Maniac (1980) [30th Anniversary Edition] + Vigilante (1983) – Blu-ray Discs

Maniac (1980) [30th Anniversary Edition] + Vigilante (1983) – Blu-ray Discs

Posted in1980s, 2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Crime, Drama, Horror, Revenge, Thriller

MANIAC
**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A+
starring Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro
screenplay by C.A. Rosenberg and Joe Spinell
directed by William Lustig

VIGILANTE
*½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B
starring Robert Forster, Fred Williamson, Richard Bright, Woody Strode
screenplay by Richard Vetere
directed by William Lustig

by Walter Chaw William Lustig reduces exploitation cinema to the filthy stepchild of Sams Peckinpah and Fuller: one part animal logic, one part tabloid paranoia. He wallows in impulse, and his sensibility is 42nd Street grindhouse through and through, from kitchen-sink production values to disjointed vignette presentations to a generally lawless indulgence towards atrocity. If Lustig’s pictures have achieved a kind of cult lustre, credit his ability to alternate action sequences with B-legends showcases. It would be a mistake to attribute more to Lustig’s pictures than workmanlike efficiency as applied to formula prurience, though there’s something to be said for knock-off garbage done with a lack of pretension–done, in fact, with a distinct, naïve childishness that doesn’t quite get down there with Jess Franco or Herschell Gordon Lewis (nor up there with Mario Bava or Dario Argento), but manages a little interest despite itself now and again, probably by (who cares?) accident.

Insidious (2011)

Posted in2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical Release, Thriller

*½/****
starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye, Barbara Hershey
screenplay by Leigh Whannell
directed by James Wan

by Walter Chaw A fairly well-done, old-fashioned child-imperilment/haunted-house movie until it falls completely off the rails and starts playing like Phantasm II (but not in a good way), James Wan’s jump-scare-athon Insidious is chiefly influenced, for what it’s worth, by Poltergeist, though it also references that “Twilight Zone” episode where a girl falls into a parallel universe. It sports a spirit medium and a crack team of ghost-hunters, naturally, as well as a little kid lost and a bombastic third act about braving the Other Side that deeply dishonours whatever minor pleasures there were to be had in the previous two. All of which would be more the pity if that dreary, extended set-up amounted to much more than the real dread of a child fallen mysteriously ill surrounded by the usual crap about doors creaking open, phantoms visiting the half-asleep (in the film and in the audience), and a baby crying for an hour before she disappears when the film no longer feels it can continue to exploit it without actually killing it. It’s that unwillingness to present bigger stakes that hamstrings Insidious; a lot like the creeping morality underpinning Wan’s Saw (and the DIY sequels it spawned), the picture reveals itself to be pretty safe in its worldview, therefore freeing it of dread in favour of non-stop startle that fades, quickly, into fatigue. If it’s not going to go there, it’s only ever going to be what it is.

I Spit on Your Grave (1978) + I Spit On Your Grave (2010) – Blu-ray Discs

Posted in1970s, 2000s, 2010, 2011, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Revenge

Ispitonyourgrave78cap

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (a.k.a. Day of the Woman)
**/**** Image A Sound B Extras B+
starring Camille Keaton, Eron Tabor, Richard Pace, Anthony Nichols
written and directed by Meir Zarchi

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE
*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Sarah Butler, Jeff Branson, Daniel Franzese, Andrew Howard
screenplay by Stuart Morse, based on a screenplay by Meir Zarchi
directed by Steven R. Monroe

by Bryant Frazer Rape-revenge is the basest of movie formulas. What amounts to a social contract exists with the audience: during the first half of the film, you will experience the sadistic, brutal, misogynistic sexual abuse of an innocent, probably naïve young woman at the hands of cavalier thugs. And during the second half of the film, you will see this broken woman–this survivor–pull herself together long enough to exact a terrible revenge on those who wronged her.

Black Death (2011)

Posted in2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical Release, UK

**½/****
starring Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, John Lynch, Carice Van Houten
screenplay by Dario Poloni
directed by Christopher Smith

by Walter Chaw Christopher Smith follows up his listless slasher-farce Severance with the handsome-looking Black Plague/witch-hunting flick Black Death–a well-played, well-conceived piece that’s ultimately distinguished by a few sticky after-images, even as it doesn’t quite get to where you hope it’s going. Set in a pleasingly grimy, disgusting Dark Ages, the picture finds our hero, monk Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), besotted with comely Averill (Kimberly Nixon) and beset on all sides by the inexorable tide of the bubonic plague. Enlisted by Bishop-appointed Holy Roller Ulric (Sean Bean) for his familiarity with the countryside to locate a strange, untouched-by-plague village, Osmond becomes, er, plagued by crises of faith. The problem, besides his wanting to nail Averill in a most unholy way, is that the village in question appears to be untouched by disease because it doesn’t believe in God.

Red Riding Hood (2011)

Posted in2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical Release, Thriller, Werewolf, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Julie Christie
screenplay by David Leslie Johnson
directed by Catherine Hardwicke

by Walter Chaw That Catherine Hardwicke keeps getting jobs speaks to a deep, ugly dysfunction in the Hollywood dream factory. Not the thought that money talks, but the idea that people like Hardwicke and Adam Sandler and Michael Bay are handed the keys to the executive washroom because they understand what it is that certain critically-deficient demographics want and proceed to provide it in massive, deadly draughts. In other industries, there would be regulatory agencies–though it’s fair to consider that checking the poster for Red Riding Hood would give you all the nutritional information you probably need. Namely that Hardwicke is the main ingredient, and that had I remembered this before the screening, I never, ever would have gone, in exactly the same way I wouldn’t eat scrapple again. I’m sure a lot of people like that shit, but grey pig-mush is grey pig-mush. Red Riding Hood is easily the worst movie I’ve seen since probably all the way back to A Sound of Thunder, and in a lot of the same ways: horribly written; horribly performed (but they didn’t have a chance); directed by someone that cameras should file a restraining order against; and edited by a cast-iron moron (make that pair of morons: long-time Hardwicke accomplice Nancy Richardson and poor Julia Wong). At least there’s Gary Oldman along for the ride to order his Moorish henchmen to, at one point, “put him in the elephant!”

Vampire Circus (1972) – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

Vampire Circus (1972) – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

Posted in1970s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, UK, Vampire

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Adrienne Corri, Laurence Payne, Thorley Walters, Anthony Corlan
screenplay by Judson Kinberg
directed by Robert Young

by Jefferson Robbins I’m risking all kinds of things here, not least the prospect of becoming That Guy At FFC Who Finds Too Much Depth In Hammer Horror Movies, but this is my take: Vampire Circus is about the plight of the Jews in Christian Europe. I rubbed my eyes and swabbed my ears at first, but attentive viewing didn’t dispel this impression. And looking at Hammer’s entire output in the fright genre, it seems like a logical consequence. The British studio always made shockers that grappled with subtext, but by 1972, Hammer was fighting for life. Its bread-and-butter franchises had been comedically pricked five years earlier by Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, which threatened to bleed gothic horror of its frights just as Blazing Saddles would soon gutshoot the Western. As Hammer’s market power waned and it threw open the doors to more explicit sex and more visceral gore, some larger story ideas were bound to creep in.

The Exorcist (1973) – Blu-ray Disc (DigiBook)

The Exorcist (1973) – Blu-ray Disc (DigiBook)

Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: William Friedkin, FFC Must-Own, Horror

FFC Must-OwnTHE EXORCIST
****/****

THE EXORCIST (THE VERSION YOU’VE NEVER SEEN)
**½/****
Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
starring Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Wynn
screenplay by William Peter Blatty, based on his novel
directed by William Friedkin

by Walter Chaw The most visible of a spate of evil-children movies littering the cinescape in the late-Sixties and early-Seventies (remembering that even Night of the Living Dead had a baby eating her mother), William Friedkin’s blockbuster The Exorcist raked in the cash even as it offered up the goods–in spades. Its “happy” ending is filthy with melancholy and menace, suggesting that whatever’s been exorcised from little Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) is actually free now (an idea itself exorcised by the extended version’s ending)–that the solution presented in the book of Luke is as empty as its herd of pigs driven into the sea. For The Exorcist to make the money it did says a lot about what was in the water in the American ’70s: partly the mainstream audience’s desire to feel shitty when a movie was over that didn’t reappear until The Dark Knight made a billion dollars, but mostly this idea, gaining currency in the cinema of the time (and again in ours), that individuals, confronted with a crossroads, are entirely incapable of affecting meaningful change. It’s why author William Peter Blatty’s choice of original ending–spliced onto the end of the 2000 re-release–is so cognitively dissonant. There’s hope in The Exorcist, and it has nothing to do with the almost jovial reassurance that there’s a better place after we die. Concluding this deeply spiritual film with a Christian platitude is, frankly, moronic, although the temptation to offer up succour is at least part of the picture’s allure.

Sundance ’11: I Saw the Devil

Posted in2011, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Revenge, South Korea, Sundance, Thriller
Ang-ma-reul bo-at-da ***½/**** starring Lee Byung-hun, Choi Min-sik, Jeon Gook-hwan, Jeon Ho-jin screenplay by Park Hoon-jung directed by Kim Ji-woon by Alex Jackson The rape scenes in Kim Ji-woon's I Saw the Devil are the most blatantly eroticized and sadistic I've seen since Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days, but they're countered by the hilariously gory revenge scenes against the rapist (Choi Min-sik) by his victim's boyfriend (Lee Byung-hun). The film isn't trying to rationalize the rape with the revenge or the revenge with the rape. Rather, it regards women and the men who rape them as equally undeserving of our sympathy.…

Sundance ’11: Hobo with a Shotgun

Posted in2011, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Film Festivals, Horror, Sundance, Thriller
**½/****starring Rutger Hauer, Brian Downey, Gregory Smith, Molly Dunsworthscreenplay by John Daviesdirected by Jason Eisener by Alex Jackson Director Jason Eisener and screenwriter John Davies must have been left in the care of a particularly negligent babysitter throughout the 1980s. Their Hobo with a Shotgun, an adaptation of a fake trailer the two made for Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse contest back in 2007 (it won, and was subsequently attached to Canadian prints of the film), not only cites Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Robocop, and probably Cobra among its myriad references but also pays what I think is an incontrovertible homage to…
The Amityville Horror (2005) – Blu-ray Disc

The Amityville Horror (2005) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Horror

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras F
starring Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George, Jesse James, Jimmy Bennett
screenplay by Scott Kosar, based on the novel by Jay Anson and the screenplay by Sandy Stern
directed by Andrew Douglas

by Walter Chaw When filmmakers leave nothing to the imagination, you’re left with the product of their imaginations, which, almost without exception, is an arid thing born of equal parts imitation and an eye to the bottom line. Innovation is frowned upon when it comes to big-budget horror (terms that mix together uneasily at best), leaving whatever was subversive about the premise to get blunted by this need to rake in a lot of money from a timid public looking for a rollercoaster instead of sociology. So it is with the latest instalment in the worst horror franchise in history, a remake of The Amityville Horror directed by commercial hack Andrew Douglas (who at least seems self-aware in interviews) that professes to be “truer” to the “true”* source material–meaning, essentially, that no one is going to die and that it’s going to be poorly written. (I snuck a peak at the 1979 film when I was in the care of a horrible babysitter, only to experience one of my earliest instances of realizing that something sucked.) It tacks on some crap about the house in question being built on the site of an old Indian mental hospital/Abu Ghraib, replacing the innocuous little red room of the original film with a chamber of flash-edited horrors à la Thir13en Ghosts. In so doing, it introduces a little flaccid White Man’s Guilt subtext into this Wonder Bread wonderland that it studiously refuses to examine.

TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Hammer Horror – DVD

Posted in1950s, 1960s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Drama, DVD, Horror, Romance, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK, Vampire

HORROR OF DRACULA (1958)
***/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Christopher Lee
screenplay by Jimmy Sangster
directed by Terence Fisher

DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968)
***/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Christopher Lee, Rupert Davies, Veronica Carlson, Barry Andrews
screenplay by John Elder
directed by Freddie Francis

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957)
***½/**** Image C- Sound B
starring Peter Cushing, Hazel Court, Robert Urquhart, Christopher Lee
screenplay by Jimmy Sangster
directed by Terence Fisher

FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (1969)
***/**** Image B Sound C+
starring Peter Cushing, Veronica Carlson, Freddie Jones, Simon Ward
screenplay by Bert Batt
directed by Terence Fisher

by Jefferson Robbins As one of the twin stars of the original Hammer Films horror canon, the precise and skilful Peter Cushing had the task of portraying both villain (Dr. Frankenstein) and vanquisher (Dr. Van Helsing). His co-star Christopher Lee, on the other hand, seldom got to be the good guy: when he wasn’t baring plastic fangs or crusted over with dried-prune makeup, he usually embodied a more human evil. Lee’s unmasked performances were assertions of will–his Dracula, for instance, overwhelms with force of presence and a hungry smoulder in his eyes. Cushing could not disguise his native gentility and bladed intelligence, but he could turn those qualities towards sinister or humanitarian ends as needed.

The Return of the Living Dead (1985) – DVD (2002) + Collector’s Edition DVD|Blu-ray + DVD

Posted in1980s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Satire, Sci-Fi, Zombie

***/****
’02 DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras A
’07 DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras A
BD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews
written and directed by Dan O’Bannon

by Walter Chaw Sort of a cross between Dawn of the Dead and Valley Girl, Dan O’Bannon’s hysterical The Return of the Living Dead most resembles in the final analysis O’Bannon’s own cult favourite Dark Star, directed by John Carpenter. Both pictures exist in an insular environment, both skewer genre and societal mores, and both, oddly enough, have something of a political conscience. Positing that Night of the Living Dead was based on a true story and that the remnants of that zombie conflagration have been stored in barrels accidentally shipped to the Uneeda Medical Supply Company (where goofy stock manager Frank (a fabulous James Karen) carelessly starts the horror cycle), The Return of the Living Dead turns a satirical eye on Reagan’s hawkish heart, the sprung logic of Italian zombie movies, and John Hughes’s brat-pack films.

The Prowler (1981) – Blu-ray Disc

The Prowler (1981) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

**½/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C-
starring Farley Granger, Vicky Dawson, Christopher Goutman, Cindy Weintraub
screenplay by Glenn Leopold and Neal E. Barbera
directed by Joseph Zito

by Jefferson Robbins Was it that the flicks got less suspenseful, or that I got savvier? Joseph Zito’s The Prowler boasts an intimidating slasher (although “stabber” or “puncturer” is more apt, since he tends to pitchfork and bayonet his victims to death), a complement of gore F/X from the estimable Tom Savini, a compelling backstory that touches on the legacy of war, and a Final Girl (Vicky Dawson) who’s fleet, smart, next-door pretty, and resourceful. Its closest equivalent is probably Friday the 13th Part 2, released just six months prior, which likewise coped with horror passed down through the generations. What it lacks, though, is tension and surprise–at least in retrospect. There are no real shocks to be had, beyond the graphic nature of the killings and the choice to open a scare flick with stock ’40s newsreel footage.

Dead Cert (2010) – DVD

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, DVD, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, UK, Vampire

*/**** Image B+ Sound D+ Extras C
starring Craig Fairbass, Dexter Fletcher, Lisa McAllister, Steven Berkoff
screenplay by Ben Shillito
directed by Steve Lawson

by Jefferson Robbins That single star is for the concept–London gangsters vs. vampires–which, apart from some very fine lensing and decent actors, is probably the only thing that got Dead Cert any kind of release. In a genre thickly dotted with piles of shit, this thing is shit stacked high but glazed with modest visual sugar and a great high-concept. It barely merits a single viewing, yet you keep hoping something will switch on and provide a reason to persevere.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009) [Blu-ray + DVD] + The Fourth Kind (2009)

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, DVD, Family, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical Release, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

DISNEY’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL
**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Robert Zemeckis, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
directed by Robert Zemeckis

THE FOURTH KIND
ZERO STARS/****
starring Milla Jovovich, Will Patton, Corey Johnson, Elias Koteas
written and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi

by Ian Pugh If Robert Zemeckis hasn’t quite left the Uncanny Valley behind, at the very least, the heart missing from his latest effort–what seems like the trillionth retelling of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and the billionth animated one–correlates directly to its absence of personality, rather than to an absence of humanity. A backhanded compliment, to be sure, but the character designs finally resemble something closer to artistic interpretation than to a failed attempt at replicating human beings exactly as they are, with Marley (Gary Oldman) and Scrooge (Jim Carrey), for example, rendered almost expressionistically to evoke rotten apples and hunched skeletons. From that standpoint, the actors’ sudden bursts of acrobatic grace, no longer so incongruous, capture some of computer-animated cinema’s wonder, the kind at which Zemeckis has grasped since The Polar Express–a true example of bringing the impossible to life. The only problem is that Zemeckis’s own script isn’t worth more than a shrug, and the film relies too much on its visuals to carry the extra weight.

Thir13en Ghosts (2001)/House of Wax (2005) [Horror Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

Thir13en Ghosts (2001)/House of Wax (2005) [Horror Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2005, 2010, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Horror, Thriller

THIR13EN GHOSTS
**/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras B
starring Tony Shalhoub, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Lillard, Shannon Elizabeth
screenplay by Neal Stevens and Richard D’Ovidio, based on the screenplay by Robb White
directed by Steve Beck

by Walter Chaw A loving family man, Arthur (Tony Shalhoub) has lost his wife and home to a fire. We learn of his backstory in a remarkably cheesy though cinematically satisfying slow 360º pan that needs to be seen to be believed. His children, Kathy (a not-scantily-clad Shannon Elizabeth) and Bobby (Alec Roberts, easily the most irritating kid in a horror movie since Bob from House by the Cemetery), aren’t really around for much longer than a moment of peril each before vanishing, and evil lawyer Ben Moss (JR Bourne), so pivotal in William Castle’s 13 Ghosts, is now basically in town for a cup of coffee.

Poltergeist (1982) – [Digitally Restored and Remastered] DVD + Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Tobe Hooper, DVD, Horror, Spielberg, Thriller

***/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras F
BD – Image A Sound A Extras F
starring JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Beatrice Straight, Heather O’Rourke
screenplay by Steven Spielberg, Michael Grais & Mark Victor
directed by Tobe Hooper

by Walter Chaw Time has made it impossible to see Poltergeist as anything other than a Steven Spielberg-directed picture. The hallmarks are there, from the microscopic attention to the family dynamic to the ridiculous, set-piece bombast of the grand finale. The only moments that feel like a Tobe Hooper joint are tiny throwaways that lack the polish Spielberg’s visual savant-ism demands, such as an artless shot of a killer clown doll, or a sequence where a guy rips his face off beneath an inexplicable sodium light over a likewise-inexplicable industrial wash basin. The rest of it is Spielberg clockwork: great suburbs, great special effects, great abuse of an expositive score (here Jerry Goldsmith fills in for John Williams), great overuse of the slow push-in, great hot mom, great irrelevant dad, great plucky little kids.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) – Blu-ray + DVD

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) – Blu-ray + DVD

Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

FFC Must-Own****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum
screenplay by W.D. Richter, based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
directed by Philip Kaufman

by Walter Chaw I’ve come to believe that Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers is not only better than Don Siegel’s honoured 1956 original but also one of the best films of the best era in filmmaking. Even in so deep a well as this New American Cinema of ours–one that has forgotten gems like Cockfighter, Fat City, Law and Disorder, Night Moves, and Electra Glide in Blue in there propping up films like Chinatown, The Godfather I/II, Apocalypse Now, Nashville, The Conversation, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and on and on, trailing into incandescent, brilliant eternity–this little work of absolute paranoid craftsmanship bears up under multiple viewings and close scrutiny and provides a succinct, prescient, terrifying précis of the decade before and the decade to come. What better analogy for the looming Reagan administration than pods stalking in lock-step, armed with arbitrary titles and senses of entitlement, steadfastly incapable of heeding the drumbeat of doom in the black jungles around us? It’s a film about the absolute horror of complete conformity and non-engagement, as well as a reintroduction to the McCarthy-ian ideal that the only thing to get terribly exercised about is the ferreting out and excoriation of differing values. Arriving as it does in 1978, at the tail end of the most creative period in American film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers offers up a warning against complacency in the immediate wake of Jaws and Star Wars, which sounded the death knell for the artistry of this period arm-in-arm with the dawning of some unknown, mass- consumed and marketed ethic.

Let Me In (2010)

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Sweden, Theatrical Release, Thriller, UK, Vampire

**/****
starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloë Grace Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas
screenplay by Matt Reeves, based on the novel Låt den rätte komma in by John Ajvide Lindqvist
directed by Matt Reeves

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Matt Reeves’s redux of Swede Tomas Alfredson’s lovely, understated, doom-laden Let the Right One In finds magnification in the wrong places while betraying what seems to be its better nature in order to present something more “palatable” to a popular audience. Wrong to call it a “dumbing down”–better to say that elements left unspoken or at arm’s length in the original film are presented in Let Me In in as confrontational, uncontroversial a way as possible. More’s the pity, as the movie begins with Ronald Reagan quoting Alexis de Tocqueville in his “Evil Empire” speech (delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals on March 8, 1983) on a television in a snowed-in New Mexico E.R.: “Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and the genius of America… America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” It’s a thread of Christian fervour that weaves through much of the first twenty minutes of the picture, through the introduction of our hero, Owen (a tremendous Kodi Smit-McPhee), suffering an extended Grace delivered by a faceless mother (Cara Buono) and, later, an admonition by an also-faceless father over the telephone that Owen’s mother is unbalanced and should stow her Christian shit a bit more tightly. The lack of the father as a physical presence in the film becomes a poignant elision in this respect: in a film about good and evil, the divorce between Father and Son, as it were, is a pithy one.

Practical Magic/The Witches of Eastwick [Comedy Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

Practical Magic/The Witches of Eastwick [Comedy Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, Jack Nicholson, Romance

PRACTICAL MAGIC (1998)
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest, Aidan Quinn
screenplay by Robin Swicord and Akiva Goldsman and Adam Brooks, based on the novel by Alice Hoffman
directed by Griffin Dunne

THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK (1987)
***/**** Image B+ Sound B-
starring Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer
screenplay by Michael Cristofer, based on the novel by John Updike
directed by George Miller

by Walter Chaw Some would say, and be correct in saying, that Griffin Dunne’s “women’s picture” Practical Magic is the perfect distillation of both George Cukor’s tradition of gynecological melodramas and Alice Hoffman’s assembly-line ladies’ relationship novels. Edgeless, in love with its own whimsy, shot through with the sort of autumnal glow more at home in instant-coffee commercials, it could, as sophomore directorial efforts go, be worse–credit for that going mostly to an amiably under-achieving cast of superstars and ace character actors. It’s the very model of the classic Studio picture in that sense: a quiet, contract-satisfying flick based on a safe property, set in a picaresque locale with vaguely populist supernatural undertones in which no one’s particularly invested. Call it The Bishop’s Wife for 1998–one of the oddest years in movies of the last twenty, among which crop this film maintains a comfortable medium-buoyancy. It’s possible to try to pull something like a feminist read out of its obsessive focus on women and their sexuality–what else is witchcraft about, after all, than a fear of the Other made manifest as girl parts? But not only is the picture too stupid to bear up under such scrutiny, such a read is also hopelessly complicated by an adaptation courtesy a triumvirate composed of snag Adam Brooks and genuine blights Akiva Goldsman and (not quite worse but somehow close) Robin Swicord. A bad sign when the only female in the creative process is Swicord, who, by working as a Mata Hari, as it were, as the woman behind The Jane Austen Book Club and Memoirs of a Geisha, has arguably done more harm to her gender than Michael Bay.