London Road, which is due to be released in the States on September 9th, is a musical about a real-life serial killer.
Somehow, with the way 2016 is going, that just seems appropriate.
Check out the trailer below.
Category Archives: Film
“Do you ever read the books you burn?”
(From 1966’s Fahrenheit 451)
Here’s The Trailer for Split!
I’ve been reading about this new movie called Split. It’s about a man who has 23 separate personalities and the three girls who he keeps in the basement.
Here’s the good news: the film stars James McAvoy, who seems like the perfect pick for this type of role. Anya Taylor-Joy, who was so good in The Witch, is also in it. The film is directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who made a comeback of sorts with The Visit.
Here’s the bad news: This sounds like exactly the type of storyline that will bring out Shyamalan’s worst tendencies. I’m going to predict right now that the film is going to end with either the three girls turning out to be figments of McAvoy’s imagination (or maybe manifestations of three of his personalities) or McAvoy turning out to be a figment of someone else’s imagination. Or maybe Anya Taylor-Joy will turn out to be the one with multiple personalities and the whole movie has just been taking place inside of her head. You know it’s going to happen.
Add to that, the movie is being released in January of 2017. January is traditionally the time that studios dump their worst films.
Oh well, no need to worry! The world’s going to end in November regardless.
Anyway, here’s the trailer for the film that none of us will ever get the chance to see!
And then the TV said…
(From 1966’s Fahrenheit 451)
Dance Scenes That I Love: The Most Menacing Jitterbug of All Time From Mulholland Drive
Tonight’s dance scene that I love comes from the 2001 film, Mulholland Drive. In fact, it’s the very first scene from that surreal masterpiece.
Trust David Lynch to make the jitterbug seem menacing.
And finally, the awful truth…
(From 1973’s Soylent Green)
Film Review: Indiscretion (dir by John Stewart Muller)
Indiscretion is a strange one.
(And by strange, I mean dull and kind of pointless.)
This film premiered on Lifetime last Saturday but, as I watched it, it quickly became obvious that it wasn’t originally produced for Lifetime.
For one thing, the film was shot on location in Louisiana. Instead of letting Montreal or Toronto stand in for a generic American city, this film was actually shot on the streets of New Orleans. (Unfortunately, the film also made New Orleans seem kind of boring.)
Secondly, Indiscretion turned out to be one of those films where the soundtrack would suddenly go silent whenever a character said anything stronger than “damn.” It was odd because you would see a character very obviously saying something like, “Fuck you,” but you wouldn’t be able to hear the voice. I guess that was to protect the gentle sensibilities of the viewer but what about people who read lips?
And finally, Indiscretion didn’t feature any of the usual Lifetime actors. Instead, it starred Mira Sorvino as a frustrated wife and Cary Elwes as her politician husband. Sorvino’s real-life husband, Christoper Backus, played the troubled sculptor who has an affair with Sorvino and then ends up stalking her family.
So, no, Indiscretion was clearly made to, at the very least, be released straight to video. It was not meant for commercial television. And yet, somehow, it ended up making a somewhat awkward premiere on Lifetime.
Anyway, Indiscretion starts out well enough. It doesn’t waste any time arranging for Sorvino and Backus to meet at a fund raiser and for them to end up having a passionate affair. Sorvino, of course, claims that it was just a weekend fling and that she loves her husband. Backus refuses to believe her and soon, he’s worming his way into her family. He befriends her husband and even gets to go on a hunting trip with the governor of Louisiana. He also ends up having an affair with Sorvino’s teenage daughter.
(Or, at the very least, he takes some pictures of her, which Sorvino later discovers. It’s a sign of how haphazardly constructed this film is that you’re never quite sure what’s going on with Backus and Sorvino’s daughter. Backus also uses one of those old Polaroid cameras to take pictures. Apparently, troubled artists don’t use digital cameras.)
The problem is that, after the first, artfully-shot sex scene, the film itself slows down to an interminable crawl. It’s as if the film’s director, editor, screenwriter, and producers all forgot that the audience has already seen a hundred movies just like this one. Nothing surprising happens and, unlike the best Lifetime films, Indiscretion never winks at the audience or indirectly acknowledges the clichéd nature of its narrative. The whole thing is just painfully dull and no amount of mood lighting is going to change that. There is a little twist at the end but most viewers will probably be so bored with it all that they probably won’t even notice. That’s just the type of film this is.
If you want to see an entertainingly over-the-top and pulpy film about people having sex in New Orleans, I would suggest checking to see if Zandalee is still available on YouTube.
“There is No Sanctuary….”
(From 1976’s Logan’s Run)
Insomnia File No. 19: Great Expectations (dir by Alfonso Cuaron)
What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
If you were awake at 2 in the morning last night, you could have turned over to Starz and watched the 1998 film, Great Expectations.
Great Expectations is an adaptation of the famous novel by Charles Dickens, the one about the orphan who helps a fugitive, is mentored by a bitter rich woman who lives in a decaying mansion, falls in love with the beautiful but cold-hearted Estella, and then later is helped out by a mysterious benefactor. The thing that sets this adaptation apart from other version of the novel is that the 1998 Great Expectations is set in modern-day America, as opposed to Victorian-era Great Britain.
Actually, beyond retaining certain aspects of the plot, it’s interesting how little this version of Great Expectations has to do with the original novel. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. While Charles Dickens deserves to be remembered as one of the fathers of modern literature, he could also be a terribly pedantic writer. This adaptation only touches on the novel’s overriding concerns about class and wealth in the most simplistic of ways. It also abandons most of the novel’s subplots and instead concentrates on the love story between Estella (Gwynneth Paltrow) and Finn (Ethan Hawke).
Oh yeah, did I mention that? The hero of this version of Great Expectations is not named Phillip Pirrip and we never have to listen to him explain that, as a child, he was nicknamed Pip because he apparently could not speak. Instead, Pip has been renamed Finn, short for Finnegan. If you believe the trivia section of the imdb, Finn was apparently the name of Ethan Hawke’s dog. And again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. One of the main reasons why so many readers automatically dislike the narrator of Great Expectations is that he is named Pip.
Anyway, in this version, Pip Finn grows up in Florida, an orphan who is raised by his blue-collar brother-in-law, Joe Gargery (Chris Cooper, giving a very Chris Cooperish performance). The escaped convict is played by Robert De Niro and, towards the end of the film, there’s a hilarious scene where Finn and the convict meet for a second time and Finn somehow does not recognize him, despite the fact that he still pretty much looks the same and still acts exactly like Robert De Niro. The eccentric woman who mentors the young Finn, Mrs. Havisham Dinsmoor, is played by Anne Bancroft and Bancroft, made up to look like Bette Davis in What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, gives a performance of almost transcendent weirdness. And, of course, Estella — who has been raised to seduce and then destroy men — is played by Gwynneth Paltrow and, as usual, Paltrow is a lot more believable when Estella is remote and self-centered than when she has to soften up towards the end of the film.
It’s an odd film, to be honest. This is one of those films that you watch and you try to be cynical but it’s all so lushly shot and deliriously (and manipulatively) romantic that you can’t help but occasionally get wrapped up in its spell. Hawke and Paltrow, both of whom are incredibly young in this movie, may not have much chemistry but they’re both so achingly beautiful that it almost doesn’t matter.
Great Expectations was the second film to be directed by Alfonso Cuaron and it’s just as visually stylish as his later films. It’s a frequently shallow and somewhat silly film but oh my God, is it ever pretty to look at.
Previous Insomnia Files:
“You don’t have to die! You can live! LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!”
(From 1976’s Logan’s Run)
