American remakes of great foreign films aren’t always a letdown (The Ring actually improved upon Ringu), but the track record is not good.
Secret in Their Eyes does little to reverse the trend.
If you haven’t seen Argentina’s El Secreto de sus ojos, the 2010 Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Film, then writer/director Billy Ray’s adaptation can stand alone as a serviceable thriller with a stellar cast.
Chiwetel Ejiofor is Ray Karsten, an investigator who remains haunted by an unsolved murder from 13 years earlier, and by some lingering feelings for his former co-worker Claire (Nicole Kidman).
Just four months after 9/11, a young woman’s body was found in a dumpster, right beside a mosque suspected of harboring terrorist activity. To Karsten’s horror, the victim was the daughter of his colleague Jess (Julia Roberts), and the killer was never brought to justice.
Now, after years of pouring through mugshots each night, Karsten returns to Jess, and to Claire, with hopes of re-opening the case.
One of the many beautiful qualities of the original film was how it juggled the years and storylines intermittently but equally, poignantly layering the gritty crime drama with the wistful pangs of unrequited love. There’s more than one secret at work here, but Ray’s vision can’t view them as equals.
His cast is certainly game, especially Roberts, who digs in to Jess’s heartbreak with ferocity. She and Ejiofor make ID’ing Jess’s daughter utterly devastating and the film’s emotional high point, which shouldn’t come so early.
Ray, who’s more seasoned as a writer (Captain Phillips, The Hunger Games) than director (Shattered Glass), pushes too hard in almost all directions, from xenophobic paranoia to the obstacles coming between Karsten and Claire. His pacing feels rushed, and his attempt to re-create the original film’s eye-popping sports stadium chase fizzles out quickly.
Many of the changes Ray makes to the core story are curious but acceptable, as you wait to see how he approaches that knockout finale. Once it hits, the feeling is more like a gut punch.
Emotional resonance is replaced with lets-go-one-better excess, as if American audiences couldn’t accept any finale without a clearly drawn morality, for fear a dark beauty might follow them home.
What Ray omits from the conclusion is nearly as criminal as what he adds, and his film ultimately wears an unwelcome irony. These characters remind us more than once that “passion always wins,” and it’s passion that needs to drive them.
But just when Secret in Their Eyes needs it most, when both storylines are converging in a deserving payoff, it cops out, and a glorious passion play becomes a common exercise in obligation.
It was fun spending the apocalypse with Seth Rogen and his friends, so why not Christmas?
The Night Before gives you that chance. Isaac (Rogen) and BFF Chris (Anthony Mackie) have spent Christmas Eve with Ethan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) every year since his parents died. They have the same routine, hit the same spots, seek the same elusive party. But the tradition’s getting a little pathetic as the trio heads into their mid-thirties, so this is their last holiday hurrah.
It’s a lame set-up about embracing adulthood without abandoning your true friends, but there’s magical Christmas weed and a slew of hilarious cameos, so maybe things will work out OK?
JGL is reliably likeable, Rogen is – well, you know what you get with him. Mackie is no comic genius and his performance feels a bit too broad. But the secret here is in the supporting players.
Jillian Bell is characteristically hilarious, as is Broad City’s Ilana Glazer, but the way Michael Shannon walks away with scenes is tantamount to larceny. He doesn’t do a lot of comedy (unless you count that sorority girl’s letter online), but his deadpan performance is easily the highlight of the film.
It’s hard to tell whether the film is too silly or not silly enough. It has its laughs, raunchy though they are, but the adventure feels simultaneously slapped together and formulaic.
Director Jonathan Levine (50/50) and his team of writers (including Evan Goldberg, natch) dip a toe in schmaltz rather than investing at all in actual character development, preferring to string together episodes of goofball fun.
The zany misadventures aren’t enough to carry the film, and lacking depth of character creates a “holiday spirit” climax that is tough to care about.
The Catholic Church sex abuse scandal – phenomenon, really – is a difficult cinematic subject to handle with integrity. It is so overwhelming in scope, in horror, in tragedy, in sociological impact and culpability that a clear eye and an even hand in storytelling can be almost impossible. Luckily, filmmaker Tom McCarthy chose to tackle the topic with his magnificent film Spotlight.
His inroad is the 2002 Boston Globe story that exposed systemic, generations-long abuses in Boston and the surrounding areas. With understated grace and attention to the minutia of journalism, Spotlight sidesteps melodrama at every turn, never glorifying its reporters or wallowing in the lurid.
A superb ensemble – Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schrieber, Brian d’Arcy James, John Slattery, Billy Crudup, and Stanley Tucci – draw you into a film with more insight than could reasonably be expected from its two hour running time.
An outsider (Schrieber) takes the helm of the Globe and wonders why the paper hasn’t spent more time on an allegation of priest pedophilia. As he learns how tough it can be to be an interloper in Boston, his native reporting team faces similar problems. But they take on the story, uncovering something so widespread and so high level it’s hard to fathom.
How did it happen? Why would these children allow it and why would they and their families keep quiet? How did the church keep it quiet? How widespread is it? Why are there so many predators in the priesthood? How exactly did such an epidemic go unreported and unaddressed for so very long?
McCarthy, writing with Josh Singer (The Fifth Estate), offers thoughtful consideration to the suffering, the cover-up, and the general societal culpability. “If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a village to abuse one.”
Spotlight also poignantly grieves the loss of faith – the inability to separate faith from institution – that haunts not only the victims, but those confronted with the systemic cover-up and enabling of the abuse.
After a couple of questionable turns (The Cobbler, for instance), it’s great to see this excellent filmmaker back at the top of his game. This is as observant a film as you will find, delicately crafted and brimming with sincere, multi-dimensional performances. It is required viewing.
I roll my eyes as much as the next guy at these obligatory two-part blockbuster finales, but as Mockingjay Part 2 brings The Hunger Games saga to a close, it might be time to reconsider.
A combo with Part 1 for an overlong single film was certainly possible, but the odyssey of Katniss Everdeen wouldn’t feel quite as complete. What began as entertaining “young adult” fare has evolved into a franchise that’s unafraid to take on some very mature themes.
Director Francis Lawrence, who has helmed the films since Catching Fire (still the standout in the series), is back, and we pick up with Katniss still recovering from her attack by a brainwashed Peeta (Josh Hutcherson).
Rebel leaders Coin (Julianne Moore) and Plutarch (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) want to use Katniss’s status as the Mockingjay for mostly symbolic effect…but c’mon, our girl ain’t gonna sit still for all show and no go!
Katniss wants the head of President Snow (Donald Sutherland), so she and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) sneak off with a battle unit and head for the Capitol. A de-programmed Peeta joins as well, but can he be trusted? Can anyone?
Per usual, J. Lawrence is in complete command of her character, never allowing a misstep along Katniss’s journey from scrappy upstart to badass warrior. She has made the transition seem effortless and completely authentic, confirming again that Lawrence remains one of the most talented actors in film.
The “love triangle” with Gale and Peeta remains muted among the film’s heady matters, which seems all the more appropriate when the few scenes addressing it land with an unfamiliar thud. Sure, Katniss makes the obvious choice, but she’s got more pressing matters.
From the start, F. Lawrence establishes Mockingjay 2 as a film that embraces the bleak. The mood is boldly dark, and Lawrence makes sure it has time to sink in before unleashing the fireworks. But once the group decides to avoid Snow’s traps by heading underground, well, hang on to your butts.
It’s entertaining, tense, even downright scary, but it also wants to matter. This is a war film, and it doesn’t back down from the moral ambiguities and social atrocities that come with the territory. As the aftermath of recent events in Paris continues to play out, there is a conscience here that will feel especially timely.
And, sadly, the end of The Hunger Games also marks Hoffman’s final film appearance. Though the scenes most affected by his untimely death are fairly evident, his exit, like that of this franchise, is handled with the grace and poignancy of a truly fond farewell.
The film drops you into a world you would be hard-pressed to even imagine and finds a story that is both bright and beautiful despite itself. It’s the story of a young woman, held captive inside a shed, and her 5-year-old son, who’s never been outside of “room.”
Never lurid for even a moment, both restrained and urgently raw, the film benefits most from the potentially catastrophic choice to tell the story from the child’s perspective. And here is the miracle of Room: without ever becoming precious or maudlin or syrupy, with nary a single false note or hint of contrivance, the boy’s point of view fills the story with love and wonder. It gives the proceedings a resilience, and lacking that, a film on this subject so authentically told could become almost too much to bear.
Director Lenny Abrahamson (Frank) creates yet another meticulously crafted, lived-in world – a world that should look like nothing we have ever seen or could ever imagine, and yet manages to resonate with beautifully universal touches. He is absolutely blessed with two magnificent leads and one wonderful supporting turn.
The undeniably talented Brie Larson gives a career-defining performance as Ma. On her face she wears the weariness, desperation, and surprising flashes of joy that believably create a character few of us could even imagine. She conjures emotions so tumultuous as to be nearly impossible to create, but does it with rawness that feels almost too real.
Veteran Joan Allen is the normalizing presence, and her characteristically nuanced turn gives the film its needed second act emotional anchor.
Surrounded as he is by exceptional talent, it is young Jacob Tremblay who ensures that the film won’t soon be forgotten. Where did Abrahamson find such a natural performer? Because an awful lot rests on those wee shoulders, and it’s the sincerity in this performance that keeps you utterly, breathlessly riveted every minute, and also bathes an otherwise grim tale in beauty and hope.
Visual showman Corin Hardy has a bit of trickery up his sleeve. His directorial debut The Hallow, for all its superficiality and its recycled horror tropes, offers a tightly wound bit of terror in the ancient Irish wood.
Adam (Joseph Mawle) and Clare (Bojana Novakovic) move, infant Finn in tow, from London to the isolated woods of Ireland so Adam can study a tract of forest the government hopes to sell off to privatization. But the woods don’t take kindly to the encroachment and the interlopers will pay for trespassing.
What’s in the woods and why is it so angry?
“An occupied people forced into hiding by fire and iron,” explains a friendly Irish policemen to the Brit couple helping to sell off Erin’s ancient forests.
Openly influenced by Evil Dead, The Shining, The Thing, and Straw Dogs, among others, the film rarely feels stale for all its rehash. Hardy borrows and spit-shines, but the final amalgamation takes on such a faery tale quality that it generally works. (Except for that Necronomicon-esque book – that’s just a rip off.)
Hardy has a real knack for visual storytelling. His inky forests are both suffocating and isolating with a darkness that seeps into every space in Adam and Clare’s lives. He’s created an atmosphere of malevolence, but the film does not rely on atmosphere alone.
Though all the cliché elements are there – a young couple relocates to an isolated wood to be warned off by angry locals with tales of boogeymen – the curve balls Hardy throws will keep you unnerved and guessing.
A lot of the scares require very little visual effect – one early bit where Adam is knocked into the trunk of his car while something claws and bangs at the door toward his screaming infant is particularly nerve wracking. Still, Hardy’s joy and real gift is in the creature feature half of the film.
The magical folk of the Hallow – “faeries, banshees, and baby stealers” – have a look that is unique, appropriately woodsy, and immensely creepy. And just when you think the film’s reached its peak with this back woods monster mash, Hardy takes a sharp turn with a deeply felt emotional plot twist.
The political allegory doesn’t really pan out; Clare, though well performed, is entirely one-dimensional; the mythology of the sludge, while cool, doesn’t clearly fit with the monsters; and why in the hell do the rest of the natives stay?!
That’s a lot to ponder, but Hardy – magician that he is – will keep you so interested with relentless pacing and horror wonder that you won’t even notice.
!Dios mio! There are so many exceptional Spanish language horror films, it was hard to choose just 5 – so we didn’t! Whether it’s a Mexican director working in Spain, a Cuban zombiepocalypse, or ghosts, zombies, mad doctors or madder clowns, we have you covered with our fuzzy math salute to el cine de los muertos.
6. Juan of the Dead (2011)
By 2011, finding a zombie film with something new to say was pretty difficult, but writer/director/Cuban Alejandro Bruges managed to do just that with his bloody political satire Juan of the Dead.
First, what a kick ass title. Honestly, that’s a lot to live up to, begging the comparison of Dawn’s scathing social commentary and Shaun’s ingenious wit. Juan more than survives this comparison.
Breathtakingly and unapologetically Cuban, the film shadows Juan and his pals as they reconfigure their longtime survival instincts to make the most of Cuba’s zombie infestation. It’s a whole new approach to the zombiepocalypse and it’s entirely entertaining.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrKJvX7mjg
5. The Devil’s Backbone (2001)
Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone unravels a spectral mystery during Spain’s civil war. The son of a fallen comrade finds himself in an isolated orphanage that has its own troubles to deal with, now that the war is coming to a close and the facility’s staff sympathized with the wrong side. That leaves few resources to help him with a bully, a sadistic handyman, or the ghost of a little boy he keeps seeing.
Backbone is a slow burn as interested in atmosphere and character development as it is in the tragedy of a generation of war orphans. This is ripe ground for a haunted tale, and del Toro’s achievement is both contextually beautiful – war, ghost stories, religion and communism being equally incomprehensible to a pack of lonely boys – and elegantly filmed.
Touching, political, brutal, savvy, and deeply spooky, Backbone separated del Toro from the pack of horror filmmakers and predicted his potential as a director of substance.
4. The Skin I Live In (2011)
In 2011, the great Pedro Almodovar created something like a cross between Eyes Without a Face and Lucky McGee’s The Woman, with all the breathtaking visual imagery and homosexual overtones you can expect from an Almodovar project.
The film begs for the least amount of summarization because every slow reveal is placed so perfectly within the film, and to share it in advance is to rob you of the joy of watching. Antonio Banderas gives a lovely, restrained performance as Dr. Robert Ledgard, and Elena Anaya and Marisa Paredes are spectacular.
Not a frame is wasted, not a single visual is placed unconsciously. Dripping with symbolism, the film takes a pulpy and ridiculous story line and twists it into something marvelous to behold. Don’t dismiss this as a medical horror film. Pay attention – not just to catch the clues as the story unfolds, but more importantly, to catch the bigger picture Almodovar is creating.
3. [Rec] (2007)
Found footage horror at its best, [Rec] shares one cameraman’s film of the night he and a reporter tagged along with a local fire department. Bad, bad things will happen.
The squad gets a call from an urban apartment building where one elderly tenant keeps screaming. No sooner do the paramedics and news crew realize they’ve stepped into a dangerous situation than the building is sealed off and power is cut. Suddenly we’re trapped in the dark inside a building with about fifteen people, some of them ill, some of them bleeding, some of them biting.
The found footage approach never feels tired – at first, he’s documenting his story, then he’s using the only clear view in the darkened building. The point of view allows [Rec] a lean, mean funhouse experience.
2. The Last Circus (2010)
Who’s in the mood for something weird?
Unhinged Spanish filmmaker Alex de la Iglesia offers The Last Circus, a breathtakingly bizarre look at a Big Top love triangle set in Franco’s Spain.
Describing the story in much detail would risk giving away too many of the astonishing images. A boy loses his performer father to conscription in Spain’s civil war, and decades later, with Franco’s reign’s end in sight, he follows in pop’s clown-sized footsteps and joins the circus. There he falls for another clown’s woman, and stuff gets nutty.
Iglesia’s direction slides from sublime, black and white surrealist history to something else entirely. Acts 2 and 3 evolve into something gloriously grotesque – a sideshow that mixes political metaphor with carnival nightmare.
The Last Circus boasts more than brilliantly wrong-minded direction and stunningly macabre imagery – though of these things it certainly boasts. Within that bloody and perverse chaos are some of the more touching performances to be found onscreen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM2corZvDTI
1. The Orphanage (2007)
Sometimes a throwback is the most refreshing kind of film. Spain’s The Orphanage offers just that fresh breath with a haunted house tale that manages to be familiar and surprising and, most importantly, spooky.
Laura (Belén Rueda) and her husband reopen the orphanage where she grew up, with the goal of running a house for children with special needs – children like her adopted son, Simón, who is HIV positive. But Simón’s new imaginary friends worry Laura, and when he disappears it looks like she may be imagining things herself.
One of the film’s great successes is its ability to take seriously both the logical, real world story line, and the supernatural one. Rueda carries the film with a restrained urgency – hysterical only when necessary, focused at all times, and absolutely committed to this character, who may or may not be seeing ghosts.
A good ghost story is hard to find. Apparently you have to look in Spain.
A bruised, muscular romanticism – a nostalgia for a hipper, more rebellious and gorgeous reality – informs Jake Hoffman’s Asthma.
The beautifully damaged Gus (Benedict Samuel) can’t claim a place in the generic uniformity of the modern world. He longs for the grittier and richer reality he believes came and went before his time. So he steals a Rolls, picks up the girl he admires, and attempts the kind of tragically restless road trip you might find in a Godard film.
All of which would feel precious were it not for erratic but solid performances, and a revelation that unveils Gus as the poseur we knew he was. Surprisingly, Hoffman and Samuel are able to mine that late-film revelation to connect the lead with the ordinary Joe in the audience, and still make his troubles resonate because of the genuine pain in the performance.
For all the film’s showy quirks – Nick Nolte, for instance, is the voice of Gus’s Guardian Angel/Wolfman – Hoffman’s abrupt manner with both camera and soundtrack keep things from feeling frivolous or pretentious.
The slew of peculiar folk Gus meets along his journey nearly chokes any hint of authenticity from Asthma, although the great (and appropriate) Iggy Pop is like a needed and timely punch in the gut to a film just about to topple over with its own quirkiness.
For a hyper-masculine road-type-picture, Asthma boasts a surprisingly nuanced female lead. Yes, Krysten Ritter’s Ruby looks like the typical off-beat beauty, and her character is certainly the right combination of naughty and nice to fit the bill, but Ritter never lets the character off too easy. She makes poor decisions, kicks herself for them, hardens, and moves on – all with a grace that feels of this time and of another.
There’s an addiction theme that threatens to hold the film together, give it purpose and drive, but often feels like the least authentic piece of the movie. Without it, though, Asthma too often comes off as a nostalgic riff on another era’s nostalgic riffs.
Hoffman’s a confident first time filmmaker with a product that is great to look if purposeless – kind of like Gus.
Not exactly a novel concept, but one you can expect to find at the multiplex this time of year, so if nothing else, Love the Coopers is punctual.
As Christmas approaches, longtime married couple Charlotte and Sam Cooper (Diane Keaton and John Goodman) have decided to split, but Sam has promised to keep quiet about it until the family has enjoyed one last “perfect” Holiday together.
But as they ready their Pittsburgh home for guests, things are far from perfect.
Their son Hank (Ed Helms) is divorced and now, suddenly jobless. Resentful daughter Eleanor (Olivia Wilde) is bringing home a fake boyfriend (Jake Lacey) just to shut her parents up. Grandpa (Alan Arkin) is upset because his favorite waitress at the diner (Amanda Seyfreid) is moving away. Aunt Fishy (June Squibb) is having memory lapses, while Charlotte’s sister Emma (Marisa Tomei) just got arrested and is trying to psycho-analyze Officer Williams (Anthony Mackie) from the back of a police car.
The big disadvantage with this formula is that as the cast of characters grows, so does the necessity of quality writing to make any of them impactful. Steven Rogers provides a script that’s pleasant enough, but it can’t resonate any more than a random sampling of Hallmark cards.
Love the Coopers wants us to slow down, live each moment, and take the time to appreciate life.
It is a sweet sentiment, truly, but told in an obvious and often contrived manner, right down to the obligatory foul-mouthed little kid (Blake Baumgartner) and reaction-shot dog. Well worn themes can still be vital, but that usually results from less telling and more showing, an approach which doesn’t seem to interest director Jessie Nelson (I Am Sam).
Instead, she invites you over for a likable cast serving up harmlessly disposable Holiday fare.
Love the Coopers? Not really, but The Coopers Are Okay I Guess didn’t seem quite wonderful enough for this time of year.
My All American is the story of an underdog college football player who became an inspiration. It was written and directed by the same guy who wrote Hoosiers, which begs the question: did the guy who wrote Hoosiers get hit in the head or something?
Angelo Pizzo also penned the script for Rudy, so this true life story finds him in a familiar neighborhood.
In the 1960s, Freddie Steinmark was an undersized Colorado high school standout who found himself passed over by most college football programs due to his stature. Legendary coach Darrell Royal gave Steinmark a chance with a full scholarship to the University of Texas, and Steinmark worked his way to team leader before chronic pain led to a cancer diagnosis.
Sports movies often come pre-loaded with inherent cliches, but Hoosiers and, to a slightly lesser extent, Rudy, overcame them by avoiding sweeping generalities to embrace smaller moments with finely drawn characters. My All American takes the opposite approach.
You’d be tempted to pin the anomaly on this being Rizzo’s first try at directing, if the script itself wasn’t equally culpable.
There’s no depth at all here, just one-note characters, swelling music and soaring shots of football stadiums.
Finn Wittrock (Unbroken, American Horror Story) is passable as Steinmark, but he’s saddled with a role that is more saint than flesh and blood. We learn in the introduction that Steinmark was never named an All American at Texas, yet the film paints him as perhaps the greatest player to ever suit up. Rizzo gives Wittrock no edges to make Steinmark’s influence resonate, and the multiple times other players tell Freddie “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you,” carry zero weight.
As Coach Royal, Aaron Eckhart proves adept at walking into a room, putting his hands on his hips, and exclaiming, “Men…”
Subtlety takes a beating on the field as well. As Coach Royal debuts the innovative triple option (aka “wishbone”) offense in 1968, his starting quarterback struggles with the unusual formation. Royal makes a QB change and the offense instantly takes off, prompting the game announcer to explain, “I guess they just needed the right quarterback to make the triple option work!”
That’s right, Jim, and that water they have on the sideline sure looks wet.
No doubt Steinmark’s is a story worth telling, but My All American needs more from Jimmy Chitwood’s playbook.
