Halloween

Any holiday on the calendar can be tied to different emotions felt by those who celebrate them. For Christmas it’s all about cheer and love. Thanksgiving is, by its title, all about gratitude. At New Year’s feelings of anxiety as well as feelings of anticipation are felt by people as they consider a brand new year. Then there’s Halloween.
Despite the thrills of all those little kids who long for vast supplies of candy from their neighbors, the general consensus is that Halloween is about fear. This is all very interesting because as many know movies are also involved with the emotions of the people who watch them.
In 1978 an up and coming filmmaker by the name of John Carpenter created a movie that is something of a perfect little combination of the fear involved with horror films, the fear involved with Halloween, and a whole new personification of fear for generations of movie goers to come. This creation of his was, of course, a movie. What did he call it you ask? He considered different names for his $300,000 independent film that would go to become a cornerstone of horror cinema, but in the end there was only one name for his movie; Halloween.
Take a minute to fight back that instinct to roll your eyes and blow this recommendation off. It is no surprise that Halloween is often lumped in with its seven vastly inferior sequels as well as the plethora of horribly ridiculous horror options like the ten Friday the 13th movies and eight Nightmare on Elm Street entries. After all, they all sit on the same stand at the rental store soon to be joined by Saw 1-6 and however many Hostel movies they cook up. The staggering number of other movies is really not important. Halloween did it first. Halloween did it right.
It is known as the godfather of slasher flicks and if you care to check the dates on all those previously mentioned other horror movies the evidence supports the claim. When John Carpenter and his girlfriend of the time Debra Hill created the story of an escaped mental patient who terrorizes a young babysitter with a large butcher knife, they were breaking fairly new ground.
Here’s the real catch though; they still had respect for the audience and for the film they were making. It wasn’t to be some by-the-numbers horror movie with excessive blood and gore. Halloween is a well paced tale of a handful of teens who do their teenage thing on Halloween night totally oblivious to the fact that rarely less than ten steps away they are being silently watched by what is called nothing less than a total personification of evil.
Here I must discuss how a slow and silent man wearing a Captain Spock mask painted white, has become one of the most terrifying villains in all of cinema history. In the sequels that followed the original film he came to be called Michael Myers. This name is never used in the movie.
As a young boy who’s just killed his seventeen-year-old sister on Halloween night, his parents call him Michael. Fifteen years later, when people speak of the house where that killing took place, they refer to it as “The Myers House.” But the haunting man who returns to his home after escaping is referred to in the credits only as “The Shape.”
That’ all he is really. He’s not a man who kills kids; he’s that evil that lurks out there. It’s that evil that is different for every person but can be seen in the bluish white soulless face. It’s that evil that can give full grown adults a chill as they walk down a dark street alone, or lay in bed staring into a dark closet that’s just barely opened.
Judging horror movies and giving them a rating is different than other kinds of movies because horror movies aren’t out for the Best Picture, they’re trying to scare the audience, and the level to which they do this effectively is the level to which they will be praised.
Halloween is a terrifying movie, but its real trick is how it gets the audience. It doesn’t feel too scary; there are not a ton of jumps or obscene shockers. The real fear comes later, when your friends have gone home and you think you’re on to the next thing. It continues to scare you for days after you’ve watched it. Tell yourself it’s an irrational fear, or that there’s no such thing as the Boogeyman, but don’t expect it to work. You watch Halloween and it’s like your six years old again, pulling the blanket over your head and closing your eyes, praying with everything you’ve got that you can fall asleep so you don’t have to imagine that Shape watching you from fifteen feet away. How’s that for some Halloween fear?

A

The Prestige

Obsession is a powerful thing. Everyone knows what infatuation feels like. Everyone knows that feeling of fascination with something. Most likely a majority of people would say that they know what it’s like to be obsessed with something in the real meaning of the word. I’m a skeptic at heart; I say that an actual serious obsession is not a common thing. It is for this reason that watching someone obsess over something is so interesting to me and I think to other viewers as well.
This sort of situation is only one of the many things audiences can feast their eyes upon as they view The Prestige. Director Christopher Nolan knows that every movie must have a purpose, and with The Prestige his purpose is the same one that the two main characters share. His purpose is illusion. Nolan tantalizes the audience with all sorts of information, sights, sounds, puzzles, and answers. Finally, after a cinematic web that only the director of Memento could weave, he concludes with a final twist and a last haunting frame before the fade to black.
There’s no way to address this movie without first exclaiming on the excellence of cast. Hugh Jackman, as Robert Angier, and Christian Bale, as Alfred Borden, set aside their onscreen personae of super heroes to embody two turn-of-the-century magicians who begin as coworkers but end up bitter enemies driven by their obsessions with outsmarting the other.
Then there’s Michael Caine, back to prove once again why he is nothing less than a screen legend, as if he actually has anything to prove. Like his role as Alfred in Nolan’s Batman Begins, Caine plays a wise man offering direction to the younger less experienced protagonist. This time around, he’s got a character separate from either protagonist while still being involved in their interactions and endeavors.
Scarlett Johansson must not be ignored in this film. Indeed as an actress she refuses to be ignored in any role she takes on. First she is the demure young assistant of Angier, but at his request she goes to work as an assistant to Borden in order to steal his secrets. As a tool in their plotting to outdo each other Johansson’s Olivia has the choice of which one she will help and which one she will deceive. I hope she knows because most of the time we don’t.
The story is not as twisted as Nolan’s Memento, neither is it as strictly linear as his less than impressive Batman Begins. It is a better film than either of these because it is balanced. Not only is the plot perfectly between boring and baffling; the scale is both one of marvelous grandeur and one of intimate character study.
The cinematography is quite impressive, especially during the magician’s feats of illusion when we the audience are allowed to see things from the perspective of the performer and the onlookers.
The tone and colors are also used effectively to portray the minds of the characters and the sense that behind every bright and exciting trick there is a darker truth not to be seen or known by the everyday observer.
The film as a whole is a magician’s show. Things happen that confuse or amaze us but we keep watching because we know, or at least hope, that they will be explained in before the lights go up. Christopher Nolan, like all good magicians, knows that he can’t give it all away or the illusion is gone. Not everything in this movie has an answer. The important thing is that everything we need to know is told. We can try to fill in the gaps with explanations that make sense to us. Or maybe with explanations that don’t make as much sense. But before we try to hammer out every mystery in the movie we have to ask ourselves, do we really want to? No, we like the illusion, it’s what we came to see, and in The Prestige it’s delivered to us with the same flare and showmanship of those dazzling magicians who’s obsession, above all things, was the captivation of an audience.

A-

The Little Mermaid

Disney can’t really be relied upon to get the whole story right; this is something with which any person who views their movies must deal right off the bat. The Little Mermaid is a prime example of this. In the original Hans Christian Anderson story the little mermaid who fell in love with a prince did not have a happy ever after. She lost her prince to some other girl and ended up turning into sea foam. This is as far as I remember anyway, but Disney couldn’t keep this tragic ending, for obvious reasons. There’s something else that viewers can learn from this Disney version of a classic tale; just because they change something doesn’t mean they make it worse. The Little Mermaid may not be better than the original story, but it’s not worse, it just has different strong qualities. While the original had a very dramatic finale, the movie has fantastic musical numbers. The original may have been performed as a beautiful ballet, but the new one features some of the most beautiful animation to grace the screen. They’re different but both good. I am not reviewing the original though, I’m reviewing the new one so I’ll talk about that now and leave the original for another time. The story is pretty simple; the seventh daughter of the sea king Triton, Ariel, is sixteen years old and a curious-to-the-point-of-rebellious teenager. She longs to be part of the human world and she collects every little human related thing she can get her hands on. One day she is drawn to the surface by the presence of a ship. She sees through the railings the prince, Eric, and she falls madly in love with him. He falls too, but into the sea when a violent storm comes upon the ship. Ariel saves him by pulling him to land and she sings to him on the beach while he is regaining consciousness. She flees the scene as Eric becomes fully awake, leaving him with just the image of a beautiful girl singing to him. Eric becomes obsessed with finding this girl much to the chagrin of his supervisor who wishes for the prince to pick a wife already. Triton finds out of Ariel’s visit to the surface and, enraged, destroys her trove of human objects. This devastates Ariel and her desperation leads her to seek help from Ursula, the sea witch who was banished from the kingdom. Ursula makes her a deal that she can have human legs in exchange for her voice, and if she cannot get Eric to kiss her by the sunset of the third day on land, Ariel will become a captive of Ursula. This is the setup and from there the story unfolds as Ariel tries to get Eric’s love without having the voice he loved so much. In the meantime Ursula does everything she can stop their union because if she can obtain Ariel as a captive she can trade the young mermaid for the soul of Triton. As I’ve already said, the ending is happy, so I’ll leave it to you to guess what the final outcome is. This isn’t the most important part of the movie though; way more than half of the fun is getting there. I saw this movie long ago but it was stolen in a robbery and I never got around to watching it again for ten years. It was just released on Disney DVD and when I saw the preview I had a moment of surreal recollection that took me back to my childhood and prompted me to, on complete impulse, buy the two disc special remastered edition. It was on sale and I remembered liking the soundtrack so I bought it and watched it thinking that at very least I would feel like a kid again. Well I didn’t feel like a kid at all because you know what, I didn’t remember it like it was at all. I never realized how good of a movie it was. I mentioned the animation before but I’ll mention it again. Never has the digital remastering of a movie been so refreshing, the comparisons between the original and redone picture are crazy. It looks like the first one was seen through smoked glass. The whole environment of under the sea is brilliantly done and the contrast between all the soft greens or blues and Ariel’s red hair is very much enhanced. It doesn’t look enhanced though; it just looks like we are seeing right into the animator’s brain. The sound quality is spectacular as well. The sound effects, the marvelous songs, and the Oscar winning score are grand to behold. The whole movie is improved and upon finishing it I was both glad, that it had been so long that I could enjoy the improvements, and sad, at not having realized what I was missing out on for all these years. I love this movie, it is one of Disney’s best and even if you think you know it you might give it another chance; it may not be the movie you remember. It may be something quite spectacular.

A-

Brokeback Mountain

I figured that since everybody else has reviewed this movie I might as well give my two cents so that somewhere down the line I can actually justify having watched with more than "well everybody else was doing it," so here goes nothing. I doubt that anybody who doesn't know the basic plot could actually be in touch enough with society to have found their way to this blog so I'll keep the recap short. In fact the whole review will be short because there's not too much to say. Here's the plot: two men, Ennis Del Mar played to much accolade by Heath Ledger, and rodeo cowboy Jack Twist played by Jake Gyllenhaal, go to work as sheep herders for the summer on Brokeback Mountain. They get drunk, have sex, and as is the norm in Hollywood, are therefore bound by eternal love for all of...well, eternity. Seriously though the rest of the movie chronicles their lives as they finish the summer working and go their separate ways. Both get married, Jack to a rodeo princess Laureen, played by the "eager to be a serious actress" Anne Hathaway, and Ennis to Alma, played by Dawson's Creek has been Michelle Williams who gives the most moving performance of the film. The movie covers the years of their lives as they continually hook up for a fling or two while either ignoring their wives or divorcing them. I'm sorry, I am a pretty big romantic at heart, and I think true love is just grand. But you know what isn't grand? Two guys who, straight or gay, enter into marriages that they both know are total shams so that they can produce kids they won't care for while they're romping around with some wild affair. I'm sure this is like fourteen hate crimes all in one, but really...REALLY, they were jerks. If they were so deeply in love then they could have gone and lived on their precious mountain without setting a bunch of poor people up for the heartache of losing a husband or father. It winds up not really working out as Jack is killed by a bunch of guys in a very similar fashion to a killing Ennis witnessed as a child. So Ennis is left alone and he goes to the house of Jack's parents where he finds their two shirts on the same hanger, you must understand that Jack had taken it from him after their first summer working together, and this is supposed to represent how they were meant for each other or something. You want to know what I thought? Well you've read this far so I assume you do, I was thinking something along the lines of: "Thank God there was one less shirt for Ennis' horribly mistreated wife to wash for her careless punk of a husband!" Seriously, they weren't heroes, they were thoughtless and driven by lust. The performances were fine, I won't lie, but the only one I really cared about was Michelle William's Alma who had her family torn apart while she desperately tried to ignore the obvious fact that her husband was repeatedly cheating on her. I'm sure there are a million people who would be royally pissed to hear their precious movie so slandered, but it deserves it. The cinematography was very nice, and the settings were beautiful, specifically the various colors in the sky and among the clouds. The Oscar winning score was also well done, but these are not the things that should be great in a movie, they help, they earn a half a star here or there, but when you watch it and you feel like it's wanting you to sympathize with pretty pathetic people it only makes for a poor movie experience. The long and the short of it is that it may have been very edgy and new, but the result seems to be the opposite of what they hoped to accomplish and heck, at least in Rent we got to hear them sing some great songs.

C-

The Grudge 2

Horror movies have a tendency to be formulaic. There’s some kind of unstoppable entity that does harm to innocent kids or young adults. Horror movies that have been imported from Japan are even more formulaic than usual. In these there is generally a creepy child ghost featuring dark eyes and chalk white skin, as well as pictures with unexplained dark spots, a heroine who is warned to stay away even though she will obviously rush to get deeply involved, and there is always large quantities of sinister water.
It’s been this way since the gold standard of imported horror, The Ring, and it continued through Dark Water, The Ring 2, The Grudge, and now The Grudge 2. You think we have a lot of sequels here; The Ringu series has at least five installments in Japan.
The thing about these movies is that, since they all follow a similar pattern, the audience pretty much knows what’s likely to happen. As long as the filmmakers continue to produce them according to this design the same audiences will return to see them again because, let’s be honest, who can resist all of the above-mentioned elements? It’s like Disney’s animated movies but for an older audience.
Be that as it may, they’re still all individual movies and like all individual movies they must be picked apart and judged accordingly. The Grudge 2 is lucky to have a marketing gimmick in its favor. Its release date of Friday the thirteenth of October lends itself well to a horror movie, like The Omen earlier this year, which incorporated the release date of 6.6.06 into its marketing.
Unfortunately the “thrill” of this fabulous release date has worn off before the previews are finished leaving us to be amused by the ghosts, dark spots, heroines, and water found in the movie. It’s important to judge movies like The Grudge 2 on the proper terms. Just as musicals are sized up based upon their songs, or kung-fu movies according to their action scenes, Horror movies are to be judged by the jump scenes and the amount of tension they successfully create. Anything above and beyond the basic requirements ought to be considered a bonus.
In an attempt to separate The Grudge 2 from the myriad other horror movies I’ll try to sum it up without giving too much away. Karen, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar returned from the first Grudge, is in a Tokyo hospital following the events of the first film. Her sister Aubrey, played by Amber Tamblyn, comes to Tokyo despite a long-standing fight between the two that has kept them from talking to each other for over two years.
Meanwhile three teenage girls from an international high school decide they will venture into the burned out house that is said to be haunted. This house being the very same one that Karen attempted to burn to the ground, at the end of the first film, in hopes of destroying the ghost of a woman who was murdered there, along with her little boy, by her husband. The story goes that once a person is inside the house they are cursed by this murderous grudge that remains from the horrific deeds of the past. The vengeful ghost one by one takes these three schoolgirls, who by horror default must be dressed throughout the film either in nothing or in sexed up prep school uniforms.
The last of the storylines involves an American family who consist of a father, his new honey, a teenage daughter, and a young boy. Their story serves as an opportunity to reproduce a similar situation in potential sequels.
The stories all find a way to be tied to each other in a small way though it’s not as powerful a tool here as in such films as Love Actually or Crash, and at the conclusion there are still a lot more things unsolved than explained.
The movie is not great, but how could you honestly expect it be? The filming is by the books; I can’t remember any kind of a soundtrack besides the random clash of symbols to help with a jump scene. As far as acting goes, well let’s just say that some one ought to tell Amber Tamblyn that opening your eyes as wide as possible while letting your mouth hang open and flaring your nostrils isn’t acting, it’s annoying. But we aren’t there to see anybody act; we’re there to get scared. The Grudge 2 has some scary parts but not many, it’s about as good as it could have been, unfortunately it couldn’t ever have really been that good.

C+

Hard Candy

Alright, these days I write for The Siskiyou so I'm doing like one review a week. Though I've already done one this week I am compelled to do another in honor a movie I just watched that was too good to pass up. Hard Candy, starring Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson as Hayley and Jeff, respectively, is unlike any movie I've seen in a long time, and possibly ever. For starters, it stars the two of them almost exclusively. There's a coffee shop attendant at the opening, a three minute cameo by Sandra Oh, and one other woman right at the end. That's five, count them five, people; just imagine the credits. It doesn't even matter, in fact the scarcity of players only adds to the wonder that is this movie, especially because of the two central characters the one who must really carry the film is 18 year old Page with the greatest young performance since Whale Rider.
You may have heard the plot before but I'll sum up the intro for anybody in the dark. Jeff is in his thirties and a photographer. Hayley is fourteen (and actually looks it for once in cinema history) and she spends her time reading and chatting online with Jeff. The movie opens with the two of them deciding, via chatroom, that they are going to meet at a local coffee chop. One thing leads to another and before you know it they're back at Jeff's house where Hayley insists on making the screwdrivers herself and posing for Jeff like one of his various teenage girl models who's pictures adorn his walls. It is at this point that act two begins as the roles of predator and prey are abruptly switched.
I am ready to start it over and watch the whole thing again right this very second, so great was the performance by Page. I'm sure it probably won't happen but I think she deserves an Oscar nomination at least. Her's is a role that so many could have played in an annoying and bratty way, but she'd not annoying and she's not a little brat. She's a smart, ruthless, vindictive, person who knows exactly what she is going to do and how she's going to do it. Like a younger version of The Bride or something similar, she was stone cold and pitch perfect. Wilson mustn't be ignored however, he plays the opposite of Page's scary but good young girl, with his sincere denials of his actions as the charming but evil pedophile.
Do not be afraid for content, besides talk of terrible deeds, a handful of expletives, and one particularly groan inducing amateur surgical procedure that thankfully isn't shown, there's nothing to be weary of. Even so, it's not Sunday family movie night material if you know what I mean. The long and the short of is this: it's intriguing in an original way which is something to be grateful for these days. It's well written, sharply acted, and beautifully shot. It doesn't force feed the audience a bunch of rehashed ideas, it thrills and horrifies in all the right ways, and it's over before you become too familiar with it.

A-

The Departed

Thank God for filmmakers like Martin Scorsese. Everyone knows the drill; you avoid the theaters like the Black Death during January and February. March and April are usually good for a chic flick or gross out comedy. Summer comes and we get our popcorn thrillers, comic book adaptations, jaw dropping effects and fight scenes. This is the way with the film industry. Then comes the fall. Oscar season begins and suddenly the movies with legendary performances and world changing messages flood the theaters. Far too often large crowds avoid the “great” films of this season because they’re dry, too wordy, or boring. I cannot tell a lie, sometimes I don’t care if it’s garnered 13 golden globe nominations, if it’s not exciting I’m just not that interested. This is why I say… thank God for filmmakers like Martin Scorsese.
“The Departed” has already been talked about as the first real Oscar contender of year, and this is true. But it’s not a run of the mill boring award winner, it’s a marvelous epic of twisted truths and bad versus good where nobody knows who’s bad and who’s good, not the characters and not us.
Scorsese has the arduous task of setting the stage that must be put out of the way in the beginning. Similar to setting up his little dominoes, he carefully and deliberately gives the audience all the information they need to know right off the bat. We see the allegiance of a child bought off by Jack Nicholson’s gleefully wicked mob boss Costello. Years later this child, Colin Sullivan played by Matt Damon, has grown up and worked his way through school and training to work under cover for Costello as a policeman in the Special Investigation Unit. During the same time that we watch Colin weasel his way into the department, we meet Billy Costigan, played excellently by the ever-improving Leonardo DiCaprio. Costigan is not that different than Sullivan, both experienced life on the tougher streets of South Boston, the things they have in common only build as the movie progresses. The second act begins as Costigan is sent through extensive and harsh situations to become an under-cover cop working alongside Costello.
What follows can only be described as a cat-and-mouse account of the most phenomenal nature. There is not one, but three mice, for all of our main characters are being sought by others in their own specific way. And to begin counting the cats would set my head spinning. The story is interwoven so intricately that we cannot help being engaged right down to the last startling kill. Even so, it is never convoluted or overbearing. Scorsese is a master, and here it is demonstrated exquisitely.
This is not a one-man show however; the excellence of direction is only the beginning of superb workmanship. Not a single actor or actress gives anything less than a stellar performance. Jack Nicholson, who can usually be relied upon to deliver sufficiently, makes the character of a bad to the bones crime lord totally new for us. Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio carry the film as two men consumed with their double lives. Mark Whalberg turns in a terrific performance as a good guy who’s a jerk and by the end you can’t help but to love him and hate him simultaneously.
While romance in this genre usually feels forced, lesser-known Vera Farmiga creates a believable and tragically ironic love triangle between herself, Damon and DiCaprio. Her talents, I think, have yet to be fully displayed, even after this film’s first-rate performance, and I look forward to great things from her.
As a movie, “The Departed” excels in numerous ways. It may not be an eternal classic, or maybe it will. For now it is simply a good theater going opportunity, it’s sure to be talked about, lauded, and so forth, but it’s enjoyable for both the art lovers and the thrill seekers, though the drawn out conclusions may not be ideal for the action audience. It showcases the talent of a great cast, features a well-paced and engaging plot, and under the careful control of Martin Scorsese it is a movie to applaud.

A-