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Lisa Reviews A Palme d’Or Winner: The Son’s Room (dir by Nanni Moretti)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the 2021 Cannes Film Festival underway in France, I thought this would be a good opportunity to spend the next few days looking at some of the films that have won the Palme d’Or in the past.  As of this writing, 100 films have won either the Palme d’Or or an earlier version of the award like the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.  Some of those films — like Parasite, The Tree of Life, The Piano, Pulp Fiction — went on to American box office success and Oscar renown.  Others, like 2001’s The Son’s Room, may have been snubbed by the Oscars but they went on to great success in their home country.  The Son’s Room, for instance, won Italy’s David Di Donatello award for the best film of 2001.

The Son’s Room is a film about a family trying to deal with an unimaginable tragedy.  Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice) is the 17 year-old son of therapist Giovanni (Nanni Moretti, who also directed) and Paola (Laura Morante).  Andrea, it is quickly  established, is an almost ideal teenager.  He doesn’t resent his parents.  He doesn’t get into any sort of major trouble, beyond stealing a valuable fossil as a part of a prank that goes wrong.  His parents know that he occasionally gets high but they also understand that it’s no big deal.  It’s just a part of being a teenager.

One day, when Giovanni and Andrea have made plans to go jogging, Giovanni gets a call from a patient who has received some troubling news and who needs to see him immediately.  Giovanni has to cancel their plans.  Andrea instead goes diving with a friend and, in a freak accident, drowns.  Giovanni, Paola, and and their daughter Irene (Jasmine Trinca) are left to mourn and to try to find some sort of meaning in Andrea’s death.

The Son’s Room is hardly the first film to be made about the untimely death of a family member.  In 1980, Ordinary People won the Oscar for Best Picture for telling a story about a similarly upper class family trying to come to emotional teams with the loss of a brother and a son.  What sets The Son’s Room apart from Ordinary People and other similar films is what doesn’t happen.  As opposed to what happens in so many other films about families dealing with loss, the death of Andrea does not reveal that his family was secretly dysfunctional.  His family doesn’t discover that Andrea was deeply depressed or that his death wasn’t a random accident.  Instead, the point of the film is that, even though the family was strong and even though Andrea was happy and had everything to look forward to it, he still died because sometimes, happy people die in freak accidents.  It’s not just dysfunctional families that suffer.  Even  a strong family struggles to deal with grief.

The film follows the family through the stages of grief.  At first, the family members fixate on imagining what life would be like if Andrea hadn’t gone swimming that day.  They resent Giovanni’s patient, even though the patient couldn’t have known what was going to happen.  They try to find someone to blame for Andrea drowning, just to discover that everyone did everything that they were supposed to do.  Andrea’s death was random, as death so often is.  Then, they’re contacted by a casual acquaintance of Giovanni, a girl named Arianna (Sofia Vigilar) and they’re finally given a chance to find some sort of meaning in what happened.

The Son’s Room is a deeply affecting movie, one that works because it largely eschews the type of melodrama that we’ve come to expect from films like this.  The film’s refusal to idealize, blame, or demonize any of its characters makes it a film to which anyone can relate.  It’s an honest look at grief but it’s also a film that earns the right to suggest that there’s no need to feel guilty about eventually moving on from sadness.  It’s a film that acknowledges that life can be random and scary but it can be pretty wonderful as well.

It’s an effective film, one that was reportedly a popular winner at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where its competition included Shrek, The Man Who Wasn’t There, The Piano Teacher, and Mulholland Drive.  (Fear not, Mulholland Drive still won the directing award for David Lynch.)  20 years after it was initially released, The Son’s Room holds up well as a look at both grief and the love of a strong family.

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Lisa Reviews a Palme d’Or Winner: Scarecrow (dir by Jerry Schatzberg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the 2021 Cannes Film Festival underway in France, I thought this would be a good opportunity to spend the next few days looking at some of the films that have won the Palme d’Or in the past.  As of this writing, 100 films have won either the Palme d’Or or an earlier version of the award like the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.  Some of those films — like Parasite, The Tree of Life, The Piano, Pulp Fiction — went on to huge box office success and Oscar renown.  Others, like 1973’s Scarecrow, did not.

Scarecrow is an example of a type of film that was very popular in the 70s.  It’s a road film, one in which two or more people take a journey across the country and discover something about themselves and, depending upon how ambitious the film was, perhaps something about America as well.  Scarecrow centers on two drifters, who just happen to meet on a dusty road while they’re trying to hitch a ride.  Max (Gene Hackman, fresh off of winning an Oscar for The French Connection) is an ex-convict with a bad temper and a huge chip on his shoulder.  Lion (a young Al Pacino, fresh off of The Godfather) is an ex-sailor who views the world with optimism and who appears to be sweet-natured but simple-minded.  To be honest, it’s a little bit hard to believe that the perpetually resentful Max and the always hopeful Lion would ever become friends but they do.  They travel around the country, talking about their dreams of opening a car wash together.  They meet up with ex-girlfriends and ex-wives.  Eventually, they even end up in a prison farm together, where Lion, temporarily estranged from Max, is taken advantage of by a sadistic prisoner named Riley (Richard Lynch).

Scarecrow is an episodic film, one that moves at its own deliberate pace.  (If that sounds like a polite way of saying that the film is slow-moving …. well, it is.)  Director Jerry Schatzberg was a photographer-turned-director and, as a result, there’s several striking shots of Max and Lion standing against the countryside, waiting for someone to pick them up and give them a ride.  Whenever Max and Lion end up in a bar, the scene is always lit perfectly.  At the same time, Schatzberg also attempts to give the film a spontaneous, naturalistic feel by letting scenes run longer than one would normally expect.  There’s several scenes of Hackman and Pacino just talking while walking down a country road or a city street.  On the one hand, you have to appreciate Schatzberg’s attempt to convince us that Max and Lion are just two guys with big dreams, as opposed to two Oscar-nominated actors pretending to be societal drop-outs.  On the other hand, Schatzberg’s approach also leads to an interminably long scene of Gene Hackman eating a piece of chicken and if you think that Gene Hackman was the type of actor who wasn’t going to act the Hell out of gnawing on and gesturing with a chicken bone, you obviously haven’t seen many Gene Hackman films.

The main appeal of the film, for most people, will probably be to see Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, two of the top actors of the 70s, acting opposite of each other.  Reportedly, both Hackman and Pacino went full method for the film and spent their prep time on the streets of San Francisco, begging for spare change.  The end result is a mixed bag.  There are a few scenes — like when they first meet or when they’re in prison — in which Hackman and Pacino are believable in their roles and you buy them as two lost souls who were lucky enough to find each other.  There are other scenes where they both seem to be competing to see who can chew up the most scenery.   Sometimes, Pacino and Hackman are compelling acting opposite each other.  Other times, it feels like we’re just watching an Actors’ Studio improv class that someone happened to film.  Too often, Hackman and Pacino seem to be so occupied with showing off their technique that the film’s reality seems to get lost under all of the method showiness.  In the end, neither one of the film’s stars makes as much of an impression as Richard Lynch, who is genuinely frightening in his small but key role.

Scarecrow is an uneven film, one that is occasionally effective but also a bit too studied for its own good.  It wears it influences — Of Mice and Men, Midnight Cowboy, Five Easy Pieces — on its sleeve but it also fails to exceed or match any of those previous works.  That said, the film does have its fans.  (Schatzberg has been working on a sequel for a while.)  Certainly, the 1973 Cannes Jury (headed by none other than Ingrid Bergman) liked it enough to give it the Palme.

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Film Review: The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (dir by Michael Chaves)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The year is 1981 and Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, of course!) have just screwed up another exorcism.  Only Ed hears as Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor) begs the demon that has possessed 8 year-old David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard) to enter him instead.  Unfortunately, Ed also has a heart attack and passes out before he can tell Lorraine what has happened.

The next month, a hollow-eyed Arne is walking down a road.  He’s just murdered his sleazy landlord, stabbing the man 22 times.  It seems like an open-and-shut case, except for the fact that Arne claims that he was possessed by a demon and that it was the demon who actually committed the crime.  At first Arne’s lawyer is planning to go for an insanity plea but then Ed and Lorraine invite her to come have dinner with them and to see their favorite doll, Annabelle.  The film immediately cuts to Arne’s visibly shaken lawyer announcing to the court that her client pleads “not guilty by reason of demonic possession.”

It’s a funny scene and I was a little bit surprised to see it because, in the past, The Conjuring films have always been distinguished by how seriously they took themselves.  The first two films both unfolded in atmospheres of growing dread, following families that not only had to deal with societal evolution but also with angry spirits.  The first two Conjuring films worked not only as horror films but also as period pieces, as stories about changing times.  Though Ed and Lorraine were always the main investigators, the first two films devoted as much time to exploring the dynamics of the haunted families as it did to portraying the Warrens.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (or, as we’ll call it in the interest of space, The Conjuring 3) takes a different approach, which I imagine has much to do with Michael Chaves directing the film instead of James Wan.  This time, Arne and the possessed family all remain ciphers.  We never learn much about who they are or who they were before they met the Warrens.  We don’t know what Arne was like before he became possessed and, as such, it’s hard to get emotionally invested in him once he does end up with a demon inside of him. 

Instead, the film emphasizes Ed and Lorraine Warren and their work to uncover the occultist who was behind the original possession.  Ed worries about Lorraine as she has psychic visions and wanders around yet another dirty basement.  Lorraine worries that Ed is going to give himself another heart attack as he hobbles through the woods in search of an evil spirit.  Lorraine proves her powers to a skeptical detective.  Ed complains that he doesn’t want people treating his wife’s abilities like a carnival sideshow but he still allows himself a slight smile when she selects the correct murder weapon.  Of course, at one point, Suspicious Minds is heard on the radio and we briefly flashback to Patrick Wilson singing the song in The Conjuring 2.  Once again, the film argues that Ed and Lorraine’s romance, their endless love, makes them uniquely capable of battling the Devil.

The film has its moments, largely because Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are adorable as Ed and Lorraine.  At the same time, though, there’s a definite “greatest hits” feel to the third Conjuring film.  There’s little about the film that feels truly spontaneous or surprising and most of the scenes feel like reworkings of scenes that worked in the previous two films.  As good as Farmiga and Wilson are in their roles (and as much as I appreciate the idea of a Catholic super hero film franchise), Ed and Lorraine work best when they’re relating to and helping other characters.  The Conjuring 3 often solely focuses on them and the end result often feels more like an Insidious sequel than a Conjuring film.

The Conjuring 3 is enjoyable enough.  It gets the job done, while never reaching the emotional heights of the first two films.  It has enough jump scares to be a fun movie to watch on a rainy night but it’s not one that really sticks in your mind after it ends.

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The TSL’s Grindhouse: Omega Doom (dir by Albert Pyun)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Omega Doom!  What’s all that about?

Seriously, don’t ask me.  I just watched this Albert Pyun-directed, 1996 sci-fi epic and I’m stil a bit confused as to what exactly was actually going on in the movie.  This is a movie that opens with a totally blank screen and then, eventually, two red suns appear in the sky.  The film takes place in the future, at a time when humans have nearly wiped themselves out of existence through their endless wars and the planet is now controlled by robots and cyborgs.  Omega Doom (Rutger Hauer) was a cyborg programmed to kill humans until he got shot in the head.  Apparently, taking a bullet to his cranium changed Omega’s programming and now….

Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?  It’s kind of hard to say what exactly it is that Omega does now.  We do know that he spends a lot of time walking around because there’s a lot of scenes of him doing just that.  Eventually, he stumbles upon the ruins of a town that is now controlled by two warring bands of robots.  Before you can say Yojimbo or even A Fistful of Dollars, Omega is playing both sides against each other and …. well, I don’t know what the preferred outcome here is.  What is Omega Doom’s motivation?  He’s not making any money out of it because robots don’t need money and it’s not like there’s anything left to buy.  And he doesn’t seem to be interested in ruling the town himself because it’s kind of a dead end of a town.  I mean, there’s dead bodies and robotic parts all over the place.  It’s suggested that he might be looking for a secret stash of weapons that can be used to either kill or protect the remaining humans but, at the same time, we don’t ever really see any remaining humans and there’s no reason why Omega would care enough about them to get caught up in a war between robots on their behalf.

So, don’t ask me what’s going on.  I guess it really doesn’t matter because it’s not like you watch a film like this for the plot.  You watch it for the action!  Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot of action to be found.  There’s a lot of scenes of robots talking about various exciting things that they could, in theory, be doing but no one ever seems to actually get around to doing any of that stuff.  Instead, all of the robots stay in their separate sections of the town and wait for everyone else to make the first movie.  Eventually, Omega makes a few moves but, even then, they’re not particularly exiting moves.  Omega carries a gigantic sword on his back and how I anticipated seeing what he was going to finally do with that sword.  Well, it turns out that Omega didn’t do very much with it at all.

Actually, the main reason you’re going to want to watch Omega Doom is because Rutger Hauer plays the title role and Hauer was always cool, even when he was appearing in a less than memorable film.  In Omega Doom, Hauer does a passable Clint Eastwood impersonation, delivering his lines with just the right amount of weary condescension.  Though you’re never quite sure why Omega is doing anything, Rutger Hauer is always watchable.

And, to be honest, I actually didn’t dislike Omega Doom as much as it may sound like I did.  It’s a slow movie and not much happens but, at the same time, I did like the look of the bombed-out city and, though the dialogue was largely forgettable, there was still the occasional line that suggested that Omega Doom had existential ambition, albeit unrealized ones.  “God took a vacation,” Omega says at one point and, for a split second, you get a hint of what Omega Doom could have been if it had a bigger budget and a better script.  It’s a film that had potential and it’s somewhat fascinating to consider how little of that potential was realized.

Of course, in the end, it all comes down to this: How can you possibly resist Rutger Hauer as a cyborg?

The Trailer For Clifford The Big Red Dog Features A Really Big Red Dog

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Damn, that’s a big dog.

The movie looks like it might be cute for kids but I have to admit that I’ve never really been a dog person. In fact, I’m pretty much scared to death of dogs. I always have been. When I was like ten, I nearly got over my fear because my family went to the lake for the weekend and there was a dog there that was really friendly. But then, he took a nap and when he woke up, he looked at me and started to growl and my mom told me to hide behind the car while she shooed him away. Of course, as soon as I got behind the car, the dog lunged for me and I ran all the way down to the lake, with him barking after me. Later, his owners explained that he was a nice dog but that he could be unpredictable, especially when waking up. They didn’t really seem to be that concerned about the fact that I had been traumatized as a result of what had happened. That incident pretty much ended whatever chance there was of me ever becoming a dog person. That said, I’d probably like Clifford, just because he’s red.

According to my New York friends, the only thing more unrealistic than the big dog is the big Manhattan apartment.

Clifford The Big Red Dog will be charging into theaters on September 17th.

The Blind Murderer Is Now A Hero In The Trailer For Don’t Breathe 2!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

To be honest, I’m probably being a bit too glib when I say that the fearsome blind kidnapper and murderer at the center of the original Don’t Breathe is now a hero. Though it appears that he’s now the hero based on what we see in the trailer for Don’t Breathe 2, it could just be a case where he’s a bad guy battling other bad guys.

At least, I hope that’s the case because, seriously, we all remember the turkey baster!

I really liked the first Don’t Breathe. I have to admit that I was kind of hoping that it would be one of those great thrillers that would never get a sequel because the first one pretty much worked because Stephen Lang’s character was a unique and unexpected villain. My feeling was that subsequent appearances by the character would only serve to make him less menacing. Though it looks like the film’s well-produced and Stephen Lang kicks all sorts of ass, the trailer for Don’t Breathe 2 still feels more like a sequel to Gran Torino than a sequel to the original Don’t Breathe. Let’s hope I’m wrong on that!

Don’t Breathe 2 will be released on August 13th, at which point we’ll see what’s going on.

Kate Beckinsale Comes Alive In The Trailer For Jolt!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This trailer gives off a definitely Lucy vibe, which I know that some people will be happy about. Myself, I kind of viewed Lucy as being a missed opportunity that wasted one of the most iconic actresses of our age. Hopefully, Jolt will handle things a bit more successfully! If it doesn’t, I might just have to give up on action-packed sci-fi films that take place in all-white rooms.

Kate Beckinsale plays Lindy, who apparently can do all the thing that Kate Beckinsale did the Underworld films, except this time she’s fueled by a little spark as opposed to being a Death Dealer or whatever is was that was going on in Underworld. (Seriously, I’ve seen all of the Underworld films and I still couldn’t tell you what was going on in most of them.) As I’ve said in the past, I’m a huge Kate Beckinsale fan. I loved her as Selene and I will watch any movie that features her beating people up and using electrodes to torture the bad guys …. well, actually, I’m not a huge fan of torture. I’m definitely not a big fan of listening to people shriek in pain and beg for their lives. That’s just not for me. So, I’ll probably go get a Coke during those scenes. You know how that goes.

Anyway, Jolt will be released on Prime on July 23rd so we don’t have that long of a wait. Woo hoo!

Everyone’s Changing In The Trailer for Hotel Transylvania 4!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have to admit that my initial reaction to the trailer for Hotel Transylvania 4 was to say, “They’ve done four of these!?”

And it’s true. For an animated franchise that has never exactly been a critical favorite and which isn’t backed by PIXAR, there’s been quite a installments in the Hotel Transylvania saga. Regardless of what the critics may think, the films do well enough at the box office. I’d be lying I said I could remember much about the previous few installments but I do recall that they were cute if not particularly ground-breaking.

The fourth film explores what happens when all the monsters get transformed into human beings. It’s a good look for Frankenstein but less so for Dracula. Adam Sandler, who voiced Dracula in the previous three films, does not return in this installment and he has been replaced by YouTuber Brian Hull. As well, Kevin James will not be returning as Frankenstein and has been replaced by Brad Abrell. Selana Gomez, however, does return to voice Mavis and the great Steve Buscemi will be back as Wayne the Werewolf.

Hotel Transylvania 4 will be replaced on October 1st.

John David Washington Is On The Run In The Trailer for Beckett!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I first heard that there was a film called Beckett due to be released in August, I assumed that it was a biopic of Samuel Beckett. I’m sure that you did as well. I was definitely looking forward to seeing how much time the film would devote to the writing and original production of Waiting for Godot.

Well, it appears that I’m going to have to wait a while for that film because this Beckett is actually an action thriller, starring John David Washington as an American tourist in Greece whose girlfriend (Alicia Vikander) goes missing after a devastating car accident. The trailer is smart enough not to reveal too much of the story, beyond the fact that Washington is going to spend a lot of the film running and being shot at. It also appears that there might be a bit of a political subtext to this film. Myself, I’m just hoping that this film will be a better showcase for Washington’s talents than Malcolm & Marie.

The trailer makes sure to point out that Beckett was produced by Luca Guadagnino. I still haven’t forgiven Guadagino for remaking Suspiria but I’m sure that his involvement will be a selling point for some people. That said, Guadagino did not direct the film, which should be evident by the fact that Alicia Vikander plays the missing girlfriend and not Dakota Johnson. Instead, this film was directed by Guadagino’s former partner, Ferdinando Cito Filomarino. Cito Filomarino also did second unit work on the Suspiria “remake” so …. well, I will try not to hold it against him. I just hope Beckett’s good!

We’ll find out on August 13th!