Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2014: Snowpiercer

 You might say that I'm being overly lenient with my definition of "films released in 2014" to include Snowpiercer. It is true that Bong Joon-Ho had finished the film in time to be released in 2013, and that a protracted struggle within the Weinstein Company kept Snowpiercer out of theatres until the following year. At the heart of the debate, it seems that Harvey "Scissorhands" Weinstein wanted to cut thirty minutes out of the film in order to make it more "palatable" for audiences. To be honest, having seen Snowpiercer, I'm not sure what parts he thought cutting out of the film would improve it in any way. It doesn't need improving, and there's no amount of editing that could turn this cerebral, at times surreal film, into a crowd pleaser. The failure of the more crowd friendly Edge of Tomorrow is a testament that sometimes, the audiences just aren't going to come in. Eventually they came to an agreement that Snowpiercer could stay at its original length, so long as it only saw limited release. The good news is that word of mouth really made a difference, and like the even more bizarre Under the Skin, Snowpiercer was being talked about, even when it was hard to see it.

 Based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, Snowpiercer is deceptively simple in its premise: in an attempt to curtail global warming, climate scientists an experimental compound, which backfires, freezing the entire world. Humanity has been all but wiped out, save for those who managed to board a luxury train designed by Wilford Industries. It was designed to run almost perpetually, and it's the only thing left that can traverse the frozen wasteland. For 17 years, the train has been going, never stopping. The social strata that makes up the remainder of humanity correlates with the sections of the train: the very poor, destitute, who could not pay for their way aboard the Snowpiercer are in the back, and the rich live near the front, in opulence, near the reclusive Wilford, who conducts the train. The back section is tired of the inequity, and Curtis (Chris Evans) finds himself leading a push from to the front - violently, if necessary.

 Embedded into the protein bars, someone has been sending Curtis messages, and with the advice of the former conductor, Gilliam (John Hurt), he thinks that now might be the time. Their only contact from the front of the train comes through Mason (Tilda Swinton), an officious, pompous bureaucrat who loves nothing so much as to remind them of their place. If they can capture her, and get past security with the help of Namgoong (Song Kang Ho), who designed the doors but also has a debilitating addiction to the train fuel's byproduct, there's a chance to confront Wilford* and stop the train. Or better conditions. Or, it depends on who gets there first. One of the interesting things is that despite the fact that Snowpiercer is a metaphor for class struggle and revolution, it's also fairly evident that this doesn't mean everyone has the same agenda. What Curtis wants is very different from what Namgoong wants, and how Gilliam and Wilford respond are fascinating unto themselves.

 Some people, like Tanya (Octavia Spencer) or Andrew (an unrecognizable Ewen Bremner) want their children back. Every now and then Mason takes them up to the front, for reasons no one in the back know, and they never return. Others, like Edgar (Jamie Bell), who were born on the train, want a sense of justice, of agency. They've never known anything but misery, undernourishment, and subjugation. We learn later in the film what life was like in the early days, moments that give considerable weight to character moments at the beginning of the film. Before that, as Curtis and company move to the front of the train, things get weird.

 This, perhaps, is what Weinstein thought he could "help" Snowpiercer with: each section of the train is distinct from the one that came before it, often in truly unusual ways. There's no way to adequately describe the surreal classroom sequence featuring Allison Pill (The Newsroom) as a Wilford Propagandist Teacher. It's not the last time the film is willing to get truly odd, which is saying something about Snowpiercer. Because the structure of the revolution is back-to-front, we often get information (particularly symbolism, like dipping axes in fish guts) before its significance is addressed. What seems like an outré moment becomes, not long after, significant in the larger structure of the world. I still love the point where a large contingent of security guards, led by Mason and Franco the Elder (Vlad Ivanov) and Franco the Younger (Adnan Haskovic) meet our heroes in a long car to battle. It abruptly comes to a halt when the train crosses a long bridge, which marks the passage of another year. The brief celebration (on both sides) and cheers of "Happy New Year" come to an end when Namgoong's assistant / translator, Yona (Ah-Sung Ko) informs Curtis that they're about to enter a "really long tunnel," and only the guards have night vision goggles. It's these unusual touches, which often collide with the brutal, post-apocalyptic reality, that give the film its distinctiveness. Trimming them out in order to "improve" the run time would have robbed Snowpiercer of many of its best moments.

 Without spoiling too much, I'd like to return to the moral ambiguity of the film by briefly discussing the inevitable conclusion when Curtis reaches Wilford (I won't say who does or doesn't make it along the way, but Bong Joon-Ho doesn't hesitate to thin both sides of the herd). There's a customary "talk with the Devil" scene, where our hero faces temptation, but this time, you have to hand it to Wilford. The case he makes is, to be honest, a fair one: what did Curtis really expect to do when he made it to the engine? Is he really going to risk wiping out all of humanity by stopping the train? It was established earlier in the film - in a horrific way - just how long a person can last exposed to the outside world. Wilford has been responsible for some horrible, unforgivable decisions, and it's during his speech that many of the seemingly "weird" moments begin to make much more sense. We've been introduced to everything that's happening in the movie well before we realized it, and the case that Wilford makes, however ghoulish, is pragmatic. From his perspective, as the steward of all of humanity, what else can he do?

 I'm not necessarily justifying either side here - before meeting Wilford, Curtis explains exactly why he's been so hesitant to lead, and what happened in the first few years, and it's not necessarily the sort of story you tell proudly. Evan's face during the monologue is riveting, and the revelations are every bit as disturbing as the discovery of what the protein bars are made of. It's the first of many revelations that contextualize dialogue you'd largely considered to be standard "I'm not fit to lead" conversations earlier in Snowpiercer. In many ways, it's a far more complicated movie than its premise would suggest, and the fact that neither side is necessarily "right" in what they want to do and how they want to do it give more heft to the ending.

 Across the board, performances are high level. Anyone who thinks that Chris Evans can only be stoic and "goody two shoes" need only spend two hours with him as Curtis to wipe that notion away. Swinton and Pill border the closest to "cartoonish" in the film, with Mason resembling a caricature of Margaret Thatcher (by design) and the Teacher being part of what is Snowpiercer's oddest moment. Both serve a purpose in the film, as does Ivanov's largely silent Franco the Elder, who doggedly pursues the rebels up the train. Special kudos to Kang-ho Song (Thirst) and Ah-sung Ko (The Host), who are more than what they seem and whose impact on the story is significant. If there's a missed note in the film, it might be from Emma Levie as Claude, Wilford's assistant, who is underdeveloped to the point of being superfluous, even late in the film. Otherwise, most of the ensemble cast is more than capable of following the story in whatever direction it takes.

 To be frank, I'm happy that we got to see Snowpiercer in its original form. There was always a chance of it lingering on the shelf in obscurity, because of debates surrounding its "palatability" with mainstream audiences. I'm not sure that the masses would or could embrace a film as nihilistic as Snowpiercer is willing to be, but now it's out there for the world to decide. It was a great year for science fiction, and Snowpiercer is near the top as far as the Cap'n is concerned.




 *I'm deliberately leaving out who plays Wilford, because it's more fun to find out, although you're likely to see the name of the actor before you watch the movie. Just not here.

Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2014: Only Lovers Left Alive

 It's a relief to be able to think of Jim Jarmusch fondly again. As unfair as it is to judge a director I like harshly by one movie, I couldn't get the bitter taste of Limits of Control out of my mouth for a long time, and it inexplicably tainted his earlier films, many of which I really enjoy. For five years, it lingered, festering and rotting, annoying me with an "art-y for its own sake" construction, and I suddenly didn't feel like watching Ghost Dog or Down by Law. There's no "there" there in Limits of Control - the film is strictly an exercise of the director drawing attention to how clever his ideas are, with no characters or narrative to draw from. A lack of narrative isn't especially new for Jarmusch - in fact, it's usually a selling point. But lack of characters? Can you imagine Dead Man without the oddball supporting cast to balance out Johnny Depp? Coffee and Cigarettes at all?

 Thankfully, five years later, Jim Jarmusch returns to characters, and from a most unlikely (for him) literary source: vampires. But I wasn't worried. I can't explain why, but despite the fact that we've been seeing watered down bloodsuckers for the last half decade (or more), something about the idea of Jarmusch and vampires felt right. It was a gamble that paid off, because Only Lovers Left Alive is easily his best film since Ghost Dog and completely wipes Limits of Control off the ledger. Everything that fans have come to expect from Jarmusch is in there: the aimless story, the location as musical backdrop, the off-kilter humor, and most importantly, memorable characters.

 When we meet Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston), we don't know anything about them other than they abide messy abodes. The camera hovers above them, spinning like a 45 as Jarmusch makes his way to their faces, the soundtrack booming. If you haven't seen the trailer, I suppose there's a good chance you wouldn't know they were vampires, at least until Eve leaves her apartment in Tangier to visit a night café. She's waiting patiently for an old friend (John Hurt), and when she says his name, Christopher Marlowe, I guess the jig is up for people going in blind. Yes, that would be "the" Christopher Marlowe, and yes, he's a vampire. He has a nice supply of "the good stuff" that he's happy to share with Eve, but please don't say his name out loud.

 Just writing this, I feel like I'm making Only Lovers Left Alive out to be a very obvious and stupid sounding movie, which it isn't. Jarmusch doesn't play coy about Adam and Eve* - they are vampires, they are old, and there's a lot of unspoken history between them. Taken out of the context of the movie, I could understand how it might sound clever in a bad way, but it's presented so matter-of-factly in the story that it's hard not to take in stride. Eve is so easygoing, and Adam so morose, that you worry they're just going to be "types," but then Jarmusch brings them together and Only Lovers Left Alive shifts into a love story.

 Marlowe asks Eve why she and Adam don't live together if they've been married as long as they have been, but it seems pretty clear when she leaves Tangier to visit him in the U.S. that they have a long history together. They can be together and apart, and Jarmusch doesn't give any explicit reason why they're comfortable half a world away. There's no tragedy or disagreement hanging over the narrative - it just is, and you accept it the same way you do the conceit that they're vampires. Like many Jarmusch films, the why is less important. It gets in the way of what is.

 As he has in the past, Jarmusch sets Only Lovers Left Alive in a city known for its musical history. In this instance, it's Detroit, where Adam sets up shop in an abandoned part of town (the city's current financial calamity is another critical part of the story) and makes music in anonymity. At least, relative anonymity. He has Ian (Anton Yelchin) bring him recording equipment, instruments and, in one special request, a bullet made of wood. That doesn't amount to much more than a MacGuffin, but it's behind what brings Eve back to Adam. He's sick of the "zombies" (what vampires call humans) and is irritated that his music is finding an audience, despite his efforts to mask his identity. She brings him solace, and when the two of them come together, their facades crumble at bit. It turns out that Adam is also something of an amateur scientist and mechanic, who sets up his own sustainable energy for the house and who tinkers with old equipment. During a Skype (?) chat, he transfers the laptop signal to an old television. It's something he enjoys doing.

 Most of the time they drive around Detroit, and he takes her to the Detroit Theater (now a parking lot) and offers to show her the Motown Museum ("I'm more of a Staxx girl," she professes), but Eve is awfully impressed when Adam pulls up in front of Jack White's childhood home. If there's a singularly Jim Jarmusch-y moment in the film, that has to be it, but fans of Mystery Train should enjoy the thematic bridge. Their reunion is short lived, because dreams involving Eve's sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska) turn out to be her way of announcing a visit. Ava doesn't care much about protocol like entering a home without permission and doesn't care much about personal space - she's more than happy to tear through Adam's supply of blood. She's not a very welcome guest, by either of them. It's hinted that they haven't seen her in more than a hundred years, and that it didn't end well "in Paris," and she doesn't seem to have changed much.

 True to form, she wastes no time in aggravating Adam and testing the patience of her sister, who tries to give her the benefit of the doubt. They make quite a trio, with their dark sunglasses and gloves, hanging out at the back of a club watching some band play (at her insistence), with Ian in tow, clueless to what's in the flask they're passing around ("is that Jaegermeister?"). By the end of the following day, she's worn out her welcome and insured they can't stay in Detroit, but they're the "boring, pretentious assholes." Her parting gift, so to speak (other than a SPOILER I'll leave out) is to leave Adam with a broken Gibson guitar from 1905, one that Eve had only recently identified the age of. It's no wonder that he was wary to find Ava had invited herself in the night before. Kids...

 Lest you worry that things get to dour and "goth" with vampires in the picture, you needn't worry: Only Lovers Left Alive is frequently very funny, in an off-beat way. Much of it comes from Adam's source for blood in Detroit, played by Jeffrey Wright. I'd tell you his name, but the setup and payoff of his name tag and the one Adam is wearing is too good to spoil here. When Adam needs blood, he pulls his scraggly black hair back into a ponytail, puts on scrubs, a stethoscope, and walks into the local hospital. The other doctors give him an askew glance, but don't say anything. However, in order to maintain a sense of mystery, Adam puts on his sunglasses when he walks into the blood lab, and he looks ridiculous. Jarmusch holds on the image of Adam trying to look intimidating as if to say, "dude, who are you kidding?" and Wright's character reacts accordingly.

 Yelchin and Wasikowska also provide varying degrees of comic relief, although Hiddleston gets most of the laughs as he tries to humor Eve and handle Ava with anything more than exasperation. His carefully constructed persona collapses completely with his wife and sister-in-law dragging him to a club, and Hiddleston knows exactly when to play the laugh. It would be easy to say he's simply playing a variation on Loki in Only Lovers Left Alive, but I don't think that's quite the case. Adam is more a creature of habit than Loki is, more comfortable in his carefully controlled environment. By the end of the film that environment has been completely shattered, and there's a humorous inevitability to the final shot. Swinton plays the moment perfectly, but that's consistent with her performance in the entire film. As Eve, she carries herself with a natural ease at all times that Adam desperately wants to have. Watching her subtle facial shifts around Ava is also fascinating - Adam is disdainful, but Eve is cautious, nervous even.

 In all honestly, I could have spent another hour with Eve and Adam, but I'm happy to have what's there. Only Lovers Left Alive restores the character to the Jim Jarmusch character study, and you don't mind watching a movie where the main characters drive around Detroit or hang out on the couch most of the time. Really, it's a lot of fun. The soundtrack is great, the actors are having fun, and Jarmusch brings just the right balance of directorial flourish and musical fetishism to the proceedings that I'm having a hard time finding things to complain about. There are more bad vampire movies and shows out there than good ones, it often feels like, so it's nice to add another film to the "positive" category. If you want to see a vampire movie where nothing really happens that you'll enjoy, check out Only Lovers Left Alive. Unless you like sparkly things or need someone to say the word "vampire" every ten minutes. You won't find that here.



 * Jarmusch did not, apparently, intend for audiences to assumed they were "the" Adam and Eve, but the IMDB trivia page erroneously refers to them being based on Mark Twain's satirical excerpts from the "diaries" of Adam and Eve, which ARE about "that" Adam and Eve. Twain also appears as a photograph on the wall of acquaintances in Adam's apartment.

Blogorium Review: Only Lovers Left Alive

 It's a relief to be able to think of Jim Jarmusch fondly again. As unfair as it is to judge a director I like harshly by one movie, I couldn't get the bitter taste of Limits of Control out of my mouth for a long time, and it inexplicably tainted his earlier films, many of which I really enjoy. For five years, it lingered, festering and rotting, annoying me with an "art-y for its own sake" construction, and I suddenly didn't feel like watching Ghost Dog or Down by Law. There's no "there" there in Limits of Control - the film is strictly an exercise of the director drawing attention to how clever his ideas are, with no characters or narrative to draw from. A lack of narrative isn't especially new for Jarmusch - in fact, it's usually a selling point. But lack of characters? Can you imagine Dead Man without the oddball supporting cast to balance out Johnny Depp? Coffee and Cigarettes at all?

 Thankfully, five years later, Jim Jarmusch returns to characters, and from a most unlikely (for him) literary source: vampires. But I wasn't worried. I can't explain why, but despite the fact that we've been seeing watered down bloodsuckers for the last half decade (or more), something about the idea of Jarmusch and vampires felt right. It was a gamble that paid off, because Only Lovers Left Alive is easily his best film since Ghost Dog and completely wipes Limits of Control off the ledger. Everything that fans have come to expect from Jarmusch is in there: the aimless story, the location as musical backdrop, the off-kilter humor, and most importantly, memorable characters.

 When we meet Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston), we don't know anything about them other than they abide messy abodes. The camera hovers above them, spinning like a 45 as Jarmusch makes his way to their faces, the soundtrack booming. If you haven't seen the trailer, I suppose there's a good chance you wouldn't know they were vampires, at least until Eve leaves her apartment in Tangier to visit a night café. She's waiting patiently for an old friend (John Hurt), and when she says his name, Christopher Marlowe, I guess the jig is up for people going in blind. Yes, that would be "the" Christopher Marlowe, and yes, he's a vampire. He has a nice supply of "the good stuff" that he's happy to share with Eve, but please don't say his name out loud.

 Just writing this, I feel like I'm making Only Lovers Left Alive out to be a very obvious and stupid sounding movie, which it isn't. Jarmusch doesn't play coy about Adam and Eve* - they are vampires, they are old, and there's a lot of unspoken history between them. Taken out of the context of the movie, I could understand how it might sound clever in a bad way, but it's presented so matter-of-factly in the story that it's hard not to take in stride. Eve is so easygoing, and Adam so morose, that you worry they're just going to be "types," but then Jarmusch brings them together and Only Lovers Left Alive shifts into a love story.

 Marlowe asks Eve why she and Adam don't live together if they've been married as long as they have been, but it seems pretty clear when she leaves Tangier to visit him in the U.S. that they have a long history together. They can be together and apart, and Jarmusch doesn't give any explicit reason why they're comfortable half a world away. There's no tragedy or disagreement hanging over the narrative - it just is, and you accept it the same way you do the conceit that they're vampires. Like many Jarmusch films, the why is less important. It gets in the way of what is.

 As he has in the past, Jarmusch sets Only Lovers Left Alive in a city known for its musical history. In this instance, it's Detroit, where Adam sets up shop in an abandoned part of town (the city's current financial calamity is another critical part of the story) and makes music in anonymity. At least, relative anonymity. He has Ian (Anton Yelchin) bring him recording equipment, instruments and, in one special request, a bullet made of wood. That doesn't amount to much more than a MacGuffin, but it's behind what brings Eve back to Adam. He's sick of the "zombies" (what vampires call humans) and is irritated that his music is finding an audience, despite his efforts to mask his identity. She brings him solace, and when the two of them come together, their facades crumble at bit. It turns out that Adam is also something of an amateur scientist and mechanic, who sets up his own sustainable energy for the house and who tinkers with old equipment. During a Skype (?) chat, he transfers the laptop signal to an old television. It's something he enjoys doing.

 Most of the time they drive around Detroit, and he takes her to the Detroit Theater (now a parking lot) and offers to show her the Motown Museum ("I'm more of a Staxx girl," she professes), but Eve is awfully impressed when Adam pulls up in front of Jack White's childhood home. If there's a singularly Jim Jarmusch-y moment in the film, that has to be it, but fans of Mystery Train should enjoy the thematic bridge. Their reunion is short lived, because dreams involving Eve's sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska) turn out to be her way of announcing a visit. Ava doesn't care much about protocol like entering a home without permission and doesn't care much about personal space - she's more than happy to tear through Adam's supply of blood. She's not a very welcome guest, by either of them. It's hinted that they haven't seen her in more than a hundred years, and that it didn't end well "in Paris," and she doesn't seem to have changed much.

 True to form, she wastes no time in aggravating Adam and testing the patience of her sister, who tries to give her the benefit of the doubt. They make quite a trio, with their dark sunglasses and gloves, hanging out at the back of a club watching some band play (at her insistence), with Ian in tow, clueless to what's in the flask they're passing around ("is that Jaegermeister?"). By the end of the following day, she's worn out her welcome and insured they can't stay in Detroit, but they're the "boring, pretentious assholes." Her parting gift, so to speak (other than a SPOILER I'll leave out) is to leave Adam with a broken Gibson guitar from 1905, one that Eve had only recently identified the age of. It's no wonder that he was wary to find Ava had invited herself in the night before. Kids...

 Lest you worry that things get to dour and "goth" with vampires in the picture, you needn't worry: Only Lovers Left Alive is frequently very funny, in an off-beat way. Much of it comes from Adam's source for blood in Detroit, played by Jeffrey Wright. I'd tell you his name, but the setup and payoff of his name tag and the one Adam is wearing is too good to spoil here. When Adam needs blood, he pulls his scraggly black hair back into a ponytail, puts on scrubs, a stethoscope, and walks into the local hospital. The other doctors give him an askew glance, but don't say anything. However, in order to maintain a sense of mystery, Adam puts on his sunglasses when he walks into the blood lab, and he looks ridiculous. Jarmusch holds on the image of Adam trying to look intimidating as if to say, "dude, who are you kidding?" and Wright's character reacts accordingly.

 Yelchin and Wasikowska also provide varying degrees of comic relief, although Hiddleston gets most of the laughs as he tries to humor Eve and handle Ava with anything more than exasperation. His carefully constructed persona collapses completely with his wife and sister-in-law dragging him to a club, and Hiddleston knows exactly when to play the laugh. It would be easy to say he's simply playing a variation on Loki in Only Lovers Left Alive, but I don't think that's quite the case. Adam is more a creature of habit than Loki is, more comfortable in his carefully controlled environment. By the end of the film that environment has been completely shattered, and there's a humorous inevitability to the final shot. Swinton plays the moment perfectly, but that's consistent with her performance in the entire film. As Eve, she carries herself with a natural ease at all times that Adam desperately wants to have. Watching her subtle facial shifts around Ava is also fascinating - Adam is disdainful, but Eve is cautious, nervous even.

 In all honestly, I could have spent another hour with Eve and Adam, but I'm happy to have what's there. Only Lovers Left Alive restores the character to the Jim Jarmusch character study, and you don't mind watching a movie where the main characters drive around Detroit or hang out on the couch most of the time. Really, it's a lot of fun. The soundtrack is great, the actors are having fun, and Jarmusch brings just the right balance of directorial flourish and musical fetishism to the proceedings that I'm having a hard time finding things to complain about. There are more bad vampire movies and shows out there than good ones, it often feels like, so it's nice to add another film to the "positive" category. If you want to see a vampire movie where nothing really happens that you'll enjoy, check out Only Lovers Left Alive. Unless you like sparkly things or need someone to say the word "vampire" every ten minutes. You won't find that here.



 * Jarmusch did not, apparently, intend for audiences to assumed they were "the" Adam and Eve, but the IMDB trivia page erroneously refers to them being based on Mark Twain's satirical excerpts from the "diaries" of Adam and Eve, which ARE about "that" Adam and Eve. Twain also appears as a photograph on the wall of acquaintances in Adam's apartment.

Spoiler of the Day: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

  Aliens (oh, I'm sorry Mr. Lucas, "extra-dimensional beings") have been waiting for someone to bring back the last crystal skull to their ship somewhere in the Amazon. When Indiana Jones, et al, return the skull, one of the "aliens" ceases to be a crystal skeleton (or something like that, I really don't remember), and the ship flies off. Our heroes sit down at the top of a mountain near where the ship was and Henry Jones, Jr. explains that the translation of "treasure" could also mean "knowledge," at which point everybody in the audience starts laughing.


 Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Forgotten

Blogorium Review: 44 Inch Chest

I know what you're thinking, but the Cap'n is not yet in the business of reviewing porn or porn-related films. That certainly sounds like something the Cranpire might do, but it's not really up my alley. No, I'm reviewing 44 Inch Chest in the hopes of turning some of you on to a well executed, well acted, well written, if not wholly successful, nevertheless entertaining revenge film from the UK.

The plot is simple, yet it opens up room for the cast (and director) to really explore themes of camaraderie, infidelity, maturity, and vengeance. The 44 Inch Chest referred to in the title is where Loverboy (Melvil Poupand) is being kept, the result of his breaking up the marriage of Colin (Ray Winstone) and Liz Diamond (Joanne Whalley). Colin's friends Archie (Tom Wilkinson), Mal (Stephen Dillane), Old Man Peanut (John Hurt), and Meredith (Ian McShane) help arrange to kidnap Loverboy for the expressed purpose of letting Colin kill him. The problem is that Colin's having a hard time doing just that, so on night two they find themselves trying to get him out of a stupor and to do what they came to this abandoned building for.

If that doesn't have you interested already, I'll give you three good reasons to see this out:

1. The script, by Louis Mellis and David Scinto (Sexy Beast), could almost be a stage play. Aside from a handful of transitional scenes, most 0f 44 Inch Chest takes place inside the room where Loverboy is being kept or in the adjoining hallway. The primary action takes place in conversation between the five men, punctuated with a few flashbacks, asides, and an initially wonky but appropriate series of dream sequences. I would be very interested to see 44 Inch Chest performed live, as their screenplay is dialogue heavy and could easily be transferred to the theatre.

2. Accordingly, the direction by first time feature filmmaker Malcolm Venville conveys the limited space in a way that feels fresh, if at times of another era. The User Review on IMDB refers to the film as "strangely anachronistic", which I don't know if that's quite fair. Venville doesn't rely on a lot of camera trickery or quick cuts, instead preferring long takes with fluid camera moves focusing on the actors and acquainting the audience with location. Even in a tight shot of Mal, Meredith, Archie, and Peanut in a hallway, there's a sense of space and motion, despite the framing. The aforementioned dream sequences are easy to point out (which may be part of the reason I struggled with their inclusion), although it's due in part to the fact that the camera switches to a subjective view of the room (almost totally from Colin's perspective), which interrupts the careful mise-en-scene Venville's spent to much of the film developing. It's not that I don't get why the sequences are there (and I'm leaving out specifics so as not to spoil anything), but initially it seems to betray the story to that point, even if by the end they're wholly appropriate to Colin's arc.

3. The cast is fantastic, and I'd be hard pressed to find a better combination of British actors in one movie. Every character is distinct and brings something different to the struggle Colin has in killing Loverboy. Tom Wilkinson's Archie is by far the most level-headed of the group; he's a nice middle-aged man who lives with his mother and is trying to help Colin get through this betrayal, and takes some enjoyment out of re-living "the good old days" with the boys. Stephen Dillane (John Adams, Hamlet)'s Mal seems to be along for the ride, a low-end criminal that wants to see Colin have his revenge, and who looks up to Old Man Peanut. John Hurt is a force to be reckoned with as Peanut, a bitter old-school hood that lives "by the code" and who uses profanity like punctuation. He's off-set by the dapper, elegant Meredith, Ian McShane's middle-aged homosexual playboy with no sense of attachment or loyalty beyond this circle.

Their interaction alone would be worth the price of admission, but in tiny roles (comparatively speaking), Joanne Whalley (Willow) and Melvil Poupand (A Christmas Tale) leave a big impression. Liz Diamond disappears for much of the movie, but as her story is slowly explained in the flashbacks (which bridge the opening scene to the dream sequences), it's clearer why Ray Winstone is so wrecked by her infidelity. Loverboy, without uttering a word, conveys the range of emotions from remorse to terror, and finally, to pity in brief glimpses. He is both the perfect compliment and foil to Colin.

Speaking of which, I haven't really delved into Ray Winstone's Colin, which is probably the sticking point for a lot of reviews. He spends most of the film in various catatonic states, or struggling to parse reality from fantasy, and it does at times make 44 Inch Chest slow down a bit, particularly when juxtaposed with a fantastic sequence in the hallway involving Peanut recounting the story Samson and Delilah (complete with footage of DeMille's 1949 version starring Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr) to the boys. There's a lot of the middle of the film where it seems Colin can't do anything, and while Winstone is fascinating to watch and packs subtlety into his character, there's not much development of the "hero" until the last fifteen minutes or so.

I suppose that I didn't mind in part because everyone is so good, and the dialogue and direction are refreshingly different from the normal, Guy Ritchie-esque British Crime Films*. I enjoyed 44 Inch Chest, though there may be flaws in the presentation; the film is compelling enough to get you over the hiccups and keep viewers engaged until the end. It would make an interesting double feature with the Michael Caine-starring Harry Brown, perhaps even more so than Gran Torino.


* Not to slag on Ritchie, who like Quentin Tarantino has been ripped off enough times be less talented filmmakers that the style is not passe.

Blogorium Review: Outlander

Outlander is a good but not great movie about Vikings fighting Aliens. Jim Caviezel plays Kainan, a humanoid alien who crash lands on Earth in the 8th century, and finds himself hunting a "dragon" with the help of Rothgar (John Hurt)'s Viking... uh, tribe? I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what you call a group of Vikings. The "dragon" is actually a Moorwen, which is an alien that uses glowing red light to capture its prey and eats pretty much anything, including a whale. Since Kainan looses his gun, he has to rely on alien smarts to kill the Moorwen, plus win over the King's daughter and broker peace between warring tribes.

Like I said; it's not a bad movie, but I don't necessarily agree with the positive internet consensus. The bar is pretty low on Vikings vs "_____" movies in the wake of Pathfinder, but just because Outlander doesn't totally drop the ball doesn't mean it's a "lost gem". The film is riddled with logical errors and forced character choices that happen only because the co-writer / director need the movie to end a certain way.

For example, the well in the middle of Rothgar's village somehow links up both to a nearby lake and to an underground volcano, which means one of two things:

1. Kainan and his Viking team either went so far underground that they split the difference between the crust and mantle under Norway, or

2. The water is so cold that it somehow cannot instantly vaporize despite its proximity to flowing lava.

There are a bunch of other logical gaffes, including a burning monster and someone who should be pulling a Harvey Dent (based on being covered with oil and being in an explosion / fighting a monster that's on FIRE), and how they could possibly forge Kainan's ship hull into weapons if it's more powerful than the steel they use to hammer it, but I digress. I want to talk about one other curious aspect of Outlander.

If you hadn't noticed from the fact there's a King Rothgar and a strange hero who kills a Monster, its mother, and comes from a distant land, there's a distinctly Beowulf-ian vibe to Outlander. It's never explicitly addressed, so I'll give some credit to Howard McCain and Dirk Blackman for letting it sneak in to the movie, but they never really go anywhere with it either.

The leads are pretty good, but supporting characters range from passable to downright terrible, and that's before we get to their awful wigs and fake looking beards. John Hurt is fine as Rothgar; he gets to be king-ly and doesn't really have a lot to do but worry about causing war between his tribe and Gunnar's. As Gunnar, Ron Perlman alternates between being Ron Perlman and a Will Ferrel impersonation of Ron Perlman with a goofy beard.

Honestly, Perlman is barely in the movie and *SPOILER* gets a cheap death from the Moorwen during the village siege. It's almost insulting to bring him in for that. Sophia Myles (Underworld, Doctor Who) holds her own as Freya, but to be honest her best scenes involve being stuck in a room full of corpses. Rob Zombie could learn a thing or two from Outlander, because there might actually be 1,000 corpses in the Moorwen cave.

As to the other guys, Jack Huston (Shrooms) is basically all right, as are the guys who play Boromir and Unferth. Honestly, I didn't notice there was a character named Unferth, but it really does continue the whole "Beowulf" riff, doesn't it? The main Viking guys (or the ones you see more than two times before they die) are all pretty good, if unmemorable.

Overall, I'd say that I enjoyed watching Outlander, although I'm in no hurry to see it again, and I guess I can understand why the brothers Weinstein had no idea what to do with the movie. I can't really see Outlander being a huge hit theatrically, and to be honest, it took me the better part of three months to decide to finally watch it.

I realize this review sounds like a pan, but there's some measure of fun to be had with Outlander. The premise is handled well enough, and the effects shots are sometimes good and sometimes cheesy, but the Moorwen design is cool and Kainan's back story helps flesh things out a bit. If you're looking for a pleasant diversion, of a Science Fiction / Fantasy hybrid movie, or if you just like Vikings, Outlander is probably worth checking out.