Tag Archives: 2011

the deep blue sea
Apr 26 2012

The Deep Blue Sea (2011)

As well made as I found The Deep Blue Sea, I’m amazed that it took ninety-four minutes to say what could easily have been said in as little as fifteen or twenty. Adapted from the stage play by Terence Rattigan, it tells the incredibly simple story of a woman who leaves behind a secure but sexless marriage for a passionate but reckless affair. With neither relationship able to give her all of what she wants, she must make a choice between going on living or dying alone. Plot wise, there really is nothing more to the film than that. I have not seen or read the original play, although on the basis of what I’ve read about it, it seems like one of the characters, an ex-doctor, had a much more prominent role than he had in the film. I can’t help but wonder if his inclusion would have made the story seem more substantive and less dragged out.

Taking place in London just after World War II (an opening title card gives us the vague timeline of “around 1950”), the central character is a woman named Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz), whose story is told as a combination of flashback sequences and present moments, the latter of which unfold over the course of roughly one day. At the start, she attempts suicide by downing several aspirins and letting her apartment flood with gas fumes from the furnace. She’s rescued in time. Left alone to reflect, we get glimpses of the events leading up to her attempt. She was married to an older, well-respected High Court judge named William (Simon Russell Beale). Despite his wealth, his status, and his highly proper behaviour, Hester fell out of love with him for his lack of infatuation.

She soon begins an affair with a seemingly high-spirited former RAF pilot named Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston). At last, she finds the physical passion she so desired. William soon catches on, and although he never raises his voice or his hand to her, he decrees that he will never grant her a divorce. Hester moves into Freddie’s inner city apartment, which is an obvious step down from the upscale luxury of William’s estate. What started off so well between Hester and Freddie soon begins to decline. Despite the physical attention he gives her, it doesn’t seem he’s capable of financial or emotional stability. He forgets important events, like Hester’s birthday. He isn’t as cultured as she is, a fact she finds bothersome. It also seems he hasn’t been truly happy since the war ended, and so he drinks in excess.

William will reappear several times throughout the film. After the initial shock of learning of her affair, he finds he’s much more willing to give her the divorce she wants. All the same, he’s genuinely baffled by her rejection of him. Perhaps he wasn’t as physically inclined as Freddie, but did feel genuine affection for Hester. He still does. Why is this not enough for her? She tries to explain it to him, although it comes off as little more than excuse-making – which is to say, she makes everything sound much more complicated than it actually is. This isn’t to say that emotions aren’t complicated, because they very much are, especially in matters of love. However, every conversation she has with William is an exercise in padded dialogue. If she would just trim away the fat and make her point, things would go much more smoothly.

Despite her verbal predilections, the film does feature some exquisitely written passages. The best are reserved for two scenes between Hester and William’s puritanical mother (Barbara Jefford). I will not quote any specific lines for want of you hearing them firsthand. Just know this: Mrs. Collyer repeatedly makes it clear, in her own prim and proper way, that Hester does absolutely nothing right and is not good enough for her son. There’s also one great scene with the ex-doctor, whose name escapes me at the moment; when he checks on Hester after her suicide attempt, he delivers to William a zinger so deliciously witty that he could have easily been quoting Oscar Wilde.

Perhaps it’s because of the story’s innate simplicity that it speaks so fluently in the language of melodrama. One of the most noticeable elements is Samuel Barber’s “Violin Concerto, Op. 14” (the film does not contain original score material). Here is a piece of music that oozes solemnity from every pore, sounding more like tonal weeping than like an orchestral piece. Long, slow solo sections are played vibrato at the high end of the scale; they’re so strategically placed that they’re obviously intended to represent Hester’s emotional state. There’s no rule stating that movies like The Deep Blue Sea need to be complicated or multilayered in order to work. All the same, filmmakers should give you more of a reason to see something apart from an easily understood relationship problem.

Written by Chris Pandolfi

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Reuniting the Rubins
Apr 22 2012

Reuniting the Rubins (2011)

The fascinating thing about Reuniting the Rubins is that it goes through a myriad of unexpected twists and turns before arriving at the ending we expect. Even more fascinating is the fact that the happy ending comes after a sequence of events that run the gamut from absurd to serious, both of which are the result of circumstances many would call exasperating, unwarranted, and even unpleasant. I’m not saying this to suggest that the film is confused or meandering; it’s simply unique in its approach to sentiment. After what we watch, which is at times mentally and emotionally exhausting, the ending comes at us like a cool, refreshing drink at the end of brisk jog. Who gives a hang how likely or unlikely it happens to be? Endings like the one in Reuniting the Rubins are half the reason we go to the movies in the first place.

It is, in short, a bittersweet comedy with a heart-warming finale. It tells the story of a family reunion – or, more accurately, the immense frustration and agony that goes into making the reunion possible. At the film’s heart is Lenny Rubins (Timothy Spall), a burnt-out lawyer whose dream of retirement is to take a relaxing cruise. His mother, known only as Gran (Honor Blackman), has a weakening heart and would like nothing more than for her family to get back together for the Jewish celebration of Pesach. Lenny is repeatedly forced into delaying his cruise, sometimes out of what appears to be an emergency situation, at other times out of guilt. As much as he wants to appease his mother, he doesn’t believe a reunion of any kind, let alone for a holiday, is possible.

Here enters his four grown children, who are so diametrically opposite from each other that it’s a wonder they haven’t killed anyone. His son, Clarity (Asier Newman), has become a Buddhist monk. His other son, Yona (Hugh O’Conor), has given up his career as a lawyer to become a devout rabbi, much to Lenny’s chagrin. His third son, Danny (James Callis), is an uptight, controlling, perpetually angry, fast-paced businessman – a staunch, greedy capitalist tycoon who’s pitching a new holographic computer screen to foreign investors. His daughter, Andie (Rhona Mitra), is a militant eco-warrior fighting to stop slave mining in Africa, the kind that yields the raw materials needed for products like cell phones, computers, and holographic projectors. She and Danny are the most argumentative of the four, and are constantly at each other’s throats.

Gran realizes that her grandchildren are a handful, but she insists on going through with the reunion, and even sees to it that their childhood home is restored for the occasion. The plot synopsis on the film’s official website refers to her actions as emotional blackmail, which I believe is a cruel misreading of her character. As a resident of a retirement home – and, more compellingly, as a holocaust survivor – she has seen her fair share of suffering and death. All she wants is to be surrounded by the people she loves, preferably while she’s still alive. This is not emotional blackmail. It’s a request that, quite frankly, would benefit not only her but also her family. Lenny initially doesn’t see things the same way she does, but that doesn’t make him a bad father. It just means that he has some maturing to do.

The film occasionally goes too far with its depictions of Lenny’s children, who for the most part are reduced to caricatureish simplifications, as if the intention was to parody them. Rather than try for something more compelling, we initially see them at their worst and/or most ridiculous. There’s Yona with his constant quoting from the Torah, Clarity with his exaggerated new age proverbs, Danny with his cold professionalism, and Andie with her confrontational liberal agenda. As the film progresses, however, a few of the layers are finally peeled back. The single best scene takes place between Danny and his young son, Jake (Theo Stevenson). Danny, at last beginning to realize he doesn’t spend enough time with his son, tries to buy his affections by giving him a wrapped digital watch. Jake solemnly asks how much his father makes per hour. “Around 300,” Danny replies. Jake then empties the contents of his piggy bank on his bed and does some quick mental math. “Can you give me eight minutes?” he asks.

And then there’s the ending – which, strangely enough, is what I started this review with. Without giving anything away, I will say that it involves two emotional contrivances that are polar opposites. In this case, this isn’t a criticism so much as it is a simple observation. As much as some of us might complain about lack of plausibility or psychological manipulation in the movies, the truth is that they make endings like this because we enjoy them. Filmmakers understand that they appeal to our need for resolution, hope, and yes, even happiness. And besides, who’s to say life doesn’t work this way? That’s a pretty broad generalization, if you ask me. If there’s anything to take away from Reuniting the Rubins, it’s that sometimes, it does work out.

Written by Chris Pandolfi

intruders
Apr 19 2012

Intruders (2011)

The perpetually frightening atmosphere of Intruders is continuously challenged and ultimately defeated by a confusing structure, gaps in logic, and a twist ending that raises more questions than it answers. Before we know the real secret of the film, we must blindly work our way through a plot that repeatedly blurs the line between reality, dreamscape, and pure fantasy. When the secret is revealed, we’re somewhat disillusioned, as it forces us to reprocess the entire film and come to the conclusion that it could not have unfolded the way it did. That’s assuming, of course, that I didn’t miss something along the way, which is certainly possible given the difficulty I had sorting through facts, characters, and events. What really eats away at me is that, short of me issuing a spoiler warning, I can’t be any more specific than that.

The film intercuts between two separate stories that will dramatically converge into one during the final act. What links them together during the first two acts is a shared brush with what appears to be a supernatural presence – a hooded, shadowy figure known as Hollowface, so named because he quite literally has no face. He can also “tear away” someone else’s facial features so that the person is left with a head that looks like a blank flesh canvas. Even before the twist, we’re left to wonder if such a physical mutilation is literal or figurative, but I’ll get into that later. He’s noticed by two characters, both young. One is a boy from Spain named Juan (Izan Corchero), who can’t be any older than six or seven. The other is a twelve-year-old girl from England named Mia (Ella Purnell).

Hollowface enters their lives in rather perplexing ways. In Juan’s case, Hollowface slips in through an open window in the middle of a rainstorm; he tries to strangle Juan’s mother, Luisa (Pilar Lopez de Ayala), only to stop when Juan enters the room and try to, I don’t know, consume him. This leads to a physical altercation between all three, which then leads to a confrontation on the scaffolding just outside the bedroom window. After that, I’m not really sure what the logistics are. Hollowface continuously reappears in Juan’s bedroom in the most ghostly of ways, although most of the time, the scenes end with Juan waking up screaming. Complicating matters further is the fact that all this started with Juan writing a story for a school assignment, one that didn’t yet have an ending.

Mia’s situation is even more baffling. Whilst visiting her grandparents’ secluded countryside estate, she reaches into a hole at the top of a tree and discovers an old matchbox. Within this box is a folded piece of paper, one that tells the fairytale-like story of Hollowface. After returning home, she claims it as her own for a school assignment, although she’s not sure how it ends, as that part of it was smudged out after years of sitting within the tree. She will repeatedly write things down, as if, I don’t know, willing Hollowface into being. Sure enough, he continuously manifests himself from within her bedroom closet. At one point, he attacks her and appears to “rip off” her lips. And yet her lips remain. She does, however, lose the ability to speak. She then cryptically tells – or, more accurately, writes down – to her therapist that she knows Hollowface doesn’t exist, but he thinks he does.

The only other person who can see Hollowface is Mia’s father, John (Clive Owen), a construction worker. The bond between father and daughter is strong, which comes into question as the film enters its final act. Indeed, we also question the bond between Juan and his mother, who’s perpetually frightened. We don’t know why until the end, and even then, it doesn’t make much sense given the sequence of events that take place. The single most bizarre inclusion is that of Father Antonio (Daniel Bruhl), who keeps re-entering mother and son’s life, presumably because he’s attracted to Luisa. She requests something of him, something that, given what we learn at the end, doesn’t seem all that likely. What did she think she would gain?

I understand how maddeningly vague this review has been, but the plot is constructed in such a way that I can’t get into detail. Not that the details matter all that much; they only make figuring this movie out more difficult. To give credit where credit is due, Intruders successfully establishes mood and, initially, keeps you on the edge of your seat in suspense. I would have appreciated it, however, if the story had a better grasp of an understandable plot and more easily defined characters. It might seem like the ending provides you with an explanation, but in reality, it only makes the waters murkier. It’s one of those resolutions that isn’t a resolution at all – a starting point for who, what, when, where, why, and how questions. The more explaining it does, the less sense it makes.

Written by Chris Pandolfi

the cabin in the woods large
Apr 15 2012

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

“I love being scared.” So said Joss Whedon in an interview with Total Film regarding The Cabin in the Woods, which he produced and co-wrote with director Drew Goddard. “The things that I don’t like are kids acting like idiots, the devolution of the horror movie into torture porn and into a long series of sadistic comeuppances. Drew and I both felt that the pendulum had sung a little too far in that direction.” When I first read that quote a few weeks ago, I wished Whedon had been there with me, for I wanted to shake him by the hand and thank him for publically reaffirming what I’ve felt about horror movies for quite some time. But then I actually saw The Cabin in the Woods, and I couldn’t help but wonder why I wasn’t seeing things as he saw them. Something wasn’t quite right.

The film, promoted by Whedon himself as a “very loving hate letter” and “a serious critique of what we love and what we don’t about horror movies,” is nowhere near as clever or insightful as it has been made to seem. Whedon and Goddard clearly have fun with a number of threadbare horror clichés, but never once do they actually say anything relevant about them. All these men really do is confirm that they exist, which is short-sighted considering the fact that most horror audiences are already well aware of this. They think they’re letting us in on the joke when in fact we were in on it all along. What I was promised was satire; what I got was a confusing, ridiculous, and surprisingly depressing film in which archetypes and conventions are addressed but barely improved.

Central to the story are five college kids who were clearly intended to be one-dimensional caricatures. But pointing out their shallowness and actually commenting on it are two entirely different matters, and frankly, I would have preferred the filmmakers to go in the latter direction. There’s Dana, the reluctant virgin (Kristen Connolly). There’s her best friend, Jules, the perpetually horny sexpot (Anna Hutchison), who just dyed her hair blonde; although she can’t pronounce one of the words on Dana’s math book, it’s declared that she’s premed. There’s Jules’ boyfriend, Curt, the hunky jock (Chris Hemsworth). There’s Holden, the scholarly gentleman (Jesse Williams), who will inevitably fall for Dana. Finally, there’s Marty, the goofy pothead (Fran Kranz), who sounds like he knows more than he initially lets on.

They leave campus and take an RV to a remote part of the woods, where they vacation in a strangely decorated and certifiably creepy cabin. Little do they know that beneath the cabin lies a subterranean office superstructure, where a bureaucratic team of workers in suits, ties, and lab coats watch their every move via surveillance cameras. Two scientists, Hadley (Richard Jenkins) and Sitterson (Bradley Whitford), use a force field to seal the college kids into the wooded area and subject them to a scenario of their own design. They manipulate the circumstances as much as possible, mostly by the release of airborne chemicals that can change a person’s ability to think. They eventually open the cellar, where, amidst an eclectic mix of creepy Victorian paraphernalia, Dana finds an old diary. Upon reading a Latin incantation, zombies emerge from the ground and descend on the cabin.

At this point, I’m going to stop describing the plot in detail, as there are numerous twists and turns that most will not want spoiled. I will say that the film is intended to be both frightening and funny, and to an extent, it succeeds at both. In the humour department, we have more than the antics of the college kids; we have the working environment of the subterranean office. Just as it would be in an urban skyrise, we see division of labour and the formation of cliques. We see money pools and office partying, and there’s even enough time to work in the playful ribbing of the nerdy intern. When they’re not working, the scientists will gab about their personal lives; in the opening scene, Sitterson spends a great deal of time complain about his wife and her new cabinets.

There’s an extremely bloody confrontation involving every imaginable monster from the annals of horror, from wispy spirits to werewolves to giant cobras to robotic slicing machines to zombies to carnivorous mermen. All leads to a Lovecraftian ending that was not only lame-brained and inappropriate but also needlessly upsetting. Was that the point of The Cabin in the Woods? To espouse a nihilistic viewpoint of humanity? If this is Whedon’s idea of sticking it to the makers of slasher films and gore fests, he might want to steer clear of the horror genre altogether. I hate to think that there are other genres he feels have been corrupted. If he were to write another very loving hate letter, say for a romantic comedy or a musical, would it too end in the same way?

Written by Chris Pandolfi

Grimm
Apr 6 2012

Grimm

Grimm

There seems to be an influx of televisions shows based on the Grimm Fairy Tales.  “Once Upon a Time” focuses on the characters we are most familiar with…Snow White, Prince Charming and even Alice in Wonderland.  On the opposite side, there is “Grimm” which focuses on the creatures or monsters in the stories, for instance, the Big Bad Wolf and ogres. Continue reading →

breaking dawn part 1
Apr 2 2012

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011)

Twilight: Breaking Dawn

I want to talk about the id. See, Sigmund Freud, the crazy granddad of psychology, had a theory. The simple (and mercifully short) version is that the mind is broken up into three areas; the superego, ego and id, the last of these being a sack of basic animal desires and emotions. I feel this last part comes in very handy to explain the appeal of properties such as Real Steel, Transformers and Twilight, as these films’ sole aim is to connect straight to the id of their audiences. Continue reading →