MIRRORS
(Review)

In my review of Kim Sung-ho’s Geoul Sokeuro (Into The Mirror)—upon which Mirrors is based—I make note of a quote from director Alexandre Aja where he states that he “…decided to start from scratch and not connect with the original Korean movie.”
Well, he does take some of Geoul Sokeuro’s principal elements—the troubled cop forced to moonlight as a security guard; the department store ravaged by a fire; the sinister, eponymous mirrors—as well as the original’s final climactic kick, and basically streamlines the narrative, pruning the varied facets Kim stuffed into his film.
What we then get is a “reimagining” that recalls Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (which Aja freely admits is his “favorite movie ever”), dotted by some rater-R gore, and shadowed by fleeting echoes of John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist, and Hideo Nakata’s water fixation.


I think my biggest problem with Mirrors is that it has no genuine sense of tension in its narrative, unlike Aja’s audacious—and so very aptly titled—Haute Tension. Even Aja’s follow-up, his remake of The Hills Have Eyes, already not as piano wire-taut as Haute Tension, still ended up playing better than Mirrors.
The unfolding of the film’s central mystery—which of course lurks in the darkness of the department store’s history—isn’t handled very well either, clumsily relayed to us via expository flashbacks and some phone calls by Kiefer Sutherland (who plays Mirrors’ lead, cop-turned-security guard Ben Carson) to his hapless infob!tch (more on that later).
And the decision to more properly pin down the true nature of the film’s mirror-centred phenomena doesn’t really do it any favours either; the original’s eclectic mix of narrative elements was certainly a lot more interesting than Aja’s simplified approach.


There’s also a whole lot of underutilization going on here as Amy Smart (who I’ve had a soft spot for ever since Felicity) is given the brief and thankless job of being Ben’s patient, younger, bartending sister Angela, before being brutally dispatched in the film’s “jaw-dropping” gore highlight brought to us by the most excellent N & B of KNB EFX, Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger.
Then there’s Guy Ritchie cohort Jason Flemyng, who’s given the brief and thankless job of being Larry Byrne, Ben’s cop friend and seemingly always available infob!tch, just a phone call away. (I haven’t actually checked, but it’s entirely possible that Flemyng spends as much screen time as a voice over a cell phone, as he does in the flesh.)
The film also doesn’t do very much with Mary Beth Peil (Grams, from Dawson’s Creek), who plays a pivotal role in the proceedings.


There are a few nice touches, mind; some subtle creeps—the handprint and doorknob bits are effective—and the aforementioned gory sequence involving Smart, being the ones that most readily come to mind.
Those bright spots however, are vastly outnumbered by scenes of a flashlight-wielding Sutherland walking about the husk of the fire-gutted department store or talking to Flemyng over his cell, which all then leads up to a disappointing WWE climax as Ben goes toe-to-toe with the film’s big bad.


I really wanted to like this one, wanted it to be the Aja film that would hands-down kick my a$.
But it isn’t, and now I’ll have to wait for Aja’s Piranha remake (in 3D, no less!), which I sincerely hope will be bucketloads of thrilling, popcorn horror fun.
Note though, Monsieur Aja, that I loved the Joe Dante original (which still swims about in the murky, nostalgia-laced deeps of my horror geek brain), so expectations will be high.
Oh, and one more thing: let’s have another original soon, eh?


Parting shot: A review of Geoul Sokeuro can be found in the Archive.

(Mirrors French OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

STARDUST
(Review)

Being a Neil Gaiman admirer of long standing (since Black Orchid and Sandman first hit the comic book shelves oh-so-long-ago), I’ve been patiently waiting for his work in film to catch up.
His English translation of Hayao Miyazaki’s Mononoke-hime (Princess Mononoke) didn’t have enough of a Gaimanesque feel to satisfy (and thus, I’ve always preferred watching it in the original Japanese), and Dave McKean’s Mirrormask was one of those films I wish I loved more than I actually do.
Now though, there’s Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of Stardust, and I’m quite happy now, thank you very much.

For what Stardust, in a not-so-small nutshell, is all about, I turn to Neil Gaiman himself, from his Guardian article, “Happily Ever After”:

“I wanted a young man who would set out on a quest - in this case a romantic quest, for the heart of Victoria Forester, the loveliest girl in his village. The village was somewhere in England, and was called Wall, after the wall that runs beside it, a dull-looking wall in a normal-looking meadow. And on the other side of the wall was Faerie - Faerie as a place or as a quality, rather than as a posh way of spelling fairy. Our hero would promise to bring back a fallen star, one that had fallen on the far side of the wall.

"And the star, I knew, would not, when he found it, be a lump of metallic rock. It would be a young woman with a broken leg, in a poor temper, with no desire to be dragged halfway across the world and presented to anyone’s girlfriend.

"On the way, we would encounter wicked witches, who would seek the star's heart to give back their youth, and seven lords (some living, some ghosts) who seek the star to confirm their inheritance. There would be obstacles of all kinds, and assistance from odd quarters. And the hero would win through, in the manner of heroes, not because he was especially wise or strong or brave, but because he had a good heart, and because it was his story.”

For anyone familiar with his writing, this should sound like vintage Gaiman, and Vaughn manages to capture a brilliant mixture of enchantment, humour, and suspense, to highlight Stardust’s traditional narrative of a boy’s passage into adulthood, of his coming into the man he was always meant to be.
Though it admittedly lacks some of Gaiman’s poetic language, the script by Jane Goldman and Vaughn nonetheless targets Stardust’s heart spot-on, giving modern audiences the sort of fairy tale even adults shouldn’t be ashamed to adore.

It’s all here, from the black nastiness of the ancient witch Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer), to the transformation of Tristan (Dot The I’s Charlie Cox) from lovestruck fool to honourable, upstanding hero, to the narration by none other than genre icon Sir Ian McKellen.
The story is then ably supported by some fine performances, particularly from Cox, whose innocent and quiet exuberance gives us a Tristan who is never less than convincing, and constantly identifiable. His brash professions of love for Victoria (tabloid regular Sienna Miller, who’d worked previously with Vaughn on his directorial debut Layer Cake, and with Cox in Lasse Hallstrom’s Casanova) early in the tale play off quite nicely against his later actions to defend the star Yvaine (Claire Danes) from the sinister forces that hound her.
It’s clear this is still the same Tristan as before, and yet, it isn’t.
And it’s not just the wardrobe change. That’s the exterior mirroring the internal growth the character has experienced, and Cox conveys that well.

If there’s anywhere that Stardust may not quite hold up though, it’s in Dane’s performance, which may lack a certain level of enchantment for some; it’s not bad by any means, but save for one particular scene where she professes her own feelings for Tristan after she’s fed him some cheese, her Yvaine isn’t quite the blindingly glowing star the character is meant to be.
And then there’s the frankly repetitive score by Ilan Eshkeri (Vaughn’s composer on Layer Cake). Yes, it gets the job done, but does it have to sound so uniform?

Thankfully, Stardust makes up for some of its shortcomings by boasting the added treat of having actors like Robert De Niro (as notorious pirate of the skies Captain Shakespeare), Ricky Gervais of Seona Dancing and The Office fame (as Ferdy The Fence), Vaughn/Guy Ritchie cohort Jason Flemyng, and Madonna cohort Rupert Everett (as two of the lords, now princes in the film), picking up some of the slack.
Vaughn and company are also wise enough to know that good supporting performances should never steal the show, so we see just enough of the actors to want some more, while keeping the focus squarely on the narrative.

With Peter Jackson having wrapped up his epic Lord of the Rings trilogy in 2003, it’s been nearly four years since anything this earnest and magickal has hit the cinemas. The unabashed respect Stardust has for this kind of storytelling, the principal trait it shares with Jackson’s Rings (definitely no snarky, postmodern winks here), bodes well for the future of the fantasy film.
I can only hope Chris Weitz‘s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass—not to mention Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf, whose script Gaiman co-wrote, and Vaughn’s next project, a film adaptation of Marvel’s Thor—continues in this vein.

(Stardust OS courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com; images courtesy of aintitcool.com.)