Dark Skies review

                 Horror movies always seem to work in 2-5 year trends in popularity. No matter what form they come in, they always have an audience and it’s been a persisting genre through the decades. However in order to survive, horror has to shift and move around with the public’s current phobias. It would seem that the bump-in-the-night, haunted house chiller is the prevailing trend currently, with the recent success of films such as “Paranormal Activity”, “Sinister”, “Mama”, and “Insidious”. Launched from the same wheel-house, we now have “Dark Skies”, another slow building, scare teasing, spine-tingler. While this film may look and feel suspiciously similar to those aforementioned movies, this one tweaks with the sub-genre a little by changing the supernatural terror from an ancient apparition into something more intergalactic.

                Josh Hamilton and Kerri Russell play Daniel and Lacey Barrett, two suburban parents who are suffering from financial strains. Daniel is an out of work architect, hoping a land a new job before the mortgage has to be paid, and Lacey is a underselling real estate agent. Together they are raising two boys; a 13 year old who is discovering girls and rebellion, and a 6 year old who has an overactive imagination that keeps him up at night. While their lives are already in disarray, they begin to have visitations by an eerie presence that rearranges the items in their kitchen, brings flocks of kamikaze birds to their house, and leaves incriminating marks and bruises on their children. Even worse, all of the members of the family find themselves losing hours at a time in strange mid-day blackouts. Together, Hamilton and Russell have to put their marital and financial stresses on the back burners while they figure out what’s going on and how to keep their children protected.

                While “Dark Skies” is certainly not a remarkable film I found that it to be perfectly serviceable.  It knows how to thoughtfully build tension and it surprisingly rounds out the family dynamics of the main characters, drawing the audience into the dread more effectively. All of these bare-minimum positives are made all the more exceptional by the fact that this movie was written and directed by Scott Stewart, the man responsible for “Legion” and “Priest”; two of the most brain-numbing arguments for why we should expect so little from mid-winter, theatrical releases.  But even if “Dark Skies” barely peaks its eyes over mediocre, if we are grading on a curve against Stewart’s other films, this production shows massive growth, maturity, and surprising restraint.

                Is there anything here you haven’t seen before? I doubt it.  The horror tropes are all familiar; including, slowly inspecting the hallways with a flashlight to investigate a noise [check], creepy kid making creepy drawings of his new “imaginary friends” [check], items in the house being misplaced or broken in a loud or obtrusive manner [check], capturing unsettling imagery and/or blurry figures in a cheap-looking security camera recording [check]. The very idea of paralleling suburban family problems with an outside supernatural force is, in itself, something of a cliché, but even if it’s a song we have all heard a million times, this movie sings it pretty well.  It’s paced competently and the screenplay isn’t overloaded or unwieldy. Also, by trading in traditional ghosts for something more ubiquitous it cleverly solves that haunted-house problem of “why don’t they just move”.

                “Dark Skies” is a completely inoffensive offering.  I wouldn’t call it memorable and it probably isn’t scary enough, but it’s tightly made and all its gears are moving like they should. While, I can’t help but notice how this movie continually pales in comparison to it’s obvious influences (“Poltergeist”, “The Amityville Horror”, “Signs”, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” etc..) it doesn’t outstay it’s welcome and it succeeds  in inspiring the nervous nibbling of your popcorn.  

Grade: C+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/March-2013

Beautiful Creatures review

 

               It is with my head hung low that we now live in a world where the phrase “Post-Twilight” is a legitimate and descriptive genre qualifier. Ever since those sparkly mopes have hit the shelves of Barns and Nobel, with their peculiar brand of preteen chastity-porn, or graced our screens with their anemic pouting, we have seen a hailstorm of young-adult, paranormal romance, both in film and literature. Some have been very, very bad (“Red Riding Hood”) and some have been moderately acceptable (“Warm Bodies”).  While the formula set for this demographic may be achingly evident, I have to say that “Beautiful Creatures” was surprisingly tolerable.

                Not unlike “Twilight”, this story centers on a young romance between a small town outsider and a supernatural outcast, although in this we have a gender reversal. Alden Ehrenreich plays Ethan Wate, a literate pseudo-beatnik in a small southern town ruled by the ignorant minds of religious zealots. To rebel against his peers he reads banned books like “Slaughterhouse Five” and “On the Road”, all while remaining somewhat popular because of his dashing good looks. When he meets the new-girl, Lena (Alice Englert), he is then further ostracized because everyone suspects her family of being Satanists—it turns out, their just witches (or Casters, as they prefer). Some of them are good like her uncle (Jeremy Irons) and some of them are evil like her mother (Emma Thompson). With her 16^th birthday is coming up, she is set to be put on a path of good or evil by the moon of the winter solstice. Making things worse, a dark prophecy says that if she falls in love with a mortal, she be swingin closer to the dark side.

                I know what you’re thinking...

                “Yay, it sounds like “Twilight” AND “Harry Potter”. SQUEEEEE!!!”

                No. Not YOU.  I’m talking to the grumpy alternative kid behind you. You’re thinking, “Yuck, it sounds like “Twilight AND “Harry Potter”. Booooo!” And to you I say yes, yes it does. But hear me out when I say, despite everything that fails in this movie, I was genuinely charmed (no pun intended) by much of it. The two lead characters are pretty well drawn and I found the actors who play them to be both charismatic and likable.  They have interesting conversations, they have their minds on higher activities (college, destiny, literature), and unlike the vegan vamps in those other movies, they don’t frump around and feel sorry for themselves; they have a sense of humor and they take action when they need to.  I liked these kids and I rooted for them.

                While I could have sat back and watched an amiable little romantic comedy about these two teens thumbing their intellectual noses at the luddites in their town, eventually its plot had to start. After the forty minute mark, the exposition train pulls into the station and that’s things start to fall apart. We get hammy performances from otherwise-talented, Hollywood vets—Jeremy Irons turning in a pathetically inept, muddled, southern accent, and Emma Thompson in a sad state of scene-devouring hysteria—prophecies have to be fulfilled, shoddy CGI begins to fill every frame and the two main characters (that are frankly better than this movie) are dragged from one fantasy cliché to another, until they have to arrive at their eventual, sub-Potter, magical showdown. 

                Okay, so at best “Beautiful Creatures” is a mixed bag and its highs and really high and its lows are really low. Because I am the type of person who is more interested in characters than I am plot, I could wade through the cheesy supernatural romance stuff for those warm moments of catchy dialogue and it’s surprisingly progressive message about taking control of your own destiny. Regrettably, because of what it is, it can never be great, but even with so much stacked against it (and that stuff is considerable)I felt sorry for the good movie at its first day of school, embarrassingly trying and fit into its awkward genre clothes. 

Grade: C 

Originally Published in The Basic Alternative/March-2013

A Good Day to Die Hard review

                 Apparently it’s a bad day to ‘Die Hard’. There, I did it. I made the obvious pun, and you know what, I don’t feel at all bad about it. I say, if the people responsible for this film are so lazy that they can’t bother to come up with an actually story for their fifth-coming sequel to this beloved American franchise, then I shouldn’t feel too bad about reducing their cynical output into a simplistic blurb. In case you were wondering, I didn’t really care for “A Good Day to Die Hard”.

                In 1988, when the original “Die Hard” was release, Bruce Willis wasn’t seen as a muscle-bound action hero like his contemporaries Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The character of John McClane was relatively normal looking, unsure of himself and he wasn’t invincible, but he got the job done and cracked wise while he did it. It was a refreshing nudge towards realism—or at least relatability— in action cinema and the genre was changed for the better because of it. Now, 25 years later, when this franchise has been so disconnected from its origins, the “Die Hard” brand has morphed into something else altogether. 

                Bruce Willis returns as McClane, who is looking a bit older and is a little bit more embittered with the world at large. When he hears that his son Jack (Jai Courtney) is in some trouble in Moscow Russia, he decides to go down and sort things out himself. Later, he finds out that Jack is actually a CIA operative and by trying to save him from some Russian terrorists he accidentally blows his son’s secret mission. Together they have to try and salvage the assignment and stop a generic missile heist.

                From the first few minutes on, this film thrusts you into the ultra-violence and for the entirety of its running time it barely lets up. Once the momentum of its kinetic destruction starts, almost nothing can get in its way; including character development, ample motivations, or a sense of establishing a clear setting. Did the movie need to be set in Russia? No. Did it have a good reason to include Jack McClane? Not really. Did it have any need to connect with the “Die Hard” series at all? I can’t say that it did.   

                Rather than getting angry at how hollow this experience was, I am more just disappointed by what a wasted opportunity this is for everyone involved. With that said, it’s not that it’s excruciating to sit through, as it is just tediously one-note.  Unlike its 80’s predecessor, it doesn’t test the endurance of its male protagonist by purposely throwing a normal dude into ridiculous situations and seeing how he deals with it. Instead Bruce’s presence is incidental, as this new addition just fetishizes the design of an action set-piece and how tightly it can be edited. Though some of those massive scenes of devastation and demolition are impressively manufactured, in the context of this movie, they serve no real purpose to what little plot there is or raise any interesting stakes for its characters.

                I guess I will give “A Good Day to Die Hard” some props for its tenacity and its energy. However, even as the bass of the house-speakers were rumbling and the screen was blasting forth another shoot out, or a car flipping over, or something else blowing up, in my head I constantly found myself editing my shopping list or preparing my evening, due to how profoundly unengaged I was. Where the first film (and some of its better copycats) drew the audience in through a sneaky sense of humanistic inclusiveness, this film waves it’s arms, barks and squeals so persistently that it unintentionally shuts out the viewer.

Grade: D+  

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Feb-2013

Side Effects review

                “Side Effects” marks the (supposed) last theatrical output by the commercially and critically popular director, Steven Soderbergh (“Ocean’s Eleven”, “Traffic”, “Sex Lies and Videotape”).  Though he has been threatening his departure for over two years now, his creative flame seems to be burning brighter before it goes it out.  Between September 2011 and now he has released four very different films that have one similar interest; taking on low-brow, genre material and classing it up in that cool, laid-back and somewhat-detached Soderberghian way.

                With “Contagion” he turned a traditional disaster movie into a sociological allegory about how the media and governments deal with international catastrophe. Likewise, “Magic Mike” tricked many ladies into the theater with the promise of sleazy male beefcake, but instead gave them a downbeat movie about the current economic crisis. “Side Effects”, his latest film, seems to reverse this trend by setting up the groundwork for a politically taut, procedural deconstruction of Big Pharma, but lurking within the picture is a unabashedly twisted B-movie—and I mean that in a good way.

                The movie begins by introducing us into the troubled mind of Emily Taylor (Roony Mara) as she begins to suffer from severe depression after her husband (Channing Tatum) is released from prison for insider trading. When she seeks the counsel of a court-ordered shrink named Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), she is then prescribed a new, experimental antidepressant called Ablixa. At first everything seems fine, until she begins act out in strange episodes of sleep walking and random violence that she has no recollection of. After a particularly bad incident she’s put into psychological observation and the negative media attention is pointed towards Dr. Banks, since he prescribed the drug without knowing the details of its side effects…Or that’s what the movie would lead you to believe it’s about.

                This is a somewhat difficult movie to review because so much of its joy is predicated on its twisting and shifting plot.  Every time you think you know where the story is going or you think you know what kind of movie you’re watching, it deflects your expectations and throws another strange flavor into the stew.  The first half of the film establishes it’s characters masterfully and the joint narrative seems to be split right down the middle, bouncing back and forth from the complicated perspectives of Roony and Jude—both giving one of their best performances yet.  When things start to complicate and the pressure starts to build, these characters begin to act out of their predictable state and the stakes are raised into a feverishly entertaining frenzy.

                “Side Effects” essentially gives you two movies; one that’s really intelligent and slick but seems to lack a sense of cinematic immediacy and one that’s wild and pulpy but isn’t very smart. Depending on your disposition, these two flawed halves will either cancel each other out or blend to make a better whole. Coming out of the theater I might have thought it was the first thing but after days of reflection I feel a little closer to latter.  Nevertheless it’s a well-made, well-acted, interesting throw back to something like the RKO noirs of the 40’s, Hitchcock’s wrong-man mysteries of the 50’s and 60’s or even the sex-thrillers that Joe Eszterhas (“Basic Instinct”, “Jade”)  would have written in the late 80’s and early 90’s. What I mean to say is it’s the type of movie you don’t see any more and though it isn’t as ambiguous as it originally suggests or as subtle as I might have preferred, I could definitely appreciate the slow-building madness of its intentions.

Grade: B

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Feb-2013

Warm Bodies review

                With the rise of horror ideas and monster icons in teenage mainstream media, it might look like horror as a genre is finally crawling out of its niche markets. Vampires, werewolves, slasher killers and now zombies have officially been placed, center stage into the tween zeitgeist.  But is it the mainstream that has changed to comfortably enter this morbid world or has horror been watered down and muted to fit into something more conventional? After all, we now have vampires who won’t kill to drink blood, buff, shirtless, werewolf heartthrobs, a serial killer who only kills the “bad guys”, and with Jonathan Lavine’s newest feature, “Warm Bodies”, we are introduced to a restrained, misunderstood zombie, with an extraordinary sense of self control.

                Nicholas Hoult plays a zombie named R, who lives amidst the end of civilization, after an infection kills most of human society, leaving only a few camps of gun-toting survivors.  When he and a horde of his shuffling, corpse companions attack a nearby base, R finds himself unexpectedly falling for the affections of a young, blonde girl named Julia (Teresa Palmer). Just after devouring her boyfriend, he then decides to protect her until he can manage his newly rekindled feelings and guide her to safety. Things get more complicated when a feral, skeleton army—known as the bonies—catches wind of their love, and they won’t have it. What’s worse is Julia’s militantly anti-zombie father (John Malcovich) can’t understand their adorable necrophilia either.

                I didn’t hate this movie but honestly that’s the best thing I can say about “Warm Bodies”. Structurally and technically I can’t fault the film too much. The direction is good, the effects are believable, the acting is actually solid, the pacing is efficient, and the soundtrack is pretty groovy. So why is it that I couldn’t help but be annoyed through most of it?

                When dealing with fictional creations like monsters and zombies, one’s allowed to change things a bit and riff on old tropes, as long as they don’t fundamentally alter the mythology beyond recognition.  If we are able to accept the rising dead as flesh eaters, why shouldn’t we accept that they could fall in love? For that matter, if we can accept that they can fall in love, why shouldn’t we accept that they don’t need to feed on human flesh anymore, or why shouldn’t they be able to talk fluently, or why shouldn’t they have a preference for vinyl records instead of digital music..? Are you catching my drift yet? 

                Also, let’s discuss these “bonies”: they’re malevolent, they run on instinct alone, they hunt in packs and they are dangerous; in other words, they're zombies!  I find their placement in this story to be very telling of the thematic problems that peppers the entire script. Because the writers have worked so hard to strip away the horror element of what a zombie is and does, they’ve contrived an uber-monster to put the danger component back into the fold. I say, why fix something that isn’t broken? Wouldn’t it be more exciting if R could kill and eat Julia at any moment? What if her instincts were wrong? What if their love was made more complicated because of R’s natural zombie hunger? Unfortunately, this movie isn’t concerned with anything too complicated.

                I know that I am probably not the demographic for this thing and I can appreciate that. Considering “Warm Bodies” is basically a post-twilight iteration of George A. Romero’s post-apocalypse, Jonathan Levine’s confident direction and Nick Hoult’s expressive performance almost elevates the obnoxiously hip and precious material to tolerable levels. Gothy, Hot-Topic-shopping, teens will surely go bananas, but I can’t help but feel that everyone involved in this production doesn’t have the respectable interest or even a general appreciation for the genre they are trying to subvert.

Grade: C-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Feb-2013