Blogorium Review: Paul

I must admit I felt a twinge of sadistic glee reading online reviews of Greg Mottola's Paul when the film finally made its way to theatres two weeks ago (it opened in the United Kingdom last month): "geek" friendly sites were falling all over themselves trying to find nice ways to pad the disappointment of what seemed to be a great idea: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost write a movie about two geeks that run into an alien while touring famous "UFO" landmarks, and then star in the film with Seth Rogen as the alien, directed by the man who made Superbad. The phrases "feel good geek movie" and "hard to pin down tonally" didn't help trailers that already made Paul look less than appealing, so in a cruel way, I felt vindicated in not wanting to see the film.

But clearly I did see Paul, or this review would be happening on Friday (check the date) and probably masking another review, like last year*. Standing on the other side of the film, I understand the reviews attempts to soften high expectations from its target audience, but I think that many critics didn't quite set their disclaimers up in the right way. Paul is actually a pretty good movie, but you have to wait a little while before that's clear.

Graeme Willy (Simon Pegg), a comic book artist, and his best friend Clive Gollings (Nick Frost), a science fiction writer, have made the pilgrimage from the UK to the San Diego Comic Con, the geek mecca. They've also rented an RV in order to travel the Southwest in search of major alien landmarks (Area 51, Roswell, The Black Mailbox), but when a car whips around them and crashes on the road, they unwittingly become accomplices in the escape plan of Paul (Seth Rogen), an alien trying to get home after a long stint as prisoner of the United States government. On the lam, they inadvertently pick up Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a fundamentalist Christian that believes Earth is only 4,000 years old. Pursued by Agent Zoyle (Jason Bateman) and two junior agents, Haggard (Bill Hader) and O'Reilly (Joe Lo Truglio), who work for the mysterious "Big Guy," as well as Ruth's father Moses Buggs (John Carroll Lynch), our unwitting heroes race to return Paul to a rendezvous point before it's too late...

The film's biggest problem is that the introduction of Paul doesn't really work. That Seth Rogen plays Paul isn't the issue: it's that Paul IS Seth Rogen for the first fifteen minutes or so that we see him. Rather, Paul is the same kind of character type that Rogen gravitates towards, and his introduction in the film is more distracting than effective. It doesn't help that many of the jokes involving Paul rely heavily on vulgarity (anal probing, alien nudity) or obvious nods to other "first contact" films - to this I have to disperse the blame evenly between Pegg and Frost's script and Rogen's delivery, neither of which help Paul find its way early on.

Frost and Pegg do a fine job of setting up the world of the film (as do Bateman, Hader, and Lo Truglio) but Paul seems "off" in the character dynamic. Part of it is the wildly uneven comic tone, including a running joke about whether Graeme and Clive are gay that doesn't go anywhere. It's not something I can really pinpoint in one scene, but the film doesn't regain its footing until Kristen Wiig's character is introduced; suddenly the interpersonal relationships make a little more sense, Paul moves into the background (somewhat) or at least isn't the load bearer for comedy in the film. Wiig's understated delivery actually helps settle down Rogen's over-the-top delivery as Paul, and the way the says "because of his blasphemous theories" was the first big laugh I had in the film (the second really big one was the discovery of Agent Zoyle's first name).

Paul throws so many "geek" references at the wall that I can't possibly mention all of them, but not only can you expect several nods to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, Star Trek, Predator, Mac and Me, The X-Files, E.T., and Aliens (the last two prominently featuring people involved in the films), but there's also Clive and Graeme's conversing in Klingon, a Wilhelm scream, two separate Indiana Jones references, a Back to the Future joke, a redneck bar version of the Cantina from A New Hope, and a clever way for Pegg and Frost to address a question raised in Shaun of the Dead (hint: it involves dogs).

Early in the film, the references seem more forced, which doesn't help the struggling first act to find its footing. That's also coupled with the bulk of the cameos in the film, including Jane Lynch, David Koechner, Jesse Plemons, Jeffrey Tambor, and (KINDA SPOILER) the voice of Steven Spielberg - part of a scene that's so obvious I wish it hadn't made the final cut. Reviews seemed to think it was a big deal not to reveal that Sigourney Weaver was the mysterious voice that Agent Zoyle is talking to, but if that's the case then why can you clearly hear her in the trailer? I didn't think that was supposed to be such a surprise, to be honest, unless you've never heard her speak before.

Because I feel you're probably thinking that I didn't like Paul, it's important to mention that despite the bumpy first half, I found myself really engaged by the midpoint and actually rather enjoyed the film by the end. If the first section of the film is trying too hard, once the film finds its footing, Paul is actually quite good and something I wouldn't hesitate recommending. I would warn you that it isn't that the film is uneven or that the "geekery" comes hard and fast (to be fair, half of the characters in the film really don't get the whole "Comic-Con thing" and that there's a running joke involving no one knowing any of the books Tambour's character wrote), but that the film is so front loaded that you might be tempted to tune out.

Don't. Stick around until Kristen Wiig shows up, and Paul improves tremendously. The chemistry within the cast finally "clicks," the jokes shift in direction (including a push towards ridiculous bursts of vulgarity, many coming from Ruth's inexperience with cursing), and the evolution of Bill Hader's Haggard from loser to obsessed psychopath is worth the price of admission. Jason Bateman is pretty fantastic playing the "straight man" role; Pegg, Frost, Lo Truglio and Wiig are all great, and when Rogen settles down it's easier to tolerate Paul as a character. By the time that Blythe Danner appears as the adult version of a child we meet early in the film, I was completely on board with the film.

Paul is a better movie at the end than the beginning, which I suppose is a shame, because if it had the consistency in the first half that it does in the second, then it could be something really special. As it is, it's pretty good, a three-and-a-half star out of five kind of movie; you'll have a good time, and will probably rent it and watch it on TV, but won't run out to buy it in a few months. Then again, it is nice to see a movie that tries to entertain and mostly succeeds when far worse movies can't be bothered to do either week in and week out.



* You didn't really think I watched New Moon, did you?

Blogorium Review: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a refreshingly good "teen" slasher film from 2006 that has, for reasons unclear to most, yet to see release in the U.S. in theatres or home video. The Weinstein Company acquired the film, released it overseas, and then sat on it, presumably indefinitely, for stateside distribution. This is a shame as its star, Amber Heard (Pineapple Express, Zombieland, Drive Angry) is on the rise, and the film itself is head and shoulders above the remake heavy, PG-13 friendly films that pass as "horror" these days.

Mandy Lane (Heard) is a junior in high school and the subject of many a high school fantasy for members of the opposite sex. Her friend Emmet (Michael Welch) seems to be resigned to his status, but when his jealous head games accidentally kill Dylan (Adam Powell), a wedge is driven between Mandy and Emmet. Nine months later, Red (Aaron Himelstein) invites Mandy to join his friends Jake (Luke Grimes), Chloe (Whitney Able), Bird (Edwin Hodge), and Marlin (Melissa Price) at his father's ranch, and Mandy, feeling lonely, agrees to join them. No sooner have they arrived than someone begins picking off the students, one by one. Is it the mysterious ranch hand Garth (Anson Mount)? A jealous Emmet? Or did Dylan really die when he jumped off the roof and missed his pool?

Aside from being a well made slasher film, one that actually builds some suspense and doesn't fixate on elaborate traps or outlandish kills, the cast is actually pretty good (what a novelty!) and doesn't grate the nerves in ways that recent teen-centered horror tends to. Every character has an arc (of sorts) that plays out during the film, one centered around a particular insecurity that is, if nothing else, a step above the slasher archetypes: stoner, jock, mysterious stranger, asshole, slut, and ethnic stereotype. Oh, and "Final Girl." Mind you, all of the characters map on to these types in a superficial level, but All the Boys Love Mandy Lane actually allows them to interact and, y'know, grow a little instead of just getting knocked off*.

There's also an efficiency in the storytelling that's refreshing: the standard "why phones don't work" or "why they don't just drive off" are handled in passing, but logical ways, and the film takes place over the course of one night in a remote location with enough space to separate the kids when egos are bruised.

What really sets the All the Boys Love Mandy Lane apart from films of its ilk (think the Sorority Row or Black Christmas or Friday the 13th remakes) is the way director Jonathan Levine and writer Jacob Forman shift the trope of "Final Girl" almost immediately. Mandy Lane is objectified before we've even been introduced to the character proper - this is the first shot of Amber Heard in the film:


The "Final Girl," a trope as old as slasher films, is almost never the subject of the male gaze, and as Mandy Lane walks down the hall of her school, she has the undivided attention of, well, all the boys, as well as some of the girls. Mandy Lane is an atypical "Final Girl"; her virginity is seen as something to be conquered by nearly every male character in the film, and each of them, regardless of the peril surrounding them, all use their best pick up line in order to have "first dibs."

Without spoiling too much, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane also deviates from the slasher formula by unequivocally identifying the killer halfway into the film, removing certain ambiguities but raising others as it moves towards an unexpected ending (even if you figure out the "twist" providing you want to call it that, the manner in which it plays out pleasantly surprised me). The very end, I suspect, is one reason that audiences are split on the film, because it takes the "Final Girl" one step further and forces you to re-evaluate the way horror audiences typically engage with their characters.

In all honesty, I have no idea when you're going to be able to see All the Boys Love Mandy Lane domestically: an import of the UK Blu Ray (all regions) and (region 2) DVD are listed on Amazon for reasonable prices, but if you're looking to rent before you buy, I don't really know how to help you. Since the film has a rather polarizing ending that I hesitate to spoil, you might want to sit patiently and keep your eyes peeled and ears open. It's worth the wait, I think.


* Members of the cast other than Amber Heard have moved on to appear in movies you would be able to see, by the way: Whitney Able is in the well received Monsters from last year; Michael Welch is, apparently, a semi-major character in the Twilight films; Edwin Hodge will be in the forthcoming remake of Red Dawn, and Luke Grimes went on to pick up a recurring role in ABC's Brothers and Sisters.

Blogorium Review: I Love You, Phillip Morris

As I Love You, Phillip Morris is finally opening in theatres (albeit limited release), I was planning on re-posting my original review today... then I realized I never wrote one. I could have sworn that in addition to reviewing Leaves of Grass several months early, I had also covered this based-on-a-true-story Jim Carrey / Ewan MacGregor film, but for the life of me I can't find it. So no apologies for repeating myself; instead you get a fresh review, just in time to see the movie (in select markets).

Jim Carrey is Steven Russell, a seemingly run-of-the-mill, Bible quoting, Jesus loving American working for the Virginia Beach police force. What his wife Debbie (Leslie Mann) doesn't know is that Russell is a just barely closeted homosexual, and after a traffic accident nearly kills him, he abandons her and movies to Miami, determined to live his life out and proud. The problem for Russell is that he can't afford the lifestyle, so he resorts to conning his way into large cash settlements with bogus injuries, stolen credit cards, and assumed identities. This does, as one would imagine it would, eventually land Steven in jail.

While in prison in Houston, Russell meets and falls in love with Phillip Morris (Ewan MacGregor), and the two use the prison system to circumvent rules and eventually room together, all of which is fine until Morris is transferred, leaving Russell alone. Steven Russell puts his con artist skills into use and in order to reunite with Morris, he goes to great lengths (including posing as a doctor to escape, pretending to be a judge ordering his own release, and ultimately Morris' attorney) and the couple is ultimately free to live together in the outside world.

Providing the "perfect" life for the both of them becomes Russell's mission, and I don't need to tell you it's a true story to figure out where things go. What I am opting not to tell you is a fairly major plot point in I Love You, Phillip Morris because it would alter the way you watch the film from its outset. Normally, with true stories, I tend to defer to the facts and assume that if you wanted to look up Steven Jay Russell, you would, but it's actually better not to for I Love You, Phillip Morris. In this case, what you don't know going in will help with a clever plot conceit built around Carrey's narration at the beginning of the film.

What I will say is that it's nice to see Jim Carrey and Ewan MacGregor in a film that plays to their strengths again. Carrey is vulnerable, goofy, and just a tad devious as Steven Russell, and Ewan MacGregor gives Phillip Morris a pure, grounded, kindness that could be lost if the film drifted too far into strictly comedic territory. Writer(s)/ Director(s) Glen Ficarra and John Requa find a tone in I Love You, Phillip Morris that's somewhere between Frank Capra's filmography and Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!, and while the offbeat love story takes a moment to adjust to, I enjoyed the film a great deal the first time I saw it.

So there you have it; my very late yet seemingly quite timely review of I Love You, Phillip Morris, a film that hasn't had much press to my knowledge. Like Leaves of Grass, I'm not sure that it's going to appeal to everybody (and it's certainly going to ruffle some feathers with homophobic audiences expecting a "typical Jim Carrey" movie) but I Love You, Phillip Morris is worth checking out if you live in any of the cities that qualify as "limited release," and absolutely worth renting if you can't see it in theatres.

So You Won't Have To: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

The downside - if there could be such a thing - to watching Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy is that when the opportunity presented itself to sit through the Platinum Dunes remake, I opted to bite the bullet. I can't even say I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010); I endured it.

Imagine that you're a big fan of a band, and the guy who tormented you in high school shows up again in your neighborhood, moves in, and makes friends with everybody you know. Not only that, but he inexplicably loves the same band that you do, even if there would be no chance he'd be caught dead listening to something you liked in school. But he likes it for all the opposite reasons you do. Like hipsters. Yeah, imagine he's into the same band you are, but in an ironic way. And then he starts a cover band that plays all of the songs in a way that makes fun of them. Now you look like the asshole that's yelling "come on guys! they're really good!", while everybody thinks the shitty cover band is better than the real deal.

That's Platinum Dunes: they've consistently found a way to remake horror movies that disregard actual fans of the films in favor of appealing to hipsters that think "that movie sucked anyway, but I know the name of it" and will go see it for that reason alone. So the movies make money, even if they lack basic film-making coherency. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is probably the best of their remakes and it's at best a shell of the original film. Without the iconography of Leatherface, it's R. Lee Ermey terrorizing teenagers. I think I've made it clear how I feel about Shit Coffin.

Their latest strip mining of a franchise is A Nightmare on Elm Street, which I believe you heard the Cap'n endured. The remake manages to strip anything interesting about Freddy Krueger, Springwood, the parents, the kids, and even the dreams away, leaving a husk of a movie that walks a familiar walk, whistles the same tune, but doesn't manage to keep you interested.

I'm going to give you five simple ways the producers, director, writer(s), and cast contributed to a movie I almost turned off seven times during the 90 minute run time:

1. Freddy's not scary - or funny, for that matter. Don't let people fool you into thinking that the jokester Freddy is gone or that he just makes "dark" jokes; that's not true at all. Freddy makes jokes, they're just really bad. And not corny, Part 4 puns, but jokes that don't even make sense. Look, I understood the context of "how's this for a wet dream" in Dream Master, but when Freddy says the same thing to Nancy because she's sinking in a hallway made of tar, it just sounds stupid.

I'm going to share one more exchange for you, between Freddy and Nancy:

Freddy: Little Nancy. Now that you caught me, what game do you wanna play next?
Nancy: Fuck you!
Freddy: Ooh, sounds like fun. It's a little fast for me. How about we hang, first?

Now I know what you're thinking, but the only hanging you see is maybe Nancy's friends behind pipes. I honestly couldn't tell, and besides that doesn't actually address what Freddy's suggesting or what he then tries to do, which is cut her.

In fact, that's all Freddy does. He doesn't sneak around and fuck with people; when the movie isn't copying shots directly from the original film, all Freddy does as walk around and scratch pipes or walls (which shoot out sparks). I don't know whether to pin this on Jackie Earle Haley or the direction or the script, but there's really nothing for him to do here. Freddy doesn't even really seem to relish what he's doing, even when he says he is. There's no sense of being toyed with, or that he's enjoying torturing the Elm Street kids. He just kills them and moves on.

2. The kids aren't interesting - To be honest with you, this really killed the movie for me, because I didn't care about one of these characters. Not the goth-ed out, comatose-acting Nancy, or the Hot Topic Quentin (the Glenn character), or I don't really know what they're supposed to be other than dressed in black and mopey Kris ("Tina") and Jesse ("Rod"), who you can only identify as such because one dies floating above her bed and the other dies in prison. There's another character, Dean, that is killed so quickly into the movie that I didn't care who he was.

It does, however, set up a funeral that's so bad I nearly renamed the film A Twilight on Elm Street. All of the kids are mumbling into their chests and staring woefully at each other about some stupid shared history they have (which you can figure out well before they do) until their parents drag them away, shushing any sense of camaraderie we might have been able to follow. Remember how Nancy and Glenn and Tina and Rod may not have been the best of friends, but you could tell that they were all there for each other? Remember how Nancy stays with Tina because she's scared and Glenn stays with Nancy so she's not alone, and even Rod is a little shaken about his nightmares but he won't tell Tina? How they seemed like they'd actually hang out? Not these paper cut-out remake versions.

Oh, since I brought up the parents...

3. Why are the parents even in this movie? - Look, it's great that the producers got Clancy Brown to come in and play Quentin's father. He's not playing the John Saxon role, mind you, because that character doesn't exist, but I guess I'll give them credit for getting it half right: character actor appears in a paternal role in A Nightmare on Elm Street film.

But then again, the script just ruins all of that promise. Every family in Springwood appears to be a one-parent, absentee / latch-key family of people who don't really give a shit about their kids. When it's far too late in the film for you to honestly care that the parents killed Freddy (this time without the botched trial - more on that in a minute) in order to suppress the memories of our main characters about being molested and cut (and they make no bones that's exactly what happened. There are pictures!) the parents still are conveniently ignoring the fact that "suppressed memories" don't leave people with gaping claw marks in their chests (Kris and Jesse).

The parents might as well not be in the movie, because they emote just about as much as their zombified children, and at no point did I believe any one of the actors playing an adult gave two shits about their child. Not once. In fact, the only reason I can think that the parents are in there at all is to expand the backstory and shoehorn a dream / flashback of Freddy being burned alive, which brings us to the next crippling story problem...

4. The cheap "did he or didn't he?" gimmick - By now you've probably heard that A Nightmare on Elm Street decides to pursue the subplot of "did Freddy really molest the children, or did they just say he did because their parents asked?" It doesn't work at all because a) director Samuel Bayer includes shots in the flashbacks of the parents finding claw marks on the kids' backs that just doesn't have any other explanation, and b) because they have no intention of pursuing the subplot.

It's a cheap way to get Nancy and Quentin away from Springwood to the preschool where everything "allegedly" happened, and so they can whine about how their parents killed an innocent man, only to immediately find Freddy's "cave" where all the horrible evidence is on display. In the span of five minutes Rooney Mara and Kyle Gallner go from emotionlessly moping about their parents to feigning shock that Freddy really was a child molester.

The idea itself isn't a bad one; while it totally changes the Nightmare on Elm Street lore, in a remake you can get away with shifts like that because it's an interesting deviation. It changes Freddy's motivation from predatory to retribution, which might not work out as well, but at least it's something different. In a movie that slavishly recreates the iconic imagery of the original (and not as well any time), this is the one big change I can point to that has any ramifications on future sequels.

But they chicken out. Freddy's a despicable child-killer and deserves to be burned alive (again) when Nancy drags him out of the dream world, only to appear again in a shock ending.

Rather than discuss the stupid, cheap scare ending (that fails to replicate the surreal ending to the original in any way) I want to discuss a lazy cheat on the part of writers Wesley Strick, Eric Heisserer, and director Samuel Bayer that drains any tension from the second half of the film...

5. Micro-Naps - Early in the movie, Quentin's research on sleep deprivation brings up the concept of "micro-naps" where the brain shuts down for a few seconds after 72 hours without sleep. According to the movie, it means you're "dreaming without knowing it," which I guess would come in handy in blurring the lines of reality and fantasy, which the remake to that point has been pretty bad at doing (reverting to a "red and green" color palette to indicate "nightmare" really makes it easy to figure out the beginning of the film).

Unfortunately, micro-naps instead become a cheap way for Strick, Heisserer, and Bayer to have Freddy appear any time and anywhere for a "jump" scare because they can't build any tension in this film. Freddy never does ANYTHING during these "shocks", except quickly pop into frame and then immediately disappear. The only thing close to interesting that ever happens is a quick chase scene in a convenience store where Nancy drifts in and out of the boiler room nightmare while Freddy stalks her. And that's over pretty quickly. After that, it's really just used for cheap scares until the last dream showdown.

---

Folks, I hated this movie. A Nightmare on Elm Street doesn't work as a remake; it doesn't work as a stand-alone film; it doesn't work as a horror film. What it did do was make me angry that people lined up to go see this garbage en masse a few weeks ago, because the kind-sorta know the name. It may be due in part to just having watched Never Sleep Again, it may be because I'm a little more forgiving of mangling a Friday the 13th formula than the Nightmare on Elm Street (and Shit Coffin still managed to strip anything away from Jason, Mrs. Vorhees, or Camp Crystal Lake), but this film was a test of my patience. I feel embarrassed that I wasted an hour and a half sitting through it, but I did it so you folks won't have to. Even though some of you have already told me that you will.

So let me say this: You Will Regret It. There is not amount of morbid curiosity that will compensate for the shallow, surface level retelling of this film by people who don't give two shits about your enjoyment of the Nightmare series. They don't care, and they will continue to put out these soulless husks of horror films with names you recognize because the ironic cover band is in vogue now. And I don't know what we can do about it.

Blogorium Review: Shutter Island

At the outset, I'd like to pose the following question about Martin Scorsese, because I'm genuinely curious:

Which of his films qualify as "lesser works"?

I ask, in part, because many of the reviews for Shutter Island that I saw early used that very terminology as a means of "preparing" cinephiles to be disappointed in some way, but what does it really mean? We can take the obvious films (Cape Fear, The King of Comedy, and New York, New York are the usual punching bags) out of the way, and where do you go from there? Does that imply his non-gangster films are the lesser ones? The films that aren't crime dramas?

But wait, I remember people calling Casino "lesser Scorsese", and the same for The Gangs of New York. Bringing Out the Dead gets slapped with that a lot, but nobody ever seems to talk about Kundun or The Age of Innocence at all, so are they "lesser works"? Boxcar Bertha? Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore? After Hours? The Color of Money? But wait, The Color of Money revived his career and was a big hit for Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. After Hours is being taught alongside Taxi Driver as neo-noir. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore figures prominently in almost every article about Kris Kristofferson and Ellen Burstyn, who won an Oscar for the film (Diane Ladd was also nominated). I'm a little fuzzy here.

Truthfully, there's some debate now about how "lesser" Cape Fear is, and Shutter Island is going to contribute to that discussion, because both films are exercises for Scorsese in making a particular style of film. If Cape Fear was his modernized take on the black and white thriller, then Shutter Island is Scorsese working period, this time on the technicolor cinerama films of the 1950s. Somehow it seems utterly appropriate that Criterion would release Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life within months of Shutter Island coming to theatres.

Ah, but I digress; Let's get to the film proper, shall we?

Federal Marshalls Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) arrive at Shutter Island - a maximum security mental institution off the coast of Massachusetts - during the fall of 1954* to help find a patient who mysteriously disappeared from her room. When they arrive at the institution, they find very little assistance from Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) or his associate Dr. Naehring (Max Von Sydow), or from much of the staff or guards. Daniels is suffering from terrible migraines and dreams of liberating Dachau, which already have him on edge, but indicators that there may be a larger conspiracy at Shutter Island send him to the edge of sanity - in exactly the last place you would want to be at that point.

Based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone), Shutter Island is a throwback to B-movies of the 1950s. It could have been a Samuel Fuller film, but Scorsese opts instead to shoot it like a Douglas Sirk picture in Cinemascope: full of rich colors framed in the widest possible sense. Shutter Island is a film about the internal world rendered in epic proportions, particularly anything having to do with the cliffs that surround the island or the lighthouse that's so important to Daniels. Even on the ferry ride to Shutter Island at the beginning, the vivid oranges and purples of the sky seem to extend in every direction around Daniels and Auhe, swallowing them up. The juxtaposition of story and visual style, appropriately, tends to overwhelm the viewer.

But it is the story that's important. The mystery of what happened to Rachel Solando, the "missing" patient who may have never existed in the first place, is really just an opportunity for Daniels to get to the island. There's a chance that Andrew Laeddis (Elias Koteas), a pyromaniac responsible for Teddy's wife Delores (Michelle Williams) is in Ward C (a Civil War bunker remade as the "worst of the worst" ward), and Daniels want to confront him. The more Daniels searches, the more possible it becomes that a vast conspiracy involving neurological tests and brainwashing is happening to the patients, and even in his fragile mental state, Daniels pushes forward to follow the clues.

I think people are beating up on Shutter Island because of the "twist", which is not so much a twist as a slow reveal. There are plenty of clues from the first frame that all is not right for Agent Daniels, from the heightened colors of the sky to the way his coat looks just a little too big. Little things don't add up in the film as Daniels and Chuck investigate the missing patient, both for them, but also for the audience. Props disappear and re-appear, statements and behavior on the part of staff and prisoners is inconsistent, and Daniels' dreams point to something we can't quite pinpoint in his back story that seems very important.

Of course, if you're really paying attention, the scene with George Noyce (Jackie Earle Haley) spells it all out. It's right there in the middle of the movie - exactly what Dr. Cawley says at the end. Scorsese is just clever enough to make you doubt that's what you heard. Shutter Island is, in fact, very good at hiding the truth in plain sight; the film gives you all of the pieces to the puzzle - save for one pretty important part - but is designed in such a way that you doubt their reliability along with everything else Teddy discovers.

Then again, the "twist" itself isn't really what makes Shutter Island such a great movie. Yes, the construction of the mystery and its payoff are impressive, but it's what happens afterward that's the real kicker. Without spoiling anything (and don't let anyone tell you what happens, that's for your second viewing) Shutter Island is an emotional sucker-punch in its last ten minutes or so, leading up to Teddy's final line, one that's both on the nose for this film but also devastating for his character's arc. Martin Scorsese takes the B-Movie model and hooks it on to something deeply affective for audiences. You don't just leave Shutter Island when it ends; the film sticks with you and digs into your psyche.

And on that note, I must ask again what it is that makes this film a "lesser Scorsese", because so far the only argument I've heard in that term's favor is that "lesser Scorsese is still better than most movies" as though that makes it okay. I found nothing to be "lesser" about Shutter Island, but I've certainly talked to a lot of people who would have seen the movie had that term not been attached before it came out.


* somebody please double check me on this one. I know the year is correct, but because I have not many options to watch it again, I'm not positive of the time of year.

Blogorium Review: Leaves of Grass

If I'm correct in reading IMDB, Tim Blake Nelson's Leaves of Grass should be playing this Friday at a theatre near you. I would recommend you go check it out; in addition to having the conceit of Edward Norton playing twin brothers - one a Professor of Philosophy and the other an awfully clever Pot Farmer - the film itself (which is also written by Nelson) takes a well worn genre and gives it some clever tweaks.

Norton plays Bill Kincaid, a Brown Professor of Philosophy who spent the better part of his life trying to disassociate himself from his mother Daisy (Susan Sarandon) and brother Brady (also Norton) and his background in Oklahoma. Despite some hiccups with a student making passes and writing suggestive love poems (in Latin), Bill is on track to have his own department at the Harvard Law School. That is, until he gets a call from Brady's friend Bolger (Tim Blake Nelson).

Brady's deep in debt to Pug Rothbaum (Richard Dreyfuss) for the cost of building his state-of-the-art hydroponic grow house, and in addition of Rothbaum's thugs hounding him for the money, he also has pressure from Jimmy and Buddy Fuller (Ken Cheesman and Steve Earle), whose dealing business he ran out of town. So Brady fakes his own death to trick Bill into coming back to Oklahoma. Brady thinks that if he can use Bill to convince people he's still in town, he can go to Tulsa and take care of Pug without consequences, then get back to being a husband and father to Colleen (Melanie Lynskey) and their unborn child.

Meanwhile, a rather confused Bill is talked into smoking up with Brady and meeting Janet (Keri Russell), a high school teacher and poet, as well as dealing with his hippie mother and coming to terms with the family he left behind.

Oh, I know. At a certain point, I was really worried that despite the philosophical backdrop and the great cast, I was just watching a variation on the "city person who left their family behind but then is drawn back in by the folksy good nature" movie. You know, the Sweet Home Alabama / Doc Hollywood kind of film. And while it is kind of that movie, Tim Blake Nelson has the good sense to take Brady's story in some unexpected directions, which Bill then has to deal with in very serious ways.

Leaves of Grass reminds me, in a lot of ways, of a much better version of Junebug. I like Junebug quite a bit, but Leaves of Grass is willing to go to darker places and constructs a better narrative, anchored by a really impressive dual role by Edward Norton. At no point did I not buy that Brady and Bill were different people. Yes, they both look like Edward Norton, and when Brady cuts his hair so that they kinda-sorta look alike, it's even clearer it's the same actor, but Bill Kincaid and Brady Kincaid are two very different people. Bill can only physically pass for Brady in the story, because Norton is that good at convincing you that they have lived different lives and that they do fundamentally see the world differently, even if they're both really intelligent about what they do.

Nelson doesn't re-invent the wheel with split screen technology here, and despite being cognitively aware of how the effects were being achieved, I still believed that two Edward Nortons were occupying the same space at times. There's a great shot involving a mirror with the two of them that really sells the physical proximity, even though it's technically impossible that Norton could be tapping himself on the shoulder.

Anyway, I don't mean to get bogged down on the technical stuff. The story keeps you going through the predictable beats and then heads down less worn roads, and the cast is all uniformly great. There are a handful of characters and plot points I'm not mentioning just to preserve some sense of discovery, but I think you'll find Leaves of Grass to be a movie worth visiting. And yes, Walt Whitman figures into the story, as though I needed to tell you that.

Blogorium Review - The Descent: Part 2

Folks, I have good news and bad news. Let's get the bad news out of the way first.

By definition, The Descent: Part 2 is an unnecessary sequel. There is no reason for the film to exist, because the story is predicated on an assumption that director Neil Marshall's original ending to The Descent didn't happen. For you to even buy into The Descent: Part 2, viewers need to go with the truncated "American" ending, where Sarah (Shauna MacDonald) does escape and drives off for that last minute jump scare. The movie tries to play off her escape from the caves in a different way, but it still undermines the original ending, where it's clear she's bonkers and never leaving. But let's say we buy into that for the sake of watching this film - which is not directed or written by Marshall - and simply move forward.

Okay, so two days after the cast of The Descent go missing, a police search is underway with media coverage. It turns out that Juno (Natalie Mendoza) is the daughter of a Senator, so there's a pressing urge to find her. When Sheriff Vaines (Gavin O'Herlihy) finds out Sarah made it out and is in a nearby hospital, he drags her - along with his deputy Ellen Rios (Krysten Cummings), a spelunking instructor (Douglas Hodge) and his assistants/students (Joshua Dallas and Anna Skellern) - back into the cave system to find Juno and the other girls. Vaines assumes that Sarah killed Juno on account of all of the blood on her clothes and her semi-catatonic state.

The biggest problems I have with The Descent: Part 2 are in the opening. There's a big hurry to get back into the caves, so Vaines brings Sarah back out to the Appalachians hours after she's taken to the hospital. In fact, there's a pretty good reason to believe she's still sedated considering how choppy the narrative is up front. The other serious issue is Vaines' insistence that instead of re-directing the search in light of this discovery, he instead keeps it hush-hush and brings along an ill-equipped search team. Two police officers with no experience underground (one of whom appears to be the department's psychiatrist), a trauma victim, two students, and only one person who seems to know what he's doing. It doesn't make any sense.

But there is good news. Once the six of them get into the caves again, things get better. While the sense of claustrophobia isn't quite as pervasive as it was in The Descent, when things get tight later in the film, it does finally get unnerving. The unmemorable characters are dispensed with quickly by the Crawlers, and there is a reasonably good sense of tension in the second half of the film, particularly after (SPOILER) Juno turns out to be alive. (one minor point of contention - the opening is pretty clear that they've only been missing two days, one of which is theoretically the day in which the first film takes place, so it's a little odd that Juno goes quite as "feral" as she does when Vaines catches up with her).

Once the teams are split up and Sarah snaps of her "Barbara in Night of the Living Dead" state, it's actually a pretty good movie. Director Jon Harris finds interesting ways to keep the caves fresh, and has the good sense not to mess with what works. The Crawlers aren't really any different than they were in the first film, and that's probably for the best. It's harder to scare viewers when all the really good reveals were used in the first film, but Part 2 finds other ways to keep things moving.

The big one, I have to say, is that the gore in this film is a) all practical, and b) really gross. It's not often that you can have one really good disgusting gore moment, but Part 2 has several. A handful of them build off of deaths from the first film, but there's one moment in particular that I both give the writers and director credit for and found alternately pretty tasteless.

I imagine that most of you remember the "blood pool" scene in The Descent, so you're expecting something like that to happen in the second film. And it does. But it's not blood this time. In fact, it isn't really clear what Sarah and Rios are swimming in until a Crawler wanders over to the edge of the pool, turns around, and shits. Yes, they've been fighting in the toilet. Gross. As stupid as it sounds, the way it's revealed is more revolting than stupid, but it should give you some idea of where Part 2 is willing to go.

The acting is kinda all over the map, but Shauna MacDonald and Natalie Mendoza are still good, and when they finally cross paths again there's a nice moment of grudging respect that either one of them survived. Krysten Cummings emerges from Part 2 as the most memorable character, which is all the better considering a much better surprise ending in this film. I'm not going to spoil it, because I honestly didn't see what ends up happening coming ahead of time. That also bumps the movie into "better than I expected" territory.

Overall, while it's nowhere in the same ball park as The Descent, I have to say that Part 2 is a reasonably fun horror movie, and much better than I was expecting it to be. I thought I'd be getting into another s. Darko "so you won't have to", but this is worth checking out. Since it's going direct to DVD, I don't need to recommend you wait to rent it, because that's really your option. It's quite watchable after a bumpy beginning, and despite the fact that there is no reason for it to exist, The Descent: Part 2 is one of the better unnecessary sequels I've seen.

Blogorium Review: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

I'm still trying to properly digest The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and the Cap'n has the feeling that I will probably be reviewing it again when I've had another viewing under my belt. What I can tell you is that I really liked Terry Gilliam's latest, and any concerns about the surrounding Heath Ledger business disappear quickly for two reasons:

1) Perhaps precipitously, the film addresses many issues audiences might have about Ledger's presence in the film. The character of Tony, while introduced hanging and near-dead, is essentially tied up in a moral quandry about life and death as it is, and his desire to escape into the Imaginarium is handled well enough that the substitutive performances by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell make perfect sense in the story.

2) The movie isn't really about Tony. He plays an instrumental role in the story, but Tony is more of a pawn in the ongoing struggle between Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), or The Devil. Parnassus lives eternally - perhaps a result of Nick's doing - and the two of them are constantly making bets in order to prove the other one wrong, almost all of which seem to be about who can claim more souls.

Parnassus begins the film in a bit of a mess, because he made a deal with Nick that if he ever had a child, he would give them over to Nick at age 16. His daughter Valentia (Lily Cole) doesn't know this, and despite being told she's 12 by Parnassus, his assistant Anton (Andrew Garfield) and ringmaster Percy (Verne Troyer), she knows something bad is looming on the horizon. But Nick is willing to make one more deal with the Doctor: the first person to claim five souls wins.

Herein enters Tony (Heath Ledger), and more importantly, The Imaginarium. Parnassus creates the Imaginarium by meditating, and by traveling through a mirror any person that enters is taking into their own imagination. Of course, they have to choose whether to follow Doctor Parnassus on a hard journey to spiritual enlightenment, or a quick fix with Mr. Nick that ends in flames. Many opt to take Nick's way out until Tony arrives.

Tony, it seems, has a flair for keeping people in the Imaginarium on the right path, even though he is desperately hiding from something in his own past. Terry Gilliam sets up early on that appearances can change in the Imaginarium to reflect your state of mind, and the transitions from Ledger (who seemed to have filmed almost exactly the right amount of footage) to his surrogates is seamless. If you didn't know better, you'd swear that's how the story was all along.

I'm not going to get too much further into the story until I watch it again, because I really want to spend more time with the second half of the film (particularly the Jude Law and Colin Farrell sequences), but I will say that the film does look amazing. Gilliam has finally hit upon the perfect balance between his vision and what digital effects can do, and what didn't work in The Brothers Grimm fits like a glove here.

Before I go, I really do want to mention the cast of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. And not just Ledger, who is actually pitch perfect as Tony - another reminder of just what audiences lost when he died two years ago. Christopher Plummer manages to balance Parnassus somewhere between a shambling mess and world weary enlightenment.

I'd never seen Lily Cole before, and didn't recognize Andrew Garfield from a few episodes of Doctor Who I'd seen, but they're both very good. Garfield has the tough task of being a roughly unlikable character - particularly compared to Tony - but he still keeps Anton sympathetic. Verne Troyer has never been better than he is as Percy; I was really quite impressed with how well he holds all of the characters and plot machinations together so effortlessly.

Johnny Depp actually has the least to do of the Imaginarium Tony's, but he's quite good. Jude Law takes a little longer to register, mostly because his Tony says very little at first (and is running most of the time), but his scene with Anton makes up for it. Colin Farrell gets the lion's share of Tony time and makes the most of it, splitting the difference between himself and Ledger as Tony's story comes full circle at the end. All three fit into the atmosphere quite well and they never make you think anything but "well, of course that's Tony!"

Special recognition has to go to Tom Waits, who is endlessly watchable as Mr. Nick. His devil is a dapper fellow in a bowler cap with bright red hair and a pencil thin moustache. Waits and Plummer are so enjoyable together that I would readily watch another movie about Parnassus and Nick if Gilliam were so inclined. Waits gives Mr. Nick an impish tone, but one that makes it clear at all times just how dangerous he really is, and while he's not underused in the film, I'd gladly take more Tom Waits.

I'm giving The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus a big recommendation for all of you, and insisting that Gilliam fans go ahead and buy a copy when it comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray next month. Personally speaking, I not only need to but very much want to see it again, because this is the sort of film that requires multiple viewings to really let it all sink in.