12/26/15: Daisy, in the Snow, With Violence

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70mm, auteur theory, Best of 2015, bounty hunters, Bruce Dern, Channing Tatum, cinema, Dana Gourrier, Demian Bichir, Ennio Morricone, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Fred Raskin, Gene Jones, isolation, James Parks, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Ford, Kurt Russell, Lee Horsely, Michael Madsen, Movies, mystery, paranoia, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Richardson, Samuel L. Jackson, suspense, The Hateful Eight, Tim Roth, Walton Goggins, Western, writer-director, Zoe Bell

Since the dawning of the ’90s, few filmmakers have so ably embodied the “love ’em or hate ’em” aesthetic as Quentin Tarantino has. If you’re in Camp QT, you consider him to be a bona fide auteur, a stubborn iconoclast whose complete love of everything under the sun has led to some of the most unforgettable, indelible films of the last 20-some years, films which have burrowed their way into the very fabric of pop culture in ways that few other films have. If you’re a fan, there are few things in life quite like getting the next Tarantino flick: his unique blend of ultra-violence, cutting dialogue and fractured narratives are the rare “art” films that play to all four walls of the multiplex, immersing viewers in an almost overpowering sense of watching films that are vitally, potently, alive. That’s one side of the coin.

If you’re not a fan, however, you’ll tend to lean a different way towards QT. On the flip side of the coin, Tarantino is a ridiculously self-indulgent enfant terrible who confuses style for substance (or, worse, doesn’t care) and is, at best, ruthlessly unaware of the problematic nature of some of his material. At worst, critics can call QT racist, misogynistic, homophobic (in Tarantino’s cinematic universe, male-on-male sexual assault is still the scariest thing that can happen to a guy), vain, a windbag, a thief or, worse yet, the luckiest hack in the biz. That’s the other side of the coin.

The thing is, Tarantino is both sides of the coin: the artist and the ego-maniac; the wish-fulfiller who appropriates cultural elements as needed, yet gives avenue for satisfying revenge, in return; the misogynist who creates fascinating, three-dimensional female characters only to put them through hell and back; the gore-hound who understands restraint. He’s a guy who loves movies, all kinds of movies: the good and the bad, the forward-thinking and the repulsively backwards, the trash and the art…this ability to bring absolutely everything to the table, for better or worse, is what makes Tarantino films actual events. In a world where everything is carefully crafted to reach the widest possible paying audience, QT feels like one of the few who’s willing to say “Fuck it” and just do what he feels like.

This exceptionally long-winded preamble is by means of bringing us to Tarantino’s newest film (his eighth, overall), the star-studded, ultra-violent, relentlessly grim and audaciously funny old-school Western, The Hateful Eight (2015). Coming on the heels of another film with a decidedly Western setting, Django Unchained (2012), Tarantino’s current offering couldn’t be further from his previous one. This is a huge, sweeping film (shot and screened in 70mm, for the first time in 40 years), that kind that looks to John Ford for inspiration even as it utilizes legendary Spaghetti Western composer Ennio Morricone for the exquisite score. It’s a film that trades in the hard-edged wish-fulfillment of Django and Inglorious Basterds (2009) for the kind of weary fatalism more associated with Cormac McCarthy. It’s a film that takes an awful lot of chances, many of which fall flat as a bad souffle. It’s also a minor masterpiece and proof positive that Tarantino remains one of our most interesting, surprising and uncompromising cinematic voices. Love it or hate it, there’s no way to ignore (or deny) The Hateful Eight.

Encompassing six chapters and some three-hours of run-time, The Hateful Eight takes its time in the early stretches, yet pays off patient viewers by the final third. Beginning with a stage-coach racing across the pristine, snow-covered desolation of Wyoming, ahead of a crippling blizzard, the film wastes no time in blowing minds with Robert Richardson’s jaw-dropping, wide-screen cinematography. From the very first shot, this is a film that announces its epic intentions and then (for the most part) fulfills them: you have to admire that sort of conviction.

The stagecoach contains two of the titular Eight, along with the driver, OB (James Parks), who’s probably the least hateful person in the entire film. The passengers, however, are a different story: John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell, channeling latter-day John Wayne) is transporting vicious murderer/casually-virulent racist Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh, absolutely feral and quite wonderful) to the town of Red Rocks so she can hang. Ruth is a bounty hunter and pretty much the antithesis of every Russell role ever: he’s mean, has a hair trigger, revels in watching his wards hang and genuinely enjoys smacking the shit out of Daisy, which he does as frequently as possible. Daisy, for her part, is pretty much just an awful human being, spitting, cussing and hocking loogies (and nasty insults) at anyone within easy reach.

Along the way, the merry company picks up another couple members of that illustrious Eight: Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson, in the apex of his history with Tarantino) and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins, simply phenomenal). Warren (a former slave-turned-Union soldier-turned bounty hunter) and Mannix (a former Confederate raider/outlaw supposedly turned sheriff of Red Rocks) are seeking shelter from the impending storm and the stagecoach presents a much better option than freezing to death.

Arriving at renowned half-way spot Minnie’s Haberdashery, the five uneasy companions find the place all but vacant, save for an additional four individuals: foppish, smarmy, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth, having a blast); surly, silent cow-poke, Joe Gage (Michael Madsen, with a ridiculous hairpiece); aging, nasty former-Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern, impish as ever); and “Mexican” Bob (Demian Bichir, completely surprising and consistently wonderful), the guys who’s in charge of the way-station.

Snowed in, the eight strangers (plus poor OB), must strike up an increasingly unsteady live-and-let-live arrangement, as they wait for the blizzard to pass and the road to Red Rocks to reopen. As several characters make a point of saying, however, transporting a live, desperate criminal is a lot more dangerous than transporting a dead one. Will Ruth’s insistence on seeing Daisy swing prove his downfall? Are these various varmints and rascals really strangers or is there more going on here than meets the eye? As suspicions grow and lies begin to surface with disturbing regularity, one thing becomes quite clear: there will be blood…lots of it.

Posited as a bracing combination of John Ford and Agatha Christie, The Hateful Eight definitely stands as Tarantino’s most straight-forward (barring a few customary flourishes) narrative, a film that’s more mystery than fractured narrative, ala Pulp Fiction (1994). It’s also his most accomplished, fully realized film, a work that displaces the aforementioned Pulp Fiction as the pinnacle of his career (at least to this humble reviewer). It’s by no means a perfect film, as I’ve mentioned earlier. In fact, let’s address those issues right now.

Many of Tarantino’s stylistic quirks fall flat: the narrator is completely ill-advised (for many reasons) and manages to change the tone instantly, while some of the effects (the slo-mo on Jackson during one scene, for example) just don’t work: they pull us out of the story completely rather than accentuating what’s going on.

The constant racial slurs and casual misogyny become all but unbearable, over time. Unlike the “necessary evils” of Django Unchained or Death Proof (2007), the virulence in The Hateful Eight seems to exist only as shorthand for how awful these people are. These are “hateful” individuals, ergo it’s only understandable that they’re all racist (pretty much to a person). Likewise, Daisy is a really shithead, so no harm/no foul when Ruth constantly clocks in her in the face. One can make the case that Tarantino is just presenting these aspects and letting the audiences decide but why did Daisy’s truly awful racial slurs and subsequent beatings always produce the biggest crowd reactions? Hateful people deserve to get beat down, obviously…but you have to show how hateful they are first, right?

The film is slightly too long. Not drastically too long, mind you (even at three hours) but slightly too long: there are pacing issues, late in the film, that make it seem longer than it is and the finale features more false endings than a Terminator film. This wouldn’t really be a problem except that it’s obvious Tarantino would rather sacrifice flow and pacing instead of trimming any of his goodies.

And now, to reference the dear, departed Roger Ebert: let me find my other list. The Hateful Eight is a beautiful, exquisitely made film, maybe one of the loveliest of the last few decades. There’s an art and poetry to Richardson’s imagery that is, to beat a dead horse, simply stunning. When viewed in the theater, in glorious 70mm, The Hateful Eight feels more cinematic and epic than anything I’ve seen in my three-decades of going to theaters. Toss in the “Overture” and the “Intermission” and it’s clear this isn’t just something to have on in the background: this is an honest to god event.

Ennio Morricone’s score is simply amazing, possibly his single best work since The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. When that impossibly epic theme kicked in, blasting out of the surround speakers, I actually teared up. This is what films should feel like: they should rattle every one of your senses, smack around in your skull like a pinball and rocket out of your over-loaded brain cavity like a gilded rainbow.

The performances, to a tee, are sheer perfection. Even though several of the characters are nothing more than broad stereotypes (Bichir’s take on Bob is so ridiculously, sublimely cliched that he was able to bring the packed crowd to a road by nothing more than his intense pronunciation of Spanish swearwords, while Roth’s Oswaldo is one feathered-cap away from a Musketeer), every single actor commits to their roles with a dedication that borders on the psychotic.

To be frank, The Hateful Eight has one of the most fascinating groups of characters since…well…since Pulp Fiction. From Kurt Russell’s “John Wayne as a wife-beater” impersonation to Jackson’s stellar, multi-facted turn as Major Warren (Jackson finally gets to lead a Tarantino flick AND play Sherlock Holmes…a two for one!) to Leigh’s spiteful Daisy, these are characters that either Ford or Peckinpah would have killed for.

Chief among greats, however? Walton Goggins knockout portrayal of the former rebel/current (maybe?) sheriff is a study in contradictions that actually works, leading to one of the great “odd couple” match-ups of recent years. Goggins has been proving himself, more and more, over the years but The Hateful Eight should stand as proof that he need prove himself no more: Goggins has fully arrived and it’s glorious to behold.

Biggest surprise here? The Hateful Eight is genuinely, subversively funny, maybe Tarantino’s most inherently humorous film since Basterds. Going in, I expected this to be a fairly grim, relatively po-faced film: nothing could be further from the truth. Whether indulging in some of that patented “talk about nothing” that Tarantino revels in or setting up sight-gags that pay off outrageous returns (never before has one filmmaker wrung so much merriment out of people being shot in the face), this is primo, tongue-in-cheek Tarantino all the way.

Ultimately, how does QT’s newest stack up with what came before? Obviously, individual results may vary but I honestly think this is his best film yet. While there’s plenty of room for continued discussion here (folks can and should continue to examine Tarantino’s insistence on racist characters, particularly in light of this film), there should be no debate as to the actual merits of the film: this is a modern classic, from start to finish. All one has to do is take a look at the film’s disparate elements (that iconic score, the groundbreaking cinematography, all-in performances, intricately-plotted storyline) that so that: whether judged on its parts or as a whole, The Hateful Eight is as rock-solid as the icy ground its characters trod.

Love him or hate him, one thing is abundantly clear: The Hateful Eight is not a film that you’ll forget anytime soon. Is it the best film of 2015? I think it might be. As mentioned before, however: individual results may vary.

11/4/15: One of These Things is a Lot Like the Other Thing

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Alien, aliens, Benjamin L. Brown, Blood Glacier, Camille Balsamo, cinema, creature feature, directorial debut, Edwin H. Bravo, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, fishing boat, frozen horror, Giovonnie Samuels, Harbinger Down, horror, horror films, isolation, Kraig W. Sturtz, Lance Henriksen, Matt Winston, Michael Estime, Milla Bjorn, monster movies, Monsters, Movies, mutations, paranoia, practical effects, Reid Collums, set in the Arctic, special-effects extravaganza, tardigrades, The Thing, Winston James Francis, writer-director

If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, than special effects maven Alec Gillis’ writing/directorial debut, Harbinger Down (2015), just may go down as one of the sincerest films in recent memory. By taking a little Alien (1979), a little Blood Glacier (2013) and a whole lot of Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Gillis crafts another Arctic-set creature feature that stands tall thanks to its excellent effects work (both practical and CGI) but sinks a bit due to the overly familiar scenario, characters that rarely rise above the level of cinematic tropes and a tone that see-saws between atmospheric, portentous doom and bone-headed, B-movie actioneering.

After opening with a really dynamic bit involving a Russian spacecraft plummeting into the Arctic Circle in the early ’80s, Harbinger Down begins, proper, with an extremely tedious bit of stereotypical found-footage that momentarily gave me unease before it was abandoned for the more traditionally cinematic look that suits the material much better. We meet our erstwhile protagonist and college student, Sadie (Camille Balsamo), who has joined the crew of the crab boat Harbinger, along with classmate Ronelle (Giovonnie Samuels) and officious, shithead professor, Stephen (Matt Winston), in order to track and study a pod of Beluga whales.

The crew, as befits this type of film, is your usual Whitman’s sampler of stereotypes, cliches, tropes and characterizations: we get the gruff, tough-as-nails captain, who also happens to be Sadie’s beloved grandpa (Lance Henriksen, adding gravitas even if he seems largely disinterested); the noble, silent and superstitious local native (Edwin H. Bravo); the motor-mouthed, sarcastic and cynical wiseass (Michael Estime); the ridiculously tough Russian chick who expresses romantic interest in a guy by beating the crap out of him (Milla Bjorn); the enormous bruiser who’s revealed to be sweeter, smarter and nicer than he appears (Winston James Francis); the weird loner who works in the engine room and always seems filthy (Kraig W. Sturtz); and, of course, the obligatory blast-from-the-past/love interest (Reid Collums).

Once our merry misfits have all come together on the isolated, frigid and storm-tossed sea, the film wastes little time in setting up the main conflict. To whit: while whale watching, Sadie spies a mysterious, frozen mass and has the crew pluck it from the icy depths and deposit it upon the ship’s deck. Turns out the object is the Russian spacecraft from the beginning of the film, complete with long-dead cosmonaut still belted into the shuttle. Faster than you can say “Maybe you shouldn’t touch that,” they do, indeed, touch the rapidly thawing craft, releasing an icky pink substance from the dead spaceman that is explained away as “tardigrades,” yet really only needs one descriptor: “horrifying cosmic slop that eats organisms and causes violent mutation.”

From this point on, Harbinger Down hits all of the standard-issue creature feature tropes: the disparate group must band together, figure out what they’re faced with, figure out a way to destroy it and then pursue it (and be pursued by it, in turn) throughout the ship until we reach the appropriately effects-heavy final confrontation. Et voila: roll credits and wait for the inevitable sequel.

If this sounds rather similar to aforementioned films like Alien, Blood Glacier and The Thing, well, that’s because it is similar: very, very similar, to be frank. This isn’t, of course, automatically a crucial defect: many of the slashers that followed in Halloween’s original wake were highly derivative of Carpenter’s classic, yet still managed to bring something new (no matter how minuscule) to the table. There are only so many unique plots, after all: say “Arctic-set, sci-fi horror about mutations” and it’s all but impossible not to reference The Thing.

That being said, Gillis’ film often leans so heavily on what came before that it frequently loses its own sense of identity. By the time we get to the de rigueur “Are they or aren’t they infected?” scene, our minds have already filled in all the blanks from previous, similar films, giving much of Harbinger Down a “been there, done that” feel.

Despite the over familiarity, however, Gillis and cinematographer Benjamin L. Brown still manage to imbue the film with an oppressive, overbearing atmosphere: the various shots of the lonely Harbinger, a tiny island of light in the unbelievably immense vastness of the Arctic Ocean, are extremely powerful and handily set up the disparity between the tiny bit that humans know and the countless mysteries that we know nothing about whatsoever. As mentioned earlier, the creature effects are also top-notch, creating intensely odd, misshapen monstrosities that recall both The Thing and Blood Glacier without being overly slavish to either: there’s something determinedly alien and otherworldly about the mutations, an alien quality which goes a long way in selling the film’s horror.

A pity, then, that the chilling atmosphere is so often broken up by silly shenanigans like the scene where Big G and Rick try to fool Stephen, Big G and Svetlana’s dumb courtship/brawl or the intensely over-the-top bit where Sadie talks shit to the Russian crew: moments like these take us right out of the action and put our focus squarely on the characters which, as stated previously, often act as the loosest-possible plotline placeholders. These, unfortunately, are the moments that separate Harbinger Down from the truly classic creature features of the past several decades: attempts at creating “ass-kicking” action and suspense that serve only to unnecessarily dilute the film’s actual tension and horrific potential.

Despite how familiar it ended up being, however, I still thoroughly enjoyed Harbinger Down. Call me a sucker for this type of film but, like dystopic sci-fi or pretty much any underwater horror, I’ll watch just about any arctic-set horror that’s set before me. With a decent cast, great locations, a solid (if familiar) story and some top-notch effects, there’s a whole lot to like about Gillis’ Harbinger Down. If nothing else, the film stands as a good indication that the effects guru-turned filmmaker has a good head on his shoulders and firmly understands the mechanics behind B-grade monster movies and their ilk. As long as he keeps crafting solid, well-made films like this one, I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for his next project.

10/24/14 (Part One): Death Cubed

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31 Days of Halloween, Andrew Miller, auteur theory, booby-traps, Canadian films, cinema, co-writers, Cube, David Hewlett, dystopian future, feature-film debut, Film auteurs, film franchise, film reviews, films, indie films, isolation, Julian Richings, Maurice Dean Wint, Movies, Nicky Guadagni, Nicole de Boer, number puzzles, paranoia, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, twist ending, Vincenzo Natali, Wayne Robson, working together, writer-director

Proof-positive that a good story and strong execution can trump such film issues as iffy acting and low budgets, Vincenzo Natali’s debut feature, Cube (1997) is a minor classic of indie-sci fi, a modest, mind-bending little film that would go on to serve as a pretty apt calling card for the writer-director as he would move on to bigger and better things. Using limited sets, astoundingly realistic (and ultra-gnarly) practical effects and an intriguing core concept, Cube manages to succeed as both sci fi and horror and would go on to launch a franchise (although, like the Hellraiser franchise, only the first couple films are actually any good).

One of Cube’s greatest strengths is the streamlined simplicity of its storyline. In a nutshell, a group of complete strangers wake up in a strange series of square, interconnected rooms. The rooms have entry/exit hatches in each wall, with mysterious sets of numbers etched into them. None of the strangers know where they are, why they’re there or what they need to do to escape. There’s only one stone cold fact: most of the rooms are booby-trapped with a variety of nasty, instant death scenarios (acid to the face, razor-wire that cuts bodies into bite-sized pieces, flame traps, gas traps, etc…). The group will need to overcome their distrust and paranoia towards each other in order to combine their skills and figure out the mystery of their “prison.” As their numbers dwindle and power plays erupt left and right (mostly courtesy of Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint), the bullying cop who serves as de facto leader), the prisoners will discover the ultimate truth about “the cube,” a truth that could spell doom for them all.

There’s so much that works spectacularly well with Natali’s debut that it might be a little more illustrative to point out the aspects that fail miserably. The first and most major issue with Cube is the decidedly amateurish, over-the-top acting: this was actually so off-putting that I seriously considered stopping the film midway through my first viewing years ago. For the most part, the acting consists of actors angrily shouting lines at each other, an aspect that gave me unhappy flashbacks to George Romero’s equally shouty Day of the Dead (1985). It winds up being a pretty major problem, at least until one gets sucked into the storyline, mostly because it makes it nearly impossible to suspend disbelief: there’s no point in the film where I ever really buy the characters as anything more than actors, even by the film’s conclusion. In particular, Maurice Dean Wint is a nostril-flaring, forehead-creasing, scenery-munching force of nature, a performer who manages to turn the simplest lines into cumbersome head-scratchers. The rest of the cast doesn’t fare much better but it’s a pretty difficult task to out-shout Wint: by comparison, everyone else seems to be underacting to the point of doing mumble-core.

The second issue, although a decidedly more minor one, is Cube’s decidedly low budget. Despite the brilliant set design, it’s pretty obvious that the entire film takes place in only a couple of rooms, giving the whole production an almost play-like feel. The effects work is absolutely stellar, particularly concerning the low budget, but closer inspection of some of the backgrounds and props reveal a decidedly more low-rent affair. Again, not a deal breaker under any stretch of the imagination but certainly an issue that the filmmakers grapple with.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much the end of Cube’s “big issues”: past that point, it’s some pretty damn smooth sailing. The overarching story is fascinating, filled with twists, turns and unanswered questions galore, easily grabbing the audience’s attention when the acting gets a little too intense. The set design, despite the low budget, is astonishing, managing to replicate some of the look and feel of a film like 2001 (1968) on 1/100th of the budget. The kills are very creative, extremely gory and very well-executed: the basic setup to the film finds us holding our breath whenever the group enters a new room, even in those instances where the room has been deemed “safe.” The discussions of mathematics and higher-level logic puzzles, as relates to the mysterious strings of numbers, are dizzying but help place the film on a higher intellectual shelf than any of a thousand similar low-budget films, particularly sci-fi related ones. Quite simply, Cube is one smart film and handily serves as a bridge to similarly smart contemporary films like Pi (1998) and Primer (2004): if anything, think of Cube as the “gateway drug” to get sci fi neophytes into the more complex stuff…Starship Troopers (1997), this ain’t.

Ultimately, Cube will always stand as one of those films that not only took me by surprise but ended up completely blowing me away. In fact, Cube is actually one of the films that’s responsible for my current tendency to resist the urge to turn off films: had I given up on Natali’s debut before it had a chance to sink its claws into me, I would have not only missed one of the best indie sci-fi/horror films ever but I probably would have ended up missing out on the rest of Natali’s oeuvre, a body of work which has proven consistently tricky, thought-provoking and endlessly entertaining. Cube taught me that, sometimes, the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. When Natali is piloting the ship, I’ve learned to just kick back and put my faith in the captain.

10/11/14 (Part Two): Who Goes There?

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31 Days of Halloween, aliens, Arctic setting, auteur theory, based on a short story, Charles Hallahan, classic films, cult classic, David Clennon, Dean Cundey, Donald Moffat, dopplegangers, Ennio Morricone, favorite films, Film auteurs, horror films, isolation, Joel Polis, John Carpenter, Keith David, Kurt Russell, paranoia, Peter Maloney, remakes, Richard Dysart, Richard Masur, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, scientists, shape-shifters, T.K. Carter, The Thing, Thomas Waites, Wilford Brimley

Although we horror film fanatics tend to be a fairly diverse bunch, there are still a handful of films that are pretty much accepted as canon by discerning viewers. This doesn’t, of course, mean to speak for everyone: many fans who call themselves horror fanatics have no interest in the genre’s history, past or anything more academic than watching the newest collection of gore scenes. I’ve long argued that horror is a genre and field as worthy of deep exploration as any other but it doesn’t change the fact that many viewers are still just after a visceral, momentary experience.

For every “casual” fan of the genre, however, there are plenty of what could best be described as “rabid” fans, folks who live, breathe, eat and sleep the stuff, tearing into everything from silent, black and white films to the newest CGI spectacles. For these fans, there are a few films that have managed to stand out from the crowd, proving endlessly influential and sources of much repeat viewings and continued exploration: Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978), the classic Universal monster films, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Peeping Tom (1960), Psycho (1960) and The Exorcist (1973) are but a small handful of the films that would probably show up on most hardcore horror fans “Best of” lists. One would be remiss, of course, if they didn’t also include one of the single most influential, popular and well-made horror films of the ’80s: John Carpenter’s ferocious, ground-breaking and utterly essential sci-horror masterpiece, The Thing (1982).

Although I’m pretty sure that almost everyone is, at the very least, familiar with the basics behind The Thing, the plot is pure simplicity. A team of American scientists at a remote research base in the frozen Arctic come into contact with something decidedly not of this world after they run into a group of Norwegian scientists who are violently pursuing a seemingly innocent dog. What at first seems like an extreme case of “snow madness” is soon revealed to be something much more terrifying: the dog is actually a grotesque, shape-shifting alien organism. The creature is cunning, quick and extremely hungry: with the Norwegians out of the picture, the Americans become the new snack du jour. As resourceful, gung-ho chopper pilot R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russell, in one of his most iconic roles) takes command of the increasingly paranoid and frightened group, he’s faced with a real devil’s dilemma: since the monster can look and act like any of them, how do the men really know which of them are from planet Earth and which are from a location just a little further away in our galaxy?

Full disclosure: I’ve been a pretty nutso fan of Carpenter’s classic ever since I first saw the movie, an impression that hasn’t changed one iota in all the years since. To be frank, The Thing is just about as perfect as a film gets, a classic case of intention meeting craft in a perfect creative spark. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to appreciate different aspects of the film: when I was younger, I was all about the ooky effects, rewatching the key setpieces so often that I practically had the creature’s movements memorized. Now that I have a few years under my belt and have become a little more jaded regarding special effects in films, I find myself focusing more on the film’s exquisite use of location and the exceptional ensemble cast: I still dig the ever-lovin’ shit out of the effects scenes, don’t get me wrong, but the subtler aspects of the film are the ones that really push it from something special to something essential.

There’s so much about The Thing that exemplifies the film as one of the very apices of the horror film genre, a perfect storm of disparate elements. There’s Carpenter’s sure-handed, expert direction, of course: the auteur is one of the very best filmmakers for combining action and horror into one Voltron of awesomeness and he has a rare eye for background detail that adds immeasurable tension to every frame of the film. The film was shot by Dean Cundey, the masterful cinematographer responsible for everything from Halloween to D.C. Cab (1983) and Jurassic Park (1993): the film looks absolutely gorgeous and Cundey is expert at making the principal characters seem as small and insignificant against the unforgiving immensity of the Arctic wasteland as possible. The score was done by the iconic Ennio Morricone, the creator of some of the most legendary, unforgettable film scores in the history of the medium. While Carpenter’s self-made synth scores have always a particular highlight of his films, Morricone’s epic, sweeping score really adds a new layer to the proceedings. The groundbreaking practical effects work was done by industry pioneer Rob Bottin and would go on to influence at least the next generation of effects creators, if not more.

And then, of course, there’s that cast. Jeez…what a cast. Taking a cue from Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), Carpenter stocks his film with some of the best character and genre actors in the biz, ensuring that no one comes across as generic “cannon fodder.” Kurt Russell…Wilford Brimley…Richard Masur…Keith David…Richard Dysart…Donald Moffat…each and every performer brings their A-game to the proceedings, adding up to one hell of an ensemble performance. The shining star of the group, of course, is Russell: while he’s been behind some of the most iconic action heroes in cinema (any conversation about kick-ass heroes that doesn’t include Snake Plissken is fundamentally flawed from the jump), MacReady is easily one of the highlights. We first meet Russell’s character as he plays computer chess: when the machine beats him, MacReady pours his bourbon down its access panel, shorting the computer out. Classic Kurt, in other words. Regardless of what’s happening on-screen, Russell is always the magnetic, undeniable center of everything: MacReady is one of the great screen creations and much of the credit for this must go to Russell’s inspired performance.

In fact, the cast is so perfect that my one quibble with the film’s actors has always been the same: I’m disappointed that there are no strong female characters here, ala Alien or Aliens (1986). There are certainly room for them, as the previously mentioned examples state. While some have pointed out that an isolated research station wouldn’t be co-ed, this has always seemed like a rather spurious assumption: after all, women have been successfully integrated into many such films (Aliens pretty much makes and ends this argument, thanks not only to Ripley’s character but the other female space marines, as well).

Integration complaint aside, The Thing really is a perfect film. It’s unbelievably tense, expertly crafted, looks amazing and is an absolute blast to watch. So many of the film’s setpieces have been burned into my brain over the years that it’s hard to imagine a world without them: the dog transformation…the hot wire and the blood…the defibrillator gone horribly amok…the spider-head…the cynical, utterly badass ending…the jaw-dropping reveal of the UFO…to be honest, a good 80% of the film plays like a highlights reel, similar to an award-winning band that scores eight hit singles out of ten on their album. I attempted to watch The Thing with as critical an eye as possible, this time around, but my earlier impressions were all just reaffirmed: this thing really is one of the all-time classics. I can’t even knock the film down a few points for being a remake of the Howard Hawk’s classic The Thing From Another World (1951), since it’s one of the few remakes to not only do justice to the original but to improve upon it in pretty much every way: Carpenter’s film has never felt like a cash-grab to me, like other remakes. The Thing has always seemed like a complete labor of love, pure and simple.

As someone who constantly finds myself re-examining and re-evaluating my impressions and opinions on films, I find that my “Best of” lists are, likewise, in constant flux. One thing that’s always remained constant, however, is my love and appreciation for Carpenter’s film. I’m not sure that I’ve ever left The Thing off of a list, to this point, and I can all but guarantee that I probably never will.

7/27/14: A Real Case of McCarthyism

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1950s movies, alien invasion, auteur theory, based on a book, black and white film, Body Snatchers, Carolyn Jones, cinema, clones, Communism, Dana Wynter, Don Siegel, dopplegangers, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, invasion, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Jack Finney, Jean Willes, Joseph McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, King Donovan, Larry Gates, McCarthyism, Miles Bennell, Movies, paranoia, pod people, remakes, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, small town life, The Body Snatchers, the Red Scare, Tom Fadden, Virginia Christine, voice-over narration

What if the people around you, including your family and loved ones, started acting odd? Not tin-foil hat, playing-fetch-with-an-invisible-dog odd, mind you…nothing that obvious: more like a subtle, slightly out of your line of sight kind of odd. Maybe they seem a little out of it…a little too unemotional and disconnected. Perhaps you’d try to tell someone else, let them know that Uncle Johnny didn’t seem quite like himself or that your next-door-neighbor suddenly seemed a little different. What if nobody believed you because everyone was suddenly acting strange, including all authority figures? Where would you turn, at that point? Would you “give in” and join the masses or would you resist, standing alone against everyone else? More importantly, however…how could you be really sure that the problem wasn’t that YOU had suddenly changed? How can you tell when you’re just paranoid…and when you’re right?

This, of course, is the basic setup for Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), the first of several filmed adaptations of Jack Finney’s sci-fi classic, The Body Snatchers. Coming as it did during the maelstrom that was McCarthyism and the “Red Scare” of Communism, it’s pretty easy to read both Finney’s original novel and Siegel’s original adaptation as commentary on the insidious nature of the communist infiltration of America during the mid-’50s (or, to be more accurate, the perception of certain high-ranking members of the U.S. government as to said subtle “invasion”). While there’s certainly nothing wrong with this reading, I’ve always felt that Invasion of the Body Snatchers was more a cautionary tale about the dangers of assimilation and the problems of “group think,” namely humanity’s inability to turn down any opportunity to “join the mob,” than it was explicitly about communism. Regardless of the particular focus, however, one thing is abundantly clear: Finney’s original tale of clones, pod people and alien invaders has proved remarkably resilient and has become part of the cultural zeitgeist in a pretty substantial way.

IOTBS’s begins with a wrap-around story (added later, against Siegel’s wishes, and easily the worst thing about the film) that introduces us to our hero, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), currently under a psych hold at the hospital. No one seems to believe Miles and the story we’ll see is his frantic explanation of events to one of the attending physicians, in order to convince them that he;s not bonkers. It’s an old-fashioned kind of affectation, similar to the whole “it’s only a dream” cliché, and exists purely to give the film a happy ending (the studio demanded the additional scenes after Siegel’s original cut was deemed “too bleak” for the general public).

Miles has been on vacation for a few weeks and returns to his small town of Santa Mira, California, to find that things have been a bit strange in his absence. Plenty of folks have been getting sick, according to his assistant, Sally (Jean Willes), but everyone refused to see the other town doctor or tell Sally about their issues. To compound the mystery, Miles’ old flame, Becky (Dana Wynter), comes to him looking for help: her friend, Wilma (Virginia Christine), has somehow become convinced that her uncle, Ira (Tom Fadden) is actually an impostor. According to Wilma, Uncle Ira looks, sounds and talks just like he always did but there are small, almost imperceptible differences: namely, the “spark” seems to be gone and Ira seems strangely emotionless. Becky has tried to convince her friend that she’s being unnecessarily paranoid, to no avail: she wants Miles to use his authority as a doctor to set Wilma straight.

After running into his psychiatrist friend Danny (Larry Gates), however, Miles comes to realize that there may be more going on in Santa Mira than he originally thought: some sort of “mass psychosis” is causing people to believe that their loved ones are actually impostors. The shit really hits the fan, however, when Miles gets a call from his good buddy, Jack (King Donovan): turns out that Jack has found some sort of “unfinished man” at his house, a seemingly dead (or comatose) creature that looks just like a human, minus things like fingerprints and distinct facial features. At first, Miles and the others seem rather blase about the whole thing (the body is just kept lying on a billiards table and they all sort of poke around it, as if it were roadkill rather than an unformed body) but an overnight development suitably shocks them: the body now looks exactly like Jack, right down to a recent cut on his hand. When Miles finds a similar “double” of Becky, in her basement, one thing is abundantly clear: extreme strangeness is afoot.

Surprisingly, however, the police seem decidedly nonplussed by the whole thing, waving off Miles’ concerns and cueing him in to the fact that there might be a deeper conspiracy going on. Sure enough, Miles, Becky, Jack and his wife, Teddy (Carolyn Jones) are witness to something truly horrific: weird, alien seed pods are spitting out the half-formed proto-humans. Putting two and two together, Miles and the others realize that they’re in the midst of an alien invasion: somehow, the seed pods are cloning the residents of Santa Mira, replacing them with emotionless doubles like Wilma’s Uncle Ira. Who can the friends turn to, however, when everyone seems suspiciously emotionless? When everyone, including law enforcement, seem like alien clones, it’s up to Miles and the others to resist and get the word out to the rest of the world…before it’s too late.

Siegel’s version of IOTBS has always been hailed as a sci-fi masterpiece and there’s quite a lot to like here: the pod scenes are always creepy and suitably icky, there are plenty of well-staged, intense chase sequences (Siegel, after all, was the gritty action-auteur behind such classics as The Killers (1964), Dirty Harry (1971) and Escape From Alcatraz (1979)) and there are several pretty unforgettable images (one of the very best is the bit where Miles kills his own clone with a pitchfork). It’s also quite obvious that Siegel’s film has influenced modern-day filmmakers: the scene where Miles and Becky try to pass themselves off as “pod people,” in order to pass through the clones unnoticed, should be rather familiar to anyone who’s ever seen Shaun of the Dead (2004), while the notion of Miles and Becky taking pills in order to prevent falling asleep couldn’t have passed by Wes Craven unnoticed. The film maintains a fairly tense, claustrophobic atmosphere and Siegel’s original, “downer” ending may be old-hat in these pessimistic times but surely would have been a strong jolt of pure moonshine back in the mid-’50s.

While there’s a lot to like here, however, there’s also quite a bit that doesn’t work. The aforementioned wraparound story is fairly awful and clichéd, while the musical score is always overbearing and too “obvious”: in certain ways, IOTBS is scored like a silent movie, with all of the bombast that the descriptor entails. I also never felt like the romance between Becky and Miles caught heat: it always hovered somewhere between silly and (ironically enough) emotionless, which allows Becky’s latter-half declaration that “I want to love and be loved! I don’t want a world without love!” to come across as both sarcastic and kind of sad.

It’s also kind of difficult to figure out just what the “rules” for the pod people are: sometimes they’re emotionless, sometimes they form mobs of shouting, angry people…sometimes the clones act normal, sometimes they don’t…sometimes the very act of falling asleep is enough to get someone “replaced,” sometimes it isn’t. Without a clear establishment of these basic guidelines, IOTBS comes across much less like a “hard” sci-fi film and more like a drive-in feature (not necessarily a bad thing, to be honest, but still a thing).

Quibbles aside, however, Siegel’s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is always entertaining and, frequently, more than a little creepy. The suffocating feeling of paranoia is a palpable thing and when the film is firing on all cylinders, it’s pretty unstoppable: the scene where pods are handed out to the town-members, in preparation of a larger scale invasion, is a real corker and there’s the very real sense that IOTBS features a fun-house warped version of a Norman Rockwell painting. Kevin McCarthy is a suitably fun, if occasionally over-the-top hero and if the rest of the cast ends up a bit generic, they all provide fine, consistent support. The black and white cinematography is also quite nice, if not quite as evocative as something like The Bad Seed (1956): it’s fairly workmanlike but gets the job done. As far as the various film versions of Finney’s story go, I’ve always been more partial to the 1978 version (they always have me at “Donald Sutherland”) but Siegel’s original is a close runner-up. If you’ve never seen the original, give it a shot: the film might feel a tad bit “old-fashioned” today (and that’s coming from someone who tends to place somewhat excessive emphasis on older films) but there’s still a lot of value here.

After all, as our world becomes smaller and more homogenized, it’s increasingly easy to see the notion of “pod people” as being a little too close for comfort: to paraphrase Pogo: we have seen the pod people and they is us.

7/1/14: That New World Odor

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Aaron Poole, Alan C. Peterson, Bruce Clayton, Christopher MacBride, cinema, conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists, cults, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, found-footage, James Gilbert, Lina Roessler, Mithras, Movies, New World Order, paranoia, secret societies, Tarsus Club, the Bilderberg Group, The Conspiracy, thrillers, writer-director

If you think about it, it’s really not so difficult to imagine that some sort of world-wide conspiracy is responsible for the current state of the world. After all, in a time when the rich and multi-national corporations have their hand in everything from food safety to the justice system to scientific research, it’s not a stretch to assume that they don’t really have the best interests of “the rest of us” in mind. After all, the robber barons may have built America but they didn’t build it for the railroad workers, the slaves and the “poor, huddled masses”: they built it for themselves and were “nice” enough to allow everybody else to live there…for a price, of course. Just because the notion of a secret, all-powerful group who runs the world from behind the scenes is plausible, however, certainly doesn’t make it fact. As with many things, the belief in large-scale conspiracies requires no small amount of faith on the part of the believer: after all, you can find a pattern in almost anything, if you look hard enough. On the other hand, however…is it really paranoia if someone is actually out to get you?

Writer-director Christopher MacBride tackles this idea of global, secretive society head-on in his recent found-footage thriller, The Conspiracy (2012) and the results are certainly fascinating, if less than eye-opening. While much of the film revolves around some pretty basic, “Conspiracy 101” ideas (chem-trails, the Illuminati, secret societies, the NSA, New World Order, et al), The Conspiracy manages to be more than just a soapbox: there’s plenty of genuine tension and a cracking good ending that manages to reference both The Wicker Man (1973) and Kill List (2011) while still managing to maintain its own sense of self. While The Conspiracy might not have the capacity to change the world, it certainly offers a nice respite from the usual “haunted house/lost in the woods/exploring the asylum”-type of found footage films and should certainly hold some appeal for fans of more thoughtful horror offerings.

Beginning with a quote from Benjamin Disraeli about how the world is governed by very different forces than we imagine, we’re introduced to our protagonists, Aaron (Aaron Poole) and Jim (James Gilbert), a pair of filmmakers making a documentary about conspiracy theorists. Jim is the more settled of the two, thanks to his loving wife, Tracy (Lina Roessler) and infant son, while Aaron is the wilder and woollier of the pair (at times, Poole reminds of Aaron Paul). We’re told that the dynamic duo began working with uber-conspiracy theorist Terrance G (Alan C. Peterson) in 2011, after coming across YouTube clips of Terrance practicing his particular brand of street-corner conspiracy evangelism. His goal, as he tells the fellows, is to let “them” know that he knows about them: watching the watchers, as it were.

After a July 11th interview, however, Aaron and Jim lose contact with Terrance for four weeks. Going to his formerly cluttered apartment, they find the whole place cleaned-out, save for heaps of the newspaper clippings that Terrance kept tagged to every available surface in his place. Taking the assorted clippings with them, the pair is, at first, extremely flippant about Terrance’s disappearance (“Maybe the mother-ship came and picked him up”) but are still curious about his “research.” As Aaron becomes more and more invested in the clippings, however, he begins to adopt some of Terrance’s rather nutso tendencies, such as filling every available surface in his home with clippings, scraps of paper and pictures while also noticing a distressing amount of mysterious folks hanging around everywhere. Jim is naturally skeptical of the whole thing (“Every conspiracy theory is up there: if you stare at it long enough, of course it will make sense,” Jim tells Aaron in exasperation) but begins to come around when Aaron makes a breakthrough. According to Terrance’s research, Aaron is able to trace the source of many of these conspiracies back to a single group: the Tarsus Club (standing in for the real-life Bilderberg Group).

According to Aaron (and Terrance), the Tarsus Club (whose symbol is a red bull’s head) has been pulling the strings on every major political, socio-economic and cultural issue for generations: their meetings always seem to occur right before big, world-changing events (such as wars) and the group seems unnecessarily secretive: their website describes Tarsus as “a membership-only club for leaders” and a call to their listed phone number only results in an automated female voice repeating Aaron’s phone back, over and over. Clearly, something is going on here and the guys do what any self-respecting researchers would do: they flood the internet with requests for any and all information about the Tarsus Club and their activities. Soon, they’re sent an invitation to meet in one of the online conspiracy virtual chat-rooms that Terrance frequented: once there, they’re introduced to Mark Tucker (Bruce Clayton), the supposed author of a Time Magazine article about the Tarsus Club. Mark agrees to meet with them, in person, and give them the low-down on Tarsus, provided they stop with all the internet stuff: according to him, it’s just pricking the bull (so to speak) and will only result in them getting unceremoniously squashed.

Mark proves to be a rather strange, enigmatic figure, whose obviously broken and reset hand speaks to some pretty dire stuff in his background. He fills them in on the Tarsus Club, telling them that the club actually dates back to a pre-Christian cult that worshipped the god Mithras. Mithras was always depicted killing a bull, hence the bull-head symbol, and Tarsus Club meeting always include the ritual killing of a bull. When asked what the point of all this is, Mark readily points to the New World Order: the desire to put more power in the hands of fewer people has resulted in the entire world being split up between a few factions, all of which are connected to Tarsus.

As time passes, Aaron becomes more and more paranoid: he sees strangers stalking him at all times and ends up moving in with Jim and Tracy after his apartment is ransacked. When a mysterious, black SUV shows up at Jim’s house late one night, he begins to get the notion that this whole enterprise might be a wee bit hazardous for him and his family but Aaron refuses to back down. When Mark tells them that he can actually sneak them into the next Tarsus Club meeting, so that they can see what goes on firsthand, Aaron jumps at the chance, dragging a much more hesitant Jim along for the ride. The pair will soon learn, however, to be careful what they wish for, as they get to witness, firsthand, just how the Tarsus Club conducts business.

As a unique spin on found-footage films, The Conspiracy really stands out, with one rather odd caveat: most of the cinematography is way too good to ever be passed off as found-footage. In fact, up until the two infiltrate the meeting, there’s not much of the film that couldn’t pass for a more “traditional” paranoid thriller. While I expected this to bother me, I actually got used to it pretty quick: in many ways, The Conspiracy is more of a faux-documentary than a found-footage film (at least until the final 15 minutes or so). The cinematography, by veteran camera operator Ian Anderson (who also makes an appearance in the film), is quite good throughout and goes a long way towards establishing the film’s chilly, sinister atmosphere.

I was also quite fond of many of MacBride’s filmmaking tricks, such as the decision to “blur out” all of the faces of the people at the Tarsus Club: this added an extra air of authenticity to the proceedings, which helped with the overall suspension of disbelief. In fact, everything about the Tarsus Club portion is spot-on and pretty great, especially from a horror standpoint. If the film has the occasional rough moment in its first two-thirds, the back-half is consistently well-done and, at times, quite frightening. While I could see the ending coming fairly early on (if you watch enough of these kinds of films, it’s pretty inevitable, regardless of the quality of said film), MacBride still managed to throw a few twists in that I didn’t see coming. The Conspiracy is MacBride’s feature debut and I’m genuinely interested to see where he goes from here: I’m not sure if the gentleman is actually interested in conspiracy theories or is merely mining fertile ground for his own uses but he’s obviously a talented filmmaker/writer, which is always a great find.

Ultimately, despite its emphasis on conspiracy theories and paranoia, The Conspiracy is not simply aimed at a core, captive audience. I’m willing to bet that anyone, regardless of political or social believes, would find something to like in the film: after all, remove the conspiracy angle stuff and you’re still left with a whip-smart thriller that features just enough horror elements to appeal to a wide swatch of potential viewers. While The Conspiracy may not revolutionize the world (or filmmaking, for that matter), it’s a more than worthy addition to the growing canon of found-footage/first-person-POV films and should appeal to anyone with an open mind and about 80 minutes to kill. Remember, though: it’s not paranoia if they’re actually out to get you.

5/13/14: The Gary and Harrison Show

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Amber Heard, Angela Sarafyan, auteur theory, based on a book, cinema, Con Air, corporate intrigue, David Tattersall, Die Another Day, Embeth Davidtz, evil corporations, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Gary Oldman, Harrison Ford, industrial espionage, Jock Goddard, Josh Holloway, Junkie XL, Kevin Kilner, Killers, Legally Blonde, Liam Hemsworth, Lucas Till, Monster-in-Law, movie, Nicolas Wyatt, paranoia, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Luketic, spies, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, tech-thriller, technology, voice-over narration, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton

Ever gotten the faint idea that you’ve already heard or seen something even if you’re pretty sure you haven’t? Similar to deja vu, I’ll often get the nagging notion that I’ve already watched a particular film, even to the point where I’ll begin to “remember” scenes. I tend to have a very strange memory: it preserves some things in amber and tosses out quite a bit without hesitation. As such, I frequently find myself asking: have I already seen this before? It happened with John Hillcoat’s The Proposition (2005), a film which I ended up watching “for the first time” at least twice, if not three times: it’s a great film, don’t get me wrong, it just managed to pass unimpeded through the sieve of my mind on multiple occasions. As I watched Robert Luketic’s most recent film, Paranoia (2013), I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d already seen this before. Turns out I hadn’t but I had, in a way: I’d never seen this particular iteration of the formula before but I’ve seen plenty of soulless, created-by-committee, commercial product in my time. If there’s one thing that can be said about Paranoia, it’s that it features Harrison Ford…and he seems mostly awake, for a change.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: a young, principled and ambitious go-getter gets tangled in the messy webs of corporate intrigue, leading him/her further down the rabbit hole as temptation, double-crosses and ulterior motives begin to fly fast and furious. Yeah, me too. It’s almost a tale as old as time…or at least as old as stories about the avarice and evil of the corporate world. Handsome, principled and ambitious young go-getter Adam (Liam Hemsworth) works at Wyatt Corp., doing the kind of vague tech stuff that everyone in tech-related films seem to do. He runs afoul of head ogre, Nicolas Wyatt (Gary Oldman, shoveling scenery down his gullet as fast as it’ll go) when he can’t come with a cool, innovative new idea: “You have everything at your disposal and come up with social networking on a TV?” Be nice, Wyatt: the filmmakers had quite a bit at their disposal, too and yet: here we are.

Adam and his “quirky” friends, Kevin (Lucas Til) and Allison (Angela Sarafyan) get canned but Adam’s still got the company credit card: who wants to par-tay? $16K (and one drunken hook-up with a mysterious blonde, played by Amber Heard) later and Adam’s up shit-creek with Wyatt. Good ol’ Nicolas, of course, has something up his sleeve: he’s Gary Oldman, after all, and that dude is just untrustworthy. He wants Adam to infiltrate the tech company, Eikon, run by his former partner, and current bitter rival, Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford). Adam is to insinuate himself in the group and steal the plans for Goddard’s newest “genius” invention, some sort of a spiffy new iPhone. When Adam balks, because he’s got principles and stuff, Wyatt reminds him of his position: “Are you a horse or a dog, Adam? Horses are motivated by fear, dogs by hunger.” Since Adam needs to pay $40K in medical bills for his ailing father (an utterly, absolutely, completely wasted Richard Dreyfuss), he doesn’t have a lot of choices: Cue up “Who Let the Dogs Out,” cuz Adam’s on the payroll.

After meeting with Goddard’s hiring agent, Tom Lungren (Kevin Kilner), Adam also gets to meet his assistant: if you guessed Amber Heard, reward yourself by tagging out of the film. His former bed-partner, Emma, is super suspicious of Adam but, then again, the film is called Paranoia…whatcha gonna do? Adam gets a job and ends up wowing Goddard with his ability to take other people’s ideas and repackage them: he’s the perfect corporate guy! As Adam gets deeper and deeper under cover, things begin to get more dangerous: Wyatt’s sinister right-hand man, Miles (Julian McMahon), is always lurking in the shadows, Goddard seems to be on to something and Emma is falling hard for Adam (who wouldn’t? Guy’s got abs for miles.). When FBI agent Gamble (Josh Holloway) enters the picture and lets Adam know that the feds have Wyatt in their cross-hairs and need Adam’s help to snare him, what’s a young, principled and ambitious go-getter to do? Many double-crosses and needlessly complex back-and-forth later, we find out.

Folks, unless this is one of the first films you’ve ever seen (which is entirely possible, what do I know?), there is absolutely, positively nothing here that you haven’t seen before, probably in much more interesting ways. The story is moldy and features so many gaping holes that I’m guessing they were on purpose: if you thought the “heroic” T-rex in Jurassic Park was a deus ex machina, wait until you get to the part in Paranoia where the whole success of Adam’s plan hinges on the fact that his cellphone won’t be fried after getting dunked in a pitcher of water. There’s no reason it should keep working but it has to, to further the plot, and so it does. The final doublecross is equally ludicrous, requiring so much suspension of disbelief that we’re pretty much in Space Jam land: I believed everything Bugs did in that movie way more than I believe anything that these idiots do in this film.

The acting is what it is: Hemsworth is handsome and bland; Oldman is both ridiculously over-the-top and strangely deflated, as if he were coming down from a week-long crack bender; Ford, as mentioned earlier, actually seems awake and aware, for a change. I’m not saying that anything in his performance will make people forget his iconic roles (or even forget the fact that, nowadays, he seems higher than Doug Benson whenever he makes public appearances) but he definitely seems aware and there’s a tiny (a minuscule, smaller-than-a-pinprick) bit of his old chutzpah here. Watching Paranoia strictly for Ford’s performance would be a fool’s errand, of course, but he’s definitely not the worst thing in the film.

Director Luketic is something of a middle-of-the-road, paint-by-numbers auteur, since he was also responsible for Legally Blonde (2001), Win a Date with Tad Hamilton (2004), Monster-in-Law (2005), 21 (2008), The Ugly Truth (2009) and Killers (2010). The one common thread in Luketic’s canon is his polished, bland style, so airbrushed that everything looks like it was poured from a mold. Veteran cinematographer David Tattersall handles the camera for this one: his previous films included the Star Wars prequels, Con Air (1997), Die Another Day (2002), XXX: State of the Union (2005) and Speed Racer (2008). Tattersall specializes in big, glossy productions and Paranoia is no exception, albeit a much shallower one than even State of the Union. Paranoia is technically proficient, sure, but it’s also hollow.

Basically, you have a director and cinematographer that specialize in big, empty images; a cast that phones the whole thing in; copious slo-mo and pounding techno music (courtesy of Junkie XL) to show how badass the whole thing is; a vague, unsatisfying message about bringing down “the man” while lining your own pockets; and enough dumb coincidence to drive any other film into the ground. Even as a time-waster on a lazy Sunday afternoon, Paranoia comes up short. I can almost guarantee that this isn’t the worst film you’ll see this year: it can’t even make that commitment. Instead, Paranoia is just another lazy example of how truly artless modern action films can be. There’s nothing here to offend but there’s also not much to remember, either.

4/23/14: When Fear is Good

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A Fantastic Fear of Everything, Alex de la Iglesia, Amara Karan, based on a short story, British comedies, British films, Bruce Robinson, Bunny and the Bull, Burke & Hare, childhood fears, Chris Hopewell, cinema, Clare Higgins, comedies, crime novelists, Crispian Mills, Decades of Death, Dr. Friedkin, eyeballs, fear, film reviews, films, Guy Ritchie, Hanoi Handshake Killer, Harold the Hedgehog, Hayley Mills, horror-comedies, I Sell the Dead, Kerry Shale, Kula Shaker, laundromats, Movies, paranoia, Paul Freeman, Quentin Tarantino, serial killers, SImon Pegg, Terry Gilliam, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Final Countdown, The Hendon Ogre, Time Bandits, voice-over narration, Wes Anderson, Withnail and I

There’s something about an “everything including the kitchen sink” approach to filmmaking that’s always appealed to me. Perhaps it was because Time Bandits (1981) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) were two of my favorite films growing up and neither of those films understood the words “restraint” or “over-indulgence.” Perhaps it’s because I developed an early love for Tarantino and Ritchie’s hyperkinetic, restless bullet-ballets: the former contorted his traditional narratives into fantastic new balloon animals while the latter never met a camera-angle, editing trick or musical cue that he didn’t love. When a filmmaker throws everything at the screen, and it sticks, the results can be some of the most thrilling, eye-popping cinema I’ve ever seen. I never tire of Wes Anderson’s immaculate miniatures-writ-large and if Alex de la Iglesia can sometimes be the model of restraint, he’s more often the device for delivering machine-gun-armed circus clowns and silver-bodypaint-adorned Jesus bankrobbers. I love small, quiet, subtle films, especially horror films, but it’s no coincidence that three of my favorite films of the past decade have been I Sell the Dead (2008), Bunny and the Bull (2009) and Burke and Hare (2010), all three of which throw so much material/effects/multi-media/razzle-dazzle at the audience that they’re almost endurance matches. While Crispian Mills debut film A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012) may not be quite as perfect as the aforementioned classics, it’s just close enough to deserve a place with the pack.

After a truly dynamic animated opening sequence, we’re introduced to our hero, Jack (Simon Pegg), a children’s author who has decided to expand his horizons with a book about serial killers. Unfortunately for poor Jack, he has a tendency to be…well…afraid of everything and he quickly begins to obsesses about the various Victorian slashers, such as The Hendon Ogre and Crippen, that he researches. Even worse, he begins to think that insidious killers are actually after him, leading him to superglue a large kitchen knife to his hand. After his long-suffering agent gets Jack a meeting with the mysterious Harvey Humphries (Kerry Shale), a film producer interested in turning his research on serial killers into a movie, Jack must get over his intense agoraphobia and prepare to actually leave his house. After his usual laundry method (washing in the sink, drying in the oven) goes horribly awry, Jack must venture out to that most dreaded of public places: the laundromat. Not only have laundromats always been at the secret center of Jack’s endless phobias but there’s also a new killer nicknamed The Hanoi Handshake Killer running around. As Jack leaves his home, knife glued to hand, he must come to grips with the source of his childhood trauma, solve a local mystery and figure out whether he wants to stick with the hedgehog that made him famous or follow his dreams into the true-crime stories that haunt his dreams. Along the way, he might just find love. He also might get into an argument with a serial killer about the validity of The Final Countdown and hair metal vs gangsta rap, of course, but he definitely might find love.

Although it may seem overly reductive, perhaps the best “easy” descriptor of A Fantastic Fear of Everything would be Wes Anderson directing a Terry Gilliam film as envisioned by Guy Ritchie.   From the opening credit sequence to the closing one, AFFOE never sits still, spinning endlessly like a perpetual motion machine. Director/writer Mills (the son of actress Hayley Mills and member of Brit-rock band Kula Shaker), along with cinematographer Simon Chaudoir, have managed to craft a film that both visually and aurally inventive, hyperkinetic and fast-paced, yet inherently human and character-driven. This is no mean feat when there’s this much stuff flying around. At various points, we get super-stylized camera shots (the opening close-up of Pegg’s eye, which rotates out to make it seem as if he’s on the floor, yet is finally revealed to him by the wall, is nothing short of genius), nifty animated sequences (the paper-doll murder explanation is super cool and the claymation Harold the Hedgehog sequence is good enough to be its own short) and inventive use of sound (there’s a great moment where the sound begins loud and non-diagetic before becoming cracked and tinny as Jack walks into the launderette). The colors are all gorgeous and vibrant, looking like nothing so much as one of the aforementioned Anderson’s candy-colored epics.

In the pivotal role of Jack, Pegg is as reliably solid as ever. He manages to bring just the right amount of nice-guy restraint to balance out the bottomless ocean of neuroses that is Jack: too much in either direction and the character would be either insufferable or as bland as milquetoast. As such, however, we get some truly great Pegg moments, including the scene where he gives change to begging children, via used sock, through his mail slot or the aforementioned bit where he argues with his potential killer about whether hair metal or gangster rap was the more valid cultural entertainment. The rest of the cast, particularly Alan Drake as the daffy “community support police officer” Tony, are all excellent but this is truly Pegg’s show: he gets the most screen-time, by a yard, and relishes it.

There are a laundry-list of reasons this film shouldn’t have worked. For one thing, this kind of hyper-kinetic storytelling can easily dissolve into mush when done wrong: just look at Ritchie’s post-Snatch filmography (including Sherlock Holmes, please and thank you) or the brain-dead Shoot ‘Em Up (2007) for proof. Mills is a new, untested director coming from not only a famous family but a famous rock band: there’s no reason this shouldn’t have smelled and tasted like a vanity project. The actual plot (guy is afraid of everything, must get to meeting) is pretty thin and the final twist wraps things up in such a stereotypically happy, upbeat ending that it threatens to make everything before it seem like subtle parody, like a Jack Handey aphorism taken too far.

Against all odds, however, A Fantastic Fear of Everything works. And it works spectacularly well, if I might add. The script is sharp and clever, full of laugh-out-loud scenes, dialogue and ingeniously clever plot details. The animated sequences are all fresh and fit in perfectly with the rest of the film, as well as contributing to the overall themes of the film (how one’s imagination can imprison one, if not careful). The acting is uniformly top-notch and the cinematography and sound design are exemplary. Truth be told, short of a truly embarrassing scene where Pegg mugs along to a rap song (this is almost as nerve-gratingly mortifying as the worst moments of The Office) and some minor issues with structure, there really isn’t much wrong with the film. If you can handle a little silliness and some self-referential moments, A Fantastic Fear of Everything is actually a pretty smart peek into the issues that make us all the stupid little humans that we are. For my money, I’m more than willing to give Jack a place on Simon Pegg’s Character Wall of Fame and I’m more than eager to find out what Crispian Mills comes up with next.