TIFF 2011 - The Eye of the Storm

The Eye of the Storm (2011) dir. Fred Schepisi
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Charlotte Rampling, Judy Davis

**

By Greg Klymkiw

I have no doubt that Nobel Prize winner Patrick White's novel - which this dreary movie is based on - is not without merit. If, however, Fred (The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith) Schepisi has rendered a faithful adaptation of it, then it probably ISN'T worth reading. I haven't read it, have you?

What I know for sure is that THE MOVIE itself is most certainly worth avoiding.

For close to two hours we get to watch Charlotte Rampling on her death bed as a rich matriarch making her spoiled children - one of whom is the ubiquitous Geoffrey Rush as a foppish man of the stage - feel like shit.

If your idea of a good time is watching some hag-like harridan spewing vitriol and barking orders, then this is the movie for you.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a sucker for screen harridans. Mind you, I usually prefer them when they're slugging it out with each other in Robert Aldrich melodramas like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane - not dour British-Australian co-ventures we're supposed to take so seriously.

Frankly, the characters in this movie don't appear to resemble a recognizable human being - at least not in most people's world. This is a considerable failing on the part of the film since the duty of all great drama is to give an audience a way INTO the characters - no matter how distant they might be from the experience of many. This doesn't mean we have to like the characters, but we do have to UNDERSTAND them.

The movie would like us to think it's actually about the human condition, but is, in actuality, about the human condition as it relates to dying nasty rich matriarchs in Australia and their insufferable progeny who have expatriated themselves to be as far away from Mommy as possible. There is the stuff of great drama inherent in this, but Schepisi doesn't find it.

With Mom close to horking out her final globs of life, Geoffrey Rush and his pinched, prissy, pretentious sister played by the always welcome Judy Davis (who, in spite of the film, almost makes it worth suffering through) have made the trek from Blighty and Gay Paree respectively to ensure their inheritance will rightfully fall into their laps. We watch as this trio trudge through the turgid drama and seldom feel anything but contempt for all of them and wonder why it is we're being dragged through this sludge at all.

I will say, however, that Ms. Davis is genuinely terrific here. There's a mordant wit to her performance that suggests she's managed to find something in her character beyond what's on the page. Alas, Rampling (one of the finest actresses of all time) manages to hurl her invective professionally and there's certainly a technical proficiency to her descent into dementia, but she's as alone as her character. This might well be the point, but it doesn't make for the most engaging drama. Rush fops about competently, but to not much end.

These three characters feel like they're all in different movies. In a sense, that might also be the point, but it doesn't work as the picture unspools and it's only in retrospect does this occur to you.

One of the more sickening subplots involves Geoffrey Rush having his knob plunged and polished by one of Rampling's caregivers - a comely young thing who (for God knows whatever reason) is genuinely charmed by him and thinks she has a chance to marry into wealth. If the movie wasn't so earnest one could almost take a perverse pleasure in seeing a semi-nude Rush ploughing a fertile young wench.

We are also afforded endless flashbacks via Rampling's dementia. In one of them, she seduces the buff young stud sniffing around Judy Davis. I know this sounds appetizing, but I can assure you it is more than enough to induce major chunk blowing.

Whilst on the topic of ejecting globs of undigested, improperly masticated comestibles, Helen Morse's performance as the Holocaust survivor Lotte is so over-the-top that the character of this former Sally Bowles-like cabaret performer is completely bereft of anything resembling a human being. Perhaps this interpretation was the point, but Morse is theatrical to distraction. The notion of a performer who suffered and survived the indignities of horrendous anti-semitism, now reduced to the role of a housekeeper and recreating numbers from the glory days of pre-war adulation on the stage for her addled dying employer is rife with possibility. One needs to be moved by her desperation, not repulsed by it. She should be a character that commands our empathy. Instead, Morse comes off like a clod-hopping Lotte Lenya. Helen, the last time I checked, the title of this movie is NOT From Russia With Love. Alas, I feel I might be too harsh here. Where, pray tell, was the director?

Every year it seems we get more and more movies like this – dull chamber dramas full of rich, old people with Commonwealth accents who crap on each other (and by extension, us) for two fucking hours and we’re supposed to actually feel something for these miserable, privileged twits. I suppose they keep getting made because there’s always money available for such pictures. They’re relatively cheap to make, attract major actors, carry a veneer of respectability, are often based on acclaimed literary properties and can be directed for a song by filmmakers well past their prime.

And, of course, they get programmed into major international film festivals and dredge up something resembling an audience on television and homevideo.

Kind of like mindless blockbuster action pictures.

At least in those, there’s the possibility that something might actually happen.

The Eye of the Storm is unveiling itself at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2011) and will be released via e-one Entertainment.

TIFF 2011 - Killer Elite

Killer Elite (2011) dir. Gary McKendry
Starring: Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert DeNiro

*

By Greg Klymkiw

What this lame duck action thriller is doing in a major international film festival like TIFF is beyond me. This is the sort of movie that gives one the impression that the festival is little more than a junket opportunity for bad movies that need all the help they can get or just an excuse to parade a bunch of stars into town.

Though it is inspired by a not-so-manly-titled book called "The Feather Men", it has chosen to rip-off its title (sans the word "The") from a solid Sam Peckinpah action picture from the 70s starring James Caan and Robert Duvall. The Killer Elite is far from Peckinpah's best work, but I'd argue one frame of it beats this noisy, jack hammering and ultimately leaden, meandering macho-man movie.

What will keep Bloody Sam from rolling in his grave is that this is, at least, not a remake of his movie.

Apparently, Killer Elite is a true story.

That hardly makes up for how terrible it is.

Basically what you've got here are two old buddies - Jason Statham and Robert DeNiro - who work as soldier-for-hire assassins. After we get to see a dull, contrived opening action set-piece with them, Statham's character decides it's time to retire. DeNiro doesn't. He's kidnapped and used as ransom for Statham to take another job. His target is ultimately Clive Owen (sporting a really stupid looking moustache), a retired rogue British operative.

Cat and mouse mayhem ensues.

The idea of an action movie starring these three guys thrills me to bits.

Unfortunately they're wasted in an action movie directed by someone who clearly has no idea how to direct action. It's yet another contemporary genre picture with lots of bluster, but far too many closeups and bone headed herky-jerky camera moves and attention-span-challenged editing.

It has none of the style of Guy Ritchie, none of the panache of Neveldine/Taylor and not even the sheer craft of all the Luc Besson hacks.

And it is most certainly not Peckinpah.

McKendry directed an Academy Award nominated short I've never seen, but the shorts I have seen in that arena are usually nothing to write home about. He's also directed commercials. He might be good at that, but he's useless with action. Well, maybe not as incompetent as J.J. Abrams was with action in Mission Impossible III, but that's hardly a glowing recommendation.

I'd take Michael Bay over this guy - hands down.

The trio of stars acquit themselves with their usual professionalism, but it's such a waste seeing them in one of the more unremarkable action pictures made in recent years. Any of the picture's pretensions and/or aspirations to be a "serious" look at the private, illegal wars being fought the world over are just so much lip service. The movie is an excuse for one action set piece after another. There's nothing wrong with that when it's executed properly, but this is strictly by the numbers and worse, it's poorly directed and I reiterate, very noisy.

It also has the dubious distinction of including one of the most pointless car chases I've seen recently. For a car chase to be good, it needs to be well directed. That's a no brainer. For it to truly rise above the rest, it needs to be driven by character.

Seeing as the movie barely has anything resembling characters, it stands to reason that most of the motivating forces behind the action are those of the director - who's not good at executing it anyway.

Enjoy!

Killer Elite is being unveiled, rather head-scratchingly, to the world at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2011) and will be released theatrically by e-one Entertainment.

TIFF 2011 - W.E.

W.E. (2011) dir. Madonna
Starring: Andrea Riseborough, James D’Arcy, Abbie Cornish, Oscar Isaac, Richard Coyle and James Fox

***½

By Greg Klymkiw

The King’s Speech gave me pathological hemorrhoids.

Thankfully my piles receded after seeing Madonna’s W.E.

This vaguely feminist fairytale crossed with fashion porn is a wildly stylish, dazzlingly entertaining and sumptuously melodramatic flipside to that horrendous Oscar-baiting nonsense.

Instead of Colin Firth spluttering with nobility as King George VI in television director Tom Hooper’s painfully earnest snooze-fest we get an exuberantly acted reverie into the life of Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough), the snappy dressing American divorcee who wooed King Edward VIII (James D’Arcy) into her boudoir, forcing him to abdicate for the woman he loved and thus allowing his stuttering, half-wit brother to mincingly don the Crown of Jolly Old England, hoist Blighty’s sceptre and eventually provide inspiration for the aforementioned hemorrhoid-inducer.

Madonna and co-writer Alek Keshishian (with script consultation from Madame Ciccone’s ex-hubby, Rock n’ Rolla helmer Guy Ritchie) make the deliciously daffy choice to tell the love story through the eyes of Wally (Abbie Cornish) – named thus by her Wallis Simpson obsessed mother. Wally is married to a philandering, alcoholic, abusive psychiatrist (Richard Coyle) and spends her days wandering through the Sotheby’s public viewing of Wallis and Edward’s soon-to-be-auctioned worldly goods.

Here she meets the dreamy Evgeni (Oscar Isaac) a brilliant Russian musician moonlighting as a security guard. He’s an olive-skinned, high-cheek boned Fabio with a Slavic accent and a great Jason-Statham dome. He tinkles the ivories with passion and reads Rainer Maria Rilke.

He’s a catch!

Instead of immediately plunging herself onto Evgeni’s schwance, she mopes about wondering why her hubby dinks around on her whilst sticking herself with hypodermics full of progesterone – hoping that she’ll get herself a bun in the oven.

And then there’s Sotheby’s. Here she ogles Wallis and Edward’s finery and slips into dollops of their passionate love story – even occasionally getting visits from the ghost of Wallis who dispenses Miss Lonelyheart's advice.

Okay, I bet you’re thinking this all sounds kind of stupid.

Well, it probably would be, but Madonna’s insane, passionate direction yields a movie experience that is pure romance. Via cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski, Madame Ciccone allows the camera to glide and whirl its way through the dress and décor of the filthy rich with such abandon that she creates a magical world that we’re very happy to be a part of.

And I reiterate – this movie is, at its peak, pure, joyous romance!

Take, for instance Wallis and Edward’s first meeting. Madonna stages the ballroom dancing with such sweep and form that she has us soaring as high as her subjects. Or in another instance, Edward gets so pissed off with his party guests snoozing through a Chaplin film screening in his sumptuous parlour that he and Wallis serve up champagne spiked with Benzedrine to liven up the proceedings – and liven up they most certainly do.

Then, there’s my favourite scene of all – Edward gets Wallis to engage in a super-sexy dance with a Nubian sex goddess and Madonna stages the entire sequence with The Sex Pistols blasting out “Pretty Vacant” on the soundtrack.

Why? You ask?

Why the fuck not? I retort!!!

Maybe it’s the old punk in me, but I loved how Madonna is clearly enraptured with Wallis and Edward. She paints a portrait of a Man Who SHOULD Be King. He’s cool. And so, especially, is Wallis. Madonna clearly has little use for the simpering brother who eventually places his butt on the throne and his nasty, controlling harridan wife. (At one point, I even imagined King George's buttocks on the throne and wondered if his farts stuttered too. But I digress.)

I genuinely believe Madonna IS a Monarchist, but she seems to be suggesting that it was the British government and the idiotic protocols imposed upon someone like Edward that destroyed the Monarchy. What it needed most was a King and Queen who were cool. And man, the portrait Madonna paints of these fun-loving lovebirds is cooler than cool.

Madonna even has the audacity to create a loving portrait of the late Dodi Fayed’s father, Mohammad al Fayed. Again, I say – why the fuck not? It’s so obvious that the Monarchy had Princess Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed knocked off. Things might have been very different if Edward had been able to tell everyone to fuck off, marry Wallis AND keep his crown!

Okay, maybe I have a bit of a bias here. Now this might not sound like much of a compliment, but believe me – it is. It’s very heartfelt. I used to have the sweetest, cutest, friendliest white and honey-coloured Shih Tzu. I loved her big time. I named her Wallis after – guess who?

Why? Why the fuck not?

For so long people made such a big deal of what Edward gave up to marry Wallis, but you never heard much about her side of the story. Oddly, this was one of my own personal obsessions and I was delighted that it’s a central thematic question that drives this movie and the character of Abbie.

As I write this, I have yet to read any reviews, but I’d bet my bottom dollar that it gets mercilessly savaged. Everyone, no doubt, has his or her knives sharpened to gut Madonna – mostly, I imagine – for being Madonna.

Many critics and maybe even the movie business at large are ready to pounce. In this day and age, when it’s harder and harder to finance a movie and next to impossible to get a movie directed by a woman off the ground, an easy target is someone who is as rich, famous and powerful as Madonna. Oh well, of course, they’ll all be saying (or at least thinking) – she got her movie made BECAUSE she’s rich, famous and powerful.

There’s a reason she’s rich, famous and powerful. She has exceptional style, savvy and talent.

Most of all, making a movie about Wallis and Edward and focusing on Wallis is – dare I say – something we’d ONLY see from a female director.

So it’s Madonna.

Why the fuck not?

She’s been the primary fuel behind an astounding career and one with considerable longevity – driven by a brilliant ability to artistically reinvent herself. With W.E. she not only reinvents herself as a filmmaker to be reckoned with, she does so with audacity and aplomb.

A few boneheads out there will probably attack the movie for being campy.

Is the movie campy?

You bet it is.

Since when can’t camp be art?

If anything, I wish the movie didn’t spin its wheels in its last ten-or-so minutes and I especially wish it didn’t resort to being so on-point in these final minutes about the consideration of Wallis Simpson’s point of view, and for that matter, a woman’s point of view. All of this was there in spades and didn’t need to be so emphatically, obviously reasserted.

That, however, is a minor quibble.

I might also add that only the style end of things, I am so delighted to say that the movie is replete with characters who smoke cigarettes. Watching good looking people smoking on the big screen is almost as pleasurable as smoking. When will people learn that smoking is cool - at least on celluloid.

Damn! W.E. is one of the most entertaining movies I've seen all year.

I feel like a virgin all over again.

W.E. is being unveiled for North American audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2011) and will be released theatrically in North America by e-one Entertainment.

TrollHunter

TrollHunter (2010) dir. André Øvredal
Starring: Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Morck, Tomas Alf Larsen, Urmila Berg-Domaas

***

By Alan Bacchus (reposted from Sundance 2011)

After a festival of heavy, brooding dramas, TrollHunter was a breath of fresh air. It’s a lively adventure film using the now-entrenched found footage technique mixed with a fun b-movie creature-feature genre.

Playing in the Midnight Section, it wasn’t a premiere for TrollHunter, as it played to excited audiences at Fantastic Fest. But with the elevated playing field of Park City, which meant more traditional journalists and international buyers watching the film, it was a significant inclusion in the festival.

We catch up with the story following two film students on the tail of an alleged bear poacher, who may or may not be hunting bears illegally around the rural Norwegian hinterland. The kids are both adventurous and naïve in their attempts to interview the mysterious hunter. Sensing the kids’ enthusiasm and the fact that they have a camcorder available to document the trip, the Hunter brings them along. After the first encounter they’re soon to learn that the Hunter is not hunting bears but trolls – giant trolls.

We learn that trolls are not uncommon. In fact, they’ve been rounded up and placed in special quarantined forests for years by the Norwegian government. But with four trolls on the loose outside their designated area, the Troll Hunter has been sent to capture or kill them.

With the delicious governmental conspiracy in place Øvredal executes a fun-filled monster movie highlighted by some fantastic old school special effects. Although Ray Harryhausen is the inspiration, the effects are invisible and seamlessly incorporated into the vérité found footage imagery. And Øvredal admirably learns from the mistakes in some of these other found footage films by keeping the camera level and steady most of the time, thus losing the ugly nauseating shakiness. That said, there are subtitles to read as well, so I highly recommend sitting way in the back.

Written as a classic b-movie anti-hero, the Hunter is placed in the Snake Plisskin/Indiana Jones mold as a soft-spoken, big stick-carrying fighter who completes his tasks with workmanlike efficiency. The seriousness of his demeanour and his ho-um attitude about the fact that he’s fighting living, breathing trolls contribute greatly to the deadpan, ironic humour.

This peculiar Scandinavian sense of humour, the incorporation of Norwegian mythology and even a little bit of black metal playing in the end credits all make this a uniquely Norwegian action/horror film.

Straw Dogs

Straw Dogs (1971) dir. Sam Peckinpah
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Susan George,

****

By Alan Bacchus

This is Sam Peckinpah's other unquestionable triumph, second to The Wild Bunch, a classic morality tale that furthers his career examination of violence and the specifically American perception of it. While The Wild Bunch was told using the tropes of the Western genre and the familiar themes of male camaraderie, heroism, anti-heroism and machismo, Straw Dogs is about a cowardly pacifist forced to find his latent primal urges to protect his home and family.

The narrative, as written by Peckinpah and co-writer David Zelag Goodman from Gordon Williams' novel The Siege at Trencher's Farm, is uncomplicated – David (Dustin Hoffman), an American mathematician, and Amy (Susan George), a Brit, have arrived in Amy's hometown, a quaint Southwest English hamlet, for some peace and quiet. However, they find themselves the brunt of xenophobic bullying from the locals, which by the end turns bloody and deadly.

The simplicity of the situation requires little narrative twists and turns. When told from the point of view of David, a meek and cowardly outsider, we immediately identify with his reluctance to act when pushed. What a remarkable thematic turn for Peckinpah to craft such a complex character restrained from the bravado and violence that is so prevalent in the genre in which he made his name.

Despite the film's reputation, there's actually little violence in the film. But it's the sustained tone of quiet dread and the intensely personal nature of the threats on David and Amy that get under our skin in ways The Wild Bunch never did. Peckinpah portrays his lead characters with remarkably layered complexity. The acts of violence are especially gut-wrenching because they're committed under a devious, false hospitality.

The British hooligans, which are ironically employed to repair David's roof, torment David in the most cruel and childish ways. Initially, it’s like innocent hazing, but it slowly escalates to dangerous assault and murderous intentions. At every turn Peckinpah resists the temptation to satisfy our needs and have David fight back. Perhaps the most nail-biting scene is David’s and Amy's confrontation with the men after the death of their cat. Amy, who had been begging David to stand up for them, gives him an ultimatum to confront the men about the feline. But as the group stand together with the elephant in the room going unspoken, the tension is earth shattering and his failure to act is devastating.

In fact, Peckinpah has never written a better screenplay. Every line of dialogue and unspoken reaction is like a loaded gun. The quiet tone contributes to the feeling of a brewing storm gathering energy and a force waiting to be released. The final act indeed releases all the tension in a superb set piece worthy of Peckinpah's career of great violent set pieces. It comes in the form of 'the siege,' after which the original novel was named. We finally get to see David take action. But it's never heroic. While it's wholly satisfactory to see his antagonists get their comeuppance, David's anger is also ugly and primal.

Amy is never completely victimized either. Her flaunted sexuality around the men, initially used to get back at David for his selfishness, is one of the causes of her rape later in the film, one of a series of tragic ironies that befalls the characters.

The rape scene is completely terrifying not because of the vicious assault suffered by Susan George's character, but because of the complexity with which the scene plays out. Amy clearly resists Charlie's urges but at one point gives in, appearing to moan with pleasure. This depiction of Amy's acceptance was, at one time, censored and cut out, only to be reinstated 20 years later. This is the genius of Peckinpah's subtle direction, which is fully consistent with the complexities of everyone's relationships in the picture. Of course, after the rape, which Amy 'accepts' only to lessen the pain involved, we're completely shattered and shocked when the scene continues with Charlie's sadistic accomplice Norman.

Of course, a remake of this film is coming out soon, which is the reason this film receives the Blu-ray release now. Nothing will take away from the power and influence of this most unique treatise on violence, which is arguably uglier and more disturbing than The Wild Bunch and any other films before or after.

Straw Dogs is available on Blu-ray from MGM Home Entertainment.

Dressed To Kill

Dressed to Kill (1980) dir. Brian de Palma
Starring: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Keith Gordon, Nancy Allen, Dennis Franz

***½

By Alan Bacchus

I am a Brian de Palma fan. Though I adore most of his films, I can acknowledge as much as his films are cinematically stimulating and provocative they can also be seen a shameless mysoginistic, poorly acted and often amateurish. There are few films in the De Palma canon that work completely as a whole without gaps in narrative logic, or lapses in good directorial judgement or laziness. But even at De Palma’s worst he continues to go for broke cinematically, attempting to dazzle us with set pieces to leave us beguiled, intrigued or stimulated.

On paper Dressed to Kill is an awful movie, which begins with a shameless nude scene, of Angie Dickinson showering intercut with obvious body double shots of her supple nipples and teasing vagina. (Note De Palma would famous reshoot this scene in his 1984 follow Body Double). It's just a dream as Kate Miller wakes up in the middle of morning sex, being pounded unceremoniously by her unromantic husband. But Kate longs to be desired and she finds this in the coy glances of a stranger in NY's Metropolitan Museum.

De Palma crafts a delirious chase sequence using state of the art steadycams paying homage to Jimmy Stewart's and Kim Novak's museum chase in Vertigo. Pino Donaggio's melodramatic music rises gradually to an orgasmic crescendo which leads into Kate's afternoon tryst with the mystery man in his apartment. Little does Kate know she's being stalked by a mystery 'woman', another voyeur following her from place to place. After leaving the man's apartment De Palma executes another stunning set piece, in one of his preferred locations, an elevator, wherein Kate finds herself attacked with a straight razor blade.

It's perhaps De Palma's most perfectly-crafted yet vicious scene. De Palma builds up immense tension from Jerry Greenberg's delicate editing drawing out each step, and glance to before punctuating the scene with the grisly murder.

An innocent hooker/bystander Liz Blake (Nancy Allen) is seen by the killer who then becomes her next target. Liz befriends Kate's nerdy son who vows to investigate the murder on his own.

Thus with the film's star, Angie Dickinson, dead, a narrative shift directly influenced by Janet Leigh's surprised early death in Psycho, moves the film over to Keith Gordon and Nancy Allen, who become an affable Hardy Boys./Nancy Allen boy-meets-hooker tag team. In the middle of everything is Kate's psychiatrist Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine) who may be hiding the identity of the murderer to protect his anonymity of his client.

Dressed to Kill is filled with silly amateurisms, laughable dialogue and jokes from Nancy Allen, an overly-serious scene-chewing performance from Michael Caine, a cliched detective played by Dennis Franz, and a downright preposterous plotting device given to Keith Gordon's character. Like the contrived machinations of plot in De Palma's 1976's Hitchcockian melange Obsession, the plotting serves as a rudimentary coat hanger for De Palma's stunning set pieces and cinematic bravura.

I've mentioned the elevator and museum scenes, but there's also the subway chase between Nancy Allen and the cloaked killer, and the killer's third act resurrection in the insane asylum which provides one of the great shock moments on De Palma's filmography. This sequence of events which seems narratively unnecessary after the killer's capture is De Palma's loopy obsessiveness at his best, pummelling us with a couple more audacious kills to send us all home with our seats wet and our money's worth. The finale confrontation is pure De Palma, a scene Quentin Tarantino respectfully borrowed for Kill Bill's Vol 1's hospital scene.

Tying everything together, the good and the bad, is Pino Donaggio's awesome score, which oscillates between dreamy overly romantic melancholy to aggressive and violent string arrangements of Bernand Herrmann, the last piece of the puzzle of De Palma's most delirious act of cinematic exploitation.

Dressed to Kill is available on Blu-Ray from MGM Home Entertainment

Hanna

Hanna (2011) dir. Joe Wright
Starring: Saorise Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Jason Flemyng, Olivia Williams

***½

By Alan Bacchus

What a pleasure to see Joe Wright, the helmer of the handsome but overly precious prestige dramas Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and The Soloist, switch gears and execute a balls out action film.

At every turn Wright is conscious to cure his system of complacency and subvert any expectations from his previous work. Here he revels in unconventionality. The opening act is a tepidly paced introduction to Hanna (Ronan), a 16-year-old girl who is being trained in all forms of survival by her father (Bana) in the snowcapped wilderness. She can fight, shoot guns, use bows and arrows and knives, etc. She knows multiple languages and can recite geographic and historical statistics like a human encyclopedia. This is the life of Hanna until the moment she asks about a mysterious box with a red button. "Push the button," her father says, "and the outside world will be alerted to your presence." What a great 'call to arms.'

Like Neo's (The Matrix) choice of red pill or blue pill, how can she NOT press this button? So she presses it, and indeed a team of American CIA-type agents come running to capture her. Clearly it’s by design that Hanna meets a mysterious woman, Marissa Weigler, who has been so prominent in her dreams. After her capture she’ll eventually have to escape, thus jump-starting the chase that comprises the bulk of this film.

This story, which is not that unoriginal, could have been turned into a conventional spy thriller. Like in Salt or The Bourne Identity, Hanna is a new millennium action hero, a robotic super soldier with unexpected skills brainwashed to fight and be a superhuman fighting machine. Sure, it's fun to see a 16-year-old girl do hand-to-hand combat with men twice her size and win, but as the film moves along we become engaged in her desires to fit in with regular life.

Mike Tothill’s editing might be the star of the show here. As Wright's editor on all the aforementioned prestige films, he too is inspired to change the cinematic paradigm. Almost everything is cut to project a strange hallucinatory effect. There’s a staccato rhythm in time with The Chemical Brothers superb and bouncing electronic score, which always keeps us stimulated. Wright moves his camera with great speed trying to keep up with Tothill's pace.

In the middle of the action Hanna meets up with a middle-class family on vacation in their camper. When she tries to integrate into the regular family, it turns into a bizarro world of sorts, like something out of a Terry Gilliam film.

The third act lets us down, unfortunately, when Wright and Tothill seem to run out of steam. Wright relies on a tired old Grimm’s fairytale allegory placing us in an amusement park filled with surreal Lewis Carrol/Grimm’s imagery. The final revelations and resolutions settle into a conventionality, which was so poisonous to Wright at the beginning. It's a shame this film doesn’t go out as high as we came into it, but it’s nevertheless one of the surprises of the year, and an exercise for all filmmakers languishing in a similar cinematic funk as Wright’s to explore.

Hanna is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Alliance Films in Canada.

John Carpenter's The Ward

John Carpenter's The Ward (2010) dir. John Carpenter
Starring: Amber Heard, Jared Harris, Mammie Gummer, Daniella Panabaker

**

By Alan Bacchus

Well, it's fun to have John Carpenter back after so many years dormant and more than a decade of forgettable films, even if this latest effort is not the reverie we all hoped for. At least it’s a pure horror film. There are no vampires or ghosts on Mars. But there is a contained location, specifically a psych ward in the '60s, and the ghost of a missing or dead girl tormenting a group of female patients.

We're treated to a classic Carpenter opening including a number of establishing shots of the ward strung together. Before that we see Carpenter’s heroine, a gorgeous and athletic Kristen (Heard), lighting her house on fire, an act that sends her to the looney bin. It’s 1966 and the ward is something we’ve seen in numerous films before - cold, dehumanizing decor, ornery doctors and nurses who seem to care little about the patient’s well being, and of course, experimental treatments like electro-shock therapy and labotomization. Kristen hangs out with other gorgeous young gals, inmates we presume are crazy too.

It doesn’t take long for Kristen to figure out there’s something not right about the ward, specifically an ominous dark-clad figure making creepy appearances around the building. Based on the glum reaction of Dr. Stringer (Harris), this seems to be a part of why Kristen is here. A few of the gals try to escape but are caught and killed by the demon ghost before Kristen has her one-on-one confrontation, and, as we can expect with these period mental patient films, all is not as it seems.

Carpenter manages to engineer a few scary sequences with creative ways to make us jump. His demon woman is a wholly Carpenter creation, a grotesque humanoid in a dress resembling one of the devil worshippers in Prince of Darkness.

But what’s sorely missing is the rich texture Carpenter used to have between his scary moments. Think of the build up in They Live before Roddy Piper first put those sunglasses on, or the monotonous music tones of Ennio Morricone in The Thing, or the religious back story in Prince of Darkness, or John Houseman’s opening campfire story in The Fog. There are no feelings like these in The Ward.

Carpenter’s later pictures have all been plagued with bad casting. Here Amber Heard is simply not believable as a tortured girl from the '60s, too generically beautiful to be psychotic. The stilted dialogue of all the girls feels more like a high school clique than four crazies in a psych ward. Thus, when Carpenter’s not trying to scare us, it’s all flat and devoid of atmosphere.

Sadly, Carpenter has lost his touch, but not without a superb body of work behind him. The Ward is like those last few films from Alfred Hitchcock, admirable but forgettable.

The Ward is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Alliance Films in Canada.

Blood Simple

Blood Simple (1984) dir. Joel Coen
Starring: Frances McDormand, John Getz, Dan Hedaya, M Emmett Walsh

****

By Alan Bacchus

The confidence and command of the medium with this very first feature film from the Coen Bros is kind of astounding. The loosely documented story behind the making of this film has it that Coen Bros made a short demo, or trailer for the film as a pitch to some family friends to invest in their feature version. With their meticulously detailed story board, the maximized their million and a half budget instantly launching their successful career.

It’s a remarkably precise execution of their for the brothers . Despite some rough-around-the-edges cinematography Blood Simple is tight as can be. No shot seems wasted. An artfully rendered jigsaw puzzle, full of crafty shadowy characters all of whom with their own dispicable agendas. We’re not even sure who to root for. The thrill is in the clever unveiling of this dynamic anti-morality tale of greed, desire and a little bit of chance.

Most of the familiar Coens’ motifs are present in this first outing. The opening shot for instance features a car speeding down an open road at night, visuals cues prevalent in Fargo, Raising Arizona and No Country For Old Men. Even M Emmett Walsh’s lazy, heavily-accented narration told with the simplicity of a fairytale forecasts it’s use in Raising Arizona, Hudsucker Proxy, The Big Lebowski and more.

The story, a deliciously plotted pot boiler, bringing to mind the best of Hollywood noir of the 40’s and 50’s. Ray and Abby (Getz and McDormand) are lovers hiding out from Abby’s husband Marty (Hedaya), who also happens to be Ray’s boss in the local saloon. Marty suspects something and hires an old private dick (Walsh) to confirm his suspicions. The detective even offers to kill them both for a tidy sum. After Marty’s double-crossed and left dead, in order to properly clean up the trail of evidence he has to kill Abby and Ray.

But the detective finds an unusually strong opponent in Abby, resulting a remarkable cat and mouse chase in her loft apartment, a memorable blood curdling finale to an ice cold nihlist thriller.

The Coens are not shy to put their cinematic style in front of content and character. But it’s a noir film and the genre requires this kind of panache and swagger. The Coens have it spades, impressing us with clever camera moves, including their famous bar tracking shot which has their camera creep along the thin rail of the bar then literally move up and over a drunkard passed out on a stool. The more erratic camera moves seem to be influenced by Barry Sonenfeld, their first DOP, who would go on to direct his films and use similar expressive moves. But the Coens also know when to slow down and hold our attention. Numerous scenes use excessive silences to amplify the tension before unleashing it’s force. The sniper scene is remarkably tense, a Hitchcockian scene through and through, one short moment drawn out by creative editing for a long as possible to maximize the shock value.

The Coens revel in the detailed procedural actions of their characters. When Ray discovers Marty's dead body in his office for instance, it begins a lengthy sequence showing his disposal of the body. Again, as influenced by Hitchcock, the steps taken by Ray to clean the scene, and transport the body into the car along the highway and eventually to it’s final destination in the shallow grave of a farmer’s field is remarkably involving, like Norman Bates' removal of Janet Leigh's body in Psycho, or the famous sack of potatoes scene in Frenzy. Though Marty’s body never moves at any time, in the back of our minds, we expect him to come back to life and attack Ray.

And remarkably it isn’t until the final act when the Coens find their true hero, Abby, the meek unassuming female victim, who at first is characterized as a femme fatale, another recurring theme for the Coen's, a resourceful everyman or woman who trumps the miscreants at their own game.

Blood Simple is available on Blu-Ray from MGM Home Entertainment

Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction (1994) dir. Quentin Tarantino
Starring: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Uman Thurman, Tim Roth, Ving Rhames, Amanda Plummer

****

By Alan Bacchus

We can’t underestimate the impact of this movie. The fact is, this film burst into the cinematic zeitgeist at large with a force comparable only to a few films in recent memory. It wasn’t a Jaws-like box office blockbuster, but it was a phenomenon just the same. From the extended opening dialogue scene full of inane ramblings from Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer, which flipped itself onto its head revealing the crazy lovebirds as free spirit criminals on a crime spree, to the opening credit sequence featuring an oddball mix of ‘50s surf music and ‘70s funk, Pulp Fiction was something fresh and new.

And yet, Pulp Fiction is really a collage of other movies delicately hidden beneath the recognizable Tarantino-isms. Many of us already knew and revered his bloody heist movie, Reservoir Dogs, a ‘60s Jean-Pierre Melville movie disguised as a clever ‘90s thriller. Some of the motifs transported into his second film included the retro-cool black and white suits with skinny black ties worn by the hitmen Jules and Vincent. There’s the hard-boiled attitude of his heavies, which is disarming based on his characters’ affable sense of humour and awareness of pop culture. There’s also Tarantino’s twisting narrative, which loops back and forth over itself like an Elmore Leonard novel, or in cinematic terms, Stanley Kubrick’s noir classic The Killing. Yet no one would ever refer to Pulp Fiction as an homage to Kubrick, Melville or Godard. Tarantino's whole is greater than the sum of its parts – a brand of cinematic deconstruction that is wholly his own.

This is also something we’ve lost from Tarantino over the years. While Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds are terrific films, they rely on overt references to his influences. Pulp Fiction acts like a culmination of his pre-Hollywood storytelling, his Video Archives days, where he famously thought up the scenes and characters in True Romance, Reservoir Dogs, Natural Born Killers and Pulp Fiction, and to some degree From Dusk Till Dawn. All of these exist in their own Tarantino universe, like a self-contained quadrilogy/time capsule of Tarantino’s fantasies and desires as a filmmaker.

His later work, written after the success of Pulp Fiction, is clearly the work of a successful filmmaker, another phase of his career. But Tarantino has always been aware of his place in the pantheon of filmmakers. His characters feel the same way.

Many people resent the presence of QT in his movies. I disagree. In this respect, Tarantino is comparable to Alfred Hitchcock, as they are two filmmakers whose personalities are quintessential to the existence of their films. With Hitchcock we expected his appearance in his films. Taking an audience ‘out of a movie’, or becoming aware that we’re watching a movie, is usually cause for trouble. But we need to watch a Hitchcock movie in the context of his full body of work, his obsessions with voyeurism and blondes, and even his obsession with 'obsession' itself. This is the definition of the auteur, the director as the author of a film wherein he or she essentially (or thematically) remakes the same movie over and over again. Hitchcock did this. So does Tarantino.

With today’s eyes Pulp Fiction is as good now as it was then. Absolutely nothing is lost with age. It also seems impervious to overexposure. The individual moments that make up Tarantino’s meandering narrative add up to a hallucinatory loop comedy of errors of crime in Los Angeles.

Going from Vincent’s and Jules’ truncated journey starting in Jules’ car as he describes his experiences in Amsterdam and ‘little differences,’ to Vincent passing his test of loyalty, not without severe shock and trauma, and to his bitter end in front of Bruce Willis’s smoking gun is a magnificent journey. Bruce Willis's scheme to leave the shady boxing racket, which takes a very wild detour in the dungeon of the hillbilly S&M rapists, is one of the greatest 'left turns' in cinema history. And the climactic ending not only shows us what happens to the lovebird criminals from the beginning of the film, it also gives the steely-eyed Jules Winfield the film's greatest moment of change.

Pulp Fiction successfully survived the '90s, which can't be said of other lauded films of the era, thus rightfully earning its place in the cinematic pantheon.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010) dir. Eli Craig
Starring: Tyler Labine,

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil manages to find an angle in the cabin movie horror genre still untapped. Eli Craig lampoons these films by putting his audience in the point of view of hillbilly psychopath characters creating a great comedy of errors pitting a couple of lovable but hapless hillbillies against a group of pretentious college students. It makes for a riotous comic horror affair.

Tucker and Dale (Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk) are a couple of backwater hillbillies lifted from Deliverance, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, except they’re actually really conscientious, genuine and respectable citizens. But to a bunch of spoiled college kids on a camping trip who’ve seen all these movies they look like psychopaths.

They first meet at a local gas station where Eli Craig cleverly intercuts the two conversations of the two sets of characters. The college kids can only see crazed maniacs based on the hillbillies’ actions and words, but from Tucker and Dale’s point of view, they’re just trying to make friends. Tyler Labine plays the trivia-smart/common sense-dumb Tucker with great sincerity. Early on, Tucker tries to ask the blonde hottie Allison (Katrina Bowden) out on a date. Despite his good intentions, he comes off as more than awkward and, to Allison, a psychotic inbred killer.

Tucker and Dale and the college kids (which becomes Tucker’s generalized term for them) convene again at a decrepit cabin in the woods. What looks like an Evil Dead cabin to the kids is the ‘summer home’ purchased by Tucker and Dale, who have become proud homeowners.

The comedy of errors escalates into action when, by accident, the kids start killing themselves in horrific ways, which of course make Tucker and Dale look like murderers. At one point, while Dale is chopping some wood, one of the kids runs after him and accidentally jumps into the chipper. A fun love story emerges between Tucker and Allison, a beauty and the beast romance, which caps off this ingenious genre twister.

Tucker & Dale is fun midnight madness entertainment. Like Shaun of the Dead, Craig has an intimate love for the genre, and his knowledge of the tropes of cabin-in-the-woods storytelling makes for a movie as genuine as it is honest. And Craig has heaps of comic gore to satisfy the blood quotient of the genre. But it's Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk, who riff and roll like a great Laurel and Hardy comedic duo, that make this even more fun than the twisty concept.

Zero Hour!

Zero Hour! (1957) dir. Hall Bartlett
Starring: Dana Andrews, Stirling Hayden, Linda Darnell, Peggy King

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Ted Stryker is a shamed WWII pilot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after failing his squadron and taking the blame for their deaths in battle. In the present he’s a wreck, as his wife recently walked out on him with their young boy. When he learns about her location and gets a seat on a flight across the country, he’s suddenly thrust into another traumatic situation. With half of the passengers, including both pilots, sick from food poisoning, Stryker has a chance to redeem himself by flying the plane to safety – if his nerves don’t knock him down first.

No, this is not the summary for Airplane!, the wild Zucker/Abrams/Zucker comedy from 1980. But Zero Hour! was their main influence – a disaster film, which, looking back, serves as a near carbon copy of their film, right down to the exclamation mark at the end of the title!

I know Airplane! intimately. It’s one of the greatest and most influential comedies ever made. And yes, I know the film was intended as a satire disaster film. And yes, I even know Zero Hour!, made years before the genre trend in the ‘70s, was a plotting influence. This would be considered blatant theft, but the filmmakers had such reverence for the material they outright purchased Arthur Hailey’s screenplay rights (originally broadcast for television on the CBC!) to remake the movie as a comedy.

Remarkably, both films line up perfectly side by side. Even the character names are the same. Dana Andrews as Ted Stryker in Zero Hour! is just like Robert Hays – a sweaty, twitching shell of a man ruined by his war experiences. The opening flashback sequences to 'the War’ resemble Airplane!’s Vietnam sequences right down to the superimposed images of Stryker’s anguished face over the battle footage. Once on the plane, even the compositions and mise-en-scene are the same.

Geoffrey Toone, playing the doctor character, chews the scenery so marvellously, rendering Leslie Nielsen’s over-the-top serious recreation of the character even funnier. And like the comedic version, as we see the tense decisions made on the plane we also get to see the cigarette-smoking air traffic controllers sweating buckets on land. Midway through, Sterling Hayden enters the picture playing Stryker’s former Captain charged with guiding Stryker to safety. Like Robert Stack’s egotistical Capt. Kramer, his bravura presence and cigar-chomping, no-bullshit attitude trumps even Toone’s authoritarian presence. And early on, Joey, Stryker’s wide-eyed boy, is introduced to the pilot in the flight deck. Watching that scene play out knowing how deliriously naughty Peter Graves plays it is difficult to take out of one’s mind.

So how can I even judge Zero Hour! on its own merits? It’s impossible. But, looking back on my old review of Airplane! I have to quote myself:

“Airplane! is rooted in a real story, which, if told in another genre, could actually work. Although the filmmakers try their best to score every gag, not everything hits the mark for everybody. But in between the lewd, rude and crude behaviour, there’s engaging and likeable characters. So when you’re not laughing, it’s not a chore to actually watch the film."

The fact is, Zero Hour!, however overdramatized, is a lean, mean tense thriller. At 90 minutes, it’s a white knuckle action film. There’s almost no inter-character conflict, and it is suspense cinema stripped down to its essential elements – all the chaff is stripped away. The fact that both versions are supremely watchable on their own and are enhanced by the presence of the other is a testament to the words originally put onto paper by its creator, Arthur Hailey.

Elephant

Elephant (2003) dir. Gus Van Sant
Starring: Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Timothy Bottoms, Elias McConnell

****

By Alan Bacchus

Like Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, in Elephant Gus Van Sant magnificently manages to create great art out of great tragedy. Indeed, both works of art are comparable. From the bombing of the city of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, Picasso rendered his most recognizable painting. For Gus Van Sant, his inspiration for Elephant, his universally celebrated Palme D’Or-winning film, was a reaction to the Columbine school shooting – a seminal event in recent US history. Years from now when we look back on his career, this might be his crowning achievement.

Van Sant’s determined minimalist style is so very deceptive and wholly cinematic. It’s cinematic in the sense that the languid and quiet pace creates an eerie tension. This serves to establish realism and makes us believe that the high school and students depicted in the film could actually exist – a high school with nameless, faceless kids free of all preconceived notions of a movie ‘high school’. But it also establishes a sense of boredom, which disarms the viewer to the inhumane tragedy about to unfold.

The film is a technical touchstone of cinematic technique. Harris Savides’ steadycam achieves some rather unique accomplishments, moving both inside and outside the school with complete unity in the lighting and depth of field. Whether or not you notice this specifically, the fluidity of the camera that creates a feeling of elegant motion is front and centre. The visual design of placing his characters in the centre of the frame moving through hallways might even connect, whether purposefully or subliminally, with the point of view in which computer games are played by the two killers in the film. Or maybe Van Sant intended to echo the eerily cold feeling of the overlook hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Look closely to follow the shifting point of view. In mid-shot, Van Sant often moves from a tracking shot following a character to a reaction shot of other characters looking down the barrel of the camera. This occurs specifically when the handsome jock turns the heads of the nattering bulimic girls in the hallway.

If there’s a false note in the film it’s the depiction of Alex and Eric as emotionless stone cold killers. When the film switches to their stories, he’s clear to show their inane and confounding activities prior to the carnage, including their planning process, executed without an ounce of remorse or self-doubt, or an acknowledgement of their fate. There’s also the gay shower scene, which creates even more confusion and questions. Regardless of how the Columbine killers conducted themselves before their rampage, their detachment from reality is frightfully terrifying.

The massacre scene that fills the third act admirably does not sensationalize the murders. The depiction of death and the often confusing actions of some of the kids just before death feel so utterly real. Benny, for instance, skulks around the school like a brainless zombie thinking he’s immune to the killers’ weaponry. And his death, so undramatic and thoughtless, is difficult to comprehend or make sense of, yet it makes sense given the way Van Sant plays out Benny’s movements.

That said, Elephant is not meant to make sense of any aspect of this tragedy, other than, like Guernica, an abstract instinctive visceral reaction from the soul of an artist.

Chasing Madoff

Chasing Madoff (2011) dir. Jeff Prosserman
Documentary

**½

By Alan Bacchus

The latest subject of white-collar crime activist filmmaking is Bernie Madoff, that detestable Wall Street fraudster and conspirator of a 50 billion dollar Ponzi/Pyramid scheme. Based on the title, Chasing Madoff isn't about the man himself. Rather, it’s about the team of men chasing him down, specifically chief whistleblower Harry Markopolos, a Boston financial manager, who at first sought to compete directly with Madoff for clients until he discovered the damning evidence of market fraud, thus compelling him to embark upon a decade-long journey to expose Madoff's crimes.

Like the fine financial docs Inside Job (Charles Ferguson), Casino Jack and the United States of Money (Alex Gibney) and the Sundance-screened The Flaw (David Sington), Chasing Madoff is effectively harsh towards not only Madoff, but also the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), The Wall Street Journal and other checks and balances that are set up to prevent this shocking miscarriage of justice.

Director Jeff Prosserman takes an especially clinical approach, employing most of the same cinematic techniques as the great Errol Morris (Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, Tabloid): centre-framed interviewees against monochrome backgrounds looking directly into the camera. Morris has been doing this for 30 years, and as used by Prosserman, his techniques are still effective. Prosserman also employs a significant amount of well-executed digital effects to transition between interviews ― the effect of scrolling through photos on a touch phone or iPad. His dramatic recreations are also in the Morris style: abstractly visualized scenes that fill in the visual gaps of his subjects' testimony.

Prosserman's clinical approach wears though, specifically Markopolos's emotionally detached testimony, which dampens the dramatic tension. Unlike Inside Job, Chasing Madoff simmers but never boils.

After the 10-year odyssey of Markopolos risking the safety of his family to "do the right thing," Madoff is caught by the same market he manipulated for so long ― the financial crisis of 2008. Not even Madoff could escape the pressure of the sub-prime mortgage affair, thus toppling his precarious house of cards almost instantly. Does this render Markopolos's efforts obsolete? Perhaps. With or without Markopolos, the financial crisis would have happened, and Madoff would have gone down, which consequently reduces the dramatic power of the film.

And though it's a different film, we also can't help but want to know more about the actual Bernie Madoff and how a wealthy, educated man would commit such heinous crimes. I suspect that might be a better story. That said, Chasing Madoff accomplishes its goals and is a strong cinematic documentary informing us about the events that led to the indictment of this now infamous Wall Street criminal.

This article first appeared on Exclaim.ca