Thursday, December 30, 2010

Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 3 of Scream 2 (0:13:51-0:15:52)

In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!



SCENE 3 of Scream 2
Length: 2mins 1secs
Primary Characters: Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), Cici Cooper (Sarah Michelle Gellar), "Film Class Guy #1" (Joshua Jackson) and "Artsy Teacher" (Craig Shoemaker)
Pop Culture References:
  • Alien and Aliens (used as another example of sequels being better than the original, quoted by "Film Class Guy #1)
  • The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (another example, quoted by Randy)
  • The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (another example, quoted again by Randy)
  • House: The Second Storey (the lead off to a discussion about horror movie sequels)
  • James Cameron (Mickey has "a hardon for Cameron")


And with this I apologise for being so delayed with this, but life happened and I don't always have oodles of spare time to devote.


The story goes that Cici wasn't meant to be in this initial classroom sequence, but was instead introduced along with Rebecca Gayheart and Portia de Rossi's sorority sisters a longer version of the scene that comes after this, but when this class sequence needed to be reshot they threw Cici into it. I think it was a good move since it's not only creates some relationship between her and Mickey (when otherwise there was next to none) and, also, it adds a little something extra on repeat viewings. Knowing that inside Mickey's head he's all "you're gonna die soon!" when she makes that crack about James Cameron's hardon (you totally know he's angry about it and wants revenge.)

I guess it's really how "the story goes" though, is it? I mean, it's how the story was. The deleted scene of the film class in the cinema class room featured no Cici and the script pages specifically detail the extended sorority pledge scene with her and Sidney. I think it makes Cici's death a bit stronger, too, since she's not just another hair-flicking sorority girl. Poor Cici. She seems like one of those cool girls from school that would actually be nice to the plebs beneath her and who wasn't as dumb as people thought.


Hi Mickey! Your introduction is a bit less suspect than Billy's in Scream, but you're discussing horror movie sequels so you were instantly a suspect, even if you're not actually in much of the movie. Isn't that funny, it feels like the killers in Scream 2 are in it far less than Billy and Stu were in the first. It makes sense in "Debbie Salt"'s case since so much of the Scream universe plays around Sidney and her actions and bringing those two in front of each other before the finale was impossible, but they could have easily thrown Timothy Olyphant a bone and given him a scare sequence earlier in the film. Although in retrospect it was probably them just trying to deflect suspicion.

Or, now that I think of it, I can't remember, but was Mickey always the killer? I remember they had to change the killer's identity when the script leaked. Hmmm.


Oh Randy.

*sigh*

I was so glad they realised how effective Jamie Kennedy and Randy were in Scream and decided to bump him up to a bigger role (well, since he checks out early it's probably even less of a role, but of bigger significance!) Although, to be honest, he and Sidney did lose a big chunk of their friends so Sidney had no other choice. I like that they go to the same college. It's feels very "we're survivors, we stick together" on them, doesn't it?


Oh hai Joshua Jackson.

Just think, if there was no Scream 2 then there'd be no Dawson's Creek, which means there'd be no Joshua Jackson walking around all moderately-famous, which means he wouldn't be on Fringe and dating Diane Kruger and looking all swank. Mmm... where was I?


"Are you suggesting that someone's trying to make a real life sequel?"


"Stab 2? Who'd anybody wanna do that. Sequels suck!


I like Cici's "huh?" face and yet she turns around and asks Mickey to "name one" sequel that surpassed the original.

For what it's worth I too would say The Godfather Part II and - duh - Terminator 2: Judgement Day (it's nestled tightly in my top 10 of all time!), but not Aliens. Love Aliens, but I prefer Alien. I mean, they're completely different movies anyway so comparing them feels at odds.

Other sequels I would have used (in 1997) would be Batman Returns, Wes Craven's New Nightmare (although, admittedly, couldn't really use it in this scenario, could they?), Child's Play 2, Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn and, er, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. That's a discussion for another day though. Since Scream 2? The Bourne Supremacy, The Dark Knight, Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me and, er, Step Up 2: The Streets. That's a discussion for another day though.


Oh Randy. This is film class and yet future Pacey Witter is in fact correct. Right? Or am I getting it wrong?

I'm so glad I couldn't grow facial hair in 1997 since I would have copied that ridiculous beard of his since Randy was my favourite at the time (after Gale, of course, although now I'd rank him after Gale and Tatum.)


"House 2: The Second Storey"

To which Randy replies that "the horror genre was destroyed by sequels." Not sure I agree with that since there have been many good ones. I do, however, look forward to the possible "remake" scene in Scream 4. I mean, surely they can't ignore that, right?


Oh Timothy Olyphant. You're so handsome and yet another actor who has come from such humble beginnings as the Scream franchise and become a respected actor. Just like Liev Shreiber!

This scene is obviously one of the most famous from the entire trilogy. Much like the "how to survive a horror movie" sequence in Scream (and nothing from Scream 3, amirightladies?), this "sequel's suck" conversation says so much about what Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven were doing with this movie. Almost like doing an autopsy at the same time as performing surgery. And you know why they know certain sequels succeed and others don't (noted again during Randy's "rules of a sequel" scene coming up later), they are pointing it out to audiences and all but demanding they take Scream 2 seriously. "We're not just another dumb sequel" type of thing, yeah? Great stuff.

Scream:
Intro, Scene 1 Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14, Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19, Scene 20, Scene 21, Scene 22, Scene 23, Scene 24, Scene 25, Scene 26, Scene 27, Scene 28, Scene 29, Scene 30, Scene 31 Scene 32, Scene 33, End Credits

Scream 2
Scene 1, Scene 2

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Review: Enter the Void

Enter the Void
Dir. Gasper Noé
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: R18+
Running Time: 161mins

Where does a film like Enter the Void stand in 2010?

I’m sure it’s a coincidence, but as I read the fabulous Liminal Vision blog today discuss the history of cult cinema, and today’s sad sorry state, I couldn’t help but think of Gasper Noé’s Enter the Void, which I had just seen mere hours earlier. Right now in Melbourne cinemas (well, actually, just the one – Cinema Nova in Carlton) you have the chance to see both Enter the Void and Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and as fun as I found the latter, its inclusion in the cinema’s “cult craving” sidebar of late night screenings belies its inception as a film with minimal goals and limited resources. Mega Shark may be “cult” in that it’s a bad movie and people enjoy sitting in a crowd, mocking it to tears, but it doesn’t lay any claim to being an actual piece of cult cinema in the traditional sense.

As I sat in the tiny, yet thankfully plush, cinema – barely 20 seats, I swear – I couldn’t help but think that Noe’s hyperactive, neon-infused, heroine-addicted, batshit insane hooladoowacky movie going experience would be the type of film that audiences would have actually embraced in the cult heyday of the 1970s. There’s a big difference between seeing Enter the Void in a small cinema with comfortable seats and a bottle of water in the drink-holder and attending a sticky-floored cinema and watching it through a haze of marijuana smoke, which is certainly how David Lynch’s Eraserhead, John Waters’ Pink Flamingos and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo - famed cult classics, all of them – were viewed in their time.


It’s like what audiences did with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, paying their $2 admission fee (or however much it was) to get high and trip out on acid right there in the cinema. Somehow I imagine it’s just not the same in 2010. Today, drug tripping university students are far more likely to download Enter the Void and watch it on the new flatscreen TV that their parents just purchased for them. It’s enough to make me pine for an era I wasn’t even alive for.

I started thinking of all this because, well, there really isn’t much to think about in Gasper Noé’s first film since the shocking Irreversible in 2001. Where that film had a powerful and complex core behind its outer sheen of abhorrent violence, one that lingered long after initial viewing, Enter the Void is an exasperating two and a half hour ponderous excursion through Noé’s over-indulgent, untamed imagination. And a rather unmoving one at that (even as shock cinema I wasn’t particularly shocked.) Why end your film after an hour and a half when you’ve run out of things to say when you can keep going for another hour? It’s art, silly. I may not have seen anything like this before in my life, but I don't think I wanted to see two and a half hours of whatever it actually was. Much like Gulliver’s Travels last week, I suspect one must be on the sort of hardcore drugs that Noé’s lead character is on in order to get through it with any sense of what he was trying to achieve.

The thing is that I believe Noé has something in here worth saying, it’s just hidden far, far beneath the five (or was it ten?) minute visual effect hallucination sequences, frequent rollercoaster orbits over the Tokyo skyline, screeching conversations between uninteresting characters and ever-looping flashbacks filmed from camera angles that give the impression Noé and cinematographer Benoît Debie thought they were being awfully inventive when really they just shoved the camera on a ceiling fan and flipped the dial. Noé is unafraid to show whatever he wants and yet surprisingly in a film filled with uncomfortable scenes of drug use and a 20-minute long sequence in a sex hotel (in which glowing visual effects are emitted out of male and female genitals, naturally) it is the abrupt violence (a shot gun, a car accident) that has the most impact. Drug addicts don’t really surprise me, I guess. Is that flippant? Perhaps, but when even I’m bored by a visual effects inspired neon driven version of Tokyo I know there’s a problem.


The film is a frightful bore and yet is boring whilst encompassing everything that can be fascinating about cinema. I just can’t help but feel this must be what it’s like to be on a drug trip that lasts as long as a hiccup. Enter the Void is visually audacious, it weaves a stunning tapestry of sounds and colour, it’s structurally intriguing and these characters should be rich in pathos (actors like Paz de la Huerta and Olly Alexander put a stop to that), but the final product is empty. There are individual moments of wonder including one of the most flabbergasting, bravura, balls-to-the-wall opening credits sequences that you’re ever likely to see, but it’s all merely a temporary high. The initial effect is eye-opening, but then it’s all downhill and I just wished Noé would inject whatever energy he used for that LFO-soundtracked credits sequence into the rest of the film. Noé is like a drug dealer whose product is disappointing. I’ve sampled and now I’d like my money back. C-


One last think I feel I should mention and that’s the oft poorly used first person view. Enter the Void uses this for its opening act and while he certainly gets some good shots out of it, I always find the tactic an annoying one since nothing can replicate one’s actual field of vision. Especially as we’re watching it on a cinema screen with our own peripheral vision. Am I the only one who thinks this method of looking natural results in the exact opposite and looks incredibly fake?

Monday, December 27, 2010

The Full Blossom of the Evening: Some Thoughts on Twin Peaks

Please note that although this blog entry discusses a lot about Twin Peaks there are no actual plot spoilers if you haven't seen the series and wish to do so. Feel free to keep reading.


I noticed today that David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me has made its way to Blu-Ray. That's great news in one respect for fans of the series and the film, but it's disappointing to note that this release still doesn't include the two hours of deleted scenes that David Lynch excised from the finished product. I know the history of why we've never seen them - legal wranglings between the European production company and New Line Cinema - but it's still a damn shame!

Nevertheless, seeing the Blu-Ray release reminded me that I had never spoken about "Laurathon", an event held in November at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) here in Melbourne. I love living in Melbourne, have I mentioned that before? Yeah, I do, because of events like this! 9 and a half hours of Twin Peaks goodness on the big screen in a room lined with red curtains and a seemingly endless supply of donuts at our disposal. It began with the pilot episode, which is - in my humble opinion - the greatest episode of television ever crafted. So, really, not that big of a deal. Alongside that episode they screened episode 7 ("Realization Time"), episode 14 ("Demons" where Laura's killer was reveals), episode 30 ("Beyond Life and Death", the series finale) as well as the movie prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

That pilot... will it ever be topped? Who knows what television has in store for us, but it's just a slice of perfection, that pilot, isn't it? So many memorable moments that are forever branded upon my brain. If I had to choose but just two - my two favourites - I would have to go with Ronette Pulaski's walk across the train tracks since the imagery is so frightening with those "twin peaks" in the background and the tattered dress that'll make you really question where the series is going. Secondly, I'd choose the school sequence towards the beginning, starting with Audrey's smoke in the locker, her flitter of fingers in home room, the screaming girl across the school yard and that eerie tracking shot down the corridor towards Laura's homecoming photo in the displace case. The entire scene really captures that feeling of other-worldliness... I can recognise it as the real world, but there's a quality there that just feels slightly alien. The characters act just slightly off, don't they? Twin Peaks was always the best with it straddled that line delicately. Both are viewable below.


Episode 14 is - here we go again - probably the second greatest episode of television that I can recall. In fact, just the other day I was at my mother's house and turned on the Foxtel and what should be on? Episode 14 of Twin Peaks! Needless to say I rewatched it even though I've seen it many times, including as recently as a month earlier. Such powerful stuff, and yet, in everything that happens in that episode, you know my absolute favourite moment? Favourite of moments above all?


"I want you /
Rockin' back inside my heart"

There's something about that moment that speaks to the innocence and the childhood that these characters (Donna and James) have lost, and that Laura had lost long ago. It's a moment is minute beauty surrounded by so much doom and gloom. Love.It. Plus, the song is pretty great, too!

The final episode? Yeah. I can't even go there.


Of course, the movie is something else entirely, isn't it? Yowza! I'd never seen it on the big screen with a proper sound system, and it's a glorious thing to behold. Admittedly, I am a huge fan of the film - I'd rank it somewhere behind Mulholland Drive as my favourite David Lynch movie - unlike some people, but to see it projected onto the big screen is an experience to treasure. Lynch knows how to work sound and he certainly turns the volume up to 11 here.

The final 30 minutes are, of course, some of the toughest cinema you'll ever see. Fire Walk with Me is rated R18+ for a reason (equivalent to America's NC17 if you'd like). The culmination of two series worth of mystery, intrigue and wonder combined with the film's near-apocalyptic sense of menace and dread, all rolled up into a terrifying package. The sort of horror you don't even find in more traditional horror movies. Scarier, too.

And that ending... wow. As much as I would be intrigued to see where Lynch would go by picking the story up again 25 years later (and it most certainly will remain a rumour, but an interesting one nonetheless with Laura's "you will see me again in 25 years" comment don't you think?), I think the final few minutes of Fire Walk with Me (below) are the perfect coda to the entire Twin Peaks saga. If you watched everything in a through line - pilot episode through to Fire Walk with Me, despite their flip-flop narrative - then I can't imagine a more apt ending. Laura and Dale, the two driving forces of the show, together in the black lodge as Angelo Badalementi's haunting synth score floats overhead, an angel appearing as if by pure virtue of David Lynch's oddity and then.... the laugh. It's just perfect. I know I'm typing similar things a lot in this entry, but it's one of my all time favourite endings.


Speaking of Twin Peaks - obviously - I recently did a piece for Trespass Mag that looked at the fates of the actors and their subsequent careers after the untimely demise - or was it perfectly timed? - of the series. Whilst I was at Laurathon I gave a little bit of a vox pop soundbite to the Boxcutters crew (Australia's best - only? - TV-themed podcast, run by exceptional people I'm glad I know in real life) and you can listen to it here.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Review: Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus
Dir. Ace Hannah
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 85mins

To coin a phrase as sung by Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville (because, since we’re talking about a movie called Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, why not?); I don’t know much, but I know that if you want to see Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus then you should see it with a large crowd made up on cult movie boffins who delight in watching the weird and the appalling projected on big cinema screens surrounded by other bad movie fans. Much like The Room, a Melbourne cult cinema mainstay, this latest entry in Cinema Nova’s Cult Cravings is designed to be viewed with many people, all of whom are hootin’ and hollerin’ and having a good time.

There’s really not much to say on the film, to be perfectly honest. Everything you can possible hope to know about the movie is right there in the title. I could reel off a list of moments that had me in various stages of laught0er – from mild giggles to full on cackles – but to read about the hilarious extras, the dodgy CGI or the tacky scenes of “sexy science” just isn’t as fun as seeing it for yourself as you wave your “Team Shark!” or “Team Octopus!” flags (yes, actual flags) and cheer when your chosen defender gets the upper hand. Or, you can ditch either of them and go for “Team Seagull”, “Team Gun-Toting Security Guard”, “Team Pelican” or any other team you care to create out of the various throwaway establishment shots that director Ace Hannah includes.


Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus doesn’t have the fascinating back-story, instant rewatchability and all-round bizarre eye-popping badness of The Room, nor was it ever aiming for anything within proximity to quality, but what it has in its favour is a gleeful sensibility that is awakened by being watched with a large group of likeminded cinemagoers. I can’t attest to how it plays on DVD in your own home, but there’s something quite comical about settling down in a plush cinema seat after a few beers to watch a movie in which, very literally, a mega shark and a giant octopus battle it out mano-a-mano. To end this review, let’s take some wise words from Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus’ own leading lady, 1980s pop star Debbie Gibson, and note that the future only belongs to the future itself and the future is Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. Well, for 85 brief minutes it is, anyway. Z-

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus will screen as a part of Cinema Nova's Cult Craving sessions, here in Melbourne, from Boxing Day!

Review: Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels
Dir. Rob Letterman
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: PG
Running Time: 85mins

As I’ve been sitting here trying to type this review, I have come to the realisation that there are in fact many ways to begin a review for Gulliver’s Travels. “It’s good!” is not one of them. But, then again, neither is “it’s bad!” because Gulliver’s Travels defies mere badness and enters a sort of crazy inverted whirlpool, much like the one Jack Black’s Gulliver encounters on the high seas, and enters a parallel universe of bad. It’s bad, but for seemingly completely new and different reasons to any other bad movie I can recall seeing recently. It’s awfulness does not fall on mere bad acting or lazy writing – although there is plenty of both - but instead falls on some unexplained strangeness that doesn’t adhere to any sense of logic on this planet.

It has warmed my heart to know that several other critics have found themselves in my position. Particularly Tara Judah of Liminal Vision, with whom I saw this film and shared a lengthy rambled conversation with after as we both scrambled to explain what we had just witnessed. Questioning the film – and its very existence – seems like a fruitless task, and yet it’s one I keep coming back to. Just why was it made? I know the studio pitch – “It’s Gulliver’s Travels… with JACK BLACK!” – must have been an easy sell, but having seen the film I am quote certain that not one single, solitary person involved in the making of this modern day update was at all interested. The director? Doubtful. The cast? Definitely not. The grips, gaffers and clapper holders? They probably weren’t even aware what movie was being made. The entire affair is a strange and altogether odd concoction, made with little finesse or bother and ending with a finished product that is the strangest movie to come out of mainstream Hollywood since Mamma Mia!

Focusing on part I of Jonathan Swift’s five-part novel from 1726, Rob Letterman’s film wastes no time with things as Gulliver (Jack Black) is sailing away on his adventure a mere 10 minutes into the film. Promptly swept away to the Bermuda to write an article for editor Darcy Silverman (Amanda Peet), Gulliver finds himself and his boat tumbling into an upturned vortex that washes him ashore an island made up of people one twentieth of his size. He’s considered evil, then a hero and then evil again and then some stuff happens with a robot (yes, a robot) and then the movie ends. I'm fairly sure that robot wasn't a part of the novel, yes?


It must be said that the film begins quite nicely with an opening credits scene filmed with tilt shift photography that is fun to watch. It all goes rapidly downhill from there with a prologue sequence of sorts that shows Gulliver being an annoying workplace clown that we’re apparently meant to find endearing. He’s nothing of the sort. The brow-burrowing doesn’t stop there either for Letterman and his writers Joe Stillman and Nicholas Stoller throw about scenes that will surely offend anyone who has even the slightest of desires of entering the world of writing and journalism. After plagiarising a piece of sample writing that his editor is too thick to notice straight away he is sent on a three week (THREE WEEK!) vacation to Bermuda (BERMUDA!) to write a short fluff piece (SHORT FLUFF PIECE!) Of course, “the pay isn’t great,” but when a character getting a three-week vacation to Bermuda as the first assignment in your new career as a travel writer then you know this film isn’t going to be aiming for realism.

Once Gulliver arrives in Lilliput things get even stranger and over the course of the next 70 of the film's mercifully short 85 minute running time they continue to get stranger and stranger. This mystical location of miniature people all dress in Elizabethan garb and yet the character of Horatio (Jason Segal) speaks in modern day terms, ending sentences with “so…” and occasionally lapsing out of his poor British accent. Apparently Gulliver’s popularity makes the citizens of Lilliput ditch their corsets, hoop skirts and frilly shirts for outfits from Supre and Cotton On. Emily Blunt’s Princess Mary goes from looking like her royal character in The Young Victoria to looking like Lindsay Lohan in a ghastly canary yellow dress with black leggings. How Jack Black’s slacker gear inspired that look is perhaps beyond my skills of movie analysis.

And what of Emily Blunt, who turned down a role in Iron Man 2 for this? Nobody within a few square kilometres of this production cares as little about it as Blunt does. I’d be surprised if the blooper reel doesn’t include Blunt accidentally throwing the words “pay check” into her dialogue when she was meant to be reciting dialogue. The only thing on her mind is, clearly, the money. There are scenes where I can swear I saw her daydreaming about a new Porsche mid-sentence! And one moment of particular horror is like a really bad punchline to a depressing career achievement montage where the audience will laugh as Blunt hides under the table. "Boosh" indeed.


And then there’s poor, sad Amanda Peet. Forced to somehow make audiences believe that she would fall for Jack Black and then humiliated by having to dance around like Portia De Rossi doing her chicken impersonation from Arrested Development. The climactic action sequence between Gulliver and Chris O’Dowd’s General Edwards in a giant robot costume is lazy, the 3D – while initially promising – is more or less ditched by the second half, presumably by visual effects artists who found better things to occupy their time with. Like, oh I dunno, eating paper. And then there’s that musical sequence where the cast sings Edwin Starr's “War”. Something tells me Elaine Benes wouldn’t even believe that if I told her.

Throw in the biggest toilet gag every seen, a drunken Catherine Tate seemingly impersonating Fiona Shaw from The Black Dahlia, a dark sense of embarrassment for Black – forced to done a pink, frilly doll costume when he arrives on an island of people even bigger than he – and Prince quotations and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a truly baffling movie going experience. Who green-lit this script? Who on set didn’t think to question anything that was going on (perhaps the copious green screens made it impossible for everyone to know how cartoonish yet cheap it would all end up looking?) and why – just WHY – did anybody think audiences would like these people?

Words can’t truly express how strange Gulliver’s Travels is. I imagine one has to be stoned to appreciate any of it, and yet nobody over the age of 8 would be within the film’s demographic. So unless you, your child or both are stoners I can’t recommend it. I mean, I wouldn’t even recommend it to them, but at least they might get a kick out of seeing Jack Black urinate over a castle. Everyone will probably sit there is shocked disbelief at the clusterfuck of oddities that make up this movie. My head was spinning by the final scene and when the credits began to roll I looked over at my friend and was quite speechless. What had I just watched and just how bad was it? How bad? This bad: F

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Review: TRON: Legacy

TRON: Legacy
Dir. Joseph Kosinski
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: PG
Running Time: 120mins

What is the legacy of TRON? Steven Lisberger’s 1982 original revolutionised special visual effects (it was deemed ineligible by the Academy Awards because they felt its use of computers was “cheating”!) and has been an inspiration for Pixar’s John Lasseter and French dance musicians Daft Punk. 28 years later and we finally get the sequel that comes as technology has finally caught up with the ideas. First time director Joseph Kosinski may have brought TRON into the 21st century, but he also brought along the clunky dialogue, confusing exposition and hokey acting. TRON: Legacy is as sleek and snappy as they come, but the parts are rusty.

Read the rest at Trespass



I honestly wanted to give this higher grade for the visuals and that amazing music score by Daft Punk, because I truly did think it was second-to-none in those areas. The costumes, the art direction, the visual effects? I'd give them all Oscars if I could (beating out Inception, which I think a lot more people will be pulling for) and I think the film would be an easy rewatch because of them. However, I also reckon the story stinks. It stunk in 1982 and it still stinks now.

I think the most apt aspect of TRON: Legacy is that the character of Sam Flynn (son of Jeff Bridges' Kevin Flynn) has absolutely no awe whatsoever at what he is seeing and experiencing. He just seems to shrug his shoulders and go "yeah, okay, this seems right." Like... huh? How can they expect the audience to be blown away by this story of technology's take-over of civilisation if the lead character can't even get all that worked up over it (unless he's shooting a big gun... ugh, GUNS? Guns in the world of TRON? That was the most offensive aspect of it. I hate when sci-fi/fantasy movie resort to using guns, it's like giving up!) In fact, one of the nicer moments was Olivia Wilde's face at the very end. She had awe, he had constipation. C+

Review: Somewhere

Somewhere
Dir. Sofia Coppola
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 97mins

What can one make of Sofia Coppola and Somewhere? Many will criticise her for yet again making a wistful movie about rich and privileged folk, just like Marie Antoinette and Lost in Translation before, filled with beautiful people who have a penchant for staring out of windows as breezy indie pop wails on the soundtrack. And while it can’t be denied that Somewhere (Coppola’s fourth film) is similar in structure to Lost in Translation; there is a striking patience within it and a modern poeticism about it that allows it to cast its own unique beguiling spell.

Read the rest at Trespass



I simply adored this movie. I need to see it again, but right now it sits just below Lost in Translation as my favourite Coppola, but could easily rise. It has an even more bittersweet quality to it than Translation. So my delicate and beautifully help moments. How about that face mask scene? Or the long pan out of Dorff and Fanning beside the pool? Or those final shots of the car? That opening sequence, too, is one of the most - and I use this word in the review - patient ones I can recall of recent films. All but daring people to decide straight away whether they're going to stick with it for not bother.

I mentioned during my Design of a Decade series of decade round-ups that Sofia's "soundtracks have become events in themselves", and Somewhere is a really interesting one. Less floaty indie pop and more mainstream flare. Where else could you ever expect to hear Gwen Stefani's lush "Cool" (with those silky smooth "coo-coo" parts) next to Phoenix's brilliant paean "Love Like the Sunset Part II" next to Bryan Ferry's "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" next to Amerie's "1 Thing"? Excellent stuff yet again, although perhaps not as far-reaching. And, really, points do get deducted for having The Police on there. For shame, Sofia! For shame... A-

Monday, December 13, 2010

Review: Love and Other Drugs

Love and Other Drugs
Dir. Edward Zwick
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: An Eternity

Edward Zwick’s Love and Other Drugs should have taken the title of Emma Kate-Coughlin’s 1996 Aussie Gen X romantic comedy Love and Other Catastrophes for a more apt description of itself. Zwick’s movie is a catastrophe all right! A truly horrendous, offensive and all-round execrable movie-going experience, one of the worst films of the year. Audiences should be cautioned against thinking it’s just another light and fluffy rom-com with attractive stars; it is actually a deeply unsetlling movie.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine

Throughout the rest of my review I label this film a "circus freak show", "incredibly stupid", "offensive", "repulsive", "depressing" and an "excessively vulgar parade of grotesquery" with "one of the worst film characters of all time". And it's all true. Love and Other Drugs is A-W-F-U-L-!


I wrote about four times as many notes during the film as I usually do and most of them can be summed up as "WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE!!!" Because right from the opening scene with Jake Gyllenhaal acting like a tripped out raver in the electronics store, nobody within several kilometres of this movie was acting like anybody remotely human. If I ever came across Anne Hathaway's character I wouldn't feel sorry for her, I'd wanna slap her and tell her to stop being so annoying and self-righteous. Don't even get me started on the brother. Seriously, one of the worst movie characters of all time. The movie still wouldn't be any good without him, but with with him - and so prominently too - it just plunges the film deep down into even more bottom feeding territory. Lowest common denominator type stuff that character is.

I couldn't help but feel as if this was like some strange retro screenplay from 1996 that was written as a way to get Julia Roberts and Richard Gere back together after Pretty Woman, but they turned it down and hid the screenplay in a drawer for 14 years. Hathaway is made up to look exactly like Julia Roberts in 1996 with the hair and the make-up and you can totally see Richard Gere as this "lovable" womanising cad who is not at all womanising, but is in fact disgusting and repulsive. I admit to getting a bit of a silent chuckle out of seeing how many wool knit jumper and overall combination the costume designer would make Anne Hathaway way as she sits around her Lisa Loeb music video apartment listening to the soundtrack of Empire Records. Which, by the way, brings about the issue of these characters' story being so long and yet not one of them even redecorates their apartment once or moves a single piece of furniture. When you hate a movie as much as I do this one you find fault in everything!

It's all just so... ugh. I tempted with giving it an F, but instead I am leaving my grade at a D- because, as I mention in the review, the sexuality is actually refreshingly frank for a Hollywood movie. There are so mystical L-shaped bed sheets here where she is covered up over her breasts and yet he has the sheet delicately placed just above his own naughty bits. Apart from the general "these are two attractive people walking around naked" bonus, it was just nice to see. Alas, the rest of the music is filthy garbage. D-

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Review: Megamind

Megamind
Dir. Tom McGrath
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: PG
Running Time: 95mins

Megamind is a new superhero movie that… wait, another superhero movie? As if audiences hadn’t had enough of those the last few years, here they get to go again. This animated film from the DreamWorks stable (Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon) is not as funny as Despicable Me and not even in the same intergalactic solar system as The Incredibles. What it has in its favour is a lead character that children will probably wish they had a plush toy of. And just in time for Christmas too, aren’t you parents lucky!

Read the rest at Trespass


After the success of How to Train Your Dragon, I was so disappointed to revert back to my curmudgeony DreamWorks Animation ways. Unless their movies are about super cute dragons or neurotic antz then I, apparently, just can't get on their wavelength. Megamind is a bit better than Kung Fu Panda, which I did not care for, but obviously far better than the Shrek/Madagascar trash. C+

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Review: Monsters (Part 2)

Monsters
Dir. Gareth Edwards
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 94mins

It is sometimes easy for a person who sees a lot of films to, from time to time, have a dispirited feeling about the whole thing. It was just earlier this year when I had a horrendous run of movies that seemed to have no end in sight. Each subsequent movie was getting worse and worse and each screening I would attend would involve me clutching on to the arm rest for dear life, hoping that something – anything - would come along and brighten up the cinema screen and send jolts of life through the nerves and cells of my, admittedly quite unevolved, brain. True to form, plenty of fine films came along and 2010 is looking robust and has blossomed with some truly beautiful works of film.

Furthermore, it’s rare that someone such as myself comes across a film that they know truly nothing about. It should come as no surprise to anybody reading this that I spent quite a bit of time on the internet writing about, reading about, discussing and fretting about movies of all various shapes and sizes. The element of surprise is one that is hard to manufacture these days with so many ways of not only knowing something exists, but knowing everything about it, too. We always know who it stars and who directed it, while countless trailers recite audiences the entire plot including the end and tell us, in glaringly obvious ways might I add, what we’re meant to feel about and for the movie before we’ve even seen it.

Sometimes I’m stunned that one of the ever-growing number of blogs, news feeds and websites that feeds the world on the ever-changing day-to-stay status of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (or Part 2, or 4, 6 or 12) hasn’t told the world just who exactly is eating which variety of sandwich from the catering truck on the set in a never-ending cries of “EXCLUSIVE!” in the desperate grab for unique hits and Digg links

So, needless to say, when I say I knew next to nothing about Gareth Edwards’ sci-fi blend Monsters, I was as surprised as anybody. I’ve been in this situation once or twice since I started writing about films and sometimes it can be beneficial and other times it can be a curse (when the film turns out to be nothing close to something I would normally watch – hello Paper Heart), but in this case it was a rousing success. The film’s almost boutique nature works in its favour as it has the ability to act as a sneak attack on a viewer. I implore you to not read the rest of this review if you have not yet seen Monsters since, as I feel I am making abundantly clear, it helps to know as little as possible. Not in a The Sixth Sense or The Others twist sort of way, but in the way that its scenes, its images and its language will have more power when you don’t know what you’re expecting. I sat in the cinema not knowing what spectacle Edwards was going to put on screen next and that’s a feeling to savour.


If you continue to read on without having seen the film then I guess you want to know what it’s all about, don’t you? Well, Monsters is a British independent science-fiction drama that was made on a budget of $500,000, filmed illegally in countries like Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Belize and America and stars a real life married couple whose previous work involves TV guest roles and similarly low budget, independent work that many audiences have probably never heard of. Writer/Director Gareth Edwards didn’t stop at just that, he is also the cinematography, production designer and visual effects programmer. He has made a miraculous filmmaking achievement that ranks as the finest film I have seen in half a decade. A modern sci-fi classic in the making and packs a powerful punch to unsuspecting viewers.

Hyperbole? Feel free to think so, but as I emerged out of the darkened cinema I knew I’d seen something truly special to me. A wondrous work of inspired filmmaking on a pure and searing scale. While a large chunk of the film’s strength – and a platform for near condescending chirps of “how did he do it?!” – relies on knowing that it was made for such a pittance in movie-making circles, yet it’s so much more. I admit to seeing Monsters and wishing I could become a filmmaker. I don’t believe I have the inherent talent to do so, but the reaction of being truly inspired is one I rarely experience. Is this what people felt like after seeing Star Wars for the first time in 1979? Maybe. I don’t mean to claim that Monsters will have the same sort of effect that that blockbuster did once upon a time, but it’s that internal feeling that a film can stir inside you that makes you want to do something that could maybe, just maybe, have a similar effect on someone else. A chain letter of sorts.

Monsters could be labelled a lot of things. Taking an amusing parlour game from Robert Altman’s The Player, it could be classified as all sorts of wacky scenarios. A road movie version of District 9, Before Sunrise in the Mexican jungle, Cloverfield without the awful characters (not so much “wacky”, I guess, as tolerable)… and while I am sure many are creating parallels between, at least, District 9 and Cloverfield, they are really nothing alike. Set the superficial similarities aside and they have no connection whatsoever. And, hey, at least Monsters doesn’t decide to ditch its narrative conceits halfway through and turn into Iron Man in South Africa.

(See what I did there? I played that The Player game again!)

Opening with murky, shaky-cam footage of an alien attack on an unnamed Mexican city, Monsters could very easily have gone down the fake documentary path that has made the aforementioned movies so successful, but it quickly transitions into a traditional two-hander filled more with tender moments, focusing on our own fragility, than moments of excessive CGI alien-blasting action. Following photojournalist Andrew Kaulder, a wonderfully ordinary Scoot McNairy, as he attempts to get his boss’ daughter, the seemingly opaque and yet kind-hearted Samantha Wynden, Whitney Able, injured in an alien attack, out of a Mexican quarantined infection zone and home to safety in America.

As I’ve just noted, there are indeed “monsters” in the film. A British arthouse film may not be the first place you would expect to find them, but they are there so, no, the title isn’t some ironic gag, but, then again, this ain’t no ordinary British arthouse film. There’s nary a gray council estate in sight, hell there isn’t even any Britain in sight! That we don’t get to see much of the monsters, however, harkens back to the days when films of this sort were working with B-grade budgets and not only kept their respective monsters hidden for storytelling purposes, but hid their monsters because they simply didn’t have the money to actually have a monster in every scene. A traditional Hollywood alien invasion film of the ‘00s Monsters most assuredly is not.


Aliens have indeed populated the Earth – or, more specifically, the northern half of Mexico – after an accident involving a satellite returned to Earth carrying stowaway alien lifeforms that inhabited the Mexican jungle upon re-entry. The “zona infectada” is bordered by a giant American-made wall to the north and an obviously threadbare wire fence to the south. In one scene it even appears that some of these fences are only maintained by a guard in a dilapidated tollbooth shack reminiscent of the one in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, so easy would it be to simply walk around rather than wait for the gate to open.

These monsters, amphibious giant squid creatures, appear to be violent, destructive creatures. The more we learn about them the more that proves to be far from the truth, a lie perpetuated by justifiably apprehensive governments and trigger-happy armed forces. These aliens are far from the point of Monsters, however, as Edwards has chosen to focus on the two humans, their dissatisfied and troubles lives back home in America spread about with piecemeal nuggets and the analogous interpretations that audiences can read into the story.

Obvious parallels with the Iraq war and the Mexican immigration epidemic are there for everyone to see, but done with refreshing genre technique that reminds of 1970s horror films reflected on the Vietnam War. If it feels like, perhaps, Edwards is smacking us over the head with his themes – a scene atop of an ancient Mexican temple comes awfully close to doing so – it’s easily forgiven because of how he’s handled everything surrounding them. The story he is telling is such a refreshingly different one that I felt they were messages in service of a film, not the other way around.

Elsewhere there are more issues on the filmmaker’s mind. Global warming, class issues and imperialism are there to be read. And yet throughout all of this Edwards never loses the sight of his film, never letting the issues and the grandstanding get in the way of telling his story.

Beyond the traditional title cards at the film’s beginning explaining the back-story, Edwards uses inventive ways of getting this situation into his viewers’ minds. Notice how McNairy’s Andrew plays soccer with local kids in front of a mural featuring army tanks and the squid monsters battling in the desert, its paint beginning to fade due to inattention and little care. Notice how a character looks at a board showing the spread of the Mexican infected zone with such ambivalence, as if the idea of aliens is so old hat. I personally loved the scene in the house of the Mexican family where the children watch an animated TV show, it’s bright and colourful images like Dora the Explorer, except this show features a young cartoon child placing a gasmask on in a comical fashion upon the arrival of a monster at his home.


And therein lies a great big part of why Monsters is successful at what it's aiming to do. Instead of taking the usual placement of an alien invasion film, putting its characters right in the midst of the initial incursion where gun fire, explosions and frantic running and screaming are the norm (recently released Skyline falls into this same trap that we’ve seen countless times before), it takes place long after when humans have grown to accept them. When asked "why do you stay here?" a taxi driver replies "we have learnt to live with it", while a news report informs how the monsters mate and another mentions how the "annual migration" of the monsters has altered this year. These people have lived with this for so long now that it adds such a fascinating dimension to the events and the characters; obviously strong and resourceful people in spite of some of their actions saying otherwise. This world is no longer “ours” vs “theirs”; it’s simply a co-inhabited way of life. These people seem more put out by a train stopping in the middle of the night than the idea of giant aliens from another world inhabiting Earth. It’s adds a new texture to the tale, one that I can’t recall having seen before.

The pleasures of Monsters is not confined purely with the intellectual. Despite the film’s modest – the say the least – budget (all products used for filming cost a measly $15,000!), Edwards has somehow crafted a film that looks like 100 times its budget. There are images in here that have been all but surgically branded upon my retinas. The first time I saw that boat on the elevated riverbank, as if moved by Fitzcarraldo himself, or the passenger jet brought down by the tentacles of one of the little-seen monsters I actually had a bit of a “moment”. I had to take in the beauty on display and yet right following each of them is another worthy of praise and adoration.

Edwards’ production design is a stunning achievement. A seamless merging of real locations and CGI work, the art direction is faultless. Particular acknowledgement must go to the Mexican festival sequence that becomes a mournful moment with thousands of flames dedicated to the dead, a sobering moment indeed. The closing scenes set in the Texas desert are also fruitful displays of wonderful sets, whether it be the deserted bordertown or the isolated petrol station that acts as the climactic scene’s private stage.

That climax, a beguiling lightshow worthy of Aurora Borealis is a magic feat of visual effects, wonder and beauty. The CGI is used sparingly throughout the film, and usually always done so well that you could have fooled me it was all done inside a computer, but the film’s climax is one of the most poetic and awe-inspiring moments of technical wizardry of the past decade. My mouth dropped agog and as the credits rolled I was speechless. It’s a transcendent moment that raises everything that came before it to an even higher level. Even if the characters of Andrew and Samantha seem suddenly less like they have been, it’s understandable considering what they’ve witnessed. Making the very final seconds even more moving since there is perhaps an even greater movie in what happens next!

Even if I didn’t like everything else about Monsters it would have been entirely worth it for that moment, the scope of which belies the film’s unassuming origins. Don’t expect guns and ammunition clips during this science fiction climax, that’s for sure.

Sure, there are several implausabilities, but I failed to be nudged by them. I am fairly certain there are no ancient pyramids within a few miles of the Mexico/US border, just as I am quite certain that the geography of northern Mexico is not lush rainforests and winding rivers. So too do I question why America spent all this money on a giant concrete reinforced wall – basically their own Great Wall of America – and yet left a giant gaping entry point for the monsters to just waltz on in. But, hey, people forgive bigger in lesser movies with far bigger budgets and more people to comb over every last detail and yet who still get far more wrong than right.

What I appreciated was how Gareth Edwards created such a rich and vivid world, one that has been lived, and with characters that – despite whether you like them or not – feel like they have a past, a present and maybe a future. No, it’s not all that impressive that he made it for half a million dollars (well, it is, but it’s not the reason for such plaudits in my mind), because no matter how many money he had, it still emanates from the mind that has ideas. On the budgetary side of things, however, it is so nice to see a low budget arthouse film that works with images just as much as ideas. They may not be the most radical or complex of issues, but this is a man who knows how to make movies work in all dimensions and with Monsters he has crafted a brilliant one, a sensory overload. I can’t imagine he will make a film better than his debut, but gosh I can’t wait to see him try. A

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 2 of Scream 2 (0:10:32-0:13:50)

In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!



SCENE 2 of Scream 2
Length: 3mins 18secs
Primary Characters: Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Hallie (Elise Neil) and Cotton Weary (Liev Shreiber)
Pop Culture References:
  • None

"Welcome to your lucky day in hell" sing the Eels over the soundtrack of our re-introduction to Sidney Prescott. The sun is shining and she has no reason to expect what's about to go down over the next few days.


I like how they don't make her instantly afraid when a) her telephone rings and b) it's "the voice" on the other end. Unlike other scary movies where the first time we see the returning "final girl" she's a tormented and distraught mess. She just yawns off the "what's your favourite scary movie" gag as if it's a part of life now, and one she doesn't expect to eventuate into malice.

"Who is this?"
"You tell me."


"Cory Gillis, 555-0176."
"Shit!"
"Hot flash, Cory. Prank calls are a criminal offence prosecuted under penal code 653M.
*Cory hangs up*
"Hmm. Hope you enjoy the movie.


Hey look! It's Cotton Weary! I continue to love that Liev Shreiber - now considered a very Respectable Actor - was in these movies. And, hey, there's a cameo by the writer of Scream and Scream 2, Kevin Williamson.

I like how they telegraph that Cotton's side of the story isn't done yet and that he is, right off the bat, a big suspect. I also like that Cotton's obsession with television news programs lead into his character's profession of Scream 3 (one of the better moments of continuity between the films, I say).


Oh hai, Hallie! I really like Hallie. I mean, sure, she's no Tatum Riley, but who is??!?, but any girl that decorates her room like this (there are flamingos on the wall off camera!) must be fun. I've always been a bit sad that Hallie was replaced as the killer in the final act and was, instead, sidled with a loopy, plot hole-riddled death sequence. Oh well. I'll always have her ghetto-on-helium "whaaaaat?" to Sidney.


Why yes, that is Sandy Heddings-Katulka as "Girl in Dorm Hallway", but I'm sure you knew that already, right?


"Where's Randy?"
"He's got film theory this morning."

RANDY'S BACK! Oh man, I was so excited when they said that dialogue. And, of course, he's taking film theory.


The press really are vultures, aren't they?

Meanwhile, I love that two of the actors playing reporters here never went on to many another movie, while the other, Joe Washington, seems to only ever play reporters in movies. Is he a reporter in real life who makes extra income by portraying reporters in movies?

Scream:
Intro, Scene 1 Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14, Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19, Scene 20, Scene 21, Scene 22, Scene 23, Scene 24, Scene 25, Scene 26, Scene 27, Scene 28, Scene 29, Scene 30, Scene 31 Scene 32, Scene 33, End Credits

Scream 2
Scene 1