Archive for the Suspense Category

« Older Entries

AFTERSHOCK (2013)

Posted in 2013, Action Movies, Bad Situations, Disaster Films, Eli Roth, Escaped Convicts, Exotic Locales, LL Soares Reviews, Suspense with tags , , , , , , , on May 13, 2013 by knifefighter

AFTERSHOCK (2013)
Movie Review by L.L. Soares

AFTERSHOCK_Radius_Keyart_1920x25601

Originally, Michael Arruda and I were going to see this one and review it together for CKF, but something went wrong with the distribution. Instead of coming to a theater near me, this one popped up only in theaters way out in the suburbs. And it wasn’t playing near Michael at all. I figured we would just have to skip this one, but luckily it is currently showing on cable OnDemand.

I have no idea why this one didn’t get a proper release, but it’s a decent little disaster flick. The one recognizable star here is director Eli Roth, who has appeared in such Quentin Tarantino films as DEATH PROOF (2007) and INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (2009). I guess someone else finally decided to utilize his acting skills. Director Nicolas Lopez puts him in good use in AFTERSHOCK as an American tourist, hanging out with friends in Chile.  (Roth also produced and co-wrote this one, by the way.)

The movie begins with Gringo (which is what the other characters call Eli Roth’s American in this one) and his buddies Ariel (Ariel Levy) and Pollo (Nicolas Martinez) seeing the sights and trying to pick up women in discos. Ariel is the insecure one who has just broken up with his girlfriend and can’t seem to get his dating rhythm going. Pollo is his roly-poly Zach Galifanakas-look alike Chilean buddy, who has a rich daddy and has a much more confident rap when meeting women. Gringo is along for the ride. He’s a recently divorced Dad who is so devoted to his daughter, he’d rather take a cell phone call from her than seal the deal with a horny local girl (in another, slightly humorous scene, Roth comes on to another American tourist, played by Selena Gomez in a cameo).

Eli Roth proves again that he's a decent actor in AFTERSHOCK, here putting the moves on a fellow tourist (Selena Gomez).

Eli Roth proves again that he’s a decent actor in AFTERSHOCK, here putting the moves on a fellow tourist (Selena Gomez).

It’s at one of these discos, an underground club, that the guys get stuck in the middle of an earthquake. But first, they meet three girls who are also visiting from America: fun-loving Kylie (Lorenza Izzo), her uptight sister Monica (Andrea Osvart) who acts like a mother hen, and their Russian friend Irina (Natasha Yarovenko).

When the quake comes, the six of them run for their lives (unfortunately, Ariel loses a hand in the process) and by the time they make it to the surface, the entire town has turned into a violent, chaotic mess. They find at least one ally in a firefighter (Marcial Tagle) who Pollo and Monica save after his fire truck crashes.

Not only are there earth-moving aftershocks that continue to cause injury and death, but a nearby prison has collapsed and a group of marauding, vicious prisoners has escaped, roaming the streets, intent on raping and killing just about whoever they come across.

AFTERSHOCK becomes a study in survival, as we eventually lose more of our heroes, either to the disaster or the escaped convicts. Who will ultimately survive, and who will die? You’ve got to see the film to find out the answer to that one.

The movie begins kind of slowly, with the guys going to a vineyard and various nightclubs, joking around and trying to get laid, before things really shift into gear, but I’ve never had a problem with characterization, and the time we spend with these guys just makes them more believable as people. The trio of girls is equally likeable.

The danger doesn’t seem to kick in until half-way into the movie, but once the first earthquake hits, director Lopez does a decent job building suspense and keeping the main characters constantly on the move. Once the action starts, it maintains a solid momentum until the end. He’s also not afraid to turn on the gore when necessary. The script for this one is by Lopez, Guillermo Ameodo and Eli Roth.

The cast is pretty good here. Standouts include Roth (who acquits himself quite well, and shows he deserves more chances to act), Martinez, who is pretty good as the most extroverted of the friends, and Osvart, who proves herself to be pretty tough when she needs to be. Interesting enough, a lot of the cast here also appears in Eli Roth’s upcoming Amazon jungle horror flick THE GREEN INFERNO, so it will be good to see them again (Guillermo Amoedo also co-wrote the script for Roth’s new one).

Monica (Andrea Osvart) proves she can be tough when she needs to be, in AFTERSHOCK.

When the going gets rough,Monica (Andrea Osvart) proves she can be tough when she needs to be, in AFTERSHOCK.

AFTERSHOCK was filmed on location in Chile, and the setting is refreshing, especially in the small details, despite one character’s complaint that she was visiting the country expecting something “Third World, but cool..” (Note: because many of the characters are native Chileans, about half the dialogue is subtitled, and half is in English, in case that affects your particular movie-going experience).

Not the most amazing film you’ll see this year, but a serviceable thriller that will keep you watching until the end. I liked this one, and wish I had had the opportunity to see it on the big screen.

I give AFTERSHOCK, two and a half knives.

© Copyright 2013 by L.L. Soares

LL Soares gives AFTERSHOCK~two and a half  knives.

Leave A Comment »

The Distracted Critic Enters THE TUNNEL (2011)

Posted in 2013, Australian Horror, Faux Documentaries, Horror, Indie Horror, Paul McMahon Columns, Suspense, The Distracted Critic with tags , , , , , , , on February 26, 2013 by knifefighter

THE TUNNEL (2011)
Review by Paul McMahon – The Distracted Critic

The Tunnel

THE TUNNEL is an Australian film written by Enzo Tedeschi and Julian Harvey, who have stepped beyond the “found The ” angle by concocting a faux documentary complete with interviews and enhanced screen shots, which reveal images the original crew didn’t realize they’d caught. They’ve crafted a decent story, giving their characters the kind of solid motivations that are rarely found in Hollywood releases. Another way it differs from Hollywood films is that they cast age-appropriate actors who you can believe hold the jobs of their characters, rather than casting pretty-looking twenty-somethings obviously too immature and inexperienced to hold the jobs they portray.

The movie opens with a spin on the “Sleight of Hand Start” (which is when the director reveals a scene from the ending to create tension right off the bat)—a 911 call, complete with subtitles, on a black screen. It tells us very little while it conveys panic and desperation. It’s a popular opening sequence for many documentaries, so it didn’t feel out of place here.

Next, we get a montage of news reports detailing a water shortage in Sydney. The reports cover a government plan to convert an abandoned subway station into a water reclamation facility. This will allow the use of water from a huge underground lake deep beneath the train tunnels. Further reports outline opposition to the plan, including worries that the evicted homeless will flood the streets. Finally, there’s a dismissive report that the plan has been shelved, though no one will explain why.

Now we meet Steve and Tangles, having drinks at their executive producer’s birthday party. Someone is filming the festivities for the hell of it, and Steve is happy to narrate the inter-office politics, while making fun of everyone the camera pans across. We see Pete and Natalie in an intense discussion, and Steve insinuates that Pete is hitting on her. When Natalie moves away warily, Steve and Tangles laugh.

In an interview segment, Steve describes Natalie as: “Just another young person coming in, getting paid too much money, hadn’t really proved herself, but you know, she was ‘the next big thing.’”

Natalie latches onto the abandoned water reclamation project, and when her investigation uncovers stories of people disappearing in the tunnels, Pete is yanked from a story that will take him to China so he can help Nat with her project. It’s a decision that Pete is painfully unhappy with.  He tells Steve and Tangles that Natalie’s: “…treading on thin ice. That’s why John put me onto this, to make sure she doesn’t f___ up again.”

Eventually, Natalie coerces Pete, Steve and Tangles to accompany her into the tunnels, insisting that John knows where they are. They break in through a maintenance gate and wander about using an outdated map. In an interview segment, Natalie confesses that she could not get the necessary permits to film in the tunnel, and she believed that without them the station would cancel her story. “…I put a lot of work into my career and I think it was all basically hanging on this one story. I didn’t really have a choice.”

Eventually, the team makes their way to the underground lake. Here, Natalie tries to record a sequence for her report, but Tangles keeps cutting her off to tell Pete and Steve to quit whispering. They deny doing it, but Tangles doesn’t believe them and accuses them of “punking” him.

Later on they find the “Bell Room,” where we learn that the tunnels were used as a public air raid shelter during WWII. The bell used to alert citizens to a bombing raid is still intact. Tangles complains that it’s too loud when Nat rings the bell, so he takes his microphones into the next room to try and dull the sound. Steve dons Tangles’ headphones and watches the gauges while Pete takes over the camera. The instant Nat rings the bell, Steve screams Tangles’ name and runs into the next room. Tangles has disappeared. They return to the bell room and discover their gear has disappeared as well….

They do manage to locate Tangles' flashlight, however.

They do manage to locate Tangles’ flashlight, however.

Director Carlo Ledesma has experience with real documentaries, having directed both FOOD MATTERS [2008] and HUNGRY FOR CHANGE [2012]. With THE TUNNEL, he has put together a “horror documentary” with a true-to-life feel. We see reporters like this all the time in real life, self-important gung-ho types who believe that their cameras and microphones will magically protect them from danger and keep them separate from anything that happens around them.

The acting is very good. Bel Deliá (THE LOVE OF MY LIFE, scheduled for 2014– I’ll be looking for it), as Natalie, conveys the desperation of someone on a last chance to save her job while trying to conceal her own self-doubt. She is believable throughout. Andy Rodoreda (BLACK WATER, 2007) plays Pete, who is increasingly relied upon to lead the group as Natalie’s composure begins to fracture. Steve Davis (the Australian TV series EVENT ZERO, 2012) plays Steve, the cameraman. It was a surprise to learn that his primary filmmaking experience is with cinematography and camera work, because his acting was fantastic.

Steve Davis plays Steve, a surprisingly good actor for a cameraman.

Steve Davis plays Steve, a surprisingly good actor for a cameraman.

Lastly, Luke Arnold (BROKEN HILL, 2009 and a lot of TV work down under) is excellent as Tangles, who, wearing the sound man’s headphones, gives most of the early tension to the film. There are a handful of moments when Steve focuses on him staring intently into the blackness as if he expects to see someone or something out there.

THE TUNNEL has some frightening moments and above-average suspense, though it does contains one eye-rolling sequence where you have to question the director’s judgement. (It involves the re-appearance of a minor character in a place he has no business being.)

In the end, the documentary format is not a new idea. It was used in the Australian film LAKE MUNGO in 2008, and there have undoubtedly been others. THE TUNNEL is more reminiscent of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999), the Spanish film [REC] (2007), and even CLOVERFIELD (2008). While it differs from these movies by coming at you like a legitimate documentary instead of a VHS cassette filmed by dead people, you don’t walk away from the movie feeling that difference on any meaningful level. It comes off, all told, like another entry into the ‘found footage’ pantheon. A good entry, but still.

I give THE TUNNEL two and a half stars with a single time out.

© Copyright 2013 by Paul McMahon

The-Tunnel-Movie-Poster

Leave A Comment »

LOVELY MOLLY (2011)

Posted in 2012, Enigmatic Films, Horror, Madness, Paul McMahon Columns, Possession, Supernatural, Suspense with tags , , , , , , on November 14, 2012 by knifefighter

LOVELY MOLLY (2011)
Movie Review by Paul McMahon– The Distracted Critic

Eduardo Sanchez, co-director of the THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) and writer/director of ALTERED (2006), has a new film out called LOVELY MOLLY (2011). It’s an interesting Frankenstein’s monster, incorporating both the hand-held camera work used in BLAIR WITCH and the traditional narrative film style used in ALTERED. The film opens, in fact, with an extreme close-up of Molly, which echoes Heather’s now iconic videotaped confession in BLAIR WITCH.

Molly looks panicked and strung out, or panicked and exhausted, and she says: “Whatever happened, it wasn’t me.” She holds a knife to her own throat for a few tense seconds, before bringing it down and saying “It won’t let me do it.”

Now we’re at Molly and Tim’s wedding, another hand-held shot, and the camera picks up a young boy who looks stuffed into a suit. He walks directly at the camera with a smile completely juxtaposed after the clip we just saw, and as the camera zooms in on the kid’s mouth he whispers “I’m hungry.” We watch snippets of a wedding, picking up little bits here and there. Tim is dissed by one of Molly’s young relatives. One of Molly’s uncles offers a toast to his brother Ben and and his wife Tammy (Molly’s parents): “Who I know are looking down on us right now, and watching their little girl start her new life with her new husband.” You also see the maid of honor giving a tearful apology for any times she let the bride down, while Molly dismisses her apology with a smile and a shake of her head. This last is such a quick exchange you just know it’s going to be important later.

After the credits roll, we put the hand-held away. It’s late at night and shadows are used very well to portray a house in isolation, surrounded by forest without a streetlight to be seen. The security alarm goes off. Molly and Tim jolt out of bed. Tim fiddles with the alarm and it takes him a few tries to get the thing to shut off. There’s a problem at the kitchen door. They creep out to the head of the stairs, hearing something bumping around downstairs. They freak and bolt themselves in their bedroom to await the cops. After a walk through reveals nothing, we rejoin them the next morning, Molly’s birthday. Tim, who drives a truck, is leaving on a job. He’ll be back in a few days. Molly is not at all happy about this. We watch her locking up the house that night, and when she reaches the kitchen door that set the alarm off, it crashes in its frame as if it’s been kicked by a horse. Molly calls the police again and is assured that the house had been vacant long enough that kids must be using the property as a place to hang out. “They’ll stop coming around after a while,” is the most comfort he offers her.

The next night, sounds of a crying child come from inside the house. Molly searches, finally opening the closet in a spare bedroom. She stares. Smiles. Reaches inside.

Next morning, Tim returns. It’s daylight. He calls, and Molly doesn’t answer. He searches the house, and is shocked to find her sitting in the spare room, facing the closet, absolutely naked. He talks to her as he creeps closer and finally sits beside her, and she seems oblivious to his presence, until finally her eyes focus and she turns to him.

“He’s alive,” she says.

Not at all the ‘Welcome home!”Tim was expecting.

LOVELY MOLLY is a horror movie of the “Is she crazy, is she possessed, or is she truly haunted?” trope. There are a lot of possible answers presented here. Molly has a history of mental illness and drug use. She’s spending much of her time alone in the house she grew up in; a house where horrible things happened to her. There are images of horses, and at one point you can hear horse hooves clopping outside the bedroom door late at night. There’s a co-worker of Molly’s who lives with her two small children in a house through the woods, and Molly occasionally sneaks over to film them on her hand-held video camera—that is, when she’s not using the camera to film empty corners as she screams for something, or someone, to show itself. There are hints that she’s possessed by an evil spirit. Through it all, you wonder how all these strands will tie together into a cohesive whole.

Eduardo Sanchez has a firm grasp of what keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. He uses our fears of the dark, of death, of solitude, of other people, to masterful effect here. Most importantly, he capitalizes on what Stephen King calls our natural “fear FOR someone else” because Molly is truly likeable. Newcomer Gretchen Lodge puts forth a tremendous performance here, inhabiting Molly completely in all her permutations of emotion. If the right Hollywood people see this film, we’ll be seeing a lot more of Gretchen in years to come.

Gretchen Lodge as LOVELY MOLLY.

In fact, all the performers have come with their A-games. Alexandra Holden (Maggie in 2006′s SPECIAL) plays Molly’s sister, Hannah. From her tearful confession in the wedding video at the start of the film, you can see Hannah’s concern grow even as she becomes more and more concerned for her own safety. Field Blauvelt (THE INVASION,  2007) plays Pastor Bobby perfectly, nailing that character with every move, every smile, every downcast eye.

The late Johnny Lewis (“Half Sack” in SONS OF ANARCHY) shines as Tim, deeply in love with Molly but without a clue as to how to help her. It’s mentioned that they don’t have the health insurance to get her the attention she really needs. I wish I was comfortable saying this is the reason he and Hannah make such piss-poor decisions, but honestly it felt like the decisions they made were the ones the writers needed them to make to have the story move the way they wanted.

The late Johnny Lewis (“Half Sack” on SONS OF ANARCHY) plays Tim in LOVELY MOLLY.

There are simply too many questions brought up during the course of the movie to answer all of them in a way that feels satisfying. It felt like Eduardo Sanchez and Jamie Nash wrote the screenplay while keeping their shooting budget in the forefront of their minds. It seemed like any aspect that threatened to exceed what they could pay for was dropped without another glance. The movie could’ve used a far less restrictive writing process. I think it would’ve been better for them to just cut loose and write whatever the story dictated, and then edit it down to meet the budget later. There are a couple of instances where the plot felt out-of-control, as if even the director didn’t understand why things were happening.

These drawbacks were relatively small, though. In all, LOVELY MOLLY is a very tense film that keeps you guessing throughout. It’s the kind of movie you don’t finish and forget about. This one will keep you thinking long after your media center powers down. It may even draw you back to watch it again.

I give it three stars with two time-outs.

© Copyright 2012 by Paul McMahon

Leave A Comment »

LOOPER (2012)

Posted in 2012, Action Movies, Bruce Willis Films, Cinema Knife Fights, Crime Films, LL Soares Reviews, Science Fiction, Suspense, The Future, The Mob, Time Travel with tags , , , , , , , on October 1, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: LOOPER (2012)
By L.L. Soares

(SCENE 1: Somewhere in the future. L.L. SOARES has a bag over his head and jumps into a weird pod-like machine. He’s out of breath from escaping from a bunch of thugs and pulls the sack off his head just as the machine activates and sends him hurtling through time…)

(SCENE 2: MICHAEL ARRUDA stands in the middle of a field, holding a large gun. In front of him is a tarp spread out on the ground. He looks at his pocket watch to confirm the time)

(Suddenly, LS appears on the tarp. MA lifts his gun, then stops)

LS: Michael, it’s me. I know I look older, but it’s L.L.

MA: I don’t understand. I was supposed to shoot whoever came back from the future…

LS: Well, you can’t shoot me. Then there won’t be any more Cinema Knife Fight column. Right?

MA (hesitates): I guess so. But I have my orders.

LS: Screw your orders. (he gets up and walks toward MA). I’m here to review the new movie LOOPER, have you seen it yet?

MA: No, I haven’t. Did you come from the future to tell me about it?

LS: Yes, exactly. (points to his gun) So we’re cool, right?

MA: Yeah (puts down the gun)

LS: Sucker! (pulls out a gun from his waistband and plugs MA)

(As LS laughs, we go back to the future, where LS enters a pod, out of breath, and pulls that sack off his head again. The machine activates, and we spiral down a corridor of time)

LS: Uh oh. I think I got trapped in a time warp this time. My karma has finally caught up with me.

(Looks at audience)

Well, looks like I’ve got some time on my hands. Might as well do that LOOPER review I mentioned earlier.

LOOPER a clever science fiction film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt. I actually wasn’t all that excited about it going in. It looked like just another gimmicky sci-fi film, and I felt like I’d seen the whole story based on the trailer. But thankfully, I was wrong. For once, I was surprised and LOOPER was much better than I expected.

The story is told from the point of view of Joe (Gordon-Levitt) who explains that he is a Looper. In the future (30 years from now, to be specific), time travel is illegal, but it’s used by organized crime. Also, due to various tagging methods, it is also near impossible to get rid of a body after killing someone in the future. So the gangsters of the future use time travel to kill two birds with one stone. They’ve sent an emissary to our time named Abe (Jeff Daniels) to set things up. He recruits people to be assassins called Loopers. Victims from the future are sent back in time, the Loopers shoot them and then dispose of the bodies. And it seems to be a very effective way to get rid of unwanted people.

Except every once in a while someone finds that the person they’ve been hired to kill is him or herself, sent from the future to “close the loop.” It’s then that they’re given a big payday and forced to retire, knowing that in 30 years, they’re going to die.

Get it?

Joe’s doing quite well. He’s got money, girls and lots of some weird drug he applies with eyedrops and that keeps him happy. Then one day he goes out in the abandoned field where he kills his victims, and comes face to face with an older version of himself, who he calls Old Joe (Bruce Willis). Old Joe isn’t bound and his head isn’t covered, like most of the victims. He is able to keep from getting shot—since he knows what his younger self is going to do—and cold cocks Joe. When Joe wakes up, Old Joe is long gone and he’s in a world of trouble with his bosses. If he doesn’t track Old Joe down and get rid of him, all hell is going to break loose. But Joe’s superiors are going to think he let his older self go on purpose (some guys just can’t bring themselves to kill their older selves when faced with the prospect), so he’s going to have elude them, too, while he tries to set things straight.

Oh yeah, there’s another subplot in the mix. Aside from Loopers, there’s also a group of evolved people called TKs (as in telekinetics). Most of them can’t do much more than float quarters with their minds, but there’s some guy in the future called the Rainmaker, who can do a lot more than that, and he’s taking over the crime gangs. Which is why so many loopers lately have been coming face to face with their older selves and being forced to close the loop.

That’s the background stuff. But LOOPER is so much more than just a concept. It’s about characters – characters who are pretty well fleshed out for a big budget gimmicky science fiction movie with an A-list cast. This isn’t your average futuristic crime movie. LOOPER is smart, well-written, and well acted.

Aside from Gordon-Levitt (who just seems to get better and better in each movie I see him in) and Willis (people in the audience were actually cheering during any scene where Willis got ahold of a gun), there’s also Emily Blunt as a woman who takes the wounded Joe in after he’s ambushed by his fellow loopers. Her name is Sara and she takes care of a little boy named Cid, who is a lot more important to the story than he first seems. Blunt is excellent here, and Pierce Gagnon is really good as little Cid, who seems smart and inquisitive sometimes and other times is just plain scary.

The rest of the cast is solid and includes Paul Dano, Piper Perabo and the always reliable Jeff Daniels (as I mentioned before).

The movie was written and directed by Rian Johnson  Johnson also made the very interesting “high school noir” flick BRICK (2005), also starring Gordon-Levitt (and it’s so odd, it’s worth checking out), and directed episodes of AMC’s BREAKING BAD and the short-lived FX series TERRIERS. He’s made a compelling little movie with LOOPER and I think he’s going to be someone worth watching in the future.

Because one of the stars is Bruce Willis, and it involves his character being sent here from the future, I guess comparisons to Terry Gilliam’s TWLEVE MONKEYS (1995) are unavoidable, but the stories are very different. They do, however, share the fact that they’re above-average for Hollywood sci-fi films.

I really enjoyed this movie. I thought it was smart and riveting throughout, and it even had a dark humor to it at times. I thought Gordon-Levitt and Willis were terrific here (there’s even one scene where Willis grabs a gun and goes on a rampage in the bad guys’ lair that reminded me a lot of Chan-wook Park’s OLDBOY, 2003).

I give LOOPER, four knives.

(LS is still spinning through time, when he suddenly lands on top of that tarp, in the middle of a field again. MICHAEL ARRUDA stands before him, aiming a gun)

LS: Michael, it’s me. I know I look older, but don’t shoot. It’s L.L.

MA: I feel like we’ve done this before.

LS: Put the gun down. You can’t shoot me. Then there won’t be a Cinema Knife Fight column anymore.

MA (hesitates): Why do I have such a hard time trusting you?

(CLOSE-UP of LS’s eyes, pleading)

FADE TO BLACK

© Copyright 2012 by L.L. Soares

LL Soares gives LOOPER  ~FOUR knives (out of five).

1 Comment »

THE TALL MAN (2012)

Posted in 2012, Controverisal Films, Family Secrets, Indie Horror, LL Soares Reviews, Mystery, Plot Twists, Scares!, Surprises!, Suspense, Twist Endings, Twisted with tags , , , , , , , , on September 4, 2012 by knifefighter

THE TALL MAN
Movie Review by L.L. Soares

When I first heard about the movie THE TALL MAN, I thought it was another sequel in the PHANTASM series. For those who aren’t fans, the Tall Man is the main villain of that franchise. But this new movie has nothing to do with PHANTASM. So I thought, based on the title and the movie poster (with star Jessica Biel prominently displayed), that this was a standard horror movie. I was wrong on both counts.

Then I found out that THE TALL MAN was directed by French filmmaker Pascal Laugier, who previously gave us the movie MARTYRS (2008), which I consider one of my all-time favorite horror films. It had the same kind of effect on me when it came out as Takashi Miike’s AUDITION did in 2000. Needless to say, I was psyched and immediately sought THE TALL MAN out. It was supposed to be in limited theatrical release, but it wasn’t playing anywhere near me. Luckily, however, it was playing on cable OnDemand, so I was able to see it for myself.

I’m really glad I did.

THE TALL MAN is a movie full of twists and turns that are going to keep you off balance throughout, as you try to figure out who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, and what everyone here is up to.

It begins in a poverty-stricken small town called Cold Rock, Washington. It used to be thriving once, but the coal mines, the main source of work there, shut down, all the other jobs dried up, and people started losing their homes. Oh yeah, there’s one other reason why Cold Rock is such a sad place. Over the years, there have been several child abductions, and the children have never been recovered. A few people swear they got a look at who took their children, a dark figure that has taken on mythic proportions in the town. Everyone refers to the child stealer as The Tall Man.

It’s here in Cold Rock that Julia Denning (Jessica Biel, who we most recently saw in this summer’s big budget remake of TOTAL RECALL) tries her best to help people get medical care. Her husband was the local doctor, but he’s gone now, and since she was his nurse, she’s able to provide some basic services to those in need. It’s clear however, that even though her husband was respected and loved in Cold Rock, Julia will never be completely accepted by everyone in town. There are some people here who trust her, however, like the mute teenager Jenny (Jodelle Ferland) who will become more important as the film goes on.

Since she’s a widow, Julia has her friend (sister?) Christine (Eve Harlow) babysit her son, David (Jakob Davies) when she’s out making her rounds. David seems to be sickly, but lights up when his mother comes home.

Life is rough in Cold Rock, but Julia does what she can, until the day comes when she returns home to find Christine beaten and tied up, and a hooded figure running away from the house, carrying David in its arms.

While trying to retrieve her son David, Julia Denning (Jessica Biel) falls into a pit of mud in THE TALL MAN.

Julia runs after them, down the street to a large truck that drives away. Determined not to let them get away, Julia grabs on to the back door of the truck, and hangs on for dear life. She tries desperately to retrieve her son in a nightmarish sequence involving the truck, a vicious dog, and an accident. But eventually, she loses the trail, and collapses in the middle of the street, where Lieutenant Dodd (Stephen McHattie) finds her and brings her into his car. He drives her to the local diner where Sheriff Chestnut (William B. Davis) is, and tells him to get an ambulance, while Dodd goes back out trying to find the child stealer based on what Julia has told him.

It’s at this point that things get strange. While washing up and changing her clothes in the office of Trish (Janet Wright) who runs the diner, she hears the Sheriff and another man in a heated discussion, wondering what they should do next. It sounds like they mean to harm Julia. What’s going on here?

To give away any more of the plot would be unkind, but let’s say, at this point, THE TALL MAN stops being a typical horror movie and goes in a completely unexpected direction. This is business as usual for director Pascal Laugier, who is used to running us through a maze in his movies, MARTYRS being a perfect example.

The cast here is very good, especially Biel, who is turning into an actress you can count on to deliver a decent performance. She’s actually much better here than she is in TOTAL RECALL, partly because she’s the lead character, but also because THE TALL MAN is a more serious, intelligent film.

THE TALL MAN is out there.

M. Night Shyamalan might still have the reputation as the king of the twist endings – even if it’s no longer warranted and he’s become something of a joke. But Laugier proves here that he deserves the title more, and he delivers the scares along the way.

The other aspects of this film are finely tuned as well, including the score by Todd Bryanton, which compliments the film perfectly. I was very psyched when I found out that Barry Dejasu was interviewing Bryanton about his soundtrack for THE TALL MAN for his Scoring Horror column (this review is being posted as a companion piece to his interview).

THE TALL MAN is so different from the usual horror movies we keep getting, and is so much more ambitious in its storytelling, that it deserves a wider audience simply because it tries to do something different, and I was disappointed to see that this one has been getting such shoddy distribution. But if you look for it on cable, you would do yourself a favor to find it.

While I didn’t like THE TALL MAN as much as MARTYRS, which remains Laugier’s masterwork, I still thought it was head and shoulders above most of the horror movies Hollywood has been giving us lately. THE TALL MAN is in no way as visceral and nightmarish as MARTYRS, but it does deliver plenty of chills and it will surprise you.

One thing about THE TALL MAN, that you don’t normally get with horror films these days, is that you’ll be thinking about it long after it’s over.

I give it four knives.

© Copyright 2012 by L.L. Soares

LL Soares gives THE TALL MAN ~ four knives.

 

The French movie poster for THE TALL MAN calls it “The Secret” fittingly enough.

1 Comment »

THE BOURNE LEGACY (2012)

Posted in 2012, Action Movies, Espionage, Heightened Abilities, Hit Men, John Harvey Reviews, Sequels, Spy Films, Suspense with tags , , , , , , on August 13, 2012 by knifefighter

THE BOURNE LEGACY Weaves Complexity with Great Action
Review by John Harvey

It takes a great deal of chutzpah to create and release a ‘Jason Bourne‘ franchise movie minus Jason Bourne.  The opportunities for failure greatly outnumber those for success, especially when essentially all of the key players (both talent and behind the scenes) who made the previous installments popular are now absent. This is the gamble undertaken by Universal’s THE BOURNE LEGACY a taut, high-octane, but often confusing spy thriller that seeks to (sort of) reboot the franchise in an alternate timeline to the previous ‘Jason Bourne‘ films.

Gone is Matt Damon’s stoic, intense Jason Bourne who drove THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002), THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (2004), and THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (2007). Also gone is Paul Greengrass, who directed the second two films (THE BOURNE IDENTITY was directed by Doug Liman).

While this loss of legacy talent is worrying, the replacements are far from being slouches.  Tony Gilroy, who wrote the screenplays for all three previous ‘Jason Bourne’ films, is now both screenwriter and director for THE BOURNE LEGACY. Gilroy has solid suspense/thriller credentials in directing or writing on such projects as STATE OF PLAY (2009), DUPLICITY (2009) and MICHAEL CLAYTON (2007). Meanwhile, stepping into the superspy slot is Jeremy Renner. Renner has been consistently good in films such as THE HURT LOCKER (2008), THE TOWN (2010) and THE AVENGERS (2012).

THE BOURNE LEGACY‘s storyline essentially runs parallel to that of THE BOURNE ULIMATUM, showing the ripple effect of Jason Bourne’s bad behavior in Manhattan. Powerful people in the United States intelligence community (including Stacy Keach and Ed Norton) have been thrown into a frenzied state of damage control as Bourne threatens to blow the lid on their clandestine superspy program. They coldly decide that the only way they can keep secrets and save themselves is to implement a ruthless, scorched-earth protocol. Translation … everyone dies. Well, everyone but them.

Which brings us to Aaron Cross, a member of Operation Outcome, one of the CIA’s other black ops superspy programs. Different from Jason Bourne’s Treadstone program, Outcome provides its agents with green pills that enhance physical abilities and blue pills that enhance mental abilities. The pills are the leash that keeps the agents under control. In LEGACY, they’re also the MacGuffin that drives most of the suspense and action.

Cross is stationed at a deeply remote training facility in Alaska when the powers-that-be send an airborne drone to blow him up with a hellfire missile, having already killed off the other Outcome agents. Cross (obviously) outwits them, but then finds himself running dangerously low on the power pills that keep him going. His desperation to escape death and get a new supply of drugs brings him in contact with Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), a virologist/geneticist who works in a top secret medical lab that monitors Outcome agents. Shearing, having barely survived an assassination attempt at the hands of the previously-mentioned powers-that-be, has no other option but to throw in with Cross and help him score a fix.

Ultimately, the established storylines of the previous ‘Jason Bourne‘ films weigh heavily on THE BOURNE LEGACY, sometimes to its benefit and sometimes not so much. While the filmmakers would have you believe that you don’t need to see the previous films for this one to make sense, don’t buy it. So much of the terminology, code names, characters, and other devices get carried over (or at least referenced) from previous films to this one that, if you’re not up to speed with (at least) THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, then you’ll have several “Huh? What? Hey, who’s that guy?” moments in LEGACY. Also, while it’s pretty easy to tell the bad guys from the good, it’s not always easy to keep track of who comes from what agency or their ultimate motives. With THE BOURNE LEGACY, Gilroy shoots for a dense, complex plot, but in reality the movie is often just plain confusing and a bit frustrating.

On the plus side, the action sequences in THE BOURNE LEGACY are a real treat, with the final set piece being breathless and completely captivating. Unlike goofier, pulp action films (ahem … THE EXPENDABLES), the ‘Jason Bourne‘ aesthetic hews closer to a version of reality where the gun battles, fights, and chase scenes could perhaps be real (…if you squint and smear a lot of Vaseline on the lens). In these films, the action tends to be more suspenseful and have more consequences. Also, with Gilroy at the helm, we get a smoother, polished shooting style (via cinematographer Robert Elswit), rather than Greengrass’ shaky camera style.

In terms of acting, I found Renner’s Aaron Cross to be more engaging than Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne. Where Bourne was almost constantly laconic and mechanical, Aaron Cross is more expressive, affable, and vulnerable. But, when the action starts, his training and chemical-induced enhancements kick in to produce a complete killing machine. As an action hero, Renner provides more texture and nuance than Matt Damon. In addition, while Weisz could have been given the role of obligatory “female in need of saving,” she provides a much more dynamic and dramatic performance.

The bad guy side of the equation is more disappointing. Stacy Keach, Ed Norton, and Dennis Boutsikaris literally fill suits and provide serviceable, if entirely predictable, performances as heartless spymasters from shady government agencies. Renner’s Aaron Cross deserves a strong nemesis. Perhaps he’ll get one in the inevitable sequel.

Ultimately, THE BOURNE LEGACY is a good, but not great, fork from the core ‘Jason Bourne‘ franchise. With a less convoluted structure and better villains, it would have been far more enjoyable. Still, the action is worth seeing on the big screen and I look forward to Jeremy Renner continuing to perform as Aaron Cross.

Official Website: http://www.thebournelegacy.net

Directed by Tony Gilroy
Screenplay by Tony Gilroy and Dan Gilroy
Starring Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, and Stacy Keach
Running time: 135 minutes

– END –

© Copyright 2012 by John D. Harvey

John Harvey gives THE BOURNE LEGACY~three and a half knives.

2 Comments »

The Distracted Critic Visits THE POKER CLUB (2008)

Posted in 2012, Crime Films, Indie Horror, Murder!, Paul McMahon Columns, Secrets, Suspense, The Distracted Critic with tags , , , , , on June 27, 2012 by knifefighter

THE POKER CLUB (2008)
Movie Review by Paul McMahon—The Distracted Critic

A long time ago, I read Ed Gorman’s short story “Out There in the Darkness.” It’s a quick and gritty tale which hints at a lot more suspense and violence than is actually there. In 2000, Mr. Gorman released a novel-length version of the story, titled THE POKER CLUB. He changed little about the characters and situations and fulfilled all the promise of suspense and violence that the novella laid out. In fact, he stretched the tension in the book tight as a drumhead. The characters do a lot more, and thereby screw up a lot more as well. It’s a difficult trick to expand an older story without making it feel padded, but the novel is excellent and a testament to a great writer.

Why, then, does Tim McCann’s film of THE POKER CLUB (2008), fail to get off the ground? McCann previously directed DESOLATION ANGELS (1995) and NOWHERE MAN (2005), two films that look pretty serious. He treats things here seriously, as well. Maybe too seriously.

Ed Gorman’s novel opens with four friends playing poker, drinking, and passing around skin mags like exuberant ten-year-olds. Neal is late because he’s on neighborhood patrol. Seems their tight little community suffers a lot of break-ins. The friends gamble for a while, and are interrupted when a burglar breaks in. Aaron, who owns the house, cares for Curtis, who’s been attacked, while Neal and Bill catch the burglar and tie him up. Their adrenaline’s pumping, they’re feeling powerful, a little drunk, and are eager to interrogate their prisoner. When the burglar tries to escape, they accidentally kill him. The friends’ power-trip turns to panic. Frightened of losing everything they’ve achieved in their lives, they make the disastrous decision to dispose of the body in a local river. Once that dirty job is done, they go their separate ways, thinking their trouble is over.

Problem is, the burglar had a partner waiting outside. He saw what they did, he knows who they are, and he’s plotting his revenge.

In the novel, the poker club is made up of four basically good guys. They feel guilty over what they’ve done, but are so racked with the fear of losing everything they’ve worked to attain that they repeatedly talk themselves out of calling the cops. Instead, they try to hunt down the mystery burglar themselves, determined to take back their lives on their own. It doesn’t take long before people start turning up dead.

I understand that filmmakers want to change things up when adapting a book into a movie. It gives people who have read the book something different than they expect, with the hope that the surprise will make them like the movie more. In reality, this psychology almost never works. The changes that were made for THE POKER CLUB, for instance, don’t work at all.

Gone is the “Neighborhood Patrol” and the back story of burglaries. These aren’t guys intent on protecting their family and property; these are just overgrown adolescents being asses because it’s what they do. Not a single character on the screen is likeable. Even Aaron, the book’s moral compass, who always tried to coax his buddies into doing the right thing, is revealed to be cheating on his wife. Neal has a cocaine addiction, which he maintains on the salary of a college professor. Bill has gone from being a doctor who deals with terminally ill patients—thus grounding his bullying nature in an interesting context—to being a strip club owner who bullies, it seems, because he enjoys it and because nobody has ever been tough enough to stop him.

Very little is done with the mysterious burglar. Aaron gets phone calls in the middle of the night where the caller doesn’t say anything. In the novel, these events heighten the tension and build suspense because the threat is revealed through Aaron’s inner dialogue. Movies don’t have that tool, so we end up sitting through a lot of barely interesting one-sided conversations.

There are a couple of intense scenes in the book where the friends gather around Aaron’s kitchen table to discuss their situation and what they should do about it. These scenes are poignant and gripping—four guys clinging to their friendship while struggling to squeak through the ugliest, most destructive situation they’ve ever faced. In the movie, these discussions are held in Bill’s strip club and can barely be heard over the pounding music while the camera focuses on pole-dancing nudes. Without subtitles, you’ll have no idea what’s being discussed. These are four guys discussing a problem that could ruin their lives and land them in prison, yet director McCann seems to think we won’t pay attention unless there are topless dancers to watch. Does that speak to McCann’s lack of confidence in his material or his lack of confidence in the American moviegoer.

Ed Gorman’s novel, which THE POKER CLUB is based on.

Michael Risley (SHATTERED, 2007), who plays Neal, and Loren Dean (ENEMY OF THE STATE, 1998), who plays Curtis, look alike and act with identical blandness, making their characters hard to tell apart. Johnny Messner (ANACONDA: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID, 2004), who plays Bill, is a little more memorable, if only because his character is such a blatant ass, he’s hard to forget. Jonathon Schaech (QUARANTINE, 2008), who plays Aaron and co-wrote the screenplay with Richard Chizmar, never emotes during the film. It’s as if he’s still rehearsing and no one’s told him they’re shooting for real.  So, not only are the characters unlikable, the actors portraying them do little to make them even seem alive.

It probably goes without saying that they’ve changed the ending of the story, as well. It probably wouldn’t surprise anyone to learn they changed it to a ridiculous degree. McCann tries to surprise the viewer by veering off in a different direction, but his big surprise negates every single hint and foreshadow he’s put in place since the dead burglar’s tarp-shrouded body hit the water. He turns the movie into a shell game where no matter which cup you think the peanut is under, you lose. McCann has tossed it beneath the sofa.

Nothing that worked in the book has made it to the screen. It’s my opinion that the movie version of THE POKER CLUB should be avoided and forgotten. If you come across Ed Gorman’s novel, though, definitely give it a read. There’s a reason the man’s won the Spur Award, the Ellery Queen Award, the Shamus Award and so many others.

I give THE POKER CLUB a single star because the cinematography and sets were pretty good, and am giving it five timeouts. Technically, it was a lot more, but by the time the film wrapped, I was grasping at any excuse whatever to shut the thing off and walk away.

-END-

© Copyright 2012 by Paul McMahon

Leave A Comment »

The David Lynch Chronicles – Volume 2: BLUE VELVET (1986)

Posted in 2012, Classic Films, Crime Films, David Lynch, Intense Movies, Madness, Mystery, Nick Cato Reviews, Pabst Blue Ribbon!, Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel Columns, Suspense, The David Lynch Chronicles with tags , , , , , , , , on June 19, 2012 by knifefighter

(WARNING: The David Lynch Chronicles is an in-depth analysis of the films of David Lynch, and therefore contains spoilers. You have been warned…And now, on with the show!)

***

THE DAVID LYNCH CHRONILES: VOLUME II
The Plain Weirdness of BLUE VELVET (1986)
By Nick Cato and Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel

Nick Cato: Of all the films David Lynch has unleashed on the world, 1986’s BLUE VELVET is perhaps his most “normal.”  It plays out like a straight murder mystery and there are hardly any head-scratching clues or off-the-wall things happening in the background.  Everything is pretty much up front.  But what sets the film apart from your standard Hollywood fare are the characters.  While it’s set in present day, most of the cast seem to have a 1950s-retro vibe going on, especially Sandy Williams (played by Lynch regular Laura Dern) and night club crooner Dorothy Vallens (Lynch’s other favorite regular, Isabella Rossellini, in a ground-breaking performance).  The film’s protagonist, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) has an innocent, curious boyish charm, but doesn’t hesitate to take advantage of dangerous opportunities.  And unless you’ve been living on another planet these past 26 years, Dennis Hopper’s role as iconic bad guy Frank Booth is simultaneously terrifying and comical, threatening yet cool, a force of nature a hurricane wouldn’t want to mess with.  Lynch uses his cast here to their full potential before pulling out a few cameos to add just a bit of weirdness to the proceedings.

Jeffrey returns to his small home town to visit his ailing father in the hospital.  During his walk home through a wooded area, he happens to see something in the grass and discovers it’s a human ear.  He brings the ear to the police but is unsatisfied with their actions.  Eventually he gets info from Sandy, the police chief’s daughter, who points him to a seedy underworld Jeffrey never knew existed in his quiet home town.

Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel: BLUE VELVET might be “normal” by Lynch standards, but I’d hardly call it a “normal” film. Lynch blends in some themes that are rather typical of his work. His characters live in the land of white picket fences, warm apple pies cooling on window sills, and cute girls with ponytails next door. This idyllic wonderland is juxtaposed against a dark place that threatens to rip apart the innocence. The thing that makes Lynch’s work truly magical is that he makes us question our own realities. Are we part of the half that’s good or the half that’s bad? Or is anyone truly immune from those dark places we try to pretend away?

Jeffery Beaumont lives in this 50s-esque landscape populated by Bermuda shorts-wearing folks who walk down the street without concerning themselves with drug lords or murderers or other unpleasantness. When Jeffrey discovers an ear bereft of its owner in an overgrown lot, his world is turned upside down. He also discovers a side of himself that he didn’t know existed. Jeffrey, an innocent college guy who initially tries to help imperiled songstress Dorothy Vallens, eventually finds himself treating her the way bad guy Frank Booth does. It’s a study in the wickedness inside all of us, even the pure and innocent.

Nick Cato: And it’s Sandy who tells Jeffrey that her father has been looking into Dorothy Vallens’s background, inspiring him to do his own investigating.  Jeffrey goes to see her at a night club (where we learn he’s a big fan of Heineken beer) and then follows her home.  He hatches a plan to sneak inside her apartment to spy on her and see if she may somehow be connected to his gruesome discovery.  Sandy reluctantly agrees to help him get in, and as soon as he does, BLUE VELVET begins an almost non-stop barrage of neo-noir suspense that lasts until the final reel.

While hiding in Dorothy’s closet, he watches her undress and is eventually discovered.  To his surprise, she doesn’t call the cops or throw him out, but insists he remove his clothes.  As soon as Dorothy begins to seduce Jeffrey, someone arrives home.  Dorothy tells Jeffrey to get back in the closet.  This is when we’re introduced to one of the most menacing villains ever to appear on film.  We learn Frank Booth (played with total anarchic chaos by Dennis Hopper) is holding Dorothy’s husband and young son prisoner somewhere, their safety depending on her bowing to Frank’s sexually psychotic demands.  As Jeffrey looks on, Booth forces Dorothy to pretend to be his mother as he inhales ether from a face mask he keeps stashed in his jacket.  It’s one of Lynch’s most disturbing scenes, and also one of his most fascinating.  Within seconds we understand Frank Booth can go in 100 different directions at once, we see Dorothy as both strong and submissive, and Jeffrey’s clean-cut image continues to crumble.

When Booth finally leaves, Dorothy tries once again to seduce Jeffrey…but when he refuses to hit her, she asks him to leave.  Again, within seconds, we see even more sides to these complex characters that drag us deeper into Lynch’s mystery.  We think that, for a second, Jeffrey is having some kind of sexual awakening, but his old self puts things on hold.

Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel: Lynch does a great job of developing Jeffrey’s good-guy image in the beginning. He befriends the police chief’s daughter to discover more about that peculiar ear he found. There’s obviously a romantic attraction between them, but Sandy has a boyfriend and, by golly, Jeffrey is such a gentleman that he does his best not to cross any lines. When Dorothy has a brutal sexual encounter with the terrifying Frank Booth (who could be the most terrifying villain of all time), he tries to soothe her. It seems like he wants to make love to her, but she wants him to be violent with her. He can’t bring himself to do it, and he leaves.

I think it’s an interesting dichotomy between the sweet, gentlemanly Jeffrey and the brutal, violent Frank. Even near the beginning, however, we get a glimpse of a yin-yang quality to Frank, which we’ll eventually see in Jeffrey as well. From time to time, Frank Booth, criminal, sadist, and drug addict, switches from being controlling and violent to babyish and submissive. He frequently refers to Dorothy as “Mommy,” and there are few hints that he and his cronies have brainwashed Dorothy’s kidnapped son into believing that his mother no longer wants him. Frank is now her baby. We often hear her on the phone, presumably with her child, reassuring him that he is her baby.

Nick Cato:  After finding out Sandy has a boyfriend, Jeffrey attends another one of Dorothy’s gigs and sees Frank Booth watching the performance right near the stage.  He’s playing with a piece of blue velvet he had ripped off her robe, while drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon (in contrast to Jeffrey’s beverage of preference, Heineken).  Lynch uses tiny details like this to begin building more tension between the two (who at this point in the film have yet to meet).  Jeffrey decides to spy on Frank, and over a couple of days discovers a pair of shady guys doing business with him.  When Jeffrey reveals this information to Sandy, they share a brief kiss, but Sandy feels too connected to her boyfriend and stops.  In turn, Jeffrey pays Dorothy another visit, although this time he knocks on the door first.  To his surprise, Dorothy claims she has been thinking of him and they indulge in sex.  She even convinces him to hit her, and while she enjoys it, we see Jeffrey is still uncomfortable with causing any more pain in her life.

When Jeffrey goes to leave, Frank comes down the hallway with his cronies and BLUE VELVET takes a rocket-leap forward in the suspense department.  The first time I saw this I was on the edge of my seat, and after a current theatrical viewing, I still had the same butterflies in my stomach despite knowing what was to come.

Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel: Now the suspense begins to build. While spying on Frank Booth, Jeffrey discovers that some shady dealings are going down between Frank and some guy in a yellow sports coat, one that makes him look alarmingly like a Century 21 Realtor. Another gent with a mustache also appears to be doing some less-than-savory dealings in Frank’s neck of the woods.

Not long after, Jeffrey returns to Dorothy’s place. When he tries to leave, Frank and his cronies meet him in the hallway and kidnap him in one of the most terrifying rides you’re likely to see. After intimidating Jeffrey, Frank and the gang decide to pay their friend Ben a visit. Ben (portrayed by Dean Stockwell, in what could be the creepiest role of his career) is holding Dorothy’s son and husband hostage. Frank tells him to play Roy Orbison’s song “In Dreams,” at which point a spotlighted Ben lip syncs along in a scene that will ruin the song and your dreams forever. Frank gets angry at the song after a few minutes and screams at Ben to turn it off. Meanwhile, Dorothy is allowed to see her son, who is being kept in a back room. We continue to hear her reassure the child that she loves him and that he is still her baby. It occurs to me that perhaps this reassurance is what sets Frank off. He goes from being a menacing monster, scaring Jeffrey and intimidating Dorothy, to a weeping baby. Maybe he’s upset that his role as baby has been usurped or perhaps Dorothy’s love for her child reaches some emotion inside this evil man.

Once they leave, however, Frank goes back to being a professional bad guy. As they drive along, he starts sexually abusing Dorothy. Jeffrey, who is being held in the backseat by Frank’s henchmen, can’t handle this and tells Frank to leave her alone. Frank expresses his anger at being told not to get too hands-on with his woman, and Jeffrey gets beaten to a bloody pulp.

Nick Cato: WOAH! WOAH! WOAH!—let’s back up just a second here:  BEFORE Booth takes Jeffrey, Dorothy, and his cronies to Ben’s den of freaks, BLUE VELVET’s most iconic moment goes down: Booth stops at a local bar, and before they enter he asks Jeffrey what his favorite beer is, to which Jeffrey answers, “Heineken.”  Now despite the over-played response that comes from Frank Booth (it’s been plastered on t-shirts and even beer ads over the years), this is arguably the key moment where the audience understands what a true, uncompromising psychopath Booth is.  He tells the poor kid, “Heineken?  F**k that s**t!  Pabst Blue Ribbon!”

Having watched and meditated over this brief piece of dialogue for the past 26 years, the line manages to simultaneously crack me up and creep me out.  Booth’s comment sounds like a combination of an abusive father and a Marine drill Sergeant.  It tells Jeffrey his own personal choices are wrong and no longer matter because after all, he’s now a part of Booth’s world.

Its little sequences like this that set a David Lynch film apart from your regular, mundane Hollywood fare.  What could have been a simple, throw-away line has become a legendary comment that brings more meaning and menace to our villain the more you allow it to seep in.

In the middle of the party at Ben’s house, Booth becomes impatient waiting for the Pabst to be served … and it MUST be served in traditional beer glasses or YOU’D BETTER BELIEVE someone will pay for it.  Only Dennis Hopper could’ve made the relaxing act of sipping a beer take on a completely sinister dimension.

Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel: All right, all right. The Pabst versus Heineken debate is an interesting point. You’ve got the good guy drinking his imported froufrou beer, and big, bad Frank Booth slugging down the workin’ man’s suds.

We know Frank Booth is the ultimate bad guy, not only because he demands that his brewski be served in the proper glass, but also because he drives the baddest car in the whole town. I assume no car in BLUE VELVET was built after 1970. Jeffrey drives the 1950s land yacht, like the good boy that he is. Frank Booth, on the other hand, has a Dodge Charger that burns up the city streets of quiet, idyllic Lumberton. It’s the classic good versus bad dynamic, but I think the two lines blur. Jeffrey discovers that he has a dark side. Frank is, in some ways, like the petulant toddler who must have his way or else he breaks down. Granted, this petulance is taken to the extreme, but he has a childish side to him.

Since we’re backtracking, let’s talk about the robins. When meeting up to discuss what each of them has discovered about Dorothy Vallens and Frank Booth, Sandy tells Jeffrey that she had a dream that the world was in disarray and everything was dark. A huge flock of robins brings in the light and makes everything okay. At the end, a robin is outside of the window, eating a bug. The good has crushed the bad. This aspect of the film made me happy. BLUE VELVET has its very dark moments, but in the end, love saves the day.

Nick Cato: And according to one of the extras on the BLUE VELVET DVD, they couldn’t get a real robin to perform properly, so a fake one was created just for that final sequence.  I have to say it looked pretty good, even on the big screen.

But back to the story: after a wild night of drinking and speeding down the highway with Frank and company, Jeffrey has his butt kicked and wakes up right where they left him.  After walking all the way home, he decides to pay a visit to Sandy’s father at the police station, only to find that her father’s partner is one of the shady men he had spied on while staking out Frank Booth.  And here BLUE VELVET gets a classic noir-type twist, adding even more of an old-school feel to the proceedings.  Sandy’s father listens to Jeffrey’s story, but asks him to stay away as to not spoil a proper police investigation he’s currently heading.

Then Lynch shifts into some classic Lynchian weirdness: Jeffrey and Sandy attend a dance, and are followed home.  But it’s not Frank Booth looking for more trouble: it’s Sandy’s boyfriend wanting to know what’s going on.  But before fists can fly, Dorothy shows up seemingly out of nowhere—filthy and stark naked—and looks to Jeffrey for comfort, mumbling something about them being secret lovers.

Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel: There’s nothing quite like a disheveled, abused, naked lady to really break up a fight. It also draws us into some serious histrionics from Sandy. Jeffrey pulls the nude Dorothy into his home along with Sandy. During his attempts to comfort Dorothy and hide her nudity, he lets it slip that his interest in Dorothy has been sexual. The expression on Sandy’s face is over-the-top. She’s so horrified that she can’t speak. Sandy lives in a world where premarital sex is a serious taboo, and the knowledge that the guy she has a crush on has been doing the mattress tango with this mysterious chanteuse is simply too much to handle. She eventually gets over it, though, and the two decide to work together to bust Frank and reunite Dorothy with her son and husband.

Speaking of mysterious folks, we learn that the guy in the Century 21 jacket that has been doing underhanded dealings with Frank Booth is actually a cop. Lynch did such an amazing job of keeping this fact hidden that it elicited gasps from people in the audience at a recent big-screen showing. This is when it gets really weird. Jeffrey puts two and two together about the strange mustachioed fellow he’d seen around Frank’s building, giving a briefcase to Century 21 guy. He rushes to Dorothy’s place to warn her that the guy was none other than Frank himself, only to be followed by Frank in the wig and mustache.

Nick Cato: The next-to-final scene at Dorothy’s apartment is a real pressure cooker.  Jeffrey finds Dorothy’s husband dead with a hole in his temple and (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!) his ear missing.  He also finds one of Booth’s cronies in the apartment, standing in a sort-of daze, as if he has been zombified by some unknown means.  When Jeffrey goes to leave, he sees the man who has been following him coming up the stairs but realizes too late it’s been Frank Booth in disguise.  Jeffrey contacts Sandy’s father over the zombified crony’s walkie talkie, and lies about where he is in the apartment.  Frank Booth enters, having heard this on his own radio, and begins to call Jeffrey an idiot for giving away his location.  Jeffrey manages to hide in the same closet he had spied on Dorothy earlier in the film as Frank makes his way to the bedroom, where he hears Jeffrey’s walkie make noise.  Pissed off when he discovers Jeffrey’s not there, he comes out and fires his pistol sporadically, killing his zombified crony in the process.

Booth slowly approaches the only place Jeffrey can be—the closet—and as soon as he opens it, Jeffrey fires at point blank range with a gun he had taken off the crony, causing Booth’s brains to fly out the back of his head.  The grim image of Booth laying in his own cranium sauce looked doubly-demented on the big screen, and even as he lays dead, looking up to the ceiling, the man causes the viewer to be nervous.

BLUE VELVET then goes from sheer brutality to one of Lynch’s most charming conclusions.

Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel: It’s amazing to me how the film ends on such a positive note. Everyone is happy, the robins are eating bugs, and Jeffrey and Sandy presumably live happily ever after in suburbia.

I read in an interview that Mr. Lynch grew up in this sort of tranquil wonderland but discovered horror when he learned that there were ants feeding on the pitch oozing from the cherry tree. That sums up BLUE VELVET pretty well.

BLUE VELVET is a ride through a clean-cut young man’s oedipal nightmare. We catch a glimpse at the very end of Dorothy playing in a park with her son. The cute guy gets the swell girl, and all is right with the world again. And isn’t that the fairy tale ending we all want?

Nick Cato: Believe it or not, I’ve always found this happy-happy, flowers and birds ending more disturbing than what precedes it.  Jeffrey and Sandy seem amazed that a robin has landed on the window sill, munching on a bug.  Is this a sign that good has conquered evil in their small town?  Or does it mean even the pretty things have dark secrets that the other person has to accept?  Despite how happy our couple looks, as well as Dorothy now being reunited with her son, Lynch manages to give even this bright, sunny conclusion a latent sense of unease.

If you’ve never experienced a David Lynch film before, BLUE VELVET is perhaps the best place to start: your mind won’t be too fried by the ending, and your appetite for his darker, more obscure works just may be kindled.

Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel: Even in a Lynch film, a happy ending leaves the viewer wondering when the other shoe will fall. We don’t know what’s going to happen after the credits roll, but we assume that the characters’ lives, at least the ones who make it to the end, go on in some manner even after we leave the theater and move on to other pursuits. Maybe that’s a sign of good filmmaking.

Perhaps the happy ending sticks out because it’s one of the few Lynch films that end on a positive note. Those who are familiar with the awesomeness that is David Lynch come to expect some warped, bizarre, or otherwise dark ending. If you’re expecting your protagonist to wake up only to discover he’s really a serial killer keeping a basketful of ears as souvenirs after living in a delusional world where he’s a good guy, it’s a little disorienting to find that everything wraps up in a nice little package at the end. There’s a clearer division between good and evil here than in many Lynch films. Good and evil blur in films like LOST HIGHWAY (1997) and MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001). There’s a merging of the two even in BLUE VELVET, but it’s more subtle.

Although most of Lynch’s work appeals to those with a thirst for the strange, BLUE VELVET would be appropriate for anyone who likes a good mystery told in a unique way.

-END-

© Copyright 2012 by Nick Cato and Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel

Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) intimidates Jeffrey (he’s in the back seat of Booth’s car) as Dorothy (Isabella Rossolini) looks on in terror from the front seat.

Leave A Comment »

Screaming Streaming: THE PERFECT HOST (2010)

Posted in 2012, Michael Arruda Reviews, Mystery, Psychos, Screaming Streaming, Suspense, Thrillers with tags , , , , , on May 11, 2012 by knifefighter

SCREAMING STREAMING!
Movie Review:  THE PERFECT HOST (2010)
By Michael Arruda

 THE PERFECT HOST is not the perfect movie.

Sure, it’s entertaining, in a sugary “oh-aren’t-we-clever sort of way,” but that’s not the best recipe for a thriller, which is why, ultimately, this one simmers rather than boils.

Career criminal John Taylor (Clayne Crawford) has just robbed a bank.  He’s injured, on the run, and he desperately needs a place to hide, so he cons his way into the plush home of one Warwick Wilson (David Hyde Pierce, who played Niles on TV’s FRASIER) by pretending to know one of Wilson’s friends.  John got the name of the friend from a postcard in Wilson’s mail.

At first Wilson declines to invite John inside, as he’s preparing dinner for guests, but he changes his mind, saying it would be rude of him to turn away a friend of a friend.  He even invites John to stay for dinner, an invitation that John grows anxious about when he learns that one of the guests is a prosecuting attorney who works for the D.A.’s office.

When news of the brazen robbery plays over the radio, John realizes his cover has been blown.  He holds Wilson at knifepoint and tells him he’s going to kill him, and the only way he’s going to change his mind is if Wilson does exactly as he says.  At first, Wilson appears to be terrified, but his behavior changes when John passes out, and Wilson announces that he had drugged his guest’s wine.

When John awakes, he finds that he is tied to a chair and discovers that his host is not the man he thought he was.  Suddenly, it’s Wilson who’s doing the terrorizing and John who’s the victim.  For a while, it seems as if Wilson is just a nutcase, but later, the plot takes several twists and turns, and we learn that there’s more to Wilson than his just being a lonely psychopath.

 

THE PERFECT HOST is a decent thriller that’s fun at times, but you really have to suspend disbelief to truly enjoy this one.  I found its convoluted story hard to swallow, and as result I never really bought it.  It’s a case where less would have been better.  David Hyde Pierce makes for a perfectly creepy psycho, and had the story left it at that, it would have worked better instead of the direction the movie ultimately takes.

You see, Wilson is not just some random psycho, which makes John’s stumbling into Wilson’s home by chance such a coincidence it doesn’t work.

But the movie’s not all bad.  The initial twist works, and there are a lot of fun scenes where Wilson torments John.  These scenes work so well because, by far, the best part of THE PERFECT HOST is David Hyde Pierce’s performance as oddball host Warwick Wilson.  He’s deliciously over the top, and he provides the movie with its best moments.  He makes a great psycho, up to a point.  One flaw is that he’s never as scary or as unsettling as he needs to be.  While I was certainly entertained by Warwick, I was never frightened by him.

As a result, THE PERFECT HOST is not much of a thriller.  It’s simply not dark enough to be taken that seriously, and it never really reaches the level of legitimate thriller.  It’s rated R, but for language, as the violence here is rather tame.

And while Pierce dominates his scenes, Clayne Crawford, who stars opposite him as John, lacks the necessary intensity to be a convincing criminal.  Also in the cast is Helen Reddy in a role that is about as integral to the plot as a loaf of bread.

There’s also something very cheap and low budget looking about this movie, as if it were filmed in the 1970s.  I wondered if this was done on purpose by director Nick Tomnay, because one of Wilson’s idiosyncrasies is his disdain for modern technology, and he doesn’t seem to have any modern electrical devices in his home, like a computer or a flat screen television, and he takes pictures with a Polaroid camera.

Come to think of it, John doesn’t carry a cell phone, and he drives a 1980s car.  Hmm.  Maybe it’s director Tomnay with the idiosyncrasies!

Tomnay also wrote the script with Krishna Jones.  Again, the first half of the story is fun, and I swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, but as it went on and added more plot twists, I simply stopped believing it all.

On a grander scale, THE PERFECT HOST could have been the type of movie Hitchcock would have directed in his day.  There’s something very claustrophobic about the first half of the film as it takes place inside Wilson’s home, which would have suited Hitchcock just fine.  But Hitchcock’s twists would have had more meat to them, and his characters would have had to suffer more angst and overcome truer obstacles than the folks in this movie.

THE PERFECT HOST has its moments—most of them provided by David Hyde Pierce—but, ultimately, it’s a light entry in the thriller genre.  More entertaining than thrilling, and hindered by a plot that lacks credibility, THE PERFECT HOST would have benefitted from the perfect re-write.

—END—

© Copyright 2012 by Michael Arruda

1 Comment »

GONE (2012)

Posted in 2012, Cinema Knife Fights, Killers, Michael Arruda Reviews, Mystery, Serial Killer flicks, Suspense, Thrillers with tags , , , , , on February 27, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT:  GONE (2012)
By Michael Arruda

 

(The Scene:  A police station.  MICHAEL ARRUDA is arguing with several homicide detectives.)

MICHAEL ARRUDA:  Aren’t you going to look for him?  I told you, he’s missing.  He was supposed to do this review with me, but he never showed up.

DETECTIVE #1:  Hasn’t he missed reviews before?  We know for a fact that you guys on occasion write solo reviews.

MA:  You read the column?

DETECTIVE #1:  Yep.

MA:  Like it?

DETECTIVE #1:  Love it.

MA:  Thank you.

DETECTIVE #2:  Didn’t you say he was going to a party afterwards?  Maybe he just blew you off and went straight to the party.

MA:  He’s not there.  I checked.

DETECTIVE #2:  I think you should come with us.

MA:  Why?

DETECTIVE #1:  We read the column, remember?  We know you two are constantly trying to do each other in.  If he’s missing, you’re our #1 suspect.

SUSPECT #1 (upon entering scene):  Then, who am I?

MA:  An unpaid extra. Okay, folks, this opening has gone on long enough, and since things aren’t looking too good for me, I’m outta here!  I’ll have to find L.L. on my own!

(MA flees the police station, jumps into a car, and speeds away, leading the police on a high speed chase.)

MA:  Looks like I’m going to have to drive and review today’s movie at the same time, as well as find L.L.  Luckily, I can multitask.

(Car nearly hits an old lady crossing the street, but MA swerves out of the way just in time.)

MA:  Sorry, ma’am!  (She flips him the bird.) (He shakes his head)  Old ladies today!

Anyway, today I’m reviewing GONE (2012), the new thriller starring one of my favorite young actresses working today, Amanda Seyfried.  And you know what?  Seyfried can carry a movie.  She carries GONE, because without her, this film’s got nothing.

In GONE, Amanda Seyfried plays Jill, a young woman who claims she was abducted by a strange man and held in a hole in the middle of the woods, before she managed to escape.  The police don’t believe her story because they never found the hole or any other evidence that corroborated her story.

Furthermore, Jill believes her abductor is a serial killer, and she has researched information of other women who have gone missing in the area over the years, and she hounds the police incessantly about her phantom kidnapper.  Needless to say, she has not made herself many friends on the force.

When Jill’s sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) disappears just before an important college exam, Jill is convinced that Molly has been abducted by the same man.  Of course, the police don’t believe her.  They believe it’s all in Jill’s head, as she has a history of psychological problems.

Without the police’s help, Jill decides it’s up to her to find and rescue her sister.  Jill also believes—because her abductor prepared to kill her at sunset— that the man will also kill her sister by sunset, and so she knows she only has the one day to save her sister.  And she’ll have to elude the police to do it, because they consider her armed and dangerous.  She’s carrying a gun, which she’s not supposed to be doing because of her psychiatric record.

And so it’s a race against time.  Jill has less than 24 hours to locate and save her sister, all the while on the run from the police.  Unless of course, the police are right, and there is no serial killer.

(MA races through a red light, plowing through a busy intersection of fast moving cars and trucks.  Miraculously, MA’s car makes it through without a scratch.)

MA:  Gotta love CGI!

There’s really not a lot to this movie.  GONE is a very average thriller.  It’s got an average cast and an average storyline, but it also has Amanda Seyfried, who is anything but average.  She’s in nearly every scene, and I never got tired of watching her.  As I said earlier, she carries this movie.  Without her, I wouldn’t like this movie, but with her, I gotta say I enjoyed it.

I thought she played Jill perfectly.  Jill is incredibly driven in her quest to save her sister.  She pulls guns on people, lies, makes up one story after another, takes people’s cars—behaviors that can easily be confused with insanity.  She does all this because she only has one day to save her sister’s life.

Seyfried convinced me that Jill firmly believes that her sister will die unless she finds her.  There is a heightened desperation to her performance, as if the character is overtaken by adrenaline and never stops.

Going in, I wasn’t crazy about the story, which I had seen neatly explained in the movie’s trailers.  Is Jill insane, or did someone really abduct her before, the same someone who now has her sister?  Fortunately, I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it during the film, because I was too busy watching Seyfried in action, evading the police while playing private investigator. The movie’s paced very well.  Director Heitor Dhalia keeps things brisk.

(MA’s car races along highway in fast motion, with a long line of police cars in hot pursuit.)

MA:  Allison Burnett wrote the screenplay, and she also wrote the screenplay for UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING (2012).  I’m sure writing a script for a cookie-cutter sequel in a dreadful series isn’t the best indicator of one’s writing talents.  Burnett does a much better job with GONE, which is a much better movie than UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING.  Then again, there aren’t going to be a whole lot of movies worse than UNDERWORLD:  AWAKENING.  At least GONE has characters who speak real dialogue and actually sound and act like real people.

(Car pulls up to MA’s car.  It’s driven by a vampire.)

VAMPIRE:  Hey!  I heard what you said.  I’m insulted.

MA:  Why?  You think you act and sound like a real person?  If that were the case, you’d be swearing at me right now for doing this.

(MA swerves his car and knocks vampire’s car off the road.)

VAMPIRE:  I will avenge this act of violence against my kind!   I will seek the assistance of—.  (His car crashes and blows up.)

MA:  See what I mean?  Phony video game vampire speak.

Seriously, though, the story in GONE is nothing to write home about.  It’s all rather silly when you think about it, and even though this one rose above its material, I did have several beefs with its story.

For starters, Jill finds clues so easily in this movie, the police here must be dolts.  She’s able to track down all this information in so short a time, and yet the police have had months to do the same but haven’t been able to come up with anything?  The premise that Jill can solve this mystery in less than 24 hours is not very believable.

Neither are the arguments the police use to debunk Jill’s assertions about her abduction.  The main reason the police don’t believe her story is because they weren’t able to find the hole in the park where she was buried, and thus couldn’t confirm her story.  This would make sense if it were a little park, but the park in the movie is a vast expanse of wilderness.  We’re talking acres here!  And they’re supposed to locate a little hole in the middle of the woods, and when they can’t, they assume it’s not there?  So, they just throw in the towel and call Jill crazy?  It’s kind of a dumb argument.

The police also cite the fact that Jill couldn’t identify her abductor as a reason why she couldn’t be believed.  Really?  You don’t think that a serial killer might try and hide his identity?  The police found this suspicious.  I didn’t.

The movie just doesn’t do a good job of making us see the police’s side of the story.  Their arguments have holes.

Another drawback is that GONE lacks a villain.  Since Seyfried carries this movie on her back, the film could have certainly used the presence of a nasty bad guy, but because throughout the movie we’re never sure if there really is a bad guy, a screen villain is obviously— and noticeably— absent.

I was dreading the ending to this one big time.  I feared it would be the old “the killer is the last person we expect” trick, which usually is a forced plot point and makes no sense.  Luckily, that’s not the case in GONE.  As I watched the ending play out, fearing the worst, I suddenly realized, “this ending works!” The fact that I wasn’t down on the ending was a pleasant surprise.

(MA drives into the woods.  Pulls car over and gets out.)

MA:  I’m here in the woods because I just received a clue.  (holds up phone with text message that reads, “Looking for L.L.?  Try the woods.”)

As I said earlier, the rest of the cast is average.  Daniel Sunjata, as Powers, the main cop on the case, and Katherine Moenning as his partner Erica, are both watchable, as is Wes Bentley as Peter Hood, an officer who seems to have a dark side.  The same can be said for Emily Wickersham, who we saw in last year’s I AM NUMBER 4, as Jill’s sister Molly, and Sebastian Stan, as Molly’s boyfriend Billy.

Jennifer Carpenter has an absolutely thankless role as Jill’s friend, Sharon.  Carpenter, if you remember, turned in a couple of memorable performances in QUARANTINE (2008) and THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE (2005).  Here she’s reduced to just a couple of scenes, none of them all that important.

GONE isn’t much of a thriller, either.  There’s no edge-of-your-seat action, no sweaty palms, no scares.  It plays much more like a mystery than a thriller, as we watch Seyfried’s Jill race against time to put the pieces of the puzzle together and find and rescue her sister.

But all this being said, I found GONE very enjoyable.  I liked it a lot, and it all comes down to Amanda Seyfried.  This movie works because she dominates each scene she is in, she’s extremely watchable, and even though you know this movie isn’t anything to write home about, she makes you believe in what she’s doing, she draws you into her story, and the funny thing is you don’t really care if she’s nuts or not, you still want to go along for the ride.

I give GONE three knives.  Take Seyfried out of this movie, and you’re looking at maybe 1 or 2 knives, at best.

Okay, we’re in the part of the woods where— there it is!  There’s the hole!  L.L., are you down there?  (points flashlight into hole and sees L.L. lying on the ground.)

L.L SOARES:  Hey, stop shining that light in my face!

MA:  What are you doing down there?

LS:  What does it look like I’m doing?  I was sleeping.

MA:  Sleeping?   In a hole in the middle of the woods?

LS:  Hey, it works for bears.  It’s time for me to get to that party anyway.  (Climbs out of hole).  So, how was GONE?

MA:  I just finished reviewing it.  I gave it three knives.

LS:  Three knives?  I think you have a crush on Amanda Seyfried.

MA:  My affection for her is purely professional.  Besides, you like her too.

LS:  Not enough to see GONE.  (Sirens are heard in the distance, getting closer.)  What’s going on?

MA:  It’s the police.  They’re after me.  It’s a long story.  We’d better get out of here.

LS:  It looks like another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.

MA:  Well, folks, that’s it for now.  We’re outta here.  We’ll see you next week with a review of another new movie.

VOICE:  This is the police.  We have you surrounded.

(LS scurries to the hole.)

MA (to LS):  Where are you going?

LS:  Back into the hole.  Come on down.  I have widescreen TV down there.  We can preview next month’s movies.

MA:  Popcorn?

LS:  Of course.

(LS & MA disappear into the hole as the police converge on the scene.)

OFFICER #1:  Do you smell popcorn?

—END—

© Copyright 2012 by Michael Arruda

Michael Arruda gives GONE~three knives.

(and it doesn’t hurt if you’re an Amanda Seyfried fan)

Leave A Comment »

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 82 other followers