Afraid of the Dark

Movies: Dark Horse

There are movies out there that are difficult and challenging. Films like Schindler's List, Hotel Rwanda Midnight Express, and Brokeback Mountain are sad, and show us a side of the human condition that we might not like or want to see. But they have nobility in their sadness. They're like vegetables: they don't always taste great, but we know they are good for us.

And then there are movies that are downright hostile. They are misanthropic and their central thesis is usually something to the effect of: "people are shit." In fact, the characters might express this very sentiment out loud.

The films of Todd Solondz fall into this category--hostile, ugly cinema. I've seen five Solondz films now, and I know that when he is at his best (as he is with Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse), his films are darkly humorous and outrageous, like less campy John Waters movies. His films make you hate characters you should sympathize with (the hapless Dawn Weiner in Dollhouse) and sympathize with characters you should be disgusted by (Dylan Baker's sensitive portrayal of a pedophile suburban dad in Happiness is haunting).

But when Solondz is at his worst, as I feel he is with his latest film, Dark Horse, his films are downright boring. Like Abe, the boorish main character, Dark Horse is grating, rude, and annoying. But it's also bizarre, with numerous dream sequences and fantasies that made it difficult to tell what was real and what was in Abe's twisted, childish mind. Also, and this might sound sick, but I didn't find Dark Horse dark enough. Whereas Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse seem to come from a dank, dark pit in the recesses of the human psyche--a place where shame, fear, and taboo hide away--Dark Horse comes more from a smelly, fluorescent-lit dentist's waiting room in small town middle America. Horrible pop music plays in the background. The decor is tacky. The people there look like they really don't want to be there. But it's not like, awful. It's just bad.


Dark Horse concerns a childish, thirty-something man, Abe, who lives with his parents, works (or rather, avoids working) for his dad (Christopher Walken, very understated here), collects toys, and believes that all the good things in life were handed on a platter to his smarter, more attractive younger brother. Abe's most irritating characteristic is that he blames everyone else for his lack of success, while he is clearly a lazy oaf.

Abe meets a woman, Miranda (Selma Blair), at a wedding and proposes to her a week after meeting her. Miranda is severely depressed and seems to cling to the idea of marriage and babies--with someone, anyone--as the answer to her problems. She reluctantly, kinda sorta goes along with Abe's plans. But, as happens in all Solondz films, things eventually go to shit and lead to a very strange yet also very underwhelming ending.

Dark Horse has some good qualities in spite of its overall unimpressiveness. All the actors excel in their roles. Selma Blair is especially good as a woman who is so depressed, she looks like she hasn't slept in weeks. Jordan Gelber is game to play the entitled, insufferable Abe, and does a wonderful job expressing the rage and disappointment coursing beneath Abe's sweaty surface.

There are also some pretty funny moments, such as when Abe tries to return an opened toy to Toys R' Us, only to be rebuffed by the faux-polite employee working there.

In the end, Dark Horse isn't a total loss. It's just not that great. I can only recommend it to fans of Todd Solondz and filmgoers who like very dark, uncomfortable comedies.

2.5 out of 5 stars

2012: The Best (So Far)

Entertainment website AV Club has compiled their picks for the best movies of 2012 (so far). While I agree with most of their choices, others leave me baffled (Haywire? Really?), so I've been inspired to look back at my reviews since January and see which movies impressed me at the time and still stick with me now.

Overall, 2012 has been one of the best years for good films in a long time (in my opinion). While I had trouble coming up with my "Best Of" lists in 2011 and 2010 due to the dearth of films that I felt went above and beyond, I have a feeling that there will be an overabundance of great films by the end of 2012.

So far, here are the movies I enjoyed the most/think are the best:

5. Magic Mike
Think and say what you will about this man-candy filled movie, but Magic Mike has garnered good-to-excellent reviews and I can say that it was one of the most surprising (and fun!) movie experiences I've had this year. The genius casting of Matthew McConaughey as the icky/sexy Dallas and Channing Tatum as Magic Mike himself elevates the movie from merely two hours of dude-butts to an actual story about camaraderie between testosterone-filled men and the calling to be more and do more in life than people think you're capable of.
4.5 out of 5 stars

4. A Separation
Technically, A Separation came out at the end of 2011, but it didn't reach my local arthouse theatre until 2012. The family drama is tense, but never melodramatic. It's highly relatable, and like in real life, finds humor in even the saddest and most confusing situations. The acting is wonderful and natural and the script is infused with realistic dialogue and plot twists.
5 out of 5 stars

3. A Dangerous Method
The story of the relationship between the fathers of modern psychiatry, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, is an interesting story in and of itself. Mix in Sabina Spielrein, a patient, lover, and protege of Jung's, and you've got a downright fascinating (and sexy. and smart) film. Directed by David Cronenberg, a master of psychological and body horror, A Dangerous Method explores mental illness, masochism, hysteria, friendship, and psychology. I couldn't look away from the screen.
5 out of 5 stars

2. The Cabin in the Woods
This incredibly twisty, funny, and smart horror-comedy was a huge surprise for many viewers. It starts like hundreds of other schlock-horror films: five college students vacation at an isolated and creepy cabin in the woods. But then the twists begin and don't stop until the final minutes of the movie. Trust me, you won't be able to guess what's really going on.
5 out of 5 stars

1. Moonrise Kingdom
Beautiful, whimsical, emotional, funny, humane. All words to describe the films of Wes Anderson. Moonrise Kingdom is his latest, and one of his best. It's about two "troubled" kids who run away together and the far more troubled adults who try to find them. It's also about how kids can fall in love like adults and adults can act like children while trying to control their own and others' lives.
5 out of 5 stars

Honorable mentions: Damsels in Distress, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Shame, Pariah, 21 Jump Street --all 4 out of 5 stars

Myriad of Movies

Movies: Headhunters, Sound of My Voice, Brave, and the Studio Ghibli movies

I've seen a ton of movies lately, and I am finally catching up on reviewing some that I saw weeks, even months ago. So here is a collection of short reviews.

Headhunters


Directed by Morten Tyldum, Headhunters is an exhilarating, if forgettable, heist film based on the book by bestselling Norwegian author Jo Nesbo.


Headhunters concerns one Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie, who looks like a young Christopher Walken). Roger is a headhunter for large companies, meaning he discovers, interviews, and recommends new talent to big businesses. Roger is also 5'6'' and married to Diana, a statuesque blonde with brains to spare. Roger is clearly insecure about his height and the fact that he's married to a bombshell, so he tries to compensate by showering Diana with all the material possessions she could dream of, including her own art gallery. But Roger's day job doesn't pay for this luxury: Roger moonlights as a art thief. When he gets entangled with a sociopathic Clas Greve, a man he is supposed to "headhunt" for a company, Roger's world comes tumbling down and he ends up running for his life. Greve will stop at nothing to hunt Roger down.

Headhunters is a fast-paced, violent thriller. I enjoyed it, but it didn't stick with me (after all, it took me about 6-8 weeks to get around to reviewing it). I would recommend it to people who enjoyed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and similar movies.

3.5 out of 5 stars

***

Sound of My Voice


Sound of My Voice is also a thriller, but a much less action-packed one. The premise of the film is fascinating: a journalist and his girlfriend decide to go undercover to check out a woman who claims to be from the future and the cult that is slowly building around her. Will they be able to bust her as a fraud, or will the get sucked in and "go native" in the process? Sound of My Voice keeps you guessing throughout. At times, it seems as though Lorna (the girlfriend) is starting to genuinely believe that this woman is telling the truth. At other times, it seems as though Peter (the journalist) is the more bedazzled of the two. And in the end, the movie makes a blatant point to keep you guessing. It's definitely a tease of a movie, but an enjoyable one. There are also great performances all around, especially up-and-comer Brit Marling as Maggie, the leader of the cult.

4 out of 5 stars

***

Brave


Pixar's latest film finally puts a human girl at the center of its plot. Princess Merida, a fiesty, red-headed, bow and arrow-toting 16-year-old, lives in what appears to be a Disney-fied version of Medieval Scotland. She is about to be married off to one of the first born princes of another clan and she is none to happy about it. Unfortunately, her mother insists that she must marry in order to continue the family line. Merida goes off in search of a way to "change her destiny", which leads to unexpected consequences and a twist I genuinely did not see coming. Even though Brave is formulaic in the sense that "everyone learns a lesson" in the end, it really is a heartfelt movie and with a very different tone than most people expect from an animated film. It's definitely worth checking out.

4 out of 5 stars

***


The films of Studio Ghibli:

Recently, the local arthouse theater in my area did a month long festival dedicated to the Japanese Studio Ghibli, featuring the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, among others. I was a little skeptical at first, since I've seen a number of Miyazaki films (namely, Spirited Away, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, and Howl's Moving Castle) and I haven't particularly cared for them--which is sacrilege in the world of cinephilia, I know.

But I went ahead and gave some different Ghibli films a try. Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro were both adorable and easy to watch. Kiki's Delivery Service focuses on the coming of age of a young witch who uses her ability to fly to become a delivery girl for a bakery. My Neighbor Totoro is a little more heart-tugging, with two young sisters at the center of the film. The girls and their father move out to the country while their mother is recovering from an unspecified illness. Despite their difficult circumstances, the girls (voiced by Elle and Dakota Fanning) are unfailingly optimistic, playful, and imaginative. They end up making friends with magical creatures in the forest, who help them deal with the fear and uncertainty of having a sick mother.

Whisper of the Heart was a more forgettable film about a school girl who dreams of becoming a writer and also finds herself falling for a rather annoying young man who wants to become a violin maker. The story line is a bit more mature than Kiki's and Totoro and deals with the difficulties of growing up and discovering one's calling.

The Cat Returns was much more fun. When Haru, a teenage girl, saves a cat from getting run over, she is rewarded in a very unusual way: the cat begins speaking to her and asks her to join him in the land of cats and marry him! Before Haru can decline, she is whisk(ered) away to a fantastical land and held captive by the Cat King, whose son is the one she saved and the one she is being forced to wed. With the help of the Baron, a statue of a cat that comes to life, and a grouchy, corpulent cat named Muta, Haru tries to escape before it's too late.

And finally, I saw an unbelievably bizarre film called Pom Poko. Pom Poko is about a community of shapeshifting raccoons whose land is being forested so that the local city can expand into the once densely wooded forest. The raccoons decide to impede this destruction by pretending to be ghosts and demons to scare away the humans. Ultimately, they lose the battle and decide to adapt and either live among the humans, or in what's left of the woods. You would think this movie could get its point across in 80 minutes. You'd be wrong. Pom Poko is two hours long and very repetitive. The raccoons try to foil the humans and fail. They try again and fail. They try again and fail. They try again and fail. They try once more and fail. They admit defeat. The end.

Oh, and they also use their balls as weapons. Yes. Their testicles. As weapons. Which is really the only thing that makes this bizarre movie worth watching.



"They used their testicles as weapons in a brave kamikaze attack"
          ~actual line from Pom Poko






Kiki's: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Totoro: 4 out of 5 stars
Whisper: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Cat Returns: 4 out of 5 stars
Pom Poko: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Friends and Lovers

Movies: Your Sister's Sister

Warning: This is a spoiler-heavy post. If you haven't seen Your Sister's Sister yet and don't want to be spoiled, please stop reading!

Your Sister's Sister is a great movie up until the last 20 minutes, during which it resolves one of the central conflicts in a manner so laughably unrealistic and 'kumbaya' that I think I actually was laughing out loud in the theater. Which sucks, because everything that led up to the conclusion was great!

YSS is the latest film by Lynn Shelton, the little-known, very talented director of Humpday. Like Humpday (which is awesome--go see it now), YSS centers on relationships and sexual politics. YSS stars Mark Duplass in an excellent performance as Jack, a cute, neurotic 30-something who is still mourning the death of his brother a year later. Jack's best friend, Iris (Emily Blunt, also giving a great performance), sends him out to her family's isolated, unplugged vacation home to relax and "think about his life". Assuming he'll be alone, Jack is surprised to run into Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), Iris' half-sister, at the cabin. Hannah just walked out of a 7 year long relationship with another woman and is drinking her troubles away in the middle of the night. Jack joins her and...one thing leads to another (they bone...very awkwardly).

When Iris unexpectedly shows up, Jack pleads with Hannah not to tell Iris what happened. Once Iris reveals to Hannah that she is secretly in love with Jack, Hannah agrees not to share their secret. But...there's a catch.

When watching the trailer (which reveals the above conflict) for YSS, I kept thinking, "So what? He drunkenly slept with the lesbian half-sister. This really doesn't mean than Jack and Iris can't be together. I mean, it was a one night stand, right?"

Well, once Hannah reveals her desire to have a baby at any cost and Jack suspiciously digs up the used condom and finds out that Hannah poked holes in it and never planned to tell him (!!!), I realized that damn, that is a good twist!

So now we have Iris in love with Jack and vice versa, but a possible baby on the way due to Hannah's unconscionable manipulations. I was genuinely shocked and outraged on Jack's behalf. That has got to be some kind of sexual abuse, right? JESUS.

To this point, YSS is great: great acting all around, a compelling plot, and a crazy twist. But then, once all the characters know about Iris and Jack's secret love for each other, the fact that Jack slept with Hannah, and the fact that Hannah is possibly carrying Jack's child...

...We get a 10 minute montage of the characters walking in nature, riding their bikes, cooking dinner, and you know, thinking about what transpired. And then, Iris tells Hannah that she wants to help raise the baby if there is one. And Jack returns to the cabin, after storming off in a rage a few days earlier, and says that he loves Iris and also wants to help raise the baby if there is one.

The second to last scene is a freakin' GROUP HUG between the characters, in which, I shit you not, Jack says to Hannah, "Get over here you sperm stealer!" before enveloping her in his forgiving arms.

WHAT?!

Ok, no. Just...no. I'm cool with unrealistically happy endings in Disney movies and movies like Juno and Moonrise Kingdom that take place in TweeWorld as opposed to the "real world". But YSS is supposed to be this super-realistic movie about human interactions. And, to me, Hannah is a freakin' criminal! Her lie is so huge and has such life-altering consequences for Jack, that the concept of the whole thing being forgiven and accepted in two or three days (along with a mopey montage) is laughable.

Yes, sometimes one night stands result in a baby. But usually not through premeditated sabotage of birth control.

Yes, I could conceive of someone sabotaging someone else's birth control and the other person forgiving them. But not so easily and flippantly as in the end of YSS.

What if the roles were reversed? What if Jack wanted a baby and poked holes in the condom? Hannah would, in all likelihood, press criminal charges. At the very least, she'd have an abortion. Not such a rosy ending there.

So, to reiterate. Your Sister's Sister is a solid, very good film until the last 20 minutes. I could not buy the ending, and was actually kind of mad about it. Normally, I'd give the movie 4 or 4.5 stars, but I must knock it down because the ending was so outrageous.

3.5 stars out of 5

Kingdom of Childhood

Movies: Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson is a director you either hate or love. His meticulously framed and designed sets with either warm your little OCD heart, or make you roll your eyes at the cutsie-wootsieness of it all. His deadpan, funny-because-it's-overly-earnest humor will make you smirk and chuckle, or make you ask "Why is this funny?"

Those of you who don't care for Wes Anderson: I get it. He's a director with a specific vision, and if that vision, or the way he expresses it, doesn't appeal to you, that's totally cool. But this review isn't for you.

Because, to me, Wes Anderson is one of the greatest living directors and Moonrise Kingdom, his latest exploration of innocence and connection, is a swoony fantasy and his best film since The Royal Tenenbaums.

Anderson tugs at the heartstrings in a subtle, barely perceptible way. In The Life Aquatic, when Steve Zissou and his crew take his submarine to find the creature that killed his best friend, and he finally comes face to face with the behemoth, I got choked up. In so many ways, The Life Aquatic is a silly movie about fantastical undersea creatures and a narcissistic Jacques Cousteau-like character out to find the shark that ate his friend. But damn, it has some poignant moments that come out of nowhere.

Rushmore, though more obviously melancholy, is similar. Beneath the sarcastic, anti-humor humor ("These are O.R. scrubs." "Oh. Are they?") is a really moving story about an outsider trying to deal with the death of his mother, first love, and finding his place in the world.

Moonrise Kingdom is on par with the longing tone of Rushmore. It's about an orphan, Sam Shakusky (imagine a 12 year old, outdoorsy Max Fischer), who escapes his troop of Khaki Scouts on the isolated New Penzance island in 1965. Sam has a plan to run away with local girl, Suzy Bishop, who dresses like a French chanteuse even though she's actually an American preteen who loves library books.

Sam and Suzy only make it so far before the grown-ups in their lives--Suzy's parents (Frances McDormand and Bill Murray), the local chief of police (Bruce Willis), and the earnest Scoutmaster Ward (Edward Norton), as well as a group of surprisingly violent Khaki Scouts--start to search high and low for them. All Suzy and Sam want to do is kiss and dance to French pop music on the beach, but they are inevitably dragged back into the real, and far less appealing, world by parents and guardians who just don't understand.

As usual, Anderson builds the movie to look like a dollhouse, with hundreds of tiny details in each frame, and with each shot perfectly centered. This is especially true during the scenes at Suzy's house: the orderly shots highlight the emotional chaos roiling underneath. The colors are exquisite and the costumes (at least Suzy's collared dresses and Sam's badge-bedecked scout uniform) are wonderful. Anyone familiar with Anderson's films knows he's as much a creator of fantastic worlds as George Lucas or Peter Jackson. Instead of creating Middle Earth or Endor, Anderson creates New Penzance Island. And for my money, I'd rather live on New Penzance.

Underneath Suzy and Sam's struggles to be together and to find their place in the world (they're both described as "troubled" by the adults around them), is a levity and optimism that is common in Anderson films. Things tend to work themselves out in the end in Anderson's tidy universes, and so although we feel genuine fear for Suzy and Sam, we also know that they'll be ok.

I think my favorite moment in Moonrise Kingdom is when Sam warns Suzy that he might wet the bed while they share a tent. He says, "I don't want you to be offended." Suzy takes his hand and says tenderly, "I would never be offended." This got a big "awwww" from the audience I watched it with. Only in Wes Anderson's movies do 12 year olds have more maturity and understanding than adults. What a world it would be if it were ours.

5 out of 5 stars

Moves Like Mike

Movies: Magic Mike

When I first heard about Magic Mike some months ago, I thought it sounded like the stupidest movie ever. From the dumb title (Magic Mike? C'mon) to the premise (male strippers? *eye roll*), I figured it would be a less funny version of The Full Monty.

So when a friend suggested that a bunch of us girls go out and see it, I agreed with some hesitation. By this point, I knew that Joe Manganiello (aka Alcide from True Blood) was in it, and he's hot, so I thought that would make it enjoyable. Plus, seeing a movie about male strippers practically screams "Girls Night Out", so I figured it might be a fun adventure even if the movie was cheesy.

...Well, I now stand corrected. Magic Mike is one of the best movies I've seen this summer. Or even this year. And it's not just good in a silly, fun way. It's good in a good way.


Directed with gentle artistry by Steven Soderbergh and starring/produced by heartthrob Channing Tatum, Magic Mike is based loosely on Tatum's own short-lived experience as a dancer/stripper in Tampa after dropping out of college in the late 1990's. As far as I could tell, Tatum does his own dancing in the movie and daaaayuuumm, this guy can move! Tatum plays the titular Mike--30 years old, works construction during the day, strips at night, and dreams of being a custom furniture designer (once he finds a bank that won't turn him down for a loan on account of his terrible credit).

You can tell right off the bat that despite Mike's crazy lifestyle (his first scene is waking up with two women in his bed--one of which is the tart, funny Olivia Munn, playing a bisexual grad student), he yearns for something more. He's a smart guy--not to mention charming and good-looking--and he's savvy enough not to get sucked too deeply into the grimy underbelly of stripping (i.e. selling drugs and/or ODing).

At his day job, Mike meets Adam (Alex Pettyfer), a young, stupid kid who is drifting through life, sleeping on his sister's couch, and trolling Craigslist for jobs. One night, Mike takes Adam to the club he dances at and introduces him to the club's somewhat-but-not-entirely sleazy owner, Dallas (Matthew McConaughey, in the role he was born to play). When one of the strippers passes out backstage and can't perform, it's suddenly Adam's (nicknamed "The Kid") time to shine! Mike pushes him onstage and he clumsily disrobes to a remix of "Like a Virgin". The crowd goes wild.

It's relatively predictable from here on out. At first, The Kid looks up to Mike as a friend and even big brother. Mike flirts with The Kid's intelligent, hardworking, and uptight sister, Brooke, who is concerned for his brother and seemingly impervious to Mike's charms. But after a while, the steady flow of money, drugs, and women goes to The Kid's head, and he becomes involved in that seedy dark side of the stripper lifestyle. Unlike Mike, The Kid is too stupid and immature to resist. And I don't say "stupid" flippantly: I'm not sure if Pettyfer meant to play The Kid this way, or if he's just a bad actor, but The Kid always looks and acts like he has very little going on upstairs.

After a series of drug and money related mishaps, Mike's burgeoning romance with Brooke is on the rocks and his own sense of independence and desire to make something more of himself is challenged by Dallas's plans to move the male revue to Miami. Mike is forced to figure out how to "man up" and decide if easy money and women mean more to him than developing a relationship with someone and working to achieve his actual dreams.

It sounds like a mortality tale and, yeah, it kind of it. The filmmakers take a relaxed approach to sex, but they portray drugs as unequivocally evil. Especially getting involved with the drug trade. But Magic Mike isn't an after school special. While the strippers have their issues, they also have real camaraderie and friendship. Even the villains in the film aren't two-dimensional caricatures. At the end of the day, most of the "bad guys" just want to make money, legally or illegally.

Mike is no saint, and the film ends without any kind of cheesy epilogue where we see him get his life together and realize his dreams. It ends with a promise that he is seriously thinking about getting his life together and taking the steps to realize his dreams. But it's actually more rewarding to see an average guy better himself in small ways than watch some fake Hollywood plot where the heroes and villains are drawn in black and white and the good guy gets exactly what he wants in the end.

Magic Mike is a great summer movie: it's relaxed, it's fun, there are hot guys in it, and so on. Just as Magic Mike himself sees no shame in stripping and partying, but also wants to be and do something more; Magic Mike the film has no shame in being silly and sexy, but also aims for something a little higher than what it already is.

4.5 out of 5 stars