reVIEW (51) SCREAM 2

reVIEW (51)

SCREAM 2

... and with a brand new Scream just around the corner, here’s the other zombie I wanted to resurrect…

Go, zombie, go!

Shamble across the Interwebz!

“Let’s face it, Sidney. These days, you gotta have a sequel!”

-- Stu (from Scream)

The menacing drone of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” plays over the opening credits of a film called Stab.

Yes, Stab--the film based on the novel The Hillsboro Murders, written by the Antichrist of tabloid TV, Gale Weathers.

With an audience of howling gorehounds in white masks and black cloaks, the sneak preview of Stab (presented in “Stab-O-Vision,” naturally) serves as the opening sequence of Scream 2, an opening that is both a sobering indictment of how fanatical some gorehounds can get about their horror movies, and a brilliant follow-up to Scream’s taut opening; we even get to see Heather Graham (a long way from Twin Peaks, she is) do Drew Barrymore’s Casey Becker, in a great Psycho homage.

Slamming us with a coda that is a chilling example of what Scream 2’s “freaky Tarantino film student,” Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), terms “life imitating art imitating life,” the sequence drags us bodily into the second chapter in Kevin Williamson’s envisioned trilogy, a stunning continuation of the first film, many of its plot elements and surprises logical ramifications of events that occurred in the original.

“It’s starting again, Randy.”

-- Sidney

Two years after the bloodbath at Stu’s house in Scream’s climax, Sidney (Neve Campbell, back for a second round) and fellow Woodsboro massacre survivor Randy (Jamie Kennedy) have gone on to university, where they are pursuing a “pseudo-quasi-happy existence,” trying to put the past behind them. A past that refuses to go away, as not only has Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) written a book about Woodsboro, but a film has been made from that novel.

Then there’s Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), falsely accused by Sidney for the murder of her mother (as seen in Scream), still trying to clear his reputation by getting on the tube to tell his story.

With Stab’s opening just around the corner, all these media prods set the stage for the renewed mayhem; as an Omega Beta Zeta sister puts it so succinctly, “It’s that movie, Stab. It’s bringing out the crazies.”

“If there is some freaked-out psycho trying to follow in Billy Loomis’ footsteps, you probably already know him. Or her. Or them. They’re probably already in your life. They get off on that.”

-- Dewey

The sly intelligence and self-referential wit evidenced in Scream is still here in the sequel, proving that Williamson’s skill at writing a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat horror film that is also a statement on the genre and the medium, was not a one-off fluke.

From the broad thematic (and cinematographic) nods to Psycho (and, to a certain extent, Psycho II) to the particular--and peculiar--workings of the Scream universe (what could just have very well been a throw-away line from the first film crystallizes into “reality” as we see Tori Spelling essay Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott in Stab; it’s just too bad we don’t get to see David Schwimmer’s Dewey), Williamson displays firm control of plot and character, taking the survivors from the original and bringing them two years forward, each of them displaying scars--both physical and psychological--from the events in Woodsboro.

And given the strong sense of continuity between the first two chapters of the Scream trilogy, my mentioning Psycho may be very appropriate, since, the way I see it, after all the trauma the survivors of Scream 2 go through, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Scream 3 opens with said survivors running a motel just off the highway, dressing up in masks and cloaks and murdering unsuspecting secretaries on the lam.

“So it’s our job to observe the rules of the sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate. More blood. More gore. Carnage candy. Your core audience just expects it.”

-- Randy

Though the death scenes here are not necessarily any gorier than those in the original, what are certainly more elaborate this time around are the set pieces leading up to those deaths; the chases, the thrills, the suspense. In an astoundingly nerve-wracking sequence, Williamson actually outdoes the “potential slasher victim trapped in the back of a cop car” scenario in I Know What You Did Last Summer with the one in Scream 2.

Williamson and director Wes Craven also utilize the Windsor College setting to its utmost, wringing all they can out of the “college campus as stalking ground” milieu.

Just as Scream played with the slasher setting archetype of the small town terrorized by the mad killer (as established in Halloween and done to death in many a subsequent film, such as The Prowler and My Bloody Valentine), Scream 2 trods the well-worn footpaths of such slasher fare as Graduation Day and Final Exam.

True to form though, Williamson takes it that one, smart step further. The script is so cognizant of its setting that the environment is exploited for all its thrill-worthy potential.

At one point, Kennedy, David Arquette, and Cox share a particularly intense scene set on the sprawling campus lawn in broad daylight, and in another (in what I like to think of as the film’s T.S. Eliot “Who is the third” moment), Campbell does a great turn in a slightly surreal dress rehearsal where Sidney plays the doomed prophetess Cassandra amidst a masked Greek chorus.

Even Sidney’s identification with Cassandra--who is doomed to live out a future she is intimately familiar with, because she can convince no one of its impending reality--is a stroke of genius on Williamson’s part. At one point in the film, Sidney laments, “I knew this was going to happen”; the police stations and reporters are now a painfully familiar sight for poor Ms. Prescott.

“Wow. That was intense.”

-- Cotton

Crackling with an air of tense expectancy and boasting a climax that has some last-minute mind screws and plot curveballs, Scream 2 is an expertly executed film that highlights not only the fascination of the movie-going masses with violence, but also the omnipresence of the media in our lives.

It is a film that once again proves that, 1) Wes Craven is alive and well and still quite capable of eliciting the scares, 2) it doesn’t hurt for horror to have a brain, and 3) Kevin Williamson is a brilliant writer with a deep respect for the genre and a great sense of humour.

Described by one critic as “a fascinating piece of work for a post-media society,” Scream 2 is a film that holds a mirror up to itself, the horror genre, and the audience, all in one graceful, knowing gesture (the audience being a microcosm of society at large); a film that gives you pause for reflection, as you’re running scared silly for your life.

“You do realize that if we were in a Scream movie, you'd be the prime suspect...”

-- Mark Gatela to me

[The above review existed in a former published life, and in slightly altered form, in the year 1997, under the identity of “Scream and Scream Again.”]

(Scream 2 OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

reVIEW (50) SCREAM

 

reVIEW (50)

SCREAM

With the impending release of Scream (the fifth installment and the first without the late, great Wes Craven at the helm), I figured I should resurrect a couple of corpses and let them do the zombie shuffle across the Interwebz, so… here’s one…
 
[The review below existed in a former published life--and in an altered form--in the year 1997, under the identity of “Hitting the Right Pitch.”]
 
“What’s the point [of watching scary movies]? They’re all the same. Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can’t act, who’s always running up the stairs when she should be going out the front door. It’s insulting.”
-- Sidney
 
In 1977, former literature professor Wes Craven--who had already helmed 1972’s lurid Last House on the Left--directed the aridly vicious The Hills Have Eyes, cementing his reputation as a creator of gritty and uncompromising horror films.
A year later, on the last night of October, Michael Myers haunted the streets of Haddonfield in a blood-drenched homecoming that would spawn a whole sub-genre within the horror field, and would make the careers of director John Carpenter and actress Jamie Lee Curtis.
It would be six years later, in 1984, that Craven’s path would intersect with the trajectory of the slasher film genre, when he ended up creating a horror icon: A Nightmare on Elm Street’s “bastard son of a hundred maniacs,” Freddy Krueger--an icon that would later lose all of its potency to the insidious disease, sequelitis.
Flash forward a dozen years, and Craven once again plunges into the slasher genre with a little scary movie called Scream.
 
“See, the police are always off-track with this sh!t. If they watch Prom Night, they’d save time. There’s a formula to it! A very simple formula! Everybody’s a suspect!”
-- Randy
 
From its intense opening sequence which features a wicked ‘90’s take on When A Stranger Calls, coupled with a game all horror hounds would both love and dread to play (watch out for the trick question), Craven makes it clear he’s out for blood.
The 13-minute sequence is so taut and solidly crafted, it makes far better viewing than any number of random full-length slasher entries you might name.
It also utilizes a device hardly seen in the 36 years since 1960’s Psycho (though Chuck Russell’s remake of The Blob, and Craven’s own original Nightmare actually, also used it to good effect).
With that brilliant sequence, we are rushed headlong into what can perhaps be best described as a postmodern slasher film that could very well have been the final word on the genre.
 
“You should never say ‘Who’s there?’ Don’t you watch scary movies?! It’s a death wish. You might as well just come out here to investigate the strange noise or something.”
-- Ghostface
 
It will be remembered that Craven first attempted to do the postmodern meta thing with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, where Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, and Craven himself, all appeared in a tale that presented them struggling against the evil they had created on the screen, now bursting through into the “real world.”
John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness would also explore similar terrain.
However you may feel about either title though, I think it’s fair to say that Scream hits just the right (meta) pitch.
 
It’s a wickedly self-referential film that speaks the language of the movie buff: from the general (rated relationships and the “life is a movie but you can’t choose the genre” analogy) to the specific (the exposure of a slasher film’s conservative, puritanical heart in one of the cardinal rules of the genre: sex equals death, the virgin gets out alive--oft-discussed by the more critically-minded of us gorehounds in the nearly 20 years between Carpenter’s Halloween and Craven’s second slasher triumph).
 
In loving tribute to the very audience who had, by that point, held him in awe for decades, Craven’s Scream is a genuine joy for horror film fans, making reference to a whole slew of movies, from Terror Train to The Silence of the Lambs.
It even turns the entire “Do horror films create violent psychos?” debate on its head in one swift, clean stroke.
With the skill of a surgeon (or an anal-retentive serial killer), Craven and scriptwriter Kevin Williamson play with audience expectations, utilizing every trick they can get their hands on, including time-honoured horror movie clichés and the genre formulas we all know and love, to give us a solid slasher flick that cuts right to the bone.
 
“What movie is this from? I Spit On Your Garage?”
-- Tatum
 
Scream is a horror movie that manages to entertain, set you on edge, and study the genre it belongs to, all in one fell swoop. In doing so, it places the entire slasher genre on the hot spot.
Even Craven is not safe from himself. From the conspicuous-looking janitor to the throw-away line, “You’re starting to sound like some Wes Carpenter flick or something,” it’s clear this film also has a sense of humour.
But like all great horror movies, it’s also relentless and persistent--the Energizer bunny wearing a hockey mask, coming at us again, and again, till the bloody end; an end orchestrated to perfection with a videotape of Halloween playing as counterpoint.
 
“Only virgins can outsmart the killer in the big chase scene in the end. Don’t you know the rules?”
-- Randy

As I mentioned earlier, Scream could very well have been the final word on the slasher genre.
But its box office success would prove to be a siren song Hollywood was loathe to resist.
Which, in the final analysis, was still a very good thing, as Scream 2 (reView post to follow soon) proved to be a crackerjack sequel.
And while I was ultimately disappointed by Scream 3 (Williamson did not write the screenplay), the 11-years-after Scream 4 (with Williamson back on scripting duties) turned out to be a curious title for me.
I didn’t much care for it back in 2011 when it was released. But I went back to it just last year as a refresher and was pleasantly surprised to discover a newfound appreciation for it.
Whereas my initial reaction was that it was an ultimately pointless retread, it turns out my reconsidered opinion is now that 4 is a slyly wicked subversion of the “Let’s introduce the new generation to replace the OG characters” type of reboot, where
 
[SPOILER!!!]
 
some of the very characters you fully expect to have the torch handed over to reveal themselves to be the ones under the Ghostface mask.
Bravo, Craven and crew.
 
And now, we have the 11-more-years-after Scream to look forward to…
Hopefully, it does Mr. Craven proud.
 
(Scream OS & UK quad courtesy of impawards.com.)

30 MONEDAS / KATLA

And now, for those of you who may want a viewing commitment more substantial than just a 2 hour-or-so movie (and don’t consider the reading of subtitles an annoyance), this pair of foreign-language TV horror shows get a couple of hearty ¡Qué horror! recommendations.

30 MONEDAS

(30 COINS)

Season 1

(November 2020)

“Do you know the best way to conceal a lie? Inventing a much bigger one.”

“That’s true. It’s par for the course in politics.”

Álex de la Iglesia serves up some pulpy religious horror with 30 Monedas, which, as indicated by its title, has the very coins which were the price of Jesus’ betrayal as the series’ centerpiece.

“We all have something we can’t manage to forget, don’t we, Father? With the Internet, there are no secrets anymore.”

“That really is an invention of the Devil.”

And while the practical make-up/creature effects are much appreciated by yours truly (the huge CGI set piece, not so much), thankfully it isn’t all po-faced horror here.

Fleeting moments of comic lightness stem organically from characters and their interactions with each other so the proceedings don’t inadvertently suffocate us with constant terror-induced anxiety.

“There is a much deeper horror. We live in the midst of a hurricane of lies and deceit. There are no truths, only a furious instinct of destruction and madness, provoked by your God.  I don’t know for what reason. Maybe it’s just for the pleasure of making you suffer.”

And then, for a change of pace…

Strip away the Biblical MacGuffins and the cause-and-effect plot mechanics, swap in a grey ash-laden mood and bleakly creepy atmosphere and a tighter focus on character and emotion, and we have…

KATLA Season 1

(June 2021)

“If you ask me, nothing here seems normal anymore. I know that you scientists don’t believe things unless it can be measured with your fancy equipment, but I can tell you that something is happening that science can unfortunately not explain.”

The eponymous Katla has been in a state of volcanic unrest for a year now, and the small Icelandic community of Vik is all but a ghost town, with most of its inhabitants evacuated, and the remaining few simply “trying to survive.”

But, as if that weren’t already bad enough, some undeniably weird sh!t belatedly hits the fan…

This one revels in its central mystery, one of dread and anticipation, as we (and the forcibly dwindled population of Vik) bear witness to the impossible and inexplicable return of individuals who really shouldn’t be among us, at least, not in the manner in which they’ve returned.

And with that sentence, it should come as no surprise that there are echoes of Les Revenants in Katla, as everyday lives are impacted by the reintroduction of… well… not the dead, exactly, as in Les Revenants*, but certainly, of individuals whose very presence flies in the face of everything we know about existence.

To its credit, Katla doesn’t overly prolong the “Why?” of its mystery.

By its final, eighth episode, it’s made clear why this is all happening. Mileage may vary, however, as to whether any particular audience member will accept the explanations, given how everything shakes out in the end.

At the very least, answers are offered, while leaving matters open for any potential follow-up season.

“Nature regularly reminds us how small we are. How everything we’ve got depends on it.”

* Though there are apparently some of those.

And hey! Lookit! There’s a creepy kid here, too!

(30 Monedas key art courtesy of impawards.com; Katla key art courtesy of twitter.com.)

POSSESSOR (January 2020)

POSSESSOR

(January 2020)

“I’m just here to fix your head.”

Brandon Cronenberg is back with the elegantly savage and caustic Possessor (released as Possessor Uncut), which finds Andrea Riseborough’s Tasya Vos up to her eyeballs in ruthlessly sinister corporate shenanigans.
Hi-tech assassination, murder by remote control, as Vos “interfaces” with a carefully vetted patsy, using their entire body to rather violently bump off whoever’s on her kill list.

Now…

To paraphrase Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Girder: “Consider (the face of) Colin Tate,” as played by Christopher Abbott, familiar to these parts from Trey Edward Shults’ It Comes at Night and Nicolas Pesce’s Piercing.
Abbott’s Colin is said patsy for Vos’ next job, which, wouldn’t you know it, goes horribly sideways…

“You might find this uncomfortable, but you just need to try to keep breathing.”

It’s been 8 years since the younger Cronenberg debuted on the feature stage with Antiviral, but he’s back with a whopper, which has a lot on its menu.

Some of the main courses: the gradual reduction--and inevitable corrosion--of identity through technology, and the interchangeability--and ultimate disposability--of the flesh.

All that, and it’s bolstered by a solid cast (you did see those names up there, right?).

So, check it out if it sounds like it falls neatly into your regular cinematic diet.

One more thing:
While we won’t be returning to the regular annual ¡Qué horror! rundown stylings of the Long Ago anytime soon, this is still technically ¡Qué horror! (or the closest thing we’ve got to it for now), so, viewer advisory: also on the menu--a side order of frank sexual imagery and liberal dollops and spatters of ultraviolence.

It was, after all, released as Possessor Uncut.
You’ve been warned.

“Do you ever think of your wife as a predator? Hmm? Do you ever think of her that way?”

(Possessor Uncut OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

THE LAST HOUSE
ON THE LEFT
(Review)


Ever since Michael Bay’s brazen culpability in the decision to redo Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre—officially kicking off the 70’s/80’s horror remake wave we’re still in the clammy grip of—I’ve been waiting for that particular remake that would actually stand on its own as a valid piece of modern horror cinema.
I look at Tom Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead, or Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead redux; we didn’t particularly need them, but they were excellent updates of their originals nonetheless.
I’ve also yet to see this generation’s The Thing or The Fly, remakes that actually transcend not just the original source material, but also the boundaries of genre cinema as well.
And while Dennis Iliadis’ grimly violent The Last House on the Left—a reworking of Wes Craven’s infamous debut feature—may or may not be in that esteemed league,* it’s certainly a very adult and ballsy piece that effortlessly leapfrogs over its recent remade ilk and is officially the first 70’s/80’s horror remake that I’m actually satisfied with.


As with the original, Iliadis’ Last House follows the ordeal of a family who gets the chance to turn the tables on a bunch of criminals who have just perpetrated a heinous act on one of its own.
Iliadis takes a script by Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth (who wrote Disturbia, and previously worked with Craven on the script for Red Eye), and with a pretty solid cast, crafts a tense and disturbing portrait of the strength of filial bonds and the universality of violence.
It’s brutal, this, and Iliadis gets some excellent performances from the likes of young actors Spencer Treat Clark (Bruce Willis’ son in Unbreakable, all lookee-he’s-growed-up-now!) and Sara Paxton (Aquamarine’s mermaid, and soon to be seen on TV’s The Beautiful Life), and more seasoned thespians like Monica Potter, Tony Goldwyn (who I still think of as either Tarzan, or the bad dude in Ghost), and Garret Dillahunt, who stole most of the best bits in the second and final season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, playing the ultimate role-playing geek living in his mother’s basement, the awesome John Henry.
With Dillahunt and Goldwyn as the heads of their respective families, Last House presents an unflinching depiction of how far ordinary people are willing to go to avenge a loved one.


This one’s intense, and yes, I’ll say it again—brutal, with some great work by KNB EFX, including a gloriously gory kitchen appliance-assisted Grand Guignol bit. (True, it’s a scene that, arguably, may have been unnecessary, but it’s still a shocking bit of grue!)
Hands down, this wipes the floor with the collective a$$es of all those other recent horror remakes, including those of Craven’s Hills Have Eyes films.
By pairing the onscreen violence with performances that manage to delineate personalities that elicit our sympathies (or our antagonism), Last House quickly proves to be much more than a misguided exercise in reheating cinematic leftovers in the hopes of cashing in on a recognizable brand name.
No, this is a grand, catered affair, whose dishes rework the classic recipe into something very contemporary, and yet, ultimately timeless.
So come on in, if you’ve the stomach for it. Just bring lots of napkins to sop up the mess.
Lots and lots of napkins…


* It would be difficult for me to judge whether Iliadis’ take transcends Craven’s version, as I’ve yet to have the opportunity to see the original…

Parting shot: Aside from Iliadis’ Last House, the only other recent ‘70’s horror remake I actually like is John Moore’s The Omen.
I do still have a bunch of issues with it (and yeah, that was another remake we really didn’t need to begin with), but it does have some great cinematography, courtesy of Jonathan Sela.


(The Last House on the Left OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; images courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS
(Review)

“It’s spelled A-D-V-N-T-U-R-E, my friend.”
“Christ, you’re a tit.”


It’s all right there in the title, innit?
The glorified send-ups of the B-movie romp—as exemplified by such films as James Gunn’s Slither and Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror—find a new recruit in Phil Claydon’s Lesbian Vampire Killers.
Here, there’s a little English village called Cragwich, with a curse laid down upon it by the dykey vampire queen, Carmilla (Van Helsing’s Silvia Colloca, who is now, by the way, Mrs. Richard Roxburgh; sign up for a movie single, and get a gorgeous wife out of it… brilliant!). As the curse goes, every village lass turns into a lesbian vampire on her 18th birthday.
But hope lies in Jimmy McLaren (Mathew Horne), the descendant of Baron Wolfgang McLaren III, who vanquished Carmilla once before. But in Jimmy’s blood also lies Carmilla’s one shot at resurrection.
And all we need for that, is a virgin.


Yup. It’s that kind of British horror-comedy.
And while it may not fulfill its promise as successfully as a Shaun of the Dead or a Severance, it’s nonetheless a sight funnier than efforts like The Cottage.
At the very least, there’s loads of hot women in this, so that’s got to count for something, yeah?

“Yup. Lesbian vampires.”
“How ridiculous.”
“No. Just another one of God’s cruel tricks to get on my tits. Even dead women would sooner sleep with each other than get with me, it would appear. But eatin’ me alive? Oh, no, that’s fine!”


Much of the film’s humour can be found in the funny, overweight sidekick figure, as essayed by Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead, or to use an American example, Tyler Labine in Reaper.
In Lesbian Vampire Killers, that role is taken quite ably by James Corden (The History Boys’ Timms, who’s been previously paired with Horne on TV’s Gavin & Stacey and Horne & Corden). As Fletch, Corden gets away with most of the script’s winningest lines.
That said, the script (by Stewart Williams and Paul Hupfield) just isn’t as hilarious as I imagine it could have been, given the patently preposterous premise.


Still and all, it’s a bit of harmless, goofy fun (the sort of fun where lesbian vampire blood isn’t red at all, but rather, a milky white substance, looking much like gallons of… umm… err… never mind).
There’s also what could very well be a fleeting verbal nod to hentai classic, Chôjin densetsu Urotsukidôji. (I was hoping for a subsequent visual, but sadly, that never came to pass.)
So if that sounds to your liking, well then, check Lesbian Vampire Killers out by all means.
It may not be a classic by modern horror-comedy standards, but it does give it a good go.

“Lesbian vampires?!”
“Next time, he’ll have me bummed by a big, gay werewolf, I swear!”


Parting shot: Reviews of Severance, The Cottage, Slither, Planet Terror, and The History Boys can be found in the Archive.

(Lesbian Vampire Killers UK quad and images courtesy of empireonline.com.)

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
(Review)


Being a Danny Boyle fan, it was with some anxiety that I tracked the fortunes of Slumdog Millionaire, a film I looked forward to with relish, feeling that the tandem of Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (who’d previously proven his adeptness at championing the underdog in his scripts for films like The Full Monty and Blow Dry) had the potential to produce something truly special.
I say “anxiety” as there was that period of time when the shuttering of Warner Independent left the film—much like its protagonist Jamal Malik—without a home. Bereft of a theatrical distributor, it seemed, at one point, that Slumdog Millionaire would be sent straight off to the DVD shelves.
But Fox Searchlight came to its eleventh hour rescue, and, just like in a Beaufoy script, the film then went on to become a frontrunner on the critics’ lists, and, at the time of this review’s posting, is also a strong contender for Oscar gold, already having made an impression at the DGA, PGA, and WGA awards.
Having been disappointed by Boyle’s most previous effort, Sunshine, it is with a tremendous sense of elation and relief that I can say Slumdog Millionaire is most certainly worth all the fuss.


With the help of his Indian co-director Loveleen Tandan (who also had a hand in the film’s casting*), Boyle captures the electric life on the streets of Mumbai, through the lens of frequent collaborator, cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle.
Supplying the frenetic rhythms of the city’s corrugated tin sprawl are editor Chris Dickens (who’s worked on Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) and composer A.R. Rahman, who make tangible in sight and sound, the pulsing, exuberant heartbeat of this triumphant story of love and destiny, where even during its most exultant moments, the very real ache of sadness and loss is acutely palpable.


The film’s cast must also be recommended, particularly Dev Patel, whose earnest and sincere portrayal of the resolute Jamal Malik, is the lynchpin of this piece.
Never once wavering from his belief and his chosen love, Patel’s Jamal becomes the symbol of hope to an entire, downtrodden populace, proof that the gravity of poverty and circumstance can be defied.


Without a doubt, Slumdog Millionaire is Boyle’s most heart-wrenching and emotionally satisfying work, marrying the visual bravura of all of his films, with the touching and potent narrative of a Beaufoy script, a script that artfully exploits the structure of an installment of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and parallels the evolution of a game show episode with the evolution of a life.
It also makes particularly extraordinary use of one of the most dubious of Bollywood staples, to stirring effect.


Ultimately, Slumdog Millionaire is a heartbreakingly uplifting tale that tells us that love can indeed conquer all, that similarly-led lives can still veer off onto vastly different tangents, that the ties of family can often be the best and the worst things in our lives, and that any dream—no matter how seemingly remote—can come true, if we only have faith in it, and in ourselves.

* Tandan has also cast Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding and Vanity Fair.

Parting shot: At the time of this review’s posting, Slumdog Millionaire has also just taken home 7 awards from the previous weekend’s BAFTA night: Best Film, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Music, Cinematography, Editing, and Sound.

Parting shot 2: Reviews of Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave and Sunshine, as well as 28 Weeks Later (which Boyle produced), can be found in the Archive.
28 Days Later is also discussed in the article "Revelations (Getting at the Truths of Apocalypse Cinema)," which can likewise be found in the Archive.

(Slumdog Millionaire OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of empireonline.com, ew.com, and latimes.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best, Most Recent Horror Movies I’ve Seen
[7 of 13]
EL ORFANATO (THE ORPHANAGE)
(May 2007)


… it’s a comforting surprise that El Orfanato is the feature debut for both [writer Sergio] Sánchez and [director Juan Antonio] Bayona. The certitude and confidence that clearly informs the film seems to have come from practiced, veteran hands. The fact that it stems from two newcomers not only makes the film even more astounding, it also effectively underscores the importance of El Orfanato as a magnificent harbinger of better, brighter things to come from the pair.

Read the entire review here.

(El Orfanato OS courtesy of aintitcool.com.)

FRINGE
Season 1 Episode 1
Pilot
Written by J.J. Abrams & Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci
Directed by Alex Graves
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

When Fringe was first announced by the trades, I had a number of reservations:
One: though J.J. Abrams’ name was attached, I can’t say I love everything he’s worked on.
If you’ve visited the Iguana before, you may know that I’m a big Lost fan, and I was also a fan of Felicity. And Cloverfield was brilliant.
But I never got into Alias, and I wasn’t that thrilled with Mission: Impossible III either.
Two: the other writer/producers announced were Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, whose scripts for M:i:III and Transformers didn’t inspire much confidence.
Three: the supreme hurdle for the show, as far as I was concerned—the premise sounded terribly X-Files-ish.

So how could the show get out from under that daunting shadow? And could the Pilot, at the very least, win this X-phile over?
I think I’d have to say the answer is a qualified “Yes.”


First off, the Pilot has a very effective pace, keeping the narrative engine going at a fast clip, while allowing time for involving character bits.
We have FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Australian actress Anna Torv), whose very personal stake in the preliminary case is telegraphed well, her desperation and anxiety palpable without being overpowering.
Then there are the father and son issues between underachieving genius (IQ 190) Peter Bishop (Dawson’s Creek’s Joshua Jackson) and his mentally unstable father Walter (played most excellently by mad King Denethor himself, John Noble, incidentally also Australian).
Oh, and the case—which will require the expertise of the elder Bishop, institutionalized nearly two decades ago, and the younger Bishop, who must serve as his father’s guardian—involves the very messy deaths of all the passengers and crew on an international flight which lands at Boston’s Logan Airport on auto pilot. (I was hoping it would be an Oceanic flight, but alas, no such luck…)

Is there, perhaps, a smidgen of convenience in the speed at which matters are expedited on the Pilot? Maybe.
But I’ll let it slide, as it is, quite literally, a life-or-death situation, and the fact remains that the Pilot never drags, and it’s a great opener that’s got the thrills, the laughs, and the requisite Abrams air of mystery to make it eminently watchable.


Clearly, this is the first Orci-Kurtzman script that’s kept me attentive and absorbed, and all involved lucked out with their casting of Noble as the certified (and certifiable) genius.
Noble delivers a portrait of tragic intelligence, laced with an unnerving air of potential lunacy, the kind of brilliance fueled by an unfettered mind. And what is more freeing, after all, than insanity?
Plus, Walter gets the best lines, and Noble delivers them with a grand, understated flourish. (The LSD bit is priceless.)

If there’s anyone in the cast who still hasn’t completely won me over by the Pilot’s end, it’s Jackson, who, unlike Noble, doesn’t quite emanate “genius” (unstable or otherwise) from his acting pores. Sorry, but at the moment, Peter just doesn’t seem to scream “190 IQ.”
We’ll see though. Still early in the game…


Getting back to the pluses, the mystery throughline for the show—“the Pattern”—is introduced effectively in the Pilot, a hook which is central to Fringe’s viral marketing, complete with the show’s catchphrase: Find the Pattern.
There’s also a megacorporation—Massive Dynamic (“Your World Is Our World.”)—that figures into the narrative goings-on, has a connection to the elder Bishop’s past, and whose motivations are, to say the least, shadowy.
Oh, and their equivalent of the on-screen text to establish setting (ala X-Files) is a neat visual which takes a page from Heroes’ chapter titles. (I particularly love the bit in Iraq.)

Now, all indications seem to point to the show being more episodic, as opposed to the heavily serialized nature of Lost.
Given though that there is “the Pattern” to contend with, I imagine Fringe may follow the lead of—and yet again, the comparison arises—The X-Files, which was largely episodic in nature, with the mythology episodes popping up over the course of its run.
Or, perhaps the template here will be more akin to Alias, as I can’t imagine Fringe will have out-and-out comedic episodes as The X-Files did.


Regardless, the show owes much to Chris Carter’s pioneering work, as well as all the test driving the post-X-Files shows of this stripe managed over the intervening years.
While it understandably took stretches of The X-Files’ freshman season for all involved to work the kinks out of the show (after all, there wasn’t really any precedent as far as the kind of series it was aiming to be), the Fringe Pilot is pretty much a fully-formed, ably constructed entity.
Not as audaciously slap-in-the-face as, say, the Lost Pilot, or, going back further, Twin Peaks’ opening salvo, mind, but effective and involving nonetheless.

So consider me hopeful and strapped in for the ride, though I will admit to still having some reservations about the upcoming experience.
Colour me cautiously optimistic over this one.


(Images courtesy of impawards.com [Fringe OS, design by FOX IN], latimes.com, tvweek.com, fringetv.blogspot.com, and fringetelevision.com.)

ALTERED (Review)

ALTERED
(Review)

Brought to us by the Eduardo Sánchez half of the directing duo behind The Blair Witch Project, Altered kicks off with a night-time hunt conducted by three rednecks, who manage to bag their quarry, something that is definitely not a regular animal.
What happens from that point onward, as well as the pivotal event that set all of this in motion, informs the rest of Altered, a very effective, old school, low-budget science fiction/horror movie that, though marginally flawed, plays so much better than Project.
For one thing, we’re actually given real, significantly more substantial characters to consider, and that makes a world of difference.

Jamie Nash’s script (from a story by Nash and Sánchez) effectively paints a group of once-friends, all still tied together by their traumatic past. Think something along the lines of Sleepers, but with a genre bent, with some freakiness and gore thrown in for good measure.
Nash puts together a script that keeps the thrills at just the right pitch, while simultaneously giving us the impression that that singular moment in these men’s shared past has indeed affected the trajectory of their very lives, and is the sole reason that has brought them here, to this night which we see chronicled in Altered.

Additionally, the performances--by Without A Trace’s Adam Kaufman, October Road’s Brad William Henke, Project’s Mike C. Williams, Paul McCarthy-Boyington, and Catherine Mangan--are commendable, more honest and textured than your average genre movie, with the rapport of the principals palpable on the screen.
Sánchez also keeps the mystery intriguing and involving, as the narrative gradually unwinds, slowly letting us in on exactly what’s going on, as well as what went on, a decade and a half ago, that brought us to this very moment. He also gamely proves that he can do wonders with an actual script and not some gimmicky combo of shaky cam and clever marketing.


As much as I enjoyed Altered though, it’s still not all goodness and light.
There are moments when, in the stalwart aim of keeping the tension going, the film’s principal setting--a house--seems to be far larger than it should be, as individuals (and other things) seem to lose themselves for varying stretches of running time.
The narrative also has the annoying tendency of having things go from bad to worse because of dumb-a$$ decisions. Granted, they’re not the sort of decisions made out of stupidity, but rather those made based on emotion, but when they happen repeatedly, the distinct urge to yell at the on-screen idiots is difficult to keep a lid on.

Still, when all is said and done, Altered is a neat little genre trip that’s worth your time and attention, something to perhaps occupy your time while we all await Sánchez’s follow-up, Seventh Moon, starring Amy Smart, and again written by Jaime Nash.

There’s also The Objective to look forward to, the new film from the Daniel Myrick half of Project.
Hopefully, both movies will be as good--or even better--than this one.

(Altered DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com; image courtesy of blogcritics.org.)

GOTHAM KNIGHT
(Review)

So, despite my initial less-than-ecstatic reaction to Gotham Knight, further exacerbated by my full-on amazement with The Dark Knight (see review in Archive), I decided to give the anime anthology film tie-in a second look, and here’s what I discovered.
It really doesn’t get any better the second time around.


Gotham Knight is a straight-to-DVD tie-in to The Dark Knight, which takes a page from The Animatrix and assembles six animated vignettes that have some connective tissue between each other, as well as with The Dark Knight.
Naturally, Batman appears, but we also get glimpses of supporting characters like Alfred, Lt. Gordon, and Lucius Fox, as well as appearances from MCU copper Anna Ramirez and gangster Salvatore Maroni (played by Monique Curnen and Eric Roberts in The Dark Knight).
Given the ostensible continuity amongst the vignettes (running approximately 12 minutes each), all six stories are by Christopher Nolan collaborator Jordan Goldberg, their screenplays written by a handful of comic book scribes and Hollywood screenwriters. (Goldberg wrote the screenplay for one vignette, “Field Test.”)


Sadly, it’s perhaps because all half dozen stories were conceptualized by one individual, that Gotham Knight doesn’t have the same level of blazing imagination so evident in The Animatrix.
While that DVD tie-in put the Matrix sequels to shame with its unbridled and multi-faceted exploration of the Wachowskis’ construct, Gotham Knight comes nowhere near the complex, brooding majesty of The Dark Knight.
It’s also a curious thing that Gotham Knight doesn’t sport the voice talents of The Dark Knight cast. Instead, we have the long-time voice of the animated Batman, Kevin Conroy, and NCIS’ David McCallum as Alfred, among others.
And though Conroy’s vocal interpretation of the Batman arguably displays a much more pleasing aesthetic than Christian Bale’s guttural growl, I’d have still preferred to hear the film’s cast in this particular case.
It is a tie-in, isn’t it?

Thankfully, I can at least say I was impressed by the fifth and sixth vignettes, Toshiyuki Kubooka’s “Working Through Pain” (which gives us a poignant glimpse of the pain that is at the core of Bruce Wayne) and Madhouse’s “Deadshot” (which pits the Bat against crack assassin, Floyd Lawton, a.k.a. Deadshot).
Aside from this pair of exceptional entries though, the rest of Gotham Knight is a disappointing mish-mash. Admittedly, there is some good animation in there, and the varied character interpretations are interesting, but the majority of Gotham Knight just doesn’t fully engage.
Particularly aggravating is Yasuhiro Aoki’s “In Darkness Dwells,” which is, visually, one of the strongest pieces, though it’s hampered by a negligible story involving the Scarecrow and Killer Croc.

Now, as much as I found 66% of Gotham Knight a frustrating disappointment, you could opt to pick up the 2-disc edition, which includes, amidst a load of extras, four episodes from Batman: The Animated Series.
With a longer total running time than Gotham Knight, these episodes include the excellent “Legends of the Dark Knight,” which uses a similar structure to Gotham Knight’s “Have I Got a Story for You,” to much better and more entertaining effect.
(Wonder Woman fans will also want to check out the 10-minute plus peek at the upcoming animated Wonder Woman, where Keri Russell, Virginia Madsen, and Rosario Dawson all get to do the Amazon thing, with Nathan Fillion and Alfred Molina along for the ride.)


Parting shot: The Gotham Knight vignettes are as follows:

“Have I Got a Story for You”: directed by Shojiro Nishimi, story by Jordan Goldberg, screenplay by Josh Olson

“Crossfire”: directed by Futoshi Higashide, story by Jordan Goldberg, screenplay by Greg Rucka

“Field Test”: directed by Hiroshi Morioka Tsubasa, story and screenplay by Jordan Goldberg

“In Darkness Dwells”: directed by Yasuhiro Aoki, story by Jordan Goldberg, screenplay by David Goyer

“Working Through Pain”: directed by Toshiyuki Kubooka, story by Jordan Goldberg, screenplay by Brian Azzarello

“Deadshot”: animation produced by Madhouse, story by Jordan Goldberg, screenplay by Alan Burnett

(Gotham Knight 2-disc edition DVD cover art courtesy of aintitcool.com; images courtesy of aintitcool.com, twitchfilm.net, and batmangothamknight.com.)