We Are Movie Geeks

With vampires being such a part of pop culture (with the recently concluded movie series based on the Twilight books) it’s hard to believe that INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, the film based on Anne Rice’s novel, is almost twenty years old. This was quite a departure for director Neil Jordan in 1994 after winning acclaim for dark, gritty thrillers like  THE CRYING GAME and MONA LISA. But now he’s back in similar territory with BYZANTIUM, based on a play. In a twist, Jordan’s new film concerns two women who share the same secret as they travel about feeding on the living, much as Cruise and Pitt did in the earlier film. Will this more intimate work also take a bite out of the box office?

As the film opens we’re introduced to the lonely sixteen year-old Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) as she commits her thoughts to paper. She shares a modest apartment with her older sister Clara (Gemma Arterton) who earns money for them by dancing at a local gentleman’s club (a strip bar). Just as she’s being fired from this job, a man from her and Eleanor’s past tracks her down. Quickly the two woman torch their home and flee into the night. They hitchhike and soon wake up on the outskirts of a quiet coastal town. That night Clara turns tricks at the run-down carnival so they can rent a new flat. One customer, Noel (Daniel Mays), breaks down and tells Clara that his mother just died and he’s let the family business, a small resort, go to seed. This gives her an idea. She and Eleanor will live there while renting rooms to the downtrodden prostitutes of the town. Soon Eleanor strikes up a friendship with a sickly young man working nearby as a retirement home waiter named Frank (Caleb Landry Jones). For some reason she believes that this village was her home many, many years ago. Eleanor wants to share her past with Frank without Clara knowing. Meanwhile two detectives are hot on the trail of the two after picking through their scorched former home. Will these women have to go on the run once more?

Much of the film is the quiet study of these two connected women and the actresses are more than up to the task of carrying us through this story. Ronan’s Eleanor is the less showy role, but she brings a quiet power to her scenes of longing and loneliness. We see the danger in her, but like Clara we still are compelled to protect her from the world. This is brought out even more when she finally reaches out to Frank. Arterton’s Clara is the more flamboyant role with her revealing outfits and swift deadly attacks that arise from her devotion to Eleanor. But there’s a sadness to her also since she’s forever trapped in various aspects of the sex trade and must keep her emotional distance from all but Eleanor. This may be the role that breaks Arterton out of the “eye candy” hero’s gal roles. Jones as Frank seems unlikely desirable, but Eleanor bonds with this fragile, broken spirit who longs for normalcy. Mays as the clueless, sad-eyed Noel is very compelling as the little schlub pulled down into Clara’s newest plan. Special mention should be made of the two men in Clara’s past. Sam Riley is excellent as the kind Darvell while Jonny Lee Miller (yes, Sherlock Holmes of TV’s “Elementary”) is spectacularly evil as the cruel, twisted Captain Ruthven who sends Clara on her path of torment.

Director Jordan and screenwriter Moira Buffini (adapting her play) have twisted several aspects of the vampire mythos. Sunlight has no effect on the women, as does garlic or religious symbols. There’s no transforming into bats or wolves either. The most striking change may be the elimination of the extended fangs. When they feed their thumbnail protrudes and becomes a claw that enables them to pierce the victim’s skin (usually the neck or wrist). We also get an insight into the vampire origins. No curses, but instead it begins in a dark cavern on an empty black-rocked island. The feeding habits of the two women are quite different. While both must have fresh blood, they must wait for the right circumstances. Eleanor is the angel of death who grants sweet release to the aged and infirm while Clara is the avenging angel who feasts on those who prey and exploit the weak. The true secret of their relationship is slowly revealed through short flashback scenes intercut through the modern story. There’s no golden glow of nostalgia  in these glimpses of the past. The woman both suffer horrific abuse and degradation along the way. And similar to the Dunst character in the Anne Rice film, Eleanor must deal with having the appearance of a young person while actually being many times her outward age. Jordan captures the night-time mood of danger along with the monotony of the small dying town. This gives the sudden bursts of violence even more impact. Jordan has given us a very well-crafted original take on the vamps on the run story. It would be worth your time to check into the BYZANTIUM.

4 Out of 5

BYZANTIUM screens exclusively in the St. Louis area at Landmark’s Tivoli Theatre

After the smash successes of the original KING KONG worldwide in 1933 and the classic THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS twenty years later, film makers worldwide, particularly in Japan, embraced the notion of a gigantic beast destroying cities (some say as a response to the A bombs that ended WWII) and created their own cinema superstar-beast with Gojira (known here in the states as GODZILLA, KING OF MONSTERS) in 1954. This inspired countless sequels and imitators (many from the same studio which created a whole monster menagerie). Eventually they were brought to television, but not as the heroes. That role would be filled by superheroes like Ultraman and robots. First there was the animated exploits of Astro Boy, Gigantor, and Tobor the Eighth Man (as they were named by US distributors). I was first aware of this genre by viewing the dubbed, daily syndicated adventures of “Jonny Sokko and His Flying Robot” (you can catch a feature film composed of four episodes in 1970 called VOYAGE INTO SPACE). At the end of every show Jonny would call on the giant robot to do battle with another gigantic rubbery behemoth. It was only a matter of time before this concept was remade and updated as PACIFIC RIM for modern movie audiences. Luckily the man at the helm is one of our greatest fantasy film makers: Guillermo del Toro. But his previous films mostly dealt with the supernatural (THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE, MIMIC, CRONOS). Will he be able to work his movie magic in a  futuristic science fiction setting?

PACIFIC RIM begins with a quick prologue to bring us up to speed, so get your snacks early! In the very near future, a gateway portal to another dimension called “the breach” deep at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean has unleashed giant amphibious monsters known as “Kaiju” who immediately head to land and destroy the coastal cities. After standard defenses prove ineffectual, the world governments begin the building of equally gigantic fighting robots known as “Jaegers”. But these robots are actually controlled by soldiers inside the machine. When the man/machine hook-up overwhelms the single soldier they decide to try it with teams of two (preferably siblings) who share thoughts and actions via a brain-sharing system called “drifting”. This line of defense headed by military man Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) and seems to be working until a disastrous defeat involving the Jaeger “Gipsy Danger” piloted by Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam) and his older brother Yancy. Five years later, the Kaiju are becoming more powerful and the world leaders decide to end the Jaeger program and concentrate on building walls to keep the monsters away from the populace. Raleigh has gone into hiding and is working on one of the wall projects when he is found by Pentecost. Seems he’s taken the Jaegars underground including the rebuilt Gipsy. At their hidden Hong Kong base Raleigh reunites with his mission control pal (Clifton Collins Jr) and meets two scientists working to stop the Kaiju: reserved Dr. Gottlieb (Burn Gorman) and fast-talking Dr.Geizler (Charlie Day) who wants to drift with a Kaiju brain. And there’s the mysterious Mako (Rinko Kikuchi), who’s eager to join the fight despite the concerns of her mentor Pentecost. Can Raleigh and Mako overcome their tragic pasts and form a new team that will seal the breach and stop the Kaiju for good?

Of course the film’s main draw is the titanic battles, but del Toro has assembled a great cast of fresh-faced film actors led by the impressive Elba as the tough as nails commander. He’s quite believable as the man to guide you into battle, but his scenes with Kikuchi reveal his softer, almost fatherly side. A flashback sequence showing how the two first met is quite a touching moment amidst the rampant chaos. Kikuchi has her own intensity especially when she demonstrates her expert fighting skills and as she deals with her loss along with her attraction to Hunnam. He’s a hero in the TOP GUN mold, but he lets his doubt be seen as he returns to the spot of his biggest loss. Gorman brings a B-movie mad scientist intensity to his stubborn researcher while Day is the opposite with his eager, wiseguy, motormouth who’s ready to put himself on the line to better understand the monsters (Gottlieb may be correct in saying that he’s a Kaiju fan). Fortunately for us Day is paired up for several scenes with del Toro staple actor Ron Perlman (Hellboy himself), really entertaining as black market creature harvester Hannibal Chau. He and his team dash in after a battle and disassemble the beasts, while not getting any mess on his steel-tipped cowboy boots. The entire cast seem to be having a great time in this adventure tale.

Better no one is having a better time than del Toro. He’s set up a terrific playground staging scenes that many kids attempted to stage in their backyards. The opening montage is almost worthy of a stand alone film (prequel, perhaps?) as he tries to bring us up to date (nice that he believes we are smart enough to follow along). This is a world that expands on the great wartime fighter pilot flicks with a bit of the satirical touch of STARSHIP TROOPERS. My main beef is that we’re in training mode right after the zippy opening battle. It’s interesting to see them get ready, but we want to see some more big monster fights! While most of them are at night or in the rain or underwater (a better FX backdrop) we can still see what’s happening since the action is slowed a bit (unlike in the Transformers series, these guys are too big to zip about). The monsters are true descendents of Godzilla and her ilk with large, sharp protruding heads (think hammerhead sharks and rhinos) and glowing pulsating blue veins and mouths (watch out because some spew an acid-like blue gunk).The Jaegers are tough looking battlebots with their pilots usually stationed in the head region. The one from China is piloted by triplet brothers so it has three arms. I love the Russian one with its bullet head shape. And yes there are consequences to their battles. Some cities may never completely recover (what a clean-up!). Besides the extended training section, the only time del Toro stumbles is in the budding romance of the leads (with a last shot lifted from many Bond films). Although it’s inspired by past works, PACIFIC RIM feels much fresher than the sequels and reboots that have filled the multiplexes over the last couple months. Try to see it in 3D (was almost burned out on it) and on the biggest screen possible. You don’t want to miss any part of this exciting fun but dangerous world that del Toro and the ILM wizards have fashioned. I hope we’ll get to visit there  at least once more. Just don’t step in the Kaiju,um,stuff!

4.25 Out of 5

The fuzzy screen of hissing static noise – a benign magnetic videotape imprinted with the occasional time code becomes a source of evil in V/H/S 2, the outstanding follow-up to last year’s anthology that manages to outdo the original of terms of creativity and intensity. Like the first, it has no stars or big-scale special effects, but it’s an extraordinarily efficient horror film, a celebration of rock-bottom production values—and more proof of how it doesn’t take bells and whistles to scare us. Those who didn’t care for the first (a love-it-or-hate-it affair) may find this one more of the same, but it’s leaner than the original (four stories this time instead of five) with more humor and less nudity. Each segment is written/produced/directed by different filmmakers who take a fractured, mixed-media approach to their respective stories, all of which are strong.

V/H/S 2’s wraparound story begins with some motel sex secretly videotaped by an unethical private eye (Lawrence Michael Levine), gathering evidence against a philandering husband. He and his partner (Kelsey Abbott) are then hired by a woman to find her missing college-aged son. The two sleuths break into his apartment where they find a row of television sets and a stack of videocassettes which become the stories that make up V/H/S 2. She views the tapes while he does some exploring that will no doubt lead to no good.

The first, and weakest, story is Adam Wingard’s “Phase I Clinical Trials” wherein a fellow named Herman (played by Wingard himself) is fitted with an implanted eye that also works as a camera, recording what he sees. He’s soon terrorized by visions of dead people that keep popping up in his apartment. With the help of a young woman (Hannah Hughes) who can hear the spooks thanks to a similar ear implant, the pair battles the undead. It’s a decent premise, but the most routine of the four segments, too reliant on cheap scares without taking full advantage of a potentially ingenious twist.

Much better is “A Ride in the Park” co-directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale (who commenced this whole genre 14 years ago with THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT). Their contribution is a wacky story of an ill-fated bicyclist (Jay Saunders) with a helmet-cam who finds his peaceful morning ride in the woods interrupted by hungry zombies. This story may be cinema’s first point-of-view presentation of what it’s like to come back from the dead. He crashes a little girl’s birthday party and all hell breaks loose in an absurd way that reminded me of Peter Jackson’s early gore opuses.

The third segment, Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto’s “Safe Haven” is absolutely the most bat-shit berserk 30 minutes I’ve experienced in a long time. A TV crew (Fachry Albar, Hannah Al-Rashid, Oka Antara, Andrew Lincoln Suleiman) convinces a controversial Indonesian cult leader (a deranged Epy Kusnandar), to agree to an interview and let them film within his religious compound. Their project coincides with the fulfillment of the cult’s apocalyptic achievement; Paradise on Earth, which consists of mass suicide and the birth of a horned, hell-spawn demon. The crew, with cameras mounted in their clothing, is caught in the blood bath. A type of escalating Lovecraftian Armageddon breaks out, delivered with the kind of manic energy the filmmakers brought to last year’s RAID THE REMPTION. Taken by itself, “Safe Haven” is one of the best horror short I’ve seen and is easily the highlight of either V/H/S film.

The fourth and final short “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” is from Jason Eisener, of HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN fame. I’ve heard good things about it but I didn’t watch it. After “Safe Haven”, I shut off the screener that had been provided me. It’s not something I would normally do, but I felt the need to have something to unspool for me for the first time when I see it theatrically this weekend when V/H/S-2 plays midnights at the Tivoli.

4 1/2 of 5 Stars

V/H/S 2 plays in St. Louis only at Midnight at Landmark’s Tivoli Theater July 12th and 13th

So we’re just about at the Summer midpoint and we’ve gotten three big studio comedies. First out was HANGOVER III which sputtered and crashed soon after its May opening. Then there was the delightful surprise THIS IS THE END which turned out to be a pretty smart satire of disaster flicks and spoiled movie stars. Very recently movie fans have been falling out of their seats at the inspired teaming of Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy in THE HEAT (it should be in the box office top ten through the end of this month). But these are all rated R. Where’s the more family friendly PG-13 comedies? Who’s that sneaking into the multiplex? Why it’s Mr. Adam Sandler, still stinging from last year’s foray into the R-rated Apatow territory, the vile THAT’S MY BOY (the first film that go no stars from me). And he’s brought several members of his posse ( the “Sand clan”, “Adam’s angels”?) with him in this flick about families that’s also his first sequel. GROWN UPS 2 is the follow-up to 2010’s hit GROWN UPS (which I did not see). Can Sandler get back the fans that stayed away from his previous raunch-fest?

It’s the last day of school and nearly the start of Summer for Lenny Feder’s three kids. They’ve all recently moved back to his East Coast home town from the West Coast (his pals call him “Hollywood”) and are living in a lovely, palatial home. All’s going smoothly till Lenny’s gorgeous wife Roxanne (Salma Hayak) suggests that the family expand. Lenny’s still close to his three best pals from childhood. Eric (Kevin James), owner of a big auto parts store, tries to hide his afternoon activities from his gorgeous wife (hmm, see a trend?) Sally (Maria Bello). Seems that Eric loves having lunch and watching TV soaps with his widowed mother (Georgia Engel). All’s well with  cable TV installer Kurt (Chris Rock) and his three kids, but it looks like his wife Deanne (Maya Rudolph) has forgotten their twentieth anniversary. Swingin’ single guy Marcus (David Spade), owner of the town go-kart track, may have the toughest Summer. The teenage son he didn’t know he had, the hulking, surly, switchblade-toting Braden (Alexander Ludwig), is  spending his vacation with him. Over the course of this long day, the guys help the kids with different problems (bullies, crushes), re-connect with other school pals, face off against some frat boys, and throw a big “start of Summer” 1980’s-themed blow-out at stately Feder manor.

In researching this film I had forgotten that SNL vet Rob Schnieder was part of the pack in the 2010 film, but he’s nowhere to be found here! Not even a mention of his character! How odd because the film is bursting at the seams with ex-cast members from Saturday Night Live. A car wash scene even involves several current cast members like Taran Killam and Bobby Moynihan. I wonder if this might hold the record for most SNLers in one flick! Plus there are lots of sports figures (broadcasters and athletes) headed by Shaquille O’Neal as a towering cop (his size is most of the jokes). And there’s past Sandler movie vets like Steve Buscemi and Nick Swardson who seems to be game for any gross-out humiliation that might amuse the first string cast members (don’t know how to end a scene, just cut to Nick being abused). As for those first-stringers, they seem to be doing lazy riffs on their TV and stand-up personas. James is big and wimpy. Spade’s tiny, laid-back, and horny. Rock’s tossing out one-liners, while we know he’s better than this weak formulaic script. At least Sandler’s character is an average Joe so we’re not subjected to another grating, braying voice as in THAT’S MY BOY or LITTLE NICKY. As for the women, they’re given little to do beside give an understanding smile to their mate and oogle hot fitness instructor Oliver Hudson. The very funny Rudolph is criminally underused as is Cheri Oteri as Lenny’s ex-grade school crush in a subplot that dwindles away. Speaking of subplots, the college frat boy clash may be the worst, as the film screeches to a halt for the obnoxious preening of Twilight hunk Taylor Lautner and Milo Ventimiglia and their brethren. Director Dennis Dugan just tries to make sure he has his camera trained on the endless slapstick cruelty (love them groin injuries), wild 80’s outfits (no one had any problems finding these vintage duds!) and to cut away to a cute shot of one of the toddlers to pump up yet another joke that falls flat. This isn’t as aggressively, offensively awful as THAT’S MY BOY (and it’s nearly 20 minutes shorter), but this film supposedly about grown ups revels in low-class juvenile behavior. Hey it’s almost a celebration, but I’ll save my celebrating for the time that these talented actors (some of them really are!) put out a film that’s unpredictable and worthy of their talents.

1.5 Out of 5