David Fincher’s rehash of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo isn’t the only “feel bad movie of the holidays.” There’s also Young Adult, a rather dark comedy that reunites the director and screenwriter behind Juno, Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody.
Young Adult is the story of Mavis (played winningly by Charlize Theron), a former high school mean girl who has grown up to be a lonely, alcoholic ghost writer of young adult literature. Mavis is struggling to write her latest book when she gets an e-mail announcing that her former high school boyfriend Buddy (Patrick Wilson, who defines dreamy) is not only married but his wife has just given birth to their first child. Mavis does what we would all do if we found ourselves in similar circumstances: she promptly returns to her old hometown and plots to break up Buddy’s happy marriage*. (Or as Mavis puts it: “We can beat this thing.”)
Once she returns to her hometown, Mavis not only struggles to reconnect with Buddy but also runs into another former high school classmate, Matt (Patton Oswalt, who deserves every sort of award nomination that there is for his performance here). As opposed to Mavis, Matt was an outcast in high school who, during his senior year, was beaten and permanently crippled by a bunch of bullies who had decided that he was gay. Much as Mavis has won fame as a writer, Matt has won his own sort of fame as “the hate crime guy.” Despite themselves, Mavis and Matt start to bond over their own inability to move on with their lives past high school.
As you might guess from the plot synopsis above, Young Adult is a not a laugh-out-loud comedy. Instead, it’s a comedy of awkward moments and “Oh no, she didn’t!” moments. It’s not always an easy movie to recommend because Mavis is an apologetically unlikable character. However, as the film goes on, you can’t help but respect the fearless way that the film tackles a character that doesn’t really offer up much chance for a crowd-pleasing redemption. Obviously, for this to work, Charlize Theron has to give a brilliant performance in the lead role and she does. However, the film truly belongs to Patton Oswalt, who plays his role with a perfect combination of anger, self-pity, and sarcasm. He provides this film with its own fractured heart and we’re all better off for it.
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* Okay, technically, maybe not everybody would do that. But I would.
This week leading up to the Christmas weekend has surely been quite a busy one for film fans everywhere. Earlier in the week we got to see the new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises (and to a lesser extent the trailer for Wrath of the Titans). That was soon followed a day later by the first teaser trailer for Peter Jackson’s upcoming return to the world of Middle-Earth with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Now we reach the triumvirate of awesome film trailers for the week with the release of the first official trailer for Ridley Scott’s return to the film franchise which made him a household name and helped redefined sci-fi (especially of the horror variety) films.
The trailer for Prometheus looks beautiful especially when viewed on 720p/1080p HD. It still doesn’t explain just exactly what the plot of the film is, but it does show some interesting imagery which harkens back to the original Alien from 1979. We even get to see a glimpse of the pilot chair where the “space jockey” sits and the very ship itself found by Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo from the first film. Even the trailer pays major homage to the original film by slowly revealing the film’s title one section at a time.
Scott has been saying that Prometheus is not a prequel to Alien and that it’s a film that could stand on it’s own without people needing to see the films in the franchise. So far, we haven’t glimpsed any of the typical xenomorphswhich defines the franchise. Time to see if they make an appearance when the film finally comes out on June 8. 2012.
If my memory serves me correctly the year of 2010 ended up becoming the year of the Action Team Flicks. Arriving first was the comic book film adaptation, The Losers, which didn’t do so well. Coming out last was the Stallone testosterone action vehicle, The Expendables, which did much better though it lacked somewhat in the grindhouse it was promising. Smack dab in the middle of these two was the film adaptation of the classic 80’s action tv series of the same name, The A-Team, which in the end I thought was the best of the three Action Team Flicks of 2010.
The A-Team was a film project that once had Mel Gibson attached to it right up to Bruce Willis, but delays upon delays pared back what would’ve been a mega-budgeted action blockbuster into something in the bargain basement (for a summer film). It starred Liam Neeson in the iconic role of Col. John “Hannibal” Smith made famous in the 80’s by George Peppard. Surrounding him would be Bradley Cooper as Templeton “Face” Peck, Sharlto Copley as H.M. “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock and veteran MMA fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson as B.A. Baracus. Holding court over this A-Team was filmmaker Joe Carnahan working with a script he, Skip Woods and Brian Bloom (who also had a role as the amoral, sociopathic mercenary Pike).
The film took what was great and fun about the original tv series and gives it a 21st-century upgrade. To say that the film’s plot was secondary to watching the cast having fun on the screen would be an understatement. The story dealt with Smith and his team being accused of a crime they didn’t commit and must now escape from a military prison to find out who set them up and clear their name. It’s straight out of the tv series’ basic premise which managed to last a full on four seasons. Fortunately, Carnahan and his writers only had to make this premise last just a little over two hours. While some may think that two hours would be too long for this film it actually moved quite fast for something that went beyond the two hour mark.
Right from the beginning the cast looked to have been having the time of their lives. Neeson was Hannibal through and through while the other actors making up the rest of the team managed to imbue these well-known characters with their own brand of craziness, absurdity and panache. Just like the other two Action Team flicks of 2010 this film also had it’s share of scene-chewing villains in the form of Patrick Wilson as a duplicitous CIA agent and Brian Bloom as the sociopathic leader of a private military company at odds with Smith and his team. It’s these two groups who end up trying to outguess and outmanuever each other to get that final upper hand. Each encounter between these two groups just got more ridiculous with each passing event.
If one ever wondered if one could fly a tank while it was in freefall then this film answers that question. The climactic showdown at the LA shipyard at night has some of the most over-the-top action of the last couple years that wasn’t a scifi-actioner. Laws of physics doesn’t apply in The A-Team and the film revels in that notion as if telling the audience to either get onboard and enjoy the ride or get off and go on the Toad ride instead.
It’s a shame that The A-Team didn’t do as well in the box-office as some would’ve hoped because the film does set things up for further adventures for Neeson and his crew. What Carnahan ended up making won’t be breaking down the doors to the awards committee, but he did deliver on paying homage to the original tv series while adding his own brand of crazy to a film that had just the right amount of fun, ludicrous action to make it the best of 2010’s Action Team Flicks.
I wasn’t expecting much from Insidious, the new horror film that’s recieved a surprising amount of critical acclaim over the past month. After all, the film is the product of a collaboration between the makers of Saw and Parnormal Activity, two of the most overrated horror films ever. Add to that, the movie is rated PG-13 and the lesson I took away from seeing The Roommate earlier this year was that PG-13 dooms horror. Insidious might be the proverbial exception that proves the rule.
As with all good horror films, Insidious starts with a deceptively simple premise. Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne play a married couple whose marriage is thrown into choas when their oldest son slips into what appears to be a coma. After three months of being in the hosptial, their son is moved back into their house where he spends his days lying in bed, hooked up to ominous medical equipment.
(Speaking for myself, there is no more disturbing sound than the sound of heart monitor, because for every beep, there’s that moment of deafening silence between beeps. The film’s director James Wan knows this too because he makes brilliant use of sound in this film.)
While Wilson deals with things by finding excuses to stay late at work, Byrne is soon seeing shadowy figures running through the house and hearing voices coming from empty rooms. Even as Wilson continues to insist that its just her imagination (that’s something all men seem to have in common — they never ask for direction and they always refuse to accept that the house is haunted), Byrne becomes more and more convinced that its not. Eventually, with a help of an eccentric psychic (well-played by Lin Shaye), Wilson and Byrne are forced to confront the evil forces that have taken control of their lives.
Let’s get the most important thing out of the way first.
Insidious is one scary movie. It’s scarier than any movie rated PG-13 has any right to be. It scared me when I was sitting in the theater watching it and, even more importantly, it’s still scary a day later.
Let me set the scene for you. As I sit here writing this, it is nearly 3 in the morning. I live in a two-story house that is full of random cold spot and which, for some reason, never seems to be totally lit even with all the lights on. My friends are with their families for Easter. My sister Erin is currently in Arlington, visiting with our other sister, Melissa. I’m in this house alone with only my overactive imagination keeping me company. Oh, did I mention that, because of some foundation issues, this house tends to randomly creak?
About two hours ago, I had just taken a shower and I was sitting, wrapped in a towel and a blow dryer, on the edge of my bed. I have this antique floor mirror that sits a few feet in front of my bed and I was about to start drying my hair when it suddenly occured to me — what if I looked at the mirror and I suddenly saw a dark shadow — like the ones in Insidious — sitting on the bed directly behind me?
And yes, I knew that was a silly thought just like I know, despite what the Insidious might tell us, there’s no such thing as ghosts and demons. I knew that if I rasied my head, I would not see anything but isolated, vulnerable little me reflected in the mirror.
But, God help me, I could not bring myself to look. Because, even though I knew that there was 99.9% chance that nothing would be sitting behind me, I knew that there was 0.1.% chance that something would be. I sat there, almost paralyzed with my heart pounding so hard I could almost hear it. I realized I was starting to breathe faster, knowing that if there was something there, it was there with me at that exact moment, siting behind me, waiting to strike…
Finally, realizing that I was on the verge of giving myself a very real panic attack over a very unreal possibility, I forced myself to look up at the reflection in the mirror.
A dark shadow was sitting directly behind me.
And I screamed and jumped off that bed so quickly that I’m amazed I actually managed to stay on my feet. I swung around, cluthing that blow dryer like a weapon, prepared to do whatever…
Nobody was sitting on the bed.
Slowly, I creeped across the room. Cautiously, I stuck a foot underneath my bed to feel if anything was hiding underneath it. I opened the closests and pushed my clothes to the side to confirm that nobody was hiding behind them.
Finally, after I somehow found the courage to sit back down on the bed, I realized that there had indeed been a shadow behind me and that shadow, because of the angle of the lights in my room, had been mine.
That’s the type of film Insidious is. It’s the type of film that uses the simple things that scare us — the unexplainable noises, the things that you sometimes think you see out of the corner of your eye — to creates a truly macabre experience that sicks with you. At its best, its a truly creepy film that works its way into your imagination through a perfect combination of atmosphere and paranoia. One reason why the haunted house genre has remained such a dependable horror set up is because it perfectly reflects one of our most basic fears — the fear of having no control, of knowing that there is no place to hide, that the forces of chaos and evil can even get to us in the sanctuary of our own homes. Especially during its first half, Insidious exploits this fear perfectly. James Wan’s camera prowls through the otherwise unremarkable suburban home like a creature possessed and you find yourself spotting shadowy figures and sudden movements in every frame that flickers before your eyes. Wan makes remarkably good use of sound here. I realize that sound of silence may be an oxymoron but if silence can make a sound, then director Wan manages to capture it in Insidious.
A lot of critics and filmgoers have been rather critical of the film’s second half and it is true that the second half if remarkably different from the first. If the first half finds Wan concentrating on atmopshere then the second half concentrates on shock and, as a result, it feels a lot more conventional. During the 2nd half of them, we learn just what exactly is happening and why and unfortunately, no possible solution could hope to compete with the sense of dread that the first part of the movie generated. That doesn’t mean that the second half of the movie isn’t well-executed. It is. It’s just not as surprising as the first half.
(However, there is one scene in that 2nd half — a red-skinned demon cheerfully sharpening his finger nails — that is just so bizarre and disturbing that it borders on genius.)
Now, I will admit (POSSIBLE SPOILER COMING UP DEPENDING ON HOW ANAL YOU ARE) that I was not a huge fan of the film’s ending. It’s not that the ending didn’t work or that it wasn’t well-exectued. It’s just that it’s the same type of ending that we’ve come to expect from all horror films, the type of thing that used to be considered a twist but now is just a cliche.
Still, ending aside, Insidious is an effective, little horror film. While it is true that the film rather liberally borrows from a lot of previous horror films (most blatantly from Poltergiest, Mario Bava’s Shock, an Australian film called Patrick, and an excellent Canadian shocker called The Changeling), Wan still takes all of those familiar elements and molds them into a genuinely scary experience.
Finally, we get the first full trailer for his summer’s upcoming film adaptation of the popular 80’s action tv series, The A-Team.
The first trailer was a teaser version which didn’t seem to elicit much excitement from people when it was first shown. It was short on any sort of details and didn’t really introduce the characters to people who may not have seen the series. That teaser trailer was also lacking in any action sequences to tease the public into wanting to see more. Well, that is until the very final sequence with the palleted tank free-falling from tens of thousands of feet and Bradley Cooper’s character “Face” popping out of the commander’s hatch, prime the Ma Deuce and firing it while doing said tank free-fall.
It’s been a couple months since that teaser’s release and there hasn’t been much from the film’s studio to help increase buzz on the film. But it looks like this official full trailer might have fixed the problem the teaser caused. This full trailer actually makes The A-Team look like it could be a fun, action flick. There’s some of the humor from the series and the full trailer gives a quick intro of the team’s four members (I liked Murdock’s best). There’s even a subtle reference in the trailer about how give the team an hour and they’re practically invincible. This is in reference to the tv show where the team literally MacGyver’s their way through no-win situations save the day. I hope that becomes part of whatever last reel climactic action sequence the film may have.
The A-Team is set for a June 11, 2010 release. It’s directed by Joe Carnahan (Narc, Smokin’ Aces) and starring Liam Neeson (Hannibal), Bradley Cooper (Face), Quinton Jackson (BA Baracus) and Sharlto Copley (howlin’ Mad Murdock). I know I’ll be there on Day One of it’s release to watch and knowing some of my older uncles and my dad, they’ll be there as well.
Through the Shattered Lens 