THE INCREDIBLE HULK
(Review)

Following an opening credits sequence that quickly and firmly establishes this as reboot more than straight-up continuation of Ang Lee’s flawed Hulk, Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk finds the on-the-run Bruce Banner (this time played by Edward Norton) hiding out in Brazil.
Doing his darnedest to learn the language and keep his head down, he works at a bottling factory while simultaneously learning to control his anger and exploring avenues to purge himself of the not-very-jolly green giant that lurks inside him.
It’s an interesting way to kick-start this pseudo-sequel, with a very conscious nod to the character’s 70’s TV incarnation (likewise titled The Incredible Hulk), which followed the episodic template of Banner in a new town, hiding out, working some odd job or other, till some occurrence would trigger the Hulk’s emergence, and the poor man would need to uproot himself once more, till he found a new place to hang his hat 7 days later.
Acknowledging the contribution the TV show has had on the public’s awareness of the character is one of the things The Incredible Hulk gets right. In fact, the script by Zak Penn (subsequently re-tooled by Norton) seems designed to have something for everyone: that opening act for the TV fans; the romantic angle—with Liv Tyler taking over for Jennifer Connelly—for the drama enthusiasts; the repeated clashes with Emil Blonsky/the Abomination—played by Tim Roth—for the comic book fanboys.
In this, and some other aspects, The Incredible Hulk plays much better than Lee’s effort. That, however, doesn’t make it a complete success.

To its credit, the film’s main players are very nearly a solid bunch.
To begin with, Norton makes a more credible Banner than Eric Bana. Bana’s an excellent actor, don’t get me wrong, but his more conventional silver screen good looks made his take on the character seem less tortured somehow, less the character from the comic books rather than a Hollywood version of that character.
Norton’s Banner, on the other hand, seems to hearken back, not just to the comic book scientist dealt a cruel hand by fate, but again, also to the Bill Bixby TV version of the character, the eternal wanderer both out of his depth and out of place, trying to regain the peace of mind and heart that the gamma poisoning has taken away from him.
And while William Hurt makes for a passably effective—if not overwhelmingly memorable—General Ross, Tim Roth manages to make a practically one-dimensional antagonist something worth watching.

But even as Roth (and Norton, for that matter) can usually be depended upon to bring the thespic goods to the screen, Liv Tyler can sometimes be one of a film’s weak cast links; see Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Thankfully, here, she delivers just enough of what the script and role demand of her to make her Betty credible as Banner’s long-suffering true love.
Most valuable supporting player though, goes without a doubt, to Tim Blake Nelson, whose Samuel Sterns is cut from the excitable, unstable genius cloth, and who we can only hope will—should The Incredible Hulk make some green at the box office—be seen more of in a sequel (or in that seemingly impending Avengers movie).
Ty Burrell (from the Dawn of the Dead remake and the recently cancelled Back To You) though, just seems like an odd choice for Doc Samson, who we see only enough of to establish him as the man with the thankless task of having kept Betty’s heart warm while she waited for her true love to come back into her life. (And trying to imagine how Burrell will essay Samson if and when his hair should turn green somewhere down the road seems even odder…)

Now, while Lee’s Hulk took one step forward by couching the established four-colour mythos in the emotional complexity he always brings to his films, he also took it two steps backward by choosing to shoot and edit the film as if it were, in fact, a comic book movie.
What I ended up seeing was a schizophrenic film that strove to make the characters real and three-dimensional, while constantly reminding me of the source material’s two-dimensional pulp origins. It seemed to yearn to transcend the material, but at the same time displayed a superficial—and ultimately distracting—fascination with the comic medium’s narrative conventions.
Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk though, clearly embraces its comic book (and television) origins, while striving to bring to the fore the romantic relationship that has always been part and parcel of Bruce Banner’s story. It also wisely curbs any over-reaching ambitions, steering clear of the cluttered narrative landscapes of Marvel entries like Spider-Man 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand.

So, despite the film’s rhythm being less than ideal (some sequences—yes, even some of the action pieces—drag a bit), and its CGI still not quite achieving entirely realistic and convincing levels, this arguably makes for better viewing than Lee’s Hulk.
It’s also most definitely better than some of the other past Marvel cinematic fare, like Ghost Rider and Elektra, so if only for that, Marvel should be commended.
Now if only they learn to be circumspect, and not jump the gun while in the heady wake of Iron Man’s box office success (that terribly premature announcement of a 2010-2011 schedule is most definitely not being circumspect), then they stand a better chance of keeping this winning streak going.

Parting shot: Reviews of some other Marvel comic book films—including Ghost Rider, Elektra, and the Fantastic Four movies—can be found in the Archive, where reviews of Leterrier’s Danny the Dog and the Zak Penn-written Suspect Zero are also ensconced.

(The Incredible Hulk OS [design by Crew Creative Advertising] courtesy of impawards.com.)

FUNNY GAMES U.S.
(Review)

"I've been accused of 'raping' the audience in my films, and I admit to that freely—all movies assault the viewer in one way or another. What's different about my films is this: I'm trying to rape the viewer into independence."
-- Michael Haneke

Well, consider me frakked.

In Michael Haneke’s shot-for-shot English-language remake of his 1997 Funny Games, George and Ann Farber (Tim Roth and Naomi Watts) are a couple of rich, white folk vacationing at their lakeside home for a couple of weeks. They’ve brought their son, Georgie (Devon Gearhart), and their dog, Lucky.
Naturally, in a film like this, when there’s a dog named “Lucky,” you can bet your bottom dollar that the mutt will be anything but.
You see, a pair of insanely courteous young lunatics (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) clad in immaculate white, are about to make a house call, all set to torture, not just the unlucky family, but the film’s audience as well.

With the cold, clinical precision that is his cinematic stock-in-trade, Haneke basically hijacks his audience and unleashes a confrontational and provocative indictment of what passes off as “entertainment” in today’s culture.
Funny Games U.S. (and its original Austrian progenitor) challenges its audience: so you like movies where people get tortured and terrorized? Well, see if you enjoy this.
With its largely static camerawork, its lack of a traditional musical score, and painfully frank performances, Funny Games U.S. presents the horrible scenario in a seemingly very real manner, while simultaneously tearing down the fourth wall on a number of occasions, reminding us that, A) this is a fiction, and B) we, the audience, are complicit in what we are witnessing.
Because this is, after all, unfolding for our entertainment.
Given that this is a decidedly non-Hollywood approach to the idea, and given that this is clearly Heneke’s agenda, it becomes obvious that Funny Games U.S. isn’t meant to be “entertainment.”
From all of what I’ve said above, it’s plainly evident that Funny Games U.S. is meant to be “art.”
And that’s I believe the sticking point of this entire quandary.

Let me use Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible as an example.
Irreversible is the sort of grueling cinematic experience that I really wouldn’t want to repeat. Viewing it wasn’t a pleasant experience.
But I do appreciate what Noe seems to be saying in it, the manner in which the narrative unfolds (begin at the end of the story in a very chaotic, nauseating manner, and work our way towards the beginning, with the camerawork gradually becoming calm and steady), part and parcel of his message.
Clearly, Irreversible is not entertainment. But I do believe that it is art.
So what’s to stop someone who makes a film that’s non-stop degradation and torture without any apparent message from claiming that there is, after all, a message (those who don’t “get it” merely ill-equipped to understand), and that his film is “art”?
And aren’t the lines that separate art and entertainment ultimately subjective?
Let’s face it: I may think Irreversible is art, but someone else will probably denounce it as filth and look at me like some sort of unhinged deviant for even considering Irreversible as a piece of art.
By the same token, I’m sure there are films out there others consider “art” that I, personally, just don’t get. (Apparently, I too, can be ill-equipped.)
Then there are those films that are ostensibly entertainment, and yet manage to say something substantial and potent about the human condition, that manage to bridge the gap and present some sort of hybrid.
Are they entertainment? Art? Or both?

Now, any Iguana regulars reading this will know that horror with significant subtext is pretty much my speed. As such, Haneke’s preaching to the choir here. (See, Herr Haneke, “No” really does mean “No.”)
But the reality is, I also happen to love films like the first Saw and Eli Roth’s Hostel films (particularly the second), because in them, I feel there is subtext, there are messages amidst the gore and the grue.
Now, whether or not Haneke will agree with me, I’ll never know. And for that matter, where is Haneke’s line, his personal demarcation between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” violence?
Shouldn’t all violence be unacceptable? But in a frank discussion of violence (the kind art can engage in), isn’t the depiction of it a necessity?
And with any depiction of violence, don’t we return to the question of acceptability? How much can we show so as to make our point?
So many questions…

In asking what Herr Haneke’s personal demarcation is though, I believe I’m missing the real point, which is, What is my personal demarcation? Where do I draw the line?
And where do you?

Parting shot: Reviews of Saw and Hostel II can be found in the Archive.

Parting shot 2: Incidentally, both Haneke and Noe were included by avclub.com in a list of 17 “Notorious Living, Working Cinematic Provocateurs,” which uses Haneke’s New York Times quote in its title.
Others on the list include Park Chan-Wook, Takashi Miike, Oliver Stone, Lars von Trier, and Michael Moore.

(Funny Games U.S. OS [design by Crew Creative Advertising] and UK quad courtesy of impawards.com; Funny Games DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com; Funny Games U.S. images courtesy of ign.com.)

reVIEW (4)
DARK WATER
[2 of 2]

Walter Salles' English-language remake of Hideo Nakata's Honogurai mizu no soko kara, Dark Water, is finally upon us, and it turns out to be the most subtle horror film made since Fruit Chan's Dumplings.

From a script by Rafael Yglesias (based on the Nakata/Takashige Ichise script, which was, in turn, based on the Koji Suzuki short story, “Floating Water”), Dark Water is the tale of Dahlia Williams (Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly), a woman in the middle of a messy custody battle with her husband Kyle (Dougray Scott of Ever After and Mission: Impossible II) over their six-year-old, Cecilia (Ariel Gade).
Forced by economics to move into a rundown apartment block in Roosevelt Island just outside of New York City, Dahlia's life quickly becomes harried and strained as the weight from her troubled childhood collides with the unsettling events that begin to take place in her new home.
Connelly (who is amazing here, just as she was in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For A Dream) submits an astoundingly naturalistic performance, and is merely the tip of an intimidating and effective thespic iceberg, which includes John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Pete Postlethwaite, and The Practice's Camryn Manheim. Even young Gade as Ceci is impressive.
And the kudos aren't just for the performers. There is the man behind the camera who must be commended as well.

What Salles has managed to do here is take his talent for presenting the audience with real, textured, and nuanced characters—as those in his Oscar-recognized Central do Brasil (Central Station)—and apply that strength to the ghost story template, producing a masterful work with potent emotional impact.
Taking the themes of Nakata's original—love and abandonment, and how both are not necessarily mutually exclusive—Salles gives us a horror film that manages to transcend the idea of horror as genre/marketing category, and enter the realm of horror as emotion. Salles' Dark Water isn't about the long-haired ghost and the sudden cheap scare to get the audience to jump in their seats. It's about the slow realization that horror (or at least the seed of it, its potential) is, in a sense, all around us, and that horror can wrench the soul just as much as grief can. Salles isn't interested in goose bumps and the shrill shriek followed by nervous laughter; he explores dread and anxiety, the fears we all face on any given day: will there always be someone who will love us, or will we be ultimately left, alone and alienated?

Now, if you're beginning to think this may not be your idea of a horror film, maybe you should listen to your instincts.
Since my exposure to horror at an early age (one of the pivotal moments, watching Richard Donner's The Omen in the long-gone and sorely missed Rizal Theater at age 8), I have had the distinct privilege of exploring its breadth and depth, in both film and literature, appreciating the shock metal grue of splatterpunk and the delicate atmospherics of quiet horror, and everything else in between; all the ghosts and psychopaths, werewolves and vampires, zombies and cannibals, and other assorted things that go bump in the night, which caper and twitter and twirl madly in the vast spectrum of the realm of horror.
Karen Berger, editor-in-chief and mother of DC's Vertigo line of comic books once said, "Horror is a great backdrop or platform to explore a lot of relevant modern-day issues. Neil [Gaiman] and a lot of the Vertigo writers used horror as a genre device to explore deeper things." She also went on to talk about using horror as a backdrop "... to explore the world in which we live, and the real disturbing aspects about society and humanity, and everyday life."
Horror is meant to be unsettling; it is there to jolt and jostle us out of our complacency, to counter-act the anaesthesized delusion of the Hollywood feel-good movie, where everything is solved by a song-and-dance routine to some golden oldie, and everyone is smiling and happy before the end credits roll. Horror opens our eyes. It imparts truths to us, however harsh or bitter those truths may be, in the hopes that we may have epiphanies, so we may better our selves and our lives.

Hideo Nakata, one of the premier talespinners of horror today, clearly understands this. Apparently, Walter Salles does too.
So, if you've an open mind as to what the word "horror" could mean to you, then get out there and take Dark Water in.
And if not, well, there's always the next horror film, complete perhaps, with long-haired ghost, ready to glide into the multiplex sooner than you think.

(The above review began life under the title “Seepage (Taking in Dark Water).”)

(Dark Water OS courtesy of impawards.com; Dark Water DVD cover art courtesy of trailerdownload.net.)