The most effective thrillers and horror films are the ones that place sympathetic characters in precarious situations and then make the audience watch helplessly as those characters do everything that the viewer would in order to survive. If we, as an audience are lucky – and the filmmaker is only trying to entertain us – then perhaps one or two of those characters emerge from the conflict alive. On the other hand, if the filmmaker is operating by a different set of rules or trying to deliver a distinct message with their film, then the audience might be in for a bit of a rough ride. This said, anyone familiar with the name Michael Haneke knows that by no means is he simply trying to entertain us: Haneke’s films are persistently polarizing, consistently challenging, and never forgiving – and his English-language remake of his own 1997 film Funny Games is as bleak, nihilistic, and as difficult to endure as the original.
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium: Zach Helm attempts to out-Gondry Michel Gondry in his G-rated directorial debut starring Dustin Hoffman.
Awake: What is something you will not be by the end of this movie?
Into the Wild: Emile Hirsch stars as a young man who decides to live in the Alaskan wilderness, presumably after seeing Awake and giving up on humanity.
Things We Lost in the Fire: Of the two 2007 Halle Berry movies that I’ve forgotten even exist, this is the one I’ve forgotten most. Except for the other one.
Inspired by the Kung Fu Flicks series I had previously posted about and still lamenting the lack of fun choices on Detroit area movie screens, yours truly has partnered with Synapse Films and the Emagine Theaters to cook up a mondo bizarro movie series that is absolutely guaranteed to overload your cerebral cortex with some of the most outrageous cult films ever produced!
Every Thursday evening in April, Detroit area moviegoers are invited to come out to the Novi Emagine and experience the seedier side of cinema as we present a series of $7 double features featuring everything from punk rock zombies and flesh-eating schoolgirls to alien parasites, demonic heavy metal bands, debauched detectives, and gore drenched winos!
Gone Baby Gone: Ben Affleck directs Casey Affleck in this well-received drama that I can only assume was scored by Ulysses Affleck and catered by Geppetto Affleck.
Martian Child: If you loved K-Pax, then this one is for you, Mrs. Spacey.
We Own the Night: Probably the closest I’ll ever get to realizing my dream of watching Marky Mark of the Funky Bunch duet with Johnny Cash.
The Brave One: Jodie Foster stars as a vigilante bent on avenging her boyfriend’s death in this film that John Hinckley Jr. gave “two thumbs way up!”
2 Days in Paris: Actor/director Julie Delpy’s indie romantic-comedy was warmly received by critics, but disappointed theatergoers who mistook it for a sequel to One Night in Paris.
The Ten Commandments: At long last, the cross-section of animated religious epic aficionados and Christian Slater fanatics has a movie to call their own.
Just last week I stared at a standee for M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming thriller The Happening and wondered just when the heck 20th Century Fox was going to unleash a sneak peek at this bad boy — well, wonder no more, for the teaser has finally hit and it is good. The flick follows a father (Mark Wahlberg) and son that embark on a frantic journey to outrun a mysterious airborn virus. This is the first time that Shyamalan has dipped his foot into the R-rated game, so expect some dark material both thematically as well as viscerally. The Happening opens on June 13th and co-stars Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo.
A captivating tale of psychological torment from Night Tide director Curtis Harrington, The Killing Kind has gone largely unseen due to a bungled distribution deal that found it screening in a handful of small southern theaters before being quietly locked away in a Hollywood vault - it’s quite a shame, too, considering this tense little thriller features a smart script from screenwriters Tony Crechales and George Edwards, and a pair of powerhouse performances by John Savage and Ann Southern. Cast as a mother and son whose twisted relationship ultimately turns tragic, Savage and Southern play off one another beautifully; their ambiguously incestuous, eerily symbiotic relationship steadily building steam like a broken pressure cooker of dysfunction set on high, and ready to blow at any second. Watching the film, this viewer couldn’t help but feeling that it shared quite a bit in common (both tonally and thematically) with Bob Clark’s masterful 1974 anti-war frightener Deathdream. Not only did the two films make their original premieres within a mere year of one another, but they both explore the complex family dynamics experienced by young men returning home after a particularly traumatic experience (the Vietnam War in Deathdream, and a forced rape that resulted in an extended prison sentence in The Killing Kind), while highlighting that there’s no easy exit once one has been subjected to such profound psychological torment. The chilling final scenes in both films - each providing a key moment of realization between mother and son - are striking similarity as well.
Film lovers curious to see how Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Key to Reserva” may have turned out had the Master of Suspense lived to see his vision realized are advised to check out this compelling film experiment for in which Martin Scorsese uses pages from an incomplete script to shoot the story exactly as he believes Hitchcock himself would have.
It’s a curious approach to film preservation in the form of a classy wine commercial, and it’s bound to fascinate fans of both filmmakers.
Few endings in recent memory have stirred quite as many gut reactions as the one in No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Cohen’s brilliant meditation on… well, what were they getting at exactly? While many critics are keen to spout their own educated opinions on the matter, the fact remains that there might not even be an answer for this controversial lightning rod of a closer. And though this reviewer is more than happy to continue to ponder the film’s final act, the real joy is to see the great film debate renewed once again. Case in point, the comment board on Jeffrey Wells’ recent Hollywood Elsewhere post, where parties on all sides weigh in with their highly opinionated thoughts on the matter. It goes without saying that those who haven’t seen the movie should sway away from the discussion, but for those that have, it’s become a fascinating forum for film fans on both sides of the argument to share their thoughts. Readers looking to delve further into the rabbit hole best check out Premiere’s thoughts on the matter, as it includes a bit more novel-to-screen comparisons as well as a conclusion that should aggravate confused moviegoers even more. To this, I say – what a great time to be a movie lover!
While the cineplexes are beginning to fill with some of the year’s better films, it’s pretty slim pickings on home video this week. Here are some highlights of what’s hitting stores today:
Bratz: Yes, it was universally panned and tanked at the box-office, but at least they didn’t try to give the live-action versions of the characters those giant heads.
Waitress: If you missed the late Adrienne Shelly’s final film in theaters, now’s your chance to catch one of the year’s best-reviewed romantic comedies.
Hot Rod: To call it one of the best SNL-fueled movies in years isn’t saying much, but Andy Samberg’s admittedly uneven starring debut is funny more often than it isn’t. Think of it as a more coherent Freddy Got Fingered. I’ll let you decide if that’s good or bad.
Who’s Your Caddy?: This movie got a wide theatrical release. You’re likely laughing more now than you will throughout all of Who’s Your Caddy’s 93 minutes.
No Country for Old Men, the darkest, bleakest film yet by Joel and Ethan Coen, manages to be both an unsettling thriller and a statement of great concern for the future. As has always been the case with Joel and Ethan’s work, the movie is cast to perfection. Javier Bardem’s personification of psychotic evil fills the screen with an unflinching power — it’s as impossible for the audience to look away from him as it is for his victims to get away from him. Josh Brolin plays the Vietnam veteran who kick-starts the plot with a perfect mix of practicality, durability, and quiet desperation. You can believe he’s seen enough horrible things during his years in the military that he’s willing to go toe-to-toe with someone as malignantly evil as Bardem’s remorseless killer. As Brolin’s wife, Kelly MacDonald serves up a vivid, tragic character with very little screen time. Tommy Lee Jones centers the film as a Texas sheriff who notes early on that the old-timers never even wore a gun on the job. He longs for a time like that, and although he is a man not prone to emotional displays, his recognition of the horrors he sees registers in unmistakable ways.
The Coens build the tension like the masters that they are, often going minutes without any dialogue. What sets this film apart from their others is the refusal to let their comedic impulses temper the material. As always, they get chuckles out of the Texas patois, and there are characters on the fringe who stick in the memory because of their distinct speaking patterns. However none of the levity breaks from the remarkably serious intentions or tone. The one scene Kelly MacDonald shares with Bardem echoes the final confrontation between Frances McDormand and Peter Stormare in Fargo. But where that film offered some hope, some sense that there is an essential rightness in the world worth preserving, No Country is about the world we know coming to an end. Those expecting a pure genre film may be taken aback by the final act, especially since the first 100 minutes rank as an expert thriller. Consisting primarily of extended dialogue scenes, save for one last shocking act of violence, the closing passages of the film underline that themes that Jones’ character lays out in the movie’s opening voice-over. In Fargo, Margie grieved because she realized not everyone has the simple decency not to kill. No Country for Old Men is an expression of mourning for a world that seems to have lost any semblance of decency or order.
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Here’s a sampling of the new titles hitting DVD shelves today:
While the cineplexes are beginning to fill with some of the year’s better films, it’s pretty slim pickings on home video this week. Here are some highlights of what’s hitting stores today:
