Before heading to the screening of Rob Zombie’s new flick 31, I hopped on imdb to find out how long a film it was. I needed to know whether Chipotle would still be open when the movie got out. While on the site, I happened to notice that 31 possessed a metacritic score of 11.
For those of you new to metacritic, it’s a website that calculates a film’s ratings from major film critics across the globe and offers an aggregate score from 1 to 100. Now, I didn’t read those reviews – I like to go in clean – but still…
Eleven.
It’s Halloween night, 1976. A van full of what appear to be do-it-yourself carnies pulls into a dusty, woebegone Southern gas station and meets a couple of creepy characters.
You’ve seen at least one horror movie in your life. You know things cannot end well for everyone involved. But if you’re familiar with Zombie’s work, you’ll know that 31 is neither a spoof nor a ripoff. Every film in Zombie’s repertoire is a mishmash homage to everything from slashers to Blaxploitation flicks to grindhouse movies to the “savage cinema” of the Seventies. 31 is no different, except that the mishing and mashing don’t work especially well.
The homages continue with the cast. As is the director’s way, Zombie’s populated his overly familiar yet strangely mismatched world with similarly remembered yet out-of-place faces. Favorites Sheri Moon Zombie (natch), Jeff Daniel Phillips and Malcolm McDowell join Laurence Hilton-Jacobs (that’s right! Boom Boom Washington, people!), Meg Foster and Richard Brake in a game of death on Halloween night. (31 – get it?)
The writing is dreadful and the acting worse. While Zombie’s attempts at humor may make you recoil, the carnage itself is generally uninspired. He contrasts the grimy fight on the ground with a weirdly opulent games-masters celebration (powdered wigs and all). What I’ve learned is that you can bedeck Malcolm McDowell with all the frilly collars and broaches you like, he can’t deliver with a shitty script. And if he can’t manage, what’s a hack like Sheri Moon Zombie supposed to do with it?
“You want to know what’s in this head of mine? I’ll tell you what’s in this head of mine. What’s in this head of mine is…”
Do you know what that is?
That’s bad writing.
Is 31 an 11? No. It’s probably a 31 – not bad enough to be memorable, not good enough to pay to see.
The great news, though, is that Chipotle was still open.
What’s in The Disappointments Room? Is it a monkey?
Nope. The room is as good as its name.
Kate Beckinsale is the damaged woman who may or may not be imagining ghosts in her new home – a rambling, crumbling old estate that has at least 70 rooms too many for her family of 3. But they moved from Brooklyn to this isolated, overgrown, creepy mansion for a fresh start.
And do you know why? Because that is the most clichéd way you could possibly begin a ghost story.
Beckinsale’s Dana begins to believe there’s something amiss in her new digs when she uncovers a secret room in the attic and the door slams behind her! Plus, a cat! And a dog!! Or are all these domesticated animals and secret rooms the fault of those prescription pills she keeps eyeballing in her medicine cabinet – but not taking! Those are prescription drugs. I bet she needs those.
Luckily there’s a woman in town working in some sort of historical society who happens to have a file handy on the old Blacker home because, you know, lazy writing.
Beckinsale struck gold earlier this year with Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship. Blessed with maybe the best role of her career, she outshone an already impressive cast and displayed her wicked sense of humor we haven’t seen since Cold Comfort Farm.
You’ll see precious little of that here. On the whole she handles the film well, although the emotional climax is beyond her. It’s even farther beyond Mel Raido, who plays Dana’s well-meaning dumbass of a husband, David.
The film was co-written by Wenworth Miller, the Prison Break actor who also penned one of the most interesting inverted serial killer films in recent memory, Chan Wook-Park’s Stoker. Where is all that nuance, subversion, originality? It’s somewhere else. It is not here.
There’s nothing seriously wrong with The Disappointments Room, but there is not a single new idea or interesting twist on an old trope. No, this is exactly the same movie you’ve seen at least a dozen times, handled this time around with nothing to distinguish itself, no flair, no pizazz, and not nearly enough scares to keep your attention.
To find a serial killer, you have to get inside his head. This is not a new concept in horror movies, thrillers, police procedurals. No, this is a tired conceit.
But Irish filmmaker Billy O’Brien (Isolation) finds a new vision for it with his wry, understated indie I Am Not a Serial Killer.
John (Max Records) is an outsider in a small Minnesota town. He works in his mom’s morgue, writes all his school papers on serial killers, and generally creeps out the whole of his high school. His preoccupations have landed him a therapist, the bird enthusiast Dr. Neblin (Karl Geary).
Turns out, John is a budding sociopath – that’s his official diagnosis. A good kid who lacks empathy, may not feel love, and obsesses over death and murder, he follows self-imposed rules and rituals to try to make himself normal and ensure the safety of those around him.
But when townsfolk start turning up in gory pieces, John turns his keen insights on the case.
Though O’Brien’s film may be too quiet an effort to command attention, his coming-of-age approach and indie sensibilities help him turn this outlandish and contrived effort into something touching, humorous and rewarding.
Records, who melted me as young Max in Spike Jonze’s 2009 masterpiece Where the Wild Things Are, serves up an extraordinarily confident, restrained performance. One scene, in particular – when he turns the tables on a bully at the school dance – is outstanding.
His onscreen chemistry with the nice old man across the street – Back to the Future’s Christopher Lloyd – generates thrills enough to offset the movie’s slow pace.
For his part, Lloyd is in turns tender, heartbreaking and terrifying.
The story cleverly inverts the age-old “catch a killer” cliché and toys with your expectations as it does. Robbie Ryan’s grainy cinematography gives the film a throwback looks that fits the image of a depressed Midwest town lost in time.
Bursts of driest humor keep the film engaging, while Records’s performance engenders the kind of empathy from the audience that the character himself could never muster.
It’s an effective twist on the serial killer formula, certainly, not to mention a coming-of-age tale that accepts its unpopular protagonist for who he is rather than how he could be made over to be happier in a way that makes us comfortable.
The weekend of wasted talent rolls on with Morgan, a derivative AI adventure that boasts an impressive cast and a lot of borrowed material.
Luke Scott’s feature directorial debut finds trouble with the L7 – an unnamed corporation’s newest attempt at artificial intelligence. There’s been an injury, and we don’t want a repeat of Helsinki, (it’s always Helsinki!) so Corporate sends the risk analyst (Kate Mara) to assess the situation.
The cast offers loads of reason for optimism. Joining Mara are Brian Cox, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Toby Jones and the great Paul Giamatti. That is a stacked ensemble. And even if every single one of them is underused, each brings something genuine and human – you know, the kind of thing that comes from deep and true talent – to the proceedings.
Highest hopes, though, are hung on the potentially dangerous cyborg herself, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. Hot off a brilliant lead in The Witch, Taylor-Joy again takes on a role in which her innocence is in question.
Like Witch helmsman Robert Eggers, Scott employs full screen close ups of Taylor-Joy’s face – her enormous, wide-set eyes and round, innocent features – to exacerbate a struggle to determine whether the character is good or evil.
And Scott clearly knows a good idea when he sees it because he borrows, grabs and plunders with glee.
His film is a mish-mash of Ex Machina, The Silence of the Lambs, Blade Runner and Terminator buoyed with decent performances and one vaguely fresh notion.
Every major character – every hero, villain, person of authority and character pivotal to the plot – is female. Every good decision, poor decision, and bit of badassery is made by a woman. And – get this – even when two of those women are soaking wet, their shirts are neither clingy nor sheer.
Right?!
I’m not going to lie to you – any horror/action hybrid with a predominantly female cast that chooses not to stoop to titillation and exploitation gets an extra star.
There are subtle moments that toy with sexuality, and Scott wisely lets Taylor-Joy express these themes primarily through a nuanced physicality. That, decent pacing and performances better than the material demands elevate the film above the predictable off-season action vehicle that it is.
In 2002, filmmaker Gus Van Sant released one of his more polarizing and thoughtful films. In Gerry, two guys named Gerry (Casey Affleck and Matt Damon) hike ill-prepared into the desert to find themselves fighting for survival.
A quick glance at The Sea of Trees suggests that perhaps Van Sant returned to these themes. Matthew McConaughey loses himself in a Japanese forest, befriends another wayward traveler (Ken Watanbe), their treacherous journey offering life lessons aplenty.
Because horror writer Chris Sparling penned The Sea of Trees, I was kind of hoping the film would be a cross between Gerry and The Blair Witch Project.
It is not.
No, it’s an overtly sentimental, culturally patronizing waste of one Oscar winner and two Oscar nominees.
We wander Aokigahara, Japan’s “suicide forest,” with McConaughey’s Arthur Brennan. Brennan’s a scientist, and you know that that means. That’s right – atheist.
Van Sant falls back on the crutch of the flashback to help us understand what this handsome scientist is doing in the suicide forest. It’s in these segments that we meet Naomi Watts’s Joan Brennan and begin to unravel the mystery behind Arthur’s trip into the woods.
Watts suffers most from Sparling’s hackneyed dialog. Her few scenes need to be pivotal and weighty – we know this because of her utterly unrealistic speeches as well as Mason Bates’s condescending score.
Van Sant is no stranger to schmaltz. As great a filmmaker as he has been, sentimentality tripped him up in Promised Land, Finding Forrester and others. His career is peppered with other writers’ projects, many of them with a point to make, and those statement films tend to be Van Sant’s weakest.
Perhaps it’s because, rather than finding his own language for the story via camerawork or score, he relies on an existing style. The Sea of Trees certainly suffers from a heavy handed score. Van Sant also misses opportunities to create a sense of foreboding, claustrophobia, isolation or even redemption with the forest itself, Kasper Tuxen’s photography instead offering irrelevant yet lovely images of windblown treetops.
From the earliest horror films, physical disabilities have plagued characters. It’s the inherent vulnerability that makes the topic such a draw for the genre, but some films – like these five – defy your expectations.
5. Planet Terror
Losing a leg – in most horror movies, this would spell doom for a character. Not in Robert Rodriguez’s half of Grindhouse, though. Indeed, for Rose McGowan’s Cherry Baby, an amputated limb turns her to the film’s most daring badass.
A machine gun for a leg! How awesome is that?! McGowan strikes the right blend of hard knock and vulnerability to keep the character interesting – beyond the whole leg of death thing. I mean, you’d hardly call her boring.
The entire film is a whole lot of throw-back fun – gory, fun, lewd, funny, gross (so, so gross). It’s so much fun that even a lengthy Tarantino cameo doesn’t spoil things. And it makes the point that people who’ve been struck by physical disabilities can still be total badasses – not to mention hot as F.
4. Misery (1990)
Kathy Bates had been knocking around Hollywood for decades, but no one really knew who she was until she landed Misery. Her sadistic nurturer Annie Wilkes – rabid romance novel fan, part time nurse, full time wacko – ranks among the most memorable crazy ladies of modern cinema.
James Caan plays novelist Paul Sheldon, who kills off popular character Misery Chastain, then celebrates with a road trip that goes awry when he crashes his car, only to be saved by his brawniest and most fervent fan, Annie. Well, she’s more a fan of Misery Chastain’s than she is Paul Sheldon’s, and once she realizes what he’s done, she refuses to allow him out of her house until she brings Misery back to literary life.
Caan seethes, and you know there’s an ass kicking somewhere deep in his mangled body just waiting to get out. The film’s tension is generated by way of his utter helplessness as he’s trapped in that bed – on the road to recovery until…. Well, we assume you know the scene.
There is so much to be said for the sharp writing, the outstanding performances, and the way the film subverts your expectations of villains, women, men, and disability.
And mallets.
3. Don’t Breathe (2016)
Young thugs systematically robbing the few remaining upscale Detroit homeowners follow their alpha into a surefire hit: a blind man (Stephen Lang) sitting on $300k.
Unfortunately for our trio – Rocky (Evil Dead’s Jane Levy), Money (Daniel Zovatto) and Alex (Dylan Minnette) – this blind man is not the easy mark they’d predicted.
The always effective Lang cuts an impressive figure as the blind veteran with mad skills and crazy secrets. Wisely, director Fede Alvarez sidesteps easy categories. Though you may think you recognize each character as they first appear, no one is as easy to pigeonhole as you may think.
There are surprises enough to confound and amaze. You may think you have the old man’s secret figured out, but so do our hapless felons. Things get a little nuts as the tale rolls on, but thanks to the film’s breakneck pace and relentless tension, you’ll barely have time to breathe, let alone think.
2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
With this horror masterpiece, director Tobe Hooper sidestepped all the horror gimmicks audiences had grown accustomed to – a spooky score that let you know when to grow tense, shadowy interiors that predicted oncoming scares – and instead shot guerilla-style in broad daylight, outdoors, with no score at all. You just couldn’t predict what was coming.
Hooper also cast aside any concerns for dignity or fair play, a theme best personified by wheelchair-bound Franklin. Franklin is supremely unlikeable – whiney and selfish – ending horror’s long history of using personal vulnerability to make a character more sympathetic. Films such as Wait Until Dark and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Rear Window – excellent films, all – ratcheted up tension through the sympathy they could generate toward the helpless character. These films’ anxiety and payoff both owe everything to watching the vulnerable protagonist in danger, and waiting for them to overcome the odds.
But Hooper is after an entirely different kind of tension. He dashes your expectations, making you uncomfortable, as if you have no idea what you could be in for. As if, in watching this film, you yourself are in more danger than you’d predicted.
But not more danger than Franklin is in, because Franklin is not in for a good time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY4ldz615FA
1. Freaks (1932)
Short and sweet, like most of its performers, Tod Browning’s controversial film Freaks is one of those movies you will never forget. Populated almost entirely by unusual actors – midgets, amputees, the physically deformed, and an honest to god set of conjoined twins (Daisy and Violet Hilton) – Freaks makes you wonder whether you should be watching it at all.
This, of course, is an underlying tension in most horror films, but with Freaks, it’s right up front. Is what Browning does with the film empathetic or exploitative, or both? And, of course, am I a bad person for watching this film?
Well, that’s not for us to say. We suspect you may be a bad person, perhaps even a serial killer. Or maybe that’s us. What we can tell you for sure is that the film is unsettling, and the final, rainy act of vengeance is truly creepy to watch.
Mechanic: Resurrection revisits the by-the-numbers Statham character Arthur Bishop. Back in 2011, Statham reprised the role first held by Charles Bronson in a middling-to-fair remake of The Mechanic. That film inexplicably merited a sequel that was not direct-to-home-viewing. Why that is confounds us.
Get nervous Gods of Egypt and London has Fallen – Mechanic: Resurrection wants that “worst film of the year” award, and it is not above soiling itself with incompetence to get it.
“WHO SENT YOU??!!”
Bishop faked his own death years back so he could escape his pointless existence as an assassin, but an old enemy has tracked him down. And brought henchmen! And kidnapped master thespian Jessica Alba! Damn this confining shirt!
“WHERE’S CAINE?!!”
Statham removes his shirt no fewer than 8 times in the film’s 99-minute running time. That’s almost once every ten minutes. The man is 49, so good for him, and for that core audience he’s built over a career of shirtless man-on-man action.
“PLAYTIME’S OVER!!”
Alba’s character development is more nuanced. She keeps her shirt on, but it’s always clingy and sometimes…even wet.
Remember how great Statham was in last year’s Spy? His turn as Rick Ford, uber-macho super agent, was hilarious specifically because it was sending up ludicrous movies just like Mechanic: Resurrection.
Bishop criss-crosses the globe with nary a toothbrush, yet at a moment’s notice he has access to countless bomb-making chemicals, ammunition, kick ass scuba equipment and multiple expensive watches. Then, before Bishop has to dive into shark-infested waters, the film is careful to show him applying a shark repellent lotion (patent pending), just to keep it real. Come on, by that point we’re expecting any sharks to have lasers on their heads on a direct order from Dr. Evil.
The sad thing is, this movie could have been saved. Make a few edits, give it a new score, call it Spy 2: Ford Gets His Own Movie, and you’ve got comedy gold. As is, this film is so bad John Travolta is jealous.
War Dogs starts with a guy in the trunk of a car and works backward, ending two hours later over the sound of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows.” Though both devices are tactical errors, what’s between them is a fairly effective take on true, undeniably American events.
David Packouz (Miles Teller) was a struggling twenty-something massage therapist in Miami when he re-connected with childhood friend Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill). Together, they grew Diveroli’s modest gun selling business into a 300 million dollar contract with the Pentagon to arm our allies in Afghanistan.
As Diveroli is quick to point out, “It’s not about being pro-war, it’s about being pro-money.”
Director/co-writer Todd Phillips, expanding a resume built on comedies such as The Hangover trilogy and Old School, brings a suitable zest to the insanity of this guns-to-riches tale, but falters when the time comes to move beyond his filmmaking comfort zone.
With The Big Short just last year, Adam McKay brought comedic sensibilities to the complexities behind financial corruption, dissecting a scandal with humor, insight, and most importantly, a constant undercurrent of outrage that War Dogs is missing.
It does feature a fantastic performance from Hill, and if you still doubt his acting chops after two Oscar nominations, that’s a YP. Hill is magnetic, making Diveroli a darkly charming sociopath who effortlessly becomes whomever his latest mark wants him to be. Don’t be surprised if nomination number three comes calling in a few months.
Teller is fine, if a bit underwhelming next to Hill, while Ana de Armas is asked to do little more than hold a baby in the embarrassingly cliched role of Packouz’s wife.
Phillips does serve up some hearty laughs and effective set pieces while telling this incredible tale, but too much of the journey feels like a testosterone-fueled romp that’s more about respect for the boys’ brazen ambition than the sad truths it revealed. It’s not that Phillips doesn’t want to dig deeper, he’s just not sure how to do it on his own terms.
More than anything, War Dogs is a film that constantly reminds you of other films. The Hangover vibe is rampant, from the guy in the trunk to the effective cameo by Bradley Cooper, but there are also shots lifted right from Scarface and Rain Man, plus stylistic nods to multiple Scorsese titles, especially Wolf of Wall Street.
That film, like The Big Short, carried a healthy dose of cynicism to dig at the wages of excess. War Dogs doesn’t, and closing with one of the most brilliantly cynical songs ever written only makes that fact more obvious.
It’s clear Phillips knows how to make us laugh. War Dogs is his uncertain step toward making us think, too.
Describing the story of Kubo and the Two Strings feels deeply wrong for a film that takes great pains to remind us of the raw power of storytelling—that our lives come and go, and all we can hold onto is the story of ourselves.
But here goes anyway: Kubo (voiced by Game of Thrones‘ Art Parkinson) is a one-eyed boy who spends his days entertaining his village in a magical, ancient Japan. His nights are a lot less fun, thanks to dire if not particularly lucid warnings from his mother about returning home before dark.
As young heroes in mythical tales are wont to do, Kubo eventually stays out past sundown, invoking the wrath of familial specters (twin sisters, voiced by Rooney Mara) who doggedly pursue him through the village, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
Kubo’s mother saves the day, but at great cost, and Kubo soon finds himself on the run with little besides his stringed instrument known as a samisen, a talking monkey (voiced by Charlize Theron) and magical powers that grow stronger by the day.
First-time director Travis Knight makes an impressive debut after years of animation experience. Knight, also the president and CEO of Laika Studios, has given his group another modern stop-motion classic. Laika has never been a studio to tread lightly around adult themes in their animated films—but while Coraline and ParaNorman aren’t short on death, Kubo cuts to the emotional core with a story so saturated with loss that it becomes its own texture, something as visceral as the sumptuously animated hair or backgrounds.
Kubo follows the typical hero’s journey: suffer adversity, embark on a quest, encounter friends and foes, suffer more adversity, conquer evil. (None of this should come as a spoiler for the adults watching who have seen or read… well, pretty much any story before.)
But beneath the surface, Kubo and the Two Strings quietly but persistently makes us confront what it means to be alive, and just how tenuous the bonds we share are with the ones we love in this world. And the script deftly handles this emotional gut punch without getting sentimental.
All the way up to the end, the film continues to ask questions without easy answers. What’s the difference between a story, a memory and a lie? Are we more than that?
Maybe not. But it’s all we have, and if Kubo doesn’t inspire you to seek out new stories of your own, you might as well be dead already.
Two brothers in West Texas go on a bank robbing spree. Marshalls with cowboy hats pursue. It’s a familiar idea, certainly, and Hell or High Water uses that familiarity to its advantage. Director David Mackenzie (Starred Up) embraces the considerable talent at his disposal to create a lyrical goodbye to a long gone, romantic notion of manhood.
Two pairs of men participate in this moseying road chase. Brothers Toby and Tanner – Chris Pine and Ben Foster, respectively – are as seemingly different as the officers trying to find them. Those Texas Marshalls, played with the ease that comes from uncommon talent, are Marcus (Jeff Bridges) and Alberto (Gil Birmingham).
Though both pairs feel like opposites at first blush, their relationships are more complicated than you might imagine. Foster, a magnificent character actor regardless of the film, is a playful menace. Though Pine’s Toby spends the majority of the film quietly observing, his bursts of energy highlight the kinship. Their often strained banter furthers the story, but moments of humor – many landing thanks to Foster’s wicked comic sensibility – do more to authenticate the relationship.
Likewise, Bridges – wearing the familiar skin of a grizzled old cowboy – makes every line, every breath, ever racist barb feel comfortably his own. Birmingham impresses as well, quietly articulating a relationship far muddier than the dialog alone suggests.
These four know what to do with Taylor Sheridan’s words.
Sheridan more than impressed with his screenwriting debut, last year’s blistering Sicario. Among other gifts, the writer remembers that every character is a character and his script offers something of merit to every body on the screen – a gift this cast does not disregard.
The supporting actors populating a dusty, dying landscape make their presence felt, whether Dale Dickey’s wizened bank teller, Katy Mixon’s spunky diner waitress, or a hilarious Margaret Bowman as another waitress you do not want to cross.
Even with the film’s unhurried narrative, not a moment of screen time is wasted. You see it in the investment in minor characters and in the utter, desolate gorgeousness of Giles Nuttgen’s photography. Every image Mackenzie shares adds to the air of melancholy and inevitability as our heroes, if that’s what you’d call any of these characters, fight the painful, oppressive, emasculating tide of change.
A film as well written, well acted, well photographed and well directed as Hell or High Water is rare. Do not miss it.
