Lessons of Darkness

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): C-

A rotten retread in the vein of Platinum Dunes’ Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th do-overs, A Nightmare on Elm Street regurgitates key visuals from Wes Craven’s iconic original but nonetheless fails to mimic or update with any competence. Helmed by Samuel Bayer (director of Nirvana’s classic “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video), the story once again focuses on a group of teens hunted in their dreams by Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earl Haley). The knife-gloved fiend’s backstory has here been modified from killing children to pedophilia, an alteration that affords Bayer numerous opportunities – beginning with an opening slow-motion montage of children’s alphabet blocks, sidewalk chalk drawings, and tykes frolicking in a playground – to ramp up the prurience. However, despite providing a flashback to Krueger’s abusive past and fiery death at the hands of outraged parents, this Nightmare doesn’t appreciably develop the Krueger myth, as the monster’s literalized sexual deviance drains him of the mysterious, otherworldly menace that defined Robert Englund’s version. Encased in make-up that’s decidedly burn victim-ish, Jackie Earl Haley attempts to rectify the jokiness of numerous Nightmare sequels by gamely trying to turn Freddy back into a figure of fear. Yet the undead psycho’s lascivious pining for his victims before nearly every kill makes him seem less an unholy terror than merely a perverted ghoul.

While Bayer’s glossy aesthetics and preference for loud-noise jolt scares are in keeping with modern horror-remake dictates, they’re also at odds with the film’s apparent desire to go more gritty and hardcore, as its car-commercial sheen and sub-Wolverine CG knife effects leadenly position the material as hokey cinematic fantasy. The teens’ repressed preschool memories from 1994 prove not only the reason for Freddy’s reign of terror but also the key to his destruction via a Pulp Fiction-style epinephrine shot to the heart. Such plot points are irrelevant, though, since the saga’s Abercrombie ciphers are so featureless that it’s nigh impossible to care about their fate, meaning that Bayer inadvertently repeats one of the very mistakes that doomed the Nightmare franchise to campiness: making supposedly villainous Freddy the only one worth rooting for. Clumsily inserting Craven’s standout imagery into its slapdash story (a schoolgirl in a body bag, a face and arms trying to emerge from a wall), the set-piece-challenged film never expands on its predecessor by fleshing out the connection between Freddy’s human crimes and his supernatural reappearance in dreams, nor does it adequately delve into its characters’ struggle to reconcile the present with the past. Instead, substituting Craven’s disquietingly surreal atmosphere for straightforward shocks, it’s just another hack-and-slash cash-grab unaware of what made its source material unique.

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010): B-

As amusingly stupid as advertised, Hot Tub Time Machine milks the ‘80s for laughs but gets most of its comedic mileage out of a more general strain of boys-being-morons insanity. In Steve Pink’s visually cruddy film, Adam (John Cusack) is reunited with friend Nick (Craig Robinson) when their high-school buddy Lou (Rob Corddry) almost kills himself via car exhaust fumes while rocking out to Motley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home.” To cheer Lou up, Adam and Nick – along with Adam’s nerdy virgin nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) – visit an old ski resort haunt, where they jump in their room’s hot tub and magically transport back to 1986, where everyone sees them as their younger selves. This scenario, and the guys’ ensuing attempts to not change anything about their pasts (because of the butterfly effect), leads to a fair share of jokes about ‘80s fashion and politics, of which about a quarter hit their intended mark. Yet amidst the uneven period goof-offery and plot strands that find the characters learning about themselves, the story mixes ribald lunacy with wink-wink knowingness to witty effect, with the cast’s easy, rambunctious rapport leading to a raft of lewd back-and-forths often laced with sorrow over youthful opportunities squandered. Shakespeare it most certainly isn’t, but the self-consciousness of Hot Tub’s silliness turns the film into an invitingly idiotic ride, one marked by a standout Rob Corddry performance as a belligerently boorish prick with a tongue made for both malice and hair metal.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009): B-

Body horror of a most repulsive kind, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) pushes at, and finally barrels straight through, the boundaries of modern cinematic shock-imagery. Tom Six’s exploitation film is designed to elicit not simply revulsion but urgent questions of “why?”, as his story – about two American tourists who fall victim to a German doctor’s lunatic experiment – delivers on its insane premise without ever quite intimating an underlying reason for staging such madness in the first place. Six’s set-up is thin gruel: heading out to a club, Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) wind up stranded on a forest road when their car breaks down, compelling them (after a passerby sexually menaces them) to randomly walk through the woods until they stumble upon the home of a big bad wolf, Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser). Some doped glasses of water later, the girls awaken to find themselves strapped to hospital beds, listening to Dr. Heiter explain his plan to use them – as well as a newly captured Japanese man named Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura) – in a procedure to form the titular insectoid “structure.” It turns out Heiter’s career was as a surgeon who separated Siamese twins, making his latest endeavor the unification flip-side to his former work. Otherwise, though, Six provides scant subtextual currents to the mad doctor’s plot, save for the fact that his first name is Joseph and Katsuro slanders him as a “Nazi,” suggesting that perhaps Heiter is a symbolic Return of the Reich determined to punish, by proxy, both his American foes and disappointing Japanese comrades. The director’s dreamily gliding camerawork and canny framing generate a mood of inevitable doom, and the square-jawed, psychotic-looking Laser seems to have been born to play Heiter, a maniac so frightening he’s occasionally amusing. Most important to the proceedings, however, is that Six’s narrative doesn’t back off from its prime threat – by midway point, Heiter has not only created his ass-to-mouth human centipede (with Lindsay, punished for trying to escape, as the dual-connected middle segment), but he’s set about trying to train it like a dog. It’s mind-boggling monstrousness, and if the demented film proves disappointingly devoid of any serious thematic meat, it nonetheless proves a haunting one-track exercise in body-invasion terror, ably achieving its goal of providing original, eye-scrub-required horror imagery.

The Losers (2010): C

Based on a popular comic book series, The Losers approximates the macho guns-blazing fantasies peddled by not only its source material but also countless run-of-the-mill Xbox and PS3 shoot-‘em-ups. Director Sylvain White’s saga involves an A-Team-ish squad of soldiers who, after being framed and left for dead during a Bolivian drug raid by mysterious spook Max (Jason Patric), become rogue mercenaries bent on revenge. They’re led by staunch good guy Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who risks life and limb during the intro centerpiece to save innocent children, and are aided by the mysterious Aisha (Zoë Saldana), whose motives for wanting Max dead remain dangerously unclear. White adequately stages a fiery erotic first encounter between Clay and Aisha, as well as a downtown armored truck hijacking performed with a helicopter and a giant magnet. Unfortunately, the proceedings’ strained witty banter and wild cartoon action is encased in an attitude of smug coolness rather than the type of self-deprecating goofiness that might have delivered requisite B-movie kicks. Too lazy to imbue the Losers’ desire for retribution with even a trace of resonant human emotion, the film colors its stale outline in ways both hackneyed (as with Chris Evans’ impromptu rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”) and mundane (be ready for that outta-left-field climactic twist!). Saldana and Morgan sweat sexuality but their characters’ passion is as arbitrary as Max’s personality is quirky, though as far as offbeat bad-guy performances go, Patric’s is a reasonably effectively facsimile of a typical modern Nic Cage turn.

In the Mouth of Madness (1994): B

John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness has heady ideas it’s incapable of fully working out, but its tale – about John Trent (Sam Neill), an insurance investigator hired by a publishing firm to look into the disappearance of Stephen King-ish horror author Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow) – is finely attuned to the disquieting realm of the irrational. Though Trent is constantly proclaiming that Cane’s popular books, which drive readers batshit crazy, aren’t “reality,” Carpenter’s story (penned by Michael De Luca) makes a rather blunt argument in favor of horror fiction’s power to influence via Cane’s latest novel “In the Mouth of Madness,” which has been inspired by demonic forces and seeks to drive the world into apocalyptic insanity. Trent discovers this while on a road trip to find Cane with publishing babe Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), a journey that leads him to Hobb’s Corner, a small New Hampshire town featured in one of Cane’s books and populated by rotting-flesh children and an unholy church presided over by the lunatic author himself. The line between the real and the unreal slowly melts away as Cane’s prose comes to life, but Madness’ portrait of art’s ability to manifest itself in the hearts and minds of its consumers is never quite lucid or well-paced enough to truly chill. That task, however, is ably taken up by Carpenter’s imagery of the impossible, from a nocturnal run-in with a boy (or is it an elderly man?) on a bicycle that’s defined by its ill-fitting elements, to a hotel lobby painting that mutates in dreadful ways. Even as his story devolves into a muddle, his acutely unsettling widescreen compositions thrillingly pinpoint the terror of the bizarrely incongruous.

Kick Me

A new collection of links for this beautiful Thursday morning in CT, including my thoughts on last week's #1 film, Kick-Ass, as well as my first feature for The L Magazine, on George Romero.

George Romero Versus Humanity (The L Magazine)

Out Now:
Kick-Ass (Slant magazine)
Death at a Funeral (Time Out New York)
Exit Through the Gift Shop (Slant magazine)
Don McKay (Time Out New York)
The Joneses (Slant magazine)
The Perfect Game (Slant magazine)

Out Tomorrow:
Boogie Woogie (Slant magazine)
Paper Man (Slant magazine)

Everyone Else (2010): A-

An opening image of an intricately embroidered carpet beautifully suggests the knotty drama to come in Everyone Else, Maren Ade’s superb depiction-cum-dissection of a young German couple’s fraying relationship. The twists and turns of romance are at the epicenter of Ade’s follow-up to 2003’s excellent The Forest for the Trees, with architect Chris (Lars Eidinger) and music label PR rep Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) becoming estranged not via a calamitous event, but through small clashes and instances of cruelty that escalate during their summer stay at the lovely Sardinia vacation home of Chris’ wealthy parents. Aside from a disastrous hiking trip and a dinner with a neighboring architect (whom Chris wants to impress) and the gentleman’s cheerily accommodating wife, the film is short on significant narrative incidents and even more devoid of traditional structure. Rather, the writer/director elegantly affords her performers room to literally and figuratively breathe. Her staging is full of scenes that flow through corridors, walkways and narrow spaces – visualizations of the central relationship’s wending, winding progression – and which grant opportunities for naturalistic conversations and encounters in which the desire to make their union (and themselves, personally, socially and professionally) successful is undercut by backbiting, betrayal and a refusal, implied by the script’s last line of dialogue, to truly see the other.

Despite its even-handed treatment of both characters, neither one of whom is assigned full culpability for their amour’s gradual devolution, Everyone Else never quite achieves complete equilibrium, as Gitti’s freewheeling, adventurous outspokenness is never as off-putting as Chris’ wimpy, resentful malice and grating indecisiveness, the latter of which Gitti calls out in a semi-rehearsed outburst of stunning, severe astuteness. Still, the two are equally entrancing, relatable creatures-of-conflict, puzzles pieces who desperately want to fit together even as they begin discovering that they may be inherently mismatched. After their first evening with the neighbors is cut short by Gitti’s refusal to accept their guests’ criticism of Chris – and Chris’ shocking, disloyal decision to side against his girlfriend – the fracturing couple extend an olive branch by inviting the two over for a dinner-of-reconciliation, leading to a finale that exudes not only suspense over how things will inevitably detonate but a stinging measure of longing and mourning over a once-bright relationship at least partially shattered by nastiness, bitterness and, ultimately, incompatibility. Far more concerned with the minute ins-and-outs of interpersonal dynamics than with histrionics or exposition, Ade’s film provides riveting, intimate immersion in its twosome’s sweet, sour, multifaceted union, in the process allowing thorny insights about fulfillment and failure to scratch and claw their way to the surface. 

Weeks and Weeks

Despite posting quite a few reviews here in recent weeks, I've neglected to deliver a new link collection - until now, that is. Thus, here are a few reviews, as well as an IFC News feature I contributed to. As always, enjoy.

Now Playing:
Date Night (Slant magazine)
The Square (Slant magazine)
After.Life (Slant magazine)
The Last Song (Slant magazine)
The Warlords (Slant magazine)

Coming Soon:
Leaves of Grass (Slant magazine)

New Directors/New Films:
Bill Cunningham New York (Slant magazine)

Feature:
13 On-Screen Couples That Were Also Off-Screen Couples (IFC News)

Big Trouble in Little China (1986): C+

John Carpenter eschews horror and sci-fi for jokey action-comedy in Big Trouble with Little China, which benefits from a rollicking wise-ass performance from Kurt Russell but otherwise falls limp courtesy of too many corny gags. Mashing up Eastern kung-fu and Western westerns, the film involves big rig driver Jack Burton (Russell, playing a tongue-in-cheek parody of his Snake Plissken-ish on-screen persona) being roped into a centuries-old battle against 2,000-year-old demon Lo Pan (James Hong), who in an attempt to become flesh and blood has kidnapped the green-eyed girlfriend of Jack’s gambling buddy Wang (Dennis Dun). When Lo Pan also winds up nabbing plucky lawyer Gracie (Kim Cattrall), who also has green eyes and for whom Jack clearly has the hots, the tank-topped hero ventures beneath L.A.’s Chinatown streets to rescue his damsel in distress, a battle that involves Lo Pan’s three elemental henchmen Thunder, Lightning and Rain, as well as a beastly monster and hordes of disposable thugs. Carpenter’s gift for widescreen framing is only sporadically spied amidst the many lethargic chop-socky fights, and his insistent genre-melding – though at times endearingly cheesy – rarely hits upon a set piece that’s truly invigorated. Given that its ridiculousness is often strained, Big Trouble should be an even bigger drag than it is, yet Russell repeatedly elevates the material with a plethora of cocky smirks, laughable come-ons to Cattrall, and self-deprecating quips and eye rolls, his cartoonish superhero antics so inspired they deserve a project that’s more pleasing than simply pleased with itself.

New Moon (2009): D

Plot deficient to the point of formlessness, New Moon ups the Twilight franchise’s schmaltzy teen-lit melodrama without providing any sort of narrative backbone to sustain it. As with its predecessor, this sequel is built around the chaste romance between human teen Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and hunky vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a pair of fashion mag-ready actors stuck brooding and pining with laughable severity – to watch and listen to Stewart violently scream during nightmares in which she longs for her fanged boyfriend is to witness the perfect storm of overwrought writing and hammy acting. In this installment, Edward decides to abandon Forks, Washington and Bella in order to protect her from all his vamp friends eager to feast on her blood (as well as those who might use her against him), thus breaking her heart and leaving her in the care of perpetually shirtless Jacob (Taylor Lautner), who it turns out is a werewolf. Director Chris Weitz drenches his mopey proceedings in slow-mo shots of Pattinson strutting and Bella yearning, his over-the-top tone in line with material that bluntly, and incapably, strives for Romeo & Juliet-style tragic grandeur even as it goes so heavy on soapy silliness (not least of which is the continuing sight of Edward’s skin shining like sparkly diamonds when touched by the sun) that the entire affair plays like a joke. Basic questions abound – what’s so special about the featureless Bella? Why does Jacob put up with Bella’s cruel cock-tease behavior? And why would Bella even be interested in Edward and Jacob, two dim-witted, one-expression-only ciphers? – but dissecting the film in such obvious ways is to miss the point entirely. New Moon is only after the affectation of emotion, of swoon-worthy poses and faux-momentous aesthetics. Nonetheless, given how drearily slipshod and uneventful this chapter’s basic plotting is (Bella misses Edward, risks death via extreme sports so she can see Edward’s spirit, and gives Jacob blue balls), it’s hard not to feel that anyone – save, perhaps, for the cornily named Twi-hard zealots – would derive greater satisfaction from the similar, yet far more cheesily entertaining, True Blood.