Anything for his Daughter

Movies: Prisoners

Prisoners, director Denis Villeneuve's first English-language film, is a tense thriller with a weird and inconsistent moral framework.

The film opens on Thanksgiving weekend in Pennsylvania. Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) just took his teenage son hunting and the boy shot his first deer. We learn that Dover is a survivalist who values preparedness in all situations. He is also a religious man, who leads his family--son Ralph, young daughter Anna, and wife (played by Maria Bello, who I strongly dislike--more on that later) Grace--in prayer over a meal.

Setting up Dover as a man with extremely strong convictions, who is also handy with a deadly weapon or a toolbox, is crucial to the storyline. We'll see why in a bit.

The Dovers head over to their neighbors, the Birches, for a Thanksgiving meal. As the parents get tipsy on wine, the two young daughters--Anna Dover and Joy Birch--leave to go back to the Dover's house. But they never come back. After a neighborhood search turns up no sign of the girls, the cops get involved and the parents--particularly Dover--get more and more frantic.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Detective Loki (was Detective Thor on vacation?). Loki follows a lead to an RV that the girls were supposedly seen playing near, and finds a mentally slow young man, Alex Jones (played sympathetically and beautifully by Paul Dano) behind the wheel. After interrogating Alex for 10 hours, Loki is convinced the young man is innocent. Unfortunately, Keller Dover isn't convinced, and when he gets word that Alex Jones is being released from police custody, he decides to take matters into his own hands.

*Spoilers below, y'all*

The plot splits into two story lines: one is a noirish whodunnit with Detective Loki chasing down leads to find the kidnapper of the girls. The other is vaguely torture pornish, with Keller Dover kidnapping Alex Jones and holding him hostage in an old apartment building, and then coercing his neighbor, Franklin Birch (Terrance Howard), into helping him "interrogate" Alex by pummeling the shit out of the poor guy. Dover is absolutely convinced that Alex knows where the girls are, despite the fact that Alex has the IQ of a 10-year-old, and barely understands what is going on. This ruthless conviction is a mirror of Dover's religious belief--and we see him saying the Lord's Prayer before continuing to torture Alex.

I found the use of faith as a motif in Prisoners to be distasteful and bizarre, given the plot. It seems, at least at the beginning, that the audience is being set up to view Keller Dover as a self-righteous hypocrite and violent nutcase who believes that the ends justify the means. I found this disrespectful to people of faith, who (mostly) aren't going to interpret Christianity to mean "torture your mentally slow neighbor by pouring scalding water on him until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit". I figured the film had an anti-Christianity bent that was going to reveal Dover to be the true monster, which I thought was simplistic and stupid.

Well...I was partially correct. In a twist, it turns out that although Alex Jones is indeed innocent, it is his "aunt" (Melissa Leo, invisible behind a gray wig and huge glasses) who has kidnapped the girls. Alex reveals a crucial bit of information that leads Dover to the aunt's house where he attempts (and fails) to rescue the girls. So...the moral of the story is...torture is justified? Sort of? [Note: upon further inspection, I remember that, in fact, another character in the film reveals the information that leads Dover to the aunt's house. So, actually, all that torture led to nothing].

More hilariously, when Dover confronts Alex's aunt, she reveals why she has made a habit of kidnapping children over the years--is a a weird sexual thing? Is she a sadist? No. She (and her late husband) were, and I quote, "waging a war on God". By kidnapping peoples' kids, they cause parents to lose faith and become "monsters like you" she says to Dover. All this because her kid died years ago.

WHAT!?? I'm sorry, but this is the stupidest motive a criminal in a movie has ever had. "Waging a war on God" by kidnapping kids? What kind of cockamamie bullshit is that? Children are abducted all the time in real life, and it usually has something to do with relatives kidnapping kids because of custody arrangements, or psychos taking children/teens for sexual and/or violent jollies (Ariel Castro, anyone?). I found the "big twist" to be laughably stupid and insulting to Christians, atheists, and everyone in between.

It also means that Dover was justified. By torturing his way into solving the mystery (before Detective Loki busts in to actually save the day), Dover is (kind of) a hero. And the bad guy is a woman so anti-Christian, she's taken to kidnapping kids and murdering them to force others to "lose faith". The logic is twisted and just...weird.

So Prisoners is a taut thriller up until the final 20 minutes or so when the whole thing falls apart. Hugh Jackman's character is incredibly unlikeable (and dumb! he spends the movie torturing a guy who obviously suffers from a mental disability) and his complacent neighbors are gutless and go along with his delusions. His wife, played by Maria Bello, spends the entire movie in bed, doped out of her mind to avoid facing the pain of her daughter disappearing. God, did I hate the character of Grace Dover--she is such a weak, stupid woman who has no idea what her husband is up to. And I've been side-eyeing Maria Bello ever since she made a comment about women wanting to be dominated by men when she played the role of another violent man's wife in A History of Violence (she made the comment in an interview when asked about the rape-y sex scene she has with Viggo Mortenson). I hate that shit.

On the plus side, Paul Dano's performance as Alex Jones (ironic name, given the career another Alex Jones has made out of bullshit conspiracy theories) is excellent. He elicits such sympathy, while still coming off as creepy. And Jake Gyllenhaal gives another one of his patented sexy, masculine--yet doe-eyed and introverted--performances as Loki. His performance, and the movie itself, remind me of another creeptastic thriller, Zodiac, also starring Gyllenhaal and much superior to Prisoners.

Finally, and this is a relatively small thing, but the cinematography in the movie is spot on. Gray, wet, November/early December in Pennsylvania. It's the perfect setting for a film about desperation and hopelessness.

Prisoners was entertaining and had some excellent performances, but the film's quite frankly wrong-headed message and the unbelievable motive of the bad guy left a bad taste in my mouth.

3.75 out of 5 stars

Was the film worth watching for a tattooed, buff Gyllenhaal? Imma say yes.

Catching Up

Movies: Elysium, Insidious, House of Pleasures, Behind the Candelabra

Y'all, I have been lazy and remiss in my duties to review all the movies I see in a timely manner. Sometimes I have to wait for the mood to strike to write something; other times, I like to wait until I see a couple similar movies that fall into a "theme". But in any case, I've gotten behind and now it's time to catch up with some mini reviews.


Elysium

I really wanted to like this summer blockbuster starring Ben Affleck's better half, but I wasn't very impressed with it and, having seen it more than a month ago, it hasn't stuck in my memory.

Matt Damon plays Max, an ex-criminal and blue collar worker living on earth circa 2154. Earth is in shambles--polluted, overpopulated, dry, and hot. Earth's wealthiest inhabitants live in an idyllic satellite called "Elysium" which hovers like a star, miles above earth's surface. Other than the beautiful landscape, the biggest advantage residents have on Elysium is technology that can heal all wounds--from a cut to cancer--in seconds. On earth, sick people are desperate to make it to Elysium to attempt to get healed. Like Cubans floating to Florida in shaky life rafts, very few people make it to the satellite without being killed.

After being exposed to high levels of radiation at his factory job, Max looks into black market flights to Elysium. The guy running the flight operation asks Max to help him illegally download information from an Elysian's (Elysite?) brain as payment for a flight to the satellite. To do this, Max is outfitted with a kickass exoskeleton thing that makes him super strong, despite his radiation poisoning, and also plugs into his brain. If he can accost the man who is carrying the information needed and download that info into his own brain, he can pay for a flight to Elysium.

Well, needless to say it doesn't go according to plan. There are a bunch of chase scenes and fight scenes, a subplot with a romance and a sick child, and an absurd ending with a million plot holes.

What fascinates me is that the director, Neill Blomkamp, who directed the apartheid metaphor film District 9 in 2009, chooses to focus more on Matt Damon kicking ass than on the actual message of the film, which is about the wealth gap and unequal access to health care. I wish we could have seen more of Elysium. Most of the scenes shot on the satellite, aside from a few scenes of what appears to be J. Crew models playing croquet, take place in some kind of government compound were a fascistic Jody Foster ruthlessly orders "illegals" from earth to be arrested or shot on sight. I would have liked to see more of the daily life of people living in Elysium as compared to the poor saps stuck on earth.

The ending promises a future of equality for earthlings and Elysians, but I didn't buy it for a second. It comes off as a lazy deus ex machina to a film that wasn't that interesting to begin with. Thumbs up to Matt Damon, who is good with flowing locks (see Behind the Candelabra, below) or with a bald head. Thumbs down the the rest of this forgettable popcorn movie.

3 out of 5 stars

***

Insidious

When I was a kid, I hated vegetables. The concept of a salad--a mixture of all kinds of raw veggies--was absurd to me. Even with dressing and cheese, who could eat that shit? Then, one day in my mid-twenties, I discovered to the surprise of my taste buds that I could eat salad. I liked salad. I craved salad. With the right toppings and dressing, salad was divine.

Likewise, after seeing The Ring in 10th grade, I decided I hated horror films. They weren't for me, and with the exception of some excellent horror movies of the 70's and 80's (Rosemary's Baby and The Shining), I avoided them. Then, one day not long ago, I realized that I liked horror movies! I liked the feeling of being scared and jumping in my seat, grabbing the arm of my (preferably male) companion. Now, I actually seek scary and gory films out.

My point with this analogy is two-fold: first, you never stop growing. If I could learn to eat salad and watch scary movies in my twenties, who knows the awesome things I'll do/be into in my thirties. Bring it. Second: Insidious, directed by James Wan, is both pants-shittingly terrifying and so, so fun and inventive.

In less capable hands, the plot of Insidious might come off as pretty stupid: a family moves into a new house and the young son hits his head and goes into a coma. Really freaky shit starts to happen and it turns out that the kid is an astral projector: his soul can leave his body as he sleeps and travel to supernatural dimensions. While his body is in a coma, his soul is stuck in this place called "the Further". Ghosts and demons and all sorts of creepy crawlies are using the kid as a lifeline to get back to this dimension. All of this is explained neatly to the parents (Rose Byrne and Patrick "Sexy Dad" Wilson) by a concerned psychic (Lin Shaye).

Like I said, the plot COULD have been absurd and awful, but in Wan's hands it is creative and different than most other haunted house or demonic possession films. And it's a great excuse to feature some truly freaky ghouls inhabiting "the Further", which Wan envisions as a nightmarish shadow world that faintly resembles the real world.

There's something to scare everyone here: creepy children, jump scares, haunted houses, possession--whatever floats your boat, Insidious has it. I'm not surprised they're making a sequel.

Although some critics have claimed Wan's recent film, The Conjuring, is more frightening than Insidious, I found this movie to push my terror buttons a lot harder. And I watched it on my TV in the middle of a sunny afternoon.

5 out of 5 stars

***

House of Pleasures

I wanted to wait to review the French film House of Pleasures until after watching another movie, Sleeping Beauty (not the Disney film, but a movie about a young woman who lets paying customers play with her sexually as she sleeps). I could have had a prostitution-themed review. But alas, I haven't gotten around to watching Sleeping Beauty yet.

House of Pleasures is a visually stunning and emotionally arresting film set at the turn of the 20th century in a Parisian bordello. It follows the high class ladies of the evening who live and work there over the course of a year or so. This includes one lady who is brutally disfigured by a customer for a reason that is never revealed. When the camera abruptly cuts to this woman, screaming and bloody, it's outrageously disturbingly (certainly more so than any of the sex acts the audience is privy to).



In addition to this act of violence, we witness other problems of this house of ill repute: the rent is going up and the Madame of the house isn't sure she will be able to keep paying the bills; one lady contracts syphilis and the man who gave it to her abandons her; romantic intrigues abound; a young, new girl joins the house...all of these stories feel both mundane and voyeuristic, given the setting.

And what a beautiful setting it is. The house and the bedrooms are gorgeous. The women are all lovely to look at. The lingerie is a modern day burlesque dancer's wet dream. But all that beauty covers over a life of difficulty and occasional degradation. Not all the men who pay for the ladies' services and attention are monsters, but the women pretty much have to go along with what they ask for in order to continue receiving their business. When the disfigured woman is offered a tidy sum to go to a decadent party where she is treated kindly, but also gawked at as a freak, it's hard to tell whether this is the kindest treatment she can expect to receive.

Another focus of House of Pleasures is the ladies friendship with one another. There are no catfights or hair pulling. Instead, the women build each other up as the world around them tries to tear them down. The film doesn't glorify prostitution and brothels--rather, it attempts to give an even-handed glimpse into a secret world.

5 out of 5 stars

***

Behind the Candelabra

Supposedly Steven Soderbergh's final film, Behind the Candelabra is the (partial) story of Liberace's secret life. It focuses on the years 1977-1986 (when Liberace passed away from AIDS) and much of the story is shown from the perspective of one of Liberace's younger lovers, Scott Thorson (Matt Damon, with fabulous hair). Liberace was nearly 60 years old when he "hired" Thorson as his "companion". Thorson was a teenager (frankly, Damon is way to old to play Thorson at his real age). And Michael Douglas, giving a bravura performance as the Showman himself, plays Liberace as the horny old goat he was. When Scott wakes up after (chastely) sharing a bed with Liberace to find the old man watching him as he sleeps, it really made me want to scream and vomit simultaneously. I guess I'm a little ageist!

Behind the Candelabra shows the absolute excesses that marked Liberace's private life--from his outrageously expensive furs to his palatial home. It also shows his controlling and downright freakish behavior toward Thorson (and, presumably, his other lovers). My favorite part is when he convinces Thorson to get plastic surgery to look more like Liberace himself. It's like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo times a million. I wanted to scream "MOM!!" and hide under the couch. This movie had parts that were scarier than fuckin' Insidious!

Soderbergh doesn't preach--he leaves it up to the audience to judge. But Liberace comes off as the flamboyant, narcissistic nut we would all assume him to be. And man, is it fun to watch Douglas ham it up. There is some indication that Liberace and Thorson really loved each other, and that very well may be true. The film is based on Thorson's book, so there is probably some bias coloring the story, but oh well. I'm not an expert on Liberace, so I can't speak to the factuality of the film. But it is quite entertaining with some excellent (and, let's face it, pretty brave) performances by Douglas and Damon. Douglas especially gives a vanity-free performance as a man whose life was ruled by vanity. That's a tall order and he pulls it off quite nicely.

4 out of 5 stars