Film Review - WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

No doubt about it, Where the Wild Things Are is a product of magical madness, the result of a gutsy studio (Warner Brothers) handing an ultra-pricy property to a maverick auteur in the hopes that some sort of movie-making alchemy would take place. With Spike Jonze, the punk-rock wunderkind responsible for the surrealistic head-trip epics Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, vividly reimaging Maurice Sendak’s uniquely illustrated beloved children’s literary staple, the final product was destined to be peculiar and challenging - a reality which incited numerous behind-the-scenes creative fisticuffs. Fortunately, from the turmoil has emerged an oft-flawed beauty of a film whose emotional and visual triumphs outweigh its pesky narrative shortcomings.

From the outset, with its graffiti-covered opening titles – which are curiously reminiscent of the studio’s The Dark Knight viral marketing campaign – and dynamic handheld opening featuring the movie’s little hero Max (Max Records) aggressively wrestling with the family dog, Where the Wild Things Are wears it’s down-and-dirty indie aesthetic on its scruffy, frayed sleeve. Jonze has hardwired the look of the film to the rambunctious psyche of his diminutive protagonist, a thin-skinned, hyperactively imaginative young boy trapped in the gulf between childhood and adolescence, desperate for the attentions of his popular older sister and busy single mom (the invaluable Catherine Keener). After a nasty domestic fight, spurred by the presence of a male suitor (Mark Ruffalo, in a brief part), little Max runs anxiously from the house and into the nearby woods. Or does he?

Max’s distressed entrance into the dim forest transforms into an epic journey across turbulent seas and craggy precipices, drawing him into the ominous island woodlands which the wild things call home. Initially threatened by the gargantuan creatures, the young boy is saved from certain devouring by the hot-blooded Carol (James Gandolfini), the volatile outsider of the group who convinces his monstrous family unit to crown Max as their king. Proving to be an eager ruler, the juvenile monarch initially engages the towering beasts in numerous games and fort-building ventures, before more complicated issues begin to rear their head. While Carol pines for the attentions of the distant KW (Lauren Ambrose), and the smaller, sensitive Alexander (voiced by Paul Dano, and resembling the bipedal cousin of The NeverEnding Story’s luckdragon Falkor) yearns to have his voice heard, Max finds himself having to empathize with and ease the complex painful feelings of his hulking subjects before summoning up the courage to return to his earthly home.

The world created by Jonze and his art department is both wondrously pristine and domesticated, and when we step into it, leaving behind the authentic middle-class suburban reality of Max’s universe, we are entering a new kind of place entirely; a fantastical land which stirs within us a sense of marvel and inquisitiveness. Inhabited by the immense monsters - stunning achievements of CG and practical effects - which bear grubby, matted fur and unclean claws, the island is a setting where the dreams of cinematic enthusiasts come true. Watching Max and his newfound friends standing on a cliff, perilously close to the treacherous surf, howling at the golden horizon, waves of astonished chills flowed down my spine. There are numerous moments in Wild Things that will leave you breathless with appreciation.

Truly, the film’s success hinges on young Max Records, a real find, who plays a refreshingly naturalistic kid; playful and intelligent, but also irrational and difficult. We believe the unfolding extraordinary events because we believe he does, and his relationship with Gandolfini’s lovingly textured Carol is superbly developed. They have a heart-to-heart while journeying across a sandy plain that is intensely moving and a visit to the monster’s secret model room produces one of the film’s most gorgeously memorable scenes.

Yet one has to question who the film was made for. The script, by Jonze and Dave Eggers, is exceptional at conveying the deeper meanings behind the monsters’ personal parallels to Max’s own life, but too formless and oblique to be an easily accessible story. Frankly, it’s often something of a downer, with an omnipresent air of melancholy and an intentionally uncertain ending. As much as kids love ambiguity and rich subtext, Wild Things feels like the work of an eccentric filmmaker completely baffled by the wants or needs of his target audience, more interested in playing to the parents who are capable of performing the necessary heavy-lifting.

Although the movie ultimately falls short of its lofty aims, there is a beguiling purity in its dark, wounded soul that captures a greater truth – one which some may feel slightly uncomfortable acknowledging. Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are is an entirely new breed of animal altogether, a grown-up children’s fable with passion and bite. There are wonders to be found within its gloomy frames, but what you discover there may not be quite what you were prepared for.

4 out of 5

*Originally printed in SFU's The Peak: Oct. 19th, 2009.

Film Review - ZOMBIELAND

Shouldn’t we all be feeling zombied out by now? Forty-one years since George A. Romero messily birthed the modern shuffling zombie spectacle with the creep-classic, Night Of The Living Dead, and we’re still watching drooling stiffs mindlessly meandering from Day to Dawn. This has inspired cheeky British parodies, sub-moronic Milla Jovovich vehicles, and weirdo Jane Austen literary crossovers. I mean, after the refined Mr. Darcy has started stomping undead ass, where else is there left to go?

The answer, of course, is the devastated, corpsepacked playground Zombieland, home to a truly memorable mixed bag of misfits and director Ruben Fleischer’s colourful send-up of all things flesh-eating and decayed. In the spirit of the film’s survival-rule-obsessed lead character nicknamed Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg — starring in his second great amusement park comedy of the year following April’s Adventureland), it seems fitting that Zombieland be evaluated by the same six crucial criteria that all of its reanimated ilk should be:

Rule #1: The lead characters need not be zombies, too!

Perhaps due to the syrupy-slow saunter of your average human-hungry assailant, it often seems like filmmakers are trying to even the odds by stockpiling entire casts of personality-deficient lobotomy victims. After the infuriatingly hysterical mass media critics of Diary of the Dead and the hordes of generic carcass fodder in the Resident Evil debacles, what a joy to encounter the lovable quartet of weapon wielding eccentrics of Zombieland. We genuinely like Eisenberg’s stammering, fretful teen; Woody Harrelson’s redneck dynamo Tallahassee; and cute con-artist sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). It’s their playful interactions and bickering, not the voracious villains, which drives the film and provides it with its unexpectedly big heart. Their chemistry is so palpable that we laugh just as much at the big gags as the smaller beats, such as when Breslin patiently educates an intrigued Harrelson on the finer points of Hannah Montana.

Rule #2: With zombies, it’s all about location, location, location!

Look, there’s nothing more boring than watching the living-impaired stumble around underground bunkers and caverns. It’s been done to . . . er . . . death. The same goes for stuffy, darkened buildings and subterranean tunnels: when it comes to cannibalistic cadavers, the more recognizable and imaginative the environment, the better. Remember Dawn of the Dead’s mall complex or 28 Weeks Later’s English countryside? They were bright and wide open, making the possibility of capture all the more horrifying and frustrating. Zombieland plays around with some fun cramped settings, such as a restroom toilet, a college student’s apartment, and a tacky souvenir store, before graduating onto a superlative after dark amusement park shoot-‘em-up finale which, in crowd-stirring style, takes full advantage of every possible prop, obstacle, and attraction in sight.

Rule #3: Zombies like brains! So do we!

Given the proliferation of dimly assembled cheapie efforts, it’s often forgotten that zombie-fests are usually the most intelligent horror sub-genre, allowing a safe venue for incisive political and social commentaries exploring controversial subjects such as race, capitalism, post-9/11 anxiety, and the injustices of the Bush era. Although Zombieland is more interested in drawing laughs, writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick work overtime to ensure that every pop-culture reference, witty jibe, and sincere moment says something about the character spouting it. Even Eisenberg’s goofy narration, which occasionally feels a little too on-the-nose in regards to the film’s emotional messages, shrewdly comments not only on the grisly events in progress, but also the aspects of zombielore being referenced and subverted.

Rule #4: The only good zombie is a gloriously demolished one!

Ever since Romero used a helicopter blade to chop the top off of a decomposing aggressor, directors have made it their goal to discover new blackly tongue-in-cheek methods of destroying their monsters and to make said methods as splatteringly bizarre as possible. Zombieland, despite lacking the usual volcanoes of viscera, more than compensates with an escalating series of over-the-top-and-downthe- other-side zombie slaughters: the poor, lurching saps are pulverized with pianos, funhouse hammers, car-doors, pruning shears, and even with a banjo which has just finished playing Deliverance’s “Duelling Banjos” tune.

Rule #5: Zombies like famous people! . . . to eat!

A masterful cameo performance can be the difference between a good film and a great one. While the sidesplitting Shaun of the Dead played it subtle with blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em turns by Cate Blanchett and Peter Jackson, Zombieland goes the Planet Terror, Quentin Tarantino route, with a destined-for-classic-status extended guest spot (which shall remain unspoiled here) that is so unforgettably wry — and strangely plausible — that it provides the film with a blazing jolt of comic oomph.

Rule #6: Zombies always live to munch another day.

Even though this movie ends optimistically, eschewing a conventional bleak conclusion, it still leaves us hanging on the perfect note: satisfied and beaming, yet curious to know where our heroes will journey next. Despite being overrun with rotten, ravaging man-eaters, you can’t help but want to revisit Zombieland. Dead or alive.

3.5 out of 5

*Originally printed in SFU's The Peak: Oct. 12th, 2009.

Epi-Cast: Episode 18 - "Attack Of The Nebbishy Undead"

The hiatus is over, and the Epi-Cast has risen up from the apparent dead, like a salivating soul-sucker creeping out of a freshly dug grave. However, rather than drain your body of lifeforce, the Epi-Cast only yearns to siphon your frontal lobes of smart-juice, through an ever-reliable mixture of rambing film discussion and general rambunctiousness! Hail we, who podcast from a basement!

Epi-Cast: Episode 18 - "Attack of the Nebbishy Undead"

In this most spanking of episodes, Cam and Tom grab their trusty chainsaws and shotguns and go to work on both the Woody Harrelson splatstick hit Zombieland and the Diablo Cody ghoul-girls-gone-wild dud Jennifer's Body. They also catch up to speed with reviews of Shane Acker's animated film 9, Clive Owen's The Boys Are Back, Matt Damon and Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (A no-prize awaits whoever can guess which host fell asleep!) and the Paul Gross-starring/directed Canadian war epic Passchendale. It's also a juicy Trailer Park Encounters segment, with coverage of the no-doubt future Oscar nominee Up In The Air, the no-doubt future Scream Award nominee A Nightmare On Elm Street, the no-doubt future Razzie Award nominee The Blind Side and, um, From Paris With Love. Goddamn, this is one tasty episode!

To download, simply right-click and save on the green episode title above. Then you are free to indulge in one of the interweb's finest wonders.

P.S. We are also available on iTunes! We kid you not! Simply do a store search for "Epi-Cast" and, ELECTRO-MYSTERIO!, you can subscribe to our feed and receive insta-dl's (Net speak for downloads). Oh, and we are the "Epi-Cast", not the "Epicast". Avoid those pretentious fools like the flesh-eating plague.

Film Review - THE BOYS ARE BACK

Sometimes it only takes a dash or two of big-time movie star charisma and directorial verve to make the wheeziest of cinematic prospects crackle with authenticity and energy. Such is the case with The Boys Are Back: an amiable, Australia-set family drama involving a recently widowed sports writer’s unconventional journey towards responsible single-fatherhood, which should, theoretically, be almost unbearably gooey and corny, but is instead a genuinely audience-pleasing addition to the already considerable “reluctant parent” genre. Chalk it up to director Scott Hicks, who previously explored the complexities of father/ son relationships to great effect with 1996’s Oscar- scoring Shine, and an atypically warm Clive Owen — subduing his usual on-screen knack for brooding animal magnetism — for putting their collective talents together in the service of something simple, irony-free, and surprisingly endearing.

Owen’s Joe Warr is an undeniably flawed individual when we first come across him, a somewhat distant father and husband, whose jet-setting lifestyle depends heavily on the thankless efforts of his wife Katy (Laura Fraser), who acts as primary care-giver to their challenging six-yearold moppet, Artie (Nicolas McAnulty). However, after Katy succumbs to the ravages of terminal cancer, both of the surviving males find themselves at a grief-stricken loss, unable to truly communicate with each other, and emotionally isolated from those around them. In an effort to coax the boy out of his shell, Joe adopts a “Just Say Yes” policy, dubbing their house “Hog Heaven” and allowing for almost complete liberation from rules and responsibilities.

Although Joe’s novel new parenting strategy is met with apprehensive concern by his worried mother-in-law Barbara ( Julia Blake), who is both his closest confidante and most headstrong adversary, as well as a pretty young local woman named Laura (Emma Booth), who helps teach Artie’s elementary school class, it quickly creates a bond between the two Warr men. It also lures Joe’s London-based teenage son Harry (George Mackay), an oft-ignored product of an earlier marriage, back into his life — an added personality dynamic which threatens to topple the idyllic unruliness of “Hog Heaven” and forces him to become a stronger and more responsible role model and human being.

While this may all sounds like a drippy voyage into the nether-regions of Movie-Of-The-Week Hell, Hicks — a consummate professional finally back on the ball after a hard decade spent dragging musty Awards-bait fodder to the screen — battles the potential pitfalls of the material at every turn. Working with Alan Cubitt’s refreshing script, adapted from Simon Carr’s memoir, the director shows a sharp eye for avoiding the most irritating conventions: consider the relationship between Joe and the adorable Laura — a development that would seem to hint at hoary romantic melodrama — which is allowed to progress naturally and tenderly. These people have too much on their respective plates for a full-bore head-inthe- clouds love story, and the filmmakers respect their characters too much to crassly concoct one in order to sell tickets. They also show admirable restraint in the conversations between Joe and his deceased wife: these are moments which are portrayed in a recognizably grounded reality as opposed to being accompanied by soft lighting and histrionic strings.

Owen has rarely been better or freer, hiding his sorrows behind held-back tears and alcohol, while simultaneously radiating giddy excitement at each of Joe’s new breakthroughs. Upon discovering, early on, that his younger son has converted a hotel hot tub into an indoor water-park, the actor’s eyes run the gamut of emotions, from shock, to disbelief, apprehension, acceptance and, finally, unbridled joy, spelling out all we need to understand Joe’s transition into a champion of domestic disorder. He provides a perfect foundation for his energetic young co-stars to bounce off of, allowing for natural, affectationfree performances. Mackay in particular has one shattering blowout of a scene, stemming from a dispute over an un-emptied garbage bin, which is an emotionally devastating showstopper.

Dramatics aside, The Boys Are Back is also a flat-out wonderful looking feature, filled with sun-kissed Australian scenery captured in all of its awe-inspiring splendour by cinematographer Greig Fraser. In a voiceover, Owen reports that when mapping the human brain, an adult’s mind reveals symmetrical flat lines, while a child’s is all zigzags and unpredictability. This insight not only informs Joe’s yo-yo-like trip between adulthood and childlike abandon, but also the film’s many gorgeous visual motifs, with the stark, flat horizons contrasted against turbulent ocean waves and craggy rock formations. Fraser’s work is a radiant character unto itself and warrants notices in the impending Awards season.

If you’re willing to surrender to the movie’s leisurely pace, which, it must be said, unravels a tad during the continent-hopping third act before wrapping up in cheerily expected fashion, there is much to admire and, indeed, love about it. The Boys Are Back doesn’t aim for flashiness or innovation, but it is honest, heartfelt and, most importantly, it works. And sometimes that’s all that really counts.

3.5 out of 5

*Originally printed in SFU's The Peak: Oct. 5th, 2009.

Film Review - THE INFORMANT!

Almost precisely a decade ago Matt Damon, in The Talented Mr. Ripley, disappeared into the chameleon-like skin of a sociopathic serial killer who was intent on climbing the social ladder to wealth and high esteem, using words and sharp cunning to gain supremacy over his clueless victims. The genius of the performance was how it allowed the hungry young performer, still fresh off of being drafted into the Big Leagues with Good Will Hunting, to portray the most gifted of actors, a virtuoso master of drawing emotional responses from his audience through an intoxicating mixture of calculated subterfuge and inspired manipulation.

One has to wonder if there was a conscious inkling to re-explore that character-type lingering in the back of Damon’s cranium when he chose to tackle the role of Mark Whitacre, the paunchy, goofy-moustachioed corporate executive- turned-whistleblower, in Steven Soderbergh’s frequently too cool-for-school absurdist comedy, The Informant! Like Ripley, Whitacre is a deceptively affable and non-descript blank of a man who attempts to construct his own larger-than-life personal narrative by confusing and misleading those around him. He bases it on the crowd-pleasing novels of Michael Crichton and John Grisham, and that is what gives the film its own unique mad-ball spin.

Based on a true story — which informed the best-selling book by author Kurt Eichenwald — The Informant! doggedly follows the often bewildering exploits of Whitacre, an Ivy League-educated biochemist, who maintains a successful, if mundane, existence as a family man and top-ranking VP of the Archer Daniels Midland group, which specializes in the manufacture of corn-based products. However, as fate would have it, in the midst of a crisis involving a new virus strain depleting the company’s lysine stock, the shlumpy exec casually reveals to his superiors that he has received extortion demands from a rival Japanese corporation, who claim responsibility for the contamination.

Soon the FBI is involved, and the ultra-cooperative Whitacre, drunk with delusions of grandeur, decides to turn informer against his long-time colleagues by cheerfully divulging the details of a Byzantine price-fixing scheme to the special agents working the case, Brian Shephard (Scott Bakula — wonderful as a study in comic aggravation) and Bob Herndon (Joel McHale). Yet, as the scope of Whitacre’s story deepens, and the complexities of the situation mutate and multiply, the players, not to mention the audience, become trapped in an often incomprehensible web of false information and lunacy.

There’s a tangible aura of fidgety anxiety through much of The Informant!, as Soderbergh, a gifted talent unproven in the comedy arena, constantly battles to capture the dry zany tone which the Coen brothers regularly trade in, but is unable to ramp the movie’s energy level up past a casual amble. This is a film that cries out for screwball-level pacing to properly keep up with Whitacre’s intensely escalating tall-tales, but instead it just casually strolls, sometimes agreeably, often lackadaisically, from scene to scene without any sense of rising tension.

Soderbergh’s aesthetic choices are also puzzling and undercut the story with insecure tongue-in-cheek flourishes. Despite being set in the earlier part of the ‘90s, the characters inhabit a world decorated in ‘70s decor, and the cinematography intentionally paints the characters flesh-tones to match the copious amounts of wood-paneled wall units and furniture dominating almost every set. Perhaps it’s the director’s intention to capture the distinct flavour of the period’s paranoid thrillers, but instead of setting an evocative tone it feels distracting and precious. Likewise, bright splashes of neon Exploitation-style graphics and, most gratingly, Marvin Hamlisch’s obnoxious score, which plays wacky circus and spy theme music over moments of “humorous” tedium — a technique which is amusing early on, but grows infuriating as The Informant! meanders into its second act stretch and beyond — do little more than provide unwelcome jokey commentary upon the dense unfolding events. It’s frustrating to attempt to derive any sense of emotional fulfillment or intellectual engagement from a film that goes out of its way to deflate itself every time we become actively involved.

Nonetheless, despite Soderbergh’s hamhanded tactics, The Informant! is not without its gifts thanks to the jittery charms of Damon, whose Whitacre is a brilliant tragicomic creation, spouting a daffy ADD-fuelled stream of bizarre non sequiturs in his wittily unreliable narration. Surrounded by a gifted cast of comedy- trained actors playing it straight, the actor’s contagious relish in hiding inside this frumpy nerd-savant is astonishing to behold. It’s truly a kick to watch this venerable leading man let his go-for-broke character actor freak flag fly.

Damon is the life force of Soderbergh’s flawed effort, a dynamic (if impenetrable) force of nature that consistently pulls the film back from the brink of quirkiness-for-the-sake-ofquirkiness monotony. Indeed, the most curious irony of The Informant! is that, like Mark Whitacre himself, it overestimates its own cleverness in the face of great odds, and to regrettable detriment. Mr. Ripley wouldn’t approve and, unfortunately, I just can’t quite either.

2.5 out of 5

*Originally printed in SFU's The Peak: Sept 28th, 2009.

Film Review - JENNIFER'S BODY and SORORITY ROW

Considering the limited opportunities offered to young actresses working under the current youth-oriented Hollywood paradigm, it’s no wonder so many aspiring starlets wind up screaming for their supper. For where else, beyond romantic comedies, can promising talent find an opportunity to sidestep the Boys’ Club job postings for superhero girlfriends and comedic lust objects and achieve top billing in a boffo weekend-winning release? Strange then, that despite the ever-present supply of female casts and content, criminally few creatively inclined women in directorial or writerly positions, take the ultra-lucrative off-ramp into Terror Town. Due to the current release of duelling blood-spattered buffets, the genre is seeing its first true battle of the sexes in eons, with the hotly anticipated snark-a-thon shrieker Jennifer's Body, overseen by Girlfight helmer Karyn Kasuma and Oscar-winning Juno scribe Diablo Cody, facing off against the fetid Stewart Hendler-directed Slasher Sorority Row.

Although neither film is successful in crossing into the frightfully fruitful ground tilled and harvested by this summer's Drag Me To Hell, Jennifer’s Body comes closest to providing the worthiest BOO! for the audience’s buck. Featuring Cody’s distinctive hip-to-the-max vernacular (my favourite line featured a shock victim being referred to as a “Zombie mannequin robot statue”), the film is a quirky yet under-baked hybrid of horror hijinx, sharp-tongued ironic comedy and John Hughes-ian teen drama which never quite gels into the anarchic giggle-and-jolt fest that it aspires to be. Still, it is interesting to watch the gifted behind-the-scenes pair attempt to mine art from demon vomit and exposed innards.

Megan Fox, no stranger to type-casting, stars as a nubile High School cheerleader transformed into a ravenous succubus after a run-in with a mysterious emo band fronted by a mascara-wearing Adam Brody. Now a vampy, trampy carnivorous force to be reckoned with, making insta-meals of the school’s lusty male population, Jennifer’s lone opposition is her insecure, frequently trod-upon best friend, the appropriately nicknamed Needy (Amanda Seyfried), a saucer-eyed wallflower unprepared for the role of town saviour.

It’s when highlighting this friendship that the movie works best, as it allows Cody – who cameos briefly cameos as a burnt out bar patron – to delve into the cruel and combustible nature of self-serving High School friendships. Even when the disappointing deficiency of scares becomes apparent, and the energy flags, the two central actresses, deftly mastering the scribe’s snap, crackle and pop dialogue, keep the film from flatlining with their charismatic and recognizable, if not relatable, characters (Fox even gets to stretch intermittently beyond her standard porn-doll mode, nicely selling Jennifer’s tragic side). The film also gives Adam Brody and J.K. Simmons, as a hook-handed teacher bearing an unspeakably tormented past, hilariously rich comedic turns.

Unfortunately, while Kasuma has made a good-looking flick, turning Vancouver into a supernatural Gothic wonderland full of portentous forests and glumly desolate suburban sprawls, she can never find a consistently effective tone, with the movie’s final third becoming mired in mucky melodramatics. Ultimately, observing the film’s rickety structure acts as a sage reminder that horror-coms are tough ventures to pull off, and that for every Scream, Evil Dead 2 or Shaun of the Dead, there are a dozen noble failures like Jennifer’s Body lying by the wayside.

Still, Kasuma and Cody’s effort is a masterwork compared to the aggressively stupid and vile Sorority Row, a remake of 1983’s The House of Sorority Row, which features a gaggle of detestable young Theta Pi sisters, headed by Briana Evigan and Leah Pipes, on the run from a hooded tire-iron-wielding killer after a morally bankrupt prank involving roofies, date rape and murder goes wrong (What if it had gone right?!). Whereas Jennifer’s filmmakers attempted to find humanity in their archetypes, Sorority Row’s cast of characters are people you’d chew off your arm to get away from, a batch of hateful harpies and jerks whose only joys are spreading VD and viciously mocking each other’s eating disorders, sluttiness and cosmetic surgery.

Director Hendler captures these obnoxious women through jittery, bleary camera-work , like a drunk pervert’s leer, often cropping off his heavily made-up and grotesquely underlit actresses’ heads in favour of grimy, sweaty close-ups of their chests and behinds. The film also boasts one of the most moronic and nonsensical culprit reveals in recent memory and unimaginative, insipid gore. Only Carrie Fisher’s campy prescence as a shotgun-wielding denmother keeps us from bolting for the exit.

Oddly enough, while Jennifer’s Body knows exactly how to portray the playful pin-up girl sexiness of its fetching stars, Sorority Row stews in its misogynistic tawdry trashiness convinced that mean-spirited nudity equates entertainment. Watching the two back-to-back, it becomes head-slappingly obvious that, as far as trendy teen horror flicks go, there’s an awful lot that Jennifer’s creators and their ilk could teach their male counterparts, as films like Sorority Row make me yearn for a day when the Scream Queens rule Horror-land.

Jennifer's Body: 2.5 out of 5

Sorority Row: 1 out of 5

*Originally printed in SFU's The Peak: Sept 21st, 2009.

Film Review - 9

The best scene in director Shane Acker’s post-apocalyptic animated adventure 9 occurs in the film’s opening minutes, with the quiet awakening of its titular gear-powered hero. Hanging from one arm by a lean, weak piece of string, the fragile little creature abruptly breaks loose, falling clumsily to the worn wood surface of a workshop table. As he inelegantly pulls himself to his feet, tiny camera-lens eyes softly clicking and whirring, taking in this strange new world around him, there is a real sense of discovery taking place. This isn’t simply a collection of pixels we’re seeing stretch its tiny puppet-like fingers and cautiously zipping up its exposed abdomen, but a living thing who instantaneously stirs within us deep-rooted feelings of wondrous enchantment. Over the course of but a minute or so, we come to understand this curious diminutive being and become wholly invested in both his future and the mysterious universe around him.

If only the film’s screenplay shared our inquisitiveness and astonishment, we may have really had something special on our hands. Alas, despite the odd-ball beauty glimpsed in this delightfully involving introduction, new-fangled ideas are at a base minimum in 9, a visually rich, yet underwhelming spectacle that favours derivative action movie tropes and one-note characterizations over creative invention and depth. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled by Pixar’s apparently bottomless wellspring of artistic marvels, observed at its most potent mere months ago with the triumphant Up, but a film bearing the names of cinema’s premier fantasy goth-father Tim Burton and current hyperkinetic hot-shot Timur Bekmambetov, mastermind behind last summer’s Wanted and the Russian cult hits Night Watch and Day Watch, attached as producers shouldn’t feel so sluggish and, well, ordinary.

You can’t blame them for rolling the dice on Acker though, who attempts to expand his clever 10-minute Oscar-nominated short to full-length, giving “9” a voice through Elijah Wood, and plugging him into an adventure which requires the brave miniature “stitchpunk” – a term used extensively in pre-release press-notes, but unmentioned in the film – to battle a relentless horde of manufactured doom-machines for possession of a powerful life-giving talisman. Journeying over the war-scarred remnants of a decimated Earth, which was annihilated by biological warfare and towering War of the Worlds­-style walking weapons unleashed by a fascist dictator, “9” comes into contact with a handful of fellow “stitchpunks”, including domineering wannabe ruler “1” (Christopher Plummer), one-eyed survivor “5” (John C. Reilly), mentally scattered idiot savant “6” (Crispin Glover), and valiant feminine warrior “7” (Jennifer Connelly). Forced together, the rag-tag group of clothe-and-clockwork crusaders must place their differences aside and band together to trounce the massive marauding robo-octopus (which bears an unmistakable resemblance to Aliens’ towering queen Xenomorph) hot on their collective trail.

Acker fills his dusty movie wasteland with jagged shapes and ugly, crumbling structures, where only the faintest of light filters through the rusted scrap-metal ceilings. Indeed, there is an impeccable craftsmanship to the rich visual world of 9 which recalls the desolate ominous environments of the Mad Max films. Similarly, each of the “stitchpunks” has a unique look and feel to their design and motion, an achievement which helps surmount the flat and distractingly clean-sounding voice-work (a little distortion and grittiness would have felt more organic), and helps us differentiate them from one another when the chaos begins to reign. The clomping, stomping villains are also highly detailed constructions, bearing recognizable animal body-structures akin to spiders, cobras, crabs, pterodactyls and fireflies, and made up of revolting fragments of bone, metal, wire and junkyard refuse.

Make no mistake; as a pure exercise in animated design 9 works, and director Acker’s attention seems solely focussed on the most minuscule details – there’s a particularly chilling second-long shot into the front seat of a car, where the petrified corpses of a mother and child remain eternally locked in a frightened embrace – but he seems more or less ambivalent about the trajectory of his film. The plot meanders when it should soar, and never settles into an engaging rhythm (it’s never good when movie-goers are checking their watches in a 79-minute movie). By the time the admittedly well-crafted heartfelt ending rolls around, it was hard, even for this historically easy mark, to raise much more than an iota of warmth for these sewn-up ciphers.

Arguably 9’s worst problem, however, is that its near impossible to discern who the potential audience for the film is, as it is far too grim and intense for children, yet features a dull, shallow script and protagonists too juvenile for adults. So it remains stuck in a weird limbo, revealing dazzling bits and pieces only during momentary breaks in its formless storyline and impressive-but-wearisome action sequences. Despite good intentions, 9, like its cute central character, feels shabby and confused, a work-in-progress that’s escaped into the world before it was truly ready. Too bad.

2.5 out of 5

*Originally printed in SFU's The Peak: Sept 14th, 2009.

Film Review - HALLOWEEN II

Watching Rob Zombie’s 2007 Halloween re-imagining, it was impossible not to detect the pungent odour of frustrated flop-sweat emanating from the disjointed final product. While the first half of the film was a continuation of the gonzo hillbilly exploitation themes of the director’s schlocky-but-promising debut House of 1000 Corpses and its sick-in-the-head brilliant sequel The Devil’s Rejects, the latter portion felt like a reigned-in and creatively bloodless retread of Carpenter’s 1977 original. The result was a movie more laughably bad than scary, with the buck wild-lunacy of the Zombie-influenced early scenes of Michael Myers childhood utterly destroying the suspense of his climactic Haddonfield, IL. home-town murder spree.

Now, with Halloween II, Zombie appears to have been let off the leash, free to explore his own obsessions and eccentricities to the fullest without having to adhere to the mythology of the earlier entries. Indeed, with this film the director seems to seeking, feverishly and gracelessly, to transcend the entire Slasher flick genre and create an unsettling quasi-artistic minded study in post-traumatic suffering, evidenced by the juxtaposed mental decay of Michael Myers (Tyler Mane), now tormented by hallucinations of his deceased mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) and his younger self (Chase Wright Vanek), and his chief victim Laurie Strode (Taylor Scout-Compton), a scarred and emotionally rattled teenager battling schizophrenic visions and night terrors. This is unexplored territory in the franchise and, in theory at least, a fresh and intriguing approach to very creaky material. Sadly, however, Halloween II is an unwatchable slop-bucket of a film, filled to its grimy brim with incoherent editing, grainy, ugly cinematography, wretched performances and tensionless brutality. If there is a worse film looming ahead in 2009, I weep for the future.

Set mere minutes after the first film, wherein Laurie had blown most of Michael’s skull to paste with a revolver, we pick up with the blood-soaked, trembling girl being consoled by Sherriff Lee Brackett (Brad Dourif) and put through gruesome post-attack surgery (one of the film’s oh-so-rare neat touches), while the skull-smashed slasher is taken away in an ambulance driven by an inept pair of medics who ponder the finer points of necrophilia. After the vehicle is destroyed in a car-on-cow calamity, Michael escapes and pulls a Kwai Chang Caine, nomadically wandering the earth on foot (and growing a nifty beard in the process). In his Halloween: H20 review back in 1998, Roger Ebert queried how Michael survived between homicidal rampages. Well, Zombie shows us: he whiles away his time butchering obnoxious rednecks and devouring their dogs raw. Nice. As Myers slowly winds his way back home in time for October 31st, Laurie must confront the cause of her fractured psyche and prepare for another blood-drenched holiday.

Zombie has shown in the past a bitter spitefulness towards his critics and has this time found a mouthpiece for his aggravations in Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), Myers’ former psychologist who, having survived a vicious assault in the previous film, has become the glory-seeking author of an opportunistic expose of Michael’s eviscerating exploits. As the director’s film spins frantically away from him into a numbing black hole of unintelligible Marilyn Manson video-esque dream sequences - not to mention an aggravating extended cheat which recalls 1981’s own Halloween II - and misplaced 70s nostalgia (a black-and-white live performance of 10cc’s “The Things We Do For Love” apparently gets lots of airplay in Haddonfield), Loomis hurls insulting barbs regarding “journalists” and even resentfully yells that “I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to do here!”. Oh, we get it Rob, but it stinks.

Despite the movie’s lofty aims, all drama is sucked out of Halloween II by its tin-eared dialogue (Do kids really say things like “too coolio for schoolio” and “I’m starvin’ like Marvin”?) and feeble lead performances. While a bored McDowell often seems to be channelling his obnoxious Tank Girl villain, Scout-Compton, perhaps the shrillest Scream Queen ever, wildly overplays every scene, succumbing to endless fits of headache-inducing hysteria by the third act. A scene featuring a fateful revelation has the potential for true disquieting horror, but instead the actress thrashes around like a grounded mackerel and shrieks the F-word in endless succession. By the time we get to the overwrought climactic showdown in a dilapidated shack we yearn desperately for gunfire if only to silence the grinding cacophony of ear-splitting sound-effects and banshee-like screeching.

Sitting through Halloween II is a punishingly dull experience, where even the ferocious kills feel exhausted and mundane. In attempting to mould the series into a pretentious weirdo experiment Zombie has delivered a true fiasco which, fingers crossed, will inspire him to regroup and rediscover the sly wit and stylishness which made him such an electric talent in the first place. For the only mark Halloween II seems destined to leave is a greasy stain on theatre screens across the world.

1 out of 5

*Originally printed in SFU's The Peak: Sept. 7th, 2009.