Review: 'What We Do in the Shadows'
The myth of the modern vampire is admittedly a very fascinating one. Their existence is one of great power, but great loneliness–a need to be accepted by humanity, despite their deadly inhibitions against them. For the most part of the last decade, the mythic race has been defined by Edward Cullen’s brooding angst–morphing this generation’s perspective into a more romantic than fearful vision. But in all honesty, despite their mysterious sensuality, vampires are pretty f*cking goofy. What We Do in the Shadows exploits this notion to its fullest capacity, creating a mockumentary about the daily go-abouts of a troupe of vampires in New Zealand. The result is the smartest vampire movie since Let the Right One In and already one of the funniest movies of the year.
Written and helmed by kiwi funnymen Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Waititi (Green Lantern), the faux-documentary follows four centuries-old blood-suckers living in a quiet Wellington suburb. They share chores, discuss their troubles with women, go out to clubs (what else is there to do when you can only go out at night?), trick the cops when they get called on for noise complaints and make all other kinds of merry around the town. The even get into a hilarious tiff with a group of rival werewolves led by fellow kiwi comedian Rhys Darby (Yes Man).
What We Do in the Shadows exploits this notion to its fullest capacity, creating a mockumentary about the daily go-abouts of a troupe of vampires in New Zealand. The result is the smartest vampire movie since Let the Right One In and already one of the funniest movies of the year.
In the same way that Jim Jarmusch’s moody, contemplative Only Lovers Left Alive reimagined vampires as city dwellers, seamlessly learning to assimilate into the modern urban society, What We Do in the Shadows finds a sweet spot between humanity and the supernatural. Where Jarmusch’s film bore its Detroit-cool fangs–Clement and co. guffaw with a menacing laugh that would make old Count Dracula’s belly ache. It takes the minutia of human life–the excitements and disappointments of the modern world–and plays them as the struggles of a vampire attempting to live in the 21st century. It’s an idea that should have already been explored, especially since vampires are the closest mythological creature to humans. Let the Right One In (and its under-appreciated 2010 American remake) did this, but in a very realistic and horrific way. The mockumentary style is so far from realistic, almost cartoon-like, that it gives the vampires a self-awareness that has been absent from the genre in recent years. Well, maybe in that Twilight parody Vampires Suck…although that movie probably did suck.
Each of the players are individually fantastic. Their deadpan delivery, the banter between the vampires, the differentiation in their characters, is the makings of a fantastic television show. Like many of the best documentaries, What We Do In Shadows begs for the world its subjects inhabit to be explored much deeper, here done Christopher Guest (Spinal Tap) style. There is a surprising amount of depth to a the explorations of love and aging that act as subplots. Some of these themes are explored with much more comical than dramatic, less mythological counterparts. That is the success of What We Do in the Shadows. It’s hilarious, for one, but there are so many mundane elements of daily life it sinks its teeth into (at least one vamp-pun, right? Ok, maybe two) with such acerbic wit that its hard not to love any moment of the film. Well-paced and relatively brief, it will be a search to find more joyous and lively comedy in theaters very soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAZEWtyhpes
Review: 'Enter the Dangerous Mind'
Opening with a Youtube-news clip montage about recent American violence soundtracked by generic dubstep womps and circuit sounds, Enter the Dangerous Mind seems to begin as a commentary on the same sociopathic notes that films like The Purge have explored with such shallow– though admittedly entertaining– comprehension. Violence comes from the most dangerous of minds in reality, but to be quite frank, it becomes apparent that there are some very dangerous minds in Hollywood when films such as Mind appear in theaters.
The film follows a computer geek, Jim (Jake Hoffman, son of Dustin), who finds solace and minor fame as an internet-based dubstep artist. His inept social and romantic skills give his only friend, Jake (Thomas Dekker) plenty to act all kinds of obnoxious about. Despite mutual affection with a social worker’s assistant, Wendy (Nikki Reed, Twilight), he slowly begins to spiral out of control until his Jake is revealed as, what it seems the filmmakers hoped would be, the 21st century Tyler Durden. Jim’s violent ways begin to overcome him and the film never really looks back at the rest of narrative.
Violence comes from the most dangerous of minds in reality, but to be quite frank, it becomes apparent that there are some very dangerous minds in Hollywood when films such as Mind appear in theaters.
Despite its dated nature (the film actually played the festival circuit two years ago as Snap), it begins rather well. Hoffman and Reed have an awkward, but likeable chemistry and do the very best with the flat material. Their early charm provides an easy-to-digest charm against the harsh underground-EDM score. One particular scene finds them describing why Jim loves to produce dubstep so much. He calls it “the noise in his head.” There is an interesting psychological study right there - given the genre’s rise post-9/11 and the technological boom. That’s a discussion for a very different movie though it seems. Mind has a mild interest in exploring violence and mental illness, but only as an excuse to be “psychological” so to speak. It’s a thriller– like too many now adays– that attempts to find an interesting framework to disguise itself as smart, only to spin in a very swift spiral into the most decades-old of cinematic clichés.
Following the big Fight Club reveal about half-way through the film, any narrative tension that had been built is smashed anvil-flat. Hoffman’s performance, though not entirely his fault, shifts from alright to almost atrocious. Again, this is not his fault as he does all he can with the paper thin writing in a deplorable, logic-defying third act. Scott Bakula’s social worker is thrown in the mix to add some tension as he pursues a key to Jim’s troubles. But, he does not do too much.
That is really the case of Enter the Dangerous Mind. Especially following a banner year for the thriller genre, it's frustrating to see such a low-initiative narrative in the independent realm. However proficient in its low-budget technical success, it's a film that already feels dated. Maybe it is just those dubstep screeches in the film’s score...yeah, definitely. However, it lacks any innovation in concept. It's tired, clunky, jumbled and very flat, and nothing that hasn't been screened before. So beware; you do not really need to enter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pDly2QWqbA
Ethan Hawke on 'Predestination'
Ethan Hawke is trending- with the highly praised release of Richard Linklater's Boyhood and now the Spierig Brothers' film Predestination, he is proving once again why he deserves to be on top. Playing a time traveling agent who is on a mission to stop future crimes from happening (click here for our review), he creates this thrilling, yet emotional journey for audiences to fall in love with. Our contributing writer Jasper talks to Ethan about some really interesting topics at the press day in Beverly Hills, getting into Ethan's creative process of choosing the roles he plays and the prospect of time travel, to which Ethan exclaims, "we are all traveling through time, all the time." We begin:
WAS IT STORY OR DIRECTOR THAT BROUGHT YOU TO THIS PROJECT?
I made Daybreakers with these guys and I just believed in them. I’ve been doing this long enough to recognize a certain look in somebody's eye and they had this sensibility of people who are going to make great films. They work so hard and care about every detail. They obsess about every situation. Daybreakers was a good experience for me and I really liked it, but I could also tell that they had better films in their future. They're such serious young men that I really wanted to work with them again.
HOW DID YOU MEET THE SPIERIG BROTHERS INITIALLY TO GET INVOLVED WITH DAYBREAKERS?
They made a really strange movie called Undead which they made with their friend for about five dollars and their own computer. It has a little cult following and my brothers really liked it so I’d seen it and when they came to me with Daybreakers, I knew who they were. They’re so good with playing with computers they did a little mock-up of me as Jess in Before Sunset as a vampire and I immediately liked them.
Click here to read our interview with Peter and Michael Spierig.
HOW DID YOU MAKE THE CHARACTER YOUR OWN?
Part of the way that I work is making sure that it is going to be a good movie. Thinking about it from my character's point of view is something I do, but one of the things you have to do is get yourself in a position to succeed. This is a really hard movie storytelling-wise. I mean, it’s extremely original, but whenever you're doing something original it's easy to fail because you're not walking down terrain that hasn’t been walked a lot. One of the things I really liked about this movie is that it is unapologetically weird. Most movies now are trying to please a certain demographic, and this movie is really just original. It’s is own voice and that’s the genius of Robert Heinlein. He was a sophisticated thinker and science fiction in general, at its best, has an ability to talk about deeply philosophical themes without being pretentious or boring.
For me, what was unique about the character was the loneliness. I really felt that this is a deeply, deeply lonely person. The transgender aspect of the character is so interesting. All of us, to lesser or greater extents, have felt alone. And when you feel alone, like you don’t belong, it can be very painful. If you felt alone all the time, if you really had no home and no family, there would be a deep loneliness to it. But, of course, the lion’s share of the performance of this movie fell on Sarah. She just give such a phenomenal performance and you know our performance are tied together. I remember when was doing Gattaca, it was Jude Law’s first big film. It was fun to be a part of introducing the world to Jude because he’s such a special performer and I felt the same way about Sarah. The movie hinged on an unknown actress giving a dynamite performance. She couldn’t be known or the twist would be screwed and she needed to be great.
Sometimes, I’ll read something really good, but I know in my heart that I’m not the right actor for this. There’s another actor. I don’t love this enough.
YOU HAD EMPATHY FOR [SARAH], BUT IT TOOK AWHILE. I THINK YOU WOULD HAVE TO GIVE [THE NARRATIVE] AWAY IF YOU HAD MIRRORED SOME ASPECTS, BUT THERE WERE SOME SIMILARITIES THERE. [PAUSE] I JUST ANSWERED YOUR QUESTION FOR YOU.
[Laughs]The trick is to be truthful, but not making it so obvious that you give it away. It was a real dance with that. In a way, it was something very, very beautiful in the movie, which is about masculine and feminine at war with itself, hunting itself. You can make a case that that’s to be true of all of us and that until will find some balance we’re going to keep traveling through space and time hurting ourselves. Something about the movie stumbles upon something really rich to me.
DID YOU LOOK INTO A LOT OF GENDER THEORY BEFORE THE ROLE? I WAS TALKING WITH SARAH AND SHE SAID SHE OBVIOUSLY DID A LOT.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that over the course of my life. It's interesting, I think a lot of the best writing really does deal with that, but it was particularly acute for Sarah which I think she does beautifully. The hard thing for her is that she’s giving this unbelievable performance and it's a genre film. If this was a small little movie about a transgender person she would win awards for this, but because the concept of the movie is so huge, you know science fiction never wins awards.
YOU SAID SOMETHING REALLY INTERESTING [IN THE PRESS NOTES]- YOU SAID THAT IN OUR PAST, WE ARE PREDETERMINED TO DO WHAT WE DID, YET WE ALWAYS HAVE THE AVENUES OF THE FUTURE. THAT THE IDEA OF THE PAST IS PREDETERMINED.
Definitely. It seems like he is in this rut of this "figure-eight" in time that he can't break out of. Its interesting, you know, why can’t you change it? And that’s how I often feel. We all have certain nights where we can’t sleep, you don't know what to do whether it's a relationship, job decision, life decision, whatever it is. You have no idea which way you're going to go. And two years later, it was so obvious that you were going to go the way you went. Why is that? Why does it feel like our life is walking on a razor’s edge? And then in hindsight, it's like “Oh obviously!” It’s so strange. Somehow the movie always makes me think about that. Then, of course, there is another level of the movie that is that amazing line: “I know who I am. Who are all you zombies?” I don’t want to ruin it, but why are we all so asleep? We’re not asking ourselves these questions about why we’re born, who our ancestors are and where we’re going. That’s the part about Robert Heinlein that I just love. That line is right out of the short story.
GOING OFF OF THE TIME ASPECT OF THE MOVIE, YOU JUST DID BOYHOOD-
Which is a time travel movie in and of itself.
YES, OF COURSE. THE BEFORE TRILOGY ALSO DEALS A LOT WITH TIME. IS THAT A SUBJECT YOU FIND YOURSELF ATTRACTED TO?
Maybe it’s just because I started acting young, that it’s just something I constantly think about. I think I found a peer in Richard Linklater. I mean, he obsesses about it too. But, I’ll never forget even as a young person deciding what college to go to, realizing that it was the first decision that I was going to make that was going to be on my obituary. [Laughs] It’s this thing we get a finite amount of and we don't know what it is, yet everything is in relation to it. I’m even fascinated on the opposite side of it in terms of longevity. I mean, getting to work on Shakespeare plays. It's fascinating to be on stage and getting a laugh with a five hundred year old joke. [Laughs] It almost feels like time travel. Theres a couple of jokes in Macbeth, which I did last year, and the audience laughed at this line. And then you start picturing the thousands of audiences through time laughing. He murders the king, and this guy comes out and he says “‘Twas a rough night” and then he says “Twas a rough night.” It’s really weird. It makes you feel like you’re part of this time continuity. And that’s what I think something about Predestination, the movie, is getting at. That we are all traveling through time, all the time. But, the nice thing about science fiction is that it lets you talk about it in a fun way, as opposed to a preachy way. And, the beauty of Boyhood, is that it almost doesn't talk about it at all. It just presents it.
AND OF COURSE, IT'S BEEN GETTING A LOT OF ACCOLADES AND AWARDS CONSIDERATION. WHAT IS INTERESTING IS THAT IT IS ONE OF THE MOVIES FROM EARLIER IN THE YEAR AND IT'S STILL RESONATING WITH PEOPLE, AND PEOPLE ARE STILL DISCOVERING IT. ARE YOU SURPRISED AT ALL THAT IT STILL MAINTAINS THAT?
Yeah, I remember thinking last year it was funny when Before Midnight came out, I’d never had such a well-reviewed film. But, by the end of the year, there were so many other movies that were coming out and it’s a very small, little, delicate movie. It was hard for [Boyhood] to stay in the conversation about the year's best because, let’s face it, in December, all the movies for grown-ups come out. But, at the same time, you don't make movies to win prizes, you make movies to connect with audiences and that’s definitely happening, so that’s been beautiful. As much as the movie speaks to parents, it also speaks to young people. We worked on that movie for twelve years, so nothing’s going to take the smile off of my face about that movie.
HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT CHOOSING YOUR ROLES?
It’s probably the most important moment of an actor’s life and it’s probably the one thing you can't go to school for. How do you choose? As actors were only as good as our opportunities. Which thing is too challenging? Which thing is not challenging enough? I’ve kind of just flown by the seed of my pants for twenty-five or thirty years. Something about my gut lets me know whether or not it would be rewarding for me to try to do. In this particular case, if I didn't know Michael and Peter, I would have thought the script was too unyielding. The target is very small for this movie. There is a lot of things that can go wrong in telling this story, but I really respect them and think they’re so smart. They’re original. They have this love of 70s genre movies and, in a sort of way, it feels like a throwback, but they're using it in a modern way and I'm really impressed with them.
For me, this was an easy decision to make. I really believe in Peter and Michael and they're giving me a really fascinating character and a chance to make an original movie. [Laughs] I mean my wife read the script and she was like “What just happened?” I’m doing this movie! Don’t try and talk me out of it, I love this movie! And, thats how I felt about it. I rarely get the chance to be a part of anything original and, you know, I do a Shakespeare play for a different reason. I basically do that to learn. I just did a movie that is a reimagining of a moment in Chet Baker’s life. So, to get to play a real person presents a different challenge. Sometimes, I’ll read something really good, but I know in my heart that I’m not the right actor for this. There’s another actor. I don’t love this enough. There’d be somebody who would kill to do this. And, sometimes I want to do something and I don't get the part. It’s been a dance my whole life. Sometimes you do things that you're worried aren't going to be good, but you really need to work and sometimes you don't do something that’s really good because you work too much. I've missed some really great opportunities because I was doing a play. I wasn’t available. Had I known it was a choice, I would have chosen the other.
BUT, IT'S ALL PREDESTINED-
[Laughs] It's all predestined, yes.
Directors Peter & Michael Spierig on 'Predestination'
Directing duo Peter and Michael Spierig sat down with our contributing writer Jasper at the SLS Hotel for an intimate conversation about their new sci-fi film, Predestination. The film, which is based on the short story "All You Zombies" by Robert A. Heinlein, tells the story of a temporal agent, played by Ethan Hawke, who travels through time to prevent future killers from committing crimes. Part action film and part thriller, Jasper talks to the brothers about their cinematic inspirations, their collaboration with Hawke, and working with family. We begin:
ARE YOU A FAN OF HEINLEIN AND SCIENCE FICTION IN GENERAL?
PETER SPIERIG: Absolutely. It’s funny that Heinlein hasn’t been adapted more. Because he has such a massive catalog of amazing thing like Starship Troopers, which has been adapted, but also ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ or ‘Moon Harsh Mistress’ and a lot of interesting novels that have not been attempted yet. I love all the old sci-fi guys.
THE SHORT STORY IS VERY DENSE. WHAT WERE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES OF ADAPTING IT INTO A FILM? OBVIOUSLY YOU ADDED ANOTHER MAIN CHARACTER, SO TALK ABOUT THAT PROCESS.
P: We initially took the short story and put it into a screenplay just to see what it was in that format and then began to really break it down and say, ‘Okay, how does this go from a ten-page short story into a 110-page feature screenplay.’ You do that by thinking about structure and the way the characters interacts. And the great thing about adapting a short story as opposed to a novel is you get to expand rather than contract. With a novel you have to pull out so much and people complain a lot that it was never as good as the novel then when they see the movie. So, that was fun to be able to expand the characters. because the concepts were so interesting, but the characters weren’t fleshed out all that much. The other thing about the short story is that is it just a setup and a payoff. It’s almost a joke about how time travel can’t exist, so we really wanted to expand that and make the characters more complete.
HOW LONG WAS THE ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY?
P: It was about 30 pages. [laughs] So it was a tremendous amount of work.
IT SOUNDS LIKE ETHAN REALLY RESPECTS YOUR VISION-
MICHAEL SPIERIG: He said that? [laughs]
I remember we always watched the movies we weren't supposed to and our parents never stopped us from watching The Exorcist or Evil Dead or any of those films and that’s sort of a big influence on us.
WITH ETHAN AND SARAH [SNOOK], DID YOU GO OFF EACH OTHER CREATIVELY OR TAKE SUGGESTIONS FROM THEM?
M: Yeah. Now that this is our second picture with Ethan, I think we’re more open with each other. There’s various versions of the rehearsal process. You can sit there and run lines over and over again, but that’s never the best thing to do. The best thing to do is to get together with the actors and just talk through the intention of each moment, each scene and what you are trying to get out of the scene. We had a very relaxed and sharing rehearsal process and I think that helped to create the natural feel of the bar scenes. Everyone was very open and it was a lot of fun.
WHO INSPIRED YOU TO GET INTO FILMMAKING?
M: We grew up in the 80s and its hard to not be inspired by Star Wars and Indiana Jones, you know, the Spielberg, Lucas stuff and James Cameron. But we also loved the early Sam Raimi stuff and closer to home, Peter Jackson, when he was doing his low-budget splatter movies. What was great about that is that were made on a shoestring. For us, it was amazing that a guy from Wellington was making these types of movies. And there are filmmakers like Kubrick -
I REALLY SAW STANLEY KUBRICK A LOT WHEN I WAS WATCHING THE FILM.
M: Yeah, I often like directors who a little out there like David Lynch and David Cronenberg. They are two of my favorites. I really enjoy films that are a bit weird.
P: We definitely grew up in the early days of VHS. I remember we always watched the movies we weren't supposed to and our parents never stopped us from watching The Exorcist or Evil Dead or any of those films and that’s sort of a big influence on us.
IT SEEMS LIKE YOU TOOK THAT INFLUENCE AND USED PRACTICAL SECIAL EFFECTS RATHER THAN GOING WITH CGI. I REALLY APPRECIATED THAT.
P: If we can do it practically, then that’s the way to do it.
M: We were saying this is our anti-CGI movie, but there is still 200 digital effects in Predestination. I get bored by CGI. A CGI thing fighting another CGI thing; it just loses all humanity for me. So we tried to do an anti-CGI movie.
P: Until we get $200,000,000 dollars. [laughs]
WOULD YOU GUYS WANT TO DO A BIG EFFECTS MOVIE?
M: Of course! It just depends on what it is. But, of course, if the project’s right, why wouldn’t you?
P: There’s a lot of good Marvel movies out there. There’s plenty of good $200,000,000 movies. But there are also plenty of films that you think are just a bunch of noise, as visual and audio.
M: We just want to work. To be a filmmaker now days is just so tough, so we’re just happy to have a job and happy we get to make the films we want to make.
AND YOU GUYS DO EVERYTHING. YOU WEAR ALL THE HATS. YOU'RE PRODUCER, DIRECTOR-
M: To some degree. We have a team of people that we work with. We do have producing partners. It’s like a family of crew: DP, designers, the effects people. Its all people we’ve known for a very long time. So it is like a family when we shoot our films.
YOU HAD A PRETTY SHORT SCHEDULE ON THIS ONE TOO.
M: 32 days or something like that. It’s quick, but so much of it took place in the bar. It’s almost like shooting a play. You can get so much done quickly. To shoot quick you’ve got to prepare well.
For our review of Predestination, click here.
SO ARE BOTH ON SET ALL THE TIME?
M: Yeah. We have split up and shot two units, but on this one we we both on set at the same time. People always ask us “How does that work?” And I think its a hard one to explain because we do so much preparation before we start shooting - we storyboard and we really test everything. Things don’t change when we start shooting, so I don’t go off and say one thing and Peter goes off and says another.So it’s pretty much 50/50 as we direct.
ARE YOU THINKING OF MUSIC WHEN YOU'RE WRITING, PETER?
P: I did. On this one in particular I had this audio track in my head when we were writing and this was the first time I've been able to translate the sounds that I heard onto screen. The scariest part of the whole movie was writing the score. If we get it all write up until the point where the music comes in, then I’ve ruined the movie right at the end.
M: It was such a different process because normally when you edit a movie, you put a guide track of music or temp track. You might use a Jerry Goldsmith track that you put in. With this, Peter was writing the music as we were editing so he would always have guides that we were thrown in so the film was being cut to the music we were going to use.
P: Which meant the film never had somebody else’s sound. Often what can happen when you put a temp track in is that you become so attached to this million-dollar score -
M: And then you get the worst composer. [laughs]
P: I made my temp tracks crap. [laughs]
DID YOU DO A LOT OF CASTING FOR THE JANE/UNMARRIED WOMAN ROLE?
P: That was a big search. We did the traditional thing which is to do a casting for every interesting actress in Australia and we looked at everybody. We knew of Sarah Snook and we knew the kind of talent that she was. She came in and auditioned, and we shortlisted a bunch of girls. It came down to two girls and we did makeup tests on those girls as a man because as good as they were we still need to see that to make sure that it would work. And Sarah was fantastic. She’s going to do alright that girl.
WHEN DID YOU BRING ETHAN IN?
M: He was the first person we had spoken to about the movie. We has spoken to him before we even to the film out to market. I remember it was one or two day after we handed him the script and he said, “I’m in.” And what that does it that it immediately legitimizes the project. We can now really get going and get the rest of the financing.
P: There’s something wonderful about Ethan though because he didn't know who Sarah was, but he just trusts us. He said, “Do you guys believe in this girl? You think she can do it?” Yeah. “Then lets do it.” And it's very rare that you can find an actor who will have faith like that. He’s wonderful in that he’s brave. “Okay, I trust you guys, let's do it.”
IT SAYS A LOT ABOUT YOU TWO, THAT YOU CAN HAVE SOMEBODY TRUST YOU THAT WAY. WHAT IS IT THAT YOU DO TO CREATE THAT TRUST?
P: Well I think that we’re pretty open and honest about things. We’re not pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes. We say “This what our intention is. This is what we want to do.” We talk about it great detail. I mean that’s the thing about Michael and I is that we are very detail oriented. Maybe that’s our German background, I don’t know. We make it a collaborative process. We are hiring good people, we want to hear what they have to say. We’ll absolutely take credit for it, but we want to hear what they have to say because they’ll come up with an idea that we would have never thought of and it just makes the movie better. So on Daybreakers, I think Ethan saw what we wanted to accomplish was on screen. I think that builds that kind of trust.
WHAT DO YOU HAVE PLANNED FOR YOUR NEXT MOVIE?
M: We have a project called Winchester which is based on the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. We just delivered a screenplay on that one. It’s about Sarah Winchester. She’s the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune and she built this mansion in San Jose and believed that she was haunted by all the spirits who were killed by the rifle. This house is supposed to be haunted by all the spirits, so she would build all these rooms and these stairs that go to nowhere and doors that open to two-story drops to confuse the spirits. It’s an amazing story and we’re working on that at the moment.
Review: 'Predestination'
Robert Zemeckis was once asked about his films' shared common interest with “time”: his Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump’s journey through the 20th century, Contact’s pre-Interstellar explorations of the time-space continuum and, even, A Christmas Carol’s ghosts of past, present and future. He simply stated that "film is the artistic medium that inherently explores time, narrative is the illusion of time, and the motion picture is the clearest way to manipulate it." This may seem obvious, but it is Zemeckis’ clear understanding of the medium that explains the current wave of time travel science-fiction in this decade. Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Interstellar, Rian Johnson’s Looper, Duncan Jones’ Source Code, Andrew Niccol’s In Time, Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow- the list goes on. In an Obama-era so concerned with changing humanity’s course for both better and worse, the idea of changing time has never been more relevant.
Predestination, the new picture from Australia's directing duo Peter and Michael Spierig (Daybreakers) is a pleasant addition to the trend- a small, but super piece of genre filmmaking. It is a very thoughtful, progressive piece in both narrative and technical craft- hardly the C-list action feature that is promised from the marketing. But it is all the more better for that. It is the rare science fiction film that- unlike a few of the aforementioned films- diverts from big set pieces, destination locations, studio think-tank climaxes and finds that careful balance between spectacle and sentiment.
Ethan Hawke- fresh in the awards season boat with another ‘time travel’ piece in Boyhood - plays his part with his usual charisma. He is the rare ‘everyman’ actor who finds value in such quirky, concept-driven independent features...
Based on the 1950s short story ‘All You Zombies’ by the ‘dean of science fiction’ Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers), the film’s first half is essentially a conversation between a Temporal Agent (Ethan Hawke)- or time traveller- and a mysterious writer who writes as "The Unmarried Mother" (Sarah Snook). It has noir-like tendencies both aesthetically in its very deliberate mood and lighting, but also narratively as the story unfolds. As ‘The Unmarried Mother" tells a bizarre but fascinating life story, the Temporal Agent allows John to go back in time and adjust what went awry. It turns into the “thinking man’s” science-fiction- a puzzle of a narrative that is as easy to follow as it is baffling. To summarize anymore would be unfair to the film.
Like any science-fiction film, there are many logical holes. The physical process of time travel, for instance, is rather clumsy to really believe and the physics and consequences of the time travel ‘business’ are skated over. However, these concerns are inherent in any ‘science-fiction’ films- or at least when complex science is simplified for narrative constraints. Its relatively small-scale production also shows at times in weak shot coverage and all-too-simple set design. Predestination isn’t about ‘science’ and ‘time’ though - it’s a much deeper and better film than that. It refrains from answering all questions because it knows that it cannot answer them. The Spierig’s don’t attempt to answer bigger questions, they just look to explore the human inkling to discover time and narrative.
Ethan Hawke- fresh in the awards season boat with another ‘time travel’ piece in Boyhood - plays his part with his usual charisma. He is the rare ‘everyman’ actor who finds value in such quirky, concept-driven independent features (i.e. The Purge) and makes the realities they explore much more tangible. However, he often steps into a supporting role to his co-star Sarah Snook- who shows off such an uncanny range in an oddly demanding role. It is a glimmer of humanity in what could have been a cardboard genre exploration- yet the actors are the pulse of the entire film, making a thematically groundbreaking narrative for the genre.
In the greater cinematic ‘time-space continuum’, Predestination is bound to be lost among louder, flashier contemporaries. It is really quite strange to review films like this one because their success depends on the puzzle, not the full solution. There is more to the film than ‘time travel’, complex narrative, charming acting and retro-cool production design. It is not perfect and perhaps its cult status is imminent, but Predestination is a film that proves that film may be the best science in exploring time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PmIJrthe-4
Review: 'Into the Woods'
Following a screening of his new film, director Rob Marshall called Into the Woods “a fairy tale for the post-9/11 generation.” Now, this “...for the post-9/11 generation” descriptor borders on cliché, however, he is on to something. After decades of gestation and development, the film adaptation of Steven Sondheim’s beloved 1986 musical arrives as a banner film of Hollywood’s nü-fairy tale revival - a revisionist movement of classic fairy tales re-imagined as tales of angst and darkness for the young adult - or “post-9/11” - crowd. Mostly, studios have muted the fireside whimsy that made the Brothers Grimm of Hans Christian Andersen’s tales so fun and memorable for tales of great battles and hormonal melodrama. Rather than reinterpret and redress, Into the Woods looks beyond the “happily ever after” untold by the troubadours of lore.
Much like the play, the film adaptation of Into the Woods follows an ensemble of fairly tale all-stars as they find themselves crossing narratives in the titular woods. It all begins when a baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) are visited by a witch from next door (Meryl Streep) who sends them on a quest through the forest to procure a series of items needed to reverse a curse upon herself and the baker’s family. While on their quest, they come upon a Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) unsure of her love for the prince (Chris Pine), a pair of adolescent troublemakers Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) and Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) and numerous other Grimm all-stars.
Into the Woods is not as dark as, say, Disney’s recent smash Sleeping Beauty revival Maleficent or the lifeless Red Riding Hood and Snow White and the Huntsman. It almost alleviates the tonal issues that marred Sondheim’s original play, finding a proper balance between family fun and its more adult thematics. But the film’s final act retains the same feeling of ‘afterthought’ as Sondheim’s second act. It is obvious that this is quite intentional - again, exploring the idea of post-fairy tale narrative - but this idea drags out the film, like the play, a little too long. Luckily, the music keeps the energy high and bubbly. Maybe it is a triumph of the play more so than the film, but Sondheim’s gift for melody and lyricism is well apparent. Marshall handles the musical numbers with careful, but dynamic coverage, reminding us of his triumphant debut with the Academy-Award winning Chicago. All in all, Marshall’s adaptation is the most fun fairy tale round-up since the original Shrek.
The ‘post-9/11 fairy tale’ maybe be bold, if not over-reaching, but it succeeds in the essential balance between light and dark that recent adaptations have missed.
The cast is pitch perfect - no, not an Anna Kendrick pun - as well, playing off of each other with infectious enthusiasm. Meryl Streep’s Witch should cruise her way into Best Supporting Actress discussions (surprise, surprise). Blunt follows Edge of Tomorrow with another star turn for a banner year. The real stars are the male leads in James Corden, Chris Pine and even young Daniel Huttlestone. Corden’s central Baker manages the narrative’s - often hard to follow - trajectories with impossible charm. Pine, on the other hand, utilizes his ‘leading man’ glamour as the Prince close to self-parody without ever losing a single ounce of charisma, while Huttlestone’s adolescent energy provides a youthful electricity to keep the kids involved. The only poor player is a very uncomfortable cameo from Johnny Depp as the Big Bad Wolf singing the song ‘Hello Little Girl’ - an uneasy tune, even in the play, that is only made worse with Depp’s laughable wardrobe.
It is just one weakness in a film that defines the idea of a holiday film. Nearly two decades in development, Into the Woods could not have arrived in theaters at a more appropriate time for Disney. It is elaborate and convoluted, but also brimming with wit; it is utmost modern but retains the classic sentimentality of its characters. It is a pinnacle of the nü-fairy tale genre. The ‘post-9/11 fairy tale’ maybe be bold, if not over-reaching, but it succeeds in the essential balance between light and dark that recent adaptations have missed.
Into the Woods is in theaters now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Byk9Is3TjY
Review: 'The Babadook'
Though she admittedly is not looking to explore making horror films anytime soon, freshman director Jennifer Kent’s debut feature, The Babadook, is the one of the most promising first features the genre has seen in nearly a decade. It is simple, stylish, and wears its influences on its sleeve like a crown. Unlike many horror directors, Kent finds life amongst the darkness to craft a film that is at once very fantastic and very real. Or rather, maybe she finds the darkness within her characters' everyday lives.
To begin, Kent is a true believer. “Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked her via phone earlier this month. Through a chuckle, she very assuredly replied “Yes. Of course.” She described some paranormal happenings caught on camera during the production of the film in the basement, where her film’s titular creature resides. “Oh, the Babadook is very much real,” she said describing it almost as a physical manifestation of the anxieties and fears of not only the film’s protagonist Amelia (Essie Davis), but those of every individual watching the film.
This keen psychological understanding is what makes The Babadook so effective and refreshing. Quite simply, it follows a single mother who struggles to raise her misbehaved young son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) after her husband’s passing seven years prior. After reading Samuel a pop-up children’s book about a shadowy creature called The Babadook, the two begin to see the creature haunt their lives, especially Amelia. After trying to convince herself and Sam that the monster is make believe, the creature feeds off of Amelia’s deep-rooted anxieties leading her to become increasingly hostile to her son, her sister and her neighbors.
Though she admittedly is not looking to explore making horror films anytime soon, freshman director Jennifer Kent’s debut feature The Babadook is the one of the most promising first features the genre has seen in nearly a decade.
“This is a film about how the Babadook affects those around you,” Kent said. “The story of the Babadook created itself from the story of Amelia’s struggles.” Those struggles that Kent is referring to are Amelia’s difficulties communicating with her child - played so perfect by Wiseman. Essie Davis plays her maternal lead with the fragility of a porcelain doll glued back together after falling from the shelf. Her careful restraint in the beginning of the film is at once heartbreaking and pitiful. She fears for her son’s obsession with hand-crafted weapons and magicians, but also begs of his school administration to give him understanding. It is this complexity - rarely seen in the horror genre - that accentuates the tension of the film’s first half.
Unfortunately, the second half of the film stumbles slightly. When the invisible threat of the Babadook becomes a physical reality, the story becomes rather dull and repetitious. It smartly doesn’t fall into the trappings and cheap scares of other exorcism films, but it it drags in it third act whilst Amelia’s demonic disposition takes over her body. What makes this half of the film really work is it ‘unique’ design, inspired by the classic silent films of Georges Méliés that Sam loves to watch in the film. “We wanted to create something real,” Kent says of the design, again emphasizing the tangibility of the terror. Ameila and Sam’s house was constructed on a stage to perfect a modern celebration of the early German Expressionist horror. Kent also said she even briefly considered shooting the film in black and white like the films of silent lore, but she settles for a gorgeous palette of blue and pinks.
Jennifer Kent’s dedication to this authenticity is quite deliberate throughout the film, but she speaks of it as if it all came very naturally. That is what makes The Babadook and Kent’s perspective so refreshing. It’s a genre film that taps into our psyche not to scare us, but to help us cope with our own anxieties about understanding people, being open and being comfortable getting older. Kent realizes that sometimes the scariest thing in life is ourselves and that is exactly what the Babadook is. “I don’t want to do a horror film again anytime soon,” she says, “but this story just felt right.” And The Babadook does. It is flawed - far from perfect - but, it is a twinkle in the dusty bag of garbage that is the current state of the horror genre. It is a confident look at what the genre can achieve, if a filmmaker believes in the ghosts on the theater screens.
The Babadook is in theaters this Friday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szaLnKNWC-U
Review: 'A Most Violent Year'
With his third feature, J.C. Chandor again proves he is one of the most exciting, young voices in American cinema - a filmmaker with a keen, much-needed understanding of character and refreshing patience for organic narrative. A Most Violent Year is a much different animal than his previous two films: 2011’s talky Wall Street drama Margin Call and last year’s wordless, one-man disaster drama All Is Lost. However, it borrows the same anxieties about fate and power and explores them on his broadest stage thus far.
As its promotional material so explicitly points out, A Most Wanted Year takes place in New York in 1981 - one of the more crime-ridden eras in the city’s history. It begins as heating oil distributor, Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), puts down a deposit on a waterfront parcel of land that will represent a huge step forward for his business. Before the deal closes in thirty days, Abel must deal with moving his wife Anna (Jessica Chastain) into a new home, a mysterious hijacking scheme involving his trucks, a pesky district attorney (David Oyelowo) looking into the heating oil industry.
This setting - so gorgeously captured by up-and-coming cinematographer Bradford Young - is a city both alive and on the frays of collapsing into past despair. This so brilliantly mirrors Oscar Isaac’s Abel - a man brimming with confidence and charisma, but also dread and disquiet. He is a man who sees the folly in the American Dream just as much as he so badly wants to believe in it, a husband and father who loves his wife just as much a he is intimidated by her. Oscar Isaac’s fantastic control of his complexity and nuances is work deserving of both screenplay and acting accolades this coming awards season.
But, if anything, A Most Violent Year is still a successful exercise in narrative control - a film carefully maneuvered to stay at a very slow, but very gripping boil.
The supporting cast is also stellar. Jessica Chastain is the kind of female lead that we need more of in American cinema. Chic, shrewd and strong as Abel’s wife Anna, she not only commands respect but becomes the authority of the film - that rugged gangster's daughter edge that Abel tries so carefully to control as a businessman. Albert Brooks and David Oyelowo give great turns as lawyers respectively helping Abel’s business grow and taking Abel’s business down. They all occupy their roles with such humanity; not in the sense of goodness, but in the sense of balance. The understanding that all good comes at a cost. ‘Have some pride in what you do,’ Abel boldly declares to a caucus of his heating oil competitors. And every character and performance in A Most Violent Year expresses just that: people with pride in their occupation, people on a quest to do something good in a city that makes it hard to do so.
While the film’s slow-burning tension is its greatest strength - it can also bring the film down. For the most part, the film moves with an impeccable pace - letting the characters make the choices for themselves and not letting narrative construction get the best of the movie. In this way, Chandor reveals his greatest strength as a screenwriter and, consequently, a director. His uncanny trust and interest in watching his characters respond to their environment as opposed to calculating their decisions. And while the unpredictability of the film’s trajectory is thoroughly gripping, it does get restless. It suffers from an acute multiple ending syndrome, not really knowing where to conclude its saga on a timely note and it begins to meander slightly in the third act.
A couple superfluous subplots briefly distract what begins - and ends - as a tightly-wound thriller. But, if anything, A Most Violent Year is still a successful exercise in narrative control - a film carefully maneuvered to stay at a very slow, but very gripping boil. It is another golden example of J.C. Chandor’s ever-promising skills as a filmmaker and a fascinating entry into a wide open awards season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZU7U3k3gHY