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Cinema Killed the Video Star

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Assassin’s Creed

by Hope Madden

What does it take to make a worthwhile movie based on a video game? Because it isn’t just talent – Assassin’s Creed proves that.

Like Warcraft, Creed pits a genuinely gifted director against all that terrible cinematic history – from 1992’s Super Mario Brothers through the Resident Evil series to this year’s Angry Birds Movie – and comes up lacking.

Australian director Justin Kurzel quietly proved his mettle with an astonishing true crime horror film in 2011 called Snowtown. Last year, he teamed up with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard – authentic talents if ever there were – for an imaginative and bloody take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

And now the three re-team, along with time-tested craftsmen Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson and Charlotte Rampling, to adapt the popular time traveling video game.

Fassbender is Cal, a death row convict secretly saved by the Abstergo science lab. There, Dr. Sofia Rikkin (Cotillard) will use him to channel his ancestor Aguilar (also Fassbender) – member of a shadowy team battling the Knights Templar for the freedom of humanity.

So, we bounce back and forth in time between a modern day SciFi story and a dusty Inquisition-era adventure. Cal struggles against his newfound captivity and the after-effects of the experiments; Aguilar parkours his way through ancient Spain, trying to keep the Templar from the apple that started all our troubles back in Eden.

If the problem here is not talent, what, then?

As usual, it begins with the writing. Kurzel works with his Macbeth collaborator Michael Lesslie, as well as ne’er do wells Adam Cooper and Bill Collage (Allegiant, Exodus: Gods and Kings). They put together a story that’s as convoluted and bloated as it is superficial.

The cast gets little opportunity to do anything other than deliver dour lines with stone faces, each one developing less of a sense of character than what you would have actually found in the video game itself.

Kurzel’s no help, his mirthless presentation undermining thrills at every turn. When he isn’t bombarding the action with murky visual effects, he’s pulling the audience from the midst of a climactic battle and back into the lab to watch Cotillar and/or Irons look on with clinical interest.

Yawn.

Maybe it’s impossible to capture the visceral thrill of gaming within the comparatively passive experience of cinema. Maybe the rich backstories of modern video games are only rich if you’re used to video game narratives. Hopefully the movies will get it right at some point, or at least they’ll stop wasting such incredible talent on such forgettable nonsense.

Verdict-2-0-Stars

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Fences

by Hope Madden

Denzel Washington is an Oscar contender in about one of every three films he makes – Fences is clearly one of those special performances.

As a director, he’s chosen to focus on the African American experience – August Wilson’s Pulitzer and Tony-winning stage play being the strongest effort yet.

Troy Maxson – a 1950s garbage man with a lot to say – is a character that feels custom-made for Washington. Larger than life, full of conflict and bullshit, bravado and stubbornness, Troy is a big presence. He fills up the screen, he fills up a room, but it is Viola Davis as his wife Rose who offers an emotional and gravitational center to the story.

It doesn’t take much effort to pitch Viola Davis a ball she can hit out of the park. Denzel does just that.

As Rose – the force that keeps the family functioning smoothly – Davis quietly astonishes. She delivers every scene – from silly reminiscences to life-altering decisions – with the easy grace of a profound talent.

Together she and Washington boast such chemistry, their glances, smiles and gestures articulating a well-worn, bone-deep love. Their time together on screen – which is a great chunk of the film – is an opportunity to watch two masters riff of each other for the benefit of character and audience alike. The result is in turns heart-warming and devastating.

The two leads benefit from the remarkable support of the ensemble – longtime character actor Stephen Henderson and Russell Hornsby, in particular.

True to the source material, Washington’s direction feels very stage-bound and theatrical. But in most respects, Washington’s delivery – faithful as it is to the idea of the stage from which it leapt – retains what is needed about the sense of confinement allowed by the few sets and locations.

This is a respectful and powerful tribute to the late Wilson, the playwright whose on-stage Fences saw its 2010 revival starring both Washington and Davis. There is no doubting this play’s bonafides, and Washington honors its intimacy and universal themes.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

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Lost In Space

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Passengers

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from romantic comedies, it’s this: as long as two people are attractive enough and have no entanglements – no jobs, no family, no social obligations to speak of – then only the most ludicrously contrived and easily surmountable of obstacles can keep them apart.

What if we applied this concept to SciFi? Well, if you can cast the two most bankable actors in Hollywood, you might be onto something.

That something is Passengers.

Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt are the pair of stupidly good looking actors playing Aurora and Jim, two of the 5,000 some odd hibernating passengers on a flight to Homestead II – a colony planet about 120 years from Earth. One convenience leads to another and they both wake up a lifetime too early.

To writer Jon Spaihts’s credit, his screenplay opens up many a moral conundrum. Between his existential questions and the film’s needed action sequences, Passengers feels like a good fit for director Morten Tyldum (Headhunters, The Imitation Game).

And yet, there is no easy out these two won’t take.

Big fans of Kubrick (clearly), Tyldum and Spaihts borrow not only from the obvious source of 2001, but even more liberally from The Shining – as well as one certain foreign film that will go unnamed for fear of spoiling the early plot twist.

Intriguing? Not for long.

Passengers also nabs bits and pieces from Gravity, Titanic and Alien (none of the good parts from Alien – although since Spaihts wrote Prometheus, maybe some of this should have been expected).

So it looks good. And the characters are likeable – troublingly likeable, which ends up becoming the anchor this film can’t escape. Potentially fascinating questions are raised, then abandoned, as if it’s too dangerous to risk upsetting some focus group who came to see love at light speed.

Pratt has no problem with likability, but he again finds it hard to veer from his comfort zone of Chris Pratt. This is even more evident next to Lawrence, who can always find small ways to craft a new character, even when hamstrung by a less than challenging script such as this.

You’ll get some how-do-you-do’s to sustainability and corporate greed, but by then the course for Passengers has long been set.

Look at these two! Don’t you like them together?

Verdict-2-5-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0968aYSHUXE

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Apologize

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Incarnate

by Hope Madden

Aaron Eckhart is a conundrum, isn’t he? He’s talented enough to land any indie gem, granite-jawed and handsome enough to elevate it to mass market appeal. Think Thank You for Smoking.

And yet, for every Rabbit Hole there’s an I, Frankenstein; for every In the Company of Men, an Incarnate.

His latest – his fourth of this calendar year – sees Eckhart as the wheelchair-bound, unshaven, grimacing Dr. Seth Ember. He’s damaged, damn it!

Don’t call him an exorcist. He doesn’t exorcise demons; he evicts supernatural parasites. He has an ability. You see, when he was young, he realized, “When I was asleep I could go into the minds of the possessed.”

How did he figure this out? How often did he get drowsy in the proximity of a possessed person?

No matter – can’t you see he’s damaged?!

When a liaison to the Vatican (Catalina Sandino Moreno) – don’t even get Dr. Seth started on the church! – lures him to a case of a possessed 11-year-old, it isn’t to save the boy. Oh no.

No?

No. It must have something to do with his damage. I’ll bet director Brad Peyton (that genius behind San Andreas) will soap-opera direct some weirdly stilted, flat and extreme-close-up-laden bit of ponderousness explaining the whole thing, but you will have lost the will to live before it’s all clarified.

There is one moment – not a scene, but a single moment – in this film where I believed Peyton might, maybe, possibly do something interesting.

Nope.

Worst thing about Incarnate? It’s not the made-for-SyFy-CGI. Not the superficial storyline, not the flatly uninspired direction. (Honestly, if Peyton had directed from inside a coma the film couldn’t have looked or felt more lifeless.)

It’s not the tedious ensemble performances, not the wildly predictable series of twists. It’s Eckhart. It’s as if he’s angry at us that he took this dog.

We didn’t make you do it, Aaron. We only sat through this festering corpse of a movie because you were in it.

I believe we’re owed an apology.

Verdict-1-0-Star

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUVwbhc0j18

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When They Go Low, We Fly High

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The Eagle Huntress

by Cat McAlpine

The documentary opens on a man standing on a snowy ridge. With him are three animals: a horse, a goat, and an eagle. The man sacrifices the goat, sets the eagle free, and then slowly trots into the distance on the back of his horse. Cut to a school classroom, where we find 13 year old Aisholpan in braids.

Director Otto Bell deftly handles his Mongolian setting with equal care to the rich history, steeped in tradition and the modern life that the people now lead. He never patronizes the culture – a nasty habit of film makers delving into a new setting. Nomads, how quaint! Traditional regalia, how mystic! Instead, Bell simply shows life as it is today, a culmination of everything that came before.

Aisholpan is a young girl who boards at school during the week, and goes home on the weekends. She likes giggling with her friends, helping her dad with the family livestock, and wants to be an eagle hunter. A woman has never been an eagle hunter before, let alone a girl, but this doesn’t seem to phase Aisholpan.

There are, however, many old men who have quite a few grievances with a woman becoming an eagle hunter. “Who would make the tea?” “Women are too weak,” and “She’ll have to get married eventually.”

It’s a great use of the “talking heads” trope of documentaries. A series of men sitting in a tent, talking about how women can’t and shouldn’t hunt. Meanwhile, Aisholpan is doing just that.

Bell produces a film with a clear narrative and story arc, but the tale never stops feeling organic. The style of the film seems to shift seemlessly with need. Distant contemplative shots are evenly mixed with tight close-ups. Sometimes an eagle’s eye view shows off the vast landscapes. Sometimes the camera is literally strapped to an eagle. This ever-changing style, fluid to capture each moment at its best, suits the world Aisholpan lives in.

One of the best shots of the film is not a beautiful snowy mountain or a dramatic slow motion shot of an eagle in flight. It’s Aisholpan herself, having just fed her eaglet bloody, raw meat, now painting her sister’s nails a shade of purple. The eaglet sits beside them, on a stump, while the two girls chatter away. Aisholpan’s world is not just about dualities, but multitudes. Her desire to become an eagle huntress is not just an affront to the men who uphold the noble sport today, but all the generations that came before them.

Aisholpan never seems too threatened by the grumblings of old men, though. In fact she hardly raises the matter. She simply wants to be an eagle hunter like her father, and her father’s father. Because her father and grandfather support her, she imagines few other obstacles. The most inspiring bit is, becoming an eagle hunter is not Aisholpan’s highest aspiration, it’s just what she wants to do right now. When she grows up, she wants to be a doctor.

And I’m sure she’ll be a great one.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

Halloween Countdown

Halloween Countdown, Day 30: Hellraiser

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Hellraiser (1987)

“The box…you opened it. We came.”

Man, those cenobites were scary cool, weren’t they?

Hellraiser, Clive Barker’s feature directing debut, worked not only as a grisly splatterfest, but also as a welcome shift from the rash of teen slasher movies that followed the success of Halloween. Barker was exploring more adult, decidedly kinkier fare, and Hellraiser is steeped in themes of S&M and the relationship between pleasure and pain.

Hedonist Frank Cotton solves an ancient puzzle box, which summons the fearsome Cenobites, who literally tear Frank apart and leave his remains rotting in the floorboards of an old house. Years later, Frank’s brother Larry moves into that house with his teenage daughter Kirsty and his new wife Julia (who, oh yeah, also happens to be Frank’s ex-lover).

A gash on Larry’s leg spills blood on the floor, which awakens the remains of Frank, who then requires more blood to complete his escape from the underworld. Julia, both repulsed and aroused by her old flame’s half-alive form, agrees to make sure more blood is soon spilled.

Meanwhile, young Kirsty accidentally opens the puzzle box, and when the Cenobites come for her, she offers a deal:  let me go, and I’ll lead you to Uncle Frank.

What? A teenager in a horror flick doing some cool headed problem solving?

It was another way that Hellraiser rose above some weak production elements to stand out, and hail the arrival of Clive Barker as an important new name in horror.

Listen weekly to MaddWolf’s horror podcast FRIGHT CLUB. Do it!

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Bringing Your Work Home

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Ouija: Origin of Evil

by Hope Madden

It’s a rare thing for a sequel to better its predecessor. It helps when the bar is not particularly high in the first place.

Such is the case for Ouija: Origin of Evil. A prequel to the 2014 by-the-numbers spook flick Ouija, the new iteration takes us back to a stylish 1965 where a struggling widow (Elizabeth Reaser) tries to eek out a living as a fortune teller.

Though her goal is noble – she just wants to bring peace to the grieving – her gig is a scam. Worse still, she enlists the help of her 9 and 16-year-old daughters. But when she brings a Ouija board home to liven up the act, her youngest turns out to be the real medium.

This is not a great film. It is, however, not half bad.

Director Mike Flanagan (Absentia, Hush), who co-wrote with Jeff Howard, has proven that he can mine even familiar territory for chills. His casting certainly doesn’t hurt.

Rather than relying on fresh faced teens to carry a supernatural slasher, he turns to seasoned actors – Reaser and Henry Thomas (that’s right – Elliot!) – to ground the fantastical elements with understated but believable performances.

The important roles, though, are the kids. Annalise Basso – so strong in Flanagan’s middling Oculus – again nails a performance as a normal kid living through extraordinary circumstances.

Lulu Wilson plays the wee spiritualist Doris, and though she occasionally slips into something too cloying, for the most part she handles her part with a nice balance of innocence and eeriness.

Flanagan wisely picks up enough from the previous film for this origins story to make it a proper standalone effort. He does get a bit heavy handed with the tiresome FX (is anyone still undone by a crab walking pre-adolescent at this point?), but for 2/3 of the film his approach is more measured. He lets the appealing performances and family dynamic do most of the heavy lifting.

Elements that weaker filmmakers would have hit hard Flanagan allows to linger, to become intriguing rather than damning.

As has been the case throughout his career, he can’t quite close the deal. Though never terrifying and rarely fresh, Origin of Evil still brings enough era-specific nods and spook house moments to be a fun seasonal escape – but never more than that.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

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Valley Dogs

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In A Valley of Violence

by Cat McAlpine

Paul (Ethan Hawke) just wants to make it to Mexico, and freedom. Unfortunately, a random and heart-wrenching act of violence detours him down a bloody path to revenge. Writer/director Ti West brings his experience in the horror genre to the Wild West, with surprising but refreshing reserve.

In a Valley of Violence benefits from West’s time in horror. The build is steady and slow. Paul transforms from quiet stranger to calculating killer, but all the blood is earned. The shootouts aren’t elaborate but they are grisly and realistic.

The first note I wrote down was “color”. (The second note I wrote down was “His dog wears a bandana.”) West has colorized an homage to old westerns, bright and yellow. At the turning point, though, his roots show.

The camera work changes with Paul. A flashback is handled with a shaky cam and a flashlight. It feels like found footage, and though it’s a jarring stylistic change, it’s not unwelcome.

Another scene is shot from a single vantage point that makes the view feel like a security camera. The small room almost gets that fisheye quality, as Paul sneaks up behind an unsuspecting bather. These touches gently meld the horror and western genres, using cues from both to shape the viewers’ journey.

The performances are as realistic as West’s measured use of bullets and blood. Hawke is brooding and dangerous, but soft, too. His dog is an excellent device to extrapolate the way PTSD can function. Paul confidently banters with his dog, makes her promises, plots with her… but when he’s faced with people he keeps his mouth shut and his eyes low.

As the sheriff, John Travolta plays with equal restraint and mastery. He’s quiet but commanding, a good match to Hawke. As he devolves into panic, Travolta becomes funnier and more terrifying.

These performances from the two veterans balance out a younger cast of characters who are spoiling for adventure.

Karen Gillan shines with absurdity and humor, and she’s hard not to watch, even sprinting across the back of a shot. Taissa Farmiga is all wide-eyed wonder, but carries enough grit to make her character arc as compelling as Paul’s.

Most of the absurdity comes from a truly excellent Burn Gorman, as the priest. His drunken ramblings about sinners are bizarre, and showcase some of the best writing in the film. The priest’s appearances divide the film into three distinct parts, highlighted by Paul’s changing interaction with him each time. He serves as a beautiful device and a welcome, though momentary, release of pressure.

In a Valley of Violence is an homage to the traditional western with updates from the horror genre, not with blood, but with tension. Paired with a fantastic score from Jeff Grace and a cast that delivers, West has avoided the trappings of the modern shoot-em-ups and rejoined the classics with some fresh perspective.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek8cjysuvJ4

Halloween Countdown

Halloween Countdown, Day 22: Housebound

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Housebound (2014)

You need to see Housebound.

Funny and scary, smartly written and confidently directed as to take full advantage of both, this is a film that makes few missteps and thoroughly entertains from beginning to end.

Gerard Johnstone writes and directs, though his brightest accomplishment may be casting because Morgana O’Reilly’s unflinching performance holds every moment of nuttiness together with brilliance.

O’Reilly plays Kylie, a bit of a bad seed who’s been remanded to her mother’s custody for 8 months of house arrest after a recent spate of bad luck involving an ATM and a boyfriend who’s not too accurate with a sledge hammer.

Unfortunately, the old homestead, it seems, is haunted. Almost against her will, she, her hilariously chatty mum (Rima Te Wiata) and her deeply endearing probation officer (Glen-Paul Waru) try to puzzle out the murder mystery at the heart of the haunting. Lunacy follows.

Kylie’s disdain for every single person and event in this film is beautifully animated – O’Reilly constantly looks as if she’s just smelled something foul. But her expressions also share those fleeting moments of regret that make her utterly, admirably human.

Good horror comedies are hard to come by, but Johnstone manages the tonal shifts magnificently. You’re nervous, you’re scared, you’re laughing, you’re hiding your face, you’re screaming – sometimes all at once. And everything leads up to a third act that couldn’t deliver better.

The film is so much fun it all but begs to be seen with a group.

Listen weekly to MaddWolf’s horror podcast FRIGHT CLUB. Do it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT1KcYiPb4I

Halloween Countdown

Halloween Countdown, Day 17: They Look Like People

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They Look Like People (2015)

A lot of horror films introduce characters with a kind of cinematic shorthand: disheveled, bearded, worn white tee shirt = sketchy but sympathetic. Skinny jeans, self-empowerment in the headphones, checks his flex in the gym mirror = douchebag.

Generally it happens so the film can devote less time to character development and jump right into the carnage, but They Look Like People writer/director Perry Blackshear has other aims in mind.

Christian (Evan Dumouchel) is killing it. He’s benching 250 now, looks mussed but handsome as he excels at work, and he’s even gotten up the nerve to ask out his smokin’ hot boss. On his way home from work to change for that date he runs into his best friend from childhood, Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews), who’s looking a little worse for wear. Christian doesn’t care. With just a second’s reluctance, Christian invites him in – to his apartment, his date, and his life.

But there is something seriously wrong with Wyatt.

Blackshear’s film nimbly treads the same ground as the wonderful Frailty and the damn near perfect Take Shelter in that he uses sympathetic characters and realistic situations to blur the line between mental illness and the supernatural.

Wyatt believes there is a coming demonic war and he’s gone to rescue his one true friend. Andrews is sweetly convincing as the shell shocked young man unsure as to whether his head is full of bad wiring, or whether his ex-fiance has demon fever.

The real star here, though, is Dumouchel, whose character arc shames you for your immediate assessment. Blackshear examines love – true, lifelong friendship – in a way that has maybe never been explored as authentically in a horror film before. It’s this genuineness, this abiding tenderness Christian and Wyatt have for each other, that makes the film so moving and, simultaneously, so deeply scary.

They Look Like People can only barely be considered a horror film. It lacks the mean-spiritedness generally associated with the genre and replaces it with something both beautiful and terrifying. Whatever the genre, though, Blackshear’s film is a resounding success.

Listen weekly to MaddWolf’s horror podcast FRIGHT CLUB. Do it!