Join us this Friday night for the next Fright Club meeting! This month we celebrate the long horror tradition of hillbilly carnage with the ecstatic, hilarious bloodshed of Tucker and Dale Versus Evil!
All posts by maddwolf
Praising Caesar
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
by Hope Madden
You can officially forget Dr. Zaius. In fact, if you think Rupert Wyatt’s impressive Rise of the Planet of the Apes from 2011 was the best that particular series could possibly do, you can forget that, too. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is an evolution to a far superior breed of film artistically, visually and emotionally.
The devastating truths of prejudice, bias, fear and powerlust are the foundational planks of any great piece of political theater, dating back to Shakespeare (fittingly) and before. Director Matt Reeves (Let Me In, Cloverfield), along with his team of writers, respects this. It is respect for the content that elevated the previous installment so far above franchise efforts as well as audience expectations.
With that respect and those expectations now established, Reeves picks up Wyatt’s themes and expands them with breathtaking expertise. The Simian Flu – the virus that gave Caesar (Andy Serkis) and other lab apes exceeding intelligence – proved catastrophic to the human population. Ten years after the outbreak and the “incident on the Golden Gate Bridge”, the apes are thriving in their own society in a forest beyond the city. Meanwhile, what’s left of the city’s human population struggles to survive.
Wisely, Reeves doesn’t pick sides, and in leaving judgment behind we’re able to see this thrilling Man V Ape escapade for its larger historical and human relevance.
These elements coursing beneath the surface of his film help to explain its profound impact, but it’s what’s layered on top that thrills.
In utterly stunning 3D, Reeves fills the expanse of his screen with fascinating and startling images, action sequences and set pieces at once familiar and unlike anything else unspooling this summer. Once again, you forget that half the drama before you erupts between CGI images and trained animals – the image is that true, the drama that compelling.
Dawn is as convincing on every front, even when it has no business succeeding. It is so loud, brutal, and committed to its premise that you cannot but surrender to the chaos. Equally successful as summer blockbuster and political allegory, the film is as well written in both arenas as any you will find.
Darker, more intense and deeply satisfying, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes takes a good thing and makes it better.
Head Games
Borgman
by George Wolf
Before hitting the theater for this one, get your head right, because Borgman is gonna mess with it.
Writer/director Alex van Warmerdam delivers a surreal, nightmarish, sometimes darkly comical fable guaranteed to keep you off balance. It is meticulously crafted and deliberately paced, a minefield of psychological torment.
Jan Bijvoet is quietly riveting as Camiel Borgman, a vagrant on the run from a group of armed men who have discovered his impressive underground hideout. Fleeing through the woods, Camiel comes upon the home of an affluent family and reaches out for assistance.
The moment the front door is opened, the family begins to lose control of their lives.
Borgman is the Netherlands official selection for this year’s Academy Awards, and last year it became the first Dutch movie accepted to Cannes Film Festival in nearly four decades. A little background in European folklore will help to understand Camiel’s unusual behavior, and the effect he has on unsuspecting targets.
Still, don’t expect any concrete answers. van Warmerdam channels Michael Haneke but becomes even more cryptic, to a degree that occasionally threatens to derail the film’s compelling nature.
But the skills of all involved ultimately win the day. van Warmerdam offsets his mysterious script with assured, thoughtful direction, buoyed by a fine ensemble cast and crisp, sometimes remarkable cinematography.
Like its title character, Borgman is unique and hypnotic, leaving you with so many different feelings you won’t be quite sure which one is right.
This Queue Is Mean..and Funny!
The underappreciated and underseen comedy Bad Words gets a fresh chance at an audience, releasing today on DVD. In his directorial debut, Jason Bateman plays a terrible man but an excellent speller in a squeamishly hilarious film that won’t cater to predictability or common decency. Bateman’s direction – like his film – is lean and mean. Bad Words is not for the sensitive or easily offended, but for the rest of us, it’s a refreshing piece of nastiness.
Need more jocularity at the expense of children? Why not dust off that ol’ Yule Tide classic Bad Santa? Madman Terry Zwigoff directs the most irreverent, mean and hilarious holiday film of all time,thanks in large part to flawless performances from Billy Bob Thornton, Bernie Mac, Cloris Leachman, Tony Cox, John Ritter, and of course Brett Kelly as Thurman Murman (“That’s your name?”). This screenplay bends to no one, but the film is an absolute classic of wrong, wrong comedy.
Countdown: Guilty Pleasures of the Eighties
Hope is hosting a Girls Night Out event at Studio Movie Grill Arena Grand this Wednesday with a celebration of that great Eighties guilty pleasure, Footloose. That’s right, the epic about a town that has outlawed dancing! Well not if Kevin Bacon and his wifebeater have anything to say about it! Let’s hear it for the boy!
In case you have a hankerin’ for other of the great cheese decade’s guilty pleasures, we’ve put together a countdown of some of our favorites.
5. Monster Squad (1987)
Who remembers this one? A bunch of pre-adolescent monster movie nerds uncover a plot by Dracula and his minions to find an amulet (it’s always an amulet) and take over the world. Very Goonies-esque, with its band of misfits on a parent-free adventure, but less annoying, and with more monsters – always a plus!
4. Better Off Dead (1985)
The greatest offbeat Eighties heartthrob John Cusack stars as a dumped teen Lane Myers, who just wants to kill himself. Instead, he is bullied into a ski-off and stalked by his newspaperboy. It’s a ridiculous little comedy that both lampoons and celebrates its genre while throwing as many utterly bizarre sight gags at the screen as its 97 minute running time can handle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWTouGjZt6A
3. RoboCop (1987)
Paul Verhoeven infuses a weird sense of humor into one of the greatEighties exploitation features, about a dystopian Detroit and the part man/part machine/part repressed memories cop who will rid the city of crime. It’s an outstanding premise, brought to gloriously over-the-top life by Peter Weller as the titanium-and-kevlar crime fighter and Kurtwood Smith, always outstanding in a badass role.
2. Dirty Dancing (1987)
No way this movie should have worked as well as it did. Credit surprisingly insightful humor and a charmingly awkward performance by Jennifer Grey – not to mention Patrick Swayze’s smooth moves – for a good girl/bad boy romance that overcomes some of its predictable trappings and many of its dialog pitfalls to leave us with a giddy fun mash note to romance.
1. The Lost Boys (1987)
The mullets, the pseudo-goth soundtrack, the Coreys – director Joel Schumacher’s only watchable film represents the very height of all things 80s. He spins a yarn of Santa Carla, a town with a perpetual coastal carnival and the nation’s highest murder rate. A roving band of cycle-riding vampires haunts the carnival and accounts for the carnage. While hottie Michael (Jason Patric) is being seduced into the demon brethren, younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) teams up with local goofballs the Frog brothers (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) to stake all bloodsuckers. The film is mediocre at best, but anything that screams 1987 quite this loudly is just too garishly compelling to ignore.
The Original Gonzo Artist
For No Good Reason
by George Wolf
Hunter S. Thompson advised Ralph Steadman not to be a writer, warning him it would only “bring shame on your family.”
Though Steadman wrote anyway, he gained fame through his frequent artistic collaborations with Thompson, providing the unique and provocative illustrations that meshed perfectly with Thompson’s unique and provocative writing.
Steadman gets his due in For No Good Reason, a satisfying documentary of a renowned artist still grappling with his own legacy.
Director Charlie Paul, in his first feature, employs an arresting visual style to complement the tale of how a man and his art evolved. Narrator/host Johnny Depp takes us into Steadman’s studio, where we see the process of crafting artwork which, Steadman says, can turn into “something quite savage…you would see the work, and think about it.”
Though there’s also some great archival footage of Steadman and Thompson in their glory days, the film sometimes has trouble remembering who the subject of the documentary really is (Depp’s frequent presence doesn’t help). When the focus stays on Steadman, he’s revealed to be a fascinating visionary in his own right, someone who Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner describes as “much more courageous” than Thompson himself.
Courageous enough even to ignore his friend’s advice and write, including a gardening column and a book on Da Vinci written in the first person.
Best of all, this is a film that serves as a wonderful showcase for the art itself, and that’s more than enough reason for For No Good Reason.
Occupy the Bar Car
Snowpiercer
by George Wolf
Those pinhead libs in Hollywood are at it again! This time, they’ve got something called Snowpiercer, and are trying to distract us with simmering tension, a smart script and terrific action, but the hidden agenda is clearly just another unwarranted attack on our job creators!
Actually, the agenda is far from hidden, in fact, it might as well be a deadly-aimed snowball right to the face of John Galt.
And damn, it’s well done.
Adapted from a 1982 French graphic novel, Snowpiercer drops us in the year 2031, 17 years after a desperate attempt to curb global warming instead resulted in a new ice age. What’s left of humanity travels the globe on a high speed train, where a very specific social order is enforced. Can you guess?
Makers in the luxurious front, takers in the squalid back.
But there’s a revolution brewing, reluctantly led by the cunning, pensive Curtis (Chris Evans, solid again) and his eager, impulsive sideman Edgar (Jamie Bell). After another degrading “know your place” speech by Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton, gloriously over-the-top), the charge to take over the train begins.
In his English-language debut, South Korean director/co-writer Joon-ho Bong flexes some serious filmmaking muscle. Bong (The Host, Mother) takes full advantage of the claustrophobic setting, both as a metaphor for the ills of society and as a springboard for spectacularly realized action sequences.
His pacing is impeccable as well, ratcheting up the tension incrementally as the rebels advance one train car at a time.
Snowpiercer is a film that’s also very aware of the well-worn path it treads. The story, born in the days of Reaganomics, employs a very high-concept premise to illustrate its still-relevant themes. Bong suspends any disbelief with a mixture of B-movie earnestness and black comedy, as well as constant nods to today’s political climate (notice how Swinton enunciates “occupy”) and classic films of years past (from Soylent Green to The Shining).
It’s all completely captivating, and downright refreshing in the way Bong and his game cast (also featuring John Hurt, Octavia Spencer and South Korean film vet Kang-ho Song) respect both the material and their audience. Even the most fervent critics of the “Hollywood elite” may appreciate the questions raised about personal sacrifice and abuse of power.
By the time the Twilight Zone-style dominoes start falling near film’s end, you realize the most thrilling ride of the summer may not be at the amusement park after all.
Slowing Her Roll
Tammy
by George Wolf
Though I grudgingly admit there’s a Melissa McCarthy backlash out there, I’m having no part of it. She’s an often hilarious comic powerhouse who has been on a roll since her Oscar-nominated breakthrough in Bridesmaids.
Her latest, though, slows that roll considerably.
Tammy is McCarthy’s first project as a headliner, from a script she co-wrote with her husband Ben Falcone (who also directs). Deciding to make it a road movie may have been their first mistake.
In one very bad day, Tammy (McCarthy) manages to lose her job, her car and her husband. Her mother (Allison Janney) offers little more than tough love, but Tammy’s grandmother Pearl (Susan Sarandon) has cash, wheels, and a travelin’ jones.
Off they go.
You can imagine how road movies are tempting for comedy writers, but the gimmick too often amounts to taking the path of least resistance. Got a few ideas for some randomly absurd skits? Just connect them with a stretch of highway or some winding country roads, and you’ve got yourself a movie!
McCarthy is a better bet than most to pull it off, and she showed that last year, scoring solid laughs in Identity Thief. But, that film also gave her the benefit of a better script, a great straight man in Jason Bateman, and a much more solid premise.
Tammy offers precious little support on any front. Sarandon, playing well above her age, settles for overacting in place of comic timing, while only a whisp of exposition is offered before they hit the highway.
McCarthy, through sheer force of her onscreen presence, does manage to find a little funny, but the glimpses of how this character might have carried a film are never fully developed. McCarthy and Falcone may one day become a filmmaking power couple, but Tammy proves they still need a bit more seasoning.
Bobcat Bigfoot
Willow Creek
by Hope Madden
Remember Bobcat Goldthwait – that screechy, overweight, sweaty comic from the Eighties? Well, in case you missed it, he’s now a film director, and a pretty good one. He’s been flexing that muscle and pushing boundaries since the early Nineties, but in 2011 he proved his mettle with the pitch-black observational comedy God Bless America.
He makes an unusual choice as the follow-up to his artistic high water mark with Willow Creek, a found footage horror that treads incredibly familiar territory.
Though his newest effort certainly boasts occasional humor, it’s no comedy. In fact, it’s basically a streamlined Blair Witch reboot with better actors.
Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) and Jim (Bryce Johnson) are celebrating his birthday with an excursion into the woods to follow the same path as those hearty souls who once tracked Bigfoot. Jim wants to make a little film of their expedition; Kelly wants to humor her boyfriend for his birthday.
The only mildly unique element about this premise is the word Bigfoot, which is so unusual that it suggests a comedy, but the standup veteran is not mining for laughs. Instead, he shows real flair for stoking tensions, expertly building anxieties about isolation while slyly unveiling that slow realization of helplessness.
But it is impossible to shake the feeling that this is just another Blair Witch. Though he improves upon many familiar scenes, they’re still lifted directly from the 1999 granddaddy of found footage horror.
Shouldering a film whose entire storyline depends upon candid, usually in-car footage of just two people tends to be too much for most actors. Indeed, the already very tired found footage style usually crumbles under the lacking improve ability of a handful of adequate actors stuck inside a car trying to make their road trip seem interesting.
But Gilmore and Johnson are surprisingly suited to the task. Their chemistry is quite natural, and therefore their dialog never seems forced. Goldthwait also knows how to make the most of the gorgeous forest scenery as well, showcasing not just the potential smothering terror of the surroundings, but also its true, natural beauty.
The combined effort is effective. Goldwhait has somehow thrown just enough wild cards into the mix that, while every scene feels eerily familiar, you still can’t ever quite predict what’s to come. It’s unnerving, insightful, and strangely fresh considering it’s just the latest in an unending series of films warning us away from the woods.
Once More, with Less Feeling
Begin Again
by George Wolf
Okay, let’s talk about Begin Again without mentioning that other movie that it will really remind you of…
Nope, can’t do it.
You’d be tempted to call it “Once for the multi-plex” even if you didn’t know both films come from the same writer/director, John Carney.
In 2006, Carney’s tender, heartfelt treatment made Once a wonderful tale of two musicians in Ireland telling their love story through song. It became an indie hit that won an Oscar and spawned a popular stage musical, but now it seems Carney wants to trade nuance for bigger box office while his new characters disavow musicians who do just that.
He moves the musical setting from the streets of Dublin to the boardrooms of New York, with Mark Ruffalo starring as Dan, a well-known record executive who’s career has seen better days. He stumbles into a bar just in time to hear Greta (Keira Knightley) being coaxed onstage to sing an original song,
Dan instantly hears a hit, and wants to record her, but Greta is gun shy. She’s still hurting from her breakup with Dave (Adam Levine), who has left her behind and become a superstar with soulless pop versions of her songs.
Greta agrees to a demo CD but there’s no budget to speak of, so they decide on a musical tour of the city, recording live with a full band at various locations around NYC.
Begin Again is aggressively likable. It’s all about winning you over you with popular actors, constant positivity and pleasant-yet-forgettable songs that are recorded in one take. Knightley even handles her own vocals, and she does just fine.
Of course she does! That’s how fairy tales work!
Look, as feel good movies of the year go, you could do much worse than Begin Again. It’s often charming. But there’s no escaping the irony in the “homemade” nature of Greta’s demo. Carney used similar tactics for Once, and came out a big winner.
Now, like Greta’s ex, Carney has big money behind him, but too little soul in the finished product.
