2020 - June
RANKING ALL FILMS:
01. Seven (1995) 4/4
02. Point Blank (1967) 3.5/4
03. Payback - Theatrical Cut (1999) 3/4
04. Copycat (1995) 3/4
05. A Simple Favor (2018) 2.5/4
06. Getting Away with Murder (1996) 2/4
07. Payback - Director's Cut (1999) 2/4
08. Audrey Rose (1977) 2/4
09. Have Mercy on Us All (2007) 2/4
10. The Trigger Effect (1996) 1.5/4
11. Whiteout (2009) 1.5/4
12. I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) 1.5/4
13. The Burning (1981) 1.5/4
14. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) 1/4
15. Patient Zero (2018) 1/4
16. My Soul to Take (2010) 1/4
01. Seven (1995) 4/4
02. Point Blank (1967) 3.5/4
03. Payback - Theatrical Cut (1999) 3/4
04. Copycat (1995) 3/4
05. A Simple Favor (2018) 2.5/4
06. Getting Away with Murder (1996) 2/4
07. Payback - Director's Cut (1999) 2/4
08. Audrey Rose (1977) 2/4
09. Have Mercy on Us All (2007) 2/4
10. The Trigger Effect (1996) 1.5/4
11. Whiteout (2009) 1.5/4
12. I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) 1.5/4
13. The Burning (1981) 1.5/4
14. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) 1/4
15. Patient Zero (2018) 1/4
16. My Soul to Take (2010) 1/4
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- DirectorRégis WargnierStarsJosé GarciaLucas BelvauxMarie GillainA modern-day Parisian town crier gradually learns that someone is using him to give cryptic warnings of a plague outbreak in the city.03-06-2020
Le Guern (Olivier Gourmet), an out-of-work actor, a moody and show-offy fellow (as all actors in movies are), decides to revive an old tradition in order to attract attention to himself and earn a few bob. Every morning, in a small ancient square which is supposedly the dead centre of Paris, he, with his loud, booming, theatrical voice, stands and reads news articles and ads (personal and otherwise), becoming, in fact, a modern-day town crier. A great character director with an eye for the dichotomies of tradition and modern life such as Kiarostami or Ozu could have made a great movie just from that premise alone, but "Have Mercy on Us All" takes a wholly different and more predictable approach. Namely, Le Guern's ads, at first harmless in-jokes and ads for local businesses, become more and more threatening which catches the eye of Herve (Michel Serrault), a retired classics professor who now runs a halfway house. Herve recognises the messages as translations of an 11th-century plague diary and predicts that someone out there is trying to warn people that a plague is coming. At the same time, the depressive inspector Adamsberg (José Garcia) is investigating a case of apparent vandalism. Someone's drawn crosses on all doors of an apartment building bar one. At first, his colleagues are telling him to drop the case and that there's nothing in it, but his gut is telling him otherwise especially when he learns that the four-point cross drawn on the doors is an old good-luck charm that is said to protect the house from the plague. Soon, Adamsberg and Herve's investigations meet and when a series of corpses apparently killed by the plague show up, it becomes obvious they are looking for the same culprit.
"Have Mercy on Us All" is an unusual career move from director Régis Wargnier best known for torrid period melodramas. Not that "Have Mercy on Us All" doesn't have its melodramatic moments but it is, on the whole, a distinctly low-key affair. There are no grand set-pieces, little to no violence, and not a trace of any horror atmosphere you'd expect in a film such as this. The investigation plods along like torn out from a police procedural TV series with all the false turns and interrogations you'd expect, the murder scenes are fleeting and framed in darkness, and the final revelation disappointingly small-scale. Laurent Dailland's cinematography is quite dull with its one-note realistic bleakness, and Wargnier's direction is essentially style-less. A touch of Argentoesque atmosphere and operatic grandness might have made this dullish "policier" at least fun to watch but Wargnier seems to be too busy trying to untangle the needlessly complicated plot in order to deal too much with stylistic flourishes. The screenplay, written by five writers and based on a novel by Fred Vargas, is messy and unfocused frequently changing protagonists only to then completely forget about them. Le Guern, a major character in the first half of the film, walks out of a scene midway through and is then only seen in the background of scenes. In fact, only Adamsberg seems to be a constant presence which is unfortunate since he's the film's most cliched and least interesting character. The divorced cop who drinks too much and has an anger problem stereotype has been around since the 1930s and José Garcia fails to put a novel twist on it, instead playing Adamsberg with a constantly sullen expression and an unshaven face. Le Guern and Herve are more interesting characters but the film barely gives them any room to develop in favour of its increasingly listless plot twists.
"Have Mercy on Us All" had potential with its Umbero Eco-style plot and unusual central premise, but it is all sadly wasted due to Wargnier's dull direction and a confused, overly-complicated plot. The film is watchable, at times even entertaining, but only on the level of a middling episode of "CSI". The only aspect of the film deserving of any praise is the excellent score from Patrick Doyle, a man who's made more than a few bad films enjoyable to watch. His score is both beautiful and exciting, two characteristics lacking in the rest of the movie.
2/4 - DirectorPaul FeigStarsAnna KendrickBlake LivelyHenry GoldingStephanie is a single mother with a parenting vlog who befriends Emily, a secretive upper-class woman who has a child at the same elementary school. When Emily goes missing, Stephanie takes it upon herself to investigate.03-06-2020
A kind of anti-mumblecore film movement (if you can call it that) seems to have developed in the Hollywood mainstream over the 2010s. I'm referring primarily to the films by Paul Feig and Judd Apatow which tend to be rambling, raunchy, at least 30 minutes too long, and intently focused on attractive middle-class women. And while the independently filmed stories of working-class teenagers are scooping up all the awards and critical love, Feig and Apatow reign at the box office. I can't say I'm a fan of their films. They always get talented people to appear in them and they are fairly often genuinely funny but the two-hour runtimes tire me out and the over-use of improvisation makes them seem formless and, well, rambling. "A Simple Favor", Paul Feig's adaptation of Darcey Bell's novel fits neatly into that description. Its premise hooked me, I loved its two leads, and I laughed out loud several times, but, boy, was I checking my watch in the third act.
The film focuses on two very different mothers, both of whom have young kids in pre-school. One is Stephanie (Anna Kendrick), a goody-two-shoes eager-beaver single mom, a full-time parent who puts her son first and whose house contains a whoopsy jar (you put in a dollar when you swear). The other is Emily (Blake Lively), a laissez-faire businesswoman, rarely at home, often craving for a martini, always with an F-word on her lips. A glamourous wheeler-dealer with a chequered past and a restless spirit who, when she shows up in a movie, you just know spells trouble. The two women make an awkward but seemingly sincere friendship, the kind you only see in movies such as these, and when Emily asks Stephanie to watch over her son while she handles "a fire at work", Stephanie agrees without a second thought. But when Emily doesn't return home, she's the first to become suspicious. A week later, Emily's body is found floating in a lake and everything seems to be tied up neatly, but Stephanie has her doubts and she begins digging in her friend's mysterious past. Meanwhile, she falls in love with Emily's sexy widower Sean (Henry Golding) and just when the two reach the "I love you" phase, Emily's son drops a bombshell at the dinner table. "I saw mommy today." Is Emily dead? If not, whose body was found in the lake? And most importantly, what is she going to say when she finds out her best friend has taken over her life.
"A Simple Favor" is best described as "Diabolique" done in the style of "Move Over, Darling". A twisty, dark thriller shot like a bubbly comedy. There's great promise in this set-up and, at first, "A Simple Favor" delivers. Its two stars, Kendrick and Lively, are terrific and embody their roles with excellent comedic precision. Kendrick, in particular, is fun to watch as the awkward, prudish, but devilishly smart Stephanie. The laughs are there and the mystery is intriguing. However, as its two-hour runtime plods along, the film's charms dissipate. Why Paul Feig thinks every single scene has to run on for at least 5 minutes is a mystery to me. No matter what's happening, the characters in this film will ramble on about it endlessly. There are numerous scenes in which the plot is recounted again and again for no seeming reason but to shoehorn some more jokes into the film. To be honest, some of these jokes are very witty, but they come at the expense of one's patience. Also tiresome are the increasingly more ludicrous and unbelievable plot twists which are so frequent and nonsensical that I got the feeling Feig inserted them at random whenever he got insecure about the overlong dialogue scenes. Eventually, not even its talented cast was enough to ferry me calmly through the final act which I found totally unconvincing and painfully slow.
I lay all the blame for this at Feig's door as the director is the one who should be able to channel the talent of his collaborators into a sensible whole. But his direction lacks both focus and style. It takes only a fleeting glimpse at John Schwartzman's dull cinematography which seems to contain only a single colour in its palette to realise that "A Simple Favor" won't exactly be a feast for the eyes. Failing to monetise on the film's noirish plot, his uninteresting and undynamic photography is tiresome to look at. On the other side, however, is Theodore Shapiro's hauntingly melodic score which is a definite highpoint in the film and one of its only consistently good aspects.
To take the argument back to the mumblecore movement, "A Simple Favor" should have been directed by Sophia Takal. Her economical storytelling style would have benefited the thriller plot more than Feig's rambling lack of pace. Furthermore, her films "Green" and especially "Always Shine" are some of cinema's most complex and intense portrayals of female friendship, a theme central to "A Simple Favor" which remains largely unexplored. Takal would have also been able to create great tension and suspense in scenes which in Feig's hands play out too loosely and aimlessly. Finally, she would have been able to wring out even stronger, dramatic portrayals out of Kendrick and Lively whom Feig uses more as humorous figures than to create real, fleshed-out characters. In other words, there is a good movie hiding somewhere in "A Simple Favor" but it's not readily on display. It is buried under tonnes of aimless dialogue scenes and inane plot twists. Instead of crafting a tight thriller/comedy, Feig has given us a largely formless film which seems too flippant to be serious and too awkward to be funny. Feig has evidently not taken his own film seriously, so why should we?
2.5/4 - DirectorTony MaylamStarsBrian MatthewsLeah AyresBrian BackerA former summer camp caretaker, horribly burned from a prank gone wrong, lurks around an upstate New York summer camp bent on killing the teenagers responsible for his disfigurement.04-06-2020
A group of kids play a cruel prank on a camp caretaker which results in him being set on fire. Five years later, he's released from the hospital, horribly disfigured and with a grudge towards kids in summer camp which is bad news for a group of teenagers canoeing near the scene of the accident. If this doesn't sound familiar you must have been living under a rock. "The Burning" is a pretty straight-forward rip-off of Sean S. Cunningham's original "Friday the 13th" right down to several shots and kills. But since originality wasn't a highly prized commodity in 80s slasher films, it would be churlish of me to criticise "The Burning" for that alone. No, this film has several more egregious flaws than its derivative nature, some of which are inherent in the slasher genre, but also several improvements over its highly popular predecessor. I must say that although I'm under no illusion that 80s slasher films were any good, I do find myself often enjoying them a lot more than I logically should. This is largely due to the outrageous nature of their villains, gruesomely inventive kills, and an unusual sense of youthful enjoyment which permeates a lot of them. "The Burning" too, feels a lot more like a group of teenagers playing around then serious filmmakers crafting a work of art. Sometimes, this is not such a bad thing, especially in a film as unpretentious and simplistic as this.
Let's start with the good sides of "The Burning". Right of the bat, it is noticeable that it has some of the most realistic and witty dialogue of any 80s slasher film. Unlike its direct predecessor "Friday the 13th", which suffered from stilted, awkward exchanges, the characters in "The Burning" sound and behave like real teenagers and, to its credit, a lot of the dialogue sounds improvised rather than typed out by 40-year-old alcoholics. A lot of the credit for the liveliness of the characters goes to its talented cast which includes early, likeable turns from Jason Alexander, Ned Eisenberg, and Fisher Stevens all of whom give far more credible and believable performances than I'm used to in these kinds of films. Also likeable are Brian Matthews and Leah Ayres as the camp counsellors, and I had a lot of fun seeing Holly Hunter as one of the extras even if her one line, "Hey Todd!", doesn't give her much space to show off her considerable talent. Less believable are the performances from resident sex kittens Carrick Glenn and Carolyn Houlihan, there only to strip naked and get killed, Larry Joshua, who is downright laughable as the camp bully, and a misguidedly creepy performance from Brian Backer, our supposed protagonist. Besides the performances, I also very much enjoyed the electronic score by none other than Rick Wakeman which is possibly the creepiest aspect of the film. Tom Savini's effects, though not quite up to the standard of his best work, are also predictably good.
However, the downsides make "The Burning" a bit of a chore to watch. For a slasher film, it takes a really long time to get going, the first significant kill doesn't take place until around 60 minutes in and even when it does get going its kills lack gruesomeness and its supposedly scary scenes are missing build-up and suspense. Most of the film is spent watching macho high-schoolers ogling their female classmates and boy do these scenes get creepy soon. Especially after you learn the film was co-written by none other than Harvey Weinstein. These pacing issues make "The Burning" a sluggish and not particularly exciting experience. It is worth noting that "Friday the 13th" had a similar problem but Cunningham more than made it up with some excellent atmosphere building and memorable kills. "The Burning's" director Tony Maylam fails on both accounts. Also lacking when compared to "Friday the 13th" is the film's cinematography. Whereas "Friday the 13th" made its lake and woods look picturesque and hauntingly beautiful, "The Burning's" cinematography is work-a-day at best. Cinematographer Harvey Harrison makes no egregious mistakes along the way, but he also fails to give the film a sense of style or identity and because of that "The Burning" feels more like a TV movie than a cinematic release.
So, with all this in mind, where does "The Burning" fall? I'd say it is an interesting historical artefact, mostly due to the numerous talented people involved with it who went on to become both famous and infamous. However, as a film (and especially a slasher film), "The Burning" is a bit of a disappointment. After a promisingly lively start, the film quickly sinks under the weight of its sluggish pace and numerous fake-out scares. It lacks both the brutality and the atmosphere of the best 80s slashers but it's too competently done to be regarded as trash. Despite some genuinely good work at play here, "The Burning" is a slog to get through and due to its derivative nature, it won't give you anything you haven't already seen (I did, however, quite enjoy the film's almost shot-for-shot copy of a kill from Dario Argento's "Deep Red"). I'd say, unless you're an 80s slasher completionist, give this one a miss.
1.5/4 - DirectorJim GillespieStarsJennifer Love HewittSarah Michelle GellarAnne HecheFour young friends bound by a tragic accident are reunited when they find themselves being stalked by a hook-wielding maniac in their small seaside town.04-06-2020
Do you remember when Kevin Williamson was on the top of the world? Instead of trying to regain his fame with half-baked TV reboots, in 1997, he was the box-office breaking critical darling behind TV's smash-hit soap opera "Dawson's Creek" and the genre-bending metatextual masterpiece that is Wes Craven's "Scream". What was he going to do next? Was it going to be another sincere teen drama about growing pains or was it to be another movie to redefine a genre long thought dead in the dawn of the new millennium. Well, it proved to be both and neither. "I Know What You Did Last Summer", an adaptation of a novel by Lois Duncan, a writer of young-adult novels from before they were called young-adult novels, is a film which tries to combine angsty teen drama with a spooky whodunnit plot, a formula that would later prove very successful for TV shows such as "Veronica Mars" and "Riverdale". But, how successful "I Know..." was is up for debate. On the one side, it was a smash hit with the audiences who ate up its stylish kills and witty dialogue, on the other, it failed miserably with the critics who were confounded by its plot and disliked its characters.
The film begins with one of the most eye-catching opening shots I've ever seen. An ambitious aerial shot swooping over a restless sea to close in on a solitary, depressed figure sitting on a cliff. As moody as you can get. We then cut to a nearby Fourth of July party where we meet our leads, the goody-two-shoes Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), the prom queen Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and their respective boyfriends, the working-class salt of the Earth Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and the cocky rich boy Barry (Ryan Phillippe). Barry's had a bit too much drink so Ray takes charge of his expensive sports car. As he navigates it down impossibly noirish cliffs in the dark of the night, Barry gets the brilliant idea of cracking open another beer which splashes all over Ray. Distracted by this, Ray serves on the road and hits a man who appears to come out of nowhere. Jeez, what are we to do? Julie, of course, suggests they call an ambulance, but the others have a better idea. After all, this would ruin Helen's future acting career and Barry's parents would just kill him. So they throw the body into the sea and pretend nothing's happened.
How long can this charade last? Why, one year to the day, of course. After Julie returns to her tiny hometown from college only to find her former friends still rotting away there (Helen's acting career's turned into a cashier job at her sister's store), the group begin receiving mysterious notes saying, you guessed it, "I know what you did last summer". And here the mystery begins. Who knows? Is their victim, a certain David Egan still alive? Or maybe it's his demented sister Melissa (Anne Heche)? Also, where has Max (Johnny Galecki), a local fisherman in love with Julie, disappeared? Is he dead? Who's next? Don't bother trying to work out these questions for yourself because it won't work. Despite its whodunnit trappings, "I Know What You Did Last Summer" is no Agatha Christie wannabe. For one, it doesn't play fair. The clues don't add up. The killer's motive is ludicrous. Chance plays too great a role in his plan. Furthermore, the film never gives us any viable suspects until it drops the revelation on us, the revelation that the killer is someone we've never met so far. But this doesn't really matter. After all, who expected this film to be an intricate murder mystery?
"I Know What You Did Last Summer" has other attributes going for it. First of all, there's Denis Crossan's eye-catching cinematography. I already mentioned the incredible opening shot but this film is full of great, moody imagery. With his blue-dominated colour palette, noirishly chiaroscuro lighting, and some smooth, ambitious camerawork he really manages to make this film far more atmospheric and involving than it should be. Also terrific is John Debney's score. Inspired by Philip Glass' work on "Candyman", it is subtly spooky and hauntingly melodic. Most effective, however, are the film's several grandiose set-pieces, one of which, an extended chase scene which begins in an alleyway, proceeds into a store and ends up at a parade, ranks up amongst the best slasher set-pieces of all time. The cinematography again impresses in this scene as the flashing lights of the parade illuminate the saddening murder. Distant echoes of laughter and merriment drown out the victim's screams. It is the film's best moment.
The downsides, however, are far more numerous, the first and largest being its cardboardy characters and stilted performances. There is very little else to say about the four leads of this film besides the brief descriptions I gave of them above. They remain one-note throughout. No matter what's going on and what danger they're in, Julie remains the nice one, Helen's obsessed with her hair, Barry's the jerk, and Ray... well, Ray's kinda there. He doesn't have much of a personality. Their reactions to the events unfolding before them don't seem human. Why is Helen partaking in a Fourth of July parade when she knows she's being stalked by a killer? Why is none of them going to the police? The performances don't help much either as Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Philippe, and Freddie Prinze Jr. all sleepwalk through their parts. Sarah Michelle Gellar is the only one who manages to bring some humanity and likeability to her part and thus Helen is the only likeable character in the film. The supporting cast is few and forgettable. Johnny Galecki referred to this film as a "cut-and-dried gig" and his lack of enthusiasm is very visible in his dead-eyed performance. Anne Heche goes off the other end, commits too much and ends up seeming goofily over-the-top.
Director Jim Gillespie juggles all of these elements but fails to create a coherent picture out of them. Pacing especially seems to get out of his hands and the film often drags, especially in its soapier moments when these bland characters attempt to express emotion through badly written dialogue. If I were more charitable I'd say Gillespie was given an impossible task, a bad script and a group of disinterested actors, but having seen his follow-up film "D-Tox" I can safely assume he's part of the problem. Perhaps some judicious recutting could have made "I Know What You Did Last Summer" a better film. Not a good one by any shot, but a better one. More focus would have to have been placed on the visuals and the action and far less on the characters. Also, some 20 minutes had to go. Then, maybe, this film could have been worth seeing on a rainy day. As it stands, it is worth seeing only if you're interested in studying Denis Crossan's excellent work. Nothing else in this film is worth any attention.
1.5/4 - DirectorDanny CannonStarsJennifer Love HewittFreddie Prinze Jr.Brandy NorwoodThe murderous fisherman with a hook is back to once again stalk the two surviving teens, Julie and Ray, who had left him for dead, as well as cause even more murder and mayhem, this time at a posh island resort.04-06-2020
"I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" ranks up as one of the silliest and most unwieldy sequel titles ever. I do suppose it's better than, say, "I Know What You Did Last Winter" or "Return of the I Know What You Did Last Summer" but not by much. However, wasn't the last summer referred to in the title two years ago. Shouldn't the title be "I Still Know What You Did Two Summers Ago" then? Maybe I'm overthinking this... I'm certainly putting more thought into the title then the filmmaker did into the film. Whatever it's called, this sequel to a middling slasher whodunnit is a thoroughly dire affair of no genuine quality. A brainless sequel that copies all the flaws of the original and none of its virtues. A shameless cash-in that is, in truth, a sequel in name only since its plot (if you can call a compilation of kills and fake-out scares a plot) has no connections with the first film beyond the same characters and the same villain. Stylistically they are miles apart. Whereas "I Know..." tried its best to be a classy slasher by mixing in elements of a whodunnit into its formula, "I Still Know..." has no such pretences. It is as simplistic a slasher film as it can be. It takes a group of people, traps them in a location with a killer, and off we go...
The film begins after Karla (Brandy) answers a radio quiz show question, "What is the capital of Brazil" with "Rio" and wins four tickets to the Bahamas. Who's she gonna take with her? Why, her boyfriend, of course, the pushy jock Tyrell (Mekhi Phifer) and her best friend, who just so happens to be none other than Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), the final girl of the previous film. With Julie's annoying suitor Will (Matthew Settle) making up the foursome, they head off to an exclusive hotel on the Bahamas only to find it empty except for a few staff members who tell them it's the storm season ("Our version of winter") and that no one usually comes in this period. The foursome is flummoxed but we know where this is going. Trapped in the hotel by a storm, they are easy pickings for a mysterious serial killer with a hook for a hand. Thankfully, the killer is considerate. He first offs the supporting cast. Meanwhile, Julie's moody on and off boyfriend Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) who was beaten up by the killer so he couldn't come along to the Bahamas escapes from hospital and heads to save his damsel in distress. Will he make it in time? Gee, I wonder...
The idiocy of this plot hardly bears dissecting and if anyone is under any illusion that "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" might work as a thriller is deluding themselves. First of all, the identity of the killer is obvious. Second, the whole set-up is obvious if you so much as know what the capital of Brazil is. Third, the killer's plan once revealed, has more holes than his victims. Why, for instance, did he only beat up Ray and not kill him? He's killed pretty much everyone else in the film. This killer is not particularly squeamish that's for sure. Why, also, did he trap them in a populated hotel? He could have arranged for them to visit an uninhabited island, or had them get stuck in the middle of the sea on the boat that ferried them there in the first place. In fact, why trap them anywhere at all. Couldn't he have just picked them off in the town where they live? Furthermore, why is he killing the entire supporting cast if his only intended victim is Julie? But who cares anyway, it is immediately obvious that this Swiss cheese plot is only a threadbare excuse to hold together the horror scenes.
Now, perhaps, I could have forgiven the bad plot if those scenes were any good. But "I Still Know..." doesn't even have the common decency to work as a slasher film. The kills lack both imagination and gruesomeness, the film as a whole lacks tension, and there's no atmosphere in it to speak of. Director Danny Cannon's idea of suspense is to overload the film with fake jump scares. It's not an over-exaggeration to say that every 10 minutes or so Julie will hear something creak behind her, she'll go to investigate, turn around and we'll see a dark figure scuttle behind her, then she'll go into another room and someone will creep up on her only to lay a hand on her shoulder. Scream! Gasp! It's only insert-friend's-name-here. Somehow I prefer these scares when the cat's the culprit. Then at least I'm not left wondering why Julie's supposed friends keep creeping up on her when they know she's jumpy.
And speaking of Julie's friends, keeping in the good tradition of its predecessor, "I Still Know..." has not a single likeable or believable character in its cast. The performances are livelier this time 'round and it seems that the actors are at least awake when they're giving their line readings but they are performing such bland and uninteresting characters that it doesn't really matter. None of them acts like a human being? What do you do when you see a corpse hanging in your closet? Why, you go lie in a sunbed, of course. What do you do when you find several corpses of grown men? Why, you accuse your thinnest female friend of killing them, of course. What is the first thing you think about, trapped in a kitchen, hiding from a hook-handed killer who's just killed a number of people you knew? Why, sex, of course. And then you wonder why I didn't care about any of these characters. At least the involvement of ol' dead eyes, Freddie Prinze Jr., is kept at a minimum.
Is there anything good about "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"? Sure. The booming orchestral score by John Frizzell is fun in how overcooked it is and Vernon Layton's cinematography is good enough so we can see everything. In the immortal words of Richard Roper, "the film's mostly in focus". But this faint praise doesn't make "I Still Know..." worth the film it was shot on. It's a dull, dumb, dour slasher sequel which doesn't even live up to the fairly low expectations left by its predecessor. Its bewildered cast tries more than they should but no one could breathe life into the characters written by screenwriter Trey Callaway. Especially not Danny Cannon, the film's heavy-handed director. You know, another thing occurs to me. How do you mean "I Still Know"? How can you suddenly not know something? What? Did he forget he was run down by a bunch of goofy teenagers? It sure is a bad sign when even the title is illogical.
1/4 - DirectorHarvey MillerStarsJack LemmonDan AykroydLily TomlinA moral college ethics professor plans to kill his neighbor, a Nazi death camp commander.05-06-2020
Despite what you may believe, the business of Nazi-hunting is a fairly recent one. As was demonstrated in the most illuminating 2014 film "Labyrinth of Lies", Germany was, perhaps understandably, uninterested in digging up old shames and with the rest of the world engaged in the more pressing issue of the Cold War, no one was pressuring it. Even America, who took it upon itself to be the World's moral compass, was less than eager to spend lots of time and money hunting down Nazis in the backwoods of South America. After all, weren't all the big ones caught in Nuremberg. But Israel wasn't going to let these monsters get away with murder so after launching a series of wide-ranging investigations headed by the feared Mossad and the world-broadcast trial of Adolf Eichmann, the world began waking up to the fact that there were mass murderers living among us, integrated seamlessly into communities, playing good neighbours, family men and women. People like Simon Wiesenthal, the most famous Nazi hunter, became international heroes, and Hollywood, as always, smelling profit, also got into the game producing such Nazi-based thrillers such as "The Boys from Brazil" and "The Odessa File". The Nazis slowly went from boogeyman from history books to fugitives who needed to be identified and arrested. And don't you just see great comedic potential in all of this? Me neither...
Due to how long it took for the world to take Nazi-hunting seriously, many of these criminals on the run were old men when they were finally brought to justice. A simple Google search will reveal scores of names of people arrested and tried for war crimes who were well into their 80s. Most recently, the world was engrossed into the case of Oskar Gröning, a 94-year old arrested and found guilty of being a so-called "bookkeeper of Auschwitz". "Getting Away with Murder", a largely forgotten 90s comedy, begins with just such a man, a beloved neighbour and father calling himself Max Mueller (Jack Lemmon) being exposed as the "beast of Berkau", an extermination camp commandant hiding out in the open. I was immediately reminded of Costa Gavras' tough 1989 drama "Music Box" which followed a similar situation and the escalating tensions between the man accused of these crimes and his beloved lawyer daughter. I wonder whether this film's director/writer Harvey Miller took some inspiration from there. If he did, he correctly recognised some inspiring material for satire and the first 30-or-so minutes of "Getting Away with Murder" have their moments. These laughs, of course, aren't aimed at the Holocaust, which would make this film a most distasteful affair, but rather the reactions of those around Mueller to the accusations. A particularly funny and insightful moment comes when a next-door neighbour being interviewed on TV comments "he was never a Nazi to me". Another great satirical jab comes at the expense of the media in a brief line in which a radio newscaster follows the description of the horrors of Berkau where 700,000 people died with "sports and whether after this".
However, as the central plot begins unfolding, the jokes move from perceptive satirical jabs to broad and fairly unoriginal gags which seem jarringly inappropriate in a film which purportes to deal with a subject as serious as the Holocaust. The film follows one of Max's neighbours, an ethics professor named Jack (Dan Aykroyd), who is indignant by the amount of support shown by the rest of the neighbourhood to Max. Realising the old man is planning to escape to South America, he decides to kill him. Well, to cut a long story short he succeeds, just as it is announced that by the district attorney that they were wrong and that Max wasn't actually the "beast of Berkau". Feeling incredibly guilty but unwilling to turn himself in ("I'm not going to go to jail for killing the wrong man. I'll go down as one of the biggest idiots in history."), Jack begins trying to ease his conscience by destroying his own life, first by dumping his fiancee (Bonnie Hunt) and then by marrying Max's stern daughter Inga (Lily Tomlin).
In truth, "Getting Away with Murder" is not a terrible film, nor is it particularly offensive (it's too broad and goofy to be taken seriously), but it is a misguided one. Director/writer Harvey Miller seems to wander aimlessly through the material changing his approach every 20-minutes, unable or unwilling to focus his film into a single style or onto a single topic. It alternates unpredictably between satire, slapstick, and a kind of Woody Allen-style neurosis and in the end never fully delivers any of them. A sharper, smarter writer could have turned this material into a really biting satire of public indifference and the media's worrying tendency to leap to judgements. A better writer could have also focused more on how every character in the film seems to be disgusted and angry about the old Nazi getting away with murder in private, but whenever it comes to doing something about it no one is quite willing to commit. All these subjects are interesting and fruitful ground for satire but not the kind of film "Getting Away with Murder" is and that is indicative and too broad to be taken seriously. There are funny moments in it, and it passes the time quickly and easily, but it is a wasted opportunity and a film which raises questions it has no business raising.
2/4 - DirectorStefan RuzowitzkyStarsMatt SmithNatalie DormerJohn BradleyAfter an unprecedented global pandemic turns the majority of humankind into violent "Infected," a man gifted with the ability to speak the Infected's new language leads the last survivors on a hunt for Patient Zero and a cure.08-06-2020
I suppose we have "28 Days Later" and its rage infected (guess we don't use zombie anymore in "serious movies") to thank for a slew of terrible, low-budget zombie movies that have flooded the film market (because that's what they're made for, the market) in the past decades. Its resurgence in the big-budget mainstream with "World War Z" can't have hurt and the recent success of the fast-pace "Train to Busan" was like adding gas on the flame. These films tend to range from the acceptably bad (like the 2008 "Day of the Dead" remake) to the unwatchably awful (like Dolph Lundgren's "Battle of the Damned"). There have been a few exceptions, fun, occasionally thoughtful films. "Train to Busan" was one of them, Zack Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead" was another, but "Patient Zero" is not. It's yet another harebrained "Day of the Dead" rip off, complete with an underground zombie research base, a jerk military commander, and a super-smart zombie being experimented on. The new twist (if you can call it that) is that this time 'round the zombies speak, but in their own, secret language which only human being can speak. His name is Morgan (Matt Smith), he was bitten but didn't "turn" and is now helping the scientists to find a vaccine in order to cure his zombie wife (Agyness Deyn) he keeps locked-up in a basement. If this sounds like a joke, it isn't. It's played serious, deadly serious, so deadly serious you can't help but giggle especially when Smith and Deyn try really hard to bring some sincerity into what is a truly, mind-bogglingly bad script.
The other characters all seem to have been bought wholesale from the Stock Zombie Movie Character Factory. Seeing them come and go into the movie is like watching one of those "select your character" screens in a video game. They posture for a while on screen, say a few badly written lines and then disappear to the side. First up is Dr Gina Rose (Natalie Dormer), named that because Dr Christmas Jones was already taken. She is the hardass scientist with a heart of gold. Her "they're just infected humans" approach clashes badly with the army men running the base but don't worry, she can look after herself. With just a few chosen words (read: a 2-minute a monologue) she can talk down any army bully in her way. Oh, and also, she is having a secret, toilet love affair with Morgan. Oh, and also, she's pregnant. Her archnemesis is Colonel Knox (Clive Standen), so named because Captain Crunch was already taken. You know he's a jerk right off because he refers to the zombies as "prisoners" and not "patients" like everyone else, because he drinks on the job, and because he shoots a zombie in the head when he's tied down. "You did that just to get even with me," scowls Dr Gina. He's about as cliched a movie villain as you can imagine and doesn't come near to the campy hilariousness of Captain Rhodes from Romero's "Day of the Dead". Finally, we get the joyful fat guy in shorts and a lab coat. His name is Scooter (John Bradley) because the filmmakers don't watch "The Muppet Show" and it's his son's birthday today. Gee, I hope he survives...
The plot begins after about 45 minutes of arguing, pointless flashbacks, and some of the worst exposition I've ever heard ("Do you remember when we took ballroom dancing lessons and fell in love?"). A zombie is brought in who is demanding to talk to Morgan. He is the mysterious Professor (Stanley Tucci), the only zombie who seems not only able to talk but to think. We know this because he goes on for about 20 minutes discussing evolution and medieval philosophy with Morgan who seems as annoyed by this as I was. "Who do you think is on the top of the evolutionary chain?" Oh, shut up! Finally, some 65 minutes in the carnage begins but it's so incoherently shot and awkwardly choreographed that it wasn't worth the wait. The shaky-cam and snappy cutting make it impossible to see what's going on and if you pause all you'll see are people who appear to be wrestling each other on the floor. Forget the flashy fight scenes of "28 Days Later", this is cheap-o land where we can afford Stanley Tucci only for a short time so we introduce him half-way through the film, where we only have two corridors so we constantly redress them hoping no one notices, and where we can afford only about 40 extras so we space them out to make it seem like there's a crowd. I'm not disparaging low-budget horror films, far from it, most of them are honestly far better than the expensive ones because they may be short on cash but they're full of ideas. No. I'm disparaging the awful low-budget films, constructed out of cliches, shot on the fly, and directed listlessly and unimaginatively.
"Patient Zero" has no redeeming qualities, it is pure junk, a film doomed from the moment its screenwriter first saw "28 Days Later" (or more probably its dumb sequel "28 Weeks Later" with whom it also shares "similarities"). It has a talented cast but you wouldn't know it from this film alone. Natalie Dormer is a boring lead, Matt Smith seems to be going in and out of his "Doctor Who" character, and whatever Clive Standen is doing its not acting. John Bradley is a fun but short-lived comic relief and Agyness Deyn seems unsure if she should be acting or posing for promo shots. Only Stanley Tucci is consistently fun to watch as no one still working does smarmy quite as well as he does, but he's not stretching himself in this part. At times, even he seems bored, such as during the unclimactic climax when he engages in one of the worst on-screen fights I've seen in recent years. He's supposed to be the big bad and yet he's defeated in less than 2 minutes and in the stupidest manner possible. I won't say how, but if you've seen "Commando" you'll chuckle at the memory of better films. Unless you're some kind of niche fetishist who enjoys watching Stanley Tucci humiliate himself in films unworthy of his significant talents avoid "Patient Zero". This zombie movie is a zombie in itself. It's dead on arrival, rotting, and being exposed to it will make you wanna kill somebody. Probably, the screenwriter.
1/4 - DirectorDominic SenaStarsKate BeckinsaleGabriel MachtTom SkerrittU.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko tracks a killer in Antarctica as the sun is about to set for six months.10-06-2020
It's always a bit worrying when a film begins with a wonky CGI establishing shot. It's 1956 and a Russian aircraft is flying over Antarctica carrying a McGuffin. There are much drinking and merriment on board as is to be expected on a Russian aircraft. The crew is made up of two pilots and two security men guarding the precious cargo. But what they aren't expecting is that they're guarding it against the pilots. After the obligatory "Let's do it" dialogue between the two men, one of them gets up from his seat, goes to the security men and after a diversion involving a Vodka bottle (of course!) proceeds to shoot one and wound the other. But the pilot flying the plane is caught in the crossfire and the plane crashlands into the snowy deserts of the South Pole. Cut to present day and US Marshall Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) who after her usual rounds of the station she's safeguarding decides to take a warm, steamy shower. This is the scene where I knew I was in trouble. Why is our heroine, a detective, being introduced into what is supposed to be a thriller with a lengthy, lingering ass shot? Did the producers of this film really think they'd make more money if they opened their film with one of the most egregiously pervy and thoroughly gratuitous "sexy scenes" in recent memory? Why Kate Beckinsale agreed to enter this film, which has nothing to do with her character's sex life, in clingy white underwear (the kind everyone wears in Antarctica, of course) is well beyond my comprehension. She must have been paid more than the CGI team.
Anyway, once we get past the minute-or-so of shots featuring our heroine's nude outline seen through a steamy shower cabin, a body of a geologist is reportedly found on the ice. After a brief examination, Stetko deduces he was murdered (probably because half his head is missing). Soon the other three men from his team show up dead, killed by a pick-axe wielding maniac decked up in a snow-suit. So off we go into yet another serial-killer-in-the-snow film, a subgenre which has so far given us such movies as the abysmal "D-Tox" and the laughably inept "The Snowman". The good news is that "Whiteout" is better than either of them, the bad news is that it's not by much. A large part of its mystery is given away right at the very beginning since due to the flashback opening we realise the killings must revolve around the cargo carried by the Russian aeroplane and yet the film treats this revelation (which comes around the halfway mark) as a shocking twist. As for the identity of the killer, we're given only three viable suspects, none of them very interesting. One is a secretive UN agent (Gabriel Macht) who shows up uninvited to take over Stetko's case, the other a jovial pilot (Columbus Short), and the third the kindly old doctor (Tom Skerritt) on his last trip to Antarctica before retirement. No prizes will be given for guessing whodunnit before Stetko. As for our lead, Kate Beckinsale is thoroughly unconvincing as the tough-as-nails detective. With her frail good looks, silky smooth voice, and lady-like demeanour, she looks more like she belongs in a period drama than a hardboiled detective movie. This is especially obvious in the flashbacks which depict her time as a narcotics detective on the streets of Miami. With her perfectly dressed hair and barely-there t-shirt, she looks decidedly more like one of "Charlie's Angels" than a cop from "The Wire".
The script based on a graphic novel by Greg Rucka moves through all snow-thriller cliches at a languorously slow-burn pace. There are snowstorms, holes in the ice, frost-bitten hands sticking to metal poles, and snowmobiles which malfunction just when the going gets tough. Besides this, the screenplay is inundated with constant repetition presumably in order to pad out the runtime. So you'll hear the account of the plane crash at least three times, Stetko and the UN agent will argue about his jurisdiction at every possible moment, and every 10-or-so-minutes you'll get a flashback either to Stetko's days in Miami or to something that happened just a few minutes ago (yes, this is one of those films that assumes its audience has the memory capacity of a goldfish). My largest gripe with the script, though, is Stetko's amazing ability to leap to correct conclusions with little or no proof and her tendency to literally stumble onto clues. Every single plot point is laid out for her so she doesn't really have to do much detecting in the movie. Case in point, when she examines the base in which the murdered trio worked, they were helpful enough to leave for her the exact co-ordinates of the crashed plane. And once they get there, Stetko takes a few steps and falls right down the hole in the ice where the plane is buried. This policing work is really easy. All you have to do is believe.
The film is credited to director Dominic Sena but there are reports that at least two other directors did reshoots. Whatever the case, the film is directed in a listless and unimaginative manner which doesn't help move the pace along. Furthermore, the climactic fight scene set during the titular whiteout (a snowstorm so thick you can only see white around you) is shot and edited in such a confusing manner it is impossible to follow the action. Not only are you unable to orient yourself in space due to the whiteness around the characters and the fact that in their snow-suits they all look the same, but Sena shoots the entire thing in close-ups so you can never actually tell what the characters are doing. Finally, the editor Martin Hunter cuts between the shots so quickly and seemingly randomly that all the suspense is sucked out from the scene. In the other scenes which aren't all white, cinematographer Christopher Soos disappointingly fails to capture the beauty of the snowy landscapes giving the film a kind of a flat TV movie look.
So is "Whiteout" a complete failure? Well, no, not really. Some of its scenes do manage to generate interest, if not exactly excitement, and there is some fun to be had with its mystery elements. The finale in which the killer is revealed is refreshingly more emotional than action-based, and I liked how the film focused more on the vastness of the South Pole and not so much on the claustrophobia of living there which is the road more often travelled. I also enjoyed John Frizzell's dramatic score, which although not particularly original is more exciting than anything that actually happens in the film. I was also impressed by the sound design (something I usually pay little attention). The sweeping snowstorms, metallic rattles, and distant aeroplane noises mix nicely together into a kind of polar symphony. "Whiteout" is more enjoyable to listen to than to watch. The film also feels completed unlike "D-Tox" or "The Snowman" which, I admit, is faint praise indeed.
1.5/4 - DirectorWes CravenStarsMax ThieriotJohn MagaroDenzel WhitakerA serial killer returns to his hometown to stalk seven children who share the same birthday as the date he was allegedly put to rest.10-06-2020
"My Soul to Take" begins with one of the most melodramatic opening sequences I've ever seen. 9-minutes so overdone that they seem like an opening for the latest "Scary Movie" instalment. Except they're not, they're meant to be an introduction for a film that takes itself seriously. Deadly seriously. The film begins in 1994 when a schizophrenic serial killer Abel Plenkov (Raúl Esparza) murders his pregnant wife and is shot by the police. But, like in every slasher, the killer is never dead the first time and keeping in that age-old tradition, Abel leaps back to life, steals a policeman's gun and murders his psychiatrist only to be shot again by the tough-as-nails sheriff. But he's still not dead. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, a young policewoman gets too close to the supposedly comatose Plenkov and gets her throat slit for her trouble. For unknown reasons, the ambulance flips over and explodes but Plenkov's body is never found. This sequence alone, one of the most ludicrous I've ever seen outside of an "MST3K" episode, was enough to make my heart sink. If it was in any way shot to be comedic, perhaps it could have worked as some sort of commentary on the idiotic slasher cliche of the continuously returning killer, but no, "My Soul to Take" is played completely straight from beginning to end in what is a shocking failure in tone from a director to whom tone has always been second nature.
This film is directed and written by Wes Craven, the master of horror irony behind such game-changers as "The Last House on the Left", "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Scream", all films that had a wicked sense of humour about the genre they both lampooned and revelled in. All three worked both as exciting horror movies and hilarious satires, a rare feat indeed. "My Soul to Take" is not Craven's first failure but it is his worst and most surprising. Even his lesser films such as "Deadly Blessing" and "Deadly Friend" always displayed a healthy sense of humour, technical proficiency, and a tongue firmly in their cheek. "My Soul to Take" fails on all three counts.
The rest of the film takes place 16 years later and follows a group of seven teenagers calling themselves "The Riverton Seven". They were all born on the same day Abel died (or did he?) and believe themselves cursed by him. They are all also annoying movie cliches, lacking in depth, character, and believability, so when they begin dying one by one I not only didn't care but couldn't really keep up. I kept forgetting which ones of them were murdered and which ones are still alive. The film then proceeds to play out as a kind of a metaphysical murder mystery as one of the group, Bug (Max Thieriot) begins displaying symptoms of schizophrenia. He's seeing the ghosts of his dead friends, believes himself able to see the future, and keeps repeating other people's words. Suffice to say this becomes tiresome very, very quickly.
"My Soul to Take's" primary problem is its serious tone. The screenplay seems to have been written with a comedy in mind, but Craven plays it for scares and it simply doesn't work. How this tonal mismatch happened is a mystery for the ages since Craven also wrote the script. Did he forget what kind of a movie he wrote? Or were the comedic elements in the screenplay actually just awfully written and were meant to be played as seriously as they are? Who knows and who cares. The film's second problem is its dialogue. Craven tries to mimic Kevin Williamson's witty, wiseass banter from "Scream" but fails miserably. Whereas Williamson's dialogue was clever and sounded fresh and real at the time, Craven's dialogue sounds like a 60-year old man's attempt to "get down with the kids" and "sound hip", man. Which is exactly what it is, I suppose. I felt embarrassed for the actors who had to deliver it. Another problem is that it takes the film almost a full hour to get to its horror scenes wasting the rest of the time with scenes of teen life. Craven wastes minutes and minutes on scenes such as two boys spying on two girls in a toilet, a boy fighting with his step-father, and an excruciating five-minute class presentation on condors. That scene, which feels interminable, would fit much more comfortably in the filmography of a Harold P. Warren on a Luigi Cozzi and not someone as iconic as Wes Craven. It is that ineptly written, misguidedly unfunny, and excruciatingly difficult to watch.
"My Soul to Take" is a genuinely awful film. Inexcusably, infuriatingly, unwatchably awful. Its characters are dull, lifeless, and annoying. Its pace is languorously slow. Its directing bored and aimless. Its tone deadly serious. Its scares tired and unoriginal. Its kills unbelievably badly shot (the CGI blood alone is atrocious). There is nothing nice or positive to be said about this movie and I hope it is quickly forgotten, for Wes Craven's sake. He should be remembered as an iconic horror director who re-invented the genre not once, not twice, but three times. Who challenged his viewers, who unlike most other genre directors credited them with intelligence and sophistication. He should not be remembered for this movie. It is an embarrassment, a flop, a dreary, depressing watch.
1/4 - DirectorDavid FincherStarsMorgan FreemanBrad PittKevin SpaceyTwo detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives.11-06-2020
David Fincher's "Seven" came like a seismic shock to the American thriller genre. Sure, there had been serial killer films before it and they came in various guises. There were the ubiquitous slasher movies, the moribund docudramas, the "Dirty Harry" inspired procedurals, and even various martial arts thrillers, but there had never been anything like "Seven" before. Of course, one could convincingly argue that "Seven" owes its existence to "The Silence of the Lambs", but "Silence's" detached clinical atmosphere and slow-burn thrills inspired few direct imitators (Jon Amiel's "Copycat" being the most notable) whereas "Seven's" melodramatic kills, psycho-metaphysical madmen, and operatic outbursts of emotion seemed to capture the imaginations of filmmakers world over. Hannibal Lector showed filmmakers what could be done with the serial killer genre but it was "Seven" that made them wanna do it. Thus, for almost a decade after, every thriller copied "Seven's" distinctive noirish look with depressed rain-soaked detectives overcoming their own demons in order to catch serial killers with artistic ambitions. It would take Tony Scott's technothriller antics to dethrone "Seven" as the go-to text of American genre cinema.
So what was it exactly in "Seven" that inspired so many imitators? Well, the most obvious answers would be its thick atmosphere and diabolical villain. The atmosphere owes so much to the film's distinctive visual style that they can't possibly be discussed separately. Set in an unnamed, filthy, grimy, gritty city in which it constantly rains, "Seven" is shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji in a style which resembles the dystopian L.A. from "Blade Runner" if all the neon lights were turned off. Dark, impenetrable shadows dominate the screen even in the middle of the day as if to signal to us that there are things in this film that can't be seen. Dressed almost exclusively in blacks, whites, and greys, the film's character look uniformly downtrodden as if the griminess of the world they live in has taken a heavy toll on their lives. In this bleak, hopeless, monotonous existence comes one of the most memorably horrific villains in movie history. Whereas most previous serial killers took their basis in fact (such as Buffalo Bill in "The Silence of the Lambs") and sought to frighten the audiences with the sheer plausibility of their existence, John Doe, the central villain of "Seven" is the very definition of Grand Guignol. His plan, to kill seven people, each representing one of the seven sins, is so over-the-top that it sounds almost like something from those goofy Vincent Price films from the 60s, but by grounding in it in the overwhelming depression of the world where the film takes place, director David Fincher succeeds in making John Doe seem not only believable but inevitable. Like Joker in the "Batman" films, John Doe is the most logical product of the corrupt, debauched world he comes from. A kind of an answer to the sinfulness that oozes from every shot of the film. If "Seven" were set in a regular, sunny, American small-town, John Doe's presence would have been a laughable cinematic cliche, but in a city where on every corner there's a prostitute, a drug dealer, and a homeless person, he looks like a mainstay of the landscape. The same is true of his crimes. In a film grounded in realism, the increasingly gruesome kills would have become tiresome in their exploitativeness, but in the stylized almost comic book world Fincher and Khondji build here, they are horrifically effective not only as horror elements but as portents of great evil and signposts leading the characters to the bowels of hell. If this sounds over-the-top... well, it kinda is, but "Seven" is a film with grandiose ideas, a film which tackles such topics as the nature of pure evil and the reactions of men when faced with things they can neither explain nor change. Use of melodramatic terminology, thus, is in my opinion justifiable.
Our leads, in comparison, are far less memorable than our villain. One is an experienced, book smart cop facing retirement (Morgan Freeman), the other his impulsive rookie partner with a chip on his shoulder (Brad Pitt). This twosome comes straight out of the rule book for buddy cop movies but what makes them work in "Seven" is excellent writing and the easy, natural chemistry between its two stars. These characters, although conceived in cliche, are utterly believable on screen, first because they are given realistic, non-forced dialogue to speak and secondly because Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt find a very interesting way to play off of each other. Instead of using the old-cop/new-cop conflict to elicit laughs, they use it to motivate each other's actions. Pitt, frustrated by Freeman's patronising attitude and what he perceives to be disinterest in catching the killer, acts out in increasingly impulsive and foolish manners as he impatiently races towards catching John Doe. On the other hand, Freeman, who takes a kind of fatherly liking for his youthful partner is compelled to dive head-first into a case he doesn't want to have anything to do with because he senses that Pitt is playing right into John Doe's hands. While his bookish instincts and old-fashioned footwork lead him to many great revelations, there is no way Freeman could catch the killer without Pitt's impulsive brawn. Thus they became a kind of Perpetuum Mobile, driving each other towards the film's inescapably grim finale. And what a finale it is! "Seven" has, what is for my money, one of (if not the) greatest finales in cinema history. Aided by Pitt's high-strung, emotional performance, John Doe's calm and polite demeanour, and Freeman's increasing despair, the tension mounts to unbearable levels. Towards the end of the film, Freeman tells Pitt "you know this can't end well", and, boy, was he right.
"Seven" is one of those films in which every element works superbly. The performances are believable, the chemistry easy and engaging, the dialogue realistic and to the point. The cinematography is moody and memorable, the direction precise and imaginative, and the tension constantly increasing. However, at the heart of "Seven" is its diabolical, long-unseen serial killer. At one point, Freeman tells Pitt that they've built-up John Doe so much that only Satan himself could live up to their expectations, but once he appears, John Doe certainly doesn't disappoint. Played by Kevin Spacey, one of the finest actors of his generation, he speaks in a kind of convinced monotone that sends chills down your spine. He is polite, well-spoken, and enigmatic. Kinda like Anthony Hopkins in "The Silence of the Lambs" just without the hamminess. If any lesser actor had played John Doe, the brilliant finale would not have worked and the film would have fallen apart. It is a credit to Spacey that the film ends so well. Unlike most of its imitators, "Seven" is a diabolical clockwork thriller, a precise and gruesome machine that like a metronome unstoppably moves to its crushing climax. Every aspect of it works (even Howard Shore's characteristically loud, overcooked score) and it well deserves its status as a masterpiece of the thriller genre.
4/4 - DirectorJon AmielStarsSigourney WeaverHolly HunterDermot MulroneyAn agoraphobic psychologist and a female detective must work together to take down a serial killer who copies serial killers from the past.12-06-2020
"Copycat's" biggest jinx was that it came out after "Seven". Compared to Fincher's classic thriller, "Copycat's" low-key psychological approach makes the film seem decidedly small-scale and a tad old-fashioned. This is not the kind of film to revel in the grandiosity of its violence, nor is the kind of film to propagate the existence of pure evil. Instead, like "The Silence of the Lambs", it focuses on psychological struggles between individuals, some good, some bad, all deeply troubled, but with clearly delineated. Its cops are good guys although a little bit troubled and its killer is insane, unsophisticated, raving, guided more by a lust for violence than an overreaching philosophical idea. Also, unlike the memorable John Doe from "Seven", the serial killer here possesses no grey zones, no power of persuasion, and isn't even a little bit right, which makes him a credible but not particularly interesting threat. His plan involves copying the murders of various famous serial killers down to the "kinky little details" as someone puts it. Why he does this is beyond me but the film is not really interested in him or his crimes. The murders are fleetingly shown, always post-factum, and director Jon Amiel doesn't allow us to linger on them, giving "Copycat" an atmosphere of class but robbing it of much of its potential impact.
Hunting the serial killer are Inspector MJ (Holly Hunter) and her eager partner Ruben (Dermot Mulroney). Holly Hunter plays MJ less like a police detective and more like a third-grade school teacher. With her small stature, thinly voice, and kindly approach she's bound to catch any villain off guard. But like Columbo, she's only playing up her natural softness when in fact she's as tough as nails. Hunter's idiosyncratic and thoroughly original performance makes MJ a far more fascinating character than she should be. By making characteristically unexpected choices, Hunter adds whole dimensions to her character which are simply not in the screenplay. Her partner Ruben and her pestering ex-boyfriend (Will Patton) who compete over her attention are decidedly less memorable but playing off of Hunter forces them too to rethink the cliches they're portraying. Patton especially steps-out of the jerk-ex role written for him and displays some truly relatable emotion and occasional hints of mental imbalance. Mulroney is likeable as Ruben but fades into the background in the company of the force of nature that is Holly Hunter.
Assisting the detectives is Dr Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver), an agoraphobic psychologist whose encounter with a serial killer left her seriously emotionally disturbed. She is the kind of character who spends most of the film stubbornly refusing to take part in it which I find excruciating. Why do I have to watch scene after scene in which Helen refuses to help in the hunt for the serial killer when I know that by the half-way point she'll accept? What does this add to the film? How does this make the character more interesting? It doesn't. The most interesting aspect of the Helen Hudson character is her agoraphobia which is not sufficiently explored. Amiel mostly uses it as an excuse to employ dutch angles and to explain why she doesn't escape her apartment once it becomes apparent the serial killer is breaking into it every night. In the end, she isn't even forced to overcome it, it sort of becomes forgotten in all the climactic hoopla. In a more economical film, the MJ character would be central and the Helen Hudson character supporting, but in "Copycat" the Hudson character is needlessly inflated at the expense of the pacing and my patience. Watching Helen and her gay best friend (John Rothman) bond frequently stops the film dead in its tracks and kills the otherwise nicely built atmosphere. Another thing that bothered me is that during the course of the film both MJ and Helen lose people close and dear to them and yet both seem to get over their losses almost instantly. Each of these losses is given exactly one scene of screentime before business proceeds as usual. That should tell you something about the consistency of this film's screenplay.
And yet "Copycat" is as often effective as it's not. Jon Amiel does a nice job building up a credible sense of threat and his direction, although not particularly stylish, is assured and technically proficient. Also, there's the wonderfully idiosyncratic Christopher Young score. Instead of going the expected Howard Shore-style melodramatic way, he underscores scenes of great emotional tension and disturbing content with melodic, downright romantic piano pieces. The subtlety and beauty of his music lend the film a tangible sense of eeriness. Coupled with a superb performance from Holly Hunter, all these elements make "Copycat" worth a watch. It is by no means a memorable game-changer the way "Seven" was, nor is it as devilishly disturbing the way "The Silence of the Lambs" was, but it is an effective, sly little entry in the age-old tradition of suspense thrillers.
3/4 - DirectorDavid KoeppStarsKyle MacLachlanElisabeth ShueDermot MulroneyA blackout leaves those affected to consider what is necessary, what is legal, and what is questionable, in order to survive in a predatory environment.19-06-2020
My favourite episode of "The Twilight Zone" is "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street". Penned by Rod Serling himself it is a terrifying tale set in a regular suburban neighbourhood in which the doors are never locked, the neighbours all know each other's names, and the kids play freely on the always green lawns. Then one day the power goes out. At first, the neighbours band together determined to protect their little haven and keep possible looters out but paranoia soon takes over. The question "why is the power out" quickly turns into "who turned the power out" but due to the damned human instinct that drives us to divide into opposing camps, the answer isn't forthcoming. Is it a communist plot, is it a military coup, is it a government conspiracy? No one knows and hatred stirs as the civil tenants of Maple Street turn on each other because one of them is surely an undercover CIA man or a commie spy or a member of some other opposing group which means them harm. By the end of the night, one of them is dead, a riot inevitable, and all of them are guilty. The friendly, civilised neighbours of Maple Street themselves became the monsters they wanted so badly to keep out.
"The Trigger Effect", the directorial debut of screenwriter David Koepp, takes the same basic idea and expands it from a taut 25 minutes into a 90-minute feature. Instead of a power outage on a suburban street, the film now focuses on a statewide blackout, and instead of a group of neighbours, now it seems the entire population of California has gone insane. Koepp, however, is smart enough to know that the blackout only exasperated pre-existing tensions and apathy. The film begins with a lengthy Steadicam shot in which we see four altercations over such minor things as a woman cutting a queue and a man getting coffee spilt down his shirt almost reach a violent conclusion. And yet despite all the swearing and threatening that goes on, somehow the situations never escalate into full-on violence. The fear of being seen, the fear of repercussions put a stop to that. But in this excellent opening Koepp clearly shows us that we are at a breaking point and all it would take for one man to kill another would be the witnesses looking the other way for just one brief moment. Then the power goes out and suddenly that brief moment turns into several days.
What is fascinating about "The Trigger Effect" is that its leads, a successful married couple, are appalled by the breakdown of civilisation and yet partake in its destruction when it suits them. The husband, Matthew (Kyle MacLachlan) is horrified by lootings which soon begin, but when his daughter gets an ear infection, he steals medicine from the local pharmacy without a second thought. The wife, Annie (Elisabeth Shue), who supposedly hates guns, in the end, wields a shotgun to protect her child. Although hypocritical, however, their actions are definitely understandable and I doubt that in their shoes I wouldn't have acted the same way. It is a shame that the rest of "The Trigger Effect" isn't as complex and thought-provoking as that. It seems to me that besides mimicking "Maple Street", David Koepp wasn't quite sure what to do with the material. His film, made from the same feeling as Joel Schumacher's "Falling Down", makes its point about the imminent and disturbingly easy civilisational breakdown in its first third and then limps along through the other 60 minutes. It seems Rod Serling was right when he made his "Twilight Zone" episode run for 25 minutes.
The second part of the film sees the married couple joined in their house by Joe (Dermot Mulroney), Annie's best friend who seems to make Matthew uncomfortable. This isn't only due to jealousy but also because Joe, a hard-working manly man, makes Matthew feel inadequate. While Joe is the kind of guy to do what needs to be done, Matthew tries very hard to avoid conflict and often acts meekly in situations which demand a decisive and definite response. What this has to do with the rest of "The Trigger Effect" is beyond me. You could argue Koepp's idea was to portray the same kind of breakdown of civility that was happening statewide on a smaller scale, in the family unit which would have been a justifiable idea except that isn't what happens. A lot of the film's runtime is spent with Matthew and Joe bickering and trying to outdo one another in Annie's eyes which just isn't that interesting especially because neither is a particularly well-defined character.
The third part of the film then unexpectedly turns into a kind of small scale "Mad Max" in which the trio hit the road in a desperate bid to get out of the city now overrun with looters and criminals. I won't spoil what happens to them, but suffice to say the film turns into a strange kind of moralising action film which manages to feel both deeply unsatisfying and preachy. The suspense scenes are directed listlessly and the messages delivered heavy-handedly. Eventually, the film climaxes with a sickly sweet message of hope which, after everything that happened before it, seems not only intellectually dishonest but also disappointingly false.
The history of civilisation is full of breakdowns be they caused by wars, plagues, famines or demands for political change. In fact, ever since its creation, human civilization has been teetering on the edge of collapse. This constant threat makes the subject of "The Trigger Effect" terrifyingly prescient but it also makes the film's depiction of such a collapse seem silly. Serling's "Maple Street" was a stirring indictment of paranoia and a razor-sharp satire of the supposedly idyllic suburban lives being sold as the realization of the American Dream. His writing was so inspired, believable, and upsetting that he didn't feel the need to bloat his screenplay with needless action scenes and cliche marital conflicts. It stood on its own. Koepp's weak remake, on the other hand, has neither the satirical edge nor the strong, believable characterisations and needs to turn to such devices in order to keep its audience's attention. Sadly, despite a strong start, "The Trigger Effect" didn't keep mine.
1.5/4 - DirectorJohn BoormanStarsLee MarvinAngie DickinsonKeenan WynnAfter being double-crossed and left for dead, a mysterious man named Walker single-mindedly tries to retrieve the money that was stolen from him.20-06-2020
"Point Blank" stars Lee Marvin, one of the quintessential screen tough guys. With his cold eyes, gruff voice, and readiness to rumble he brought a commanding presence and a kind of cool intelligence to all the parts he played. Here he plays Walker, a professional thief who is conned by his partner-in-crime (John Vernon) and left for dead, shot and stranded on the now deserted Alcatraz Island. But Walker doesn't die and in an almost supernatural feat, he manages to swim back ashore, recoup his strength, and now he's back wanting only one thing. His 93,000 dollars. That's all he asks for. Not a dime more, not a dime less. He doesn't seem to care his former partner who's now working for a powerful mob organization has stolen his wife (Sharon Acker), he doesn't seem to care when she commits suicide. He's not out for blood, just his money. When they give it to him, he'll go away, but when they don't, people die. Like a one-man killing machine, Walker methodically works his way up the chain of command. First up is his ex-partner, then his immediate superior (Lloyd Bochner), and then his immediate superior (Carroll O'Connor). And he's not going to stop until they pay him back. At one point, one of the higher-ups wonders "You threaten a financial structure like this for $93,000?" But of course, he does. It's a matter of principle and for Walker, principle is the only thing he has left.
And that's a quintessential tough-guy movie plot, except "Point Blank" isn't a run-of-the-mill actioner in the least. It transcends the genre mainly because it is directed not by old sure-hands like Don Siegel or John Sturges but by John Boorman, the English director of such films as "Deliverance" and "Zardoz" which blurred the lines between arthouse and mainstream and which have over the years become legitimate cult classics. Boorman gives "Point Blank" a broken structure through which the past and the present fall into one another. Just like Walker's actions in the present are caused by events in the past, so we flashbacks frequently intrude this film, sometimes for only a few frames. The effect is similar to the one later on employed by Nicolas Roeg and gives the film an eery, dreamlike atmosphere which makes you wonder whether what you're seeing is really happening or is only Walker's dying dream as he lays bleeding in Alcatraz. Marvin's performance doesn't help settle the issue. Throughout the film, he barely speaks beyond making his demand, "I want my money". True to his character's name, he spends most of the film walking in a focused, determined manner, relentlessly moving towards his goal. Death which he leaves in his wake doesn't seem to disturb him much and he never drops his cool exterior except once when he realises he's fallen for his sister-in-law Chris (Angie Dickinson), but this is only a momentary distraction, one he indulges in during a stakeout. Not even sex will make Walker waste a second of his time. Wherever he goes, Walker is followed by a mysterious, omniscient figure of Yost (Keenan Wynn), a guardian angel whom we suspect of being the devil himself. He guides him from one target to the next. What is in it for him? We don't know.
Besides giving the film a surreal atmosphere, Boorman also focuses on certain moments other by-the-numbers actioners would skip. There's a brilliant scene in which Walker finds his ex-wife, alone and depressed. Remembering happy days, she talks at length about how they met and married and how it all went to hell. True to form, Walker never says a word, but there's great sorrow and regret in his stoic silence. Another terrific moment comes after Walker and Chris have had sex. Chris asks him "What's my last name". Walker, cool as ice replies, "What's my first name". It is these moments of emotion in between all the ruthless killing that make "Point Blank" such a thoughtful and powerful watch. Sure, at times some of its experimental antics get a bit too much and occasionally it seems a tad dated, but the strong characterizations, eery atmosphere, and a chilling central turn from Lee Marvin really elevate "Point Blank" from a simple action picture to a real classic. It is a stylish, brutal, witty, and relentlessly bleak movie which paved the way for other such ambitious genre pictures. In many ways, Boorman's never topped himself.
3.5/4 - DirectorBrian HelgelandStarsMel GibsonGregg HenryMaria BelloAfter a successful heist, Porter is left for dead. Once he recovers, he seeks vengeance and wants his share of the money.20-06-2020
Porter (Mel Gibson) is not a nice guy and despite what the tagline may tell you, he never was one. The first time we meet him he jumps over a railway gate without paying, steals money from a beggar, and then kicks down his ex-wife's (Deborah Kara Unger) door. The last time his wife saw him, she was shooting him in the back and running off with his partner-in-crime Val (Gregg Henry) and 70,000 dollars of Porter's money, now he's back in town and on a mission, the mission, of course, being, get the 70,000 dollars, no matter how, and no matter at what cost. Killing is no problem for Porter and he does it a lot in this film. First on his hit list is Val who buys it after he explains he can't pay him the money back, but the organization he works for can. "Then what good are you," Porter asks before shooting him in the head. The organization calls itself the Syndicate and is structured like a pyramid, lieutenants on the bottom, two managers above them, and a mysterious millionaire called Bronson (Kris Kristoferson) on the very top. The money, of course, flows upwards which is very bad news for Bronson since Porter is following the money and death is following in his wake.
"Payback", the directorial debut of screenwriter Brian Helgeland, is based on the same novel as "Point Blank" but that's where the similarities end. For one, "Point Blank's" lead, played memorably by Lee Marvin, was a thief with principles. When someone mentions principles to Porter, he laughs and retorts "I'm getting misty". He's a straight-up bad guy, a villain and often a bully with no qualms over killing and no principles whatsoever. He's after the money because he can't stand the idea of being conned. Marvin was out for justice, Porter's out for vengeance. The films also greatly differ in style. "Point Blank" became a cult classic due to its trippy broken structure and dreamlike atmosphere. "Payback", on the other hand, goes for realism with its bluesy soundtrack and black and metallic cinematography. To that end, the violence is downright grisly. Each punch connects with a sickening crunching sound, each bullet causes a nasty wound and once hit, people stay down. This is a brutal film but it revels in its brutality. It creates a joke out of it, because for all its nastiness, "Payback" is a very funny film. It gets a lot of comedic mileage from its excessive amounts of violence and even more from its quirky characters. Porter is pursued by a sadomasochistic dominatrix (Lucy Liu), two dandy cops (Bill Duke and Jack Conley), and a neurotic drug dealer (David Paymer) while hunting down a hippy gangster (James Coburn) and Bronson's whiny teenage son (Trevor St. John). There's a lot of humour to be had with Porter himself as Gibson plays him with his tongue firmly in his cheek. He growls, frowns, and glares through this part with infectious glee. He was the right choice for this part. There wasn't so much fun to be had with "Point Blank".
I didn't like all of "Payback". I scoffed at the hooker with a heart of gold cliche that is Porter's girlfriend Rosie (Maria Bello) and I thought the happy ending that came along with her was a huge cop-out. I also disliked the dead-pan narration provided by Gibson which reminded me of the listless voiceover from the theatrical cut of "Blade Runner" in its lacklustre uselessness. Finally, I felt that the film needed a tighter, faster pace in order to capitalise on the insanity of its overly complicated and chess-like plot. But this is a fun movie and that's hard to deny. Brian Helgeland and his star Mel Gibson create a kind of black comedy atmosphere which ferried me through all the violence and grit. If this script was played straight it would have been a despicable and unbearable experience akin to one of those torture porn horror movies. But due to the undying grin on Gibson's face and the endless amounts of over-the-top humour, "Payback" not only thrills but also entertains.
Now, I've seen "Payback" many times mostly from the beat-up VHS tape of it I had in the 2000s but what I didn't know at the time was that "Payback" wasn't as much fun to film as it was to watch. Helgeland and Gibson clashed over the tone of the film and, as it often happens, Helgeland got summarily fired and about a third of the film was reshot. Unusually, however, the original director's cut was eventually made available on DVD and it is indeed quite a different picture. Some improvements are made. The annoying narration is done away with and the pace is significantly tightened up. However, also gone are the comedic touches that made the theatrical cut as enjoyable as it was. Gibson's performance in the director's cut is extremely dead-pan, more like Lee Marvin's in "Point Blank", without Gibson's signature twinkle in the eye and tongue in his cheek. The result is a film which is grimier and bleaker than it should be. Removing those over-the-top black comedy moments makes "Payback" a lot less fun and a lot less memorable. It also makes the film a lot less original as bad-guy-driven action thrillers were all the rage in the post "Reservoir Dogs" 1990s. As it turns out, the third act was completely refilmed and the director's cut ends with a shootout at a train station which is nowhere near as entertaining as the double-cross Porter pulls on the Syndicate in the theatrical cut. Also missing is Kristofferson's hammy turn as Bronson who is now played by Sally Kellerman, a possibly interesting choice had the character not been relegated to a disembodied voice. Instead of having a physical, interesting villain, the director's cut of "Payback" gives us a voice over the phone. In conclusion, despite its tighter pace and lack of narration, the director's cut pales in comparison with the flawed but endlessly entertaining theatrical cut. In this case, I side against the director.
THEATRICAL CUT - 3/4
DIRECTOR'S CUT - 2/4 - DirectorRobert WiseStarsAnthony HopkinsMarsha MasonJohn BeckA stranger attempts to convince a happily married couple that their daughter is actually his daughter reincarnated.21-06-2020
Janice (Marsha Mason) and Bill Templeton (John Beck) are a happy, successful New York couple living with their precocious daughter Ivy (Susan Swift) in a fancy, two-floored apartment with paintings on their ceilings. Then one day, returning with Ivy from school, Janice notices a strange man following them. She'd seen him before in the park and Bill's seen him on the bus to work. They go to the police, but as always in movies, they can't do anything until a crime is committed. Who is this mystery man and what does he want? Well, as it turns out, his name is Elliot Hoover (Anthony Hopkins) and he's a businessman from England. He too once had a happy family, a wife and a daughter called Audrey Rose before they both died in a horrific car crash that left them alive but unable to leave the burning vehicle. For years, he says, he was depressed until he met a psychic who told him his daughter was still living. It became his mission in life to find her again and after seven years he believes he finally has. You see, he believes his daughter Audrey Rose has been reincarnated as the Templetons' daughter Ivy. At first, Bill and Janice are rightly sceptical and brand Hoover "a nut". However, after their daughter begins experiencing disturbing nightmares in which she seems to be burning alive, Janice slowly begins believing which threatens her relationship with both Bill and her daughter.
This is fascinating and highly promising material, but one which demands a far more delicate and subtle approach than the one director Robert Wise takes. "Audrey Rose" should have been an intimate drama about a happy family and a destroyed man desperate for a piece of that happiness. Instead Wise and screenwriter/ novelist Frank De Felitta overburden the film with horror elements and cliche spiritualism which drag the film into the realm of the absurd. Little Ivy suffers all kinds of night terrors, seizures, and fits during which she spins around uncontrollably destroying everything in her path. Meanwhile, Michael Small's overcooked score hopelessly tries to evoke "The Exorcist" while cinematographer Victor J. Kemper bathes everything in harsh blues for no apparent reason. Instead of building three-dimensional, relatable characters, Wise and De Felitta rely on high-end theatrics. John Beck spends the whole film shouting and punching walls, Marsha Mason sheds so many tears she could quench the thirst in the third world, and little Susan Swift tries unsuccessfully to channel Linda Blair. Instead of being a likeable family, our three leads are relegated to horror film cliches. Only Anthony Hopkins manages to build a relatable character and even though he seems to be impersonating Laurence Olivier for much of the time succeeds in getting across some of the emotion his character is feeling.
The film eventually completely falls apart in the second half which turns into an absolutely ridiculous courtroom drama in which Hoover tries to persuade the jury that Ivy is actually Audrey Rose. Instead of laughing at the sheer preposterousness of such a claim, the judge allows him and his melodramatic lawyer (Robert Walden) to bring before the court a bevvy of psychics, mystics, and a hypnotist. The high-point of hilariousness in this film must be the deadly serious testimony of an Indian mystic which is underscored by the chants of "Hare Krishna" and then interrupted by a montage of documentary footage of India. I'm by no means surprised to see a 1970s film try to sell the notion of India as some sort of magical place, but I am surprised to see it done in such a dead-pan manner. Finally, a hypnotist is brought in to get the truth out of little Ivy and my compliments go to the actor portraying him, the great Norman Lloyd, for keeping a straight face during a scene which is hopelessly overwrought and laughably sincere.
"Audrey Rose" has no business engaging in such horror theatrics, its story demands an intelligent, emotional telling which would focus on the emotions of its core characters rather than cheap horror tactics ripped off from "The Exorcist". This is why "Audrey Rose" is a hopelessly misguided film, one which wastes its truly fascinating and poignant premise and talented cast. Robert Wise had previously directed both great horror movies ("The Haunting", "The Andromeda Strain") and great dramas ("I Want to Live", "West Side Story"). How he got the two genres mixed up here, I don't know.
2/4