2012. Dir: Tim Burton. Starring: Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green and Bella Heathcote. ●●○○○
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the film-making process and I don't begrudge others for enjoying it, but just because there's lots of fun being had on screen doesn't mean the audience will have fun, in fact it's often the case that the more fun the cast and crew appear to be having the less fun the audience have. And there's a lot of fun being had on screen in Dark Shadows.
The film opens with a pointless scene setting flashback narrated by Johnny Depp's Barnabas Collins detailing the history of his relationship with witchcraft practising Angelique Bouchard, played by Eva Green. There's opulent architecture, triple murder and Collins transformed into a multi-knuckled blood-sucking vampire. Tedious and irrelevant the passage only seems to exist to attempt to cover over the gaping plot holes yet to come.
Fast forward 200 years to the mid 1970's and a mysterious stranger is heading to Collinsport, Maine, a young girl answering an newspaper notice for a Governess in the
dilapidated manor, a young girl with a surprising similarity to the ghostly ex-fiancee drifting around the cobwebbed corridors. Not least because both are played by Bella Heathcote. She meets the stern matriarch, Michelle Pfeiffer who remains far more dignified than this trash deserves, and is soon assisting alcoholic psychologist Helen Bonham Carter in the education of the youngest heir to the Collins dynasty.
But wait, where is the unsubtle presence of arch over-actor Depp? Never fear, he is soon to be released from his subterranean prison by an unwitting assortment of building engineers - although quite why they're digging the foundations for a MacDonalds so late at night isn't really answered - and before long he has returned to the family home and vows to restore the fortunes and dignity of the Collins estate.
What follows is approximately 90 minutes of repetitive fish out of water jokes - many of which were in the trailer - oodles of sexual chemistry between Depp and Green (although oddly none between Depp and Heathcote) and a final showdown between witches, vampires, ghosts and most preposterously werewolves. Note I am not saying werewolves are more preposterous than the other assorted monstrous characters however when a character comes on just to admit their Lycanthropic tendencies minutes before the end of the film when there's been no hint of it before smacks of writerly indulgence.
Depp adds another oddball character to his repertoire, neither good nor bad in the scheme of his past work, it is most definitely not in any way original. Whilst the supporting cast relish the opportunity to go for one-dimensional turns reflective of the soapy source material, wasting such diverse talents as Chloe Grace Moretz and Jackie Earle Haley. Only Green, displaying the sultry, slutty, animalism of the slighted femme fatale gives anything close to a performance worth remembering.
Regular Burton collaborators Rick Heinrichs (returning as Production designer after a 11 year absence) and Colleen Atwood (costuming for Tim for the 9th time) have done excellent work hear, mercilessly revealing the 1970's as the most garish an unappealing design decade of the 20th century, whilst staying true to the gothic roots you would expect for this haunted house melee. The design motifs are the stars here with the intricate Collinsport Mansion with it's nooks, crannies and secret passages as much a character as most of the performers. Unfortunately I can't help but wonder whether they've missed a trick here - if the aim of the movie was to replicate the cheap shonkiness of the original series which would explain the drab characterisations and left-field plotting - then why not play around with deliberately crass production design, the sort of wobbly walls and rubber effects that made Ed Wood so memorable.
It's hard to see what Burton is really trying to achieve with this homage to TV mediocrity. Is he celebrating it's joyous unprofessionalism or slyly satirising horror tropes? Either way this film fails to achieve those aims and I really can't recommend it for anyone.
Thursday, 24 May 2012
Dark Shadows
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
Jackie Earle Haley
Happy Birthday to
Jackie Earle Haley
49 today
Following Jackie extraordinary performance and subsequent Academy Award nomination for Little Children I suspect he knew he only had a limited window in which to establish a legitimate career in movies, being short of stature on top of his ethereal facial structure means parts are harder to come by. But now he's made his money with Watchmen and the Elm Street remake he'll hopefully have more opportunity to experiment on film.
Friday, 7 May 2010
Out this week (07/05/2010)
For one brief moment this afternoon I am returning back to the world of film. It's a place where I feel comfortable, where I can confidently predict the outcome, and where I know in a couple of hours I can stumble back into the light take a deep breath of fresh air and know it was just a movie. It's a slow week (the least enticing week of releases since January), with only a couple of films reaching even four our of ten on the excitometer. Out of them I'd have to recommend Chris Morris' Four Lions
The Back-Up Plan
J-Lo has decided, following her twins, to return to films safe in the knowledge that Sandra Bullock has paved the way for about 40 year old recapturing the rom-com market. Unfortunately this plan is no Proposal, and J-Lo never had the right fanbase to exploit that crowd.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
Badmaash Company
Four friends in Mumbai (the nicer bits of Mumbai) decide to get together and form a "company". I don't know what the company does or how it makes it's money - both the synopsis and trailer are curiously evasive about his - but it turns out to be a big success. Hooray...
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
Bumm Bumm Bole
This Hindi children's film does at least have a nice concept, it's about a samll boy who loses his sisters shoes (why did he have her shoes?) then runs a marathon in order to win her a new pair. I'm not intrigued enough to see it mind.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
Four Lions
This terrorist comedy, about a quartet of inept extremists, is bound to cause some anxious nailbiting amoung the press. But with Chris Morris, the unique and distinctive comic voice behind "Brass Eye", as the creative force it's bound to be both darkly humourous and issue busting.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●○○○○○○
Furry Vengeance
Do you have children with poor taste in movies, ADHD or hat you just don't like? Then go and see Brendan Fraser getting hounded by cute and furry critters. It's like a live action Over the Hedge, without the animals talking.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Hot Tub Time Machine
Am I being generous giving this a four. You're damn right I am, but reviews for John Cusacks comedy about going back to his youth and those halycon years we've lft behind have been quite kind, and the principle cast all look like they're enjoying themselves.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●○○○○○○
Just for the record
Good news. It's a Danny Dyer picture, which means we get a gratuitous picture of Danny all cockteasy at the end of the post. It's a comedy about the British film industry. Do not expect much.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy's back. This time looking a lot like Jackie Earle Haley. This looks a lot better than your average revionist 80's slasher pic, but that really isn't sayiong much.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●○○○○○○
Room and a half
Director Andrey Khrzhanovskiy (70) has had a long aand succesful career in documentaries and animation, but bizarrely the semi-fictional account of the Russian poet and exile Joseph Brodsky, partly told through animation, poetry and with different film styles, is his first narrative feature. Looks very good if you can stand over 2 hours of experimatal Russian movies.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Virsa
Pakistani movie about ex-pats in Australia and their different choices with regards to naturalizing themselves into society. Probably very worthy.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
And, amazingly I missed Ekam, Son of Soil from 23 April.
A Punjabi melodrama about a Australia based lad who returns to the village of his father. I have no idea if Soil is the name of his father, or a reference to working in the fields...
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
As promised:
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Shutter Island
2010. Dir: Martin Scorsese. Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingley, Max von Sydow and Michelle Williams. ●●●●○
I'm not much of a reader. Sure, like anyone I can devour an airport paperback in a couple of sittings, but these are few and far between. I spend much more time between books, with dogeared classics drifting around my desk waiting for the first chapter to be tried agian. Occasionally though I make a bit of effort. It could be because I love the author's style (Michael Chabon, J.G Ballard) or because I've heard great things (The Time Traveler's Wife, Curious incident of the dog in the night-time) OR because I hear there's going to be a movie made form it. Which how I came to read Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island.
I hated it.
But that negative experience meant that I could, when the film came out, watch it with a understanding of where the plot was going and pre-warned about the style. Lehane, who specialises in adult crime thrillers (Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone have both been sucessfully adapted to the big screen), set out to write a genre piece, a gothic mystery with a dramatic twist. As a novel I felt it didn't work as the ending was too neat, too cliched to be true. Of course it's a film cliche, anyway, so naturally it works better in that medium.
As the film starts we see a ferry coming out of the mist on it's way to the titular island and its maximum security institute for the criminally insane. Before we've had a chance to fully register the characters Marshalls Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (geddit???!!! - Mark Ruffalo) are being thundered away from the dock in an open top jeep to a soundtrack of intense classics.
The plots own macguffin is escaped prisoner Rachel Solando who's miraculously squeezed through her bars and disappered into the inhospital island, and the Marshalls have been called to help track her down. Not that that's the only thing on DiCaprio's mind. Whilst he's there he must find out the truth about the secret mind drugs that sinister phychiatrist's Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow are dishing out and avenge the murder of his fragile wife Dolores Chanal (Michelle Williams) by the arsonist Andrew Laeddis who may also be, unregistered, in the island. Meanwhile he's suffering from violent headaches, dreaming about his wife's murder, suffering from flashbacks to World War 2. And, to top it all off, there's a big storm coming.
If all of this combined makes it seem like there's an awful lot going on, you're right. But remember most of these events are red herrings. The film is packing in incident and characters to confuse you, to obscure the truth from your vision. Like the fog in the opening, we aren't meant to understand the full implications of the search until that thrid act reveal. Although you could read those last two paragraphs and in effect solve the entire mystery.
Marty knows what he's doing with the story, in what must be his most satisfying film since Goodfellas. The sensibility of the novel and the genre is a ball that Scorsese is more than happy to pick up and run with. Every underlined clue, every musical cue, every jumpy edit seems to be perfectly judged to reinforce the storys central conceit. It is both a pastiche and a modern response to the melodrams of the 40's and 50's where the heroine (usually) begins to doubt her own security and sanity The Spiral Staircase, Gaslight and Sorry, Wrong Number all come to mind.
To that end we also completely forget it's a Scorsese picture, wih it's use of a classical soundtrack and heavy handed symbolism it's about as far away from his past masterpieces as you can imagine. Only the concentration camp shoot out with it's relentless tracking shot is a clue to who you're working with.
In the lead role DiCaprio continues to grow as an actor, able to convey much with a look or a throwaway line. Even the more outre choices - like the completely gonzo scribbling - seem to fit with the characters arc. The way he plays the final scene by the doors of the asylum is incredible, a massive awareness of his situation combined with a confidence about the path he must follow.
I expect in 10 years time we'll look back at this period in DiCaprio's career (with this Inception and Clint Eastwood J. Edgar Hoover biopic) when he truly matured into the greatest actor of his generation
Ben Kingsley also givs a rare performance as the doctor in charge, slipping from playfulness through exasperation to dismissive sometimes within a single speech.
As you would expect in a Scorsese picture the design is solid, with Dante Ferretti's (Casino, Interview with the Vampire) production design inside Robert Richardson's (Inglorious Basterds, Powder Keg) lens meaning every frame is a piece of art.
Overall this is a wonderful throwback to the films of yore, only let down by it's lack of ambition, with no commentary about the world outside of the film.
Monday, 14 July 2008
Jackie Earle Haley
Happy Birthday to
Jackie Earle Haley
47 today
Jackie was a child actor, (see The Bad News Bears or Breaking Away) who had almost disappeared by the mid nineties. He returned to film in 2006 with an oscar nominated performance as the peadophile in Todd Field's Little Children. I amactually not a fan of the performance - not a subtle as the Ronnie McGorvey from the book - however it's been a great opportunity for Jackie to return to film. Look out for him in the highly anticipated Watchmen adaptation and in Scorcese's Shutter Island next year.
