Monthly Archives: August 2014

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Sharklessnado

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Into the Storm

by Hope Madden

You have to kind of feel for a film about tornados that comes out right now. How could they have known when they began the years long trek toward a final product that SciFi Channel would launch a flick about a tropical storm that rains great whites on actors who stopped being famous in the Nineties? And even if they did know, who could have predicted its insane success? Or a sequel?

So, no, poor Into the Storm just marched along unaware, casting grade B heroic types, developing a mediocre script, and spending some cash on special effects. For what?

To bore us to tears, that’s what.

What is essentially a rehashing of 1998’s Twister with a little Jackass side plot, Into the Storm follows a two-van storm chasing team out to document the eye of a tornado – just film right up inside that bad boy, kind of a Dorothy’s eye view. With them, we chase some crazy cloud patterns to a wholesome small town where the high school graduation ceremony is about to take place – RIGHT IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST!

But wait? Where’s Donny, the assistant principal’s troubled son? He snuck off to film an environmental video with the girl of his dreams at that old abandoned warehouse – RIGHT IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST!

When there are this many tornadoes, there are lots of bellies.

Director Steven Quale’s storm scenes do look great. It’s just his relentless attempts to find a reason to put his characters in harm’s way that get a bit tedious.

He hasn’t exactly drawn on a cast that elevates the material. You’ve got that kid from iCarly (Nathan Kress), the dead (and not walking) wife from Walking Dead (Sarah Wayne Callies), and a full sized Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage, heroic as ever), none of whom particularly impresses.

Matt Walsh does, though, and not in a good way. Here’s a guy with a lifetime of excellent comedic character work under his belt, but a dramatic character arc – even a painfully obvious one – is still pretty far out of his reach.

But Into the Storm is not about weakly written characters or underperforming actors. It’s about living life for today. It’s about trusting your kids and appreciating what you have. It’s about the resilience of the human spirit. It’s about sharkin’!

Oh,wait…

You know what? At least Sharknado wasn’t boring.

 

Verdict-1-5-Stars

 

 

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Frothy Summer Concoction

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The Hundred-Foot Journey

by Hope Madden

I did not have high hopes for this movie about a young Indian cook and his family, who open a restaurant 100 feet from a famous bastion of French cuisine.

Director Lasse Hallstrom’s output has primarily offered superficial romance, trite drama and cheesecloth since What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. And the media blitz about producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg says “sledgehammer of sentimentality” to me. Plus, it’s made by Disney, who Slumdogged it up earlier this summer with the tastefully offensive Million Dollar Arm.

But there are two glimmers of hope.

Writer Steven Knight is not faultless, but when he’s on, he is brilliant. (Please see Eastern Promises, Dirty Pretty Things, Locke. Seriously, please see them.) So there’s that.

And any script can be made better when it falls into the hands of the incomparable Helen Mirren. You saw RED, right?

And basically, The Hundred-Foot Journey is an exact sum of its parts. The frothy concoction offers seductive visuals, feel-good cultural blending, trite drama, a script that sneaks in some subtle but bright jabs at France’s recent history of violent racism as well as the high octane competition of haute cuisine, and a gem of a performance by Mirren.

Watching young Hassan (Manish Dayal) struggle with his natural cooking instincts, the culture clash his life has become, and his romantic interest in a rival sous chef pales when compared to the boisterous, enchanting battle of wills between Mirren’s Madame Mallory and Hassan’s father (Om Puri). These two acting veterans are as flavorful and tempting as any of the dishes simmering onscreen, and the film weakens whenever the story pulls away from them.

Hassan’s romantic subplot fails to deliver any heat, and when the film follows him out of town, you can’t help but feel you’re biding your time until your next visit to Pop and M. Mallory.

It’s being called Slumdog Millionaire meets Ratatouille, which isn’t far from the mark. Adapted from Richard Morias’s charming summer read, the film is as sweet as it is harmless. For foodies and folks looking for the cinematic version of a poolside paperback, The Hundred-Foot Journey delivers. If you’re seeking something with a little artistic nutrition, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

Fright Club, Slider

August Fright Club: An Ohio Premier!

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Join us Friday, August 22nd for the next installment of Fright Club – now at 9:00 pm! The earlier start time should allow us to discuss the film after the screening. Prizes and fun before start time, too!

This month we proudly present the Ohio premier of Calvaire (The Ordeal), a bizarre and terrifying trip into madness!

Join us!

Outtakes

Countdown: Summer of SciFi!

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The summer of 2014 crapped forth yet another Transformers movie, so it shoulders that shame. But otherwise, it hasn’t been such a crummy season, especially if you are fan of science fiction. The season began a little early, back in April, with Scarlett Johansson’s hypnotic alien abduction poem Under the Skin. But come the hot weather, Hollywood kicked into high gear with few disappointments. Here are the best of the season.

5. X Men: Days of Future Past

Matthew Vaughn’s 2011 re-envisioning of this franchise worked miracles, thanks to an inspired rewrite of history and an even better cast. It was worrisome when the next in this line fell back to Bryan Singer, whose spotty cinematic output in the last decade suggested he may not be the man for the job. But, he proved game for the challenge, bringing the best of one X Men world (Hugh Jackman, obviously) together with the best of the throwback generation (everyone, basically: Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and James McAvoy) for a time travel bit of wizardry, shape shifting and Seventies references. Hearing Fassbender quote James Brown is alone worth the price of admission.

4. Edge of Tomorrow

Why didn’t anyone see this gem? Aliens meets Groundhog Day may seem like a weird pitch, but good Lord is it entertaining! Tom Cruise may irritate many, but he brings it to a role that requires a complete reimagining of character by the time the credits role. Beyond that, he throws some unexpected and much appreciated humor at us while he relives the same horrendous day again and again in the hopes of finding a way to defeat an invading army of aliens. He has the help of Emily Blunt, and he – and we – should be grateful. In what amounts to the Sigourney Weaver role, Blunt flat out amazes. She has never turned in a weak performance, but who saw action hero in her future?

3. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

It would have been hard to outdo 2011’s surprise hit Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but director Matt Reeves (Let Me In, Cloverfield) does just that. Though his sequel offers less intimacy and heartbreak, it takes the story of our quickly evolving simian cousins to an epic, even Shakespearean level. Remaining ever neutral in what amounts to a political thriller, Reeves never abandons the energy and imagery of a blockbuster, combining the two approaches to create an exceptionally entertaining whole.

2. Guardians of the Galaxy

Director James Gunn does Marvel fans right with one of the year’s most fun rides. Gunn nails the tone, the color, the imagery, and the sound of one Earthling dartin’ about space scavenging, smooching, and basically living the dream. The effortlessly likeable Chris Pratt leads a film, joined by ragtag misfits who collectively become the most enjoyable team of intergallactic scoundrels since Han Solo piloted the Falcon. This is the definition of a great summer movie.

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

1. Snowpiercer

An immediate dystopian classic although badly under marketed, Snowpiercer went on to become the most buzzed about film of the summer, and with good reason. Visionary direction from Joon-ho Bong (The Host, Mother) gave the film a dizzyingly claustrophobic tension, while brazen casting victories (Oh my God, Tilda Swinton) and another solid lead turn from Chris Evans work together to create an enthralling allegory of the makers and the takers.

Fright Club

The Snowtown Murders

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The Snowtown Murders (2011)

Very quietly, Australia is putting out some of the most troublingly honest films on earth, The Snowtown Murders among them.

First time filmmaker Justin Kurzel’s movie bears more than a passing resemblance to 2010 Aussie import Animal Kingdom. Both boast unreasonably realistic performances focused on Australia’s seedier side; both examine one family’s functional disregard for the law; both hinge on the relationship between a charismatic psychopath and a quiet, wayward teen.

But Kurzel’s film, unfortunately, mines a true story.

John Bunting tortured and killed eleven people during his spree in South Australia in the Nineties. We only watch it happen once on film, but that’s more than enough.

The director seems less interested in the lurid details of Bunting’s brutal violence than he is in the complicated and alarming nature of complicity. Ironically, this less-is-more approach may be why the movie leaves you so shaken.

An unflinching examination of a predator swimming among prey, Snowtown succeeds where many true crime films fail because of its understatement, its casual observational style, and its unsettling authenticity. More than anything, though, the film excels due to one astounding performance.

Daniel Henshall cuts an unimpressive figure on screen – a round-faced, smiling schlub. But he brings Bunting an amiability and confrontational fearlessness that provides insight into what draws people to a sadistic madman.

There’s not a false note in his chilling turn, nor in the atmosphere Kurzel creates of a population aching for a man – any adult male to care for them, protect them and tell them what to do.

Once he has the trust of his neighbors in this low-income suburb, Bunting picks and chooses: who dies, who helps, who lives another day. What begins as exceedingly brutal neighborhood vigilantism turns quickly to a sort of thinning of the herd, and eventually to simple, unfathomably horrific entertainment.

The Snowtown Murders is a slow boil, and painfully tense. It’s hard to watch and harder to believe, but as a film, it offers a powerful image of everyday evil that will be hard to shake.

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Slacker Turned Oscar Contender

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Boyhood

by Hope Madden

With an effort that proves Richard Linklater to be indefinable as an artist even as it feels a natural evolution of his best work, Boyhood is a movie like no other.

Linklater filmed his low key opus over twelve years, pulling cast and crew back together for a few days each year to check back in on Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) and their parents to see how things are hanging.

And that’s it. We participate in every year of Mason’s childhood, from Grade 1 to his freshman year in college. It’s not the big events, either, but the seemingly innocuous moments that, in sum, define a childhood.

Linklater’s genius has always been his generosity and patience with his cast and  his mastery in observing the small event. Many of his films feel as if they are moving of their own accord and he’s simply there to capture it, letting the story unveil its own meaning and truth. The Before series offers obvious examples, but much of his work, from Slacker and Dazed and Confused onward, benefits from a casual observational style.

Never has he allowed this perception to define a film quite as entirely or as eloquently as he does in Boyhood. With the collaborative narrative Linklater sets a tone that is as close to reality as any film has managed. It’s both sweeping and precise, with Linklater’s deceptively loose structure strengthened by his near flawless editing and use of music to transition from one year to the next. He’s the surest bet so far for an Oscar in directing, and his film is the strongest contender yet for best picture.

For his cast, Linklater returned to regular contributor Ethan Hawke, whose performance as Mason’s somewhat flaky father marks the best work the actor’s ever done. Equally wonderful is Patricia Arquette with the meatier role of Mason’s mother, a loving if flawed matriarch. Linklater’s own daughter Lorelei also impresses and absolutely entertains as the boy’s sister.

Importantly, though our primary vehicle through this childhood is Mason, we come to truly know all these characters. None is given short shrift, and each is entirely fascinating in their own right.

But the film succeeds or fails with Coltrane, and Linklater owes a debt to the movie gods for this bit of casting. What a wonderful, fascinating, tender character the young actor carves out of this experience. With nary a false note, he carries us through the unforgettably familiar and authentic moments of insecurity, love, heartbreak, longing and confusion that mark childhood.

It’s a breathtakingly understated and authentic turn, perfect for the only film of its kind.

 

Verdict-5-0-Stars