Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “World War Z”

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Okay, I get it — fans of Max Brooks’ best-selling “zombie apocalypse” novel World War Z are pissed off about director Marc (Monster’s Ball, Quantum Of Solace) Forster’s big-budget, big-screen “adaptation” of it because the finished product bears essentially no recognizable similarity to its printed-page predecessor. Heck, some are even going so far as to say that they actually like the film, they just feel that it should be called something else.

On the other hand, it seems that more or less everyone who hasn’t read the book loves the movie.

Much as I’d enjoy picking a side in this, the latest great “genre geek debate,” I honestly can’t, simply because I don’t really fit into either of the “warring” camps, seeing as how I neither read the novel nor loved the film with the kind of awestruck wonder its most fervent partisans seem to be brimming over with.

Oh, sure, it was pleasantly entertaining enough — United Nations bad-ass-for-hire Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt — who, let’s face it, is probably contractually obligated to always play somebody at least a little bit cooler than the Average Joe) races against the clock, and around the globe, to keep his wife, Karin (Mireille Enos of TV’s The Killing) and their kids safe from a massive viral plague that essentially mashes together elements of the scenarios George Romero laid out in both The Crazies and his seminal “Living Dead” flicks, only with a much larger budget that enables the filmmakers to give us a more international perspective on the goings-on. Governments are strained to breaking point and/or collapse entirely, WHO and the world’s various military forces struggle to get a handle on things, no area is left unaffected, no one is safe —you get the picture.

The script went through four sets of hands — Babylon 5 creator and frequent comics scribe J. Michael Straczynski gave way to former Lost head honcho and occasional comics scribe Damon Lindelof who in turn gave way to Drew Goddard who in turn gave way to Matthew Michael Carnahan — and, as you can imagine, is something of a mess as a result. Fortunately, it never slows down long enough for you to fully realize that fact, and instead keeps you on the edge of your seat with its PG-13-level action and semi-violence (notice I don’t say anything about gore — sorry, die-hard zombie-holics) from the time it clocks in to the time it knocks off and heads for the bar around the corner.

The end result is something of a hustle — it’ll slowly dawn on you as you make your way home from the theater that what you just saw really wasn’t anything too special, but what the hell — you were too busy having fun to notice.

And that was probably the whole point, really. I don’t think Forster and his literal army of screenwriters set out to reinvent the wheel here or overturn the sacred “Romero Rules” permanently. They were just the guys brought in to make something of a damn popular book that Paramount bid a fortune to obtain the rights to and if, at the end of the day, all that survived of World War Z as most folks knew it was the title, well — that’s pretty much all they were paying for, anyway. Beyond that the only edicts from the studio “suits” were probably to land a huge star, load up on the CGI, and deliver a product that the average summertime movie-goer would find to be a reasonable enough investment of ten bucks and (roughly) two hours.

Judging it on that scorecard, you’d have to say they can all pat themselves on the back, say “mission accomplished,” and go home. Those hoping for a movie that would revolutionize the genre on celluloid the same way the book did in print are bound to be left feeling a bit disappointed, as is anyone who bothers to actually think about what they’re seeing while they’re seeing it, but for anyone and everyone else, hey — it’s a decent enough little thrill ride. Grab some popcorn, sit back, and please don’t struggle against your inner 12-year-old.

Now, as to the other raging debate splitting the internet about whether or not this is actually a horror movie or just a “thriller” with some genre trappings —

Forget it. I’m sooooo not going there. One nerd-controversy per review is my limit.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Now You See Me”

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Maybe it’s unfair to saddle director Louis (Transporter) Leterrier’s new-ish “caper” drama Now You See Me with the “blockbuster” label, since it obviously doesn’t have the budget (or hype machine surrounding it) of an Iron Man 3 or a Man Of Steel, but its surprisingly healthy take at the box office in recent weeks has it hedging into “blockbuster” territory in terms of its gross ticket receipts, it’s got a “blockbuster”-caliber cast, and it definitely falls into the category of lightweight, fun, summer entertainment, so — let’s just roll with it.

And let’s not take that “lightweight, fun, summer entertainment” statement as a jab, either, please, because Now You See Me is a solid little piece of film-making that anyone associated with it can (and should) be damn proud of. It’s just not particularly “deep” in any thematic sense.

But so what? It’s been awhile since Hollywood served us up a good “caper”-style thriller — the last genuinely superb one that comes to mind is Roger Donaldson’s criminally-underappreciated The Bank Job, and that’s getting to be a good few years ago now — and even though this is a film that doesn’t aim for the same level of “ooh”s and “aah”s of the latest Marvel or DC celluloid comic-book adaptation, it’s got more genuine heroics than most of them, and is every bit as finely-calculated a crowd-pleaser as anything they’ve sent down the pipeline in recent years, as well.

The all-star cast definitely helps to elevate a script that at times belabors its points with admittedly necessary but occasionally clumsy “info-dump” scenes and features a smattering of dialogue that can best be described as “clunky,” and while none of the actors involved are exactly stretching their abilities into new and unexplored territory, there’s something to be said for knowing what the folks you hire are best at doing and then getting out of the way and letting them do it.

To that end, Jesse Eisenberg tackles his role as fast-talking, arrogant illusionist J. Daniel Atlas with aplomb; Woody Harrelson delivers a solid, workman-like piece of acting as mentalist Merritt McKinney; Isla Fisher gives us a nice turn as former-magician’s-assistant-turned-headliner Henley Reeves; Dave Franco projects cool confidence as safe-cracker/lock-picker/con artist extraordinaire Jack Wilder; Mark Ruffalo gives another “believable everyman” performance as Special Agent Dylan Rhodes, the man tasked with somehow getting some charges to stick on our intrepid foursome, who have come together and billed themselves as “The Four Horsemen,” after they apparently rob a bank in front of a Las Vegas show audience (or do they?); Michael Caine gives it his usual grade-A “go” as the group’s multi-millionaire benefactor/promoter/future victim; Morgan Freeman essentially plays himself in his guise as Through The Wormhole host, albeit with quantum physics being replaced with magic trick “debunking” as his gig; Melanie Laurent cuts a satisfying European-woman-of-mystery figure as Alma Dray, Ruffalo’s reluctant Interpol partner/potential love interest — heck, there are even notable minor performances here from Michael Kelly and Common as two of the cops who are down a few rungs on the investigative totem pole.

It’s not like the film doesn’t have any sort of statement to make about the general state of the world, either — to the contrary, “The Four Horsemen” take great pride in ripping off those who have ripped off society, and represent the kind of folk heroes the world could surely use in the wake of the mortgage crisis and the atrocious Wall Street bailout it gave birth to. Think of them as modern-day Robin Hoods with a flair for the dramatic and plenty of flat-out amazing tricks up their sleeves.

Still, the art of deception being the constant theme here, don’t be shocked if the reasons for our protagonists’ “crimes” turn out to be a lot more personal than they first appear to be (hey, I did say this movie wasn’t particularly “deep,” remember? Not even when it looks like it might be.) . I think I’ll just leave it at that, which might even be saying a little too much already.

Leterrier, as we’ve come to expect, keeps things moving at a fairly expert clip, throws in some nifty little visual tricks along the way, and most definitely delivers the goods in the film’s more action-heavy scenes, and while he handles the script’s quasi-trippy/metaphysical conclusion quite nicely in my view, I think a lot of folks will still find it a bridge too far, and frankly, for a movie that’s all about sleight of hand, you’ll still most likely see the “surprise character revelation” at the end coming from a mile off.

But ya know what? This is such an expertly-crafted piece of populist entertainment that I don’t think you’ll mind its admittedly-glaring weaknesses, simply because you’ll be too busy smiling from ear to ear. And that, perhaps, is its greatest trick of all.

There will surely be better films than Now You See Me released in 2013. Heck, there already have been. But I doubt there will be any that are more fun.

Before You See Anything Else — “Before Midnight”

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

So, this is it. You can keep your Man Of Steels, your Iron Man 3s, your Star Trek : Into Darknesses, and your Pacific Rims — fun popcorn fare some of those may be, but for me summer 2013 at the movies is all about the third installment in Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy’s long-running cinematic romance, Before Midnight. I won’t rehash the details of how and why this unlikeliest of indie “franchises” has meant so much to this armchair critic on a personal level over the years — hell, over the decades now! — as my reviews of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset last week covered that ground pretty damn thoroughly already, suffice to say that the chance to see Jesse and Celine living happily ever after is, at the risk of sounding hopelessly corny, a little bit of a celluloid dream come true for yours truly. And so here it is — and here they are, doing just that.

Or are they? Okay, sure, they’re together — and have been, apparently, since the conclusion of Before Sunset nine years ago. They’ve got twin daughters, successful careers (Jesse as a novelist and English professor, Celine as an environmental activist) in Paris, and are just winding up spending a magical summer at a writer’s retreat in the Greek Islands. Sounds ideal, right?

But all is not, of course, well in paradise — Jesse’s torn about the son he left behind in the US and wants to be a more active part of his life, Celine feels stifled by the apparently-tranquil domesticity of her situation and has no desire to move back to America for Jesse to be near his kid, and both are struggling with the the ever-narrowing possibilities life offers up as we age and our thousands of dreams get whittled down to a more concrete set of responsibilities. The passing years have seen “must do”s replace “want to”s in their lives, and one of the running themes of all of these Before pictures is that of somehow finding a way for love and passion and the sheer wonder of being with another person who understands and accepts us for who we are to survive amidst all that.

They seem to be doing their best. Their sex life is still refreshingly healthy for a cinematic couple on the cusp of middle age, they still walk and talk like the two young lovebirds who met on the train to Vienna, and they still show a genuine affection for one another that can give all of us some small measure of hope. But half the film is consumed by a fairly heated and wide-ranging argument in a hotel room that lays bare the many fault lines underpinning in their relationship. The only question, it seems, is whether they’ll continue to navigate those together or choose to go their separate ways.

Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke, who collaborated on the screenplay together once again (though it’s still nice to see them share character-creation credits with Linklater’s friend, the late Kim Krizan), strike a very delicate balance here between presenting the “heaviest” material we’ve yet to see in this series with the most lighthearted, comedic sequences to date, as well, and the end result is a film that’s not just a joy to watch, but to absorb, from its first frame to its last.

My long-standing group of friends I’ve seen all these films with waited until we could all see it together, and over the customary after-movie drinks last night we all agreed on two things — we loved it to pieces, even though it was, in many instances, the most difficult of the bunch to take in; and we couldn’t wait to see it again. It’s just a bit too early to figure out where we’d rank this is the entire — uhhmmmm — “pantheon,” I guess, after only one viewing, ya see.

Now, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to unceremoniously transition into a personal plea here — rumors are swirling that this might be the final Before of the bunch, and if that’s the case, I think it’s well past time for Oscar to show it a little respect. Yes, this series enjoys a deeply passionate and committed following, but it sure would be nice if Hollywood’s establishment paid some attention to this evolving little piece of wonderment that’s been happening under their noses for nearly two decades. Hawke and Delpy have both affected subtle body-language shifts over the years to delineate their characters’ evolving personalities (he walks with more swagger than ever, for instance, while she exudes an air of peace-that’s-looking-for-any-excuse-to-erupt resignation) that perfectly complement their maturation on paper and each is deserving of a Best Actor/Actress in a Leading Role nomination, and if the three collaborators aren’t recognized with a nod for Best Original Screenplay, there seriously ought to be an investigation. Hell, unless something else comes along that completely knocks our collective socks off, there ought to be an investigation if they don’t win it. Let’s get the email, blog, forum, etc. pressure campaign started right here — who’s with me on this?

Before Midnight is the most authentically human picture to come down the pipeline in ages, and traverses a rocky yet rewarding emotional terrain with grace, warmth, and yes, even charm. It shows how love endures when initial , lustful ehuberance ages into a kind of occasionally- resplendent ardor, and how it finds its level and holds us aloft even when we get everything we’ve ever wanted only to find out it’s still not exactly what we were yearning for (humans, we’re so picky). It’s the “happily ever after” we’ve always wanted for Jesse and Celine — and for ourselves — warts and all. And I’m so completely in love with the cinema, and even with life, again it damn near hurts. If this is, indeed, the end — and I sincerely hope it’s not, I want to grow old with these characters — it couldn’t be more perfectly imperfect, more gloriously flawed, more tragically comedic, more uneasily blissful.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Man Of Steel”

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

I know that, in this day and age, we as a society seem to get off on tearing down our myths and legends and “humanizing” them, but seriously — when did Superman develop a split personality?

Before you jump to any conclusions based on that admitted “gotcha” of an opening line, allow me to state for the record that I didn’t actively dislike Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel, it’s just that it spends its first half or so rather half-heartedly trying to portray its title character in more human terms than we’ve seen in previous iterations before finally throwing all that out the window and deciding that it actually wants to tell a story about a God who walks (and flies) among us, and the film definitely suffers as a result of this abrupt shift in tone.

But first the “plus” side of the ledger : Man Of Steel is pretty much the most awesome visual spectacle the movies have ever produced. I’m no fan of CGI as a general rule, but damn if every single effects shot in this flick isn’t enough to take your breath away, particularly the sequences on Superman’s home planet of Krypton, which Snyder and his WETA-employed staff depict in a markedly new and exciting “biotech on steroids” fashion. When the action goes earthbound, the optical awesomeness continues, never fear, so if spectacle is what you’re after, you’ll walk away from this well pleased indeed.

Pitch-perfect (with one notable exception which we’ll get to in a moment) casting doesn’t hurt matters any, either — Henry Cavill makes an immediate impression in both his Superman and Clark Kent personas; Russell Crowe is suitably above it all as his Kryptonian father, Jor-El; Kevin Costner and Diane Lane are almost too spot-on for words as his adopted human parents; Laurence Fishburne’s Perry White is old-school newspaper vet all the way (even with the pierced ear); and the always-underrated Michael Shannon oozes psychotic menace as lead villain General Zod. Watching all these people at work is a genuine joy.

Granted, the script — by Dark Knight veteran David S. Goyer (from a story co-plotted with the head honcho of this whole enterprise, Christopher Nolan) — doesn’t do any of them any favors dialogue-wise (apparently Kryptonians have evolved beyond good, old-fashioned conversation and speak entirely in grandiose pronouncements — but it’s not like the mere humans in this film are any less prone to dull, dry, wooden, faux-poetic waxings themselves), but the players by and large manage to rise above the material they’ve been handed.

I say “by and large” (and here comes that exception I talked about a moment ago) because, sadly, one has been dealt such a losing hand that I’m not sure what she could really have done about it — I’m speaking, of course, about Amy Adams’ Lois Lane. Goyer does some brave and interesting things in terms of shaking up the established Clark-Lois backstory ( let’s just say she won’t be sneaking glimpses of him at sly angles when his glasses are off to see how much he might or might not look like Superman), but the cold, emotionally distant nature of this particular big-budget beast means that the whole love story angle falls pretty flat. By the time Goyer, Nolan, and Snyder decide they want to play the Nietzchean uberman card for all it’s worth, the independent, confident journalist we meet at the outset is reduced to becoming more awestruck than she is lovestruck, and rather than being “Superman’s girlfriend” she comes off more as his disciple. Who just so happens to kiss him. I mentioned the abrupt tonal shift in the film at the outset of this review, and poor Lois definitely suffers the brunt of it.

The messianic poses Cavill is forced into during all the flight and battle sequences get pretty old pretty fast as well, it’s gotta be said, and with no real transition period in the way the story is structured between its “simple farm boy from Kansas” and its “demi-god here to save us all from the evil forces originating from his own homeworld” (that he inadvertently brought here himself, but hey, let’s not dwell on that) segments, well — let’s just say not much thought apparently went into how jarringly that would all play out. Hans Zimmer’s typically percussive, insistent musical score only augments the problem, and while there’s no way anybody was gonna have fans forgetting about John Williams, a “stripped-down,” “less over the top” orchestral accompaniment really doesn’t work when you’re trying to portray Superman as a fucking deity.

Superman purists, for their part, may also find themselves semi-outraged by more than the snakeskin-fetish-wear take on his costume. There’s no Jimmy Olsen here, no Lex Luthor (although the “Lexcorp” logo appears here and there on props throughout — as do the logos for Sears, 7-11, and an unending and highly annoying litany of corporate sponsors), and “Metropolis” is never mentioned by name even though the entire final act takes place there. So be ready for at least some “nerd-rage” on the internet. Still, if those were the only things that bugged me about Man Of Steel, I’d be feeling a little bit better about it as a whole right about now. Not that I’m all that pissed or disappointed —-just, well, kinda perplexed.

I can’t say that Man Of Steel isn’t a fun movie to watch, because it is — hell, it’s an absolute visual marvel, and if you want to shut your brain off and just be taken along for a wild adventure ride, you’re not gonna do much better this (or any other) summer Still —my mind kept drifting back to the famous first-encounter-between-Supes-and-Lois scene in Richard Donner’s Superman : The Movie (still the gold standard for all superhero flicks as far as I’m concerned) : when Lois asks him “who are you?,” and he replies, simply and with a smile, “a friend,” that told us all we needed to know right there. Sure, he was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but at the end of the day , Superman as envisioned by Richard Donner, Mario Puzo, and Christopher Reeve was one of us.

By contrast, Superman a la Snyder, Nolan, Goyer and Cavill is above us. He’s not here to help humanity, but to redeem it. He’s not our hero anymore, he’s our savior — whether we want one or not.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “After Earth”

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Given that the always-on-the-ball Lisa Marie Bowman already beat me to the punch with this one on these virtual “pages,” I won’t waste too much of your time, dear reader, on my post-mortem analysis of the decidedly dull, wannabe-mystical-and-“empowering” mess that is Will Smith’s latest vanity project, After Earth, and instead merely remark upon some — -well, remarkable facts.

The first being that precisely two scribes here at TTSL actually saw this thing, and my best guess is that we both saw it in empty theaters because, according to box office receipts from the past weekend, nobody else went. So Sony/Columbia owes us a debt of thanks. And maybe some free passes to some future release of theirs.

Secondly, I’d like to state for the record that this film actually isn’t the abysmal and abject failure so many have quickly taken to labeling it as being so much as it’s just thoroughly predictable and almost relentlessly dull. 1,000 years after the evacuation of the planet due to largely unspecified but apparently quite serious environmental devastation, emotionally distant military bad-ass-with-focus-group-tested -name Cypher Raige (Smith) and his son, Kitai (Smith’s kid Jaden) crash-land on the supposedly uninhabitable rock and must find a way to — yawn — survive while also learning to — yawn again — finally form the deep bonds of trust that all parents and their offspring are, y’know, supposed to have.

There’s a bog-standard “warrior monk” mentality that runs through this picture that confuses stoicism for honor and nonchalance for dignity, and while Smith seems to be ill at ease with the material, he’s really got no one to blame but himself given that the film’s plot was apparently hatched in his own mind and the whole thing’s a family affair, with the former “Fresh Prince” not only starring in it, supposedly having a hand in scripting it, and casting his son to appear alongside him, but with his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, grabbing a producer’s credit, as well. And while it might be tempting to lay a pretty fair share of the blame for this overwrought snoozer on M. Night Shyamalan’s doorstep, as well — especially given his thoroughly uninspiring track record over the past decade or so — the fact is that he’s pretty much acting as a director/co-writer-for-hire here, his fifteen minutes as Hollywood’s “next big thing” having apparently — finally! — run their course.

And weird as it sounds considering my disdain for pretty much anything he’s ever had his name attached to in the past, Shyamalan actually acquits himself reasonably well here. His direction doesn’t especially stand out in any respect, mind you, but you know what they say about how tough it is to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. All in all, I got the distinct impression that he was at least trying to inject some life into some pretty goddamn listless proceedings.

His efforts certainly aren’t enough, though. LMB’s right that the film’s environmental message feels both heavy-handed and tacked on — shit, at least Birdemic was so hilariously inept at doing more or less the same thing that you couldn’t help but love it —but its New Agey emotional subtext is even more clumsy and ham-handed than its ecological one, and to me that’s where the film’s most egregious sermonizing is to be found.

Parents should love their kids and be nice to them? Wow, ya don’t say.

Anyway, there’s probably not much point belaboring the obvious any further here — I’ve never been a big fan of piling on, and as I said, I don’t find this flick so much actively bad as it is just dull, preachy, and without purpose apart from demonstrating to the world what an awesome, caring, understanding bunch the Smith/Pinkett clan is (after all, they’d never treat their kids like this in real life, right?). So there ya go — and there it goes, since all indications are that After Earth will probably “enjoy” a well-deserved short-lived run on our nation’s movie screens before slowly dying on the home video and cable TV vine. Hang onto your cash and catch it on TNT or TBS some Saturday afternoon a year from now.

Before The New One Comes Out — “Before Sunset”

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

When I got back to the US after spending 18 or so months abroad in 2005, Before Sunset had already come and gone from theaters the previous year, and to be honest, my first reaction to it was to be a bit perplexed by the whole idea. “Never saw that one coming,” I thought to myself — but I knew I had to see it. Yeah, as I said last time, I couldn’t really picture any other ending for Jesse and Celine apart from one where they absolutely had to have met up again six months later and lived, as the saying goes, “happily ever after,” but here we were, nine years down the road, with the real (well, okay, not “real” — it is a movie, after all — but you know what I mean) story of what came next. Fortunately for me, my very good (to this day) friend with whom I had seen Before Sunrise had missed this one in the cinemas, as well, so just a few days after getting settled back into my house, with almost no furniture in place, and my TV and DVD player only having been hooked up a matter of hours earlier, we kicked back and did a little marathon viewing session of both films back-to-back.

The first thing I was taken aback by was how much of an emaciated meth-head Ethan Hawke looked like this time around, and Julie Delpy looked to be bordering on “unhealthy thin” status as well, but no matter — for the next hour-and-a-half or so we were back in their lives, and they were back in ours, and even if everything wasn’t gonna be perfect, it was all gonna be good enough.

Which isn’t too bad a summation of Before Sunset as a whole, with one added caveat — “good enough” can be pretty damn beautiful in its own way. Jesse’s an author know, touring Europe to promote his new book, an obviously-autobiographical account of two strangers who meet on a train, spend an evening in Vienna, and fall deeply, passionately, and completely in love. Then never meet again. Or maybe they do. The novel’s ending is deliberately ambiguous.

Sound familiar? Anyway, on the last night of his tour he happens to be giving a reading/signing in Paris, and Celine shows up. They have just enough time, it seems, to grab a cup of coffee before he’s on a plane back home, and the motif of “stolen time” that they should never have had in the first place that runs through the first film is definitely pressed even further this time around, as events unfold very nearly in real time and every minute our two long-separated lovers spend together is one that pushes the envelope of their “real lives” even further out of shape.

I have to be honest — on first viewing this ultra-compressed time frame gave things a very rushed feel that I wasn’t terribly “in to,” but I’ve subsequently grown to appreciate its utility as a story-telling device more and more. Jesse’s got a wife and son back home, but it’s a sham marriage where they’re both just going through the motions, while Celine, who now does some sort of unspecified work for an environmental organization, has a boyfriend who works as a photojournalist and is basically gone all the time. She couldn’t make it back to Vienna to meet him all those years ago because her grandmother had just died, while Jesse showed up and couldn’t find her, even going so far as to post missing persons flyers around town in hopes of tracking her down. And that “missed meeting” has informed and shaped the course of their lives every bit as much as the time they actually did meet.

Once again, Richard Linklater’s superbly subtle eye ensures than the camera is in exactly the right place for maximum dramatic impact with every shot, but giving the proceedings an even more naturalistic flow here is the fact that there’s no Linklater/Karen Krizan script to be read — rather Hawke and Delpy were allowed to “get in character” and create their own dialogue for these people they knew so well. It works like a charm, and the whole thing feels like nothing so much as an expertly-filmed conversation between two old lovers that unfolds as they hurriedly stroll through the streets of Paris. Every second counts. Every word counts. Ever movement and expression counts. Everything counts. Even if it’s delivered with the more practiced nonchalance that most of us acquire as settle into what life is rather than dream about what it could be.

With both characters now in the early 30s, those possibilities of which I speak have narrowed considerably compared to last time around, but I think that’s the whole unfolding theme of this entire series — learning to find a place for dreams, and for love, in a world that whittles away the chances at achieving both as the years go on. A search for beauty and truth and meaning by projecting our hopes and ideals into visions of a world that we wished existed inexorably giving way to a life where we can still, hopefully, search for — and maybe even find — beauty and truth and meaning in a world that already exists. It’s painfully obvious that both Jesse and Celine have never really “moved on” from their one magical night together, and that they’ve both dreamed of an existence where they were able to meet again ever since. Jesse’s stumbled into a responsible “family man” life simply because he saw it as all that was on offer anymore, and Celine’s carefully walled herself off from real emotional connection with others simply because it all hurts too much when they inevitably leave. Both are hopelessly infatuated with a memory, yet torn apart by it at the same time, and are now presented with a very rare opportunity in life — the chance to rekindle that memory, actively, in the present day, and maybe — just maybe — build on it. They both share the unbreakable bond of one moment in time that’s authored every moment since. And now, finally meeting again after all these years, wouldn’t ya know it — they’re in a hurry.

Imperfect circumstances for two people leading imperfect lives that have largely been a series of imperfect reactions to one perfect evening. Celine’s completely neurotic, Jesse’s completely resigned to his fate, and yet — the spark is still there. Their time together here is often painful, argumentative, and decidedly uncomfortable, but it all feels so almost unbearably authentic that you can’t help but become just as swept up in it as you were by that night in Vienna.

All of which leads to an ending you can’t help but love, despite the enormous complications you know it will present to both of these characters’ lives. Linklater is obviously trading in reversals with Before Sunset from the outset — showing us still-frame shots of where our couple will go at the beginning rather than showing us where they’ve been at the end, and swapping out talk of what they want their lives to be with a litany of regrets over what their lives have become, but whereas their first meeting was a luminous evening capped off with a separation, their second is a rocky, tenuous, long-delayed and frankly even a bit faded afterglow that Jesse purposely blows off his flight home to stay in. This is no longer an idealized memory, or a painful reminder of what might have been — this is here. This is now. This is real life with all its flaws and foibles and tragedies and responsibilities. And these two are in in together.

As with all things as we get older, moments of revelation and life-altering decisions become more subtle and unpronounced in their execution, but their impact is every bit as real. When Celine tells Jesse “you’re going to miss that flight,” and he replies “I know,” it’s not tinged with the momentous import of every new character revelation we enjoyed in their first outing, but it sure does resonate at least as much as any of them, if not moreso. These people are grown-ups now. Their actions matter. And our reactions to them are consequently more complex and nuanced. “Dude, you’re fucking your life up big-time here” is answered by “but you’ll be fucking it up even more if you leave.” I was, and still am, elated by his choice, despite its implications, and am eagerly awaiting the next chapter in this story with a burning interest I haven’t felt for any other film in years. Before Sunrise left me in love with an idealized vision; a dream. Before Sunset left me in love with the real world and all the possibilities that still exist within it.

Before The New One Comes Out — “Before Sunrise”

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Folks who only “know” me from my online and (occasional — in fact, too occasional for my tastes, but that’s another matter for another time) print writing are probably going to be surprised by what I’m about to admit : the summer movie I’m most looking forward to here in 2013 isn’t Man Of Steel or Star Trek Into Darkness or Iron Man 3 or The Lone Ranger or any of that. Nope, friends, the one I absolutely can’t wait for — hell, pathetic as it sounds, the one I feel, at this point, that I’m flat-out living for is Before Midnight, the third collaboration between Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke that marks their next — and hopefully not last — look into the lives of my personal favorite couple in cinematic history, Jesse and Celine.

How much do I love these flicks? So much that I’m setting myself an arbitrary 1,000-word limit on my reviews of the first two so that I literally have to force myself not to spend all night writing about them. Say what you will for the likes of Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, or Linklater’s own Slacker or Dazed And Confused, but for me the first two Before films are the celluloid touchstone for so-called “Generation X”-types like myself, and are probably, I would imagine, pretty damn engrossing for other audiences — both older and younger — as well.

Once you’ve seen the second, it’s fairly well impossible to look at the first through anything but the prism of what comes after, so pretending like I can take Before Sunrise on its own merits is an exercise in futility. Let’s not even go there, then. And let’s avoid the whole question of which is the “better” of the two, as well, since they’re inextricably linked and those of us who know ’em and love ’em wouldn’t have it any other way. Let’s just agree right here and know that we’re looking at them one at a time only because they came out one at a time, and let that be the end of it.

And while we’re at it, I might as well state for the record that I can’t look back at Before Sunrise without some kind of warm nostalgic glow that, I’m certain, warps my overall view of the film itself and colors everything about it with a far more rosy tint than it’s earned.

Or wait. Maybe it has earned it. In fact, maybe the reason 1995 stands out as a great fucking year in my life is precisely because that’s when this movie came out. It would make sense. It’s not like there are a tremendous number of overly specific memories that flood my mind when you say “1995.” I was living in an apartment I shared with a buddy of mine since high school, I worked a couple of dead-end gigs, I had a girlfriend that I had a semi-rocky but mostly just dull and listless relationship with — the usual stuff. But I did party a lot and have a ton of fun and found myself tenuously taking the first steps into what would eventually become — yawn! — “responsible adulthood” along with a good group of friends who were going through the same shit at the same time, some of whom I’m fortunate enough to still be “tight” with to this day.

Damn, we could talk about anything. And one thing we talked a lot about was Before Sunrise. How Ethan Hawke was so much more human than he’d seemed in anything else. How Julie Delpy was just fucking luminous in every frame. How the dialogue was so real and immediate and free-form and authentic.

Truth? I think these were people we wanted to be having a night we all wanted to have. Most of us probably didn’t catch the numerous Ulysses references dropped as Jesse and Celine made their way through the streets of Vienna, most of us didn’t know enough about film yet to really appreciate the spot-on choices Linklater made with his camera at every turn, and most of us couldn’t yet directly relate to the intense and abiding love these two developed over the course of one (goddamnit, I’ll say it) magical evening — we just knew this was what we wanted life, and love, to be like.

And I think we all still do. We’ve probably all been lucky enough to feel that same sense of unfolding wonderment at the discovery of another person in our lives — I know I have and I was smart enough to marry the girl — but it didn’t happen in Vienna, on a compressed time frame, and we were all probably a lot more clumsy about it. So hey — here’s to movie magic.

It’s kinda hard to believe that just a couple years prior to this, Hawke was starring in a flick called Reality Bites, because Before Sunrise is, at the end of the day, a story about how reality doesn’t “bite” at all, but about how amazing, wonderful, and almost unbearably perfect life can be, even if it’s only for all-too-brief moments here and there. Linklater and co-writer Kim Krizan delivered a crackerjack script, to be sure, but the best and most important line they gave us — even if it’s a cliche — is when Delpy’s Celine informs us of her belief that “if there’s a God, it’s not in you, or me, but right here — in the space between us,” because for all it’s amazing dialogue, naturalist acting, and pitch-perfect characterization, it’s in observing that space between our two young lovers that the real enchantment in this work lies.

When the two finally part company at the end, it really does rip your heart out — especially knowing what’s in store for them nine years down the road — but I have to admit, before I ever even heard that the first sequel was in the offing, my reaction to the way this one wrapped up was always the same — “Jesse, you schmuck, don’t get on that train, drop everything and tell this girl you want to love her for the rest of your life starting right now and let the chips fall where they may!” I spent the following years imagining that they must have met again in Vienna six months down the road precisely as they’d planned because, frankly, I just couldn’t bear to picture any other possible outcome — if any couple ever deserved to live “happily ever after,” it was this one.

Nearly 20 years (!) and God-knows-how-many viewings later, I still believe that. Even before knowing what happened next (but not yet knowing what happens after that one — folks in New York, LA, and Austin who have already gotten to see Before Midnight, know that I am well and truly envious) this simple, uncomplicated story, where nothing happens but everything happens — a story laced with a kind of, for lack of a better term, “active nostalgia,” that takes you right back to where you were in life when you first saw it but reveals new things each time that can only come from being certainly older and hopefully wiser — was enough to make me fall in love with love in a richer and more rewarding way than I had ever considered previously and to want the spontaneous joy of getting to know another person and what makes them tick that these two shared to never, ever, in a million billion years, end. Not for them, not for me, not for any of us.

Now I’m getting sappy. Or maybe I started out sappy right from the get-go here and have gotten progressively worse about it to the point where I just can’t ignore it any more. And that 1,000 word limit? Guess I fucked that up. But ya know, I don’t care — I’m just happy right now. Happy to live in a world where stories like this are even possible. Happy to have a front-row seat to perhaps the greatest intermittent two-person character drama anybody’s ever come up with. And happy to share my thoughts on a movie that’s meant so much to me with you good people reading this. If you ain’t got a love like this, friends, I wish you nothing but the very best in finding it. And if you’ve got it, never take it for granted and never let it go. This. Is. What. Life’s. All. About.

Grindhouse Classics : “Pick-Up”

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

One word that doesn’t usually (if ever) come to mind when you’re talking about the drive-in fare churned out by Crown International Pictures in the 1970s is weird.

Yeah, okay, fair enough — I suppose just about any CIP flick looks a little bit “weird” to a contemporary audience, given that they’re all very much products of their time, but honestly, pretty much everything released under their banner boils down, story-wise, to a simple morality play with a generous helping of sex (always) and violence (sometimes) thrown in — and more often than not, as with most exploitation fare, the most common themes in the Crown back catalog are “don’t set your sights above your station in life” and “don’t talk to strangers.”

At first glance, 1975’s Pick-Up, directed (and produced, and shot, and edited) by Bernard Hirschenson, would appear to fit comfortably into the “don;t talk to strangers” category, since it’s the story of two footloose-and-fancy-free hippie chicks named Carol (Jill Senter) and Maureen (Gini Eastwood — no relation, at least that I know of, to you-know-who), who hitch a ride across Florida with a far-out guy named Chuck (Alan Long) who is, like them, at loose ends and just “taking in what the world has to offer, one day at a time, man” in his fuck-pad RV.

Come on — he’s gotta be trouble, right? I mean, he’s an Aries, and according to the supposedly-metaphysically-tuned-in Maureen, Aries guys are bad news these days because of some state of flux going on in the universe or something. Still, the girls hop in for a ride anyway —

Trouble eventually does come their way, but Chuck isn’t the cause. After a deluge, the RV gets stuck in the Everglades mud, and that’s when things, as I promised at the outset, get weird. Chuck and Carol get busy screwing their brains out, but Maureen in between reading star charts and tarot cards and having waking (and sleeping) visions of her childhood, is visited by Pythia, a priestess of Apollo, who gives her a sacred dagger for some reason or other. And if you think that sounds strange, wait until the slimy politician and latex-faced clown show up.

Okay, yeah, none of this makes a tremendous amount of narrative sense — or even common sense — but it sure is interesting. It turns out that Maureen was molested by a priest as a child (guess they were into girls in the ’70s) and this is at the root of her psychological disturbances, which culminate in quite possibly the most bizarre scene (of many contenders) in the film, where she and Chuck finally “make it” on a stone altar with the clown, the politician, and the priestess watching on. And all this right after Chuck kills a wild boar (be warned, this film does feature genuine animal slaughter, although hardly of Cannibal Holocaust proportions) What does it all mean? Who knows. And honestly, who really cares? Pick-Up was clearly made with the stoner crowd in mind and, frankly, was probably made by members of the stoner crowd, as well. It’s all good, man. Just go with the flow.

There are some notable things to point out in relation to this film while we have a moment — the Florida Everglades locations are authentic, and were probably an absolute bitch to film in (good thing everybody was probably high), and both Senter and Eastwood are not only reasonably talented actresses, but absolutely gorgeous, as well — yet neight ever made another film. Go figure.

Like most of the Crown stuff we’ve covered both here and at my “main” site — http://trashfilmguru.wordpress.com , for those of you who don’t know — Pick-Up is available on Mill Creek’s 12-disc, 32-movie “Drive-In Cult Classics” DVD boxed set collection. There are no extras, but the remastered widescreen transfer looks surprisingly crisp and clean and the mono sound is, at the very least, perfectly adequate. This may not be the best film in the collection by any stretch, nor is it the most fun, but it’s definitely one of the most interesting, and it’s well worth the 80 minutes of your life it takes to watch it.

Enough With The “Bates Motel” Stuff Around Here, How About Some “Mayhem Motel” ?

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Don’t get me wrong, folks — by and large I kinda like Bates Motel, and I certainly enjoy reading Lisa Marie’s write-ups on each episode here on TSSL, but let’s not kid ourselves —- that show is a soap opera less- than- cleverly-concealed beneath some standard horror genre trappings. You can, of course, say the same for The Walking Dead, another show which I also dig for the most part, but it’s high time we stopped pretending either of these were anything but — well, crap. Enjoyable crap, sure, but crap nonetheless. And I’m certainly not above enjoyin’ me some crap.

Writer/director Karl Kempter’s 2001 shot-on-video offering Mayhem Motel, for instance. This is most definitely crap — hell, it’s even weird crap, disgusting crap, nauseating crap (less than five minutes into the proceedings a character billed in the credits as “Pukey” throws up in a bathtub — for real — and then proceeds to sit down in his own regurgitated mess), but then, it never pretends to be anything else. There are no affectations here toward “quality character drama,” Kempter isn’t fooling himself that his film has anything “important” to say, and in fact there’s no real story here to speak of at all, just a series of vignettes centered around a bunch of degenerate fuckwads and various other products of the gene pool’s decidedly shallow end who all happen to be staying (perhaps at the same time, perhaps not — it’s never made clear and frankly doesn’t matter anyway) at the same fleabag motel.

I don’t know about you, but I find that refreshing lack of anything even remotely approaching an agenda to be a strangely noble thing.

It also means that Mayhem Motel is both a difficult movie to explain, and an easy one to review — plot recaps are completely unnecessary since there literally is no plot, but at the same time simply saying “you’ve really just gotta see it and decided for yourself” sounds like something of a cop-out, even though — well, you really do just gotta see it and decide for yourself. There’s definitely not much of anything resembling a “point” to be taken away from this at-times-self-consciously-weird-for-its-own-sake string of mish-mashed, completely unrelated events — apart from maybe some vague overall suggestion that sex with strangers can get ya killed — and most (okay, all) of the scenes seem more designed to provoke some sort of visceral reaction (even if it’s only “okay, what exactly was that all about?”) from the audience rather than actually involving you in them, but what the hell — it certainly makes for a one-of-a-kind 70-minute viewing experience.

What I can’t say with any certainty, however, is whether or not it’s actually a good one — that’s up to you. The movie’s a mass of contradictions — I mentioned that’s it’s both unpretentious and self-consciously-weird-for-its-own-sake, and trust me, both are true — but the acting (roughly half the parts are played by a guy named Matthew Biancaniello, the other almost-half by a woman named Sara Berkowitz) is of a generally high standard for this type of production (i.e. one shot for a reported $22,000), the lighting is uniformly interesting (if not uniformly effective), and in between the midget, the floating plastic Easter eggs, the guy with a tracheotomy, and the blow-up rubber fuck doll, Kempter really does succeed in creating both a sleazy and genuinely otherworldly atmosphere here. And besides, we ll know that most people will do just about anything for money, but seeing what they’re willing to do for no money is so much more interesting.

So yeah — it’s fair to say that Mayhem Motel does what it sets out to do, I just can’t say whether or not what it sets out to do is really worth doing. That’s a purely subjective call, and while I enjoyed it for what it was, I can certainly see why some folks might turn this off a few minutes after the opening credits. I’m not prepared to say this is one of those things you’re either gonna absolutely love or absolutely hate — like, say, White Castle hamburgers — since I don’t see it as being able to elicit strong reactions along either of the emotional poles like that, but you’re either gonna find it interesting or completely pointless.

Or, perhaps, both interesting and completely pointless.

Mayhem Motel is available on DVD either as a stand-alone release from Brain Damage films (I can’t speak to its technical specs or any extras on that version as I haven’t seen it), or as part of the “Decrepit Crypt Of Nightmares” 50-film, 12-disc box set from Pendulum Pictures, the Mill Creek sub-label that specializes in zero-budget indie and homemade horror. That’s how I caught it and it’s presented full-frame with fairly lousy stereo sound (something of a surprise since Kempter apparently makes his living as a sound mixing guy on various other projects) and no special features or other frills of any sort. Considering the whole package retails for no more than twenty bucks, whaddaya want, anyway? I’d say give it a go if you’re feeling adventurous — beyond that, you’re on your own.

Everyone Else Is Talking About The “Evil Dead” Remake, So I Guess I Will, Too

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat — first-time director Fede Alvarez’s new remake/”reimagining” of Sam Raimi’s 1981 classic The Evil Dead (this time going out minus the article at the beginning of the title, so it’s just Evil Dead, thank you very much) is not, as its ad poster claims, “the most terrifying film you will ever experience.” That’s actually a gutsier tag line than it sounds on first reading, since it’s essentially promising that not only is this flick scarier than anything you’ve already seen, it’s scarier than anything else you’re ever going to see for the rest of your life. It can’t live up to that, period — and truth be told, it’s not even very scary at all.

Which isn’t to say that it’s bad or anything. In many key respects — eschewing CGI for “real” special effects, not even trying to cast somebody new in the role of Ash since absolutely anyone would suffer in comparison to Bruce Campbell (who, along with Raimi, is on board as at least an air-quote producer on this one) — Alvarez and his cohorts (including, it pains me to say, co-screenwriter Diablo Cody, who I was fairly certain was going to fuck things up here in some way, shape, or form but, pleasingly, doesn’t) get a lot of what they’re trying to do here right. The film is gory beyond belief, moves at nearly the same breakneck pace as its ’81 template, there’s a sublimely wrong tree-rape (yes, you read that correctly) scene, the script provides a believably updated reason for why our five protagonists are getting together in a remote cabin in the woods — that looks very much like the original, might I add — in the first place ( I won’t spell it out too specifically but it gives new meaning to the old “withdrawal’s a bitch” cliche), and the performances are, on the whole, fairly solid.

They’ve also wisely chosen not to mess with the whole “haunted book inked in human blood and bound in human skin that releases untold evil onto the world” premise, so points all around for not only not messing with what worked in the original, but also for not trying to catch lightning in a bottle twice by hewing too closely to it. Alvarez seems to have gone into this one knowing what he should and shouldn’t play around with, and that puts him a step ahead of your average horror remake director.

Here’s the rub, though — whenever you’re trying to update the look and feel of a $375,000 production on a budget of $14 million, something’s bound to get lost in translation, and no matter how hard it tries, Evil Dead circa 2013 just can’t capture the grittiness, the grime, the immediacy and, dare I say it, the heart of its progenitor. Alvarez is definitely going for an old-school approach here, and I commend him for that, but it’s still (and obviously) not old-school in actuality. Once you poke beneath the paper-thin surface, it becomes fairly obvious that any successes the new film has are more or less of the cosmetic and superficial variety. It looks good, sure — but it still feels kinda wrong, even though it’s doing its level best to cover that up by, again to its credit, not giving you too much time to think.

I mentioned before that I by and large liked the cast — Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore and, especially, Jane Levy as our doomed (or is she?) central “heroine,” Mia — all do a nice job. But none of them especially stand out, either, which isn’t too bad a mini-metaphor for the movie itself as a whole — it’s thoroughly competent in terms of its execution, but there’s not much extra “spark” to the proceedings. Alvarez seems to understand the essential ingredients for making a solid, respectful, won’t-piss-you-off updating of a classic, but he’s got some way to go before he can create a genuine classic from whole cloth himself.

In some respects, there’s really not a whole lot he can do about that — The Evil Dead was shot in a remote Tennessee cabin while Evil Dead constructed its own location in New Zealand that set out to ape the look and feel of middle-of-nowhere USA as best it can — but that’s just endemic of the greater problem at work here, namely that this is a story that just plain not only doesn’t need a so-called “upgrade,” but literally can’t survive one with its celluloid soul intact. I give Alvarez all the kudos in the world for trying, and for at least understanding the surface elements of what made the original the undeniable classic that it’s rightly hailed as, but so much of what made Raimi’s flick the singular triumph that it was can never be duplicated. Hence, I guess, why I just referred to it as a “singular” work. In short, while we’re still talking about the first one some 32 years after its release, I’ll be damn surprised if people are talking about this remake very much even a year from now.

Still — they did what they could here, I suppose. I had an exchange with a couple of friends on facebook earlier today about the endless stream of remakes in general that we’re forced to navigate, and it made me realize that at some unspecified, silently-arrived-at point, I went from going into these things thinking “I hope they get it right this time” to “dear God I hope they don’t fuck this one up.” It’s a subtle shift, sure, but it certainly speaks volumes about the general performance of the studios’ big-budget-remake machine. I’m pleased to say that Alvarez et. al. don’t fuck this one up (and whatever you do, hang around until the credits are over — you’re guaranteed to leave with a smile on your face even if you don’t actually like the film at all), but it is what it is. The Evil Dead 1981 was a product of blood, sweat, tears, determination, and — weird as it may sound — love, put together by folks who didn’t always know what they were doing but were always giving it more than their best effort. Evil Dead 2013 is, for all its attempts to duplicate the trappings of its predecessor, a professionally-executed Hollywood production. You tell me which is gonna be better.

Hell — tell me which has to be.