Monthly Archives: October 2013

New In Theaters

A Unique Voice

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by George Wolf

 

Well, I admit it, I didn’t see this coming from Lake Bell.

Bell, known mainly as an actress from her multiple film and television roles, does have experience writing and directing short films. Even so, In a World…, her debut feature as writer/director/star, has the assured confidence of a much more seasoned filmmaker.

It is a clever, witty, insightful film, uniquely set inside the professional voiceover industry.

Bell plays Carol, a voice coach who also happens to be the daughter of one of the most legendary voices heard in movie trailers (Fred Melamed). Though Carol would love to follow in her father’s buttery-voiced footsteps, she’s repeatedly told it is not an area where women are welcomed.

While her personal life spirals downward, Carol’s professional life sees an uptick. Unexpectedly, she finds herself in direct competition with her arrogant father and his douche of a protege (Ken Marino) for a coveted gig voicing the trailers of a new, Hunger Games-style “quadrilogy.”

Though never really laugh out loud hilarious, In a World… offers much to keep you engaged and smiling. Bell’s script delivers finely drawn characters, smart dialogue, and honest takes on love and sexism that feel refreshingly real.

Bell elicits wining performances from her ensemble cast (along with a couple nice cameos) and delivers a star-worthy performance herself, moving easily between emotional, goofy or sexy.

Surprise or not, In a World… establishes Bell as an original filmmaking voice with great potential. It is a movie that knows where it’s going from the opening frame, and Bell has no trouble keeping you thoroughly charmed as she slyly drops some knowledge.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjP54lV8qFI

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A Scary Movie a Day All Through October. Day 6: The Loved Ones

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The Loved Ones (2009)

Psycho may have asked us to look at the weird relationships possible with mothers and sons, but fathers and daughters can develop dangerously close bonds, as well. For proof, just gander at this Aussie freakshow.

Writer/director/Tasmanian Sean Byrne upends high school clichés and deftly maneuvers between angsty, gritty drama and neon-colored, glittery carnage in a story that borrows from other horror flicks but absolutely tells its own tale.

Brent (Xavier Samuel) is dealing with guilt and tragedy in his own way, and his girlfriend Holly tries to be patient with him. Oblivious to all this, Lola (a gloriously wrong-minded Robin McLeavy) asks Brent to the school dance. He politely declines, which proves to be probably a poor decision.

Byrne quietly crafts an atmosphere of loss and depression in and around the school without painting the troubles cleanly. This slow reveal pulls the tale together and elevates it above a simple work of outrageous violence.

Inside Lola’s house, the mood is decidedly different. Here, we’re privy to the weirdest, darkest image of a spoiled princess and her daddy. The daddy/daughter bonding over power tool related tasks is – well – I’m not sure touching is the right word for it.

The Loved Ones is a cleverly written, unique piece of filmmaking that benefits from McLeavy’s inspired performance as much as it does its filmmaker’s sly handling of subject matter. It’s a wild, violent, depraved to spend 84 minutes. You should do so now.

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Your Scary-Movie-a-Day Guide to October Day 3: Funny Games

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Funny Games (1997, 2007)

Michael Haneke, an amazing creator of both tension and soul-touching drama, continues to prove he is a filmmaking genius. From the creepy, mysterious Cache (Hidden), to The White Ribbon – his incandescent and terrifying pre-WWII  masterpiece – to last year’s Oscar-nominated Amour, everything Haneke has done deserves repeated viewing. This is a bit easier with Funny Games, as he made it twice.

A family pulls into their vacation lake home, and are quickly bothered by two young men in white gloves. Things, to put it mildly, deteriorate.

Haneke begins this nerve wracking exercise by treading tensions created through etiquette, toying with subtle social mores and yet building dread so deftly, so authentically, that you begin to clench your teeth long before the first act of true violence.

Asks the victimized father, “Why are you doing this?”

Replies the villain, “Why not?”

Haneke is hardly the first filmmaker to use adolescent boredom as a source of frightening possibility. Kubrick mined Anthony Burgess’s similar theme to icy perfection in A Clockwork Orange, perhaps the definitive work on the topic, but Haneke’s material refuses to follow conventions.

His teen thugs’ calm, bemused sadism leaves you both indignant and terrified as they put the family through a series of horrifying games. And several times, they (and Haneke) remind us that we are participating in this ugliness, too, as we’ve tuned in to see the family suffer. Sure, we root for the innocent to prevail, but we came into this with the specific intention of seeing harm come to them. So, the villains rather insist that we play, too.

Once Haneke’s establishes that he’ll break the 4th wall, the director chooses – in a particularly famous scene that will likely determine your overall view of the film – to play games with us as well.

His English language remake is a shot for shot repeat of the German language original. In both films, the performances are meticulous, realistic, unnerving. The family is sympathetic, but not overbearingly so. They’re real.

But in both films, it is the villains who sell the premise. Whether the German actors Arno Frisch and Frank Giering or the Americans Brady Corbet and Michael Pitt, the bored sadism that wafts from these kids is seriously unsettling, as, in turn, is each film.

 

1997:

 

2007:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48s781bxWF8

New In Theaters, Slider

SciFi of Significance

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by Hope Madden

The wondrous galactic epic Gravity delivers an unmatched cinematic achievement. Co-writer/director Alfonso Cuarón sets you adrift in space, and for 90 minutes he leaves you breathless at the glory of the universe, and wrung out at the drama of attempted survival.

His work will make you remember why you go to movies – to the dark auditorium with the big, big screen. It will make you remember a time when a trip to the cinema utterly dwarfed the experience of movie night at home.

To create this magnificent beast, Cuarón created tools and technology that simply did not exist prior to this film. He created what he needed to authentically craft the sense of zero gravity, utter silence, cosmic lighting – all in 3D, no less.

When it comes to the vehicle for all this gadgetry, Cuarón, along with co-writer and son Jonás, seems to understand that simplicity is his friend. He refuses to complicate the tale, and the paired down narrative allows the primal terror and exhilaration of the space adventure to take hold.

Cuarón’s camera takes us to the outer reaches, and then crawls inside the space suit, allowing us to hurl unmoored through space along with Sandra Bullock’s novice astronaut. She is a medical researcher on her first space voyage, and she is in over her head, unprepared for all that she will experience. Just like us.

A playful George Clooney tags along for camaraderie, helping Cuarón create a joyous calm before the crisis. They’re astronauts. Look how cool that is! No wonder they risk almost unimaginable peril to do it.

Though the narrative makes a misstep here and there with emotional trickery and melodrama, what errors Cuarón makes with words he more than compensates for with the overwhelming visual experience.

The action will wring you out as you curse the clumsy suits, rail against the unpredictability of gravity, strain with heroes desperate to rush in a silent calm that will not allow it. Gravity doesn’t just deliver a magnificent view of space; it also offers perhaps the most breathlessly exciting action adventure of the year.

Visually glorious does not begin to describe Cuarón’s film. More than that, Gravity is realistic – jaw droppingly so. And this is why people began making movies in the first place – to transport you someplace magical, someplace otherworldly. Few if any have succeeded in this quest quite as Cuarón has with Gravity.

 

Verdict-4-5-Stars

 

 

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Your Scary-Movie-a-Day Guide to October, Day 2: Dog Soldiers

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Dog Soldiers (2002)

Let’s get October’s first creature feature out of the way with a fun, bloody, exciting trip to the Scottish highlands. Wry humor, impenetrable accents, a true sense of isolation and blood by the gallon help separate Neil Marshall’s (The Descent) Dog Soldiers from legions of other wolfmen tales.

Marshall creates a familiarly tense feeling, brilliantly straddling monster movie and war movie. A military platoon is dropped into an enormous forest for a military exercise. There’s a surprise, bloody skirmish. The remaining soldiers hunker down in an isolated cabin to mend, figure out WTF, and strategize for survival.

This is like any good genre pic where a battalion is trapped behind enemy lines – just as vivid, bloody and intense. Who’s gone soft? Who will risk what to save a buddy? How to outsmart the enemy?

But the enemies this time are giant, hairy, hungry monsters. Woo hoo!

The fantastically realized idea of traitors takes on a little extra something-something, I’ll tell you that right now.

Though the rubber suits – shown fairly minimally and with some flair – do lessen the film’s horrific impact, solid writing, dark humor and a good deal of ripping and tearing energize this blast of a lycanthropic Alamo.

 

 

For Your Queue

For Your Queue: You’ll Feel Fine

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Proof positive that the end of the world may be just the welcome change we need, This Is The End releases to DVD today.

Wouldn’t you know it? Just when there’s a rockin’ party at James Franco’s house, the darned apocalypse has to go and ruin everything!

And by “ruin everything,” I mean turn it into the funniest film of the year. Franco, Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride and an ensemble of their famous friends all play themselves, lampooning each other and the folly of celebrity culture.

It’s crude, it’s wrong, it somehow manages to work in a positive message, and it’s damn funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j463qtCRlxk

Last year’s party apocalypse movie It’s a Disaster! is the obvious choice for a rapturous double bill. Writer/director Todd Berger sends us to a couples brunch with Tracy (Julia Stiles) and her new beau Glen (David Cross, who could not be better). Simultaneously, the world ends. The bitingly clever, surprisingly enjoyable comedy of manners boasts a spot-on ensemble and the best gallows humor of 2012.

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A Scary Movie a Day for October! Day 1: Halloween

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Halloween (1978)

Look past the ton of weak imitations, the awful sequels and the jokes about the Shatner mask, and remember that the original Halloween was pretty effective. No film is more responsible for the explosion of teen slashers than John Carpenter’s babysitter butchering classic.

Sure, you’ve seen it, but from the creepy opening piano notes to the disappearing body ending, this low budget surprise changed everything. Agreed, there are several terribly flat lines, and P.J. Soles as a giggling, dead-eyed airhead irritates the shit out of you, but Carpenter develops anxiety well, and plants it right in a wholesome Midwestern neighborhood. You don’t have to go camping or take a road trip or do anything at all – the boogeyman is right there at home.

Michael Myers – that hulking, unstoppable, blank menace – is scary. Pair that with the down-to-earth charm of lead Jamie Lee Curtis, who brought a little class and talent to the genre, and add the bellowing melodrama of horror veteran Donald Pleasance, and you’ve hit all the important notes. For the coup de grace, John Carpenter’s minimalistic score is always there to ratchet up the anxiety. Nice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SFmmROBUto