Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

I was in the mood to to watch/mock a bad horror movie last night, and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark seemed like a pretty good option.  It's a Katie Holmes vehicle, a remake, it has a first-time director, and a pretty awful title.  It should be a shoe-in for a good drunken time, but it had a few surprises in store for me.  First of all, the star of this movie is actually a little girl.  It's rarely as much fun to brutally ridicule children as much as it is terrible adult actors with lopsided faces.  Besides, I think we can all agree that children are creepy.  Second of all, Guillermo Del Toro co-produced and co-wrote Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, which implies a certain degree of creativity.  So what's it to be?  A spectacular crap-fest, or a creative mood piece?

Sally (Bailee Madison) is in the never-enviable position of being the young child being shuttled between self-absorbed divorced parents.  Her mother has sent Sally to visit her dad, Alex (Guy Pearce), while he renovates a dilapidated New England mansion.  And by "visit," I of course mean "live forever with" --- surprise!  Alex isn't a very attentive parent, and his interest in Sally's happiness can best be described as "nonexistent."

Alex, envisioning his daughter's future bedroom

Making things even better for Sally, her dad is dating his interior designed, Kim (Katie Holmes), who feels very uncomfortable acting as a fill-in mother.  But that's all okay, because they both more or less ignore her most of the time, which allows Sally to investigate the massive building and its surrounding land.

...which apparently includes parts of Narnia

 While exploring, Sally discovers something in part of the overgrown garden.  It is a skylight for the basement, which Alex and Kim had no idea existed.  You see, the basement had been hidden by someone many years ago, when they put up a wall in front of the basement door.  Why would anyone want to do such a thing?

Because they didn't want to see children going through what appears to be a doorway to Hell?

Well, when Sally goes down to the ancient basement, she hears her name being whispered.  Some thing --- or things --- that sound like they have emphysema keep whispering for her to play with them.  Their actual words are, "We're your friends.  Come down to the basement and play with us."  While that may ring all sorts of alarm bells in a reasonable person's head, Sally is an eight-year-old and, therefore, capable of an entirely different type of stupidity.  Soon enough, the creatures are terrorizing Sally, and she can't get any adult to believe that there are evil faeries hunting her in the darkness.

Try shouting "I don't believe in faeries!"  It would kill Tinkerbell.

And that is their biggest weakness: these creatures are sensitive to bright lights.  But how hard is it to plunge an isolated old mansion into darkness?  And what do they want when they finally get their tiny paws on Sally?  They want to feast on her teeth.

Oh relax.  You have another set to look forward to.

I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the acting in Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.  Bailee Madison did a solid job in the lead role.  For child actors in horror movies, there is a fine line between acting scared and being extremely annoying, but Madison never really approached anything obnoxious.  I thought she was pretty believable, even when making extremely poor choices.  

Example: this is where she went potty

She wasn't a fantastic lead, but I'll take solid acting over overacting any day, especially with children.  Aside from her lopsided smile, Katie Holmes was also pretty good as the most reasonable character in the movie.  Her character was pretty bland, but I didn't mind watching her in this movie, which is as much as I am capable of complimenting her.  Guy Pearce was capable as the father, in that I think he played the part that the script asked for, but his character was just awful.  It's not just that he was an offensively bad (although, to be fair, not evil) father figure; he has a complete 180 toward the end of the movie, and it just doesn't work.   

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark was the first (and so far, only) directorial effort by Troy Nixey.  For a first effort, Nixey had an uphill battle.  This is, at its core, a haunted house movie, which means it relies heavily on atmosphere and suspense --- two things that even veteran directors have trouble with. There are moments where he succeeds; the smaller-scale scares that leave something to the imagination are actually pretty good.

Two words: creepy hands

However, the script calls for a lot less mystery than I think this plot calls for.  For being a movie about creatures in the dark, the audience gets to see an awful lot of the creatures in question.  The special effects on these creatures are pretty good, but that's beside the point.  If this isn't supposed to be a creature feature --- and it definitely isn't --- then why do we see so much of the things that are supposed to be scaring us in the dark?  

"Bippity boppity bitch!"

That's a choice that I disagree with, but it doesn't make for a bad film.  What dumbs this picture down a few notches is its inconsistency with regards to how it treats light.  The sensitivity the devil faeries have for light ranges the gamut, from absolutely requiring deep, dark shadows to being able to hang out at a well-lit party (sitting in a potted plant, but still...).  The cinematography doesn't help any.  This should be a very, very dark film, from a lighting perspective.  It's called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, but whenever the lights go out, it looks like a spotlight is shining in from outside.  And once Katie Holmes' character buys into this whole shadow faery thing, she doesn't think to go out and buy a bunch of lamps or flashlights or anything?  That's just stupid.  The film's consistency and logic, as well as its look and feel, are definitely things the director is responsible for.  I think Nixey had some good instincts in his first directorial effort, but some of the basics are lacking.

As a horror movie, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark doesn't have a lot of what genre fans typically look for in an R-rated flick.  There is a bit of gruesome violence at the beginning of the movie; the prologue was pretty cool and even had me cringing a little.  For the rest of the movie, though, there isn't much violence or gore to speak of.  If you were looking for gratuitous nudity, I would like to point out that the heroine is a child, so...please stop.  

This is not sexy

Still, this is more of a suspense-type horror, so sex and violence were never strong possibilities.  Unfortunately, the suspense isn't too effective.  It has creepy moments, especially in the first half, but the second half is full of mind-numbing stupidity.  None of the characters, the monsters included, do anything even remotely logical.  Here's just a small example of how frustrating this script is: little Sally has just fought off some faeries and has taken some pictures of them and has even crushed one; when her father dismisses her claims as an overactive imagination, she tries to find a photo to prove her case instead of the faery corpse she left in the damned bookcase.  That's not the dumbest moment in this movie, mind you --- it's just one of the easiest to explain.  When you add all that up, this isn't a very good horror movie.  The acting of Bailee Madison goes a long way toward making this easier to watch, but it doesn't make up for a dumb script.  If this was PG or PG-13, I would be a little more forgiving, but being rated R and missing out on anything on my horror checklist AND being stupid is just too much to overlook.  It's not as bad as I thought a Katie Holmes movie would be, but it is definitely not very good.

Lawless

John Hillcoat has made some gritty movies.  This is not a filmmaker given to sentimentality, and he's not afraid of capturing ugliness on film.  His last two films have impressed me, but fell just shy of being great; if there was just a little bit of spectacle added to spice up the bleakness, The Proposition and The Road would have been radically different.  Hillcoat's newest film, Lawless, prominently features Shia LaBeouf, which isn't necessarily a sign of quality or grittiness.  Lawless does have Tom Hardy, who I am quickly becoming a fan of, and the great Gary Oldman, who I love.  Adding Shia (which is Hebrew for "fluffy") to those two masters of transformation (as in acting, not turning into cars) and a frequently depressing director sounds like something worth watching.

Lawless is the true(-ish) story of the Bondurant boys, a family of moonshine makers/bootleggers in Prohibition-era America.  In Franklin County, Virginia, though, that was nothing special --- just about everyone either made their own moonshine or bought it from their neighbors.  Heck, even the police buy moonshine.  The Bondurants were different thanks to their reputation for toughness.  Well, thanks to Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard's (Jason Clarke) reputation, that is.  While those two have defied death and done things like punching Godzilla in the taint (I'm paraphrasing), their little brother, Jack (Shia LaBeouf) hasn't done much of anything.  With his brothers being local legends, that means that little Jack has a chip on his shoulder and big shoes to fill.  When the film begins, Jack's biggest problem is impressing a local girl and trying to make moonshine on his own.

The secret ingredient is urine

Things get significantly worse when a hot-shot Special Agent from Chicago rolls into town.  For the record, Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) might have a badge, but he is not a good man or a lawful one.  He is brutal and his game is extortion.

But he looks so nice...!

Rakes and his boss want to run the moonshine business in Franklin County; if the moonshiners give Rakes money, then he won't have the police harass them.  Forrest isn't the type to lay down for anyone, though, and refuses to pay.  Cue the violence!

Shia competes in the 200M Outdoor Shootout

The acting in Lawless was uniformly good.  Shia LaBeouf was the point of view character, but he was clearly not the most important character.  Still, even though his character was kind of annoying and remarkably stupid at times, I thought LaBeouf handled the part well.  All his actions made sense (for him) and LaBeouf's comic timing lightened up the film considerably.  Tom Hardy was the true star, though.  Hardy has great physical presence on the screen and his crazy eyes are some of the best in Hollywood right now.  When you give him a part where he is supposed to intimidate people, he slips into it with ease.  They even try to make him less threatening by having him wear sweaters all the time and speak in grunts, but he is still magnetic on the screen.  It's rare to have a clearly violent character portrayed as a patient man, but Hardy manages to pulls it off.

The world's deadliest cardigan fan, after Bill Cosby

Jason Clarke was also pretty good; his part largely consisted of him looking haggard and wordlessly communicating with Hardy, but he still felt dangerous.  Having Guy Pearce play the villain was an interesting choice, because he doesn't really stack up well against Tom Hardy.  Thankfully, they opted to make him weird, creepy and condescending --- thoroughly unlikable, in other words, and very much Hardy's opposite.  And in case you're wondering, yes, he did shave the part into his hairline.  Jessica Chastain was solid as Hardy's romantic interest, although her character's choices pointed to some of the film's weaknesses.  Mia Wasikowska played Shia's love interest, and she was fine in an uncomplicated part.  Dane DeHaan had a solid supporting role as Cricket, the Bondurant friend who survived rickets.  It wasn't a flashy part, but a solid supporting role in an ensemble drama; if he keeps picking roles like this, DeHaan might wind up being a big deal.  Speaking of big deals, I was excited to see Gary Oldman's first scene, where he calmly shoots the hell out of a pursuing car with a tommy gun.  He didn't say a word, he just winked.  And it was awesome. 

You had me at "tommy gun"

After that, though, he has maybe three more minutes of screen time.  What a waste!  Gary Oldman --- one of this generation's greatest actors and over-actors --- playing a bad-ass gangster that follows murders with winks, and he's barely in the story at all?!?  Lawless, you're a wicked tease.

I've mentioned that John Hillcoat is known for his less than optimistic films.  Part of that has something to do with him getting Nick Cave to write two of his films (including this one), but it is also a very deliberate choice on the part of Hillcoat.  He has never been one for sentiment when depressing realism is available.  That is what makes Lawless such a departure for him; it doesn't try to sear your soul.  In fact, Hillcoat actually tries to play to the humor in the script.

Ha ha!  Jokes!

Most of the film's levity comes from the awkwardness of Shia LaBeouf's character, but the best bits come from Tom Hardy's minimal reactions to Jessica Chastain.  These aren't supposed to be thigh-slapping gags, mind you, but those lighter moments are a lot more amusing in the otherwise grim context of this story.  Hillcoat is not going to impress you with his cinematography --- although the man knows how to frame a landscape shot --- instead, he opts for capturing unpleasantness.  His primary tool is a willing cast, and I thought he did a great job directing them.  He also managed to make a graphically violent film that does not feel exploitative.  We get to see several characters serve as blood-puking punching bags, but the focus is more on the horror of the violence than on how awesome the aggressor is.  If anything, this movie is about how you rebound from violence, instead of how you actually fight.

Two out of three brothers agree: rebound with alcohol

Thanks to that attitude, we are not forced to witness any explicit violence toward women, even though there are opportunities in the story.  For that matter, the gratuitous sex scene would have been pretty tasteful, too, if it didn't have Jessica Chastain getting naked about half a scene too early.  Oh, well.  All in all, I think this was a nice step forward for Hillcoat as an artist, since he has stretched his style a bit with (more or less) success.

Lawless is definitely a violent film, which naturally means that there are plenty of action scenes.  The movie trailer makes it seem as if this is going to be a movie filled with gunfire, but the focus is instead on hand-to-hand combat.  The most gruesome scenes involve knives, boots, and brass knuckles.  For fans of gore, there are more than a few scenes where it looks like the fellow getting beat up will be picking his own teeth out of his crap over the next few days.  The gunplay is fairly anticlimactic by comparison.  Aside from Gary Oldman's tommy gun scene and Guy Pearce's powerful revolver, nothing cool ever happens with guns.  That fits the tone of the film just fine, mind you.  If you're looking for something that basks in gunfire like Tombstone or a John Woo movie, though, this may not be for you.

Taking care of boo-boos is much easier than gunshot wounds

The biggest problem with Lawless is the story itself.  Hillcoat does a pretty good job, given the script, and Nick Cave's script is pretty engaging for being based on a true story.  The focus is all wrong, though.  At its core, Lawless is about greed and power (personified by Guy Pearce) infringing on freedom and principle (personified by Tom Hardy).  Unfortunately, the main character was Shia LaBeouf's, and too much of the film centered on his attempts at romance and manhood. 

"You staring blankly reminds me of my last girlfriend.  Do you know Megan Fox?"

Due to that focus, the filmmakers never get around to addressing the motivations of Jessica Chastain's character; I think there was an opportunity for a great supporting actress role here, but it gets buried because it does not directly impact Shia.  His character isn't strong enough to carry a "fill the shoes of my brother" sort of story, and that becomes obvious as the plot ticks on.  I like the way this movie looks and feels, and I enjoy the acting.  The story is the unfortunate weak point.  For fans of Tom Hardy and bloody face punching, though, it is definitely worth a watch.

Prometheus

Typically, when I see a movie, I jot down some thoughts and will probably blog it within a few days.  Unless I'm being lazy, which has been known to happen from time to time.  With Prometheus, though, I had a different problem.  I just wasn't sure how I felt about it.  So, I pondered and pondered, making sure to stay off the interwebs and work it out in my noggin.  The more I thought about Ridley Scott's kinda-sorta-not-really prequel to Alien, though, the more I realized that my take on the movie didn't fit my traditional review format.  So, first up is this review.  My next post will be "Prometheus: What the Hell Was That?" and I will try to explain what confused me so much about this film.

Prometheus is, at its core, the story of Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), and their quest for answers.  Shaw and Holloway are romantically-entwined archaeologists, and they have found the same star constellation in the primitive artwork of several ancient civilizations, separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles. 

"Is that...somebody playing jai-alai?"

That wouldn't be a big deal if the constellation was the Big Dipper, but this particular constellation is not visible with the naked eye.  In fact, human technology had to expand to an advanced degree before discovering it.  That fact, coupled with the inexplicable coincidence of societies that had no contact sharing the same image in their artwork, leads them to conclude that the constellation is a map.  A map to where, you may ask?  A map to a planet where humanity's predecessors (dubbed "Engineers" by Shaw and Holloway) came from --- humanity's cradle, if you will.  Their theory intrigues the aging corporate magnate Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) and he funds a space voyage (on the ship Prometheus) to investigate the planet.  Once the crew arrives, however, they find a barren world with only one empty base.  Well, maybe not exactly "empty."

Giant statue head with made-to-scale aspirin tablet statues

They also find a corpse of what they presume to be an Engineer.  But what could wipe out the Engineers?  Why did they come to Earth in the first place?  Can we still find out where humanity came from?  The last two questions, while good, are not nearly as important as the first. 

That looks vaguely familiar, doesn't it?

When you consider that question, the natural follow-up is this: how likely is the survival of a group who doesn't know what they are up against?  Hint: not very.  With every passing minute on this planet, it feels less and less like the cradle of humanity and more like a tomb.

Now, if you've seen the film and are wondering where all the buff Powder clones are, that's what I'm going to get into with "Prometheus: What the Hell Was That?"

While my synopsis may not indicate it, there are actually more than a couple of actors in Prometheus.  Noomi Rapace was good as the innocent who has to get tough, but she wasn't great.  I wanted to like her character more, but wound up being distracted by some other plot elements instead.  I will say that she conveyed pain and fear better than anyone else in the cast, at the very least.  Oh, and if you have any fears about pregnancy, she's in a scene that you may not want to watch.  Ever.

Logan Marshall-Green was a lot less sympathetic.  He did a fine job playing an overconfident prick, but I think that his character was intended for more, given the amount of quality screen time he had.  I did like Idris Elba as the captain of the Prometheus.  It was odd seeing a captain play such a passive role in a sci-fi flick, but I enjoyed his laid-back approach.  I would have liked to see more of his character, but he did a good job with what he had and his choices at the end of the film didn't feel completely out of left field.

The rest of his core crew --- Benedict Wong, Emun Elliott, and a few others --- were inconsequential to the overall acting quality of the film.  The character design for Sean Harris was a bit unusual for a geologist.  I expected him to be a guard or something, but he was a scientist.  So...there's that.

Sometimes, even smart people get tattoos on their head

Rafe Spall's character was similarly odd.  He plays a biologist who shows zero interest in a dead alien and later acts like a complete jackass when encountering a new species.  Worst.  Biologist.  Ever.  I wasn't a big fan of either of those two.  Charlize Theron played a cold, calculating bitch in the background of scenes; I don't think Theron did a bad job acting here (her reaction post-flamethrower was pretty good), but her character felt like a waste of space to me, another bit of misdirection in a film jam-packed with it.  I have no idea why Guy Pearce was cast to play the elderly Peter Weyland; Pearce was fine and his makeup was good, but why cast a young man as an older man if you're not going to show him as a youth?  And, no, I don't count viral marketing as a good enough reason.  Maybe this means that Pearce will be showing up in a planned seuqel/prequel to Prometheus?  Whatever, it's not too important.  Similarly, I was surprised to see Patrick Wilson playing the incredibly bit part of Shaw's father in her dreams.  The most impressive actor in Prometheus, though, was definitely Michael Fassbender.  His work as the android David was fantastic.

Dare I say..."Fasstastic"?  No, probably not.

It takes a lot to play a character supposedly devoid of emotion and make him absolutely mesmerizing in every scene, but Fassbender accomplished it.  He was cold, manipulative and sneaky, but he didn't remind me of the other android characters from the Alien series; his character felt very unique.  He also had a viral ad that was pretty good, but it doesn't even hint at how much fun he was to watch as a quasi-villain.

The first thing I think of when I ponder Ridley Scott's direction in Prometheus is how incredibly gorgeous the movie looks.  The cinematography is sometimes breathtaking, the sets are impressive in both size and style, and the details of the Prometheus ship technology and the Engineer base are well beyond cool.  The imaginative visuals in this movie make it one of the most visually astounding science fiction films I have ever seen.

I'm not always an IMAX guy, but this looked amazing in IMAX

Scott obviously had a pretty good relationship with Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender, as they turned in good performances, but I was a little disappointed in the rest of the supporting cast.  There are a lot of characters in this film that make important decisions, but I felt that Scott made them seem more important to the overall story than they were, which made them feel overvalued and underdeveloped. 

Example number one

I wouldn't have minded that so terribly if the film wasn't so packed with subtext.  Prometheus is a dense movie that does not stop to explain itself to the likes of you, the audience, or hint at what details are going to be important later.  On the one hand, I respect that choice; more often than not, films err on the side of over-explaining themselves.  Prometheus, though, is absolutely unapologetically confusing.  Scott definitely gives enough hints to read into his intentions, but the fact that I feel compelled to write another blog post about those intentions should indicate that his storytelling is not as taut or clear as it could have been.

That's really the problem with Prometheus.  It has one truly impressive performance (Fassbender) and a good secondary performance (Rapace), a wonderfully developed universe, and an ambitious concept (humans seeking their makers).  What it doesn't have is good storytelling.  There are a few reveals in this film, but they are predictable and dull.  And then there is a twist, which is astounding because it appears to have no motivation.  For the first two-thirds of Prometheus, it is a slow-boiling sci-fi thriller with somewhat pretentious themes, and it looks like it's going to be great.  And then it suddenly becomes a horror movie, complete with psycho killers and monsters.  That just felt cheap to me.  I also didn't appreciate the bushels of questions (that is the proper term of measurement for questions, by the way) I was left with when the film finished.  Granted, it did get me to ponder the film for an entire week after seeing it --- which is quite a feat --- but I was left unsatisfied.  Prometheus is absolutely gorgeous and ambitious, it handles the creation of mankind so well that the existence of an alien Engineer race doesn't preclude the existence of God, and it is very, very impressive.  It is also purposefully obtuse and frustrating.  As much as I wanted to be blown away by this movie, the story and the unexplained subtext disappointed me.  Still, it is certainly worth seeing, if only for the spectacle and Fassbender.

By the by, I wanted to call out prometheus-movie.com as the source for all the cool pics I included in this post.  I don't know who's in charge of that site, but they are definitely the web's singular resource for all things --- pics, details, theories, whatever --- Prometheus.  And they appear to be pretty bright; after I jotted down my interpretations of what happened in this movie in my follow-up post, I went back to compare my take with theirs and I learned a few things.

The King's Speech

"I'm gonna knock you owwwt!  Queen Momma said knock you owwwt!"

I'm reading a lot of post-Oscar snobbery against The King's Speech's Best Picture win, and I don't get it.  If you haven't heard (or don't care), the criticisms have sounded more or less like this:

Of course The King's Speech beat out The Social Network for Best Picture.  It's a period piece with British accents, while The Social Network is about the most cutting edge technology EVER!  Way to take the conservative choice, Academy!

First of all, let me just say that my best film of the year was Inception, not either of these prestige pictures.  That said, I completely disagree with the negative feedback toward The King's Speech.  Yes, it has British accents, but I don't consider WWII-era England as a "period piece;" aside from some ladies' dresses, they still wear the same suits and hats there today.  Heck, according to British "comedy," men still wear the same dresses today.  As for the technology angle, I would argue that this film shows an example of just how powerful technology (in this case, radio) is.  More importantly, though, this is a movie about friendship and overcoming adversity --- and it's not a huge downer!

Prince Albert (Colin Firth) is second-in-line for the British throne.  His father, Albus Dumbledore King George V (Michael Gambon), a forceful personality, is getting on in years and laments that he will have to pass the crown on to his playboy son, Prince Edward (Guy Pearce).  Edward isn't a bad guy, but he's not prim-and-proper, like royalty should be, and he has a tendency to sleep with married women.  Obviously, it's okay for British noblemen to have sex with married women --- the primae noctis decree was clearly supported in Braveheart --- but you're not supposed to keep a relationship going with them!  That's peasant behavior, man!  It's just as well, though; in these modern times (the 20s and 30s), it is becoming increasingly expected that the King and Princes will give public addresses on that new-fangled radio box.  In another fascinating concession toward popular trends, here is a clip of Edward and Albert (I assume) dancing the Charleston to the music of the times:

Edward is handsome and a good speaker, like his father, but Albert --- well, he's got a bit of a problem.  Albert has a stammer, a stutter, a speech impediment, or whatever you want to call it.  His speeches are punctuated with long, awkward silences that draw attention away from whatever he's supposed to be talking about and embarrass him and everyone listening.  Awkward!

Okay, fine, the man isn't a public speaker.  Neither are most people.  The only problem is that his "job," such as it is, won't let him avoid public speaking.  Tired of seeing her husband humiliated in public and private by his stammering, Albert's wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) decides to approach an unconventional therapist after all the traditional doctors have failed.  This therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), is a transplanted Australian with some radical ideas --- he wants to be informal with the Prince!  Gasp! --- but he is able to prove his theories relatively quickly.  Unfortunately, George V opts to check out of life's grand hotel a little earlier than was convenient, which makes Edward the king.  Ed's insistence on marrying his lady love (an American multiple divorcee), partying with commoners and generally acting un-kingly alienates Parliament and just about everybody else.  When he is faced with his crown or his woman, Eddie chooses the lady and resigns his post.  That makes Albert the new King of England, and he assumes his new rap name kingly name of George VI.  Soon afterward, Parliament declares war on Germany, and AlbertGeorge VI needs to give the most important public address of his life to an audience that could cover as much as a quarter of the world.  Can Lionel and AlbertGeorge fix his stutter in time?


I have to admit that I really enjoyed this movie.  The acting was great.  Colin Firth, who wastes his talents so frequently on romantic comedies, is wonderful in an understated performance.  I love laughing at people, but I didn't laugh at his stutter even once in this film --- that is quite an accomplishment for this creative team.  His character was very well written, too; it can be difficult to identify with the problems of royalty, but focusing so much on Albert's perception of his duties and the embarrassment that comes with not being able to communicate was endearing to watch.  When Bertie failed, I felt awkward; when he made progress, I felt proud.  That's some damn fine filmmaking, right there.  Geoffrey Rush was also very good.  I picked him as my Best Supporting Actor of 2010 because he did a great job playing a no-bullshit, I'm-right-and-I-know-it type, while simultaneously being the embarrassing father to his sons and being justly afraid of his wife.  It was a well-rounded performance that felt very real.  Helena Bonham Carter was also good as the supportive wife --- definitely a solid supporting performance --- but I would have liked to see her develop a personality of her own, outside of "I'm helping my husband."  The rest of the cast was fine, excluding Timothy Spall, who did a pretty annoying impression of Winston Churchill, and a pretty standard interpretation of a self-important religious guy by Derek Jacobi.  And am I the only one who found it funny that Rush's character is called out for being Australian, but Guy Pearce (another Aussie) was playing a British Prince?  ...maybe it was just me, then.

The direction by Tom Hooper was interesting.  Obviously, with some of the best performances of the year in his movie, Hooper must have done a pretty good job of directing.  It goes beyond the simplicity of a good working relationship with the cattle actors, though.  Hooper was able to hit all the right emotional buttons with this movie, overcoming any resistance from Recession-era America.  The politics of the film was played down and Hooper wisely chose to emphasize a very relatable problem: the fear of public speaking.  It also helps that the glamor of being a Prince is de-emphasized, with many of Albert's efforts being spent on things he did not enjoy.  Most importantly, though, Hooper was able to make the friendship between a King and a commoner seem plausible, warm, and mutual.  A lot of movies make you tear up because something is sad, but it takes a special movie to make you proud of a character.  On a cinematography side-note, I didn't notice the high-vaulted ceilings that are so common in movies about Kings and Queens; instead, I noticed fairly enclosed spaces and hallways.  I don't want to get all artsy on you, but I think Hooper might have subtly been suggesting the pressure on Albert, or at least symbolizing his throat problems.

In the making of this movie, the filmmakers chose an interesting path.  You would think that the story of a King who abdicates his throne for his lady love would be worthy of a movie; heck, even a story about a woman who feels that she is important enough to forfeit a kingdom over could be good viewing.  Other movies might have focused on the politics of England in the years leading up to World War II.  Instead, this movie is about a King with a stutter, a story that doesn't sound interesting at all, and it is far more engaging than those other possibilities could hope to be.

Films that are based on real people often fall into the trap of telling their life's tale, without having an explicit dramatic arc.  Thankfully, this was a movie about overcoming an impediment, and didn't focus on George VI's reign --- Bertie was King when Britain went from a worldwide empire to its modern size.  Surprisingly, the film didn't call out the Royal Family at all.  Helena Bonham Carter's character became the Queen Mother into this millennium, Bertie's daughters eventually became the seemingly eternal Queen Elizabeth II (still on the throne) and the scandal-plagued Princess Margaret.  I really appreciated that this movie doesn't poke you in the eye with its historical impact, or that of its characters.  Avoiding those self-serving odes to history definitely kept the interest on the relationship between King and commoner, and that simplicity is part of what makes this film work.

Is The King's Speech a movie that will floor you with special effects or a powerhouse performance?  No, but that's okay.  It's well-written, -acted, and -directed.  It's pretty low-key, but it is able to make you laugh and tear up.  What more do you want?  It's just a really, really, well-made film.

If you're curious as to what AlbertGeorge sounded like in real life, check out this link.  Firth's final speech is a very good imitation.

Animal Kingdom

The DVD case for Animal Kingdom has a quote from a critic, calling this "Australia's answer to GoodFellas."  That's a bold statement.  It did win seven Australian Film Institute awards and was nominated for five more.  Granted, I don't know what it was up against in Australia --- did AC/DC or silverchair act in any movies this year? --- but that's still pretty impressive.  Jacki Weaver was even nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, so it's not just the Aussies that like this movie.  But this is America, home of the gangster movie.  How does Animal Kingdom stack up?

Joshua Cody's (James Frecheville) mother has died from a heroin overdose, so he goes to live with his estranged grandmother, "Smurf" Cody (Jacki Weaver).  Smurf is mother to one of the more notorious gangs in Australia.  Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), the eldest, is into armed robbery; Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) is a major drug dealer; Darren (Luke Ford), the youngest, just kind of follows his brothers' lead; Baz Brown (Joel Edgerton), a brother by everything except blood, is Pope's partner in crime and appears to be the brains of the group.  Joshua is only eighteen, so he's not exactly running in the same circles as the other Codys, but their problems quickly become his own.

Around this time, the Melbourne task force for armed robbery was under a lot of pressure for apprehending a suspicious number of newly deceased suspects; they were approaching suspects (that were probably guilty) and, instead of arresting them, shooting them dead without cause.  Word on the street was that Pope is next on their list, so he is in hiding by the time Joshua moves in to the Cody house.  The street was wrong, though; it was another member of the gang that is shot dead by police, unarmed, in a grocery store parking lot.  That sort of aggression cannot go unchallenged in high stakes cops-and-robbers; the Codys decide to murder some police officers to send a message.  It's not like they aren't suspects, though, so the entire family gets picked up for questioning, including Joseph.  He hasn't been raised around crime, though, and the rest of the family starts to get nervous over what he may or may not have said.  Inspector Leckie (Guy Pearce) begins paying special attention to Joseph, which unnerves the Codys even more.  The film opens with a voice-over from Joseph, where he explains that all criminals are afraid, even if they don't realize it, because they all know that theirs will not be a happy ending.  How can Joseph live with people who fear him being used to hurt them?  How can family solve a problem like that?  Who will make the choices that must be made for survival?  Can they all live happily ever after?  All these questions, and more, will be answered in the next exciting episode of...Animal Kingdom!

...and we're back.  This isn't exactly the sort of plot you usually associate with GoodFellas, is it?  Right off the bat, the film starts off with a downer (heroin-dead mother) and it doesn't ever become fun.  Joshua never witnesses the perks of being a gangster.  There is no romanticizing a life of crime here.  Instead, this film focuses on what is typically the final third of any gangster film: the investigation and apprehension of the gang.  It does that very well, in fact.  The film is believable, the characters are cutthroat, and the pace suits the plot.  This is David Michod's feature film debut as a writer and/or director, and I was impressed with how well he told this story and how he handled the actors.

Speaking of actors, all good gangster movies need a few standout characters.  Despite his age, James Frecheville was very impressive in his feature film debut.  It's not like he put on an acting showcase or anything, but his performance might be one of the best sullen teenager bits I've ever seen; teens are surly and not terribly talkative to their families, and Frecheville captured that attitude perfectly.  He wasn't terribly interesting, but that wasn't his job.  The star of the movie was undoubtedly Ben Mendelsohn as Pope.  As a person, Mendelsohn looks unassuming, even a little nerdy.  He takes that awkwardness and transforms it into something creepy and frightening in this movie.  It's not even what he does (at least at first), it's how he stares at people.  Jacki Weaver's performance was also noteworthy; I was waiting for her Oscar-worthy moment for almost the entire film, but it was worth it when it came.  She was a creepy, cold-hearted bitch, and yet did it in a very motherly way.  The rest of the cast was good, but more or less filled their parts.  Nobody was bad, but there were only a few choice parts in the movie.  I would like to point out Guy Pearce's respectable mustache:

That's not teen surliness; it's cop 'stache envy

While I liked the characters, I was disappointed that I didn't actually get to see the rising action in this story.  Would it have been too much to ask for one armed robbery scene, or one drug deal gone bad?  Australian movies (the ones I have seen lately, anyway) seem intent on taking all the fun out of violent films.  Yes, this was impressively plausible.  The ending was pretty awesome, too.  I just wish the film had even one moment where things seemed all right, if only to contrast with the tense atmosphere of the rest of the movie.  I also would have liked to see more of Smurf in the movie; the idea of a mother actively supporting her gangster sons is an intriguing one, and I think her part could have been bigger.  You know, looking at it with a bit of distance, I suppose that this movie does share one thing in common with GoodFellas; both have main characters that are nowhere near as frightening or interesting as their crazy friends.

Despite that, this is definitely more character-driven than I expected.  Without that robbery gone bad or whatever to begin the film, Animal Kingdom latches on to the faults of each respective Cody brother as they handle this less than ideal situation.  I'm not a huge fan of voice-overs --- they are often tacked on because the movie is hard to understand otherwise --- but Joseph's bit at the start of the movie acts as the theme to the film, and was very well done.  If the movie had any variance in mood, or if Joseph was a more charismatic character, I think this movie would have moved from "worth viewing" to "seriously awesome." 

The Road

The Road is a movie that makes you think about other post-apocalyptic dramas and say to yourself, "You know, those other movies really seem lighthearted now."  It is one of the few movies that makes me consider Children of Men as a laugh riot.  In case you're having trouble judging my tone, I'll spell it out for you: DEPRESSING.

This shouldn't come as a surprise, considering the people involved with this movie.  The director, John Hillcoat, has done bleak in the past.  Viggo Mortensen doesn't usually take roles in romantic comedies (unless you count the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King).  The movie is adapted from the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, author of No Country For Old Men, someone whose subject matter doesn't really lend itself to frivolity.

This is the story of a nameless man and son as they make their way across the remains of the United States, toward the sea.  Something has happened in the recent past (within the lifespan of the boy) that has ruined the world.  It is a dark, dirty, ashen post-apocalypse.  Crops have failed and animals are dead.  The only nourishment the father and son can find are occasional bugs or, if they're extremely luck, canned goods.  Ammunition is at a premium; the father has a revolver with two bullets, one for him and one for the boy.  Some people have resorted to cannibalism and scour the land in gangs.  Obviously, this tends to make the father suspicious of strangers.  Despite this logical animosity toward others, the two meet occasional strangers, including Robert Duvall and Michael K. Williams (best known for his awesome work as Omar in The Wire series).  Sometimes, they encounter a habitable house; sometimes, those houses are being used by cannibals to store their "cattle."  As they make their way cross country, the father begins coughing blood and knows his time will soon be up.

Sounds like fun, eh?  I have to say that I did not enjoy this film.  I also should point out that enjoyment was definitely not the goal here.  This film takes the Hollywood cliche of the post-apocalypse and makes it downright horrifying.  I am Legend was lonely, but had some cool moments (Oh, right...you don't want to hunt deer in NYC?  Liar!).  Mad Max had dozens of colorful characters.  28 Days Later had excitement and some little moments of joy sprinkled throughout.  The Road has survivors that have made it this far because they are stubborn.  They have no hope.  They have no friends.  The keep going because they don't want to stop.  Watching this is something of an endurance test, too.  Sometimes, a movie will take on a difficult, depressing subject, and the tone just doesn't match the subject matter.  That is not the case here.  The post-apocalypse will suck, and this film knows it.

This is a dark movie, and the cinematography matches the tone.  The lighting is dim (because it's permanently cloudy) and the camera takes in sweeping panoramas of dead wasteland.  If you're going to watch this, do it in the dark.  Everything looks painfully authentic here, including the actors.  Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee (the son) both lost a lot of weight to appear this malnourished.  This might lose its impact as the film progressed, if it wasn't for the occasional flashback to the pre-apocalypse, which was full of color, electricity, a healthy Viggo and his late wife, played by Charlize Theron.  Those brief moments serve as a visual reminder of just how horrible the world the father and son occupy really is.

The acting here is top notch.  Viggo Mortensen does his best work when he doesn't have to speak much, and this is not a wordy movie.  He plays a tired, scared man that will go to any length to keep his son alive, and he looks like a man that has spent years living like that.  Kodi Smit-McPhee does a good job as the son, clearly living scared, but still trying to understand his father and others.  This movie avoids melodramatic father-son moments, but there are still a few touching scenes toward the end.  These two are on screen for almost the entire movie; the supporting cast is lucky to share the screen for more than two minutes.  Charlize Theron's character could have been glossed over to represent how great the past was, but she is shown as a woman, wife, mother and person in her few scenes.  She is sometimes happy, other times not.  It's a surprisingly varied role, given the limited screen time, and Theron does it justice.  Robert Duvall delivers an unsurprisingly great performance as an elderly survivor that looks like he is 300 years old.  Michael K. Williams and Guy Pearce both make the best of their bit parts, minute as they are.  There is no bad acting in this entire movie.

From a technical point of view, John Hillcoat did a fantastic job bringing this story to life.  The acting is very good, the cinematography is very good, the tone of the movie is very appropriate, and I think the film accomplished everything it set out to do.  And yet, I don't think I want to watch this movie again in the near future.  While I appreciate a lot of things here, I just can't get past how exhausting this movie is.  And I'm not sure you're supposed to.

The Proposition

The typical Western has good guys (usually sheriffs or the like) and bad guys (horse thieves, Indians, bank robbers, etc.) fighting in a town that looks like it wouldn't be a terrible place to visit.  Sure, it looks a little dirty and there's no running water, but where else can you order a sarsaparilla in a bar and not get any weird looks?  In the traditional Western, there are a lot of broad landscape shots, showing how open and rich the country is, and some Westerns will explore that openness, only to return to the warmth of the town at the end.

The Proposition is not that kind of Western.  It may take place in the 1880s, but the location alone makes this film noteworthy.  Instead of America's vast frontier, this movie takes place in Australia.  Not Australia, land of lobsters, wine and the Great Barrier Reef, either.  This is the Outback.  It is as wide and vast as America's western vista, but it is intimidating instead of inspiring.  This is a land that painted in brown and red, with dust and blood baked by the sun into everything you see.  This is Australia, the continent-sized penal colony.

With that in mind, it should not be surprising to learn that this is not a typical Western plot.  The movie begins with a shootout, where Charlie (Guy Pearce) and Mike Burns are outmanned and outgunned.  They are soon captured by the local law, specifically Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone).  Apparently, Captain Stanley is hell-bent on "civilizing" Australia, or at least making is resemble England in manners, if not appearances.  The biggest lawbreakers (and thus, the most uncivilized force) around is Arthur Burns (Danny Huston) and his gang.  Until recently, that gang included Charlie and Mike, but Arthur's bloodthirsty tendencies caused a rift between the brothers.  Captain Stanley knows this and wants Arthur dead.  He makes Charlie a proposition: Charlie has a few days to find Arthur, kill him, and return to town, or else Mike will be hanged.  If Charlie is successful, both he and Mike get a legal pardon.

Of course, nothing's ever that simple.  Charlie has to contend with a bounty hunter (John Hurt) and angry Aborigines on his quest to reach Arthur, and then has to decide whether to kill his brother or not.  Captain Stanley's job is not much easier.  The complete Burns gang (Charlie and Mike included) recently murdered an entire family, pausing only to rape the pregnant wife.  Allowing any member of the gang to go free causes considerable distress among the townsfolk.  The town wants their pound of flesh, regardless of who is the greater evil.

The Proposition is an interesting movie because there is no character with a clear-cut high moral ground.  Yes, Captain Stanley wants to "civilize" Australia, but what does that mean?  He brought his young wife to a a lonely wasteland, where they put up a small picket fence and have tea on their porch.  These little touches of Britishness are almost tragic in this environment.  These details quietly ask "Who is this guy kidding?"  Stanley's entire motivation is so out of sync with his environment that it is almost funny.  He believes in himself, though, and is willing to kill almost anyone in town to protect the captive Mike Burns from lynching.  Charlie Burns is not as complex; he is a bad man that wants to save his delicate (possibly retarded) younger brother.  Killing Arthur might even be a relief to Charlie.  Arthur doesn't show up until halfway through the film, but lives up to the hype.  He is mean and without conscience, but he recites poetry and loves to hear Irish ballads.  He really doesn't seem bad until he gets around so-called "civilized" folk.

The cast here is very good.  It's always nice to see Guy Pearce in a decent movie, because the man can act.  Here, he balances familial duty and conscience well.  Ray Winstone does a great job as the Captain.  He shows such toughness around men, but shows his weakness with his wife (Emily Watson), although not to her.  The supporting cast is fine in relatively one-dimensional roles.  Emily Watson is a frightened and lonely wife, surrounded by men who could conceivably rape her with little notice.  David Wenham is decent as the highest local authority, acting within the bounds of British law, but not necessarily applying those laws well in Australia.  John Hurt does a nice job as the weathered bounty hunter.  Tom Budge is eerie as a Burns gang killer with a heavenly voice.  Danny Huston steals the show, though.  The oddities in his character make him very likable in the quiet Outback scenes, but terrifying when he is on the warpath.

Nick Cave's script (yes, Nick Cave the musician) clearly wants this movie to be on par with the best Sam Peckinpah Westerns, and it comes very close.  The only difference between this movie and, for instance, The Wild Bunch, is that this movie doesn't really make you root for the main character.  Instead, you sympathize with Ray Winstone and maybe Danny Huston.  Director John Hillcoat is relatively inexperienced, but it doesn't show here; he does a fantastic job with the bleak scenery, the mood, and the actors.  Ultimately, though, the lack of character for Guy Pearce to work with hampers this film.  This isn't a fun viewing experience, so having a sympathetic main character is essential to a good ending.  Despite this flaw, the film retains a sense of brutal authenticity.  American Westerns don't make the Old West look like much fun (most of the time), but this Western feels like hell.

The Hurt Locker

I'm trying not to review movies that I have watched in the past, but rather movies that I just finished watching.  I think that reviewing a movie months or years after the viewing is unfair to the film in question.  I saw The Hurt Locker when it came out on DVD last month, but since it just won Best Picture, I figured it was okay for me to bend the rules and throw my two cents in now.

War movies are, as a genre, a mix of testosterone and malestrogen (the bodily chemical that causes Man Tears).  If you disagree, watch your grandpa's reaction to the end of Saving Private Ryan; when the elderly Matt Damon character is talking to Tom Hanks' grave, I guarantee gramps will be quietly leaking tears made of beer, sweat, and cursing.  The Hurt Locker plays against type by never really having that malestrogen moment, or for that matter, much of anything when it comes to small moments.

Jeremy Renner plays a bomb technician who joins a new company after their friend and bomb technician is killed in action.  Renner plays the new guy entering the established status quo, which consists of a three man team, played by Anthony Mackie, Brian Garaghty, and now Renner.  Renner is a lone wolf who is seemingly oblivious to danger, while his teammates are all too aware of it.  This acts as the main conflict in the film, as Mackie and Garaghty's characters are just trying to survive the remainder of their deployment, while Renner is just interested in defusing bombs, regardless of his own or his team's safety.  Unlike a lot of war films, then, the conflict here is an emotional one between a small group of people.

Renner does a pretty good job as a bomb technician.  Yes, he's overly confident and casual about danger, but I see that as realistic for a character that decides that war isn't dangerous enough, so he decides to defuse homemade bombs.  It's a good thing that Renner's performance is pretty good, since Mackie and Garaghty don't do much with their parts.  Mackie spends most of his screen time scowling and Garaghty might as well have been doing a screen test to play Linus in a live-action "Peanuts" movie.  Neither performance is bad, mind you, but both could have done better.  Both have a moment, though, after the three of them get drunk together that was pretty good.  Renner has one scene in particular where his character shines in a very understated way.  It's a simple scene, featuring him speaking softly to his infant child, trying to articulate why he likes the army and why he feels uncomfortable as a civilian.  It's a simple, understated scene that could easily have been sappy or overblown, but is allowed to be subtle and trust the intelligence of the viewer.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of smaller bits that knock the movie down a few notches for me.  The first is the movie's slogan, "War is a Drug."  Now you know that director Kathryn Bigelow, the director of such subtle masterpieces as Point Break and K-19: The Widowmaker (AKA "Harrison Ford can't do accents"), is going to be using metaphors.    I understand that the movie feels like a grind to watch at times because the soldiers' lives have a lot of boredom and repetition, despite the dangers.  Understanding what the director was going for doesn't mean that I appreciate it, though; it kind of reminds me of Christopher Nolan's Insomnia... yes, it felt like I was suffering from insomnia like Al Pacino, but it doesn't mean I ever want to see the movie again.  There are two other scenes where Renner's character shows his humanity (or, really, one long scene), but when Renner's character slips off the Army base, the purpose of the scene loses its direction and impact.  David Morse's bit part rubbed me the wrong way, too, the way he acted like Flavor Flav to Renner's Chuck D; I think the viewers can figure out that Renner's a "madman," he doesn't need a hype man.  It was nice seeing Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes in a decent movie, but their parts were so small that these excellent actors could barely leave an impression.

Overall, the film tries to make some intelligent points about war and the people that choose to be in the Armed Forces.  The movie had some wonderfully eloquent, subtle scenes, but it countered those with ham-fisted metaphors.  Renner was pretty good, but the director didn't get enough out of the supporting cast to fulfill the potential of this well-shot film.