Crimson Peak

“Crimson Peak” is a Gothic Horror film starring Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain

CrimsonPeakPosterGuillermo del Toro is one of the few mainstream filmmakers with the vision and foresight to take craft, visuals and artistry into mind in his filmmaking. But since “Pan’s Labyrinth” he has yet to live up to his auteur reputation. “Crimson Peak” is del Toro taking a stab at more modest genre filmmaking, and while the film is bursting with colors, special effects and the finest in set design, Del Toro’s embodiment of them ranges from at best superfluous to at worst meaninglessly pastiche. “Crimson Peak” is horror and the macabre often for its own sake, and it plays more like two hours of concept art rather than a fully fleshed out film.

“It’s not a ghost story; it’s more like a story with a ghost in it,” says the film’s protagonist Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska). She echoes the first misnomer about “Crimson Peak”, which has been advertised not as a horror film but Gothic Horror. Yet del Toro is no stranger to traditional horror jump scares or shrieking attacks of strings on the film’s score. It only strives for Gothic horror in that it plasters old-fashioned kitsch everywhere.

The film’s color scheme of reds, yellows and blues seems constantly in conflict with itself. Allerdale Mansion, an English estate where Edith is swept away to by her new husband and sister in law Thomas and Lucille Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain), is an impossible structure of pure malevolence. It has ominous cracks in the ceiling, endless corridors, and massive walls and staircases headed nowhere and only made to impose. Short of writing on the walls, “This house is evil” (wait! we’ve got ominous Latin inscriptions and looming portraits of their vicious mother), it even seeps a red clay ooze from the floor. Points if you can guess that symbolism.

Del Toro’s attention to detail doesn’t stop at his sets. He employs classical editing techniques like a pinhole shot to remind you this is old fashioned, quaint and thus even more sinister. The film opens with a fairy tale warning from Edith’s dead mother and is even bookended with a literal book opening its pages at the film’s open.

And yet del Toro’s style is all superficial. The camera doesn’t particularly move with grace and the set design does all the heavy lifting rather than the framing. Without this, del Toro’s technique and visual references smack of pastiche. The same style without substance claims have been saddled on other movie buff directors like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson in the past, but “Crimson Peak’s” visuals don’t so much set a mood as remind you of one.

“Crimson Peak” concerns how Edith falls in love with Thomas, the mysterious entrepreneur from across the pond. Her father disapproves, but when he’s brutally killed in what is inexplicably thought to be an accident, Edith and Thomas marry and return to England. His intentions though may only be to fleece Edith of her wealth, and Thomas’s sister Lucille seems itching to dispose of her sooner.

But again, everything here is bleak and devilish from the onset. It’s a movie of secrets and ghosts with haunted pasts, but there are no real secrets to be had. The Sharpes’ intentions are so clear that we care little about what they’re hiding in their past. Chastain plays Lucille as so immediately cold and vicious to remove all doubt. She’s dressed out of place in blood red when we first see her, and after playing piano her fingers are crippled and vampiric. Every line of her dialogue is whispered and made to be an idiom with a hidden double meaning. Chastain isn’t bad, but she’s being directed to chew the scenery and play broad.

It’s because Lucille announces her intentions as in it for the money, but also the horror of it. del Toro is invested in “Crimson Peak” for the same reason, not to tell a story of love, ghosts or secrets, or “a story with a ghost in it” as Edith suggests, but to pay an overwrought ode to horror itself.

2 stars

Interstellar

Starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, Nolan’s space odyssey is his most sprawling yet.

“2001: A Space Odyssey” is a film about grasping the unknown, recognizing there is a realm of understanding and existence we can’t possibly fathom in our present state. We strive for that understanding constantly but must be in total amazement before we reach that peak and evolve. Stanley Kubrick’s film is a polarizing masterpiece, but he conveys this incomprehensible idea through the surreal, the spiritual, the terrifying and the awe inspiring. The film’s iconic images are impenetrable and inscrutable, and yet in that moment they transport us to something beyond ourselves.

Christopher Nolan may or may not be Stanley Kubrick’s disciple and modern equivalent, but though his latest film “Interstellar” is thematically familiar to Kubrick’s classic, Nolan’s execution is that much more procedural and clinical. For his entire career he’s toiled in rules and exposition, and it’s as though now with “Interstellar” he’s tried to make something literal out of Kubrick’s reverie.

“Interstellar” is an ambitious mess of a movie, and yet the scale at which it stages these themes may make it secretly brilliant, a movie in which Nolan has cracked the secret to understanding what’s beyond the horizon. That’s the sort of power Nolan has as a filmmaker and over the general public; he gives an impression that he’s full of sage wisdom that, with enough scrutiny, we can decipher the full meaning behind his movies. Continue reading “Interstellar”

Zero Dark Thirty

At the end of “The Hurt Locker,” Sergeant William James returned home from his tour of duty and stood in the aisle of a supermarket, overwhelmed and lost. After all he had seen and done, what more did he know to do?

Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal have explored this dilemma yet again in “Zero Dark Thirty,” only now we’re at the center of a cold, revenge fueled manhunt for the most wanted man in the world, Osama bin Laden. Now that we’ve got him, what’s next?

“Zero Dark Thirty” is a stirring procedural drama that examines the more exciting, alleviating, gripping and harrowing moments of our decade long battle with Al Qaeda. And because it feels so thoroughly investigated by Mark Boal and so intensely staged by Bigelow, it is at the center of major controversy in the CIA and US Senate. But there is no nobility here. The film hardly advocates torture. Through depiction, not endorsement, it suggests that our revenge soaked victory may be more hollow than we imagined. Continue reading “Zero Dark Thirty”

Take Shelter

The usual through line for family movies about mental or physical disabilities involves the struggle of the family to care and love for a disabled person. “Take Shelter” however considers that were a father to suffer a mental illness, he may lose his masculinity and his ability to care for his family. For all this to come in a riveting, often surreally brilliant psychological thriller shows the intense bravura filmmaking at play in Jeff Nichols’s film.

Like Nichols’s first film “Shotgun Stories,” “Take Shelter” finds depth and character in its vivid slice of Americana living. Michael Shannon plays Curtis, a construction worker living in rural Ohio with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and their deaf daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart). They’re a happy family, and although they seek surgery to correct their daughter’s hearing, they do so not because they can’t manage but because she’s not playing with the other kids as much as she could be. Curtis and Samantha’s love for her is summed up in one beautiful moment as they watch her sleep. “I still take off my boots so I won’t wake her up,” Curtis says. “I still whisper,” Sam adds.

But Curtis feels his capacity to be the father he should be is in jeopardy. He starts having dreams in which a storm of biblical proportions is nearing, and it causes his loved ones to attack him. In one dream his dog ferociously bites his arm, and Curtis cages him outside. In another his best friend Dewart (Shannon’s “Boardwalk Empire” costar Shea Whigham) fights him, and Curtis gets him transferred to a different crew at work.

Nichols seamlessly weaves special effects into this simple landscape, blurring the lines between what Curtis perceives and what is really in front of him. For him, dark, rippling clouds are always looming, birds spiral in hypnotic patterns and the rain and lightning is so dense that it seems to engulf us.

The clever aspect of the screenplay is that the terrors don’t just surround Curtis figuratively. His daughter’s disability already gives him pause, but we learn before long that his mother too has spent years of her life in a nursing home suffering from schizophrenia. Is Curtis really suffering a spell, or is he causing his own distress? The movie’s lack of melodrama and careful ambiguity keep us rapt and guessing.

But the physical shelters Curtis builds to block out the imagined ones start to have an impact on his home life in ways he was precisely trying to prevent. When he takes out a loan and uses equipment from work to expand a tornado shelter in his backyard, “Take Shelter” wonderfully pits Curtis’s mentality against his way of life. It’s a powerful metaphor captured in a realistic story.

Chastain’s womanly realism and Shannon’s earthy substance elevate “Take Shelter” to that of an indie Americana masterpiece. Shannon plays much of the film in more reserved moments, but he shows as much intense, insane, outrageous and unbridled range as any actor today or ever. He has a solid, stoic face but eyes that show his mind quivering. His pensive gaze and late night conversations with his wife seem to ask that amidst the home he knows so well, he can’t really be alone, can he?

4 stars

Off the Red Carpet: Weeks of 10/24 – 11/7

I took a week off last week, despite there being at least one piece of gigantic movie news, perhaps not Oscar relevant, but enough to make nerds on Twitter (myself included) flip out for better or worse.

But with the election now firmly behind us, I can focus on a race with just one president running (“Lincoln”).

President Obama defeats Mitt Romney in Presidential Election

Hey! Guess what? Now funding for “Sesame Street” and PBS won’t be cut and young kids will still like the movies and art for future generations!

Disney buys Lucasfilm for $4 billion, plans to make “Star Wars Episode VII”

“Star Wars” is now coming back in 2015, and I couldn’t be more disappointed. Even if “Star Wars” has become something of a joke since the prequels and having the “Star Wars” name on your product in fact makes it worse, the “Star Wars” series, with George Lucas’s muddy fingers and all, had become bad but never boring.

For Disney, who also owns Marvel, to plan to release “Star Wars VII” in the same year as “The Avengers 2,” is to make it into another tentpole blockbuster and popcorn movie that will be instantly forgotten as soon as people walk out of the theater.

Rumors are now spilling in that Matthew Vaughn (“Kick-Ass,” “X-Men: First Class”) is in talks to direct, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fischer are all interested in reprising their roles, and George Lucas is supposed to still be a “consultant,” whatever that means. These are telltale signs that this is not going to be an interesting film that takes the franchise in a new direction but one that is sheer fanboy baiting. (via Collider)

21 films eligible for Best Animated Feature

The number of animated movies considered eligible each year for the Best Animated Feature Oscar dictates the number of nominees the category will have, three or five, and five will definitely be the winning number this year based on 21 films meeting the Academy’s requirements. This says to me that Disney could very well have three potential nominees this year with “Brave,” “Wreck-It Ralph” and “Frankenweenie.” Expect buzz for “Rise of the Guardians” and one of the Gkids (“The Secret of Kells,” “Chico and Rita”) distributed entries. (Full list via In Contention)

Box office numbers bode well for “Wreck-It Ralph,” “Flight,” “Argo”

In a big surprise, Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph” trounced the weekly competition by raking in nearly $50 million on its opening weekend, double that of Robert Zemeckis’s “Flight,” a number that’s really nothing to scoff at. “Argo” also performed well in its third week by making $10 million, proving that this is a movie generating money by word of mouth that has the legs to go all the way to a Best Picture prize. Doing less well was “Cloud Atlas,” which in two weeks has only brought in $18 million of its over $100 million budget. (via Box Office Mojo)

“Hitchcock” premieres at AFI Film Fest

Film buffs are eagerly awaiting the movie “Hitchcock,” for obvious reasons, and early reviews of the movie say that although Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren provide their characters with range and depth, first time feature director Sacha Gervasi’s film is a lightweight entry that feels clunky at times and goes against the grain of what people actually know about Hitch. They also now have HBO’s “The Girl” to compare it against, which likewise received poor reviews by painting Hitchcock as little more than a peeping tom.

European Film Awards and British Independent Film Awards announce nominees

“Amour,” “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” “The Intouchables,” and “The Imposter” are all among the nominees in two of Europe’s smaller award races, the European Film Awards and the British Independent Film Awards. The former nominated films that won’t get an American distribution this year and the latter nominated films that got American distribution last year. See the full lists here and here. (via In Contention)

Week 4 Predictions Chart

This week I’m adding in some preliminary Screenplay predictions since the rest of the field is unchanged in my mind.

Continue reading “Off the Red Carpet: Weeks of 10/24 – 11/7”

Lawless

There are enough movies about moonshining and the Prohibition Era as there were crime families getting rich off the swill. John Hillcoat’s “Lawless” is just another one of those burning cellar lights in the Virginia countryside, and it’s hard to see why this particular story is worth telling.

“Lawless” is a dusty, brown-looking film about the three Bondurant brothers in 1931 Virginia. The oldest brother Forrest (Tom Hardy) is a legend ‘round these parts because everyone believes he’s “indestructible.” He and his brothers make an honest living of dishonesty. Legendary gangsters roll in from Chicago with Tommy Guns, and they put up with it as part of their daily routine. Even the appearance of a ruthless federal officer (Guy Pearce) doesn’t seem to phase them, as they get richer, fall in love and live like kings.

It’s more of a character drama about people with different disciplines and convictions for violence than something with a stirring plot, but you wish they had more sense and purpose in life than to just start a blood war.

Hillcoat’s film is a super violent affair that glamorizes the bloodshed without pretense or reason. They slit throats, tar and feather bootleggers, cut off people’s testicles and walk blindly into gunfire, but the characters don’t act out of family values or morality, just a misguided sense of rage and maintaining a way of living. Continue reading “Lawless”

The Tree of Life Revisited

“The Tree of Life” deserved a second viewing to fully appreciate it. It’s a masterpiece after all.

“That’s where God lives!”

If there was any film in 2011 that deserved revisiting, it was “The Tree of Life.” It may have been polarizing, but in a year of some great and some mediocre films, it stood as far and away the most important film of the year.

And what’s more, it took watching it twice to realize it’s a masterpiece.

When I originally reviewed the film, I was caught in a state of perplexed awe. I called the film a purely cinematic ode to life itself, but remained unclear of the symbolism and without a feeling of emotional levity.

And yet “The Tree of Life” is so much more than just an ode to life. Watching “The Tree of Life” resembles the feeling one might experience after a rough mid-life crisis: a feeling of peace, acceptance and embracement of life’s beauty.

Terrence Malick’s film is averse to the bitterness, negativity and cynicism that motivate us to search for unanswerable questions in life. Instead, it is a constantly beautiful film that views the color and frivolity of life existing all around us. Continue reading “The Tree of Life Revisited”

The Debt

“The Debt” and its characters are torn between the values of romance and honesty. The story behind the former is a surprisingly convincing love triangle, and the details behind the latter are a generic, if not silly, conspiracy thriller.

Three Israeli agents in 1965 are tasked with apprehending a formerly sadistic Nazi doctor, and in 1997, one agent’s suicide reveals the specifics of their successful mission are not what they seem.

We know this because in the future we are first introduced to Helen Mirren as Rachel Singer. Mirren has a wonderful way of revealing both apprehension and regality simultaneously. She and her ex-husband Stephan (Tom Wilkinson) share a few private words in between their daughter’s book tour documenting their heroic endeavors. It turns out that their fellow agent, David Peretz (Ciaran Hinds), has just committed suicide, and a now disabled Stephan requires Rachel to go back into the field one last time.

The plot demands the older versions of the characters maintain a troubling secret, but this truth is not all that life shattering. To me, it would seem as though the truth would merely be an embarrassment and a slight slap in justice’s face, but little else. Continue reading “The Debt”

The Help

“The Help” isn’t really a drama about racism but about snobby, white Southern socialites.

 

What’s the real evil in civil rights era Jackson, Mississippi? Is it racism or controlling, white female socialites? “The Help” thinks it’s the former but the film is simply an entertaining movie about the latter.

It tells of how the budding young journalist Skeeter (Emma Stone) returns from college to find she is more enlightened and intelligent than her prejudiced housewife friends and that the black maid that helped raise her as a child is gone from their home. She’s embarrassed by a rule that would force black servants to use a separate bathroom outside the house and decides to write a book from the perspective of the help.

Skeeter’s two most animated subjects are the life of the film. Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minnie (Octavia Spencer) are fun, sassy, strong and complex individuals with a lot of stories about one of their employers, Hilly Holbrook. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Hilly with spunk and whiplash tartness, but her character is a one-dimensional, bitchy control freak who determines who’s in and who’s out in her middle class WASP social circle of women. Continue reading “The Help”

The Tree of Life

“The Tree of Life” is a purely cinematic experience. Terrence Malick has made a film that speaks life lessons and evokes fundamental human emotions through visuals and style above all else. In doing so, his film worships the gift of life itself.

The purpose of existence, as seen through Malick’s eyes, is to simply love life, and every part of it. Beauty, pain, sadness, joy and all else that encompasses our being are necessary to live and reach the afterlife, which Malick envisions as a place to cherish the life we came from.

Such a view may seem overly optimistic and unpractical to some, if not most, but this is Malick’s film first before anyone else’s, and its message appears utterly sincere to the environmental and natural themes evoked throughout the four other films in his nearly four decade career.

With messages as life fulfilling as these and a film as operatic and grand in scope as this, “The Tree of Life” preaches lessons that one could live by and has aspirations to be one of the greatest films ever made. It’s a bit far from that benchmark, but the intentions are sure and true, and the experience is still wholly enriching. Continue reading “The Tree of Life”