The Eclipse – Drama, horror and a little comedy rolled into one strange little film

Michael (Ciaran Hinds) is a lonely widower with two children. He works as a chauffeur for a writer’s festival in Ireland. Michael has to drive an author named Lena (Iben Hjejle). She writes ghost stories and Michael identifies with her as he believes he’s starting to see a ghost. Once Michael and Lena meet, we can feel the tension between them. These two characters have something in common and it may develop into romance. They’ve both had supernatural experiences that bond them.

There is also Nicholas (Aidan Quinn), a best-selling American author. Quinn is fantastic here as a man who is very full of himself. He is selfish, obnoxious and rude. He comes to the festival to meet up with Lena as they had a romantic encounter in the past. Lena is reluctant to continue anything with him because he is married. Nicholas (Quinn) chews up the scenery as he gets drunk and makes several heavy handed advances at Lena. He goes crazy when he sees Lena spending time with Michael, who he sees as a simple driver and a stalker. His outbursts and behavior toward Michael in one key scene are hilarious and disturbing.

The film transitions between the drama of the love triangle and loneliness of Michael’s life, some truly funny scenes and ghostly horror scenes. The horror scenes are sparse and that makes them work all that much more. Ghosts pop up unexpectedly a couple of times. We never expect the scares as they are interwoven with the quiet and dramatic scenes.

My only gripe is that the ghosts/apparitions are never fully explained. There is some slight closure, but no outright answer for the apparitions. Otherwise this is a well acted and very well paced film that juggles genres expertly.

Three stars ***

Trailer

Director – Conor McPherson

New Review Tonight – The Eclipse

I will be seeing The Eclipse tonight. Click here for a link to the IMDB page. I’ll add my review tonight.

Hot Tub Time Machine – It’s literally a hot tub time machine

This film has a dumb title in the same vein as The 40 Year Old Virgin which was a hilarious and fun film. This one works in a similar way. It has a lot of ridiculous over the top gross-out humor combined with good story.

We have 3 friends, Lou (Rob Cordury), Adam (John Cusack) and Nick (Craig Robinson). Lou is an insecure bastard who treats his friends terribly, but they’re all he’s got. Adam and Nick have both strayed from the group of friends because they became committed to a job or a relationship. They all come back together when it seems that Lou has attempted to commit suicide (I’ll let you see the film to see how this happens).

In order to help Lou they decide to go to the the ski resort they used to frequent in their high school days and they take Adam’s nephew along. The guys with nephew in tow arrive and realize the place is run down and a shadow of its former self. They decide to make the best of it and jump in the hot tub. After a huge alcohol and drug binge they wake up and it’s 1986 and it’s all due to the hot tub (time machine?). They’re suddenly in their 17/18 year old bodies (seen in a mirror ala Quantum Leap). What follows is a hilarious trip through 1986 where the guys must decide if they should do the same things they did or if they should change things up.

The story is actually touching and interesting. The gross out gags are well timed. By the end of the film I cared about all these characters, even Lou (Rob Cordury). My sides actually hurt from laughing at some points.

A solid 3 stars ***

Trailer

Director – Steve Pink

Night on Earth – It’s like Taxi Cab Confessions, sort of

Night on Earth a film that is composed of 5 mini-films. Each one takes place in a cab in a different city around the world in the middle of the night. The cities are L.A., New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki.

The 5 segments feature a driver and a passenger or 3 passengers as is the case in the final section in Helsinki. Jarmusch simply gives us these characters and their interactions. The only relation between the 5 segments is the taxi cab setting. The conversations between the drivers and the passengers are what matter here.

In L.A., Winona Ryder is a tomboyish driver and her passenger (Gena Rowlands) is a casting agent who thinks Winona would great for a film role. In New York the driver (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is a German immigrant who has clearly never driven before. His passenger takes the wheel for a trip to Brooklyn. The Paris segment has a driver from the Ivory Coast who kicks two drunk politicians out of his cab after they harass him. He then picks up a blind girl and annoys her with his ignorant questions. The driver in Rome (Roberto Begnini) is a sex obsessed maniac who drives with sunglasses on at night. He picks up a priest and horrifies him with his crazed sex stories. The final segment in Helsinki features a driver that picks up 3 unruly drunkards. Two of them tell the driver of the awful life of their friend who is passed out and the driver tells his own sad story.

There is never any clever surprise or twist. It’s simply about the late night conversations between driver and passenger(s).

The soundtrack is by Tom Waits, heard between segments, creates an eerie sensation that mirrors the lonely night-time cab rides in each city. I enjoyed this one.

3 and 1/2 stars ***1/2

Trailer

Director Jim Jarmusch

The Straight Story – David Lynch tells it straight

David Lynch is known for making some very surreal films that are often hard to understand. The Straight Story is one of his few conventional films. It’s based on a true story.

Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) is an old man near the end of his life. He lives a simple life in a small Iowa farm town with his mentally handicapped daughter (Sissy Spacek) that he cares for very much. One day he receives a call that his brother who lives in Wisconsin has had a very bad stroke. Alvin decides he needs to visit him, but he doesn’t have a driver’s license and he doesn’t see very well. He won’t let anyone drive him. He leaves alone on his riding tractor mower for the 300 mile journey from Iowa to Wisconsin.

Along the way Alvin meets many strangers who are very kind to him and they exchange stories. As Alvin relates his story to these strangers we find out about his estrangement from his brother and his need to make the trip alone.

Lynch’s majestic shots of the countryside convey a sense of loneliness that parallels Alvin’s loneliness on his grand and unusual trip. Richard Farnsworth brings warmth and charisma to the role of Alvin. He waves kindly to people as he passes by on his tractor and we can’t help, but root for him. The exchanges between the various strangers give us a glimpse into Alvin’s history. These exchanges help to explain the real reason for his trip. It becomes clear that the urgency of the trip is the real Straight story and not the strange mode of transportation. It’s hard to believe that Lynch, a master of the macabre can present such a straightforward and beautiful story, but indeed he does.

Four Stars ****

Trailer

Director – David Lynch

Dead Snow – Not just zombies, Nazi zombies!

I’m not a huge fan of the horror genre and specifically zombie movies.  In my opinion if you’ve seen one horde of marauding zombies you’ve seen them all.  There’s no difference unless you prefer the older, slow shambling type or the newer speedy variety.  The zombies of the Norwegian film Dead Snow are the faster type.

We have a group of young medical students who are vacationing in a remote cabin in the middle of extremely snowy mountains.  As they walk toward the cabin their conversation references several horror films. This is a clue that the film is self-aware.

There is a common scene in the horror genre which I refer to as “the warning”.  This happens when our characters are at the cabin. A creepy old man appears, accompanied by the expected sound scare. He warns of a Nazi danger which our heroes laugh off (Nazis in present day?) before being given a stern second warning.

The first attack is during the obligatory and ridiculous sex scene in an outhouse.  From there the attacks escalate and our surviving heroes go running to get help.  There are hilarious sight gags: a snowmobile equipped with a machine gun, a character runs at a zombie with a hammer and sickle held together and hanging off a cliff by holding onto zombie intestines.  Also, zombies hacked with a chainsaw (hello Evil Dead reference).  The chainsaw is later used as a cure for avoiding zombie infection (or is that Nazi infection).

The film is pretty much built out of horror movie cliches, but is saved the sight gags and its self-awareness.  There’s certainly not much new or inventive here with the exception of the zombies being Nazis.  If you’re into the whole zombie thing this is for you.

Two and half stars **1/2

Trailer

Director – Tommy Wirkola

Into the Wild – A surprise of a film

In theory I should have been completely turned off by this film.  I should have been completely repulsed by the protagonist and bored by the soundtrack.  Why you ask?

Well this is a film about a young man (Christopher McCandless played by Emile Hirsch) who beyond all reason and logic decides to go “into the wild” and live on nothing, but what he hunted and a bag of rice. He does all this because he believes it will free him.  Also the soundtrack is done by Eddie “horse croak” Vedder.  I like Pearl Jam enough.  I’ve even seen them in concert (they were fantastic).  I’m just not thrilled about Eddie Vedder doing an acoustic soundtrack to a movie about a deluded young man who feels the need to live in the wild in order to rage against the materialism of our world.

Despite all that I ended up loving this film.  The story is told in a non-linear form.  We flash back and forth between Christopher’s travels and his life in the wild.  The conclusion of the film is probably common knowledge as this is based on a famous book, but I’ll refrain from going over that.  I will just say that the McCandless’s journey and motivations are presented very well  from the beginning to the end. Sean Penn does a great job of showing us Christopher’s issues with his parents.  We see the people Christopher meets and the effect they have on him and how he affects them.  The non-linear form may be an artistic choice, but it works very well here to convey the story of a young lost soul.  Eddie Vedder’s soundtrack is simply beautiful and compliments the film better than anything else I could imagine.

4 stars ****

Trailer

Director – Sean Penn

The Wolfman – Well it has a wolfman in it if anything.

I heard that Benicio Del Toro was going to star in a Wolfman movie in early 2009. After seeing some art-work and reading that Del Toro was a huge fan of the old Wolfman films I got excited. By the end of 2009 I knew that the movie also starred Anthony Hopkins and Hugo Weaving. The trailer looked fantastic and CGI even looked pretty good. The impending February 2010 release date seemed so far away and I was so ready for a good old Wolfman romp with some modern touches. Sadly I was mostly disappointed. Let’s put it this way:

The good:
The score is fantastic (reminiscent of the Bram Stoker’s Dracula score). The beginning is mysterious enough and we only get glimpses at the wolfman which helps to create a sense of tension. The set up of the film really had a throwback feeling to older horror films which was a nice touch. One notable thing is that this wolfman is bipedal.

The bad:
When we get clear shots of the wolfman and the transformation he is a swirly computer creation that moves at unbelievable speed. The story is pretty sloppy. We begin with a gypsy camp and an attack by the wolfman. The gypsies are dropped only to come back later with no real good reason. There’s very little growth or development. The police officer investigating the case (Hugo Weaving) is a compelling character with great presence, but he gets little screen time.

The ugly:
Benicio Del Toro is just muttering his lines in an awful monotone. There’s no feeling behind his character at all. Emily Blunt’s character is vague and mostly pointless. Anthony Hopkins phones in an awful performance. The criminally bad CGI showdown that would make John Woo proud. (that’s not a good thing if you’re curious).

Trailer

2 stars **

Whip It – Tough Chicks

Whip It is Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut. I had a really fun time with this one. Bliss (Ellen Page) is a girl that’s forced into beauty pageants by her overbearing mom (the always amazing Marcia Gay Harden). She has a father (Daniel “voice of Kevin Arnold” Stern) who seems to be pretty supportive, but very submissive to his wife. Bliss is clearly not a fan of having to do these pageants, but she’s from a small town and that’s all they have to offer.

One day on a trip out of town Bliss sees a roller derby match and manages to con her way onto a team even though she’s underage and ends up becoming their champion player. Yes this thing plays out like every sports/competition film you’ve seen. Yet, it still works. Why you ask? Well, it’s because these characters are well developed and the film is very well paced. Bliss and her family seem realistic and they each have good reason for behaving the way that they do. The characters’ growth and realizations are realistic.

Judging from interviews I’ve seen with Drew Barrymore I would have never guessed that she could create such a cohesive project. I have clearly been disproved as this is a pretty tightly written and directed work. It is really just a fun and charming little film about a sport that has its own little sub-culture. If you don’t want to go see a roller derby match after this I don’t know what’s wrong with you.

A solid 3 stars ***

Trailer

Director – Drew Barrymore

Alice In Wonderland – Alice by Numbers

My mom read the Lewis Carrol story to me when I was really young in the early 80s. Alice’s adventures were truly wonderful, original and frightening back then. I remember seeing the Disney cartoon and that brought a whole new creepy visual aspect to the story that I really appreciated.

Fast forward to this new film and it just feels like we’re retreading old ground. By this time we’ve all seen various versions of the Alice story. Here, Alice is older and going back to Wonderland, but does that bring anything new? Well, we have the Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, the Tweedles and so and so on (all stuff we’ve seen before). Johnny Depp is put in a ridiculous over the top costume as the Mad Hatter, but he manages to make the character interesting by giving us a truly mad person who switches between accents and personalities. The film’s conclusion is an inevitable action sequence that seems to have no purpose, but to give us an action sequence. The film could have been about Alice finding her true self through wonderland. It could have had a redemption for the Red Queen as she’s a sad woman with an enlarged head that just needs to be loved. Instead we get another banal good vs. evil story with the main character triumphing at the very end. Sure it all looks very pretty and is technically an achievement. Yet, in these post-Lord of the Rings and Avatar times we live in, this just another crazy, kooky looking fantasy film full of pretty sets and CGI (which is truly jarring in the case of Crispin Glover’s digitally stretched out character).

Two and half stars **1/2

Trailer

Director – Tim Burton