Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
There are a number of films I’ve seen recently that I just can’t work up entire reviews for. It’s not that they’re bad films or that they’re not worth seeing, per se, but that they just don’t feel like they demand lengthy discourse. Some are already open, and some are still about to open. At any rate, let’s do this fast:
THEY
Lemme see if I’ve got this straight. It was Sean Hood who wrote HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION for Dimension, and he co-wrote a film called THE DARKLINGS with Brendan William Hood, who just happens to be his brother, and who happened to write this week’s Dimension release THEY, right? I envision a childhood for these two filled with crappy horror films that got turned off every single time before they were over, because based on these two films, neither one of them is cursed with the burden of good taste, and neither one of them has any idea how the hell to end a movie.
Let’s make something perfectly clear: THEY is not a terrible movie the way HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION was. In fact, Robert Harmon and his cinematographer Rene Ohashi have created some striking widescreen imagery, and Laura Regan is getting some good experience as the scream queen du jour between this and MY LITTLE EYE. But THEY is cursed with a really magnificently shitty ending, the kind of ending that makes you hate a film, a non-ending that does nothing and concludes nothing and negates whatever fun you had with what you just saw. It’s the kind of ending that a creative executive should be fired over. How did this get filmed? How did this get tested over and over and still end like this? Was this always the ending in the script? Rod Serling, king daddy of all twist ending writers, sneezed endings better than this. This is so bad as a twist or a shock or a surprise or a whatever that it makes JEEPERS CREEPERS look like PSYCHO. If you’re willing to sit through a decent little genre exercise knowing that an ending like that is coming, THEY is the film for you.
The “Wes Craven Presents” that’s been slapped on the front of this feels particularly perfunctory this time. He’s not listed as any sort of producer. My guess is he never saw the film until they asked him if they could use his name. It’s a marketing tool, nothing more. I guess they needed to find something to use to sell it, since the film provides nothing you can really use. There’s a lot of vague talk about “night terrors.” There’s some well-managed atmosphere and mood as whipped up by Harmon. There’s creepy things that crawl along just at the edge of frame. But there’s nothing you can actually sell, because the movie never delivers anything. There are nods to classic horror iconography (the CAT PEOPLE homage is actually pretty effective as used here), and Ethan Embry, Marc Blucas and Dagmara Dominczyk all do their best with underwritten supporting roles, each of them essentially providing convenient reactions to pad things along to the next cocktease, the next near-set piece, the next Weinstein scare. A filmmaker who worked for Dimension once told me, contempt fairly dripping in his tone, that Bob Weinstein’s favorite scare in the world is “a fucking cat jumping out of something.” And if you look at Dimension’s output, you’ll see that sort of thing all over the movies. Horror... real horror... should get under our skin. It should disturb us after we’ve left the theater. It’s not about a momentary shock that we laugh off. At least... it’s not primarily about that. THEY has a kernel of something at its heart, a near-primal fear of the dark and the thing under the bed and the noise in the closet. The opening scene taps some of the basic dread of childhood that Spielberg mined so efficiently in POLTERGEIST, but what happens is so much more traumatic than the rest of the movie acknowledges. It’s a film full of notions, but without connections. If THEY was able to put it all together, it might have been an able little horror movie, but instead, it’s frustrating, and I can imagine only the most patient genre devotees being able to tolerate the film’s worst indulgences.
HARRY POTTER & THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
HARRY POTTER films are harder than they look, and I’ll say this for Chris Columbus... he has a much better handle on the overall task with this, his second time at bat, and his last as director for now. He’s gotten better at almost every technical aspect involved.
Oddly, it’s Steve Kloves who appears to have stumbled with this film, and part of the blame lies with the source material. CHAMBER OF SECRETS is probably the weakest overall POTTER book in terms of structure, and for a little while, Kloves appears to have figured out how to focus the film into a horror story above anything else. This is where the near-slavish adherance to what Rowlings wrote hurts them, though, because Kloves should have been free to really run with that concept. CHAMBER OF SECRETS works best when it’s playing dark. Harry, played with growing confidence by Daniel Radcliffe, is a little creepy this time out, and he wears it well. The other kids are growing up as well, and Tom Felton is going to grow into an absolutely ideal Draco Malfoy. He’s a perfect foil for Radcliffe, all sneer and snowy smugness, the exact opposite of Radcliffe’s rumpled charm. The cast is filled out nicely with new additions like Shirley Henderson as Moaning Myrtle or Kenneth Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart. The cinematography is handled by Roger Pratt this time, one of my heroes. This is the guy who shot BRAZIL and THE FISHER KING, who shot THE END OF THE AFFAIR and SHADOWLANDS and 12 MONKEYS. This guy’s work is exceptional, and sure enough, I infinitely prefer the look of this film to the look of the first film. Credit must also go to ILM, whose Quidditch sequence represents a quantum leap from last year’s take on the same event from Sony Imageworks. Of course, Columbus has more experience shooting Quidditch now, so some of the jump in quality should be attributed to how much more polished he’s become.
Maybe, in the end, too polished for his own good. The ending of this film is rushed, packed with exposition that doesn’t really tie into the film we’ve seen before it, and it doesn’t really play fair with its audience. If you haven’t seen it, skip to my next review, because I want to bring up some things about the film’s conclusion...
Okay... if Ginny Weasley is the one who started all this, then why did Kloves and Columbus choose to essentially eliminate her from the rest of the movie. The book did a great job of dropping enough clues for you to piece things together, important when you have this sort of a mystery at the heart of your film.
But, no. Ginny’s a nonentity, barely introduced in her first scene at the house. And the mystery of Tom Riddle’s whole name isn’t introduced until it’s time to solve it. It’s lazy screenwriting, and it depends upon a familiarity with the books to fill in the gaps. It irritates because these are essentially very good films. I think Columbus has performed above and beyond in very difficult artistic circumstances. These films are Important Product to Warner Bros., the cornerstones of a franchise that they may not realistically know how to do yet, but that they are on track for thanks to these first two movies. Is there room for improvement? Sure. THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN is a smashing good yarn, and it’s up to Kloves to find the pulse of the thing and make it really live and breathe. If they do this next movie right, they’re going to really put the audience through the wringer. I’d rather this film be the interesting warm-up that it is than see the next film stumble.
INTACTO
If nothing else, INTACTO is a promising debut for director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. I must admit... I’m a bit puzzled by the early word comparing this film to MEMENTO. Aside from vaguely similar titles, there’s really nothing that would stylistically bind the two. INTACTO is told in linear fashion, although elliptically. If I’d compare it to anyone’s work, it would be that of Atom Egoyan, who makes such great, devastating time bombs, movies that really don’t sink in on first viewing. INTACTO wants to be that kind of film. It wants to linger. It wants to give you pause later as you contemplate the levels of meaning. And that’s certainly a noble ambition. I’m just not sure the film has what it takes to deliver on such high goals.
The film begins with a strange game of Russian roulette in the back rooms of a casino that seems to exist on the edge of a crater somewhere. It’s an ethereal setting, and right away, the film is a visual stunner. Max Von Sydow plays one of the two combatants. He fills a revolver so only one chamber is empty, and then he and his opponent face off. At the end of the scene, we’ve been shocked. We’ve seen details like the survivor’s tattoo on Von Sydow’s left arm. But we have no idea where things are going, or what’s happening.
It’s such an odd concept for a film that even the most attentive viewer is going to need a while before they really piece it together. Basically, there are these people who are like luck vampires. If they encounter someone on a lucky streak, they touch them and they absorb their luck, drain them of it. There’s an underground of kinky games of chance, and a few of them are memorable, with a blindfolded chase through a heavy woods being a particular standout. There’s a strange dreamlike quality to the narrative that left me distanced, though, so I was admiring individual moments rather than the film as a whole.
There’s a little bit of UNBREAKABLE in this premise, too. Tomas (Leonardo Sbaraglia) is the sole survivor of a nightmarish plane crash, and the fact that he walked away without a scratch is what brings him to the attention of Federico (Eusebio Poncela). Federico is looking for someone, a battery, who he can drain at just the right moment so that he can finally face down and defeat The God of Chance, the character we saw in that opening scene. Von Sydow plays Sam as the ultimate survivor. Yes, he made it out of a German concentration camp in WWII. There’s more to it than that, though. Finally, there’s a woman, Sara (Monica Lopez), who is tracking down Federico and Tomas, who forms the final point in the strange square dance that makes up the majority of the film.
There’s no escaping the fact that this is a first film. It suggests a very promising future for Fresnadillo, but as a film by itself, it’s not ultimately a satisfying experience. I am glad I saw INTACTO so that I know to keep an eye on this filmmaker, but I don’t know that I can recommend it as something you need to search out in the overcrowded weeks ahead. Not with ADAPTATION and NARC and ABOUT SCHMIDT and more rolling in. Lions Gate has had some real winners so far this year, but INTACTO is a minor gem at best, a solid double in a season full of home runs.
8 MILE
I’ll say this about the Eminem vehicle 8 MILE. It’s directed with a willfull integrity by Curtis Hanson, and it works on the level it aspires to. It’s a small-scale success story, a rapping ROCKY, and it works in large part because of the screen charisma of its lead.
Having said that, there’s really not much here. It’s a slight film, and what pleasures there are come primarily from how hard Hanson has worked with screenwriter Scott Silver and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (FRIDA, THE 25th HOUR, AMORES PERROS, RICKY 6) have all worked to give us a credible world in which to set the oft-told story of an angry young man trying to find his voice. I don’t know that I’ll really ever buy Eminem in other roles, but he knows how to play Jimmy “Rabbit” Smith. He smolders convincingly, and when he explodes, I buy it. I liked the fact that Kim Basinger finally let her natural southern twang fly free as Jimmy’s white-trash mom. I’d also like to take a moment to say that if that’s really Kim in her first moment onscreen and not an ass double, then I want to redouble my ovation. The film’s filled with eye candy, with Brittany Murphy playing Alex, an ambitious little hottieburger who wants to model the way Jimmy wants to rap. She’s willing to do anything to put her portfolio together, teaching Rabbit a hard lesson halfway through the film. One could make the case that 8 MILE treats its women badly, and you certainly wouldn’t be wrong. Then again, I don’t see anyone else being treated especially well. One of Eminem’s friends shoots himself in the dick. Another turns out to a be a duplicitous hustler. Even his closest friend doesn’t seem to understand him as the film ends. It’s not exactly a movie about winners.
Most of the people I’ve talked to about the movie want to talk about the last battle in the film, and it’s obvious why that’s the case. Hanson and his editors (Craig Kitson and Jay Rabinowitz) and Prieto have all worked a sort of magic here. I’m reminded of the way the musical numbers just sort of erupted in Alan Parker’s FAME. They shouldn’t have worked, but they were grounded so firmly in the world that Parker created that they made sense. They were emotionally right. The structure of 8 MILE is so blindingly obvious that it shouldn’t work. We should be irritated by how apparent it is from the opening scene that the film is going to have to end with a battle, and Eminem is going to have to win. What else is going to happen when you open the film with him choking, freezing up onstage, unable to even compete? Yet, despite the obvious nature of the ending, it works, and it works because Eminem doesn’t just win the battle... he decimates the guys he faces. It’s a glimpse at exactly what it is that sets the real Eminem apart, and it’s quite revealing.
So often, people get hung up on Eminem’s lyrics on his albums, and if you’re remotely sensitive, I can see why he might make you jumpy. He uses shock imagery to get your attention, and he wallows in excess. He also happens to be an incredible stylist in his own right. He has an innate sense of timing and phrasing that manages to be both comic and menacing, depending on how he wields it. Within the context of this film, you see him build to the routine that he uses to destroy his opponents, members of a crew called The Free World. They serve him a beatdown the day before the battle, and they come at him on a personal level when they rap against him. In each of the rounds, though, Rabbit deflects the attacks. In the last round, he is picked to go first, which puts him on the offensive, leaving it up to the Free World to rip him apart in rebuttal. Rabbit knows how much ammunition they have to work with. Because you’ve seen everything that’s come before, it connects with an almost electrical charge when he unloads on his rival:
”This guy aint a motherfuckin' emcee/I know everything he's 'bout to say against me/I AM white, I AM a fuckin bum/I DO live in a trailer with my mom/My boy Future is an Uncle Tom/I do got a dumb friend named Cheddar Bob/Who shoots himself in his leg with his own gun/I did get jumped/By all 6 of you chumps/And Wink did fuck my girl/I'm still standin' here screamin "Fuck the Free World!"/Don't ever try to judge me, dude/You don't know what the fuck I been through/But I know something about you/You went to Cranbrook, that's a private school/What's a matter dawg?/You embarrased? This guy's a gangsta?/His real name's Clarence/And Clarence lives at home with both parents/And Clarence’s parents have a real good marriage/This guy doesn't want to battle, he's shook/’Cuz ain't no such things as half way crooks/He's scared to death/He's scared to look in his fuckin' yearbook/Fuck Cranbrook!/Fuck the beat, I'll go acapella/Fuck a Papa Doc/Fuck a glock/Fuck a trailer/Fuck everybody/Fuck ya'll if you doubt me/I'm a piece of fuckin' white trash/I'll say it proudly/Fuck this battle, I don't wanna win/I'm outee”
And as he passes the mic to a stunned, chastened Papa Doc, he practically spits out:
”Here, tell these people something they don't know about me!”
It’s a great moment. It’s a moment that makes the whole rest of the film worth sitting through. It’s a totally shameless ending, and it doesn’t matter. Everybody brought their A-game to this one, and in that great final beat, they all pay off on the investment by Universal and Imagine. This isn’t an Oscar contender. It’s not even a great film. But it’s got a great sense of self, and it does what it promises. You can’t really ask any more.
So with that, I’m out of here, too, and I’ll be back tomorrow with that Michael Caine interview, and I’m working on two huge DVD columns for the rest of the week. Loads of good stuff to come. See you soon.
"Moriarty" out.
