Archive for adrien brody

GIALLO (2009)

Posted in 2011, Dario Argento Films, Italian Horror, LL Soares Reviews with tags , , , , , on January 21, 2011 by knifefighter

GIALLO (2009)
A Film Review by L.L. Soares

GIALLO, like a lot of Dario Argento’s recent films, is a mixed bag. Referring to both the color yellow (‘giallo” is Italian for yellow), and the pulp paperbacks with yellow covers that featured the violent mystery stories which gave the Italian genre of books and films its name, GIALLO gives us a fairly straightforward tale of a serial killer known only as Giallo/Yellow (Byron Deidra), who drives a cab through the busy streets of Milan. He is drawn to beauty, and when a beautiful woman gets into his cab, chances are good she won’t be heard from again. In his apartment building, there are catacombs beneath the house that give him lots of places to hide his prey. He tortures them until they die, and then he moves on to the next one.

When a model named Celine (Elsa Pataky) becomes Giallo’s latest victim, her sister Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner), who has just arrived from the airport, is determined that her sister will not become just another statistic. Refusing to give up, she turns to Inspector Enzo Avolfi (Oscar-winner Adrien Brody), a former New York cop who now solves the more gruesome crimes that arise in Milan. Allegedly a master of detection, Inspector Avolfi seems almost like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, except for one thing. Where Holmes was mostly infallible, Enzo is not always so good at his job.

Avoiding the kind of stylish visuals he is known for, Argento mostly plays things straight here. Too straight. There’s nothing especially unique about this film, nothing that really stands out, except for Brody, who turns in an okay performance in an otherwise pedestrian film. There is absolutely no evidence here that GIALLO was directed by the same guy who gave us SUSPIRIA (1977) or OPERA (1987). I’m really starting to wonder if the real Argento has been replaced with a pod person!

When we finally see Yellow, who gets his name because of jaundice due to a liver disease, he’s a guy with an awful make-up job and a giant nose. I guess he was supposed to be deformed, and this should explain to us why he hates beauty so much, but he’s  just incredibly fake-looking. Every time he was onscreen, I was reminded of those over-the-top goofy villains from the DICK TRACY movie (1990). That alone made me want him to get caught and get his comeuppance. Yellow, as a source of menace, is just plain laughable!

And the killer is not much of an adversary for Brody. He’s such a dim-witted fool he makes Enzo seem like a genius. But Yellow has one advantage—a thorough knowledge of the catacombs. And it is this knowledge that gives him the upper hand in at least one key scene.

I remember when Argento’s MOTHER OF TEARS came out in 2009, some people gave me a hard time for praising it so highly. But the truth is, it was a rare time in recent memory when Argento seemed at all passionate about his work, instead of just going through the motions. Even if you hated the more campy elements of MOTHER, you couldn’t miss the fact that here was a stylist, having fun, perhaps at his audience’s expense. But at least it felt vibrant at times, alive. That’s been something rare in Argento’s recent work.

There’s no such feeling with GIALLO. It is drab and workmanlike. There is no art here to be seen. And it’s rather forgettable once the final credits roll.

For someone considered a master of disturbing visuals and surreal atmosphere, there’s none of that to be found. The only visual that we remember is of the killer – a preposterous fool whose appearance generates more laughs than scares. I haven’t seen this bad  a make-up job in a horror movie in a long time.

It’s ironic that GIALLO was pulled from distribution shortly after its release in America. Due to a financial dispute with the producers who failed to pay him, Brody’s contract stipulated that his image couldn’t be used by the film until financial matters were corrected. The irony is, Brody is the only really reason to see this one. I saw it on Cable OnDemand during its brief run here in the summer of 2010, but now it’s unavailable. It’s not that big of a tragedy, because it’s pretty forgettable, but if the money people behind GIALLO really want to recoup their expenses, they would best pay Brody what he is due. This is minor Argento, given a slight boost by the presence of an actor who deserves more respect than he got here.

I give this movie one and a half knives. The only actor who stands out in this one is Brody, despite that fact that this is not one of his more memorable roles. And I chuckled at the hilarious make-up job on Byron Deidra.

© Copyright 2011 by L.L. Soares

LL SOARES gives GIALLO - one and a half knives

 



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PREDATORS!

Posted in 2010, Action Movies, Aliens, Cinema Knife Fights, Monsters, Science Fiction, Sequels with tags , , , , , , , , on July 12, 2010 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: PREDATORS (2010)
by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE: A forest.  Suddenly two screaming bodies fall from the sky and hit the ground hard.  Close-up reveals they are MICHAEL ARRUDA and L.L. SOARES.)

MA (checking his body):  Thank God.  No broken bones.

LS:  Damn!  What kind of a free-fall ride is this?

MA:  Are you hurt bad?

LS:  Not at all.  Last time I suffered three broken ribs and my shin bone tore through my flesh.  This time, nothing.  How cheap is that?  I might ask for my money back!

MA:  You do that.  I’m going to begin our review of PREDATORS.

LS:  Nah.  Seeing you scream like a baby was worth the price of the ticket.

MA:  That was called “acting.”  I wasn’t really scared.

LS (laughs):  And I’ve got a head of hair like Bon Jovi.

MA:  And your point would be?

LS (suddenly wearing a huge rock star style wig) What the—-?

MA:  Today’s movie, PREDATORS, is not a remake or a “re-imagining” of the 1987 original movie PREDATOR, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.  It’s a brand new chapter in the franchise.

The story begins with a bunch of people with parachutes falling from the sky and landing in a strange, unknown forest. There’s Royce (Adrien Brody), a mercenary killer who quickly becomes the leader of the group; Isabelle (Alice Braga), a tough-minded soldier; Cuchillo (Danny Trejo), an enforcer for a drug cartel; Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov), a Russian soldier; Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), a soldier from Sierra Leone; Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien), a member of the Japanese Yakuza; Stans (Walton Goggins), an extremely volatile Death Row convict; and Edwin (Topher Grace), a doctor, who seems incredibly out of place in this group.

LS: I especially liked Hanzo and Cuchillo, man. The movie I saw, the coming attractions included a trailer for the upcoming Robert Rodriguez (who also produced PREDATORS) film MACHETE, starring Danny Trejo —remember when that was a fake trailer for GRINDHOUSE (2007)? — well now it’s going to be a real movie! Not only do I love this guy as an actor, I hope MACHETE makes him a star. But he’s not in PREDATORS long enough.

MA: Yeah, Danny Trejo seems to be a Robert Rodriguez favorite.  I remember him way back in FROM DUSK TO DAWN (1996), that insane vampire flick which Rodriguez directed, starring George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino!  And he appeared in Rodriguez’s popular kids’ movie franchise, the SPY KIDS trilogy in the early 2000s, playing a character named— you got it, Uncle Machete.

LS: Gotta love Uncle Machete, man!

MA: I agree with you.  He’s not in PREDATORS enough.

LS:  The same for Walt Goggins. I love this guy. He was great as Shane in one of my favorite TV shows ever, THE SHIELD. But he was also good in Rob Zombie’s debut HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES (2003), as well as the brand new FX TV show JUSTIFIED. I’m always happy to see him, and this movie was no exception, although I have to admit, it was hard to see his character – who claims to be a murderer and a rapist – as anything more than comic relief.

But you’re right, the intro is great. The movie starts off really screwed up, with each character falling from the sky and then thinking they’re all enemies – it’s like an acid trip, man.

MA: They quickly deduce that they have been chosen because they are hunters, and they have been placed here in this forest, because they are in the middle of a game preserve, and THEY are the game.  When they reach a clearing and see a very strange-looking sky, they realize they are on an alien planet.

Royce believes that in order for them to survive, they need to know who is hunting them, and so he leads the group in search of the hunters.  Of course, they discover the hunters are the Predators from the PREDATOR franchise.  There are actually two types of Predators in this movie, the classic type from the original franchise, and a newer more powerful Predator, a race that seems to be running this particular planet, as they keep the classic Predators captive. The two kinds of Predators are mortal enemies.

LS: Another interesting point. We find out that while the original “classic” Predators can travel alone, these new, bigger Predators always hunt in packs of threes – a point that will be important as the movie unfolds.

MA: Royce and his merry band of soldiers later meet Noland (Laurence Fishburne), a half-crazed survivor from an earlier hunt— half-crazed because he’s been surviving alone on the planet for 10 “seasons” now!  Noland tells Royce that the Predators have a ship which they use to go to and from the planet, and Royce makes it his plan to commandeer the spaceship to get back to Earth.

LS: Fishburne is good, but he’s in this movie way too briefly. I wish he’d actually thrown his lot in with Brody’s gang and used his know-how to help them out. And for a guy who’s somehow been able to stay alive for 10 years on this planet, he sure makes some bonehead moves in this movie. It’s like, once he meets Adrien Brody and his gang, Fishburne turns stupid.

MA: The hunt is on, as the Predators set their sights on the humans, while Royce and company set their sights on the escape ship.

PREDATORS is a movie that I had zero expectations for.  I thought– do we really need ANOTHER Predator movie? – but, I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised by this one, and I ended up liking it a lot.

LS: Me, too. I was kind of bummed out I had to see this one. But man, what a surprise. Not only did I like it, I thought it was easily the best PREDATOR movie ever!

MA: You know, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but now that you mention it, I would have to agree.  It is the best one in the series.

(An ALIEN jumps down from a tree branch, gesticulating angrily at them.)

MA:  I’m sorry.  Your two bouts with the Predators were OK, but they weren’t as good as this movie.

LS (to ALIEN): You gotta tell the folks making your movies to stop using all that CGI.  It’s making you look like a cartoon, and that’s not scary.

(ALIEN walks away with drooping shoulders.)

MA:  Although its brief pre-credit sequence showing Adrien Brody simply falling from the sky without anything else happening was silly and nondescript, after the credits, the movie quickly introduces its characters and gets its story moving without delay.  I was into this movie within the first 10 minutes.  It hooked me right away.

LS: Hey, I thought you liked the “falling from the sky” intro. I know I sure did. I was grooving to this movie from the minute it started. I loved that things weren’t explained right away, and we had to figure things out at the same pace as the characters did.

MA: Well, yeah, that part I liked.  The uncertainty of everything at the beginning, that feeling of “what the hell is going on?” really grabs you.

Things are helped, of course, by some fine acting.

Let’s start with Adrien Brody.  He’s one of the reasons I was a bit skeptical about this movie.  I thought, Adrien Brody as the lead of an action-horror movie? He’s no Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I expected him to be sorely miscast.  I’ll say it right here.  I was completely wrong about him.  Not only was Brody excellent in this movie, not only was he believable as a tough, mercenary killer, he delivered one of the best acting performances I’ve seen in a genre film this year.  I think it’s because I didn’t really expect him to be able to pull this role off, but he comes off as utterly convincing.

LS: In the past, I didn’t care for Adrien Brody all that much. But he’s totally won me over. Imagine, it took him leaving art films and taking roles in genre flicks for him to really grow on me. But I loved his performance in SPLICE and I really dug him here, too.

Let’s face it, even though the monster was cool in the original PREDATOR, the people were rather cheesy. Schwarzenegger was okay – he still couldn’t act very well at that point, but he knew to keep his talking to a minimum – but the rest of the cast was pretty campy. I mean, Jesse Ventura? He’s a better  politician than he was an actor. Watching the 1987 original feels really dated. But this new movie kicks all kinds of ass.

MA: Brody in a genre film is starting to become a regular thing.  We saw him earlier this year in SPLICE, but he was also in KING KONG (2005), and he was even in— and I hate to even say the name of this movie— THE VILLAGE (2004).  While I liked him a lot in SPLICE, he’s even better here in PREDATORS.  I could get used to seeing Brody in horror movies.

LS: I actually thought he was pretty good in THE VILLAGE, and excellent in SPLICE. He just keeps getting better and better.

MA: I also really enjoyed Alice Braga as Isabelle.  We saw Braga earlier this year in REPO MEN.  I think she delivered a better performance in REPO MEN, as that role was more complicated and challenging, but she’s damned good here, too.

LS: I liked REPO MEN, and Braga is very good here as well.

MA: The rest of the cast was also very good.  I especially liked Louis Ozawa Changchien as Hanzo, and Oleg Taktarov as Nikolai, and while Walton Goggins was entertaining as the unpredictable psychopath Stans, I was somewhat disappointed with Topher Grace as Edwin, the doctor.  Grace played Venom in SPIDER-MAN 3 (2007), and here in PREDATORS, his character is rather bland.  Plus, I knew there had to be some reason why a doctor was selected to be part of this group, and when that reason is revealed, I thought it was a letdown, which isn’t Grace’s fault, but given what he had to work with, he didn’t really do a whole lot to raise that character to a higher level.

LS: I don’t care for Grace, and I thought he ruined Venom for the movies (Venom is a so much cooler character in the comics). But the part where Hanzo faces off against a Predator, with just a samurai sword, was easily one of my favorite scenes.

MA: That was an EXC ELLENT scene!  As duels go, it was majestic.

Laurence Fishburne makes the most of his brief screen time as Noland, the half-crazed survivor.  He could have been in the movie longer, and I wouldn’t have minded.

LS: I like Fishburne a lot, and wished he’d had a bigger presence in the movie.

MA:  I liked the way he was always whispering, so as not to attract the Predator’s attention.  It was kind of creepy.

LS: And he kept talking to some imaginary friend. It reminded me of my relationship with you!

MA:  I imagine I resent that remark, friend!

WHISPERING VOICE FROM WOODS:  Over here.

MA:  Who said that?

VOICE:  You’re too loud.  They’ll hear you.

LS:  Show yourself, you wimp!  What’s the idea of hiding in the woods like a big baby?

MA:  Who are you?

VOICE:  The wind.

LS:  The wind?  What is this, THE HAPPENING?

MA (trembling):  N-no!  First, THE VILLAGE, now THE HAPPENING.  There are too many M. Night Shyamalan references.  Stop it!  STOP IT!

LS (shaking MA):  Get a grip on yourself, before I have to hit you upside the head with this machete!

MA:  Whoa!  Where did that come from?

LS:  From the Danny Trejo Fan Club.  Are you good to go now?

MA (taking a deep breath):  Yeah, I’m okay.  Thanks.

I thought the special effects ran hot and cold.  The vicious four-legged creatures that attack the group before the Predators enter the scene, were rather fake-looking and obvious CGI creations.  The Predators themselves were okay.  Sometimes they looked scary and real, and at other times they looked phony.  The best looking creature in this one was the classic Predator, the one who was being held prisoner by the newer, stronger Predators.  He was scary and horrific looking, and I wish he had been in the movie more.

LS: I thought the alien “dogs” were okay. As for the Predators, I’ve been a fan since day one. I thought the original PREDATOR (1987), was pretty goofy, but the monster kicked ass. And they’ve continued to be terrific visually, through all the ALIEN VS. PREDATOR films, and especially here.

MA: Director Nimrod Antal did a good job here.  The action sequences are exciting, and the hunt scenes intense.  There were also a few gory touches that made this one as hard-hitting as it needed to be.

LS: He did a great job! He’s also directed a few other interesting films, like KONTROLL (2003) and VACANCY (2007).

MA: Writers Alex Litvak and Michael Finch wrote a story that hooked me from the get-go.  Even though this was a PREDATOR movie, and everyone in the theater knew that the Predators would be the guys doing the hunting, the story was written in such a way that the first half of the movie, in which we don’t see a whole lot of the Predators, was still compelling and very interesting.  I think this was due largely to this being a brand new story.  It wasn’t a rehash of the original two movies, or the two recent films that pitted the Predators against the Aliens.

LS: Yeah, the script was super! The pacing is relentless throughout. I really enjoyed it.

MA: There were elements of surprise here.  Just where the hell is this forest anyway?  Why is there an ordinary doctor among the group of killers?  What are those strange four-legged creatures?  Why is one Predator being held captive by other, slightly different looking Predators?  There was enough happening early on to pique my interest and get me into this movie.

Once Laurence Fishburne’s character appears, I thought the movie leveled off somewhat in terms of surprises.  It becomes more of a standard action movie, as the hunt heats up.  While this is enjoyable and entertaining, the film does become more routine during its second half.

Still, it doesn’t fall to anything resembling “below average,” and this is because of the strong performance of Adrien Brody.  Brody drives the story along, and with the strength of his acting abilities, he carries this movie on his back, and he takes it all the way to a successful finish.

I also really enjoyed the music score by John Debney, the man who did the music for SIN CITY (2005).  It reminded me a lot of the score from the original 1987 PREDATOR movie, by Alan Silvestri.

To nitpick, I would have liked some better explanations for a few things.  For starters, just how is it that the classic Predator understands what Adrien Brody says to it so easily?  Do Predators understand English?

LS: Si, senor!

MA: Just how was it that these people were whisked off Earth and sent here?  And just where is HERE?

But these are minor quibbles in a movie as entertaining as this.  PREDATORS is the kind of movie where I don’t care if there are minor missing elements to the story, because the story as is works so well.

I thought PREDATORS was one of the more entertaining movies I’ve seen this summer.  It’s got great acting, especially from its lead Adrien Brody; it’s got lots of neat action sequences; and it is not boring in the least.  It’s well worth the price of admission. I give it 3 knives.

LS: I like the fact that not everything was explained, but just enough was to keep us glued to the screen. PREDATORS3 and a half knives was a big surprise for me, and I really enjoyed it. I’d give it .

MA: So, there you have it.  Definitely give yourself a treat this summer.  Go out and see PREDATORS.

(PREDATOR appears behind them with a beer in each hand.  He hands them to LS and MA).

LS:  Gee, thanks!

MA (lifting bottle):  Here’s to a kick-ass movie, which should really reinvigorate this franchise.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s another PREDATORS movie in the works in the not too distant future.

LS:  Let’s not rush into more sequels, okay?

MA (to PREDATOR):  And what do you think about the prospect of starring in more Predator movies?  Are you GAME?  Oops!  Bad choice of words.

(PREDATOR aims his weapon at them.)

LS:  Game. You would have to remind him.

MA:  He just can’t help himself. He’s addicted to hunting.  Well, folks, we’ve got to duel our friend Mr. Predator here.  But we’ll be back next week with another review of another new movie.

LS (hands MA a paint ball gun):  Ready?  (MA nods).  Okay, Mr. Predator, the game is on!

(MA and LS take cover in the woods, while the PREDATOR roars.)

WHISPERING VOICE:  They went that-a-way.

—END—

© Copyright 2010 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gives PREDATORS - 3 KNIVES

L.L. Soares gives PREDATORS - 3 1/2 KNIVES

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CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT – COMING ATTRACTIONS – JULY 2010

Posted in 2010, Cinema Knife Fights, Coming Attractions with tags , , , , , , , , , on July 2, 2010 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: COMING ATTRACTIONS: JULY 2010
by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE: The deep woods at night. We find MICHAEL ARRUDA and L.L. SOARES wearing military fatigues, cautiously making their way through the underbrush. Suddenly, they are startled by a strange clicking noise, and MA notices a pinpoint laser beam hitting him square in the chest.)

MA: That’s not good!

LS: No, it’s not good. You’re about to get blasted.

MA: You’re all heart.

LS: You’re gonna be all guts in a minute. (Steps away from MA to avoid being spattered)

(There is a sudden loud SWOOSH, and from the treetops a PREDATOR becomes visible and jumps to the ground, hovering over MA.)

LS (to MA): It was nice knowing you.

MA (to PREDATOR): Hey, look behind that tree! I think I see an ALIEN!

(PREDATOR shakes its head. Starts making clicking noises at MA.)

MA: Really? Oh, that’s a relief.

LS: You understand what it’s saying?

MA: I took a PREDATOR language class last summer. Anyway, he’s not here to harm us, after all. He’s just here to deliver us press kits from his new movie PREDATORS opening on July 9.

LS: That’s mighty nice of him.

(PREDATOR hands them kits, waves good-bye, then leaps up, disappearing into a tall tree.)

MA (to audience): Welcome, to our CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT COMING ATTRACTIONS column for July.

LS: Yep, the column where we let you know in advance what we’ll be reviewing in the month ahead.

MA: Before we get to PREDATORS, there is one other movie first that I can’t believe I have to mention yet again. TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE opens June 30, so technically it’s a June release, but our review will be posted over the long July 4th weekend. So in terms of CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT, we’ll be dealing with ECLIPSE in July. I’d rather not be dealing with this one at all. I don’t like this series and I’m not looking forward to this movie, but as always, I will keep an open mind when watching it.
LS: Yeah, I wish we didn’t have to see ECLIPSE either. What a crappy way to start the month. But I guess that’s our job.

MA: Moving right along. PREDATORS opens on July 9. I’m feeling very mixed about this one. I enjoyed the original PREDATOR (1987) with Arnold Schwarzenegger eons ago, and I thought the recent ALIEN VS. PREDATOR movies were a fun ride in a mindless sort of way, but another Predator movie? I don’t know. Sequels, especially deep into a series, tend to be very weak movies, so I don’t really have a lot of high expectations for this one.

(From high in the treetops the PREDATOR makes loud clicking noises and gesticulates threateningly.)

MA (to PREDATOR): Sorry. I’m sure you’ll be very good in the movie, if that’s any consolation.

LS: I saw the original PREDATOR again, not too long ago, and while the monster is pretty cool, the movie itself is dated and pretty silly. I actually think a “reboot” could be an improvement. Then again, with that S at the end of the title, PREDATORS might be as much of a sequel as a reboot. Instead of Schwarzenegger this time around, we’ve got Adrien Brody, who was pretty decent in the recent movie SPLICE that we reviewed, and Laurence Fishburne.

MA: This news flash just in: the weekend of July 16, LL and I will actually be taking the weekend off!

(Gasps and cries are heard off camera.)

MA: Yes, it’s true. Amazing, isn’t it? A weekend without CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT.

LS: That’s right. We actually haven’t taken a break since this site first went up late last year, but even though we’re finally taking a weekend off, we’ll still be talking movies. We’ll be at a convention that weekend, where, hopefully, we’ll be leading a panel on horror movies.

MA: That means that our review of INCEPTION, which opens on July 16, will be posted a week later, the weekend of July 23. I’m looking forward to INCEPTION. The trailer looks good, and since I loved THE DARK KNIGHT (2008), I’m looking forward to another movie by its writer/director, Christopher Nolan. I also like Leonardo DiCaprio very much, and I’m looking forward to seeing him in a new movie, after the disappointing SHUTTER ISLAND which came out earlier this year.

I’ve heard a little bit about the plot, and I have to say I’m not all that impressed. I have a feeling this could be one of those movies that wins me over on style rather than content. But we’ll see.

LS: Visually, the trailer looks interesting, but reminds me a lot of the Alex Proyas movie DARK CITY from 1998. But the plot, about someone who can go into people’s dreams and extract secrets, sounds kind of interesting.

MA: Really? Sounds like that old Dennis Quaid movie DREAMSCAPE (1984) to me. Plus the recent remake of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET left a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to movies about dreams.

LS:  I dunno. I think Christopher Nolan can pull it off. And I’d like to see DiCaprio in a good movie after SHUTTER ISLAND turned out to be such a letdown, too.

To finish off July, on July 30, we’ll be doing a DVD review of THE COLLECTOR from 2009. When I suggested this one to Michael, I’m really surprised he agreed to review it. But I think we’ll have a lot of fun with it. It didn’t get a proper release where I am (it was in theaters out in the suburbs and didn’t make it to the big city for some reason), and I’ll be curious to dissect it.

MA: I know very little about this movie, other than its connection to the SAW movies, which for me, isn’t winning it any brownie points.

LS: Normally, we just use the COMING ATTRACTIONS columns to let you know what we’ll be up to, but we also have a few special treats coming up from our other contributors this month, including Dan Keohane’s review of the new M. Night Shyamalan movie, THE LAST AIRBENDER; John Harvey tackling the new Angelina Jolie movie, SALT; and a very special review by author Phil Nutman of the classic British cannibal film, RAW MEAT (1972), starring Donald Pleasance.

MA: Yep, and with that, we wrap things up for July.

LS: So, what’s inside these PREDATORS press kits anyway?

MA: Let’s look.

(They open press kits to discover bloody body parts.)

MA: Showing off his trophies, I guess.

LS (excitedly): Oh boy! Toys!

MA: Toys? Are you nuts? Those are severed body parts! What kind of toys did you play with as a child? On second thought, don’t answer that! I don’t want to know!

LS: Come on! You know you played with horror toys, too!

MA: Maybe so, but that’s a story for another day. Well, folks, that about does it for our COMING ATTRACTIONS column. We’ll see you this July at the movies.

—END—

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SPLICE

Posted in 2010, Cinema Knife Fights, Science Fiction with tags , , , , on June 7, 2010 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: SPLICE
by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE: a busy laboratory. MICHAEL ARRUDA looks on as L.L. SOARES stirs together a bunch of chemicals)

LS: And add a bit of eye of newt and tongue of yak

MA: That doesn’t sound very scientific!

LS: What’s with the science? I’m making my lunch.

MA:  Well, in that case, could you add some tomato sauce. I like my yak tongue with sauce. Love those saucy tongues!

(LS flings a ladle of tomato sauce onto MA’s head.)

LS:  Saucy enough for you?

MA (wipes face with cloth and licks lips):  Actually, it could use some oregano, but that’s neither here nor there. We have a movie to review: the new cloning movie, SPLICE. Care to begin?

LS (puts down beakers):  Okay. This one starts off fast right away, with no slow explanations. Two scientists who are also lovers, Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley), are working on strange cloning experiments that involve splicing together DNA from various animals to form new species. When the movie opens, they have already created a brand new life form. The first of their kind—“Ginger” and “Fred”—are strange lumps of flesh that resemble nothing as much as giant crawling penises!

MA:  You said it, I didn’t. But you’re right. That’s what they look like.

LS:  I had a major flashback to Frank Hennenlotter’s BAD BIOLOGY, which I reviewed not too long ago (and which also had a crawling penis in it). It seems the main point of this research, though, isn’t to have fun with DNA, but to create new creatures which are teeming with proteins and chemicals that can cure diseases and get turned into pharmaceuticals. The major drug company the scientists work for, run by the ruthless Joan Charot (Simona Maicanescu), is only interested in making profits, otherwise they’ll pull the plug on the research, no matter how ground-breaking it is.

MA:  I thought this was a realistic plot point. The motives of Joan Charot and the drug company don’t come off as cliché.

LS:  When Clive and Elsa find out that they will not be funded to create more life forms, but are expected to extract goodies from the ones they’ve already created, they feel they’ve reached a scientific dead end. They had planned to create yet another new life form, this time including human DNA in the mix (because straight human cloning is illegal), but the company won’t fund it.

Instead of giving up, they simply continue their own experiments in secrecy, desperate to prove to themselves that they can do it (especially Elsa). After several failed attempts to mix animal and human chromosomes, they finally get it to work. The result is Dren (Delphine Chaneac), who first looks like an armless baby kangaroo but slowly gets more human as she grows at an accelerated rate (growing years in a matter of days).

MA:  I thought the baby Dren resembled a cross between an alien baby and a walking roast chicken. Something, like this! (Reaches into boiling pot with giant fork and lifts a strange looking roast, a chicken body with a CLOSE ENCOUNTERS alien head.)

LS:  Don’t touch that!  It’s not even close to being done yet!  (MA puts it back into the pot.)

Eventually, she’s a weird-looking, bald little girl who isn’t so easy to hide from the other scientists or the management, and eventually Clive and Elsa take Dren out to the country to stay in the barn of a farm that used to be Elsa’s childhood home.

At this point, Dren’s head is separated by a line that makes her look like an honest-to-God butthead!

(BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD pop up and giggle)

BEAVIS: Heh, heh, he said Butthead.

BUTTHEAD: Haw haw. He said my name.

LS:  As Dren continues to grow, she also becomes more and more dangerous to those around her. And a few times when Dren escapes, everyone goes into panic mode.

That’s pretty much the story in a nutshell.

(Suddenly, from out of a large beaker, comes a little monster that looks like a live-action Porky Pig, but green. The creature runs around the room grunting and snorting)

LS: Hmmm, maybe I can have green eggs and ham for lunch.

MA: Hey, it’s your own personal Mini-Me!  (Green Pig lifts Alien Chicken from pot and starts dancing with it, knocking into test tubes and lab equipment.)  Hey!  Stop that!  He’s going to wreck the place.

(LS hits the creatures with a shovel)

GREEN PIG: Tha-tha-tha that’s all folks!

LS: Now where was I? For the most part, SPLICE was much better than I expected it to be. The trailers looked okay, but when I went into the theater, I wasn’t really expecting much. Good trailers have been attached to bad movies before, and I wasn’t going to get my hopes up.

Everyone involved here turns in good performances. The script is smart and seems aimed at adults rather than teenagers. And Dren is suitably creepy and sometimes even scary. Hell, there’s even some human-on-monster sex later on in the movie. So what’s not to like?

That said, there were moments when I found certain events hard to swallow, and the ending is predictable as hell. But for the most part, everything is good enough to make you happily suspend your disbelief.

The movie moves at a brisk pace, the research bits are never draggy, and Dren is actually a pretty cool creature.

I give it two and a half knives. I didn’t think it was a must-see movie, but if you do spend the money for a movie ticket, I don’t think you’ll feel ripped off. It was pretty decent.

What did you think, Michael?

MA:  I think I’m about to bore everybody, because I’m going to say the same things you just did. I wasn’t expecting much from this one either, and like you, I was pleasantly surprised. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it was aimed at adults rather than teens. That was what stood out the most for me as I watched this picture, that the screenplay by Vincenzo Natali, who also directed, and Antoinette Terry Bryant, was refreshingly adult. And it was well-written.

I thought it started off slow, as most of the early scenes involved just our two lover scientists, Clive and Elsa, and at first they weren’t doing much for me. The beginning reminded me of David Cronenberg’s THE FLY (1986) as that film also featured two main characters almost exclusively throughout, Jeff Goldblum’s doomed scientist Seth Brundle and Geena Davis’s reporter. In that film Goldblum and Davis drew me in immediately, especially Goldblum who I think delivered the performance of his career in THE FLY.

Here, Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley weren’t anywhere near as compelling. However, they grew on me as the film went on, and I ended up liking both of their performances a lot.

The movie picks up steam once Dren enters the picture. It’s funny, because Dren isn’t a particularly compelling character herself. I mean, she’s a new life form, and so she should be compelling, but somehow she’s not. The reason the movie gets better once Dren appears is that she affects change in both Clive and Elsa. Because of Dren, Clive and Elsa go through some dramatic changes, and it is through these changes that their characters really become deeper and more interesting.

LS: I don’t agree. I liked Dren a lot. But I agree that she affects Clive and Elsa in interesting ways.

(Another creature rises up out of the cooking pot. This time it’s a muscular little man, without a shirt, who starts doing all kinds of posing on the tabletop)

LS: Oh no, it’s a tiny Taylor Lautner!

MA: Who?

LS: You forgot so soon? The werewolf kid from TWILIGHT: NEW MOON. All he likes to do is show off his abs.

MA: I know who he is. I was just trying to block him out of my mind.  What’s the idea, anyway?  Of all the characters to conjure up, why him?

LS (lifts a large sledgehammer): Oh well, all experiments can’t be successful.

(TINY TAYLOR LAUTNER suddenly begins to transform into a lame-looking CGI wolf)

LS (brings down hammer): Oh no you don’t! (Sounds of whimpering, then silence)

MA: Well, back to the review. At first, Elsa loves Dren like a baby daughter, and Clive, realizing the potential trouble their new creation could cause, wants to kill it. Then, as we learn more about Elsa’s deceased mom and how awful she treated her– and when they return to Elsa’s childhood farmhouse we see her old bedroom, which looks like something right out of PSYCHO (1960)—we realize her feelings towards Dren are more complicated than simple maternal instincts.

LS: I wished they had expanded a bit on Elsa’s childhood. For once, flashbacks could have added to the emotional impact of the story. That bedroom is very disturbing, but we see it so fleeting that it doesn’t really register at first.

MA: Later, Elsa becomes harsh with Dren, and you get the feeling she’s acting like her own mother. When Dren reacts and tries to harm Elsa, Elsa strikes back by treating her inhumanely, like a lab experiment, stripping her of her clothes and dignity, and even maiming her.

At this point, it’s Clive who begins to relate to Dren, to become sympathetic towards her, which leads to that human/monster sex scene you were talking about.  All joking aside, it’s a really neat scene.

LS: Oh, it’s definitely one of the movie’s highlights.

MA: At one point, Clive tells Elsa that she didn’t want kids of her own because she was afraid she’d lose control, but she was happy to have a lab experiment as a child, because she would have complete control over that. It’s a telling moment in the movie, because we learn why Elsa was so driven to create Dren in the first place.

The movie really takes an intelligent approach to its science fiction tale. It could have been superficial and cliché, but it’s not. It’s actually character-driven, as the tale of Dren unfolds through the actions and behaviors of Clive and Elsa.

However, it’s far from perfect. Take Dren, for instance. While I really enjoyed her look, she never becomes the character she had the potential for becoming. She’s a new life form, for crying out loud!  She should be fascinating!  Instead, she’s mildly interesting.

LS: I disagree. I think Dren is actually my favorite character in the movie, and Delphine Chaneac does a great job bringing her to life. The actress who plays her as a little girl (Abigail Chu) is quite good, too. But Chanéac makes her completely sympathetic, without uttering a single human word.

MA:  I guess. I’m with you in terms of the way she looked. I thought she was cool-looking, but in terms of her character, I wanted to get inside her head more. I don’t think I felt her pain as much as I felt the pain of the two leads. But I liked her much more than THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE!

LS:  Don’t start that again, or you might find yourself in one of these test tubes!

MA: And to nitpick here, her name Dren is “nerd” spelled backwards. I don’t know why, but while watching the scene when they named her Dren, my mind suddenly experienced a flashback to the 1976 KING KONG when Jessica Lange explains her name Dwan as “Dawn with two letters reversed.”  Ugh!

LS: The scene where Elsa gives Dren her name is kinda goofy, but it’s not that bad, and it makes enough sense that you can let it go.

MA: There were a few memorable scenes, but not a whole lot. I thought the initial birthing scene where both the baby Dren and Elsa nearly die was rather flat and not all that dramatic. The scene where Dren makes her first appearance was much better. There’s also a neat scene later in the movie when Clive and Elsa are making this huge presentation for their company, Newstead, and they’re in front of a huge audience of business types and scientists. They’re supposed to be showing off Fred and Ginger, but the two creations decide to attack each other, eventually spraying the shocked audience with a shower of blood. It’s a sick, funny scene, that had the audience I saw it with laughing.

LS: That was a fantastic scene! And does some major foreshadowing about what’s to come.

MA: Yeah, they weren’t laughing to make fun of it, they were laughing because it was a cool scene!

But for the most part this movie is not about high drama. For example, when Dren escapes at the farmhouse, I thought the film might go the monster movie melodrama route about some strange creature loose in the countryside. It doesn’t, which actually is a good thing. SPLICE remains a methodical thought-provoking science fiction thriller throughout.

There’s a sense of sadness which pervades this movie. Dren is a sad, tragic character, and the film does a good job capturing this feeling.

LS: I definitely agree about the atmosphere of sadness that seems to hang over everything. It’s very effective.

MA: And the moment when Clive tells Dren that they love her, and they embrace, is one of the more emotional scenes in a movie that isn’t really all that emotional, other than that feeling of sadness.

The best part by far is the relationship between Clive and Elsa. They seem very real, and the way they interact and the things they say to each other are very realistic.

As you said, the weakest part of SPLICE is its ending, which was predictable and blah, and really, had the movie had a stronger ending, I probably would be much more enthusiastic about it.

As it is, I found SPLICE surprisingly adult and realistic, a thought-provoking science fiction thriller that’s smart and enjoyable, but ultimately a film that lacks the heightened drama or horror that could really put it over the edge and take it to the next level. I also give it 2 ½ knives.

So, I guess we’re in agreement on this one.

Hey, is that sauce ready yet?

LS:  Almost. It’s just missing one key ingredient.

MA:  What’s that?

LS:  Head of critic.

MA:  Head of critic?  You mean—?

LS:  Nah!  Not you!  Who would I get to prove wrong week after week?  (Opens pot, then begins to unwrap a parcel of butcher’s paper.)

MA:  That’s huge. How many heads do you have in there?

(LS unwraps parcel to reveal— the heads of STATLER and WALDORF from THE MUPPET SHOW)

STATLER:  Hey, can you believe these guys?  Passing themselves off as critics!

WALDORF:  Well, they’re definitely not cooks, either!  They can’t even boil water!  They’re burning the place down!

LS: Oh shut up, you two!

(Flames shoot out from underneath the pot).

LS:  Oops. Too much gas.

MA:  No comment. That does it until next week, folks. See you, then!

—END—

© Copyright 2010 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Both Michael and LL give this movie 2 1/2 KNIVES:

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