The Innkeepers (2011)

May 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Innkeepers (2011) movie poster

director Ti West
viewed: 05/16/2012

Writer/director Ti West, who has started a name for himself with The House of the Devil (2009) and to a lesser extent with Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009), delves yet again into the horror genre with his haunted hotel film, The Innkeepers.  According to the story behind the film, West was inspired by “true ghost stories” that were told while he and his crew stayed at Torrington, CT’s Yankee Pedlar Inn, so much so, he wrote a whole film around the hotel.

It’s supposed to be the final weekend for a storied hotel, said to be haunted by the abandoned bride who had owned the hotel (or something).  Two geeky clerks are running the empty place, Luke and Claire (the pretty and charming Sara Paxton), serving only a couple of customers and trying to evoke the spirits within with healthy curiosity and some recording devices.

I was actually thinking how refreshing it was to see a horror film that wasn’t shot to look as though it was all done on fixed-place security cameras a la Paranormal Activity (2007) and so on.  Here’s hoping that “found footage” films will soon stop being made.  Not likely, I know, but I can dream, can’t I?

Kelly McGillis shows up (again in a quasi-horror film; I last noted her in Stake Land (2010)).  She plays a retired television actress turned new age mystic, who engages with Paxton in some sounding out of the spirit world.  Lena Dunham, now of HBO’s Girls as well as her Tiny Furniture (2010), also shows up in a real throwaway scene as an annoying cafe worker.  The film isn’t all that tight in that sense.

But Paxton is the charmer here.  She’s cute and wistful and goofy, giving a believable and unique vibe to the primary figure of the story.  Of course, things eventually go south.  It wouldn’t be a horror film if they didn’t, right?

West is more interested in building suspense than in going for cheap scares, but it’s still not an overly sophisticated thing.  It has its charms, I’ll give it that.  I’ll keep my eye on West though he hasn’t overtly impressed as yet.

Filed under DVD

Detour (1945)

May 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Detour (1945) movie poster

director Edward G. Ulmer
viewed: 05/13/2012 at the Roxie Theater, SF, CA

The final installment of my film noir triple feature at the Roxie, Detour, is actually one of my favorite films.  Certainly, it’s one of my favorite noir films, so lean and ruthless, so deceptively simple, so razor-sharp tight.  Ann Savage is amazing as the femme fatale par excellence, swerving between rage and kittenish vulnerability, manipulative to a fault, vicious yet pathetic.  I’m more struck by her performance every time I see it, and I’d never seen it on the big screen before.

Of the three films that I saw as part of the “I Wake up Dreaming” noir festival, only The Pretender (1947) was shown on film.  So that was a little disappointing.  But still, it was cool to see it big and bold, with a crowd.

Filed under film noir, Theatrical

Une si jolie petite plage (1949)

May 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Une si jolie petite plage (1949) movie poster

director Yves Allégret
viewed: 05/13/2012 at the Roxie Theater, SF, CA

Feature #2 of my triple header of “I Wake Up Dreaming” film noir series at the Roxie was the French film, Une si jolie petite plage.  Though the French coined the term, proper categorization stands that film noir is an American thing by definition.  That said, most of the American directors of noir were ex-pat Europeans, bringing aesthetics and artistry from all over Europe to Hollywood via genre cinema.  The Roxie’s promotion for the film posed it as ”the missing link between the French thrillers of the thirties and the nouvelle vague,” so it’s not quite true noir but European noir still carries a lot with it.  They also touted it as “brilliantly forlorn and totally French,” and that it is as well.

The French seaside never looked drearier.  It’s the off-season, raining endlessly, with only one shabby hotel open for customers.  A young man checks in, coming from Paris, apparently depressed, and averse to the music of a popular singer who has just been murdered.  It could have been a Georges Simenon novel.  It is a kind of story that is almost classically French, or maybe it’s more in the tone and the way the narrative plays out, the existential dolor.  The hotel is pervaded by this fatalistic ennui, a sense of inescapable doom, a melancholy without the faintest hint of possibility for redemption.  The characters keep referring to the desolate shoreline as “such a pretty little beach,” repeating the title time and again, emphasizing sincerity as well as some irony, too.

It’s beautifully filmed and excellently produced.  A low-key downer, for sure, but impeccable in many ways.

To say that it connects “the French thrillers of the 30′s to the nouvelle vague” as the Roxie’s promo materials suggest, I’d have to question if there is not more of this all along the way.  It seems there is more of a fairly unbroken line between The Lower Depths (1936), Pépé le Moko (1937), La bête humaine (1938), Le jour se lève (1939), Quai des Orfèvres (1947), Touchez pas au grisbi (1954),  Rififi (1955), Bob le flambeur (1955) leading up to Breathless (1960).  Maybe there is something more specific that is being connected, maybe I haven’t seen the films to which they are referring.  But I do see some consistency through the crime cinema of France on through to Jean-Pierre Melville and perhaps beyond.

Une si jolie petite plage without a doubt, though, is a very fine film.  Interesting and evocative even in its potentially cliche of French esprit du cinema.  Trying impossibly to light Gauloises in the incessant rain, seeking solace in a woman who has had many lovers and perhaps clients, while in the end, it all comes to rien.

Filed under film noir, France, Theatrical

The Pretender (1947)

May 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Pretender (1947) movie poster

director W. Lee Wilder
viewed: 05/13/2012 at the Roxie Theater, SF, CA

The first film of a triple feature that I watched at the Roxie last Sunday as part of their “I Wake Up Dreaming” Film Noir series, The Pretender was a solid example of “Poverty Row” American post-war darkness.  Directed by W. Lee Wilder, Billy Wilder’s brother (didn’t know about him before this), it’s not the most compelling of thrillers, but has its noirishness pretty well on display.

I don’t know why but I was thinking to myself that if this film were to be re-made today, it would be a comedy rather than a thriller.  Basically, the main character, Kenneth Holden (Albert Dekker), is an investment broker who has a sweet set-up with a young heiress, the daughter of a dead friend of his.  He hopes to woo her to cover the many bad deals he’s made but when she doesn’t seem interested, he puts out a hit on “whoever” she plans to marry, as on display in the society section of the newspaper.  When she changes her mind and decides to marry him on a whim, he’s basically fingered himself for death and though he tries to call off the hit, he swerves into a prolonged and lugubrious paranoia.

When he tells the local crime boss what’s up, the crime boss laughs in his face, that he should have put a hit out on himself.  And that’s the thing, it’s pretty funny.  All the dinners he turns down, all the new staff that he fears, hoarding his own food in his room, fearing every stranger…it’s all good noir but it’s also highly ludicrous.

There are a lot of little good things in the film, from incidental characters adding flavor to rather clever development of the local baddies.  It’s a certainly enjoyable film.  It was the one of the three that I was least interested in, but it was good, a good start to a triple feature.

Filed under film noir, Theatrical

Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010)

May 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010) movie poster

director Eli Craig
viewed: 05/12/2012

I’m not sure what part of the pitch of Tucker & Dale vs Evil, a slasher film in which the rednecks are the heroes and not the villains, appealed to me.  I get this from time to time, when I’ve queued something up, have it in hand, am actually watching the darn thing, when it hits me: ” Why did I think this looked worth watching?”

In the case of Tucker & Dale vs Evil, it wasn’t because the film was horrible that I was thinking this.  It’s actually kind of cute and pretty funny, though not the most well constructed film in the world.  Usually, it’s not just the subject matter but the sheer terrible quality of a flick that makes me question myself.  In this case, it was just one of those self-searching moments, a vantage into some recess of my soul, some part in which my brain isn’t necessarily thinking as actively as it could be, that leads me to some film that might not rank too highly in someone else’s queue or purview.

For its blood and gore, Tucker & Dale is actually perhaps more akin to The Cabin in the Woods (2012) than to your average horror/slasher.  It’s a self-reflexive exploit and vague critique of genre conventions in the horror film, even particularly the “cabin in the woods” subgenre.   In this case, it’s a much more character-driven comedy of errors, namely about the titular heroes, two good-natured backwoods homeboys who stumble onto a group of hypersensitive and reactionary college kids who are camping out in the woods for a lark.

Tyler Labine plays Dale, a bearded wallflower of a good ol’ boy, who comes to the woods to help his best pal Tucker (Alan Tudyk) to fix up his summer cabin that he’s recently purchased.  They “appear” to be all the things that every film since Deliverance (1972) have taught the world to fear about the people of the backwoods.  But in reality, they are sweet, goofy, gentle good guys who quickly become the heroes.

The actors are all pretty decent throughout this low-budget affair, getting their little moments to flash their schtick before getting skewered or wood-chipper’ed.  It’s no high water mark for comedy or horror or meta-critique, but it’s entertaining and kinda funny at times.  And the characters are kind of ingratiating.

What it says about me that I queued this up and watched it perhaps says more about me than the fact that I enjoyed it.  Or maybe not.  Maybe that’s the point.

Filed under DVD

The Avengers (2012)

May 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Avengers (2012) movie poster

director Joss Whedon
viewed: 05/11/2012 at CineArts @ the Empire Theater, SF, CA

It’s been suggested that one’s enjoyment of the new Joss Whedon The Avengers film is in direct correlation to your fanaticism regarding comics.  Comic book fans have been effusing about the film and the thing has been rocking the theaters, ratcheting up more money than God in its “as yet” run.  At first, I was thinking to suggest that my more moderated appreciation of the film might indicate a lower level of geekiness within myself.  But I think that formula is not quite correct.  Fanatics may be thrilled, others may be appreciative, but enjoyment doesn’t directly correlate to hardcore geekdom.

The real story, to me, has been Marvel Studios’ overt gambit at franchise-building over the five or so years building up to this blockbuster.  It certainly goes back to Iron Man (2008), in which the first suggestion of The Avengers was staked.  It may have also included 2008′s The Incredible Hulk, which starred Edward Norton as Bruce Banner (switched out here for Mark Ruffalo).  Marvel Studios had the plan well laid-out by the time Iron Man 2 (2010), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and Thor (2011) were released.  The latter three films in some ways were marketing materials for this big superhero team film featuring a whole gang of characters, no shortage of big name actors and actresses, co-starring in an ensemble action film extroirdinaire.

I’ve posited, since the first X-Men film that Marvel released in 2000 that for a lot of movie adaptation of such materials, the mantra is more to get the character(s) right, in the eyes of the fanbase, more than make a movie work.  So, it was much bated-breath that geek favorite Joss Whedon took the reins of this beast of a flick.  That Whedon’s only other cinematic directorial effort was Serenity (2005), this could have been a concern.  Or, as it turns out, it was a coup.

It’s undeniably a coup now, given the popularity and money that The Avengers has garnered.  It’s given the green light to dozens more films with the characters and actors.  While this might have been the event to which much of Marvel’s other films had been building, this event is now part of the marketing for all that comes hence.

It’s no little thing to pull off a superhero movie well.  Most of them are not so good.  Many are very bad.  It’s arguably even harder to do so when you’ve got as many primary characters having to vie to simply be secondary characters.  And then a villain and some big action sequences that can are genuinely exciting.  So kudos to those guys and let’s all be prepared for years more of the many elements and extensions of this franchise ad nauseum.

All that said, that is what I think is most interesting about the film.  The film itself I liked.  I felt entertained.  I particularly liked Ruffalo as Dr. Banner and Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man, though all of the cast members are good in their roles, good enough anyway.  And the kids liked the film too.  Hard to say how much at first glance, but I do think they did like it.  We’d watched Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor together, so they had some of that to help orient them to characters and comic books with which they were unfamiliar otherwise.  And we’ll be in, I’m sure, for others to come, though we’ll just have to see what they feel like when that comes along.

Filed under Scarlett Johansson, Superheroes, Theatrical, With the kids

Into the Abyss (2011)

May 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Into the Abyss (2011) movie poster

director Werner Herzog
viewed: 05/14/2012

Werner Herzog doesn’t consider his death row documentary Into the Abyss to be an anti-capital punishment film.  But it is, more or less.  It’s an exploration of the story of a particular heinous crime, committed in Texas in 2001 by two boys who were teenagers at the time.  They murdered two other teens and the mother of one of the victims, ostensibly to steal a Camaro.  One of the boys got a life sentence, the other a death sentence.  Herzog interviews them and their families, the families of the victims, police, and former workers in the execution process.

While Herzog is not heavy-handed, he states early on in one of the interviews that he is against the death penalty, that he believes that no one, no state, has the right to take the life of anyone.   Herzog is notorious for inserting himself, if not visually, distinctively, in his documentaries, with his soft German-accented English and strangely deep-thinking, interpretive and leading questions.  It would probably be more of a problem if he wasn’t so drawn to such compelling material, that his subjects evoke more than his voice can diminish.

The most compelling moments come from a couple of the interviewees.  Firstly the former director of the Texas facility that does the actual work of killing the inmates.  He had overseen the process of hundreds of executions, but after the first time that he put a woman through the process, he lost his nerve and sense of what he believed.  He stepped down from the job and is now avowedly anti-capital punishment.

The father of the boy who ended up with a life sentence, who himself is serving a 40 plus sentence in a facility “across the road” from his son, is the other extremely compelling presence.  He recounts how he testified for his son’s sentence to be commuted to life, as he was no kind of father to the boy, that the boy had little chance in life.  He goes on to talk about his shame in finding himself in prison with two of his sons, having Thanksgiving dinner together, and being handcuffed to his son.  His regrets and realizations reveal the pain and depth of soul-searching that he has undergone, that he truly lives with his sorrows.

The meetings with the survivors of the victims are sad as well.  It seems as if everyone in these families, the killers or the victims, have much tragedy and death within their clans.  What isn’t evoked in great perspective is the reality of the towns in which they live.  Herzog’s camera skims the town, but doesn’t seem to capture much there.

Herzog doesn’t beat the drum heavily in one way or another on the issues.  He shows sympathy with the families of the deceased, as with the prisoners and their families, but stating, as he does, where he stands leaves the film at a tilt, whether you agree with him or not on the issue.

The two prisoners deny their guilt, blaming one another.  The oldest story in a prison, perhaps.  But the boy murderer, now a young man with still very boyish looks, is executed 8 days after Herzog’s interview with him, adding some weight to the issue.  Guilty or not, regretful or not, this man, alive and vibrant in his interview, is now dead.  It’s little question as to his guilt as far as the film is concerned.  And the crimes were indeed heinous.

The other young man is now married to a very pretty and intelligent young woman who became involved with him through her work in advocating for prisoners.  By the end of the film she is pregnant, somehow, with the inmate’s child.  This is a dubious aspect that Herzog treats with gentleness, though it is also a very awkward thing in itself.

There is a lot going on in the film, a lot in the issues, in the stories.  And it’s a worthwhile endeavor.  I think I’d prefer if Herzog maybe produced his documentaries rather than directing them.  His personalization of the material, an honest enough fact of their production, seems typically odd and dissonant.  I mean, what did these small town Texans think of this oddball German film-maker?  With his probing, fancifully existential questions?

There are no answers.  Which is fine.

Filed under Documentaries, DVD, Werner Herzog

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

May 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) movie poster

director Hayao Miyazaki
viewed: 05/05/2012

It’s funny looking back at my prior entry in the film diary about Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which I last watched about six years ago.  My kids would have been 4 and almost 2 at the time and they probably weren’t quite ready for the film, but I noted as I often have about how Hayao Miyazaki is the greatest feature animation director of all time, how I hope that he keeps making films forever, and how I want to raise my kids on his movies.  Miyazaki may now have stopped directing films but I have indeed raised Felix and Clara on his movies, though in an oversight of mine, we managed to miss out on a couple.  So, after watching Spirited Away (2001) the prior week, they were eager to see another of his films that they hadn’t seen.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Miyazkai’s films cluster among Felix and Clara’s all-time favorites.  In fact, we need to add Nausicaä to that list now, as well.

The great thing about Disney releasing all of his films on DVD has been that this is not such an obscure passion as it could have been.  I am sure that there are kids all over America, all over the world (not just in Japan), who are also reared with these films.  I know many friends who also have shared these films with their children and have become favorites as well.

Nausicaä was the first of Miyazaki’s own creations that he wound up directing.  The style definitely feels older, which are part of the charm of the film.  Much of his themes and ideas are already present.  Strong female protagonists, not the modern “girls who kick butt”, but rather characters who organically are the heart of the story, well developed, and integral.  The threat of nature despoiled is the core of Nausicaä, as it is key to a number of his stories, a magical ancient world either destroyed or long-forgotten, re-connected with by the film’s heroes.  And his fascination with flying machines.

His Studio Ghibli, the company that he formed after the release of Nausicaä, has released a number of fine films outside of his own.  But Miyazaki’s films are in a class unto themselves, something impossible (or at least very difficult) to replicate.

The kids both really liked Nausicaä, both placing it along with Spirited Away at the top of their favorites lists.  It’s something in which we can all share.

Filed under Animation, DVD, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, With the kids

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

May 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) movie poster

director Drew Goddard
viewed: 05/04/2012 at AMC Loews Metreon 16, San Francisco, CA

From producer co-writer Joss Whedon and co-writer/director Drew Goddard, The Cabin in the Woods is a horror film about horror films, a riffing commentary on the genre, the tropes and cliches, the purpose, the audience, and the mentality of the makers.  It’s as much about the film-making process as it is about giving you a scare or a shock.  And in reaching for this meta-commentary, it breaks out into a rather hilarious and complex uber-scenario, an over-arching narrative about the manipulators, the writers, directors, the puppet-masters, as it were.

This meta-horror film is one of the best and most interesting additions to the canon/genre in years.  If you are so inclined at all to see it, read no further, just go and see it.  Seriously, the less you know, the more interesting it will be.  Just go see it.  Reading any further is only a risk to your own potential enjoyment of this clever and fun film.

Don’t say I didn’t tell you.

It’s not giving much away in saying this about the film.  It opens with a sequence about these corporate/political types, working within some strange bunker, prepping an interior world for a set of five young people to experience a traditional horror setting, the titular cabin in the woods.  So, it’s pretty obvious from the beginning that there is more at play in the film than the by the numbers slashers’ body count.

The film then veers off into the central narrative of the campers, five archetypes (who need to be drugged and motivated to achieve ideal levels of archetype behavior), who cross over into a wooded place for their particular doom.  The manipulators are essentially the corporate movie-making machine, painting by the numbers, hitting their spots, specific notes, and the commentary shows: this is how horror films are made.  It’s by template.  Insert varying evil killer thing, kill off according to a script.   Even the manipulators/creators are somewhat bored by the proceedings.

When one of the characters becomes hip to the manipulation, that’s when all hell breaks loose.  The entirety of the mechanism of production is revealed, huge sprawling mechanism that it is.  And it’s quite a funny vision.  Beyond the mechanism lies the reason that all this work has to be done, a need to sate some ancient rite with blood of the young and the entertainment of the many.  This last part has a somewhat Lovecraftian vibe to it, so even though it’s kind of silly, it’s also kind of awesome.

I guess that this is the year that Joss Whedon proves himself out on the big screen.  His new release, The Avengers (2012) is raking in the dough and has been posting surprisingly strong reviews.  This film, which sat in limbo due to bankruptcies, is probably not for nearly as wide and audience, but it’s a bit of a breath of fresh air in a genre that is indeed far too color-by-numbers than it should be.

Filed under Theatrical

Spirited Away (2001)

May 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Spirited Away (2001) movie poster

director Hayao Miyazaki
viewed: 04/27/2012

After watching Coraline (2009) with Clara a couple of weeks ago, I realized that yet another of my favorite films, Spirited Away, was something that the kids didn’t seem to have recalled watching.  I was strangely struck by this because it is indeed one of my favorite films and the thought of how I could have missed watching this with them was strange to absorb.  But I guess that when it came out it was probably too scary for them for a while and as time rolled on, I had kind of forgotten that they hadn’t actually seen it.

What was an oversight on my part became a grand opportunity to share with them this fantastic film from Hayao Miyazaki.  I think from its very initial release that many of us recognized it as a true masterpiece.   Time is usually the true judge of quality, and I can honestly say that this amazing, remarkable fantasy film is as strange and vivid as ever, deeper and more interesting, and thoroughly and utterly enjoyable.

Spirited Away is the adventure of Chihiro, a ten year old girl, moving to a new city with her family, winds up in another world, a spirit world, where her parents are turned into pigs and she winds up working for a witch at a bathhouse for spirits.  The spirits are of traditional Japanese beliefs, beings embodied in all things: rivers, rocks, trees, animals.  They come to the bathhouse to wash away the filth of pollution and abuse, but they also deal with having fallen out of memory and knowledge of people.  Haku, a boy that Chihiro meets at the bathhouse, is really a river dragon whose name has been forgotten.  The spirits and traditions are not only physically destroyed by human expansion but are becoming spiritually disconnected (as are humans).

Chihiro’s journey is a classic type of fantastic adventure, growing to appreciate this hidden world, to become respectful, kind, and heroic.  The plethora of strange beings in the spirit world are endlessly visual treats.

Miyazaki may have several films that could be considered masterpieces.  My Neighbor Totoro (1988) has a simplicity yet such sublime magic to it, playing with similar themes of nature inhabited by spiritual creatures, a less complex and quieter narrative, no less moving and fantastic in contrast.  But Spirited Away is something much grander, much more strange, and so utterly original, it’s a tremendous and still utterly fun adventure.

The kids really enjoyed the film.  Rather unsurprisingly, I suppose.  Neither of them recalled seeing it at all before and were able to enjoy it completely fresh and without expectations or foreknowledge.  I am curious to query them on it a little further down the way to see how sustained their feelings are for the film.  For me, a decade on since my first viewing of it, I am even more enamored of it than before.   It is indeed among my favorite films.

Filed under Animation, DVD, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, With the kids

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