TIFF ’07: George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead

September 15, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: George A. Romero, Film Festivals, Horror, TIFF, Zombie

Fest2007dead***/****
written and directed by George A. Romero

by Bill Chambers The problem with 2005’s Land of the Dead is that it could’ve been made by virtually anybody at virtually any time. While I imagine that George A. Romero, stalwart hippie that he is, has an anticapitalist streak a mile wide, that picture’s “eat the rich” trajectory ultimately felt like a rather flimsy pretext for Romero to resume chronicling social change through the prism of his precious undead. Given that the “Dead” films have typically had long incubation periods, it’s surprising to see Romero return to the well so soon, but then it was probably best to hit the reset button post-haste. George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead does just that in more ways than one: Here, Romero disentangles himself from the cul-de-sac of a zombie-human détente by starting from scratch in the present tense, making this the Casino Royale of the series.

TIFF ’07: Mother of Tears: The Third Mother

September 9, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Dario Argento, Film Festivals, Horror, Italy, TIFF

Fest2007tearsLa terza madre
***/****
directed by Dario Argento

by Bill Chambers Sanity and fatigue are ineluctable corrupting influences on an aging filmmaker, but it brings me great pleasure and no small relief to be able to report that while Mother of Tears: The Third Mother–Dario Argento’s long-gestating conclusion to his “Three Sisters” trilogy–is neither as artful as Suspiria nor as dreamlike as Inferno, it nevertheless surpasses expectations fostered by Argento’s recent work to emerge as his best movie in decades. Fitting that Argento should choose to tell the Rome-set story of Mater Lacrimarum last, marking this as a homecoming in more ways than one.

Halloween (2007)

August 30, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Malcolm McDowell, Sherri Moon Zombie, Scout Taylor-Compton, William Forsythe
screenplay by Rob Zombie, based on the screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill
directed by Rob Zombie

Halloween2007by Walter Chaw If Rob Zombie ever decides to direct a horror movie, watch out. To date, up to and including his remake of John Carpenter's legendary Halloween, he's presented us a series of family melodramas peppered with modest genre references and exploitation flourishes. His best film, The Devil's Rejects, is widely misread and underestimated, the most common complaint being that it isn't scary. It's a lot like complaining that Ordinary People isn't scary. But I'd challenge anyone to come up with many more ebullient, honest moments of uplift than the conclusion of that film (set to "Free Bird" of all things), as Zombie's miscreant clan makes a bid to let their freak flag fly in the middle of the American desert. His pictures are throwbacks to the Seventies in more ways than their relationship to drive-in and grindhouse fare: they're lovely odes to a sense of frustrated possibilities in a United States suffering the first throes of post-Sixties culture shock. It goes hand-in-hand with the Nixonian westerns littering the popular culture in the new millennium; no surprise to me that this administration–and the attendant feeling of paranoia and cynicism befouling our air–encourages this kind of revisionism, and really, who better than Zombie to helm an update of Carpenter's seminal slasher?

TIFF ’07: Just Buried

August 27, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, TIFF
*½/****starring Jay Baruchel, Rose Byrne, Graham Greene, Nigel Bennettwritten and directed by Chaz Thorne by Bill Chambers Just Buried (formerly Pushing Up Daisies) stars Jay Baruchel as Oliver Whynacht (get it? "Why not?" Me neither), a neurotic with a really annoying affection (his nose bleeds when he's nervous) who inherits a small-town funeral parlour from his estranged father. He's ready to hand over the reins of the money-hemorrhaging business to a competitor when he falls under the spell of the Lady Macbeth-like mortician, Roberta (Rose Byrne), whereupon the two hatch a scheme to drum up business that rather rapidly transforms them…

Succubus (1968) – DVD

August 20, 2007Posted in1960s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Blue Underground, DVD, Germany, Horror

Necronomicon – Geträumte Sünden
**/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras B-
starring Janine Reynaud, Jack Taylor, Howard Vernon, Adrian Hoven
screenplay by Pier A. Caminnecci
directed by Jess Franco

by Alex Jackson Jess Franco's Succubus begins with heroine Lorna (Janine Reynaud) torturing and molesting a man chained to a stake while his similarly bound, bloodied, and partially-nude lover watches. The lover protests, so Lorna tortures her some until she passes out. She then goes to the man and plays with him a bit before skewering him with her ceremonial knife. The lights fade up and an audience applauds. The snuff scene was simulated. It's part of an act Lorna performs at a chic nightclub. This opening is the most eloquent and lucid scene in the film, for it establishes that director Jess Franco no longer has a responsibility to be eloquent and lucid. Succubus is going to be told subjectively through the perspective or Lorna, who is going schizophrenic (or something) and is increasingly unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Thus, whatever we see might actually be happening–and then again it might not be. We never really know.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007) [Unrated] – DVD

August 15, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, Wes Craven, ZERO STARS

The Hills Have Eyes II
ZERO STARS/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras D
starring Michael McMillian, Jessica Stroup, Daniella Alonso, Jacob Vargas
screenplay by Wes Craven & Jonathan Craven
directed by Martin Weisz

by Walter Chaw I don't have any real objection to anything depicted in The Hills Have Eyes II: not to the live-birth prologue that ends with the grisly murder of the mother; not to the greenstick demise of one National Guardsman or the death-by-feces of another; not even to the brutal rape of still another enlistee whose very existence opens the door for an ugly sequel. No: testament to the howling ineptitude of the enterprise is that its every desperate attempt to offend fails miserably. It's so poorly directed and edited, in fact, that not only is nothing frightening (which is to be expected, frankly)–nothing's surprising, either. Every jump scare is completely telegraphed, the nigh-invulnerability of the bad guys is totally predictable, and every fatality of every alleged hero is delivered sans pathos or, really, consequence. It doesn't matter who dies because who lives has already been decided within the first few minutes. What's more, it's already been divined by the dullest member of the audience–said dull member the only one who gives enough of a shit to try to figure it out in the first place and stick it out through to the end. The sole reason why anyone would watch the whole thing would be if they were paid to do so, and even then, it's only money. Let me stress, though, that you're not leaving because the movie is horrific, appalling, and a moral vacuum–you're leaving because it sucks balls.

1408 (2007)

June 22, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Stephen King, Theatrical

*½/****
starring John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack, Tony Shalhoub
screenplay by Matt Greenberg and Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski, based on the story by Stephen King
directed by Mikael Håfström

by Walter Chaw Boy, do I like John Cusack. He has scary, earnest intensity. No one does the nervous pit-pat like he does; no one else could have been Lloyd Dobler, or Martin Blank. Then there’s The Sure Thing, Better Off Dead, Being John Malkovich, and hey, I liked The Ice Harvest (most of it, anyway). And boy, I guess Samuel L. Jackson is sometimes not terrible. The one scene he and Cusack have together in the prestige horror flick 1408 plays like seriomythic garbage-pop poetry: everything’s good–the cadence, the words; what I’m saying is that I was well and truly on board with this dumbathon all the way up to the point where Jackson’s hotel manager Olin (and as an aside, King has a special place in my heart for opening The Shining with “Officious little prick,” referring to a different hotel manager) offers that the titular room in question isn’t haunted, it’s just an “evil fucking room.” Cusack is haunted landmark guide writer Mike (the landmark guides aren’t haunted, and neither is he, he documents haunted locations…never mind), not only a bit of a lush who looks like he’s gained a few pounds on his liquid diet but a surfer, too, making this one of a sudden slew of films to deal with surfing (Surf’s Up, Evan Almighty, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer) while providing 1408 (it adds up to “13,” get it?) its Jacob’s Ladder/”Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” escape clause. Yes, it’s that kind of film–what kind of film did you think it was going to be?

Eye to Eye: FFC Interviews Eli Roth

June 9, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Horror, Interviews

Erothinterview2titleJune 10, 2007|I pretty much disagree with most of what Eli Roth has to say about Hostel Part II. An unabashed fan of his work for its delicate balancing act of depravity, deathly-black humour, and loving homage, I found his latest film an exciting self-reflexive exercise–a casual question mark thrown at moviegoers who would knowingly pay to see graphic depictions of torture. But the man himself insists that his primary goal lies in pleasing the audience with his specialized brand of perversion–and if, in explaining his technique, he comes across as abrasive, self-important, and longwinded, it's because he's got a lot of set ideas about what his films are saying and at whom they're targeted; furthermore, he's unafraid to expound on those ideas in excruciating detail. And yet, his aversion to accepted subtext–as well as his somewhat wishy-washy consideration of critical reaction–neatly encapsulates one of the most admirable aspects of Hostel Part II, i.e., how its finest (read: grisliest) moments at once point to something bubbling under the surface and somehow thwart a deeper reading of the Guignol thrills. Roth certainly lays a great deal of his personality and excitement for cinema on the table for all to see, but still I wonder what he's keeping hidden. I'm reminded of how his mentor David Lynch deadpanned a challenge to viewers to find the "correct" interpretation of Eraserhead.

The Bride and the Beast (1958)/The White Gorilla (1945) [Positively No Refunds Double Feature] – DVD

June 4, 2007Posted in1940s, 1950s, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Horror

THE BRIDE AND THE BEAST
***/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Charlotte Austin, Lance Fuller, Johnny Roth, William Justine
screenplay by Edward D. Wood, Jr.
directed by Adrian Weiss

THE WHITE GORILLA
***/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Ray Corrigan, Lorraine Miller, George J. Lewis, Francis Ford
screenplay by Jo Pagano
directed by Harry Fraser

by Alex Jackson It would be easy to dismiss The Bride and the Beast and The White Gorilla, sight unseen, as dated trash encapsulating the lamentable racist attitudes of the era in which they were produced. Both films belong to a sub-genre of pulp fiction in which great white hunters penetrate the jungles of darkest Africa and quickly conquer the continent’s great beasts, much to the awe of the childlike natives. Told directly and on the level, it’s possible for this material to have a raw, primal power–this is the stuff of myth, right? The hero slaying the dragon and bringing peace to the land. I don’t find the “White Man’s Burden” position nearly as offensive as I find films like Jungle Goddess, where the white saviour passively conquers an African civilization and then just as passively leaves it behind. Certainly, you should be able to have a romantic fiction without marginalizing an entire race of people.

The Messengers (2007) – DVD

May 14, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Horror, Mystery

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Kristen Stewart, Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller, John Corbett
screenplay by Mark Wheaton
directed by Danny Pang & Oxide Pang

Messengerscapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Horror is not my area of expertise, but I'm fairly certain that The Messengers barely qualifies for the category. A two-bit riff on Ju-On and The Sixth Sense (themselves worth four bits at best), it's professionally shot and cleanly designed but fails completely to be at all scary or even marginally resonant. Those who recognize and revere the social relevance of genre entries from the '70s will be tearing their hair out at the film's hermetic sealing-away from anything beyond teen angst, with references to no less than the high foreclosure rate in farm country used purely as a plot convenience. (Inexcusable when you consider what sort of eldritch imagery might be wrung from a devastated agricultural wasteland.) What you get from The Messengers are some by-the-book jump-scares, "creepy" imagery that wouldn't damage the average eight-year-old, and a "surprise" ending that any thinking adult will see coming from miles away.

Frankenstein Unbound (1990) – DVD

May 3, 2007Posted in1990s, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound
**/**** Image A- Sound A
starring John Hurt, Raul Julia, Bridget Fonda, Catherine Rabett
screenplay by Roger Corman and F.X. Feeney, based on the novel by Brian Aldiss
directed by Roger Corman

Frankensteinunboundcap

by Alex Jackson Dr. John Buchanan (John Hurt) is a brilliant scientist in New Los Angeles, circa 2031. One of his experiments fractures the space-time continuum, sucking him into nineteenth-century Geneva, where he meets Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia), who's busy conducting a few experiments of his own. In the meantime, the Frankenstein maid is on trial for the murder of Victor's brother. Nobody knows how she did it, though they figure it's witchcraft. Because he read the book (Frankenstein, of course), Buchanan knows that Frankenstein's monster (Nick Brimble) is the true culprit. Frankenstein is refusing to admit to his failed experiment, however, and would rather allow this girl to die than confront his crimes against God. Exasperated, Buchanan goes to Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda) for help. As for the monster, he's terrorizing Frankenstein and insisting that the scientist create him a female companion.

Inland Empire (2006)

April 27, 2007Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: David Lynch, Drama, Esoterica, France, Horror, Mystery, Poland, Theatrical, Thriller

****/****
starring Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux, Grace Zabriskie
written and directed by David Lynch

by Walter Chaw Nikki (Laura Dern) is an actress landing her dream role opposite Devon (Justin Theroux) in a film directed by the great Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons). Alas the project, “On High in Blue Tomorrows”, has a history in which a previous, doomed production ended as reality seeped into its fiction and the film’s onscreen/offscreen lovers were killed. For a moment, it seems as though David Lynch’s Inland Empire might be as straightforward as a haunted Hollywood genre exercise–but time slips, it’s suddenly the next day, and as one character says to another, you’re sitting over there. Displaced, distracted, the picture is a masterpiece that, for the patient, the active, and the curious, may be the most literal definition of “dread” captured on film. That feeling you get when Henry Spencer contemplates his feral baby in Eraserhead is the same species of disgusted, familiar fascination that infects this film like a murder of maggots.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: Severance

April 27, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Film Festivals, Germany, Horror, Hungary, UK
**½/****starring Tim McInnery, Toby Stephens, Claudie Blakley, Danny Dyerscreenplay by James Moran & Christopher Smithdirected by Christopher Smith by Ian Pugh Severance appears to have been crafted with the hope that someone out there with press credentials will use the poster-friendly quote "'The Office' meets [some horror film]," and, in order to guarantee that possibility, it mashes together about eight different subgenres of horror to simmer with the dry British humour. As we begin, David Brent manqué Richard (Tim McInnery) leads his merry band of office drones into the woods for a teamwork seminar in Bulgaria; they share a little…

Black Christmas (2006) – DVD

April 17, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Christmas, DVD, Horror

*/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C+
starring Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Andrea Martin
screenplay by Glen Morgan, based on the screenplay by Roy Moore
directed by Glen Morgan

Blackchristmas06capby Travis Mackenzie Hoover The worst thing about Glen Morgan’s Black Christmas is that there’s too much of it. The original, by the tragically late Bob Clark, was a small masterpiece of economy, relying on little more than its one major set (a dormitory), an unseen killer, and some sorority sisters. But that was 1974, when nobody was paying any attention: by 2006, Hollywood had exchanged the cheap and the grungy for the overwritten and over-produced. The industry now demands rounded character arcs, and for this reason alone we’re given a backstory for the film’s slasher that nobody needed in addition to a padding-out of the action with forced cynicism and phoney characterizations. It’s an overstuffed mess that fails miserably to evoke the fear and melancholy of a spectacularly defiled Christmas.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: Sisters

April 12, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Canada, Crime, Film Festivals, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, UK
**/****starring Chloë Sevigny, Dallas Roberts, Lou Doillon, Stephen Reascreenplay by Douglas Buck & John Freitas, based on an earlier screenplay by Brian De Palma & Louisa Rosedirected by Douglas Buck by Ian Pugh Perhaps a little too earnest for its own good, Douglas Buck's Sisters takes one of Brian De Palma's most transparent tributes to Hitchcock and almost completely abandons its homage-laden aesthetic, convinced that saddling everyone with even more psychological baggage would somehow expand on the previous film's chilling ideas about identity panic. The basic structure remains the same: attempting to escape the grasp of her controlling psychiatrist ex-husband…

Grindhouse (2007)

April 5, 2007Posted in****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Esoterica, Horror, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
Planet Terror (**/****): starring Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey
written and directed by Robert Rodriguez
Death Proof (****/****): starring Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Zoe Bell
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

Grindhouseby Walter Chaw Robert Rodriguez is better at making an old exploitation movie and Quentin Tarantino is better at capturing the joy of watching old exploitation movies, meaning that the Rodriguez half of Grindhouse is exuberant, post-modern camp and the Tarantino half is, as Tarantino's films usually are, pure delight. Rodriguez winks and tries maybe too hard; Tarantino, being the sui generis of a very specific kind of film, proceeds to create something that resembles Vanishing Point and Two-Lane Blacktop while steering clear of irony, self-indulgence, and post-modernism in its reverence. The mistake is in seeing some of Tarantino's casting choices as ironic: what's wrong with the careers of the world's Travoltas and Pam Griers and even De Niros is that they started cashing in on the ironic value of their brand. No, what Tarantino does is remember why they became a brand in the first place. A moment where Kurt Russell, as Tarantino's bogey Stuntman Mike, flashes a giant, shit-eating grin right through the fourth wall doesn't come off as self-congratulatory so much as it shows an old genre vet excited to be back in the saddle. While Rodriguez's Planet Terror is fun in a back-clapping way, Tarantino's Death Proof is a profound insight into the sort of dick-raising entertainments that made Tarantino who he is as fanboy artist. Rodriguez likes to show off–Tarantino can only make the movies he makes: it's not the pulpiness of the subject matter that feels like the true faith in Tarantino's films, it's the sense that for all the artificiality of his aesthetic, there's not an ounce of pretense in his decisions. In short, Rodriguez is the Salieri to Tarantino's Mozart.

Saw III (2006) [Unrated Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

March 30, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Crime, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Dina Meyer, Shawnee Smith, Bahar Soomekh, Tobin Bell
screenplay by Leigh Whannell & James Wan
directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. If nothing else, the Saw saga can be said to defy the law of diminishing returns that normally governs sequels. Both the first and second instalments were equally dumb movies, combining an ambition to be more plot-driven than the average slasher opus while not having the intellectual chops to actually pull it off. Borrowing heavily from Se7en's premise of a moralistic serial killer, the films try to pass off a sub-Rod Serling guilt complex as something resembling theme and subtext; the filmmakers think they're doing more than killing folks in baroque ways, and the combination of brutal violence and twinky piety effectively blunts the former and disqualifies the latter. Which is what makes Saw III a semi-pleasant surprise: for the most part, it's far less pretentious than its predecessors, leaving us in the dark without much exposition and deferring the cheesy explanations until the predictably disappointing finale.

Decoys 2: The Second Seduction (2007) – DVD

March 19, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Decoys 2: Alien Seduction
½*/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Corey Sevier, Tobin Bell, Dina Meyer, Kim Poirier
screenplay by Miguel Tejada-Flores
directed by Jeffry Lando

Decoys2capby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Sometimes a symptomatic reading is the only thing keeping a critic from hurling himself out a window in the contemplation of drivel. Frustrating when it's not simply banal (and often both at once), Decoys 2: Alien Seduction (promotional title: Decoys: The Second Seduction) is one of those times. As with the first Decoys, it's loaded with revelations about the Canadian fear of sex and the national stereotype of the snivelling, eternally-discouraged male. Good thing, too, because it's almost completely intolerable in every other particular. I defy even the most devoted B-fancier to sit through its tiresome sophomore humour and lame attempts to get the girls' kits off. That it embodies Canuck cynicism towards male-female relationships is pretty much its only point of interest.

The Films of Kenneth Anger: Volume One – DVD

March 15, 2007Posted in1940s, 1950s, 1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Fantasy, Horror, Short Films

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover J. Hoberman once stated that the critic who forgoes the avant-garde "has as much claim to serious attention as a historian who never heard of the Civil War." If that's the case, Kenneth Anger is the avant-garde's Ulysses S. Grant. Lurking in the boho wilderness long before awareness of the New American Cinema spread, he's an influential figure not only in the underground but also in the mainstream. A young Martin Scorsese watched Anger's leather-boy opus Scorpio Rising, gasped at its radical use of popular music, and promptly swiped it for his Mean Streets, thus setting off a chain of events that would end up–somewhat unpleasantly–at the films of Tarantino. That director's incorporation of pop-cult detritus likewise has its roots in the camp underground of which Anger is a part–though our avant-gardist chose to pilfer from Crowley and Kabbalah in addition to the leftovers of pop.

Requiem (2006) – DVD

February 26, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Germany, Horror

***½/**** Image B Sound A- (IFC) B+ (Mongrel)
starring Sandra Hüller, Burghart Klaussner, Imdgen Kogge, Anna Blomeier
screenplay by Bernd Lange
directed by Hans-Christian Schmid

Requiemcapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Like most pop epics, The Exorcism of Emily Rose was all about being sure. One had to throw down for the concept of the physical manifestation of Satan–any human considerations were swept aside in the affirmation of God's merciless will. And if certain college girls were crushed to pulp (a sentiment which extends to the general expendability of humankind), so be it. Thank goodness, then, that there's a movie like Requiem, based on the same case that inspired The Exorcism of Emily Rose but comparatively merciful in its mission. It wants to salvage the blighted life of an epileptic tossed around from doctor to doctor–one who, once presented with the beginnings of psychosis, had only religion and a mistrust of medicinal practice to fall back on. She's a victim of other people's indecision rather than of the Devil himself.