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Movie Reviews

Twists, Turns and Dead Ends: Orphan, A Perfect Getaway, The Uninvited

by Dustin Freeley on January 13, 2010 · 0 comments

Orphan

I’m a bit disappointed about how much I enjoyed this film — I hated the reboot of House of Wax and categorize most recent horror/suspense/thriller-type movies as bits of films that have been recycled and placed over snippets of Dvorak opera. However, the acting in Orphan is quite solid as Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgarrd hold their own.  Also, kudos to the ten-year old Isabelle Fuhrman for showing some true acting chops.  She’s not merely the focus of quick-cut-showing scowls; she’s emotive, makes use of subtle facial nuances and dons a consistent accent. (You could learn something from this, DiCaprio).  Plus, this all makes her far creepier than either waifish Olsen Twin. (Note: This image has not been Photoshopped)

In the end, I think I like the movie for what it is — it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but, I’m not positive; it’s about a half-hour too long and provides a clichéd evil character without an adequate rise of dementia, which again ties in to the length of the movie. An overt, evil character is fine for a ninety minute vehicle, but when a movie crosses 120 minutes, there needs to be some sort of development; instead, Orphan often resembles 1993′s The Good Son (a flick where post-Home Alone/Pre-obscurity Macaulay Culkin tries numerous times to kill the prepubescent Frodo), falling short of emulating The Omen — the original, not the diluted remake.

One thing I will credit the film with is a decent twist.  Full disclosure: I knew the twist before I saw the film On Demand, which is one reason I didn’t want to see it in the theaters.  However, I was expecting some sort of crescendo where Esther is captured by police officers or dog catchers, or something right before a long-winded exposition during the last thirty seconds of the film from a doctor to the happy couple who hold each other tightly while comforting the other’s suspicion that they are terrible parents for letting a demon into their home.

Something like this:

DOCTOR
Russian. Midget. Hooker.

HAPPY COUPLE (simultaneously)
Noooo!  How could we?

They embrace

Quick cut to Esther chained up like veal, writhing but pathetically, and then back to the couple

WOMAN (weeping)
I blame myself.

MAN
Don’t blame yourself. I should have seen it.
She wanted to blow me.

DOCTOR
Yeah. They’ll do that.

WOMAN
But she looks so young.

MAN
Midgets don’t age.

DOCTOR
It’s science. You couldn’t have known.

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to see how the twist unfolded and (most of) the carnage that came after.

DYL MAG Score: 7

The Uninvited

Have we reached the point that twists have gone far beyond predictability and have circled around to nonsensical and unnecessary?  If you have seen The Uninvited the answer is “yes.” Even amidst the pedestrian scare tactics of the film, choreographed red herrings, and glacial pace of the storytelling, the last twist-revealing five minutes are the most simultaneously exciting and, well, silly.

A twist plays on the viewer’s conception of the story that has been presented and then alters it.  Often, there is a need to rewind the flick and investigate lines that were delivered to see if there is a double entendre or ambiguous suggestion (a la Fight Club, Scream, or even the recent A Perfect Getaway).

In The Uninvited, the twist is a virtual refashioning of the story; it seems that each and every bit of dialogue never happened, and the facts of the story from the first 80 minutes are fabricated — particularly the preternatural premonitions that Anna has. Each ghoul or goblin she sees points, literally, to Rachel (Elizabeth Banks) as the killer.

Fine. Anna is delusional and has anger issues. I get it, but nothing throughout the film hints that this twist is plausible. (Except everyone says she’s crazy, which makes the twists a bit lamer.)  This tactic actually elides the joy of a twist: learning it and then going “oh yeah! How did I miss that?”  The Uninvited offers none of this.  There are no clever camera tricks that create ambiguity; there are no intimated lines that could be inferred differently.  The Uninvited merely rearranges the story it has told and leaves you wondering if Shutter would have been a better choice to waste 90 minutes.  (It wouldn’t have been; together, they would have made you believe you sat through The English Patient.)

DYL MAG Score: 4.5 (actually more tepid than hot)

A Perfect Getaway

One 2009 film that pulls of the failed coup from The Uninvited is A Perfect Getaway.  This movie isn’t great; the acting is mediocre and the dialogue vacillates from campy to expository to clever, but it’s a fun ride — particularly because the characters in the film intentionally give off the vibe that they know they are part of a horror movie.  At times, Cliff (Steve Zahn) and Nick (Timothy Olyphant) talk about the typical structure for films, where a twist comes in the second act just before the climax or the need to establish red herrings to keep the audience on their toes.  Sticking to protocol, both of these tropes occur in the movie, though amidst the intentionally silly red herrings (goatee + tattoos = murderer), the film cleverly masks ambiguous dialogue that is later discovered to be the opposite of what a viewer would infer — thus, the “oh, yeah!” moment.

Similarly, the pair of serial killers is hiding among four couples.  While suspicions run high about and within each pair, there is plenty of intimate dialogue while the viewer sees opposite pairs sitting silently in the background.  This actually becomes a key to the tale’s re-imagining during the last forty minutes of the film.

In the end, the film is still a bit of a roller coaster, but at least it stays on the tracks.

DYL MAG Score: 6

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Movie Reviews: Mythology in Daybreakers (plus, a shot at Twilight)

by Dustin Freeley on January 10, 2010 · 1 comment

The vampire mythology fascinates me.  Zombies get a bad rap because their pallid skin is usually bruised and covered in sores; they lack coordination and an adequate vocabulary beyond the oft-repeated “braaaiiins,” meander wildly from side to side and often have entrails hanging from their incisors.  They can’t really be blamed for this affliction — everyone goes a little mad sometimes.  Werewolves suffer a similar stigma.  Although they move gracefully and fluidly, any compassion locked within is overshadowed by drool-glistening fangs, a full-body coiffure of fur, and a pension for hunting chickens and baying at the moon.

Vampires on the other hand represent a marriage of villainy and beauty — not simply immortal and doomed to pine on the Earth forever, vampires perpetually wear the visage of beatific youth to transcend generations by assimilating into the privileged bourgeoisie.  They maintain a nightlife that twenty-somethings revel in and forty-somethings use as nostalgic fodder.   Moreover, their sole function is to seduce — not for love, but for survival: one that consists of consuming and relishing in the most poignant moments of each decade.

Imagine being thirty years old for the last century — privy to the development of the American economy, the birth of two world wars, two wars in Asia, the Civil Rights Movement, the liberation of India, and the destruction of the World Trade Center without ever being dismissed as too young or out-of-touch. Vampires are the voyeurs of civilization; yet, they are isolated and unable to foster an emotional connection that is not superseded by the need to survive.

This is where Twilight falls short of the mythology: it negates the inherent isolation and mingles the plight with clichéd romance.  If Edward has learned to feed off animal blood, then the worry that he will drink Bella’s blood is less a plight and more a forced storyline. Plus, allowing Twilight’s undead to venture out in daylight negates the isolating darkness that vampires must seek; thus, what’s the danger aside from UV rays? Where is the plight? In other words, Twilight is more like the Marilyn Manson and Evan Rachel Wood-biopic (he might bite her; she’s okay with it; CGI the werewolf).

Daybreakers deviates from this recent glut of vampire- media and mingles the vampire mythology with the social discourse of Darwinian evolution.  Overall, the premise is astute and shows a wealth of promise.  In addition, the first hour of the movie fosters an eeriness that emits isolation, using direct sound (a wine glass set down on marble counter tops, heavy feet climbing up stairs, flesh splattering against a window, or the sound of scalpel hitting a surgical tray) to score the film. Similarly, Daybreakers relies on cold blues and greens to accentuate the gray-hued palate.  The experience is creepy and doesn’t set you up for cheep screams like House of Wax or Shutter.

In 2019, virtually everyone is a vampire, and the blood supply has nearly vanished — most animals have been consumed (except bats — turns out vampires aren’t cannibals; would you eat a monkey?), and the existent humans are either vigilantes being hunted by the vampire Army or being farmed like delicious baby cattle so that their blood can be harvested.  Most impressively, the mass transformation from human to vampire is diplomatically conveyed — Charles Bromley (Sam Neil) views his transformation as a blessing that prevented him from dying of cancer; likewise, Frankie Dalton turns his brother Edward (Ethan Hawke) so that neither will ever have to watch the other perish.  On the other hand, Edward resents his transformation because he is unable to disassociate himself from the humans that the vampires must farm and consume.  Disturbed by this focus on hunting and harvesting humans, Edward becomes a hematologist whose goal is to develop a blood substitute.

While Daybreakers offers the benefit and plight of vampirism, it also solidly presents a moral conflict.  Edward searches for a blood substitute to propagate a human/vampire coexistence, but the inherent problem in this coexistence is that the blood substitute becomes unnecessary if humans are available, which happen to be the prefered sources of vitamin B and iron for vampires.   The introduction of Elvis Cormac (Willem Defoe), a former vampire whose humanness was restored through a freak accident, becomes the impetus for Edward’s quest for a cure.

However, this is where the film becomes a bit confused.  The story is consistent throughout, but the last forty minutes of the film feels as if the writers/directors said, “Hey, let’s make sure there’s some carnage in this film.”  I am far from being against carnage, but the silent, desolate imagery that charged the beginning of the film transition to melodramatic, slow-motion blood-letting — particularly the Trail-of-Tears-style scene where blood-starved, mutated vampires are yoked to one another and dragged out into the sunlight, burning and falling to piles of ash on the pavement.  Could have been a powerful scene and parallel to the opening scene where a young female vampire holds a suicide note and waits patiently for the sun to crest the tops of distant trees; instead, it becomes a bit sappy.

In the end, the Spierig brothers (co-writers and directors) revisit the original mythology when the Eden of a mutual existence is rendered improbable given the need to consume in order to survive. Thus, as select vampires are turned back into humans, they become immediate buffets of juicy intestines and tender livers for the blood-deprived vampires.  Perhaps the Thunderbird that escapes the carnage and drives toward the sun-drenched dessert that lies at the horizon portends a sequel; though, Daybreakers is a fine extension of the mythology that doesn’t require closure. (Unless the directors decide to do an Alien vs. Predator-style venture where the vampires from Daybreakers feast on the pasty, whiney, Twilight brood).  Dear Santa,

DYL Mag Score: 7

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Movie Reviews: All That is Solid Melts Up in the Air

by Dustin Freeley on January 9, 2010 · 0 comments

Thus far, Jason Reitman is three for three and has managed to make the dramedy relevant again.  In Thank You For Smoking and Juno, Reitman tackles the tobacco industry and teenage pregnancy without beating the audience over the head with the righteous stick or presenting epiphanies that change the characters from concrete villains to saccharine heroes.  His characters are flawed, and thus, they are human.

Up in the Air’s Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is no different.  In the court of public opinion, his job would probably be branded ignoble — traveling around the country firing people for companies who do not have the heart (or courage) to wield the axe.  Reitman’s timing couldn’t be more perfect given that the unemployment rate in this country is hovering around ten percent; as such, Up in the Air offers a commentary on the nobility of big business in general.  Since fifty to sixty hours a week spent with any group of people is often more than is spent awake with family denoted by blood, why wouldn’t employers be imagined as an avuncular extended family?  Bingham’s position exposes this illusion and fashions employees as cogs in a machine that are expendable and replaceable, which is not necessarily original, and is really a refashioning of Marx’s notion of mechanized workers.

Refreshingly, Bingham is not a cold-hearted hangman; instead, he understands the emotional severity of his position and genuinely attempts to council each “let-go” employee onto a path of re-birth that evades self-destruction and depression.  In other words, he masks the callowness of the company with genuine sympathy, which simultaneously connects him with the audience.

Moreover, Bingham lives a life that outwardly avoids compartmentalization and represents an unbound, free existence.  While he has a home — one that he lives in forty days a year and is empty with the exception of a refrigerator stocked with Jim Beam-airplane bottles — his key ring consists of dozens of hotel keycards that unlock a myriad of more familiar front doors.  Likewise, the families that others propagate are replaced by airline associates, stewardesses (or are they flight attendants now?), and hotel clerks who are prompted to greet Ryan with a welcoming smile.  Bingham is entirely mobile and never has to feel settled or grounded.  The baggage he carries is literal and carry-on (it saves thirty minutes a trip and one full week a year; also, you should always stand behind the Asians when waiting to be screened) — he is even a public speaker who addresses the benefits of avoiding relationships because they serve to weigh you down.

At the same time, Up in the Air explores the dichotomy of this freedom in that it also fosters isolation. Bingham has no real connection with anyone aside from those who check his tickets and offer him more miles toward “the number he has in mind that [he] hasn’t reached yet.”  When he finally allows himself to connect with a Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), a woman whom he sees as his undulating equal, the relationship is destined to fail because for her, Bingham is an escape from the socially-impelled reality that she has set up for herself in Chicago.

The opening credits offer a view from the cockpit of an airplane, interspersed are shots of the ground below; from twenty-thousand feet we glimpse farms and tract housing, all compartmentalized by roads and street— paths impelled by and for the purpose of commerce.  From the beginning, Reitman subtly questions whether or not Bingham’s life differs from our own.  How secure are we in the relationships we establish?  Are we fooling ourselves into believing in the security that a job and family imply?  Does family provide collective security or individual security—is family equivalent to a familiar place to store one’s toothbrush?  Finally, while Bingham is illustrated as a compartmentalized individualist, how collectivized are we who watch him?

If I were my shrink, I would suggest that asking questions is a similar way in which I avoid facing difficult and potentially discomforting answers.  And perhaps this is what Reitman intends.  He doesn’t augur the end of civilization; we are not all doomed to become automatons.  Though, it’s difficult to watch this film without appreciating our individual sources of security while envying Bingham’s freedom — even if it is illusory. Up in the Air leaves us flying in the same cockpit, gazing on a cloud-paved horizon, sailing serenely in a vacuum.

DYL MAG Score: 8

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Movie Review: Avatar’s Visuals and Venial Sins

by Dustin Freeley on January 3, 2010 · 1 comment

Possibly the most beautiful movie I have ever seen, Avatar is visually stunning and a revolution of filmmaking.  The 3-D technology that director James Cameron employs is flawless, but the greatest feat that Cameron has pulled off is eradicating the line between humans and their animated counterparts.  In recent years, Pixar has released some of the most visually enthralling and entertaining animated films (Up, The Incredibles, Wall-E), and this praise is well-deserved in that the stories are solid and immerse the viewer in a world of fantasy.  The difference between Pixar productions and Avatar is that it is inherently easier to suspend disbelief while watching Pixar films because they are animated, and the audience mindset is immediately transferred to an animated realm of fantasy.

Appropriately, there is praise for the impeccable scenery that makes up Avatar‘s alien world of Pandora, but this is secondary to what Cameron has done by composing the Na’vi.  Their body movements are fluid, and their interactions with each other are believable in that the characters don’t appear to be composed in a computer and cut and pasted in the same scene as if they were bits of cell-animation.  Most important to the maintenance of disbelief are the intricacies of the characters themselves.  The greatest risk in marrying live-action and animation is the transition from humanoid characteristics to those that are computer rendered.

Avatar begins with scientists, engineers, and soldiers (all live-action) transported to a military base set on the perimeter of Pandora, and the movie quickly establishes itself in the science-fiction/fantasy genre, inherently risking audience detachment when the characters shift from live-action to animated counterpart.  Most prominently in animated/live-action films, the softened features of the animated doppelgangers make the transition noticeable, which serves to detach the audience from the world of fantasy and perpetually asks them to readjust to the visual dichotomy.  Likewise, such softened features are binary: they either represent an amorphous creature associated with evil—think Gollum from Lord of the Rings—or caricatured innocence—see Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles or Russell from Up.

However, in Avatar the transition from live-action to animation is visually flawless and avoids repelling the audience because of the meticulous attention paid to the nuances of skin and facial features; virtually nothing suggests that these animated Na’vi are artificial.  The skin is textured like human skin, not diamonded like reptiles. Their mouths move, and the natural lines of the face are revealed. The cheek bones adopt depth-defining shadows that convey emotion without needing the quotidian verbal exaltation. Anger is visually emoted without the “aaarggh,” frustration without the “hmmpph,” confusion without the “huh?” and disappointment without the “ah…no..no.”  In other words, while cartoons, the Na’vi are not cartoonish.

Amidst this praise, Avatar lacks a story that consistently carries a film for two hours and forty two minutes.  It’s a love story that is occasionally injected with a diaphanous metaphor about white-male imperialism on indigenous, peaceful worlds (think Pocahontas).  In themselves, there’s nothing wrong with love or the metaphor, but the attraction between Jake Sully and Neytiri is perfunctory and is reminiscent of Jack and Rose from Titanic.  The visuals in Avatar make it leagues better than Titanic, but the romance is similar: both women slum and suddenly fall in love–seemingly because that’s what appears in most How to Write Screenplay guides.   Likewise, the metaphor is heavy-handed and ironically makes the live actors cartoonish — particularly narcissistic antipath Parker Selfridge (really? Self?), and warmongering Colonel Miles Quaritch, who uses the phrase “Shock and Awe” to refer to mission parameters. Thus, I’m not even sure if the metaphor is diaphanous or a re-creation.

Given the awesomeness of the film, perhaps the mediocre story is a venial sin — and perhaps fifteen years isn’t long enough to pen a story that doesn’t mimic the film that won you an Oscar in 1997.  In the end, Avatar might have made the word “film” (in its literal sense) an anachronism, and as a friend pointed out after seeing this film, “we just witnessed this generation’s Birth of a Nation” in regard to its impact on every other film that attempts to incorporate 3-D as part of its medium.  Can’t say that Avatar won’t become one of my guilty pleasures when it hits HBO; can’t say I’ll watch anything beyond the immense battle scenes; can’t say that Neytiri didn’t make me question the inappropriateness of loving another species. Time will tell.

DYL MAG Score : 6.5 (could be a 7 when I invest in a blu-ray player)

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