Three Films Make A Post: Boy meets girl, girl unimpressed, boy starts band

The Conjuring 2 (2016): By now, I don’t think James Wan’s idea of what is terrifying and my own will ever converge, unless I’ll ever be converted to the gospel of the jump scare as the most important thing in any horror movie. Otherwise, it’s the usual Wan stuff: high technical abilities put into the service of delivering jump scare after jump scare after jump scare (which generally works on me for half an hour and then quickly becomes annoying) and a script whose only substance is some generic Christian demon stuff, a bit of whining about sceptics, and some advertisements for Bill and Lorraine Warren, whose film versions are still the blandest yet supremely sanctimonious psychic investigators alive, seeing as their only character trait is being holy. To me, Wan’s movies are the emptiest of empty spectacle, that is to say, spectacle I can’t even enjoy as spectacle because I find it utterly uninvolving. Of course, given who well these things sell and how much lots of horror fans and critics love them, they must work better for others.

Goosebumps (2015): To reiterate that I do indeed enjoy me some spectacle, take this family friendly horror comedy by Rob Letterman based on the books by R.L. Stine, who also appears as a character played by a Jack Black who for once doesn’t seem to be playing his Jack Black persona. It’s deeply harmless, loud, and fast fun with competent young actors, lots and lots of CGI monsters, and not too many scenes of people learning valuable lessons to annoy me. There’s never a boring moment, likeable characters who don’t get into speeches about God at the slightest provocation and also don’t look as if they were at a 70s themed costume party. Even better: most of the ideas the film comes up with are actually fun and clever, with many a call-back to horror classics (and I suppose Stine’s work, though I can’t say I have any personal experience with it), even most of the jokes don’t seem to be written down to some assumed brain-dead twelve year old. If I had kids, I’d absolutely tie them to a chair to watch this with me.

The Family (2013): But then, I also mostly enjoyed this very violent comedy with Robert de Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer as the parents of a psychopathically inclined mafia family in witness protection under the tutelage of a typically grumpy Tommy Lee Wallace in France, as directed by Luc Besson. To my own surprise and confusion, I found myself laughing a lot, despite my usual reaction to humour in Besson’s films being along the lines of running away screaming. Of course, part of the film’s charm are meta moments like the scene where de Niro’s and Wallace’s characters are witnessing a screening of Goodfellas (in my book probably the best gangster film ever made with or without de Niro), which of course results in some tearful reminiscing by de Niro’s character. Otherwise, there’s quite a bit of humorous ultra-violence, and jokes that reach from the dubious to the stupid, all filmed by Besson with his typical relish.


The moral of the story seems to be that Americans are dangerous lunatics, but families are good, though I might be wrong.

In short: Mother! (2017)

While I sometimes think I’ve seen basically everything in a movie, and can find my way around any of them, there still is the possibility to encounter a movie that takes me by surprise and may even confuse me quite a bit. So how about Darren Aronofsky’s somewhat divisive Mother!?

This may or may not be a religious allegory (which may or may not be saying that the creator godhood is an asshole sucking the blood and love of women –perhaps standing in for humanity - while giving them nothing in return but an illusion of love and a baby he’s going to take away again), a film about that horrifying conceptual entity known as The Artist (which may or may not be saying that The Artist is an asshole sucking the blood and love of women while giving them nothing in return but an illusion of love and a baby he’s going to take away again), or a couple of other things. Insert your own favourite theory here, really - you’ll probably find more than enough ambiguous moments in the film to hang it on.

It most probably is a male-driven feminist work, curiously because Aronofsky’s camera can’t seem to glance away from Jennifer Lawrence – whose performance dominates the picture not without good reason – for more than a moment, than despite of it, clearly wanting to say something about the way women and society in public and in private relate.

In the beginning stages, this aspect also turns Mother! into something of a social horror film with a couple of scenes that reminded me of the books of Ramsey Campbell in their dread of skewed social situations; later it becomes a (probably metaphorically) apocalyptic one. It’s not a film made with a horror audience in mind, though. At least marketing-wise, Mother! really wants to be sold to a mainstream audience, though it certainly isn’t the audience that would get much out of it.


Be that as it may, this is clearly the work of a director who is perfectly alright with presenting his film to an audience not being willing to follow where he goes, one misunderstanding him, or one just getting out of a film whatever the hell they want. Even if this approach doesn’t work for a viewer – and for once, I wouldn’t even blame anyone for calling a film pretentious - one should at least appreciate the incredible visual power of Aronofsky’s filmmaking, as well as the fearlessness to make a film like this and pretend it’s totally going to be the sort of thing a mainstream audience is going to want to watch without complaining afterwards.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

You know the drill: the Orient Express, the murder of a rather unpleasant chap (this time around also played by a rather unpleasant chap), one genius Belgian detective of taste, style and the facial hair of nightmares, and a trainload of suspects given by a cast of great actors.

To start, a double disclosure: Firstly, I am not a great lover of the works of Agatha Christie, or rather, I’m not terribly fond of so-called “Golden Age” (as with many genres, the actual good stuff came after the Golden Age for me) mysteries as a whole – with exceptions of course. Frankly, I often don’t enjoy the emotionless, game-like quality of this particular genre; I also can’t give a flying fart if Lord Suckbottoms was murdered by the butler or his nephew. Secondly, I am not the greatest fan of this version of the Orient Express’s director/Poirot Kenneth Brannagh either. He’s certainly a very talented man, but to me, he too often seems to use much of his talent to demonstrate how talented he is, which is the sort of approach that’ll sometimes make even a genius look like a hack.

However, I actually think Brannagh has his tendency for excess in general and excessive vanity specifically well under control for this film, using his considerable powers for much better things than self-aggrandization. As a matter of fact, the consistency with which Brannagh – in both of his roles for the production - makes good, intelligent, and interesting choices throughout is it what makes this a rather inspired mystery film. From time to time, mostly in the early parts of the film, Brannagh’s direction does get a wee bit showy, but that’s mostly an attempt to keep a film that mostly consists of one dialogue scene after the other gripping to an audience without putting all of the work on the shoulders of the actors alone. Kon Ichikawa did this sort of thing better in his movies about Kozure Kindaichi in the 70s, but then, Brannagh does keep his film flowing and comparatively tight for its genre, where the Japanese master of this form thrived on digressions of all sorts.

As an actor, Brannagh does an admirable job with his Poirot, avoiding either turning him into a caricature or just copying the style of David Suchet’s interpretation of the role. This Poirot doesn’t go overboard with dubious French or incessantly babbles about little grey cells, but reads as a somewhat eccentric, clearly brilliant man with a great capacity for compassion and understanding, in the end a very human genius. Which makes him just the right sort of Poirot for Brannagh’s interpretation of the mystery’s solution which attempts – and even half succeeds – to sell its inherent absurdity through emotion, an approach that is certainly further supported by much fine acting by everyone in the cast, be it Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe, Leslie Odom Jr., or Daisy Ridley. These are actors willing and able to understand and incorporate into their acting one of the finer points of what is going on here: that everyone in this film is hurt and broken, and acting out a role in front of Poirot - sometimes themselves too - and that not each character here is as good of an actor as the one playing them.

I usually see Brannagh as a director prone to too grand gestures, but in Murder, he demonstrates particular strength when it comes to visually incorporating telling details – obviously a rather important thing in a classic mystery – without feeling the need to excessively point them out to his audience. In a comparable vein, I also appreciated how Brannagh anchors the film’s narrative in its place and time without pretending the film itself does belong to that time, too. So there’s a much clearer view of the way concepts of class and race played out than you would find in most mysteries of its time without strictly making this a film about race and class. Instead, these issues build part of the social fabric the film’s narrative takes place in, adding veracity and further emotional resonance that keeps the film far away from the abstractness that kills a mystery for the type of viewer I am.


All this makes Brannagh’s Murder on the Orient Express easily one of my favourite films in the classic mystery style. It may not be as incisive as Gosford Park but unlike the Altman film, it is aiming to make a perfect modern specimen of a form instead of deconstructing it. In this, it succeeds splendidly.

Three Films Make A Post: Its victims become maniacal night creatures

The Shipping News (2001): Swedish director Lasse Hallström aims for some sort of North American magic realism with elements of the (Northern?) Gothic here. At times, the result is compelling with scenes that suggest an element of near-cosmic/spiritual awe surrounding life on Newfoundland, making the more melodramatic turns of the plot feel fitting; at other times, he lays the BIG EMOTIONS on so thick they begin to feel more silly and contrived than the fated he is probably aiming at until even some of the expertly (perhaps too expertly) added lighter moments can’t always distract from the artificiality of plot, place and characters.

Always, though, the actors – which isn’t exactly a surprise with Julianne Moore, Kevin Spacey and Judi Dench only being the tip of the iceberg of talent - are doing a great job with whatever the script gods throw at them.

Cooties (2014): Summer school teachers led by Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson and Alison Pill have to fight off the attack of zombie-fied (well, virus infected) elementary school kids. Hilarity and/or brutal violence ensues. Well, sometimes, for about half of the jokes in this one are actually funny while the other half falls a bit flat thanks to the script’s complete lack of originality. The same thing also hampers interest for the characters, though there is one surprise that changes up at least one of the rules of how characters in this sort of movie live and die a bit.

Some of the suspense scenes are rather on the effective side – original or not. Directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion tend to play most of these scenes straight, which works out well for the film. Despite its imperfections, this is a likeable little movie, not the sort of thing that’ll shift any paradigms but certainly worth a watch.


Into the Night (1985): Ed (Jeff Goldblum) suffers from insomnia, learns that his wife is cheating on him and is bored to death by his job. How lucky for him that he lives in a John Landis movie, so he meets professional mistress Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer) and gets dragged into a comedy thriller plot that involves killings nobody in the film seems to feel much about, a bizarre rogues gallery of character actors, directors and even David Bowie, and an improbable romance. It all adds up to a skewed and loving portray of Los Angeles by night (like in the old chestnut with “the city is a main character”, but true), with quite a few clever thriller bits, many more funny jokes than unfunny, and a series of encounters with all sorts of strange people, neither starting nor ending with Diana’s Elvis impersonating brother. Actually, there’s also a thematic throughline concerning trust and self-knowledge that is more complex than the film’s general pace and grinning even in the face of murder suggest, which only helps turn a film that is already a joy to watch that decisive bit better. Well, the film’s ending is a bit rough and awkward but I’ve come to expect endings that don’t quite come together from everything Landis puts out.

Ladyhawke (1985)

At some point in time in medieval fantasy France. Notorious thief Gaston Phillippe (Matthew Broderick), generally called “the Mouse”, manages a lucky escape from prison. Marquet (Ken Hutchison), the man whose supposedly inescapable prison Gaston escaped from, and who clearly doesn’t take too well to the stress of pleasing his boss, the evil bishop of evil (John Wood), is so angered he and his man spend quite some time trying to hunt the thief down again.

Gaston is rescued from probable (he is very lucky, after all) doom by the knight Navarre (Rutger Hauer), former captain of the guard Marquet now captains. Navarre has an old grudge against Marquet and the Bishop, and has returned to finally put an end to their shared story. Navarre and his lover Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer) have been cursed, you see, and he has to spend his nights in the form of a black wolf, while she turns into a hawk by day, both doomed only ever to catch a short glimpse of each other as humans at dawn and at dusk.

At first involuntarily, but once he learns the whole story and meets Isabeau increasingly voluntarily, Gaston is drawn into the lovers’ story, and his help, and that of a monk (Leo McKern) with his own share of guilt for the curse, just might be what will keep it from turning into a tragedy.

Ladyhawke’s Richard Donner always has been one of these curious directors to me whose films as a whole never seem to cohere into a directorial personality. There does seem no philosophy, nor a shared approach beyond technical slickness visible in his films. That isn’t to say the films of Donner and directors like him can’t be worthwhile, because there is something to say for direction that steps behind the story it is telling, even though it does make it rather difficult to declare someone an auteur. At the very least, these films will be worthwhile when these stories are actually worth telling.

Ladyhawke’s story certainly is that. Actually, I find it difficult to avoid the word “perfect” to describe it, seeing as it seems to never take a wrong step in any direction it takes (let’s just pretend the main theme by Alan Parsons doesn’t exist), effortlessly mixing comedy, fantasy, and romance in just the right way. This is a film told from the perspective of what would usually be a mere comic relief character, after all, who never becomes annoying, and never is just a comic relief character even in the scenes when he’s bumbling. As a matter of fact, there’s a suggestion that things turn out well in the end (oh, come on, that’s not a spoiler) because Gaston’s metier isn’t tragedy, and he can therefore choose the part he wishes to take in a doomed romance and turn it right.

But really, this sort of consideration pales behind the way the film uses a pretty perfect – and pretty – cast, beautiful photography of extremely photogenic Italian locations, and a script that’s tighter than you’d expect to tell a romantic story in both meanings of the word, what could be seen as (and most probably is) the film’s slick sheen of commercialism turning into its own kind of poetry. That is an effect a more discrete director like Donner can probably achieve easier than somebody more pushy, for what’s more distracting from (a) romance than a director shouting “look at me! I’m an artist!” when in fact the audience really should look at the tale itself instead of the teller.

Ladyhawke as a whole projects a certain kind of conviction, as if the film itself would believe in its own story enough to produce a sense of wonder out of thin air (certainly the best place for senses of wonder to come from), taking what could have turned out trite and unpleasantly manipulative (the film is of course still manipulative, as all art is, but in a way I at least didn’t mind being manipulated), romantic.

Of course, one person’s poetry is another person’s insufferable kitsch, and one person’s romance is another person’s voluntary slavery but at least today, and with Ladyhawke, I’m one person, and not the other.

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