In short: Asher (2018)

Asher (Ron Perlman) is a professional killer. You know the kind – aging, tired, sad, lonely apart from a handful of professional contacts, and not without regrets for his life decisions. His life just might take the kind of surprising upturn few people of his age get, when he killer-meet-cutes Sophie (Famke Janssen), a woman with some baggage herself and a mother (Jacqueline Bisset) suffering from dementia.

But as these films go, a strategic mistake in his professional life sets Asher on a collision course with one of his former friends and associates (Richard Dreyfuss), and some too ambitious plans the killer doesn’t know about get most of the rest of said associates killed, so his newfound hope for an actual human life just might come too late and be rather deadly for Sophie.

On paper, Michael Caton-Jones’s Asher is nothing special. We’ve seen its plot and variations thereof a hundred times before and its central characters are just as well-worn (though kudos for Sophie not being blind). However, in practice, there’s something pretty special about the whole affair. In part, the film’s considerable amount of actual human pathos is won by a cast and director whose careers have reached a trajectory quite parallel to Asher’s, a late middle to final phase that doesn’t fit comfortably with anyone, and the least with consummate professionals in a business that favours youth over talent and experience any day, as much as you try to mutilate yourself with botox and whatever other nonsense’s the flavour of the day.

It’s not all self-pity and doom and gloom here, though. Instead there’s a relaxed quality to quite a bit of the film, a willingness to stay with characters and care for them when other films would make haste to the next plot point. But then, we know the plot very well indeed, so fixating on it would be quite beside the point, especially when caring for what’s going on with the characters is a lot more rewarding.

Part of Asher’s special quality in this regard is how clearly it applies actual lived experience to the genre tropes it uses, providing the film with palpable humanity where it could get away with going through the motions. The actors clearly share in the film’s approach here, and they all, especially Perlman, Janssen and Bisset, seem to put a lot of themselves into what we are seeing.


There are also some fine, homage-heavy scenes of professional killer business, a dry yet warm sense of humour and low-key eccentricity as a way to give standard plot beats more life to enjoy here, turning this into quite a different film from the would-be post-Tarantino thing I expected Asher to be going in.

Three Films Make A Post: There's a new police force on the streets... and they only come out at night.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016): There’s the old chestnut that says not every film is for everyone, and that some films are definitely less for everyone than others. This pretty much describes Oz Perkins’s Netflix arthouse horror movie about a live in nurse (Ruth Wilson) moving into the house of elderly writer Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss) and the haunting she experiences. Which sounds rather easily consumable, but in Perkins’s telling, it is a film of shifting realities and meanings, where there’s never a clear dividing line between the real and the unreal, the psychological or the supernatural, and where that line only ever dissolves further. It’s a very slow and subtle film, with a brilliant lead performance by Wilson, yet it is also a film that needs patience, thought, and viewers absolutely willing to follow where it goes. For me, the film is beautiful and intense, but I can definitely see why someone might watch it and just get bored. Some films just either resonate with you, or they don’t.

Rollercoaster (1977): In comparison, James Goldstone’s thriller with disaster movie elements about an amusement park ride safety inspector (George Segal) finding himself drawn into the hunt for a mentally not terribly healthy blackmailer (Timothy Bottoms) threatening to sabotage rollercoasters around the USA is downright fast. In actuality, it’s a bit of a slow starter, spending too much time dithering before Segal’s Harry Calder is drawn into the plot. Once it gets going, though, this turns into an exciting little film that makes highly atmospheric – and often clever - use of the amusement park surroundings, plays fair with its audience and comes by its best set pieces as organic parts of the plot. There’s a fine cast too, with people like Richard Widmark and Susan Strasberg in various supporting roles.

Goldstone’s – who was mostly a TV guy - direction isn’t spectacular, but he’s effortlessly effective when it comes to the suspense sequences, and by now the style has taken on the enjoyable patina typical of well made but not spectacular 70s films.


The Wackness (2008): Looks like I’m not escaping the coming of age films these days. Jonathan Levine’s genre entry recommends itself through an off-handed but efficient portrayal of mid-90s New York – with hip hop as the logical soundtrack – solid acting by coming of ager Josh Peck, mandatory The Girl Olivia Thirlby, and Famke Janssen as her mother, and one of his showy yet intelligent and typically enjoyable performances by Ben Kingsley as the psychologist of our dope dealing hero – also his best customer, friend, and the stepfather of his love interest. The best parts of the film really concern the relationship between the two male characters, with Kingsley’s Dr. Squires despite the age difference still not having life figured out much better than the kid has. The relationships between the men and their respective women alas don’t really work too well because this is one of these male-centric coming of age films that never does spend any time alone with its female characters, and so never develops much motivation and personality for them not connected to the guys, turning their actions into plot conveniences more than choices made by human beings. Which to me always seems like a rather childish approach for films supposedly all about growing up.

House on Haunted Hill (1999)

Evelyn Stockard-Price (Famke Janssen) has decided that the ideal place for throwing her next birthday bash is the titular House on Haunted Hill, a former psychiatric institution once under the charge of a mad man (Jeffrey Combs, as a matter of fact), and claiming a history of death and destruction during and after that particular stint. Despite their marriage having come down to the point where it is a series of entertainingly bitchy dialogue sequences and murder attempts, her husband Stephen Price (Geffrey Rush), a stinking rich carnival barker style rollercoaster tycoon, obliges. Well, sort of, for Stephen invites rather different guests to the party than Evelyn had in mind, because he has decided to run with a gimmick for the evening - survive the night in the house and get a million dollars! – and does consequently go for a rather more desperate clientele than the rich friends of rich people.

The victimsguests who eventually show up at the House – as played by Ali Larter, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher and Bridgette Wilson – aren’t the ones Stephen had invited either, though, for some mysterious force has changed the guest list yet again. It comes as no surprise to the audience when the guests, the Prices and the owner of the place (Chris Kattan) soon find themselves locked in the mansion by a neat mechanical lock-up device, nor that things will get rather dangerous for everyone involved.

It’s not just that Stephen has rigged up the house with all kinds of spooky contraptions so the guests have to work for their million, there are also quite real, and very nasty, ghosts to cope with, as well as a little murder conspiracy, and…the Darkness.

When it comes to remaking films, going for something like the great William Castle’s original House on Haunted Hill makes a lot of sense: it’s a well loved film to some – like me – but it’s not well-loved for being particularly artful, nor deep, nor complex, nor important to the development of genres or lives. Rather, it’s loved as an extremely fun example of the movie as carnival ride, made out of funny and sharp dialogue, some hokey yet great effects, Vincent Price, and Castle’s very distinctive impresario personality and all that it brought. Apart from Price, these are things a film in the late 90s could provide.

And while Geoffrey Rush certainly is no Vincent, his performance, which is about in equal parts a homage to Price and one to William Castle himself, is pretty damn fun. Particularly so in Rush’s scenes with a Janssen who clearly also gets the joke and enjoys herself.

I’m fond of director William Malone’s decision to set the film’s first half hour or so mainly up as an extended Castle homage, be it through the very Castle-like prominent billing of people like James Marsters and Jeffrey Combs who barely have cameos, or through the sheer insistence of Rush’s character on the sort of gimmickry and overcooked showmanship Castle loved so well.

Once that part of the film is over, things settle down to a competent horror romp through some very cool looking sets - mechanical gothic by way of art deco style in design –, hokey yet fun scares, and featuring a bit too much late 90s shock rock music video editing. The whole affair is scandalously lacking even a single moment of depth but fully delivers on all promises of cheap thrills. As a little extra, this House on Haunted Hill does also belong to the tiny minority of horror films whose shared main sympathetic character is a black man who even survives the movie.

Three Films Make A Post: His acting will kill you.

Taken 3 (2014): You gotta hand it to Luc Besson and director Olivier Megaton, they really went out of their way to make Liam Neeson’s third adventure as uninvolving as possible, with a plot as predictable as the sunrise, but much less interesting. On the positive side, this time around, Liam’s female movie relatives aren’t kidnapped. Too bad the film’s alternative is to kill off Famke Janssen and have someone attempt to frame Neeson for it. The expected series of mild action scenes, a bit of waterboarding, and random melodrama ensues with little that’s thrilling or interesting to watch. The formula has grown stale, and neither Besson nor Megaton seem to have any interest in finding something interesting to replace it with.

But hey, at least the words “IT ENDS HERE” are on the film’s poster.

Chastity Bites (2013): John V. Knowles’s “Liz Bathory visits an American small town campus while working in the pre-marital virginity business” horror comedy, might not have Liam Neeson, or all that much of a budget, but it’s lively and the fun and funny moments highly outnumber its annoying ones. Plus, while it’s not completely original, it’s a film clearly trying to look at the classic elements it uses from its own place in time and space, subverting what seems fitting while keeping others in place. Plus, leads Allison Scagliotti, Francia Raisa and Louise Griffiths are, quite unlike Neeson, clearly putting energy and enthusiasm into their performances. I’m not too fond of the film’s more satirical parts because they tend to be built on the thing I like least in comedy – turning the kinds and classes of people the comedy writer doesn’t like into stereotypes so as to have an easier time making fun of them without hitting that pesky empathy in an audience – but for more than its running time than not, this is a fine little horror comedy.

Some Dollars for Django aka Drango: A Bullet for You (1966): I would not have pegged Paul Naschy’s frequent partner León Klimovsky as a very good Paella Western director, but the film at hand, while certainly not in the top of the Euro Western genre class, is a perfectly entertaining little thing, well-paced and energetic - which might be explained by Enzo Castellari supposedly having had a hand in the direction, but I tend to be very careful when it comes to this sort of thing. The film belongs to that part of the European Westerns that skews more to the classic US model of how such a film has to play out – just with added dubious dubbing, a bit more violence and torture and a much better musical score, of course – and even concerns itself with two very clear redemption arcs for its main characters. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t reach the heights of the best US Westerns there but it’s still pretty entertaining as well as showing Anthony Steffen and Frank Wolff in a particularly good week, the former expressing more emotion than usual, the latter making the most of the opportunity to for once be a bit more of good guy.

Technorati-Markierungen: french movies,american movies,spanish movies,action,horror,comedy,spaghetti western,in short,olivier megaton,liam neeson,famke janssen,john v. knowles,allison scagliotti,francia raisa,louise griffiths,leon klimovsky,anthony steffen,frank wolff

In short: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)

Years after their well-known witch-related ordeal, Hansel and Gretel have grown up into two exceedingly attractive people with a thing for black leather (Gemma Arterton and Jeremy Renner, who both seem to have a lot of fun with their roles), and live out their hatred of witches by working as witch hunters for hire.

But don't worry, Gretel prefers a fact based hunting approach to the job, so innocents need not fear, as the film's first post-credit sequence proves by having our heroes save innocent (well, more or less) Mina (Pihla Viitala) from being burned at the stake, enraging the local Sheriff (Peter Stormare) in the process. Little do our heroes expect that beautiful Augsburg will have more than the usual amount of witch-napped children and a normal witch hunt for them, and will even reveal the secrets of their past to them.

Grand witch Muriel (Famke Janssen, eating scenery with the same relish you'd show eating a candy witch house before you realize there's a witch living in it) and a whole bunch of black metal band rejects have plans to brew some very special potions that will make them impervious to the witch's worst enemy, fire. They just need some very special ingredients. Let's hope our heroes and their arsenal of improbable weapons will be up to the task at hand.

Going into Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, a lot of critics seem to have expected to find a deep and profound work reflecting on the nature of humanity, or bourgeois life in not-17th century not-Germany, and were consequently deeply disappointed when they found these highly logical expectations confounded when they were instead confronted with what basically amounts to Van Helsing or Brothers Grimm, but not shit and reasonably short.

For me on the other hand, Hansel & Gretel is pretty much exactly what I expected of Dead Snow's director Tommy Wirkola, a man clearly talented when it comes fun, fast-paced nonsense (and lighting actresses). It's the sort of film that revels in its own (slightly gory) comic book silliness, and attempts to have at least one silly-but-cool idea that spits on the the laws of physics (stuffy old bastards) per scene. This, Wirkola achieves with a high degree of charm and efficiency, throwing silly witches, silly witch hunting techniques, and silly physics at his audience with a palpable sense of fun. But be warned: this is a movie, where witch house eating induced diabetes can become a real problem, so if that sort of thing pulls you out of the whole fairy-tale-punk mood, this is not the film for you.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is very good at being the carnival ride version of a movie, without feeling the need to apologize for it, nor ever forgetting the fact that the important thing about a carnival ride isn't just that it's loud and colourful, but that it's supposed to be fun.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,german movies,tommy wirkola,in short,action,fantasy,horror,jeremy renner,gemma arterton,famke janssen,pihla viitala

Three Films Make A Post: Rabid, Drug-Infested Hippies on a Blood-Crazed KILLING RAMPAGE!

The Possession (2012): I was warned by other reviews that Ole Bornedal's movie loses much of its quality during its finale, but for my tastes, the whole thing jumped the shark at about the fifty minute mark when Jeffrey Dean Morgan does his short experiment in DIY exorcism (is there a column about that in Maker Magazine?). At least that's the point when all the film's increasingly loud and dumb attempts at scaring the audience only produced increasingly annoyed eye-rolling anymore. It's a bit of a shame, too, for the film's beginning promises a decent, subtextually loaded piece of nuclear family in dismay (oh noes!) horror, some of the horror sequences show promise, and the acting is rather good throughout. Alas, the longer The Possession goes, the dumber it becomes, turning loud when it should be silent and pompous when it should be subtle. Or maybe I'm just growing too old to appreciate a movie shouting at me throughout its running time as "horror"?

Taken 2 (2012): Speaking of disappointments, Olivier Megaton's sequel to what just may be the best among Europa Corps's endless assembly line churn-out of action movies does not hold up to the standards of the first film. Somebody must have talked Luc Besson into toning the violence down, and now we have an action movie that often seems afraid to show much of the action, even in the extended cut. There's some theoretically interesting subtext about the film's bad guy - whatever his name is - and Liam Neeson's character being mirror images of each other, but in good old Besson fashion, the script wastes that potential in its insistence on having the bad guy still being cliché-evil. This wouldn't be so bad if the rest of the movie would make a better effort distracting the audience from the film's failings, but there's really not enough going on for that at all.

On the positive side, this time around Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace are allowed a bit more screen-time and personality, though of course no actual agency. I'd also wish these films would stop casting nearly thirty year old Grace as a seventeen year old girl (one assumes) with the mental development of a twelve year old, but that might be just me.

Henge (2011): I was quite a bit more impressed by Hajime Ohata's short-ish (53 minutes) movie about a man (Kazunori Aizawa) who starts transforming into a monster, which does change the marital relations to his wife (Aki Morita) in various ways. Elements of Cronenbergian body horror, Hellraiser and finally kaiju cinema come together in a movie strong enough to transcend Aizawa's indifferent performance and the dubious quality of its special effects. There's some true conviction behind the filmmaking here that is a beautiful antidote to the half-assed-ness of the other films I looked at today.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,french movies,japanese movies,in short,horror,thriller,kaiju,ole bornedal,jeffrey dean morgan,olivier megaton,liam neeson,famke janssen,maggie grace,hajime ohata