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

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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

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.

10/28/14 (Part One): Gollum By Day, Genius By Night

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31 Days of Halloween, Andy Serkis, black comedies, Cherry Tree Lane, Christopher Ross, cinema, David Legeno, Doug Bradley, estranged siblings, farmhouse, favorite films, feuding brothers, film reviews, films, gunfighters, horror, horror-comedies, isolated estates, Jennifer Ellison, Jonathan Chan-Pensley, kidnapped, Laura Rossi, Logan Wong, Movies, Paul Andrew Williams, Reece Shearsmith, Steven O'Donnell, The Cottage, The Ransom of Red Chief, Unfinished Song, writer-director

Let’s all take a moment to praise Andy Serkis, shall we? While many film-goers will know Serkis as the man behind the mo-cap suit for such blockbusters as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films (Gollum), his King Kong adaptation (the big fella, himself) and the Planet of the Apes remakes (Caesar), Serkis is actually a well-established British actor with a 25-year career that encompasses everything from television to dramas and biopics to more explicitly genre fare. He’s an incredibly gifted performer who manages to bring an impish sense of mischief to each of his roles, whether he’s portraying Blockheads frontman Ian Dury in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010) or infamous grave-robber William Hare in Burke and Hare (2010).

Similar to larger-than-life personalities like Ron Perlman and Bruce Campbell, Serkis is the kind of actor that can enliven just about any production: in the right film, he’s pretty much unstoppable. Luckily for us, writer-director Paul Andrew Williams’ The Cottage (2008) is the right film in every way possible: outrageously funny, uncompromising, suitably vicious when necessary and featuring an outstanding supporting cast, The Cottage is a nearly flawless thrill-ride that proves one thing above all: we need more Andy Serkis and we need more now!

Serkis stars as David who, along with his rather dim-witted brother, Peter (Reece Shearsmith), has just kidnapped Tracey (Jennifer Ellison) in order to hold her for ransom. In the best Ransom of Red Chief tradition, however, Tracey is a living nightmare: the foul-mouthed, perpetually sneering step-daughter of mobster Arnie, Tracey is more of a handful than either brother could have imagined, managing to clobber them psychologically (and physically) at every possible opportunity. In short order, we come to discover that Arnie’s son, Andrew (Steven O’Donnell), is in on the kidnapping with David and Peter, although he proves equally inept. The four hole up in an isolated cabin in the woods, as far from civilization as possible.

The situation manages to get even worse when it’s revealed that Arnie knows just where the bungling criminals are hiding and has dispatched a lethal pair of Asian hitmen (Logan Wong, Jonathan Chan-Pensley) to send them to the great here-after and recover his beloved step-daughter. When Tracey manages to get free, taking Peter hostage, it looks like the end of the road for our Keystone Kriminals. The pair end up at a mysterious neighboring farm, however, a residence that bears a suspicious resemblance to a Betty Crocker version of the Sawyer farmhouse in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974): as any genre fan worth their salt knows, the party is just getting started. Soon, everyone will be locked in a desperate life-or-death struggle with a living monster that doesn’t take kindly to trespassers: who will survive and what will be left of them, indeed!

From time to time, a film will grab me by the lapels and shake the stuffing out of me, requiring my immediate and unwavering attention: The Cottage was one of those films. Truth be told, I was hopelessly head-over-heels for the film by the 20 minute mark, thanks to a brilliant script and some of the best dialogue I’ve heard in ages. The acting is impeccable, with Serkis and Shearsmith bringing the house down as the bickering brothers. For her part, Ellison is simply magnificent: fuck “mean girls”…Tracey is THE mean girl, hands down. Abrasive, cunning, wheedling, strong and take-charge, Tracey is the last thing you usually expect to see in a horror film: a strong female character. There is real joy to be found in the ways she mercilessly wears David and Peter down: to be honest, had the film just consisted of the kidnapping angle, minus the added slasher aspect, I would have been just as happy…the film is that good.

But then, of course, I would have been robbed of the supreme pleasure of the latter half of the film. Suffice to say that Paul Andrew Williams is just as adept with the pure horror elements as he is with the comedy elements: when the film takes off the gloves and squares up its shoulders, it’s one mean bastard, no two ways about it. Eviscerations, a shovel to the mouth, pick axes…The Cottage doesn’t skimp on the grue, although it never feels overly oppressive or dark, thanks to the always prevalent comedic elements.

Along with the brilliant script and acting, however, The Cottage looks and sounds like a million bucks. While Christopher Ross’ cinematography is exquisite, one of the film’s biggest weapons is Laura Rossi’s amazing score. Similar to Danny Elfman’s whimsical Beetlejuice (1988) score, Rossi’s work in The Cottage helps set a nearly fairytale-like tone that makes for a bracing, fascinating mash-up with the more intense elements. An Oscar nominee for her work in Unfinished Song (2012), Rossi is handily responsible for much of the film’s mood at any given time and the music here really stands out.

Truth be told, I’m hard-put to find anything really bad to say about The Cottage: gonzo energy, great performances, genuine humor, fully developed characters, a perfect ending, endlessly fun…there’s not really much more I could ask for, to be honest. By the time the film had finished, I was already ready to start it all over again: it really is that good. Even though Williams doesn’t dabble in horror very often (his only other horror entry, thus far, was the vicious home-invasion thriller Cherry Tree Lane (2010); he’s more known for dramas like London to Brighton (2006) or Unfinished Song), his results are so good that it really makes me wish he’d spend more time with the scary stuff. I’m not greedy, though: when you’ve got a filmmaker as talented as Williams and an actor as good as Serkis, you pretty much take whatever you’re given. In the case of The Cottage, we end up receiving one hell of a good film.

5/4/14: Let Crispin Sing You to Slumber

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Au Revoir Les Enfants, awkward slap fight, based on a book, Charlaine Woodard, Cherry 2000, cinema, Cleveland family, Crispin Glover, Dylan McDermott, estranged family, farmhouse, Faulkner, film reviews, films, Flannery O'Connor, Hans ZImmer, Harry Dean Stanton, Howdy, isolated communities, Jenny Wright, Kansas, Lindsay Christman, Lois Chiles, Mary Robison, Michael Almereyda, Movies, Renato Berta, Southern Gothic, strange families, Suzy Amis, Tim Robbins, tornadoes, Twister, Until the End of the World, William S. Burroughs, Wim Wenders, writer-director

Sometimes, a film isn’t about quite what it appears to be about. Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), for instance, is not about a guy trying to get a job. Solaris (1972) isn’t about a bunch of cosmonauts and Over the Top (1989) isn’t about arm-wrestling. Well, actually, Over the Top is about arm-wrestling but I’m sure there’s much more to the complex narrative than that. Part of the joy of watching a really good, complex film (such as Over the Top) is in peeling away the many layers of meaning, cutting through the symbolism and subtext to get at what the filmmakers are really talking about. In many cases, taking an “art” film at face value is a particularly useless exercise: these are meanings that need to be discovered, not tripped over.

Sometimes, however, a film can just stand as a complete mystery, a towering monument to a singular point-of-view that anyone who isn’t the filmmaker would be hard-pressed to decipher. In and of itself, this isn’t always a bad thing: I absolutely adore the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I completely understand them. I love experiencing them, however, which can often make all the difference. In the case of director Michael Almereyda’s head-scratcher Twister (the furthest thing from the ’90s-era Bill Paxton epic, mind you), however, I’ll have to be honest: not only did I leave the film without really understanding it, I also left the film without really enjoying it. I don’t mind needing to watch something a few times to pick up the full meaning: all of my viewings of Taxidermia (2006) have got me closer to understanding but I’m definitely not there yet. When a film is confusing, open-ended and dull, however, repeated viewings become analogous to torture and I’m just not willing to suffer for the meaning. Not even for Crispin Glover in an absolutely amazing red smoking jacket.

It may help to think of Twister as a sort of “Southern Gothic,” a kind of cock-eyed take on Faulkner or a bloodless Flannery O’Connor. The film, based on Mary Robison’s novel Oh!, concerns itself with the Cleveland family, a not-so-merry clan of Midwestern weirdos who live life on their own, strange terms. Father Cleveland (Harry Dean Stanton) is a soda-pop and roller-coaster baron who has just brought his fiancée, Virginia (Lois Chiles) home to meet the family. The family consists of daughter Maureen (Suzy Amis), son Howdy (Crispin Glover) and Maureen’s daughter, Violet (Lindsay Christman). Maureen’s estranged boyfriend (and Violet’s father), Chris (Dylan McDermott) is also lurking in the shadows, as is Howdy’s girlfriend, Stephanie (Jenny Wright) and her boyfriend, Jeff (Tim Robbins). Toss their opinionated maid, Lola (Charlaine Woodard), into the mix and you have quite the cast of irregulars.

In and of themselves, the characters in Twister sound pretty intriguing on paper. Howdy, by himself, is such a bundle of neuroses that they could’ve based an entire five-picture series on him. After all, this is a guy who serenades his girlfriend with the creepiest sub-Velvet Underground dirge in the history of recorded music and makes it seem as natural as belting out O Sole Mio. He’s Crispin fuckin’ Glover and this is just what he does, man. McDermott rages around, doing his usual “tempest in a teacup” thing but that’s what McDermott does, too. Hell, Tim Robbins even gets in an awkward slap fight with Glover: how could that not be fascinating?

But it’s not fascinating. Unfortunately, it’s anything but. In fits and starts, Twister works just fine but the film never develops any sense of forward momentum or narrative cohesion: it just lurches from one strange situation to another. Chris keeps sneaking into the house, getting caught and thrown out but no one really seems to mind. Stephanie is dating Howdy but also seems to be Jeff’s girlfriend…or maybe she isn’t. Maureen and Howdy go on a hunt for their missing mother and track her to a farmhouse where William S. Burroughs is target shooting. Burroughs has never been mentioned or introduced in the film and is only credited as Man in the Barn: when he explains to the “kids” that their mother is now in Ireland, it carries no weight whatsoever: Who the hell is he? How does he know their mom? Is he actually real or a figment of their imaginations? Is Burroughs just playing himself or is he actually a character? It’s a frustrating bit of inanity that handily removed any joy I briefly felt over seeing Burroughs: what the fuck was he doing here?

This confusion even manages to extend to the title, Twister. Spoiler alert: if you’re looking for a tornado, it occupies all of two minutes within the context of the film. Fair enough: I came to see Stanton and Glover as odd family members, not a disaster porn film about high winds. That being said, I simply can’t, for the life of me, figure out what relevance the tornado has. Cutting out any mention or activity around the twister wouldn’t change the film in any discernible way, so what’s the point? I have no problem with symbolism or subtext whatsoever but this just seemed like such an esoteric choice, as random as pulling a name out of a hat. I will admit to not being familiar with the source material, so perhaps the impact of the tornado was just reduced in the film. Nonetheless, this just becomes one more symbol of my issues with the film: its seeming randomness.

Craftwise, the film tends to have a rather muddy, indistinct look that could either be chalked up to a bad transfer or just a crappy production, in general. Writer-director Almereyda got his start as screenwriter on the Melanie Griffith-as-sexbot howler Cherry 2000 (1987), so there’s probably not much reason to assume this would look great but the dull look doesn’t make sticking with the film any easier. This is even harder to understand given that the cinematographer, Renato Berta, was a well-respected craftsman who shot Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) just two years before: what gives? In a further disappointment, veteran composer/soundtrack pro Hans Zimmer turns in a chaotic mess of a score, a mishmash of tones and movements that seem cobbled together from other pieces. It’s never cohesive which, ironically, may make it the perfect soundtrack for the film. A prime example is the scene where Chris and Maureen drive through the town after the twister has passed through: the soundtrack plays the scene like a slasher film, all staccato jabs and nervous energy: it makes no sense within the context of the scene and doesn’t even seem to work as counter-intuitive: it just seems like a stylistic choice that didn’t work out.

So, is there anything worthwhile here? Sadly, there’s actually quite a bit to like in Twister, even if the parts are much greater than their sum. Glover, as always, is genuinely weird and seems to possess as much gravity as a black hole: it’s virtually impossible for any other actor to share screen time with him and not be completely forgotten. Stanton, old pro that he is, tries to compete with Glover but he’s just not given enough to do. That’s a real shame, since Stanton has been one of my favorite actors since the first time I ever laid eyes on Repo Man (1984). He’s definitely not bad here but he’s not awesome, either, which kinda sucks.

There are a few scenes (the aforementioned scene where Howdy sings, a hilarious bit involving Chris and a flaming shot that gets out of control) that are as good as anything in these types of films but they’re too few and far between. The shot scene, is particular, is a real gem: McDermott brings an almost Chaplin-esque quality to the bit, as he tries to blow out the fire but only succeeds in spreading the flames. In a film filled with quizzical moments and scenes that seem designed to make one say “Hmm…,” it’s a genuinely laugh-out-loud moment and I definitely wish there were a few more like that. It also manages to feel out of place but it still works better than much of what came before and after.

At the end of the day, Twister is one of those films that could easily fit my mother’s oft-repeated phrase: “Neither fish, nor foal, nor good red herring.” I’m not really sure what Twister is, truth be told, and I’m not ever sure that I will. I can only sit and ponder what a Southern Gothic film featuring Harry Dean Stanton, Crispin Glover and Dylan McDermott riding out a tornado in a cramped farmhouse might have been like. When I close my eyes, I can almost see the film and it’s a pretty good one: it’s quirky, it has interesting characters and something to say about how disasters can bring all of us, including the truly strange, together. It’s even got a little something to say about family and how you’re stuck with ’em, for better or worse. That’s not this movie, however, and that’s a shame.