THE DEVIL’S EXPRESS is sometimes known as GANG WARS, I guess because there’s one or two scenes where gangs fight each other. Truly, it is the tale of a man named Warhawk Tanzania — that’s not his name in the movie, but some details are destined to be lost to time — who encounters an ancient Chinese demon monster who has been mauling unfortunates in the tunnels beneath New York City. Only Warhawk Tanzania, with his kung-fu mastery, is brave enough to battle the demon.
Actually it’s not all that great, and there’s no way the reality of THE DEVIL’S EXPRESS will ever match up to the movie you are no doubt imagining right now. But it’s still one of the more fun movies we’ve covered on the Daily Grindhouse podcast so far, and our conversation about it was most definitely a ton of fun.
And now here is the growing list of our previous episodes, in case you’d like to catch up. I’m a couple episodes behind, having been slow to update my personal site in general, so you’re in luck — if you’re not already aware, there are two newer episodes after THE DEVIL’S EXPRESS, which I will put up in separate posts right after this one!
M. Night Shyamalan, the kinda-sorta auteurist filmmaker who rocketed to above-the-title fame with a couple movies only to struggle critically over the tail end of the past decade, has a new movie coming out this summer. It’s called AFTER EARTH and it stars Will Smith, one of the last dependable movie stars, and his son Jaden. The movie is a sci-fi epic about a father and son who return to Earth in the deep future, long after the planet has been abandoned by humanity. I included AFTER EARTH on my list of 2013’s potentially strangest movies, which is totally a dick move on my part. I mean, how much have I done with MY life to be sitting here taking cheap shots? At least this guy is out there making movies, and making them with some of the world’s hugest stars. In my heart, I’m really not a so-called hater.
Quite the contrary in this case, in fact. I think there’s a particular angst for movie lovers when we start following a talented filmmaker who then makes a severe right turn down the off-roads of unfulfilled or squandered promise. It happened to me with Kevin Smith, for example, a witty, bold, and perceptive writer who I always hoped would take an interest in learning what to do with a camera, but it turned out he’d rather pursue other interests besides visual storytelling. By contrast, Shyamalan never had a problem being cinematic, but he certainly grew overly enamored of certain tics that precluded concise and coherent films. I would have liked to remain a fan, but at a certain point I had to decide that I didn’t want to follow these guys up their own asses.
So here’s a chronicle of me falling in love with another man’s talent, and then rapidly falling out of it. I wrote most of this piece back in 2008 but unfortunately my mind hasn’t much changed since then.
NOTE: This will not include anything Shyamalan did before THESIXTHSENSE,because I haven’t seen any of that stuff. I’m most interested in the Shyamalan of self-created myth & legend, the Shyamalan we have come to know in the past decade, the one who – like a young Bruce Wayne in his study who looked up at a bat and gained an instant career direction – looked up at the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK poster in his office and asked himself why he wasn’t making those kind of movies. That is the filmography I will be talking about here.
I also won’t be talking about anything after THE HAPPENING, for reasons that may soon enough become apparent.
THE SIXTH SENSE (1999) – This one came out of nowhere in the summer of 1999 and blew most people’s minds. It was a ghost story with the emphasis on story. The dramatic twist near the end actually deepens the experience, and it doesn’t hurt that it makes you want to re-watch the movie with the twist now in mind. This is an extremely solid movie about faith and the after-life and how those intersect and overlap. Is it maybe even good enough to one day sit on a shelf alongside another one of the director’s inspirations, THE EXORCIST? That may be going a little far. But it does serve as an answer to the most vehement haters, the ones who, burned by his later films, have rechristened him F. Night Shyamalan:
Anybody wondering why they still allow this guy to make movies should re-watch THE SIXTH SENSE. It was a massive financial success achieved with an actually good movie. The people who make the decisions are no doubt optimistic that one day, this guy will do that again. (So am I, for the record.)
But the movie itself does indeed hold up to revisiting. To prospective screenwriters like myself, I also recommend reading it in script form, if you can track that down, because it’s still just as affecting on the page. This movie is so solid that it has a good performance by Donnie Wahlberg. That’s directing, son.
The truth is that Shyamalan’s filmmaking talent is very real. Every movie he has made since THE SIXTH SENSE has contained varying degrees of that copious cinematic talent. Key word: “varying.” It’s why his filmography is so frustrating. He wouldn’t be so widely discussed if he wasn’t so capable.
UNBREAKABLE (2000) – I loved this one when it was first released. Saw it twice theatrically and a couple more times on DVD. So I hope that earns me enough leeway to suggest that it does not really hold up viscerally eight years later. It’s slow as a turtle attempting to moonwalk. Okay, hang on–
Here’s a rule: You can’t make a movie that’s more boring than real life. You just can’t. It’s why — to take a random and unrelated example — BROKEN FLOWERS was so disappointing to me. No matter how much Bill Murray you pour into a movie, you can’t slow a story down so much that you leave out the space for narrative.
Anyway, that’s why Shyamalan’s “deliberate” pacing falls so often flat. It also plays into the cardinal mistake Shyamalan likes to make of turning lighthearted subject matter — in this case superheroes — into a somber and ponderous suite of melancholy. It’s true that comic books themselves have been doing this for years, and now comic book movies are doing it too, so Shyamalan can’t be entirely faulted there. In a way, he was ahead of the curve.
On an intellectual level, UNBREAKABLE still works. It’s an interesting approach to the standard superhero/supervillain origin story. I just don’t want to rewatch it ever again. Unless…
You know what would solve all its problems? If the once-rumored sequel were to actually happen. Because as it stands now, UNBREAKABLE feels like the longest first act ever. I would definitely be curious as to what happens in the second UNBREAKABLE movie if it ever happened, especially since the second act is traditionally where the majority of the actual story takes place. UNBREAKABLE doesn’t add up to much without its MR. GLASS STRIKES BACK.
SIGNS (2002) – Forget the fact that it’s kind of impossible to look at Mel Gibson anymore without off-the-screen baggage. He’s fine in the movie, really. It’s the movie itself that’s the problem. This is where the storytelling problems infecting Shyamalan’s arsenal start to rear up violently. Shyamalan’s technical skill is still crazy-impressive – every scene where those aliens appear (or don’t) is freaky and great.
It’s the other stuff that just plain doesn’t add up in a coherent way — first and foremost that ending — and there’s been enough cyber-ink spilled on the subject for me to not bother to add to it. But the movie still made tons of money, and enough people still inexplicably say they like it, which is no doubt precisely how the first out-and-out blunder came to pass.
THE VILLAGE (2004) – Or as I call it affectionately: Cinematic blue-balls.
There’s nothing wrong with the original premise – colonial village is surrounded on all sides by a thick forest and maintaining an uneasy truce with the horrible monsters who live there – in fact that’s a great goddamn premise! And the way those red-cloaked spiny creatures are set up is chilling. Even knowing how things turned out, I still get chills thinking of their first couple appearances in the movie, and trust me, I don’t scare easy at movies. The first half of THE VILLAGE does the tough part and brings the fear.
So why completely subvert it for a corny twist ending? I’ll tell you how I figured out the twist after the first five minutes of the movie: “Okay, colonial village, bunch of musty old white people, how are they going to work in a role for the director, a modern-sounding East Indian guy, AHA! – it’s actually set in the present day!” And sure enough, there he was, and so it was. Sorry to ruin the movie, but you’d be a lot happier if you turned it off at the hour-mark anyway.
LADY IN THE WATER (2006) – Even worse, somehow. Massive folly. Near-unbelievable, but I didn’t see it alone, so I know for a fact it really happened.
Reading Shyamalan print interviews is one of my guilty pleasures. I’m just fascinated by how someone so smart and talented can so often be so misguided. I may risk sounding like an asshole to say so, but I truly find it illuminating. For a while there, Shyamalan was fond of defending his work by questioning why so many people criticize him and not his movies. Seems to me that one way to avoid that is to take a break from casting yourself in your movies. Right? Kind of hard to separate the two when, in this case, you’re playing the pivotal role of the man who will write the book that will change the world, even though it will mean he will die a martyr. And you can’t be so naive as to think that notebook-toting, detail-oriented professional film critics won’t pick up on the fact that the only character to meet a gruesome death, in an entire movie about the act of storytelling itself, is the cranky film critic.
The same way that you can’t complain about the way that people are always trying to figure out the twist endings of your movies when you keep putting twist endings in your movies. Right?
I particularly liked how the title character spent very close to the entire running time curled up in the shower. That was exciting.
And Paul Giamatti had the speech impediment coming and going, and that Latino dude with the fucked-up arm… (Now I’m getting confused again.) The wolf made of grass was pretty cool though. (Was I high?) Wikipedia tells me there was in fact a grass-wolf. It was called a “scrunt,” which really isn’t a great word to have in what was intended as a children’s movie.
THE HAPPENING (2008) – Okay. Okay.
It’s starting to become apparent that the director may no longer be interested in suspenseful stories about the supernatural, and has in fact now evolved into the maker of really, really weird comedies.
If you go into THE HAPPENING in this spirit, you will not be disappointed. If you are looking for a creepy edge-of-the-seater, you surely will. Without giving anything important away (I want to leave the half-hearted yet still insane ultimate revelation to the bravest among you), here are some reasons why I enjoyed THE HAPPENING:
“Filbert.” Let me explain: The main characters are fleeing Philadelphia on a railroad train, which inexplicably stops. Someone ducks their head away from the window, and the name of the town in which they are now stranded is revealed: Filbert. FILBERT! Duh-duh-duhhhhh! No, God, please, no, not… Filbert! Filbert! Dooooom! I don’t even care whether or not I’m the only one who laughed at that, because it’s still funny to me. Fucking Filbert, man.
I was NOT, however, the only one who laughed when the construction workers started walking off the building. Everyone in my theater laughed at that. It’s mostly because the plummeting crazies are played by dummies. And if we learned anything from The Three Stooges and Saturday Night Live, it’s that dummies are the greatest of all comedy props.
I don’t know who in all of Hollywood I would cast as a science teacher and a math teacher, respectively, but Mark Wahlberg and John Leguizamo are not they. Likable and down-to-earth actors both, but far better casting for, say, the cranky gym coach and the wisecracking AV teacher. They do their best, but the dialogue they are given does them no favors.
I swear a couple times Shyamalan cuts away from the action to a reaction shot of Zooey Deschanel and it looks like she’s trying to suppress a crack-up. Shyamalan may not have noticed, but I’m sure I did.
Intentional laughs are in the movie for sure, to the point where it’s almost confusing when it happens – stay tuned for the scene where Wahlberg tries to relate on a personal level to a plastic plant. Expertly written and played, and I’m not being sarcastic at all.
Far and away Shyamalan’s best and most hilarious cameo in all of his movies to date happens in THE HAPPENING. If you end up going, please stay for the credits to see what role he played. It’s just got to be a joke. But one of those jokes that only the one making it gets; you know that kind.
The Lion Scene! Oh man, the lion scene. The lion scene is a horror-comedy classic of which an EVIL DEAD 2-era Sam Raimi would be chainsaw-wieldingly envious. Soon to be a YouTube staple, guaranteed.
So if you’re looking for scary, this is not your territory. Watch the news instead. But if you’re a certain kind of moviegoer in a certain kind of mood, grab a couple like-minded buddies and Mystery-Science-Theater away.
Now, I skipped Shyamalan’s 2010 movie, THE LAST AIRBENDER, because I didn’t think my brain could handle all the fart jokes I was destined to make about that title. By every last account (except probably Shyamalan’s), I made the correct decision. But I’m curious about AFTER EARTH. Did the nasty thrashing he got over his last couple flicks make Shyamalan reconsider some of his more over-used quirks? Does the presence of Will Smith, one of the most infallible choosers of successful projects of the last decade-and-a-half, suggest that Shammy has reclaimed his earlier mojo? The AFTER EARTH trailer does not look overtly comical. It’s somewhat well paced, and more importantly, it has hordes of monkeys in it. That’s not any guarantee I’ll be able to stay away.
There are some potentially great movies coming out this year. Go anywhere else on the internet and you will read about movies like PACIFIC RIM and ANCHORMAN 2 and THE WORLD’S END and ELYSIUM. I’m excited about those too. There’s also all the obvious nerd bait like STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS and HUNGER GAMES 2 and THOR THE DARK WORLD. Not really my thing, but it’s certainly understandable if those are the kind of titles that make your heart do a happy dance.
But step off the beaten path with me. Let’s take a moment to give some attention to the real weirdos out there. Let’s look at some of the movies of 2013 which no one in their right mind is looking forward to. I’m not talking about intentional cult items like MACHETE KILLS or ESCAPE PLAN. Those movies are that guy or girl at the party who’s trying too hard to be sexy and therefore failing big for exactly that reason. I’m talking about the ugly guys or girls who just don’t give a fuck what you think they look like. They just wandered in off the street because they got a whiff of the guacamole dip.
This isn’t about schadenfreude. Well, not really. I mean, I’m no saint. There are a couple movies I wouldn’t mind watching crash and burn. In that category are ENDER’S GAME — written by a bigot, directed by the guy who made X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE; sure, no way that pairing could go wrong — and a pair of Vince Vaughn movies, one where he hangs out at Google for an entire movie and another movie where he plays a sperm donor, because no one learned anything from THE SWITCH and holy Lord do I ever not want to see or ever be asked to think about Vince Vaughn donating sperm.
But generally, my natural good nature wins out and I am a sweetheart who only wishes the best for everyone. Still, there are some movies coming up in 2013 whose very existence perplexes me. And that in turn makes me curious. Call me a a jerk, a creep, a kook, a contrarian, a nihilist, an anarchist — I’ve been called all of those things before and that was only this morning at the nunnery — but I like really bizarre movies that make no rational sense, and I like it even better when those movies turn out to be entertaining. So the following bunch is a group I’ve got my eye on in 2013 (some are getting real close now!):
_______________________________
ASSAULT ON WALL STREET (May 10)
Why It Could Be Cool:
It’s ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 meets WALL STREET!
Why It Probably Won’t Be:
It’s ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 meets WALL STREET!
_______________________________
JAVA HEAT (May 10)
Why It Could Be Cool:
It’s the caveman version of HEAT!
Why It Probably Won’t Be:
Mickey Rourke may actually be an Al Pacino, but Kellan Lutz is no Robert De Niro. I mean, maybe he is. I’ve only seen him in ARENA. He did not come off too brightly there. Also, his name is Kellan Lutz.
Why It Could Be Cool: “From the producer of SPIDER-MAN, X-MEN, and IRON MAN…”
Why It Probably Won’t Be: …And the director of SOUL SURFER!
_______________________________
SINBAD THE FIFTH VOYAGE (May 31)
Why It Could Be Cool:
Pseudo-stop-motion-animated skeletons!
Why It Probably Won’t Be:
Skeletons aside, this looks impressively bad. Like ten dollars worth of stolen garbage. I bet you Sinbad doesn’t even do his MacDonald’s milkshake routine!
_______________________________
AFTER EARTH (May 31)
Why It Could Be Cool: Will Smith! A clone of Will Smith! Space! Volcanoes! Monkeys!
Why It Probably Won’t Be: M. Night Shyamalan.
But that also means it could be as funny as THE HAPPENING. At this point, Shammy is probably done for as a serious director. But as a director of hilariously-solemn unintentional-comedies, he’s got a better shot than most.
_______________________________
AXE GIANT: THE WRATH OF PAUL BUNYAN (On DVD June 18)
Why It Could Be Cool: Well, it’s a horror movie about the legendary giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan. Ain’t a thing I can say I’ve ever seen before, and brother, I’ve seen plenty. Also, while there are no signs from the trailer or the official site, there’s still a better-than-average chance of a cameo from Babe The Blue Ox.
Why It Probably Won’t Be: Actually, I have no reason to expect it won’t be amazing.
_______________________________
HAMMER OF THE GODS (July 5)
Why It Could Be Cool: It’s a movie about Vikings!
Why It Probably Won’t Be: Vikings that say “Kiss my axe.”
_______________________________
R.I.P.D. (July 31)
Why It Could Be Cool: I’ll never not have hope for a movie that has Jeff Bridges and James Hong in it, and unlike most of the huge movies this summer, this one seems to have a sense of humor about itself.
Why It Probably Won’t Be: It’s trying way, way hard to be both GHOSTBUSTERS and MEN IN BLACK at the same time. See if you can spot the big, gaping difference.
_______________________________
THE FROZEN GROUND (August)
(No trailer yet.)
Why It Could Be Cool: Cage versus Cusack. Hate to paraphrase myself so quickly, but: It’s like HEAT for weirdos.
Why It Probably Won’t Be: This comes to us from 50 Cent’s production company, Cheetah Vision, and yes, 50 Cent co-stars in the film. 50 Cent’s movies are becoming an obsession of mine — not because they’re particularly awful, but because they aren’t particularly good, despite often tremendous casts. Also, NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT THEM. He’s so famous yet his movies are so under-the-radar. But that’s a much longer conversation. THE FROZEN GROUND is based on a true story. John Cusack plays Robert Hansen, the notorious serial killer, and Nicolas Cage plays the Alaskan cop who hunts him down. It’s no secret that Cage, once (and still) a tremendously gifted and unconventional actor, took a severe detour into mostly silly movies. It’s less commented-upon that John Cusack has kind of done the same thing. There’s an outside chance that a movie teaming the two of them could end up being great, but even if it doesn’t, it can still be colossally entertaining.
_______________________________
DON JON (October 18)
Why It Could Be Cool: Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of the smartest actors around and this is the first movie he wrote and directed. He seems to have brought his old accent from LOOPER along, and that was surely a fine movie. Scarlett Johannsson, who is also great, is his co-star, and she looks particularly phenomenal in this trailer.
Why It Probably Won’t Be: Well it still could be. There’s a ton of major talent involved. But I have to admit, and you probably should also, that if it were anyone other than Joseph Gordon-Levitt making this movie, there’d be plenty of cause for agita. It’s hard to escape the suspicion that JGL came up with this movie back when Jersey Shore was hot. It’s tough not to notice that Scarlett is using one of her SNL accents. It impossible not to consider that porn addiction is pretty difficult to make charming on film. And on top of all that, Tony Danza.
_______________________________
THE BUTLER (October 18)
Why It Could Be Cool: There are a lot of good actors in this movie.
Why It Probably Won’t Be: Watch the trailer. Listen to and look at all the shit those good actors are made to do, say, and wear. Listen to that music. Have you done all three? Great! Now your incontinence is cured!
___________________________________________
GALLOWWALKER(S) (release date unknown, may actually have already been out for two years)
Why It Could Be Cool:
It’s exactly BLADE, but then also a Western!
Why It Probably Won’t Be:
I mean let’s be reasonable with our expectations here.
________________________________________
Bookmark this page because I will be updating it as I discover more beautiful treasures!
I’m never happier than when I’m writing about old horror movies. Hopefully that’s true for you too, because as of today, you can read what I wrote about a pair of old horror movies over at Daily Grindhouse!
This quick list was born out of an email conversation I’ve been having today. If someone had me at gunpoint and I had to name the characters who I think are the all-time coolest, this is what would happen. I’m not sure why anyone would need to pull a gun on me to get such a list, since I’d obviously provide it for free… but the point is: This list might have been a little different with more time to reflect on it, but I kind of like the immediacy of such a thing. There’s an honesty to it. When I’m asked what I think is cool, this is what’s at the tip of the tongue of my brain.
In other words, don’t waste your time arguing with it. Let’s be friends. But I WOULD love to hear your own favorites, so feel free to shoot me your own top 10!
POSSESSION would be one of the rawest, most vicious, most harrowing films ever made about love and marriage and the awful dissolution of both, even if there weren’t an oozing Lovecraft-style tentacle demon sitting squarely and evilly in the middle of it. Polish director and co-writer Andrzej Żuławski reportedly made the film in reaction to a painful divorce, and it shows. This movie had to have been made by someone who knows what it’s like to be in love, and then out of it. (The internet tells me that Żuławski has since been with and NOT with Sophie Marceau, so his highs and lows may be higher and lower than most.)
Dashing genre legend Sam Neill plays Mark, the husband going through hell on earth, and the fierce and striking Isabelle Adjani plays Anna, the wife whose mysterious personality-flip drives him to madness. Mark returns from a trip and is immediately welcomed by Anna with a divorce request. He feels totally bushwhacked. They have a young son, who it seems Anna has totally abandoned, both emotionally and literally. Anna has taken up with a new lover (Heinz Bennent) — who isn’t that new, actually, as he’s almost twice her age. But despite the brutal slugfest that ensues between Mark and Heinrich, the new guy isn’t half the problem, really. Something confusingly supernatural seems to be at work — Mark meets his son’s teacher, Helen, who is a dead ringer for Anna (Isabelle Adjani plays a dual role), while Anna is acting more and more unhinged, animalistic, and self-destructive, and oh yeah, that incredibly vile monster mentioned up top is starting to make house visits. If all of this is sounding crazy, you need to see the movie because it plays seven-hundred times crazier than it sounds. You’ve never seen anything like it.
POSSESSION has an odd, frenzied, almost jumbled energy right from the outset, for many reasons, one of which being that this is an international production. The film’s director is from Poland, its leading man from New Zealand, its leading lady from France, and its setting and filming location is in Germany. This makes it interesting and vibrant, while lending it a personality clash that probably serves the narrative well. The cinematography by Bruno Nuytten (who, maybe not for nothing, had a relationship with Isabelle Adjani) is fascinating — though it has the look of most British film at the time, and the film for long stretches wouldn’t look out of place on PBS, it picks up a whirling momentum that adds greatly to the disorienting effect of the events onscreen. The unusual score by Andrzej Korzynski has a similar effect. There’s nothing safe or reassuring about POSSESSION once it gets going, least of which its perfomances.
Sam Neill is a phenomenal actor whose ability to project sly intelligence has seen him cast equally as heroes and villains. He was once screen-tested for the role of James Bond and I see no reason why that wouldn’t have worked, except that it may have kept him away from many of the other interesting roles he’s played. In POSSESSION he’s playing something closer to an everyman, though if you read “hero” when you look at him early in the film it certainly helps, as does later on his capacity to suggest darkness.
But it’s Isabelle Adjani who rips the film away and threatens to disembowel the very machinery that is projecting it. When critics call a performance “fearless”, they really have no barometer with which to judge that virtue if they haven’t seen Isabelle Adjani in POSSESSION. This is without a doubt one of the bravest, least self-conscious, most go-for-broke frightening performances ever committed to film, regardless of gender. Gender does matter, though. This role captures all the allure, the awe, and the fear that feminine sexuality instills in men. Mark cannot comprehend the changes that Anna is going through, and it scares the hell out of him.
The dedicated physicality that Isabelle Adjani brings to bear is far more formidable than any monster could ever be, even though this film has a creepier monster than most — brought to life by Carlo Rambaldi, the effects genius who designed E.T.! Rambaldi also had a hand in the creation of the title character in ALIEN, another film that generates horror by evoking sexual imagery — though that one is far more subtle than this one.
POSSESSION is incomparably bold, personal filmmaking. Some of those who have seen it have balked at classifying it in the horror genre, since it is so unusual and resistant to classification, and because it is possible (I think wrongly) to read the supernatural elements as metaphorical. But again, even if there were no tentacle-beast pulling the strings, this film would still have nearly as visceral an impact, due to its incredible lead performances and the concerted efforts of its crew. POSSESSION is bruising and unforgettable and most of all shocking, long before anyone walks into that room and sees the unholy thing writhing on the ground. The only reason that more people don’t know about this movie is because most people probably couldn’t handle it.
POSSESSION is tonight’s midnight screening at Cinefamily in Los Angeles, as part of their month-long Video Nasties celebration. LA, you are so lucky.
Why watch a movie with subtitles? Because if you don’t, you could miss something truly wonderful.
In hindsight, South Korea’s THE HOST is easily one of the best monster movies of the past twenty years. Regardless of release date, it’s just such a great example of what a great summer movie should be. THE HOST is funny, scary, silly, vicious, politically-aware, and profound, sometimes all at once. It’s rare that a movie can get me to genuinely care about its main characters, but rarer still is when a movie gets me to caring right from the first ten minutes, and yes, from behind subtitles. Rarest of all is when this happens in a movie about a mutated river monster laying siege to a major city.
This movie is about a family of weirdos and dipshits (really, that’s the scientific term) who have to band together to save a little girl when she’s taken by an American military scientist’s careless mistake gone wrong. That “careless mistake gone wrong” is a real-deal swallow-you-up monster, and it’s not one that looks much like any I’ve seen in movies before. An original monster design that is both convincing and interesting to look at is a near-impossible mountain of a prospect — in this case it took an international crew that included New Zealand’s Weta Workshop (THE LORD OF THE RINGS, 2005’s KING KONG).
The great monster movies have a simplicity to their engine. There’s not much to THE HOST‘s story beyond the monster’s initial attack, and then the search for the girl. (Described in those terms, this is not too far afield of the basic plot of 1933’s KING KONG, which is a good ballpark to be inside. Even if you’re playing right field.) But it’s not just simplicity that makes this movie have impact — even at a full two hours, THE HOST has momentum. It’s brilliantly filmed, acted, edited, and scored. And the movie is really funny. (This is why some have compared it to JAWS.) The main characters are somewhat dopey, particularly Song Kang-ho as the bottle-blond goofball whose layers eventually reveal themselves. To be honest, I started off laughing at them — as the director and co-writer Joon-ho Bong clearly must have intended — but as the story goes on, I found myself really invested in them, hoping they’d succeed, and worried they wouldn’t. That’s what really great movies do, in my opinion. Get you to care. And if they can do that while thrilling you, scaring you, and making you laugh? Well, then the comparisons to JAWS don’t seem quite that much of a reach.
THE HOST is the midnight movie this weekend atIFC Center.
Hey, remember that scene in THE THING where Kurt Russell has to slice the finger of each of his coworkers for a blood test in order to determine which one of them is The Thing? Remember that scene in EVIL DEAD 2 where Bruce Campbell has to lop off his own hand and then the evil possessed hand returns to torment the rest of him? Do you have a good time with that level of queasiness and cringe factor and nasty humor?
Then let me recommend SPLINTER, a recent horror flick which almost nobody anywhere seems to have seen.
The set-up: After their camping trip ends prematurely due to a malfunctioning tent, a young couple hits the road to find a motel. They’re hijacked by a criminal and his cracked-out girlfriend. So that outlaw couple takes the civilian couple hostage, we’re in a crime movie, okay, then all of a sudden the car rolls over a dog. Or a porcupine. Or something. Whatever it is, it’s angry. The human beings head to a gas station to regroup, only to find that something – a something related to the something they ran over – has invaded the area. Bad, ugly things proceed to happen, most often to human extremities.
I liked this movie for very simple reasons, although keep in mind that simplicity is very difficult to properly achieve in a horror movie:
o The suspense works. The characters have to quickly think and act their way through a series of set-pieces as they are besieged by an undefinable creature, and though I’ve seen this kind of set-up so many times before, I still couldn’t say for sure how it’d end up until it finally ended.
o I liked the lead couple (played by Jill Wagner and Paulo Costanzo) and I wanted to see them survive until the end of the movie. I believed that these two would be in a relationship; they complement each other’s personalities and abilities. Some might say that because she’s ridiculously beautiful and he kind of isn’t, they wouldn’t ever even date, but it does happen and the actors make it feel real. It’s solid casting, and hey, the criminal character is also particularly great in the movie. The guy’s name is Shea Whigham, and he brings an entertaining, wackadoo, bizarro Bill Pullman kind of energy to the role. (You may have since seen him in Boardwalk Empire, TAKE SHELTER, SAVAGES, MACHETE, and BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS.)
o The creature concept is awesome and original, and the latter adjective is especially rare in horror movies. I don’t want to reveal a thing, except that the monster is a good idea, one that I don’t remember seeing on film before, and I wanted to see more of it. (One criticism of the movie is that it leans way too hard on the Steadicam, still unfortunately way too en vogue, when instead it’d be more satisfying to eventually parcel out more money shots of the creature than we ultimately get.) The creature is creepy, gross, and believably lethal – even that aforementioned evil hand becomes intimidating.
o It was short. Arguably even too short. But I respect a movie that knows what it is. Gets in there, thrills and chills ya, then rolls credits. It ain’t Flags Of Our Fathers. It’s SPLINTER. 82 minutes is just about right, I think.
In a just world, a fun horror trip like this one would get the nationwide release that a PARANORMAL ACTIVITY #13 or a SAW #54 would receive. Then again, most good horror films are there to help remind us that this isn’t always a just world. So maybe the low profile of this movie is fitting, if not fair. But let’s change that a little. SPLINTER is a modest but solid fright-flick outing, and you’ll probably have fun with it if you’ve bothered to read this far.
It’s been a strong year for mainstream animated movies. Toy Story 3, How To Train Your Dragon, Tangled, and Megamind all range from good to great, with varying degrees of inventiveness and warm humor. Despicable Me is no exception.
It’s true that Despicable Me’s story of an evil genius whose heart grows in size is also one told by Megamind. [Read my review!] It doesn’t have to be a competition, and I like both, but especially writing this after having seen both, it’s hard not to mentally link the two. Despicable Me had the advantage of getting to theaters earlier on the calendar, but the two are distinct enough that there’s room for both, and any similarities that the two share are ingratiating.
For one thing, the sensibility and the voice cast of both movies is completely dominated by the comedy boom of the last ten years, for which we can thank comedy masterminds such as Judd Apatow, Ben Stiller, and the Upright Citizens Brigade. Watch this:
Despicable Me features the voices of Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, Ken Jeong, Mindy Kaling, Jemaine Clement, Rob Huebel, and Danny McBride (among others).
By contrast, Megamind features Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, David Cross, Bill Hader, Amy Poehler, Justin Theroux, and Ben Stiller. Not much of a contrast! Most of these people have worked together in all kinds of permutations over the last several years – not that I’m complaining one bit, mind you.
The ubiquitous Hans Zimmer is also present as composer on the scores of both movies – again, not a problem for me because I like what he does. And it plays out differently, primarily because Zimmer is joined by hip-hop producer Pharrell Williams. It’s a nice change-up from the usual orchestral thunderings in movies of this kind: Pharrell adds a jaunty playfulness to the sound of Despicable Me that makes it just different enough to be interesting. [Here’s the main theme.]
Another main difference comes from the sensibilities of the two vocal stars: Whereas the villainous Megamind initially has a lot in common with the mock-arrogance of many of Will Ferrell’s characters, Steve Carell’s Gru is a little sadder and lonelier. It helps that he looks not unlike the Danny DeVito version of the Penguin. Gru is more efficient and effective than most of Steve Carell’s more clueless characters (Michael Scott from The Office, Brick Tamland from Anchorman), and in fact he’s got a better shot than most supervillains do at achieving his villainous goals – in this case, stealing the moon. But there’s something missing. He has a mad-scientist sidekick (Russell Brand, surprisingly decent at playing a character other than himself) and an army of yellow rubbery Minions (kind of the Smurfs to Gru’s Gargamel, and by far the most memorable scene-stealers of the movie), but there’s a younger, nastier supervillain (Vector, voiced by Jason Segel) trying to steal his thunder, and Gru is losing his top-dog status. The moon heist is to be his last great grab at the supervillain gold, but the lack of an emotional connection to humanity – he has flashbacks to failed attempts at impressing his mother, voiced by none other than Julie Andrews – somehow seems to be sapping his mojo.
In a bid to derail Vector’s competing schemes, Gru comes up with the idea to adopt three orphan girls, so that he can teach them how to sneak into Vector’s lair, under the guise of selling Girl Scout cookies, so that they can help to steal the younger villain’s secrets. Instead, they steal Gru’s heart. Sorry, did that sound corny? It doesn’t play that way, although it occasionally comes close, and of course having three young girls involved in a war between two evil masterminds does necessarily reduce some of Despicable Me’s more manic possibilities. This isn’t a movie for adults, it’s not meant to have the anarchy of a Wile E. Coyote/ Roadrunner cartoon – it’s a family movie, and understanding that makes it easier to get into the portions of the story where sentiment gnaws at the edges. But the kid characters are more scrappy and likable than most (someone’s been taking notes from Pixar) and when all else fails, Steve Carell’s surprisingly-undistracting silly-accented vocal performance and the sponge-y, skittery Minions liven up the movie with an unusual, off-kilter sense of humor.
In a year that had its share of A’s, it’s popular to dismiss the B-plus’s. But Despicable Me is a whole lot of fun, and when it comes time for you to watch a kid’s movie, if it’s possible you could do better, it’s also possible that you can do plenty worse. If more movies worked as hard to be entertaining (and succeeded as often) as Despicable Me does, then the overall movie landscape would be a much better place.
This happened on October 15th, 2009. There’s still no joy in it for me.
Trick ‘R Treat is a movie that has developed a large internet and word-of-mouth following among a certain kind of film fan, the kind that loves to find a little-known movie worthy of attention in order to champion its merits to the world. Trick ‘R Treat was originally slated for a 2007 release and was never released widely; it finally made it to DVD last week. Having heard scattered but rapturous praise in advance, and always on the lookout for an original horror film that could use a defender, I made watching it a priority.
The verdict: Disappointing.
It’s not good. It’s not. In fact, a half an hour into the movie I realized that it was actually bad, and it wasn’t going to stop being that way. And sure enough, it didn’t. It’s twice as disappointing because I know that there are plenty of smart people that love this movie, and good for them, but they’re not right on this one. There’s some nice cinematography in Trick ‘R Treat, and some occasionally inspired imagery, but a new and original Halloween classic? No. Really, it isn’t. Not hardly.
Trick ‘R Treat is an anthology horror movie, meant in the spirit of Creepshow (George A. Romero & Stephen King) or Twilight Zone: The Movie (John Landis & Joe Dante & Steven Spielberg & George Miller), and the five individual stories are meant to overlap seamlessly in the spirit of Pulp Fiction. (Stepping into big shoes can make it real easy to trip up…) The five stories – or four with an introductory sequence – all take place on the same Halloween night, and all are haunted by a scarecrow-mask-wearing trick-or-treater in orange pajamas, kind of a silent Crypt-Keeper figure. That character is by far the most memorable thing about the movie, and he features into the final and most straightforward story, the only one that is ultimately worth watching in the least.
Here’s the lead-off problem: Trick ‘R Treat is operating on the premise that Halloween has a series of traditions, and that bad things can happen if you violate those traditions. The movie mistakenly assumes that every viewer is acquainted with the traditions featured in each story. It certainly does not lay out the traditions clearly at the outset, and even after watching all of the stories, I wasn’t clear what principle they were referring to.
Let’s look at each segment in these general terms:
The prologue features a young couple returning from a Halloween parade. The young woman (Talladega Nights’ Leslie Bibb) snuffs out all the jack-o’-lantern candles in the yard, against her boyfriend’s warning. In an extended “homage” to the opening sequence of John Carpenter’s Halloween, she is stalked and killed. The tradition broken here: Don’t take down the Halloween decorations until the night is over? Okay, this one I get, although it hardly seems like the punishment fits the crime. (After all, how else can she make room for the Christmas lights?)
The first full story features a school principal (Spider-Man’s Dylan Baker), a single parent with a young son, who confronts a sloppy brute of a child (Bad Santa’s Brett Kelly) who has been smashing pumpkins and stealing candy. The principal calmly poisons the kid, then spends the rest of the episode trying to nervously hide the body from the neighbors and his son. The tradition broken here is: Always check your candy. That one I get, because it’s the only time in the movie that a tradition is clearly stated. The crippling problem with this story is character-based: Why does this guy kill a kid on his front steps, totally out in the open, and then all of the sudden get shy about it?
In the second story, a group of adolescents plays a scary prank on an autistic girl, but in doing so, they invoke an old supernatural menace. Tradition broken: Don’t play pranks lest they happen for real? I’m not sure. This was a pretty convoluted segment, with plenty of character and plot inconsistencies. My more empathetic tendencies also lead me to take issue with the concept of the mentally-challenged undead. If you are the type of person who is excited by the prospect of retarded zombies, go ahead with it I guess.
In the next story, a virginal college student (True Blood’s Anna Paquin) is stalked by a cloaked, fanged man, but she and her mega-hot friends turn the tables on him. Tradition broken: Don’t take anyone’s Halloween costume too literally? I really can’t say. This segment is an utter mess, and it pains me to say it because it culminates in the appearance of my favorite movie monster. But the story makes no sense, it is confusingly intercut with the previous stories, it features the abrupt and not-well-explained reintroduction of a character from an earlier story, and it features the worst acting of the entire film. You can distract me with amazing cleavage, but only temporarily.
In the last story, a wheezing old bastard (awesomeness’s Brian Cox) is besieged by that scarecrow kid who’s been appearing throughout the movie. Tradition broken: Be kind to trick-or-treaters lest they be unkind to you. I guess. This isn’t fully clear, but it almost doesn’t matter this time around. I called this one the best segment earlier because it has the most interesting filmmaking – it has the movie’s best actor playing against a legitimately decent monster design, and it’s just an extended chase sequence that doesn’t waste time on poor dialogue or cute twists. The pumpkinbaby’s motivations are still mighty unclear, but at least I wrung some entertainment out of the movie’s final moments.
The one thing that fans of Trick ‘R Treat and I can agree on is the mystery behind its delayed and unceremonious release. Not that I believe that this movie is good enough for anyone but the most optimistic and desperate horror fans, because it’s not; but because I literally see a worse movie than this dumped into theaters every single week. Trick ‘R Treat doesn’t hang together right, but it’s less ugly and sadistic than the Saw movies, more energetic than (for example) Surrogates, and more ambitious than just about any Sandra Bullock movie. Trick ‘R Treat fails, but at least it tried. It’s sad that I consider that praise, but I’d rather give a chance to a movie that wants to be original than a movie that is cynical and lazy.
But yeah, probably skip this one anyway.
Am I wrong? All I know for sure is that I’m on Twitter: @jonnyabomb
Demon's Resume 
