“Seriously, Lisa!? We should give awards consideration to The Purge: Anarchy!? Are you serious!?”
Yes, actually I am quite serious. Notice that I didn’t say that we should necessarily give The Purge: Anarchy any awards or that we should even nominate it. I just said consideration. For whatever flaws that The Purge: Anarchy may have, it’s actually one of the better and, in its way, one of the more thought-provoking mainstream American films released this year. Working within the guise of being a simple genre film, The Purge: Anarchy is one of the few films to give serious consideration to the politics and culture that could both lead to and result from dystopia.
What I’m saying is that — despite what the critics may have said last summer — The Purge: Anarchy is actually one of the most subversive and intellectually curious films released this year. You just have to be willing to look past all of the action conventions and instead focus on the film’s subtext.
The Purge: Anarchy takes place one year after the end of the first Purge film. America is still led by the New Founding Fathers and every year, for one night, all crime is legal. As the national media constantly assures everyone, the Purge is responsible for every good thing about America. And even though there are a few rebels who claim that the Purge is not necessarily a good thing, most people chose to believe that — as long as it’s government-sanctioned — it’s for the best.
Whereas the first Purge film took place solely inside one family’s house and focused on the domestic melodrama within, The Purge: Anarchy focuses on what goes on outside of the gated sanctuaries of the rich. As quickly becomes apparent, the Purge is less about purging negative feelings and more about keeping the non-rich, non-white population under control. While the poor kill each other in the streets, the rich pay for the privilege to kill poverty-stricken “volunteers” in the safety of their own homes. (Some of the volunteers agree to die out of the hope that their family will be sent some money. Most are just rounded up on the streets, killed, and forgotten.)
Perhaps even more so than the first film, The Purge: Anarchy works because it feels so plausible. We live in a society where we are continually told that moral rights and wrongs can be determined by man-made laws. When a man is filmed being literally choked to death by a pack of police officers, we’re told that it was the man’s fault because he was failing to respect authority and many choose to believe it because “the law is the law.” (Never mind, of course, whether the law is being fairly applied or makes any sense to begin with.) If a man in uniform is murdered, it’s rightfully called a crime. If a man in uniform commits a murder, we’re told it’s simply a part of the job.
And so, that’s why I suggest that The Purge: Anarchy deserves greater consideration than it’s been given. Yes, it is a genre film and yes, it is an installment in an action franchise. However, it’s also far closer to the truth than many people are willing to acknowledge.
With this being awards season, a lot of attention is being given to a small handful of films. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because I love some of those films. However, with all the focus being some narrowly directed, we run the risk of forgetting that Boyhood,Birdman, and Whiplash weren’t the only memorable films released this year. With that in mind, I’ve decided to post 10 quick reviews of some other films that, if I was in charge of things, would be given some awards consideration.
We start things off with Ben Wheatley’s haunting and psychedelic period piece, A Field In England.
As you might be able to tell from the above trailer, A Field In England is not necessarily an easy film to describe. The film takes place in the 17th Century, during the English Civil War. Reece Shearsmith plays Whitehead, who is an apprentice to a never-seen alchemist known as The Gentleman of Norwich. Fleeing from a raging battle, Whitehead meets three deserters, Cutler (Ryan Pope), Jacob (Peter Ferdinando), and Friend (Richard Glover). Cutler offers to lead them to a nearby ale house but instead, he takes them to a desolate field where Cutler secretly drugs them with hallucinogenic mushrooms and then demands that they pull on a rope that appears to be attached to a stake in the middle of the ground. Pulling on the rope leads to the sudden appearance of Cutler’s boss, the haughty and sadistic O’Neill (Michael Smiley).
O’Neill, it turns out, is also in some way connected to the Gentleman of Norwich. He claims that there is a treasure buried in the field and only Whitehead — as the apprentice to an alchemist — will be able to find it. At first, Whitehead refuses to help O’Neill but then O’Neill takes Whitehead into a tent and does …. well, he does something. The film never makes explicit what happens in that tent and the result is one of the most hauntingly disturbing scenes that I’ve ever seen.
And from there, things only get stranger. Jacob and Friend are forced to dig for the treasure while Whitehead consumes more and more mushrooms. The characters occasionally freeze in place, creating a painterly tableaux. A character dies and then repeatedly returns to life. Most ominously of all, a black sun appears in the sky, seeming to grow with each new outrage.
Obviously, A Field in England is not a film for everyone. That’s what makes it a truly memorable and brave cinematic experience. At a time when so many movies are ruthlessly designed to take absolutely no risks, A Field In England is willing to run the risk of being incomprehensible. However, the film itself is so well-directed and acted and the black-and-white cinematography is so hauntingly gorgeous that it doesn’t matter whether or not it makes any sense. In fact, after a while, you start to truly love the fact that it does not. This is pure cinema and therefore, it’s exactly the type of film that not only deserves but demands to be seen and honored.
Unfortunately, it’s also a film that has been ruled ineligible for any Oscar nominations, which is a pity. However, regardless of what the Academy may say, it still deserves the consideration of film lovers everywhere.
When I wrote my review of The Theory of Everything, I mentioned that Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time made a brief, if important, appearance in another film released earlier this year. That film, of course, was the latest Nicholas Sparks adaptation, The Best Of Me.
Now, I have to admit that The Best Of Me was one of those forgettable films that I kind of suspected most of our readers would not mind me never getting around to reviewing. It came out two months ago, it got terrible reviews, and it didn’t do much business at the box office. I didn’t even enjoy it and I’m the girl who always ends up defending the Twilight films whenever the boys here at the Shattered Lens start to make fun of them. You can tell the impression that the Rest Of Me made on me by the fact that I just got the name wrong and I didn’t even bother to correct my mistake.
But here’s the thing. January is rapidly approaching and, with January, comes my annual 16 worst films of the year list. And chances are that The Best Of Me will appear on that list and I’d like to be able to link to a review.
It’s probably not a shock to hear that The Best Of Me is not a good film. With the exception of The Notebook, the novels of Nicholas Sparks are not known for inspiring good films. Instead, they are known for inspiring films about achingly pretty people who meet on the beach, have a melodramatic secret in the past, and ultimately end up falling in love. And dying, of course. Somebody always has to die. The familiar Nicholas Sparks formula actually works pretty well when you’re the one reading his prose and visualizing the story in your head. That’s largely because you can always imagine yourself as the heroine and maybe James Franco, Bradley Cooper, or Ryan Gosling as the hero. But, when it comes to making movies out of his books, the end results are often so predictable and uninspired that the Nicholas Sparks drinking game had to be legally banned after scores of single women fell ill with alcohol poisoning.
(Yes, that actually did happen! Google it! …. or don’t. Actually, don’t.)
The Best Of Me is, without a doubt, the most Nicholas Sparksian Nicholas Sparks adaptation ever made. Seriously, it has everything that you would expect from a Nicholas Sparks film and it presents it all so predictably that watching the movie is a bit like watching a checklist. We’ve got two former high school lovers who are reunited 20 years later. We’ve got melodrama that comes out of nowhere. We’ve got multiple flashbacks. We’ve got soft focus cinematography. And, of course, we’ve got an ending that is meant to be both tragic and inspiring but it’s neither because, since this is a Nicholas Sparks movie, we already knew that the ending was going to try to be both tragic and inspiring.
What we don’t have is much chemistry between the two lead actors. James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan are both pretty in the way that people in Nicholas Sparks films often are but you never get the feeling that they have much affection for each other. Even worse, in the flashbacks, their characters are played by two actors (Luke Bracey and Liana Liberato) who look absolutely nothing like James Marsden or Michelle Monaghan. In particular, it’s impossible to believe that Luke Bracey could ever grow up to look like James Marsden. I found myself half-expecting a huge twist where Marsden would reveal that he was an intruder.
And you know what?
That would have been a lot more interesting than what we got! Somebody help me get in touch with Nicholas Sparks! I’ve got some ideas for his next book!
For a far more memorable look at love and relationships, allow me to suggest The One I Love, a film that was obviously made for a lot less money than The Best of Me but which is also a lot more thought-provoking.
In The One I Love, Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss play a couple whose marriage is on the verge of breaking up. At the suggestion of their friendly-yet-creepy marriage counselor (Ted Danson), they agree to spend a weekend at a beautiful but remote house. Danson assures them that they will be the only couple at the house. Duplass and Moss agree and, at first, the weekend seems to be working. However, soon both of them start having conversations and encounters that the other claims to not remember. Duplass and Moss discover that they are not alone at the house…
And to tell you anything else about the plot would be unfair. The One I Love is one of those films that works best when the viewer discovers its mysteries at the same time as the characters. To spoil the film would be a crime. Let’s just say that there is a twist that will leave you reconsidering everything that you’ve previously seen in the movie.
Beyond that twist, however, The One I Love works for the exact reason that The Best of Me does not. Moss and Duplass have the chemistry that the leads in The Best Of Me lack. You believe them both as individuals and as a couple.
So, when it comes time to consider what we talk about when we talk about love, check out The One I Love and leave The Best Of Me behind.
Earlier this year, when I was sitting in the audience for the unfortunate Nicholas Sparks film The Best Of Me, I found myself staring at the sight of an oil rig worker (played by James Marsden) relaxing by reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. And, before I could stop myself, I laughed out loud and I may have even loudly said something along the lines of, “Oh come on!”
At the time, I got a lot of dirty looks but I stand by my reaction. It’s such a cliché. Any movie character who is meant to be intelligent and soulful will be seen casually reading a copy of Hawking’s book and scrunching up his brow as he considers whatever it is that Hawking has to say. It makes sense, of course. If the current cult surrounding Neil deGrasse Tyson proves anything, it’s that it is currently in to pretend to be fascinated by science.
I have to admit, though — science has never been my subject. The cold logic of it all bores me to tears and there’s no bigger turn-off then listening to someone brag about being a “rational thinker.” (Rational thought is incredibly overrated.) As long as things work like they’re supposed to, the how and the why don’t really concern me. Whenever I hear someone complain that there are “too many unanswered questions,” I think to myself, “Good.” I like unanswered questions. I like irrational feelings. I like mysteries that can never be solved. They fuel imagination. They inspire great art. They make life interesting and unpredictable.
(Please understand, I am not anti-science. I’m anti-pretending-to-care-when-I-don’t.)
With all that in mind, you might think that I would be bored by The Theory of Everything, the recently released biopic about Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) and his marriage to Jane Hawking (Felicity Jones). And, I’ll be honest. If not for the fact that the film has been pegged as being a certain Oscar contender, I might not have ever wanted to see The Theory of Everything. However, seeing as how The Theory of Everythingis a certain Oscar contender, I did want to see it.
And, up until the final 30 minutes of the film, I was surprised with just how much I liked The Theory of Everything. I have to admit that the film’s science still went over my head. As far as that was concerned, the only thing I really learned is that there’s a difference between General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory but don’t ask me to explain that difference. (And, for the love of all that is good, please don’t try to explain it to me…) But, to be honest, the exact details of Hawking’s theories aren’t really that important to The Theory of Everything. Instead, the film is content to have supporting characters assure us that Hawking’s work is brilliant and important and that’s really all that it has to do. After all, everyone in the audience already knows that Stephen Hawking is a genius. The appeal of The Theory of Everything is not the science but instead the human behind the science.
The Theory of Everything works for two very old-fashioned reasons — it’s well-directed by James Marsh and it’s well-acted by Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones. For all the time that the film devotes to people talking about how Hawking challenged the conventional view of the universe, The Theory of Everything is, in many ways, a conventional biopic. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A familiar story well-told is still a well-told story.
The film starts with Stephen as a student at Cambridge and we follow him as he awkwardly courts Jane and takes her on an amazingly well-filmed and soul-achingly romantic date. Shortly after this, he’s diagnosed with motor neuron disease. (As I discovered while doing some research for this review, Hawking was actually diagnosed before he even met Jane.) Told he only has two years to live, Stephen’s first instinct is to isolate himself from the world but, largely as a result of Jane’s love and support, Stephen instead continues his work and becomes world famous. The film suggests that it took a combination of Stephen’s logical (and skeptical) genius and Jane’s devout and unwavering faith (in both his genius and the God that Stephen doesn’t believe in) for him to eventually become the Stephen Hawking that we all recognize today.
And it’s all extremely well-done and touching, up until the final 30 minutes of the film. Going into the film, I did not know much about Stephen Hawking but (thanks to Wikipedia), I did know that he eventually left Jane for another woman. I have to admit that I did not expect the film to deal with this part of the story. To the film’s credit, it does attempt to deal with the end of Stephen and Jane’s marriage but it does so in such an awkward way that it’s obvious that the filmmakers weren’t quite sure how they should handle the situation.
After all, the film had just spent 90 minutes presenting Jane as being an occasionally frustrated saint and Stephen as being idiosyncratic but likable. And now, suddenly, Stephen is going to have to act like a jerk. The film doesn’t know how to handle this and, as such, those final 30 minutes feel fake in a way that the rest of the film does not. When Stephen tells Jane that he’s leaving her for another woman, it’s presented as being an almost mutual decision made by the two of them. Tears are shed but there’s little visible anger, with the film going so far as to suggest that Stephen is leaving Jane because he wants her to be able to live the life that she put on hold to take care of him. It’s even implied that Stephen was kind enough to pick out a new husband for her.
That new husband is played, quite well, by Charlie Cox. When he first told Jane that he’s attracted to her, I assumed that the scene was included so that Jane could gently rebuff him and show us how devoted she is to Stephen. However, thinking back on it now, it almost feels as if that scene was largely included so it could provide some cover for Stephen. It’s as if the filmmakers are saying, “See? Stephen wasn’t the only one tempted to end the marriage…”
And I have to admit that the way the film handled the end of Stephen and Jane’s marriage felt so false to me and the way Jane was treated and portrayed seemed so unfair that, as soon as I got home, I actually did the following google search: “Was The Theory Of Everything unfair to Jane Hawking?”
Reading the article, I discovered that, according to Jane’s autobiography (upon which the film is ostensibly based), both her marriage to and divorce from Stephen Hawking was far more complex and intriguing than what was presented in the film. For one thing, the marriage ended not with tears of acceptance but instead with a shouting match. And trust me, if any actress could have done justice to Jane Hawking’s anger, it would be Felicity Jones. By the time the film ends, both the character and the actress have earned the right to express their anger. But neither one of them gets that opportunity, largely because that version of the Hawking marriage would also have been far less crowd pleasing.
And, if anything, The Theory of Everything is specifically designed to be a crowd pleaser.
And don’t get me wrong. It’s a good film and it’s one that left me with tears in my eyes. Do I recommend the film? You bet I do.
I just wish that, during those final 30 minutes, the film could have been a little bit more honest with itself. It’s a good film but it’s hard not to regret missing out on the film that it could have been.
That’s a question that was first asked way back in March. At the time, the answer depended on who you asked. For instance, Noah is one of Arleigh’s favorite films of the year. My reaction, however, was far more mixed. Noah was one of those movies that I thought I would review as soon as I watched it but that proved to be a lot more difficult than I expected. As I found myself wondering what I should say in my review, it became very apparent to me that I wasn’t sure whether I liked the film or not.
By the time that I finally decided that I was, overall, disappointed by Darren Aronofsky’s controversial and spiritual-but-not-quite-biblical version of the Deluge, over a month had passed and we had all moved on to different movies.
And so that review remained unwritten. And, at first, I thought it wouldn’t matter. As much as I try to review every single movie that I see, I know that the world is not going to end if I miss a film or two. After all, I’ve never specifically written down just how much I hated the latest Transformers movie and the world has yet to plunge into the sun…
And yet, for all of its flaws and the fact that it left me feeling underwhelmed, Noah has stuck in my mind in a way that many of the films that I saw this year have not. It would be a struggle for me to remember much of anything about Dracula Untold but Noah … Noah has stayed with me.
Thinking back, it’s easy for me to say what did not work about Noah.
As opposed to Aronofsky’s best films (Requiem for A Dream, The Wrestler, and my beloved Black Swan), Noah felt oddly paced with certain scenes ending too quickly while other scenes seemed to drag on forever.
The film’s environmental message was delivered with such a heavy hand that it ultimately did not make much of a difference whether you agreed or not. For a film that went out of its way to establish itself as not being a traditional biblical film, Noah was certainly preachy.
While the film deserves credit for not flinching in its portrait of a surly and self-righteous Noah, it still doesn’t change the fact that the movie was essentially 138 minutes spent with a very unlikable character.
Anthony Hopkins gave perhaps the worst performance of his career as Methuselah. In the role of Tubal-Cain, Ray Winstone was such a one-dimensional villain that I half expected him to invent trains just so he could tie Emma Watson to the tracks.
And, of course, there were the Watchers — fallen angels who had been turned into sentient piles of stone by a vengeful God. I know that some people loved the Watchers but to me, they looked ludicrous…
And yet, that’s the reason why we love Darren Aronofsky, isn’t it?
Obviously, it was a risk to portray the fallen angels as being a bunch of talking rocks. It was also a risk to take a character who is mentioned only once in the book of Genesis — in this case, Tubal-Cain — and then use that character as a representation of everything that’s wrong with the human race. It was a risk to make a “biblical” film that openly questioned both the existence and wisdom of God. We expect and demand that directors take risks but, at the same time, we also want to ridicule and judge when those risks don’t work out. That’s the issue that we, as film lovers, often face. Do we celebrate and perhaps excuse a director for his intentions or do we solely judge him based on the results?
And the thing with Noah is that, as much as the movie did not work for me, it also did work for me. For all of those flaws that I listed above, Noah is full of images that are so beautiful and so memorable that I can still visualize them as if I saw them yesterday:
Noah and his sons walk across a gray and blasted landscape, stopping just long enough to stare at a foreboding city in the distance.
Noah walks through a decadent settlement and briefly, this somber film is so full of bright colors and flamboyant characters that the viewer is almost as overwhelmed as Noah.
That Ark, looking small and isolated, floating across an endless blue ocean.
And finally, Noah talking about the horrors of humanity and briefly, we see that the shadows that he’s visualizing are dressed in modern clothing.
For all of my issues with Noah, it’s such a visually impressive film and takes so many risks that I can’t help but respect it. I don’t consider it to be a great film but, after all this time, I can say that it’s a film that only a true artist could make.
And, considering the current state of American film, that’s one of the best compliments that one can give.
He so seriously does. The deep-voiced character actor, beloved by fans of Allstate Insurance, Spider-Man, Jason Reitman, and the Coen Brothers alike, has been memorable so many times in the past that it’s easy to take him for granted. However, with Whiplash, he proves himself to be not just a distinctive screen presence but to be a brilliant actor as well. There’s a lot of good things about Whiplash but, ultimately, it’s Simmons who makes the film something more than just another promising indie film.
Simmons plays Terrence Fletcher, the legendary and feared conductor of the Schaffer Conservatory jazz band. (We’re told that Shaffer Conservatory is the best music school in the country. Of course, in a real life, the best music school in the country is located at University of North Texas, where I studied Art History but still enjoyed occasionally listening to the One O’Clock Lab Band.) As played by Simmons, Fletcher is both a genius and a sadist. When he talks about music, he does so with a passion that makes it impossible not share his love for all that jazz. When he conducts his band, he does so with a cruelty that makes you question if the music is worth the cost of the emotional stability of the people playing it. When he hears that someone is out of tune, he responds by reducing a musician to tears. When he says, “Not my tempo,” it’s both a critique and a threat. The fact that he’s creative and quick-witted with his insults does nothing to lessen the pain that they cause.
Fletcher’s latest protegé/victim is a talented 19 year-old drummer named Andrew (Miles Teller). Andrew shares Fletcher’s love for jazz but nothing can prepare him for the lengths that Fletcher will go to manipulate him. Whether it means insulting Andrew’s father (Paul Reiser) or casually threatening to give Andrew’s spot away to another drummer, Fletcher’s nonstop and often viscous criticism makes Andrew a better drummer but also threatens to destroy his sanity.
Director and screenwriter Damien Chazelle understands that those of us in the audience have seen literally hundreds of films about intense teachers and the students that they teach. Chazelle cleverly manipulates all of our expectations. The minute that we expect Fletcher to say something encouraging or to reveal himself to actually be a compassionate mentor, Simmons instead barks out another insult or regards Andrew with a withering glare. And, as we wait for Andrew to stand up to Fletcher or prove his mentor wrong, we are instead forced to admit that Fletcher’s approach does seem to be working.
When, towards the middle of the film, Andrew crashes his car while rushing to a jazz competition and then attempts to play the drums with both blood on his suit and a broken hand, you can’t help but both admire his determination and fear where that determination is going to take him.
As I said at the beginning of this review, there’s a lot of good things about Whiplash. As you might expect for a film about jazz, it has a great soundtrack. Miles Teller gives a great lead performance, one that may be overshadowed by J.K. Simmons but which — along with his work in The Spectacular Now — indicates that Teller is an actor to watch. (We’ll just forget the fact that he was also in Project X.) Some of the film’s best moments don’t even involve J.K. Simmons, instead they’re just scenes of Teller obsessively drumming until his hands are bloody.
But, ultimately, it is J.K. Simmons who truly elevates this film. Simmons makes Fletcher into a truly fascinating villain, one who constantly leaves you guessing. By the end of the film, you may not like Fletcher but you definitely can not get him out of your head.
Ultimately, the success of Whiplash stands as a tribute to the talent of J.K. Simmons.
‘The Babadook’ is a truly effective horror film whose beautiful and twisted imagery – as well as complex and powerful explorations of grief and the bonds between a mother and her child – cut to the bone, managing to scare and move all at once. The film, which explores maternal affection, depression, grief – and a whole multitude of similar themes – is not just one of the best horror films of the past few years, but is also just simply one of the best films of the current year.
The film stars Essie Davis as Amelia, a widow living alone with her hyperactive son Sam (Noah Wiseman). Amelia loves her boy, but his presence is a constant reminder of the death of her husband – who died in a crash while driving Amelia to the hospital to give birth. The grief of the accident constantly lingers over them both. This is made all the worse for Amelia as Sam has become more of a burden as of late. Sam is beginning to more strongly deal with the absence of his father and expresses this in some unusual ways – including making up scary monsters and weapons to fight them with. Their strained relationship takes a dark turn when a mysterious pop-up book appears – the character in which is a spooky creature that awakens in Amelia fears and dark thoughts about her son that have long been hidden under the surface. She doesn’t know where the book came from or who this nightmarish Babadook is – but she can’t seem to escape it. The situation and Amelia’s mental state is exasperated by sleep deprivation, social pressures and growing depression as the anniversary of her husband’s death approaches. She is soon forced to confront a demon – both physical and psychological – that threatens to destroy her and Sam.
‘The Babadook’ very much reminded me of ‘Repulsion’ and ‘The Shining’ in its portrayal of a mental spiral into very dark places – as well as ‘The Orphanage’ in its handling of grief and loss. This is all packaged in a visually striking story – lots of blacks, greys and whites – with a creature that is sure to be an instant classic. What makes it all the better is the way in which it constantly subverts the expected in both genre tropes and what we are actually seeing on the screen. Is the Babadook real? Or is it simply a mental manifestation of the pain and grief that runs deeply through the story? Either way, the fears, doubts and terror it all elicits amount to more than just scares – it also moves with real and honest emotion. Take out the horror aspects and the film is still a moving portrait of a mother dealing with loss and the responsibility of mothering a troubled child. This is a shining example of the brilliance that the horror genre can achieve – how it can be emotionally affecting in ways no other genre can. Add to that a phenomenal performance by Essie Davis and the confident direction of Jennifer Kent and the result is a masterpiece of the genre – and easily one of the year’s best films.
*I discuss the ending in the comments. I say this to warn of spoilers below – as well as to continue my above analysis for those who have seen the film.*
I realize that is a big claim to make. Birdemic, after all, is known for not only being one of the worst but also for being one of the most inept films ever made. It’s a film that regularly appears on lists of the worst films ever made and, unlike the always entertaining The Room, Birdemic actually deserves the honor.
So, when you compare a movie to Birdemic, it’s kind of a big deal.
However, having now sat through April Rain on multiple occasions, I can say that April Rain totally deserves the comparison.
Imagine if your local community theater decided to put on a low-budget, theatrical adaptation of 24, with the director’s son playing Jack Bauer and a retired accountant playing the main villain and you might have some idea of what it’s like to watch April Rain.
The film opens with endless overhead shots of Los Angeles while stirring “epic” music plays in the background. The movie uses these overhead shots in much the same way that Tommy Wiseau used the Golden Gate Bridge in The Room. Whenever the scene needs to change, we get an aimless overhead shot of Los Angeles that rarely seems to have much to do with either the scene we just viewed or the one that we’re about to watch. At first, it amused me to notice how many buildings had helicopter landing pads but then I realized that I was just looking at the same buildings over and over again.
After we spend a while looking down on Los Angeles, we are immediately thrown into the middle of the action as six men have a fierce gun battle outside of a warehouse. And by gun battle, I mean that each man stands about four feet away from the other, shoots a gun, and somehow manages to miss just as often as they hit. It’s during this scene that we learn two important things about April Rain:
1) Nobody in this film dies without flailing around for a few minutes before hand.
2) Anyone firing a gun will be shown in slow motion.
As for why everyone is shooting at each other, it all comes down to weapons. The group in the warehouse has a few crates full of weapons. The people attacking the warehouse want the weapons so that they can sell them to a terrorist cell.
The people attacking the warehouse, incidentally, a members of the Russian mob. I figured this out because they had names like Nikolai and Dimitri and not because any of them actually had a Russian accent or, in any other way, came across as being Russian.
Which is not to say that they don’t have accents. Their boss, Kotov (Adrian L. Tutor), definitely has an accent. Actually, he has several and they change from scene-to-scene. Sometimes, he sounds like he’s from Italy and then other times he sounds like he’s from Scotland…
Anyway, when we first meet Kotov, he’s running around in circles in his suburban front yard while his two youngest daughters chase after him. He’s wearing a dark blue apron that reads, in bright red letters, “World’s Greatest Dad.”
The face of the Russian Mafia
His oldest daughter, Katrina (Brittany Beery), would probably disagree with that. She’s got a crush on the newest member of the mob, Alex (Ryan Guzman). When Kotov drags Katrina to church, she gets out of it by saying, “I’m getting my period, dad!” and doing a massive eye roll. (Interestingly enough, I used to do the exact same thing to get out of going to Mass. Never underestimate the importance of the eye roll.) What makes this scene especially memorable are the extras sitting on the pew directly behind Kotov and his family. When Katrina explains why she has to leave church, they gasp and look like they’re about to faint from the shock. They do this despite the fact that Katrina and Kotov are whispering and that their voices would undoubtedly have been drowned out by the church organ that is played throughout the entire scene. Perhaps, at one point, the filmmakers were planning on including a subplot that hinged on super hearing…
ANYWAY — and watching April Rain is one of those films that will inspire you to say “anyway” quite a lot — it turns out that Alex has a secret of his own. He’s not really a Russian mobster! No, he’s a member of an elite division of the — well, to be honest, I’m not sure which agency he works for. However, I do know that it’s top secret because it’s housed in a huge warehouse and everyone spends a lot of time talking about how it’s all top secret.
Along with Alex, the team includes:
1) Sikes (Luke Goss), who is I guess is supposed to be in charge. He’s a taciturn but fair man who is first seen disciplining his teenage son. (“I can do what I want!” his son shouts, “In your face, old man!”) Sikes spends a lot of time shouting things like, “I WANT HIM ALIVE!” just before then shooting a bad guy in the head. (Incidentally, in April Rain, getting shot in the head means that a small splotch of red paint appears on your forehead.)
2) Rita (Miranda Frigon), who I liked because she’s a redheaded administrative assistant, just like me! At one point, Rita gets a phone call from someone outside of the agency. Sikes tells her that he needs her to be 100%. Rita agrees. The phone call is never mentioned again.
3) Kenny (Doug Savant), who doesn’t really have much of a personality.
4) Thomas (Vincent Spano), who is Kenny’s best friend and who, as a part of his job, is currently sleeping with Hellen (Anne Leighton) who works for Kotov. At one point, Thomas’s wife (Hillary Tuck) shows up and points a gun at him and screams at him for cheating on her. An exasperated Thomas yells back, “I work my ass off and you show up here and make me look like an ass in front of Kenny!” And the scene goes on and on from there…
And finally,
5) Hillary Miller (Ming-Na Wen!) is apparently Sikes’s superior. Thomas refers to her as being the Wicked Witch of West Los Angeles. “She flies around on her broomstick with a strap-on and a jar of vaseline,” he informs Alex. Ming-Na gets top billing but she’s actually only in a few minutes of the film and she spends most of that time yelling and glaring. It’s almost as if she’s daring you to ask her how she ended up in a movie like April Rain.
Ming-Na dares you to ask her what she’s doing in April Rain.
ANYWAY — Kotov has been supplying terrorist leader Tariq (Deniz Akdeniz) with guns and Vespa motor scooters and you better believe that we eventually do get a chase scene where the bad guy is fleeing on a Vespa. (And you also better believe that almost the entire chase scene is filmed in slow motion.)
Before launching his terrorist scheme, Tariq becomes an American citizen. The oath of citizenship is delivered by a judge who actually shows up on a Sunday to do so. “It’s the least I can do, after all the work you’ve done on my house,” the judge helpfully explains. Of course, as Tariq and the Judge enter the courthouse, the camera lingers on a security guard who views both of them with clear suspicion.
Upon returning to his apartment, Tariq and his family celebrate his new citizenship. Then, his two neighbors arrives to congratulate him. These two neighbors — well, they simply have to be seen and heard to be believed. “Share the wealth!” one of them proclaims, “then maybe everyone won’t want to kill us…” Another one drinks a toast to “education and the redistribution of wealth,” which I guess is the film’s way of letting us know that the only thing needed for the Tariqs of the world to succeed is for them to live next door to stereotypical California liberals.
What’s especially interesting about this film is that, for all the time devoted to the Judge, the security guard, and those two neighbors, none of them are all that important to the plot. In fact, after their initial scenes, neither the judge nor the security guard are ever seen again. As for the two neighbors, they’re kicked out of the apartment after Tariq is visited by Yusef, a jihadi who is also a pizza deliveryman…
(Just about every film has a few red herrings but few take it to the extreme of April Rain, a movie in which just about everyone in the cast is a red herring.)
Everyone’s either a red herring or a redhead or both.
Much like Birdemic, The Room, and Troll 2,April Rain is such a uniquely bad film that it becomes oddly fascinating. You watch and, with each moment, you can not help but wonder how much worse the film can get. And, with each passing moment, you discover that it can get a lot worse.
You want a cast that alternates between catatonic underplaying and histrionic overacting? April Rain hasgot you covered. (In defense of the cast, it’s not that any of them are bad actors as much as the script doesn’t leave them much choice. For instance, I thought Brittany Beery did the best that anyone possibly could with her role. The same can be said of Ryan Guzman and Luke Goss. As for Ming-Na — well, I imagine she probably just wanted to get her scenes over with.)
You want action scenes that essentially look like a bunch of kids making finger guns and going, “Bang! Bang!” at each other? April Rain is the film to see.
Do you want random scenes that come out of nowhere, make you go, “What the Hell?,” and are then promptly forgotten about in the movie’s grand narrative scheme? April Rain will not disappoint.
Do you want pages and pages of dialogue that add up to nothing more than empty verbosity? Might I suggest watching April Rain?
Do you want to see a movie that’s so bad that it’s good? Well, I’d suggest watching The Room and then Troll 2 and then Birdemic. But once you’ve got those three out of the way, definitely give April Rain a try!
The Town That Dreaded Sundown is the latest classic horror remake. In this case, it’s a remake of a 1976 docudrama about a real-life serial killer who, shortly after World War II, haunted the streets of my former hometown of Texarkana, Texas. (You can read my review here.) The original was a low-budget but effectively creepy little film that was shot on the streets of Texarkana and was full of authentic Texas atmosphere. (It helped that it was directed by Charles B. Pierce, a Texarkana native, as opposed to some jerk from up north.) What made the film all the more haunting was the fact that — in both the movie and in real life — the Phantom Killer was never captured.
So, how does the remake compare?
*Sigh*
(For the record, I’m not only signing but I’m also massively rolling my mismatched, heterochromatic eyes.)
Listen, I will give this film credit for attempting to be something more than just your usual horror remake. It actually does have a fairly clever premise. Instead of retelling the original story, the remake of The Town That Dreaded Sundown begins with a bunch of people in present-day Texarkana sitting around and watching the original film. There’s even an eccentric character named Charles B. Pierce, Jr. (Denis O’Hare) who we are told is the son of the original director. It’s a clever idea, one that wisely acknowledges the effectiveness of the original film while also commenting on the continuing mystery surrounding both the identity and the fate of the Phantom Killer.
And, when someone dressed like the original Phantom Killer starts to murder young couples in Texarkana, we — just like the characters — are left to wonder whether it’s the spirit of the Phantom or if it’s someone imitating the murders from the original film or whether it’s something else altogether.
That’s certainly the question faced by Jami (Addison Timlin), who survives being attacked by this new Phantom but then grows obsessed with trying to discover who he is. Addison Timlin gives a really good performance here. She’s likable and sympathetic, the perfect “final girl.”
In fact, the entire film is well-cast. Anthony Anderson is a lot of fun as a cocky Texas Ranger while Gary Cole and Joshua Leonard do good work as members of local law enforcement. Denis O’Hare, who I will always think of as being Russell on True Blood, brings a certain dissipated nobility to his role. The victims are all sympathetic and the killer is creepy.
But, with all that in mind, I was disappointed with the remake of The Town That Dreaded Sundown. The reason the original film worked is because it was made by a member of the Texarkana community. Charles B. Pierce knew the town and he understood why the Phantom Killer continued to haunt the citizens. What his movie lacked in technical polish, it made up for in authenticity.
Though the remake features a narrator and duplicates the original’s obsession with letting us know whether each scene is taking place on the Texas-side or the Arkansas-side of the town, there’s still absolutely nothing authentic about it. Whereas the original was filmed entirely on location, the remake was mostly filmed in Shreveport with only three days devoted to getting some location footage of downtown Texarkana. As someone who has lived in both Shreveport and Texarkana, allow me to assure you that you can totally tell the difference.
The remake was produced by Ryan Murphy (of Glee and American Horror Story fame) and the film really does feel like a lesser season of American Horror Story. It’s a film that has so little use for subtlety (just check out Edward Herrmann going totally overboard as a hypocritical preacher) that its creepy moments are totally smothered by all the heavy-handed cartoonishness that surrounds them.
Ultimately, the remake fails because it has no feel for or understanding for my homestate. It was made by people who obviously know nothing about Texas or Arkansas beyond what they’ve seen in other movies produced, directed, and written by other northerners.
The 1976 Town That Dreaded Sundown worked because it was authentic. Despite a few good ideas, the remake is just too generic to do justice to the original.
So, there’s this fucking movie called Blood Ties and it’s about a lot of fucking guys who live in fucking New York City in the fucking 70s and they’re all kind of a bunch of fuck-ups but they all know how to fucking use the word fuck as both an adjective and an adverb. That’s the main impression that I took away from Blood Ties, a film that feels a lot like a mash-up of Place Beyond The Pines and every Martin Scorsese film ever made.
The year is 1974. After serving several years on a murder conviction, 50 year-old Chris (Clive Owen) has been released from prison. Chris’s transition back into society is a bumpy one. For one thing, his ex-girlfriend (Marion Cotillard) is now a prostitute and refuses to let Chris see his children. Though he gets a new girlfriend (Mila Kunis), he still finds himself struggling to hold down a job and he soon finds himself tempted to once again pursue a life of crime.
What might make that difficult for him is the fact that his younger brother, Frank (Billy Crudup), is now a cop with an old school porn star mustache. Frank makes little secret of how much he resents his older brother and it isn’t long before the two of them are constantly fighting. However, Frank has problems beyond Chris. For one thing, he’s romantically pursuing Vanessa (Zoe Saldana), despite the fact that he earlier put her husband, Anthony (Matthias Schoenaerts), in prison.
In order to keep their dying father (James Caan) happy, Chris and Frank try to put aside their differences. However, when Frank sees Chris fleeing from the scene of a robbery, it becomes harder and harder for him to ignore his brother’s activities. Meanwhile, Chris has to decide whether or not to potentially sacrifice his freedom to keep his brother safe from a vengeful Anthony…
When Blood Ties was originally released at the beginning of the year, I considered seeing it but — for some reason — I ended up seeing The Legend of Hercules instead. (Don’t you hate it when that happens!) And I have to admit that I had forgotten about Blood Ties until I discovered that we were getting EPIX for free this holiday weekend. Blood Ties is one of the films that’s currently showing on EPIX and, when I saw it was available, I thought to myself, “I can’t wait to see A Most Violent Year but until that opens up down here in Dallas, why not watch another violent New York period piece?”
And so I watched Blood Ties and … well, bleh. Actually, bleh may be too harsh of a judgment. The film is full of fun period details and Billy Crudup gives a really good performance as Frank. There are some well done action scenes and I appreciated the fact that, for the most part, the film did not try to make violence look glamorous or fun. The film has a great soundtrack though, for the most part, most of the songs here can also be heard in a countless number of superior Scorsese films.
But, ultimately, Blood Ties is never as good as you want it to be. The film’s plot is about as predictable as can be and, far too often, scenes that start out interesting quickly degenerate to various characters standing around and yelling at each other. And while that may often be what happens in real life, it still doesn’t make it particularly interesting to watch. And then you’ve got poor Clive Owen, a good actor who is seriously miscast here. Casting Clive Owen as a streetwise New York gangster is a bit like casting Ray Liotta as a member of the Queen’s Guard. It just doesn’t work.
For those of us hoping for a great New York City crime epic — well, we’re just going to have to keep hoping that A Most Violent Year turns out to be just as good as everyone says it is…
