to play off. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Nicole Sky Grey as the Juliet to Ricky’s Romeo, however: she plays the character with a completely winning combination of vulnerability and steely reserve. At one point, Kemala asks why it’s “so easy to die for nothing” in their country and she becomes, effortlessly, both the film’s bleeding heart and its wounded conscience.

There’s an awful lot to like about Better Mus’ Come: the film is full of tense, well-staged action scenes (the big conflict between Ricky’s Laborites and Dogheart’s Socialists is suitably thrilling but is over-shadowed by the truly bravura scene where Kemala and Chris are almost caught by Dogheart’s crew while hiding in the trunk of a cab), features a nicely realized romance (Ricky and Kemala make a cute, realistic couple) and has plenty to say about Jamaican politics circa the late-’70s. The film sometimes suffers from “feature-debut” jitters but, on the whole, is a remarkably assured creation. Despite my relative lack of knowledge regarding Jamaica’s political history, I was utterly enthralled by Better Mus’ Come.

While the film isn’t based on actual events, per se, it’s certainly inspired by the era it represents and marks a distinct, powerful calling card for an emerging new talent. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we’re going to be seeing a lot more of Storm Saulter in the future: while Better Mus’ Come isn’t quite as unforgettable as City of God, I’m willing to wager that Saulter’s next film will be.

7/19/14 (Part Two): Sucker’s Bet

14 Thursday Aug 2014

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13 Sins, bad cops, bad decisions, brothers, cinema, conspiracy theories, corrupt law enforcement, Daniel Stamm, deadly games, desperate times, Devon Graye, dysfunctional family, Elliot Brindle, film reviews, films, horror films, Mark Webber, Movies, Pruitt Taylor Vance, remakes, Ron Perlman, Rutina Wesley, The Game, The Last Exorcism, Tom Bower, writer-director

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Just what, exactly, would you be willing to do for complete financial freedom? It’s an interesting question, especially in this day and age where any and everyone seem desperate to secure their “15 minutes of fame” by any means necessary. The formerly notorious but now (presumably) passe game show, Fear Factor, sought to answer this question with a variety of stunts and “dares,” although the rewards usually fell far short of the aforementioned “complete financial freedom” angle. In this case, contestants would eat reindeer testicles, sit in glass boxes filled with tarantulas and perform “hazardous” stunts (hazardous, of course, being a relative term when network television takes as many precautions as humanly possible to avoid on-air death), all for a cash prize that, if memory serves correctly, was nowhere near the amount required to make someone financially independent.

In the case of Fear Factor, people were willing to do some pretty icky things (eating balut, as far as I’m concerned, will always be a deal-breaker) but everything was undertaken with the assurance (again, born of network television, the “safe word” of the entertainment industry) that no harm could really befall the contestants or those around them: the very worst that could happen would be someone puking, which falls pretty low on the “soul-shattering” scale. What if the safety nets of polite society were removed, however? What if the stakes were raised and someone were actually offered complete financial security in exchange for completing a series of ever more heinous tasks? Where would we end up drawing the line? Would we draw a line? These are the questions that writer/director Daniel Stamm asks in 13 Sins (2014), a remake of the earlier Thai film 13: Game of Death (2006). When basic morality stands in the way of a truly life-changing amount of money, is the world really as black and white as we wish it were? Or are the obvious shades of gray that fill the margins more terrifying than any potential monster under the bed?

After a truly dynamic, disturbing opening that introduces us to the closing moves of a previous “game,” 13 Sins begins proper by introducing us to our hero, the put-upon sad-sack known as Elliot Brindle (Mark Webber). As far as problems go, Elliot has a fairly full plate: he’s just about to get married to his pregnant fiancée, Shelby (Rutina Wesley), while also taking care of his mentally disabled brother, Michael (Devon Graye) and his bitter, racist, hateful father (Tom Bower). To make everything better, Elliot has just been fired from his job as an insurance salesman (he isn’t able to “do what it takes,” which is about as obvious as the foreshadowing really gets), his brother is getting kicked out of his care facility and his father is getting kicked out of his retirement home. Holy insurmountable problems, Batman! To whit: Elliot now has no income, an expensive wedding to take care of and needs to move his vile father (Shelby happens to be black, which makes her a constant target for the father’s virulent racism) and loving but “challenging” brother into his small home. For most people, these might be the kind of issues that would completely crush and destroy someone’s spirit. Turns out, Elliot may just be one of those kind of folks, after all.

Our hero’s luck changes, however, when he gets a mysterious phone call while stopped at a deserted intersection in the middle of the night. The unknown, excessively jovial person on the other end of the line tells Elliot that he has the opportunity to be on a game show: when Elliot, rightfully, expresses his disbelief, the caller proceeds to reveal several aspects about Elliot’s personal life that no one should really know. He then tells Elliot to swat the pesky fly that’s currently bopping around his car: if he does, he’ll automatically earn $1000. After swatting the fly, Elliot receives a text message that alerts him to the successful completion of Task 1. A follow-up calls gives Elliot his next task: eat the dead fly and receive $3622, the exact amount that Shelby owes on her credit card. This would make an awfully nice wedding present, according to the voice, and a perfect way to begin Elliot and Shelby’s life as a married couple.

After getting home and checking his bank account, Elliot realizes that the caller isn’t joking: $1000 has recently been deposited to his account. After roughly a second of forethought, Elliot eats the fly, completing Task 2 and receiving his next payment. At this point, the mysterious caller fills him in on the rest of the details: Elliot must complete a total of thirteen excessively more difficult tasks, each task worth an increasingly large sum of money, all the way up to the 13th task, which will reward Elliot with a “life-changing amount of money.” Failure to complete any task will result in “losing it all,” including all money won up to that point, as will trying to interfere with the game in any way. Telling anyone about the game, whether his loving fiancée or law enforcement officials, will also result in a loss: according to the voice, the game is solely Elliot’s to win (or lose). If he wins, Elliot and Shelby will begin their new life on their own terms. If he loses, well…how much worse off could he get? Elliot completes his registration process by facing the bathroom window and intoning “I will dance with the golden toad”: with that, the game is afoot…and Elliot’s fate is sealed.

The kicker, of course, is that Elliot really has no idea how bad things will get until the shit hits the proverbial fan. While the initial tasks seem harmless, if decidedly odd (killing and eating a fly may be nasty but it doesn’t exactly turn someone into Ed Gein), the follow-up tasks find Elliot going down an increasingly grim rabbit hole of public disturbance and reprehensible behavior: making a child cry, burning up a church’s nativity scene (handcrafted by blind children, naturally), getting revenge on a childhood bully. As Elliot completes the increasingly more unpleasant tasks, he must take great pains to keep Shelby, Michael and his father from figuring out what’s going on. Things become even more complicated when a gruff, no-nonsense police detective (Ron Perlman) begins investigating Elliot’s various “crimes.” As the caller continually reminds Elliot, he’s now so far into the game that winning it is the only way out: otherwise, he’ll end up serving some pretty decent jail time for his various “crimes against humanity.”

Elliot is fundamentally a good guy, however, and really just wants to provide for his family under some pretty difficult circumstances. As a nice guy, he begins to balk at some of the tasks but an odd thing begins to happen: as Elliot completes more and more tasks, he begins to get a bit…well, acclimated, to the whole thing. He begins to swagger around and get back some of his old self-confidence. While Elliot may not be doing particularly nice things, he is, at the very least, taking direct steps to dig his way out of the financial hole he’s buried in. He’s doing what all of us would like to do: pulling himself up by his own bootstraps and initiative. Once the tasks take a horrifying turn, however, Elliot is left with a very basic but all-important question: what does it benefit a man to gain it all if he loses his very humanity, in the process? As his life spirals completely out of control and Elliot comes ever closer to that feared 13th Task, he will quickly learn that there are more than one way to play any game. And, sometimes, winning can be worse than losing.

While watching 13 Sins, I was constantly reminded of an old saying: “If this is the kind of thing you like, then you’re gonna love this.” In some ways, Stamm’s film is the very epitome of this ideal: certain people (myself included) will eat up the film’s concentrated nastiness with a spoon, whereas others will find the whole thing to be such a despicable little bit of coal-black misanthropy that they probably won’t make it past the first 10 minutes. To be fair, both viewpoints are completely valid: 13 Sins is absolutely not for everyone and anyone with a decidedly “sensitive” palette should approach this with extreme caution. While the film does go to some pretty intense places, gore-wise, it goes to some even more intense places, concept-wise, which will probably be the dividing line for most folks.

In many ways, the film acts as a sort of moral barometer, asking the audience just how far “too far” really is. I can think of very few people who would have significant moral quandaries over eating, much less killing, a fly. I even know plenty of people who might not balk at making an anonymous child cry (if you know who you are, for gods’ sake, keep your damn hand down!). Suffice to say, however, that I’m eternally grateful for not knowing anyone who could surf through all 13 tasks without feeling at least some sort of pang to the conscience area, especially once we get to the dreaded 13th task. This, then, is the film’s greatest coup and its biggest virtue: it sets up a slippery-slope of dubious actions that traps the viewer half-way down, like a Venus Fly Trap. As we find more and more ways to justify what goes on (I could do that, if I really tried…I could do that if I didn’t think about it…I could do that if I really had to…I could do that if I had absolutely no other choice), it becomes painfully clear that morality and the notion of “good vs evil” are much less concretely defined than many of us might have previously hoped. Even when one adds in the supposed assurances of organized religion, there’s still the unspoken notion that we would violate any and every taboo if only to safeguard our loved ones: hard-and-fast rules are all well and good until it’s your husband/wife/baby/parents/siblings/best friends on the chopping block. At that point, many of us might find ourselves rethinking long-held notions of right and wrong, arriving at a definition that’s a bit more conditional and less rigidly enforced.

But this is all, of course, almost completely academic: a film can worry us with moral quandaries until the cows come home (Are the cows properly treated? Have they been fed growth hormones and kept in tiny pens? Are we raising them simply to be slaughtered or do realize that all living creatures have inherent value as individuals? What if the cows can’t find their way home?) but still have as much impact as one of those old videos from high school health classes. How does 13 Sins hold up as an actual film? Does it work as both a thriller/chiller and a thought-provoking dissertation on our modern malaise? For the most part, despite a few rather sizable plot holes, the answer is a resounding “absolutely.”

While I’ve never seen Stamm’s previous films (I’ve never cared enough for demonic possession films to have really paid The Last Exorcism (2010) much attention and his debut, A Necessary Death (2008) sounds intriguing but was, likewise, off my radar), 13 Sins is a thoroughly well-made, effective little film. Mark Webber channels the working-class relateability of someone like Sam Rockwell in his portrayal of Elliot, which makes it much easier to empathize with his character’s oftentimes terrible decision-making. Devon Graye is excellent as the developmentally-disabled Michael, managing to make the character seem less stereotypical than might previously be possible for a character of this type in a genre film. Perlman, of course, is spectacular but when is the guy ever bad? Even if he were phoning in the performance (which he doesn’t), Perlman would be an utterly magnetic, charismatic presence: there’s one throwaway bit where he sticks his tongue out at a little girl that manages to be hit so many character “buttons” at one time that it’s kind of ridiculous…in a completely badass way, of course. My big complaint with Perlman’s performance in 13 Sins is the same from any film that he doesn’t star in: there’s way too little of him here, although what’s here is suitably excellent. The rest of the cast, from Tom Bower’s obnoxious father to Rutina Wesley’s eternally faithful, if utterly confused, Shelby provide great support for Webber but, ultimately, this is his film and his journey to make.

From a production standpoint, 13 Sins is top-notch: while the film often has a glossy, heavily produced look, the subject matter is pure exploitation, taking a certain perverse glee in presenting a raft of unpleasant situations in as visually appealing a way as possible. When they saw an arm off in the film, it looks great, even if the scene is so protracted as to practically demand nausea: it’s the film’s great blessing (curse?) that everything is delivered in as hyper-realistic a way as possible, even as the scenarios become increasingly fanciful and “unrealistic.”

Since 13 Sins is, technically, a mystery (at least in the same vein as Fincher’s The Game (1997)), the script becomes all-important and Stamm (working with co-writer David Birke) has crafted a particularly smart, strong foundation. While I found the ultimate resolution to be a little problematic (without going into much detail, it bothered me that Elliot didn’t think through the ultimate ramifications of his final bit of revenge: could he have really been that short-sighted?), the plot is exceedingly tight. The tendency to group certain tasks together felt a little arbitrary and more than a little lazy, on occasion (Wait…we really have to think up 13 different tasks? What if we just came up with…I dunno…11 or so and just fudged the rest?) and there were a few elements that seemed unnecessarily vague (I still have no idea what the 5th Task entailed, although I’m pretty sure the filmmakers didn’t, either) but these are, ultimately, pretty small quibbles. When 13 Sins works, it works amazingly well, provided the same sort of gut-punch, visceral reaction that I had to the first Saw (2004). When it doesn’t work, it’s a quick-paced, highly entertaining and suitably sleazy thriller: in my book, that’s kind of a win-win situation.

Ultimately, 13 Sins, like American Mary (2012), is one of those films that is easy for me to like but difficult for me to recommend. While the subject matter is certainly less immediately reprehensible than the body modification/torture scenarios of American Mary, I can’t help but feel that many viewers will feel completely shut out of the pitch-black heart that beats at the center of 13 Sins. In many ways, Stamm’s film is holding a cracked fun house mirror up to society and asking us if we like what we see: in a day and age where, literally, “anything goes,” Stamm asks us to reconsider that notion just a little further. After all, you might be willing to do just about anything to provide yourself with a viable future but how far are you actually willing to go to test that hypothesis? Killing that fly is a small step, sure, but it’s still the first step: at this point, what step are we all on and how far will we go before we say “enough is enough?”

7/4/14: Moonshine Over My Hammy

07 Thursday Aug 2014

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bad cops, based on a book, based on a true story, Benoit Delhomme, bootleggers, brothers, Chris McGarry, cinema, corrupt law enforcement, Dane DeHaan, film reviews, films, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jason Clarke, Jessica Chastain, John Hillcoat, Lawless, Mia Wasikowska, moonshine, Movies, Nick Cave, period-piece, romance, set in the 1930s, Shia LeBeouf, the Great Depression, The Proposition, The Road, Tom Hardy, voice-over narration

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There are some writer/director relationships that end up bearing more interesting fruit than others and the pairing of Australian director John Hillcoat and post-punk savant Nick Cave is certainly one of those. Beginning with the brutal Ghosts…of the Civil Dead (1988) and continuing on into the equally raw The Proposition (2005), Hillcoat and Cave have proved a formidable team: Hillcoat is a masterful director who’s able to wring genuine pathos out of Cave’s often unpleasant, animalistic but eternally vital characters. Stylistically, Cave’s voice approximates Cormac McCarthy’s tales of moral decay, explosive violence and doomed fatalism, which are only complimented by Hillcoat’s panoramic, sweeping visuals. When it was revealed that Hillcoat and Cave’s next pairing would be an adaptation of Matt Bondurant’s novel about his bootlegging family, The Wettest County in the World, I was interested to see how the two native Australians would be able to bring their particular vision to bear on Prohibition-era rural Virginia. Turns out, there’s still plenty of brutality to go around, although Lawless (2012) ends up feeling like a much different beast than either Ghosts…of the Civil Dead or The Proposition.

Lawless involves the various machinations of the Bondurant family: brothers Jack (Shia LaBeouf), Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard (Jason Clarke). The brothers run one of the biggest, most impressive bootlegging operations in rural Virginia and are something of local gods, particularly when one factors in the local legend about the Bondurant’s invincibility (an interesting hint of magical realism that also informed bits of The Proposition). Brutish, laconic Forrest is the defacto leader, although youngest brother, Jack, is our entry point into the story. He’s the “new generation,” as it were, and constantly strains at the restraints that he feels are placed by his more cautious older brothers. Jack also idolizes urban gangster Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), a flashy, tommy-gun-wielding hothead who bears more than a passing resemblance to the legendary “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Forrest, for his part, just wants life to keep going as it has been: the family has managed to carve out their own piece of happiness and success amid the turmoil of the Great Depression and Forrest will do anything to protect their way of life.

Trouble, as it often does, ends up riding into town in the person of sleazy G-man Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce). Rakes, all ash-white complexion, plucked eyebrows and fastidious dislike of dirt and germs, is a mealy-mouthed monster and just about as far from “law and order” as a lawman can get. Together with corrupt Virgina Commonwealth Attorney, Mason Wardell (Tim Tolin), Rakes is more interested in shaking the Bondurants down and taking a cut of their profits than he is in eliminating the run of moonshine from Franklin County out to the rest of the bone-dry state. Hard-headed Forrest won’t budge, however, initiating a war between the bootleggers of Franklin County and Rakes. As the casualties build up on both sides, the polar ends of the Bondurant clan must deal with their own issues: Forrest begins a halting, tentative relationship with Maggie (Jessica Chastain), a waitress at the Bondurants’ “bar,” while Jack tries to court Bertha Minnix (Mia Wasikowska), the virginal daughter of a local fundamentalist preacher. When Forrest is ambushed and injured during a liquor delivery that Jack was supposed to back him up on, Jack decides to strike a deal with Floyd Banner, which irks Forrest and creates a division in the family. As the corrupt feds close in and their fellow bootleggers either fall in line or are outright killed, the Bondurants must make a desperate last stand to preserve their way of life. Will Forrest be able to pulverize the problem into submission or has his luck (and invincibility) finally run out?

While Lawless has moments of abject brutality that nearly rival anything in Hillcoat and Cave’s previous films (the scene where Forrest beats ten shades of red out of a pair of barroom louts with some brass knuckles manages to be both immensely horrifying and primally satisfying, while the scene where Rakes’ men tar and feather a bootlegger is just horrifying), this is a much “softer” film than either Ghosts…or The Proposition. For one thing, Hillcoat and Cave break up the brutality with the twin romance angles, which bring some delicate balance to the proceedings: while the relationship between Jack and Bertha often feels a bit silly and clichéd, there’s some genuine pathos to the tender, wounded courtship between the formerly big-city Maggie and the resolutely grim Forrest. While neither romance ever really takes center stage, they both serve as decent enough ways to break up the near constant stream of beatings (poor Jack gets wailed on at least three separate times, including once by his own brother), shootings and stabbings, along with the odd rape and tar-and-feathering here and there.

While Lawless looks absolutely gorgeous (veteran French cinematographer Benoit Delhomme provides us with some truly striking, beautiful images, as well as a really evocative way with hard shadows and dark areas), the whole film is let-down by the often out-of-place acting. Hardy, in particular, is frequently kind of awful but there isn’t a single performance in the film that feels genuine or rings true. Perhaps the award here must go Guy Pearce, however, who plays Rakes right to the cheap seats and comes up with something akin to a mustache-twirling Bond villain. LaBeouf (who can be decent-enough, given the right role) feels severely light-weight as Jack and Jason Clarke gets so little to do as “other brother” Howard that I kept wondering if most of his character arc got left on the cutting-room floor. Only Chastain (who’s always been hit-or-miss for me) acquits herself admirably as Maggie: there’s genuine pain in her performance but there’s also some steel there, too, a fighting impulse that somehow seems both more real and more feral than the one ascribed to Hardy’s character.

With more fine-tuned, realistic performances, Lawless would be a much better film, although it’s still decidedly lightweight when compared to Hillcoat and Cave’s other collaborations. There were several points during the film, not least of which during a thoroughly unnecessary closing tag, where it felt like Hillcoat lets the material get away from him and the tone had a tendency to flop violently between breezy, musical montage action scenes and moments such as the one where a character is “reverse-gutted” from tailbone to neckbone. This back-and-forth was also evident, to a much smaller degree, in The Proposition but Lawless’ tone feels less structured and more haphazard. When the film works, it works spectacularly well: the combination of the Depression-era setting, extreme violence and a rousing bluegrass-ish score never cease to get the blood-pumping. When one steps back to examine the film as a whole, however, it seems to come up a bit short. It’s a pity, really: there seems to be a really intense, gritty story locked inside but the constant overacting took me out so often that I ended up viewing events in a much more clinical manner than I would have liked. The greatest criticism that I can level against Lawless is that, for the first time, Hillcoat and Cave appear to have created something that feels disposable rather than essential. Here’s to hoping that their next partnership bears better fruit than this one.

6/21/14: When Brothers Attack

29 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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actor-writer, Alex Rennie, Awful Nice, Brett Gelman, brothers, Christopher Meloni, cinema, co-writers, comedies, dead father, estranged family, estranged siblings, feuding brothers, feuding families, film reviews, films, Hari Leigh, home renovations, independent film, independent films, indie comedies, James Pumphrey, Jon Charbineau, Keeley Hazell, lake house, Laura Ramsey, male friendships, Movies, sibling rivalry, The Money Pit, The Odd Couple, Todd Sklar, will, writer-director

awfulnice

For anyone who grew up with a sibling, Charles Dickens’ famous quote from A Tale of Two Cities may be all too accurate: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” While there may be no truer, closer friend than a brother or sister, these are also the people who know how to push our buttons better than anyone in this big, crazy world. An older sibling may prove to be a tyrant, while a younger sibling may have been a constant source of annoyance while we were young. The frustrating thing about families, obviously, is that we rarely (if ever) get to pick ours: that particular lottery was taken care of well before we had any say in the situation. Writer-director-actor Todd Sklar’s sophomore film, Awful Nice (2013), takes a look at a pair of estranged brothers who may just come to realize how invaluable they are to each other…if they can keep from beating the crap out of each other, that is.

Jim (James Pumphrey) and Dave (co-writer Alex Rennie, channeling Charlie Day) are estranged brothers who end up forced back into each other’s lives after their father dies and leaves them a dilapidated lake house in his will. Jim is the marginally more mature/responsible of the two, given that he actually has a wife, kids and full-time job, while Dave is more prone to eating donuts out of trash cans, stealing complimentary breakfasts from motels and living so far off the grid that he kinda seems…well…like a vagrant. Even though Jim and Dave haven’t seen each other in years, they manage to handily pick up their former sibling rivalry as if no time had passed, including all of the stupid challenges and dares from their childhood (the dinner scene that begins with a drinking challenge – water, beer, gravy – before turning into an arm-wrestling match that morphs into a fist-fight is a particular highlight). Jim has no time for Dave’s foolishness, while Dave can’t stand Jim’s condescending, superior attitude: nothing’s changed since they were kids except for the addition of facial hair.

After visiting their father’s lawyer, Jon Charbineau (Law and Order’s Christopher Meloni in an absolutely ridiculous wig and glasses), the brothers receive some money to renovate the house, along with an offer for Charbineau’s “personal” construction team to take over the renovations. Jim is all for the idea, wanting nothing more than to get the hell away from Dave and back to wife Michelle (Hari Leigh), who’s becoming increasingly annoyed over his absence from home, thinking he’s just using this as an excuse to bail on familial responsibilities. Dave, on the other hand, is so positive that he and Jim can renovate the wrecked house (think The Money Pit (1986) with better wiring) that he spurns Charbineau’s offer and jumps in headfirst, as it were. Taking the bait, Jim decides to stay and renovate the house, naively believing this to be a fairly simple task. Poor, poor, stupid Jim…

As Jim and Dave continue to work on the house, more and more things begin to go wrong: Dave’s flighty inability to focus on the task at hand leads to untold complications (he begins the renovation by spending $900 of their money on an arcade game, which doesn’t bode well); Charbineau’s construction crew, led by the quietly sinister Ivan (Brett Gelman) appear to be made up of Russian mobsters and don’t take kindly to Dave’s obnoxious attitude or desire to do the job himself; Jim runs into an ex-girlfriend, Lauren (Laura Ramsay), which complicates his present marital difficulties; and Dave falls for a waitress, Petra (Keeley Hazell), who may or may not be a Russian prostitute. In time, many of these disparate issues will come together in a perfect storm, forcing Jim and Dave to finally fix their hopelessly fractured relationship. Will it be too little, too late or will family always win out in the end?

While there’s absolutely nothing unique, ground-breaking or particularly fresh about Awful Nice, it does have a particularly potent ace up its sleeve: the film is very, very funny. Uproariously so, if I may be so bold. The script is exceptionally sharp and witty, which helps do a lot of the heavy lifting, but let’s give credit where it’s due: Pumphrey and Rennie are absolutely perfect as the feuding brother. Not only are the two actors individually funny (as mentioned, Rennie channels Charlie Day’s spastic insanity to near perfection) but they work beautifully as a comedy team. They actually seem like brothers, which is no mean feat, but they’re a perfectly synced combo, which is even more important. While the dialogue is consistently great, much of the film’s physical comedy is completely sold due to how in-tune the two actors are with each other’s comedic style: it’s the kind of complimentary acting that can be found in the best “buddy” films, such as The Odd Couple (1968) or Crosby and Hope’s “Road to…” pictures. The rest of the cast is just fine (although Meloni is so silly as to be almost trifling) but the film is dominated by its charismatic, dynamic leads.

When Awful Nice is funny, it’s very, very funny: there were moments during the film where I laughed harder than I had in some time (the bit where Dave sets off the airbag in Jim’s car by jumping on the hood is a neo-classic, as is the running gag where Jim constantly bops Dave in the head with an umbrella, to Dave’s growing irritation ). The film is never dumb, however (aside from Meloni’s ridiculous get-up), and just as apt to blindside with a genuinely impactful observation about Jim and Dave’s childhood or their miserable adult relationship as it is to throw in a scene where Dave gets his ass beat by a couple sneering yuppies. It’s this expert melding of the emotional and the silly that really drives the film: it’s never so lightweight that it floats away but this sure as hell ain’t On Golden Pond (1981), either. It’s a pretty perfect mix and one that I wish more modern “dramadies” would get right.

For the most part, Awful Nice is a pretty exceptional, modest little film. Not everything works, mind you, and there are a fair number of plot developments that just don’t go anywhere (in particular, the bit with Jim and his ex-girlfriend amounts to a red herring and the Russian construction crew is woefully under-utilized) but the film hits more than it misses and is genuinely funny, which can’t be stated often enough. I also appreciated the little absurdist elements that popped up here and there, never enough to take focus off the rest of the action but just enough to let you know that Sklar and Rennie have got more on their minds than just churning out a low-budget film. Awful Nice is gut-bustingly funny, full of heart and surprisingly sweet without ever becoming cloying: in other words, it was a pretty great little film and I eagerly await Sklar and Rennie’s next full-length. Let’s just hope that if Meloni’s in that one, he gets to keep the rug and Groucho glasses at home.

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