Down the Shaft

 

Timing can often make or break a film's success. That would be especially true if your film was about an attack on a New York city skyscraper scheduled for a 2001 release.

Quick Plot: Welcome to the Millennium Building, 102 floors of thriving activity located in the heart of the big apple. After a bolt of lightning strikes while the bottom barrel security team is on guard, the building's 73 elevators begin acting a bit funny

There are minor inconveniences at first: a maternity workout group gets trapped, resulting in a few early deliveries but no injuries. A rogue rollerblader is sucked into the maintenance elevator via the parking lot and exits on the top floor with a bang, shooting straight out and 100 floors to his death. And of course, a blind man with a bad haircut is lured down the shaft after his seeing eye dog. 

The building's management, played with appropriate Mr. Rich stiffness by the late Edward Hermann, is able to cover much of it up, especially since Ron Perlman's elevator repair company is willing to play along. Rogue rookie mechanic Mark (Twin Peaks' James Marshall) however, knows something is amiss, as does plucky reporter Jennifer Evans, played by pre-Mulholland Drive, post-Children of the Corn IV era Naomi Watts with a New York accent that gave me hives. All that and I haven't even mentioned my boyfriend Michael Ironside stopping by as a maybe evil German scientist.

There is a LOT going on here, and most of it is fairly terrible. Writer/director Dick Maas was remaking his own 1983 film, a movie I apparently watched just four years ago and remember next to nothing about it. Down, also titled The Shaft, will probably linger a little longer in my head for two reasons: its extremely bad pre-9/11 timing, and the fact that it employed so many treasured character actors.

A lot of them are (thankfully) having fun. Unfortunately, it's pretty unclear whether that's what they're supposed to be doing. The tone is a mess, which means the prevailing note is what takes over...and that is basically "dumb." This is the kind of movie where Naomi Watts has to scream fake rape accusations and terrorist threats to get ahead, and I honestly can't tell if the movie thinks it's funny or horrible. 

For the film's first half hour or so, I was amused with the same level of chuckles that a better-than-average Asylum Studio flick can pull. But folks, this movie runs close to two hours which ultimately feels like a violation of the Patriot Act. 

High Points

I'll never argue with a concept as glorious as "killer elevator" and thankfully, for as messy as Down is, it does have a fair amount of fun 

Low Points

I once entered an elevator in a women's hospital along with a single (very) pregnant woman. It was just the two of us and as soon as the door closed, the lights went off. For about two seconds, I realized a terrifying, exciting truth: I would have to deliver a baby. Every sitcom and Beverly Hills 90210 episode I ever watched was leading to this very moment. By the third second, the lights were back and we safely reached the ground floor, crisis/hero moment averted.

I bring this up to say, how dare a movie include a scene where a batch of heavily pregnant women are trapped in a corrupt elevator only to not give us an actual birth scene

Lessons Learned

Nobody moves up in the world faster than an elevator operator

In the scheme of things, decapitations really don't happen that often

When your career takes a downturn, your alma mater may downgrade your status from "Harvard alum" to "former Harvard graduate"

Rent/Bury/Buy

It's hard NOT to recommend the star-studded evil fake New York skyscraper elevator movie because unfortunately, we just don't get nearly enough star-studded evil fake New York skyscraper elevator movies. I THINK I enjoyed this one more than Dick Maas's original, but how much of that was its quality and how much was my glee at the very hint of a Michael Ironside appearance. This could probably make a fun drinks-with-friends kind of watch, as its goofiness requires a certain kind of audience energy in order to work for the ridiculously long runtime.   

Save the Last Interpretive Dance

When the world seems to make a universal decision that a mid-budget studio genre film is so bad that its hot young director is fired from the unrelated bigger budget studio film he's about to make, you can bet my HBO subscription that I'm going to eventually watch it.

Quick Plot: Meet the Carpenters, a strange little family that functions in ways no human beings typically do. Single mom Susan (Naomi Watts, who is incapable of giving a bad performance even when placed in an unreasonably bad movie) works as a waitress at a '50s style ice cream shop/diner that gets a ridiculous amount of customers on weekday mornings. When not playing video games or the ukulele, Susan enjoys getting drunk with BFF Sarah Silverman (who styles herself like Amy Winehouse and flirts with teenagers like any normal human being), 

You might be concerned that Susan's two sons are in irresponsible hands, but fear not: 11-year-old Henry (Jaeden Lieberher of It) is an unearthly intelligent little boy who knows everything about everything, be it financial investments, building Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions that put Pee-Wee Herman to shame, or meticulously planning the murder of a police officer.

Yes, that's a thing. See, all that brainpower seems to literally be hurting poor Henry's brain, which develops some kind of lethal tumor. Thankfully, he's given just enough time in the hospital to get his family (which also includes adorable younger brother Peter, played by Room's Jacob Tremblay)'s affairs in order.

This includes laying out a plan for Susan to murder Walter White's brother-in-law.

Henry's biggest regret in his short life is that he's unable to protect Christina, his classmate who lives next door and is being abused by her stepfather Glen (Dean Norris). Thankfully, he's scoped out the neighborhood carefully enough to lay out the perfect 45-minute murder plan for mom to carry out during Peter's and Christina's upcoming school talent show.

Guys, this is a weird, weird movie.

The Book of Henry didn't make much of a killing at the box office, but it likely killed a good deal of momentum in director Colin Treverrow's career. Hot off the success of Jurassic World, Treverrow was tapped to direct Episode IX in the Star Wars saga. Everything seemed to be in order until either script issues tore the production team or, possibly more believably, enough LucasFilm higher-ups witnessed the mess that is The Book of Henry.

Look, there have been plenty studio releases that rank lower than The Book of Henry in the quality department, but few that are quite as...odd. IMDB's only real illuminating trivia point claims the original script was more a black comedy, which makes sense considering the plot of this movie involves, you know, a 12-year-old boy drawing up plans for his childlike mother to murder their neighbor while his stepdaughter reveals his crimes to the school community via interpretive dance.

Yes, that happens. 

Part precocious child tale, part dead precocious child tragedy, and part complicated murder plan, The Book of Henry would be perfectly fine had it aired on Lifetime. Unfortunately for Treverrow (and really, everyone else involved and the audience) it came to theaters and expected people paying $10+ to watch it leave feeling satisfied. Considering how many Lifetime movies I've seen done better, that is almost criminal. 

High Points
I'm not being sarcastic: the cast of this movie truly does its best with whatever the hell it has been given

Low Notes
The fact that this movie has such good performances is ultimately the thing that hurts it the most, as you see crumbs of a decent story about grief amidst, you know, the movie about a 12-year-old arranging murder from his Tim Burton treehouse

Lessons Learned
Dodgeball isn't an Olympic sport...yet

Lee Pace is an incredibly tall and incredibly attractive human being

You have to watch tech stocks closer than the rest

You might think you're a prodigy, but you can't really prove it until you master one of the nation's few remaining payphones in 2017

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Book of Henry is currently on HBO Go, and let's face it: you should watch it. I mean, you shouldn't if you're one of those strange creatures who only looks for quality in their entertainment, but for the rest of us curious cats too dumb to know better, this is...something. 

The One With Rachel Weisz

There are three things I knew about Dream House going in:

1. This was the movie wherein the beautiful and talented Rachel Weisz and the even more beautiful and talented Daniel Craig fell in love, creating a union that very well may destroy us mere mortals

2. This was not to be confused with (though for simpletons like me, would ALWAYS be confused with) the wonderfully wicked Hong Kong satire Dream Home

3. Anyone who watched the trailer knew the 'big twist,' one of those huge plot turns that apparently ruins the viewing experience

4. It wasn't going to be very good

Having not seen the trailer and having an odd fascination with cinematic horror that is not very good, I naturally queued it up on Instant Watch.

Quick Plot: Will Atenton is a big shot New York City editor handing in his resignation to spend more time with his wife and daughters in their new New England home. How big a shot is Will? Such a big shot that he has a whole staff carry his belongings out in those brown boxes that exist in every firing/quitting scene you've ever seen on film.

Before you can order a martini shaken not stirred, Will and his family are experiencing some strangeness at the homestead. Shifty neighbor Anne (Naomi Watts, because more talent should always be wasted) seems to be hiding something, but more pressingly, a batch of teenagers hold a black mass in the Atenton basement. Not surprisingly, we learn that the house was once the site of a tragic unsolved massacre wherein someone shot a mother and two little girls. All evidence pointed to the father, who has since been released from a mental institution.

Dream House was, to put it mildly, a troubled production. Aforementioned trailer reveals the film's huge twist (which in fairness, comes around the hour mark, so perhaps an argument could be made that it doesn't COMPLETELY ruin the film) and director Jim Sheridan apparently clashed so hard with the studio that he asked to have his name removed from the final product. Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz supported him by refusing to do any press for the film. 

Also, nothing in it really makes any sense.

This isn't a terrible film by any means. The actors are all professionals (though I have a personal aversion to hearing the normally lovely Rachel Weisz speak with an American accent). The visual style has some interesting things going for it in how it suggests the Atenton New England neighborhood as something a little otherworldly. The family dynamic is warm enough that I was fairly invested in their fate. The ingredients, if you will, were definitely there.

The problem, quite simply, is that nothing is mixed or cooked or combined or cobbled together in any way to make sense. After you learn the twist, there's simply so much that doesn't make any logical sense. For a small example, the mere fact that one can apparently walk from a secluded country home to the heart of town in the middle of a harsh winter and back again before sunset requires more than a fair share of suspension of disbelief. Unlike the trailer, I’ll avoid spoiling a key point, but suffice to say, Elias Koteas shows up as the most incompetent criminal this side of Shredder.

High Points

Hey, at least the ladies get some eye candy

Low Points

Look, I'm not really one to complain about an impeccably crafted male body on display, but the very idea that Will had that much time to work on his abs is a little dubious. Still, lady eye candy is nice in a genre typically catered towards the male gaze

Lessons Learned

Some types of jobs can be made much more foolproof with a picture or at the very least, a browse on Google Earth

There is ALWAYS time to maintain your Bond physique

One has no need for a car if living in the very pedestrian-friendly New England countryside

Rent/Bury/Buy

Dream House is, very simply, not a very good movie. It ultimately seems to be aiming for the same mature crowd as, say, The Skeptic. The tone doesn’t know if it should be genuinely dark and disturbing or grandparent-friendly, leaving the material to sizzle, grow cold, and eventually, become easily forgettable. There is some heart to the performances to at least keep some invested, but even on Instant Watch, this is a skip. Check out Dream Home instead. If nothing else, seeing both will free you from always wondering which title you did indeed watch.