SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK (US/Canada/China - 2019) Directed by Andre Ovredal. Written by Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman. Cast: Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Gil Bellows, Dean Norris, Lorraine Toussaint, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn, Austin Abrams, Kathleen Pollard, Javier Botet, Troy James, Mark Steger. (PG-13, 108 mins) Based on the beloved trilogy of YA books written by Alvin Schwartz and vividly illustrated by Stephen Gammell, SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK takes some of the series' more famous tales of terror ("The Big Toe," "The Red Spot," "Me-Tie-Dough-ty Walker!") and weaves them into a more ambitious narrative rather than going for the anthology structure. It's also got the fingerprints of producer Guillermo del Toro all over it, especially with some of the nightmarish monsters recalling The Pale Man from PAN'S LABYRINTH and the title character in the GDT-produced MAMA, who was played by Javier Botet, called upon once again by del Toro, this time to play a corpse searching for his missing toe. Though he had a hand in shaping the script in its early stages (along with Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, the duo behind the FEAST and THE COLLECTOR franchises, as well as writing SAWs IV-through-VII), del Toro farmed out directing duties to Andre Ovredal, director of the found-footage cult hit TROLLHUNTER and the terrifying THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE. Despite the source being a series of books written in the 1980s and being in various stages of development for several years, it's a safe assumption that SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK probably wouldn't exist in this cinematic form were it not for the massive success of both IT and the Netflix series STRANGER THINGS. Comparisons are inevitable and observing that this is kinda just a more age-appropriate IT that tweens and younger teens can get a ticket to is an argument that's not without merit, but SCARY STORIES manages to be its own beast. That's due in large part to an appealing cast of young actors and it being a rare throwback sort-of project that actually conveys genuine affection for what it's doing beyond misremembered nostalgia and the resurrection of a short-lived disaster of a reformulated soft drink that anybody who was conscious during 1985 and still of sound mind today can verify that absolutely fucking nobody liked. Nobody.
Set in 1968 in the small Pennsylvania town of Mill Valley Township with an America at war in Vietnam and in the days leading up to the election of Richard Nixon, SCARY STORIES centers on three outcast teenagers--aspiring writer and horror fanatic Stella (Zoe Colletti), lanky, sarcastic Auggie (Gabriel Rush), and goofball jokester Chuck (Austin Zajur)--who are introduced on Halloween throwing a flaming bag of shit (Chuck's, in case you were wondering) into the lap of jock bully Tommy (Austin Abrams) as he passes by them in his car. Fleeing for their lives, they end up at a drive-in showing NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and hide out in the car of Ramon (Michael Garza), an 18-year-old drifter who drove into town earlier that day. Stella talks Ramon into taking them to the shuttered and reportedly haunted Bellows mansion on the edge of town, home to the once-powerful family that built Mill Valley. Tales have been passed down for generations about Sarah Bellows, the black sheep of the family and all-purpose Mill Valley urban legend who was kept in a locked room in the house after she allegedly poisoned some local children at the turn of the 20th century. While roaming around the mansion, Stella and the others find the secret room and in it, Sarah Bellows' book of scary stories, handwritten in her own blood. Stella takes the book home, where she lives with her dad (Dean Norris) after her mom left them years earlier, the cause of some cruel rumors that still persist, and finds that a new story is writing itself--in blood--in the pages of the book. Sarah is seeking vengeance for the theft of the book by punishing all who were there when it was taken from the house--including Tommy, who followed them and spray-painted a racial slur on Ramon's car, and Chuck's older sister Ruth (Natalie Ganzhorn), who's secretly been going out with Tommy. Using this set-up, SCARY STORIES takes some of those more popular tales from Schwartz's books and uses them as comeuppances against Stella and her friends, like a local folklore-based FINAL DESTINATION that condemns all of them as Sarah Bellows will not stop until she has her revenge on them and the entire town of Mill Valley Township.
As a 46-year-old child of the '80s, SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK feels like the kind of movie I would've seen with my dad in 1984 and still have an affectionate soft spot for today. It's the kind of "crowd" movie that you don't see much of these days, where you can sense that nervous communal tittering going across the theater when everyone knows something's about to happen. Ovredal does a really good job of playing the audience, often delivering the payoff jolt right before or right after you've been conditioned to expect it. It's about as icky as a PG-13 horror film can get, but like the books, it's the kind of grossness where the eew-factor provides much dark-humored fun (a beef stew with a toe and an eyeball among the ingredients; a seriously infected spider bite that's about to explode on a girl's face), and it works all the creepy tropes (scarecrows, ghosts, long, ominous corridors in a dark basement with something approaching from the distance) in an effective fashion. The weaving in of a Vietnam subtext lends some social commentary to the proceedings (and the setting allows the use of Donovan's always-creepy "Season of the Witch"), but the attempted contemporary allegorical implication doesn't really land, even if it adds some texture to Garza's character and helps explain why the local sheriff (Gil Bellows, presumably no relation to the Mill Valley Township Bellows) is giving him such a hard time. A film that would've been better suited to hit theaters near Halloween instead of the second week of August (it's probably coming out now so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle with next month's IT sequel), SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK is a fun ride with solid scares and an engaging cast playing well-written characters, the kind of goofy horror crowd-pleaser that Joe Dante (GREMLINS), Fred Dekker (NIGHT OF THE CREEPS), or maybe Tom Holland (FRIGHT NIGHT) would've made in the mid '80s.
CRIMSON PEAK (US - 2015) Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins. Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver, Burn Gorman, Leslie Hope, Doug Jones, Bruce Grey, Jonathan Hyde, Sofia Wells, Emily Coutts. (R, 119 mins)
It seems as if all of Guillermo del Toro's films are long-gestating dream projects he's had toiling in the deepest recesses of his mind since he was a child. He announces more projects that he can possibly make (face it, kids--PACIFIC RIM 2 ain't happening) and there's seemingly no end to his boundless imagination and love for what he does. Del Toro's latest, CRIMSON PEAK, is an absolute triumph of style, set design, costuming, and an almost choking Gothic aura. Among the most ambitious of throwback homages, it plays like a never-made film where Alfred Hitchcock chose Mario Bava to be his cinematographer. It's the realization of what might've happened if Merchant-Ivory remade THE SHINING and moved it to Victorian-era England. Owing as much to Henry James, Daphne du Maurier, Charlotte Bronte, and Edith Wharton as it does to THE HAUNTING THE CHANGELING, and del Toro's own back catalog, CRIMSON PEAK is more of a supernatural Gothic tragedy than a non-stop frightfest, which isn't to imply that it skimps on the shocks and the gore. The jolting scares and the shocking violence are sporadic enough that del Toro makes them count. The found-footage and the digital splatter crowd will probably be bored senseless by CRIMSON PEAK--like the Wachowskis, del Toro is a visionary who still somehow manages to get studios to spend exorbitant amounts of money on his wildly inventive and very personal passion projects. CRIMSON PEAK is probably the best-looking film of the year, and it's a rare case where the surface beauty and visuals are stunning enough to give its writing and structural weaknesses a pass. The script, by del Toro and Matthew Robbins (his writing collaborator on MIMIC and the del Toro-produced DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK), with uncredited contributions from British playwright Lucinda Coxon, hinges on too many predictable plot twists and familiar elements you've seen in a hundred other Gothic dramas and ghost stories. Had the plot been a little more inventive and up to del Toro's standards of production design, he would've had a legitimate classic instead of the year's best-looking retread. The layout, the decor, the architecture--del Toro's attention to even the most minute aesthetic detail is obviously obsessive on a Stanley Kubrick level. As exquisitely and hypnotically jaw-dropping as CRIMSON PEAKS looks, it's obvious where del Toro's priorities lied.
Just after the turn of the 20th century in Buffalo, shy Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) has aspirations of being the next Mary Shelley. A headstrong, independent young woman forced to grow up early upon the death of her mother, Edith had an early supernatural experience as a child when she was visited by the ghost of her mother (played by del Toro's go-to guy Doug Jones) and warned to "Beware of Crimson Peak!" A bit of a loner with no interest in being a snobbish society matron, Edith lives with her loving, protective industrialist father Carter (Jim Beaver) and keeps ophthalmologist and potential suitor Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam) in the friend zone, but her comfortable upper-class life is upended with the arrival of Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and his sister Lady Lucille Sharpe (a delightfully scowling Jessica Chastain) from England. Sir Thomas is hoping to convince Carter to invest in a machine that mines clay from the earth, but Carter is unconvinced of the worth of the machine and dismisses Sir Thomas and his "soft hands" as indicative of a life of too much privilege. After Sir Thomas begins courting Edith in an attempt to prove his worth, Carter has a private investigator (Burn Gorman) look into the Sharpe's background and is so perturbed by what he finds that he pays Sir Thomas to break Edith's heart and leave Buffalo at once. When Carter is brutally murdered, Edith finds solace and comfort in the loving arms of Sir Thomas and the two are quickly married, much to Alan's suspicion and Lady Lucille's apparent seething jealousy.
When the newlyweds and Lady Lucille relocate to the Sharpe ancestral home at Allerdale Hall, a decrepit mansion so far out in rural England that it's four hours to the nearest town, the truth becomes clear: the Sharpes are penniless, and Allerdale Hall is in almost complete ruins, with a hole in the roof that allows leaves , rain, and snow to pour down directly into the main living room. It also rests on a large deposit of natural clay into which it's been very slowly sinking for decades. While it's clear the Sharpes are running a con game of sorts in an attempt to get Edith's money, it's also obvious that Allerdale Hall is haunted by the vengeful ghosts of those who have died within its walls. Edith encounters these ghosts but can't convince Sir Thomas or Lady Lucille that they're real, and Edith grows even more alarmed when she learns that, because of the red clay surrounding Allerdale Hall, the home is referred to by some as "Crimson Peak," the very place the ghostly spectre of her mother warned her about years earlier.
While reminiscent of Rebecca and The Turn of the Screw, CRIMSON PEAK has a long stretch of being a Victorian take on THE SHINING. From her childhood, Edith has had a "shining" of sorts that she blocked and let manifest in her writing of ghost stories. The Kubrickian design and layout of Allerdale Hall, with its endless corridors, a bathtub scene that's a blatant riff on Jack's encounter in room 237, a ball that enters the frame and rolls to Edith but there's no one there who could've rolled it to her, and warnings from Lady Lucille to stay out of certain areas, all owe a debt to at least Kubrick's (perhaps not Stephen King's) vision of the Overlook Hotel. There's even a Dick Hallorann surrogate in Alan, who journeys overseas from Buffalo to England and travels a great distance in a blinding blizzard to the snowed-in Allerdale Hall in an attempt to rescue Edith once he realizes the Sharpes' true intent. All of this looks incredible, but in terms of story and theme, del Toro's a bit on autopilot. His efforts were unquestionably concentrated in the visual aspects of the film, and to that respect, it works beautifully. If you want an impossibly gorgeous piece of Gothic eye candy, you can't beat CRIMSON PEAK, which demands to be seen on as big of a screen as possible. Del Toro has said, in envisioning Edith as his heroine, that CRIMSON PEAK is for his "inner 14-year-old bookish girl." That's a telling statement, because in terms of content, CRIMSON PEAK isn't really for 14-year-old bookish girls, but its character arcs and story progression could've very well been concocted by a 14-year-old del Toro. There's a lot to love here, especially if you're a fan of Gothic chillers, haunted mansions, and the garish lighting of Roger Corman's AIP Poe adaptations and when Mario Bava started making movies in color with 1964's BLACK SABBATH. But del Toro the screenwriter just isn't working at the same level as del Toro the director.
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES (US/New Zealand - 2014) Directed by Peter Jackson. Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro. Cast: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Evangeline Lilly, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm, Ken Stott, Graham McTavish, Aidan Turner, Stephen Fry, Billy Connolly, Sylvester McCoy, James Nesbitt, Jed Brophy, Stephen Hunter, Ryan Gage, Manu Bennett, John Tui, Mikael Persbrandt. (PG-13, 143 mins)
"One Last Time" seems to be the resounding theme throughout this final chapter in the HOBBIT trilogy as well as in its advertising. The films in Peter Jackson's original 2001-2003 LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy stand--especially in their extended editions--among the most monumental achievements in all of cinema. But by splitting J.R.R. Tolkien's relatively light and quick-reading Hobbit into another colossal, epic trilogy and insisting on shooting them in the absurd 48 fps "high frame rate," a format that makes everything look like a live TV broadcast, really only works for expansive exterior shots and is preferred by no one with a name other than "Peter Jackson," Jackson seems guided more by hubris and self-indulgence than anything. The Hobbit isn't meant to be as huge as The Lord of the Rings. It's a smaller, more brisk story and by importing elements of Tolkien's The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, bringing Orlando Bloom back to play Legolas, a character not even present in Tolkien's novel, and even going so far as to invent his own entirely new character--the elf Tauriel, played by Evangeline Lilly--and granting her as much, if not more plot and screen time than the key principals, Jackson is only demonstrating that he doesn't know when or where to stop. It's great that Jackson loves Tolkien so much, but where his LOTR trilogy ranks with the original 1977-1983 STAR WARS trilogy, his bloated, three-part HOBBIT, while well-acted and enjoyable on its own terms, is his STAR WARS: EPISODE I-III, and like George Lucas, he's surrounded by yes-men and basically at the point where he's too rich and powerful for anyone to tell him "no." When Jackson made the original LOTR trilogy, he had an insane ambition and something to prove. Remove that and the HOBBIT trilogy feels like little more than an extended victory lap.
At least the third part of the HOBBIT trilogy, THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES, is the shortest at a mere 143 minutes. Roughly half of the running time is devoted to the epic battle at Erebor, where Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) has reclaimed the Dwarven birthright following the dragon Smaug's (motion captured by Benedict Cumberbatch) rampage on Laketown and its subsequent death courtesy of the black arrow fired by Bard (Luke Evans). Thorin has been driven mad with power and is obsessively hunting for the Arkenstone, which has been stolen by Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who knows that it's dangerous for Thorin to possess. Meanwhile, Bard has led a large band of Laketown refugees to Dale, where he's formed a tentative alliance with elf king Thanduil (Lee Pace), who wants elven jewels being kept in Smaug's former stronghold. Legolas and Tauriel also turn up, with Tauriel still dealing with her forbidden love for the dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner) as Orcs launch an offensive and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) dispenses sage advice.
With FIVE ARMIES, Jackson attempts to send the trilogy off with multiple extended battle sequences that play like a bunch of Helm's Deeps strung together. There's some occasionally inspired bits of action and some dazzling visuals that look fine in standard, 24 fps 3D (though the waxy sheen and gauzy Barbara Walters soft focus on some of the actors, particularly Bloom, can be distracting), but after a while, it's hard for it not to become an exhausting, eye-glazing CGI blur, quite often looking more like a video game than a movie. FIVE ARMIES works best in its few small-scale and quieter moments, be it a smiling nod from Gandalf (again, McKellen has little to do here aside from "show up and be Ian McKellen," but he owns this role so thoroughly that even watching him phone it in is a pleasure) or Thorin coming to his senses and realizing that he's been treating his friends horribly. There's so many characters and intertwining subplots that Freeman's Bilbo more or less disappears into the ensemble until it's time for him to say goodbye to the dwarves and head back to his home at Bag End. Despite some good performances by Evans and Armitage, there's too little of the sense of emotional connection that worked so brilliantly in the LOTR trilogy, where its many scenes of friendship and camaraderie never fail to get the waterworks going for fans. It's not like the magic is gone, but the freshness definitely is, even with brief, shoehorned-in appearances by other LOTR alumni like Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Christopher Lee as Saruman, and Hugo Weaving as Elrond (their bits were intended for THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG but cut from it and edited into this film instead), and in using more CGI than ever in this closing installment (the shot of Legolas running along a bridge as it collapses is dreadful), there's a very diminished sense of humanity compared to before.
In his LOTR trilogy, Jackson paid loving tribute to Tolkien and captured the writer's voice and spirit with nothing less than absolute perfection. But by stretching THE HOBBIT from a 300-page breeze of a read to three films totaling around eight hours--even longer once you factor in the DVD/Blu-ray extended editions--Jackson is only paying tribute to Peter Jackson, capturing the voice and spirit of a gifted visionary who can no longer do anything without completely overdoing it, like a three-hour-plus KING KONG. I probably sound like I hate the three HOBBIT films, but I don't. They're entertaining and demonstrate flashes of past LOTR greatness (Cumberbatch's Smaug in the second film is probably the highlight), but the overall feeling is one of shrugging ambivalence. The LOTR trilogy is one that vividly entertains and still richly rewards. The nice-enough-while-you're-watching-it but forgettable HOBBIT trilogy is just there. People still talk about LOTR in reverent tones, but do you know anyone who really loves the HOBBIT movies and speaks of them as highly as the LOTR films? Everybody's gone to see the HOBBIT movies but it seems like we've approached this new trilogy more out of a feeling of obligation than out of the feverish excitement we collectively had a decade ago. I'm actually sort-of glad that it's done.
THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG (US/New Zealand - 2013)
Directed by Peter Jackson. Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro. Cast: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Benedict Cumberbatch, Luke Evans, Evangeline Lilly, Cate Blanchett, Lee Pace, Stephen Fry, Ken Stott, James Nesbitt, Aidan Turner, Sylvester McCoy, Graham McTavish, Jed Brophy, Mikael Persbrandt, Ryan Gage, Manu Bennett, Lawrence Makoare. (PG-13, 161 mins)
The second installment of Peter Jackson's HOBBIT trilogy is a no-expense-spared visual stunner, but again suffers from the bloat of Jackson and his writing team padding a 300-page book into what will amount to somewhere around nine hours of cinema. I'm not saying there's an etched-in-stone rule for film adaptations of books, but if you can read the book in less time than it takes to watch the movie, you might be overdoing it. Jackson was able to convey the entire epic LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy in three films, but the recurring--and justified--criticism of this latest venture is that The Hobbit is a comparatively smaller-scale, less grandiose novel, but it's still taking him three overlong films to tell the story thanks to the addition of material from Tolkien's The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. There's simply no reason other than the greed of getting fans to pay for three movies that this couldn't have been one three-hour film. This frequently becomes a problem when a visionary filmmaker unveils a game-changer and is then granted carte blanche to do whatever they want. He may not be the insufferable asshole that James Cameron is, but that doesn't make Jackson's self-indulgence any less problematic and off-putting.
Harsh words, perhaps, but I didn't dislike THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG. It looks terrific (I saw this in regular 3-D instead of the stagy-looking High Frame Rate 3-D, which is Jackson's preferred vision), the performances are excellent, and there's some inspired set pieces, most notably the barrel escape from the castle of Elvenking Thranduil (Lee Pace). That's just one stop on the journey of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who's accompanying a group of dwarves led by the heroic Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) to obtain the Arkenstone from the dragon Smaug, who long ago took control of Lonely Mountain from Oakenshied's ancestors. SMAUG really consists of a handful of set pieces stretched out to extreme lengths. Whatever spectacle is achieved--the giant spiders, the barrel escape, and eventually, the showdown with Smaug (wonderfully voiced and the face motion-captured by Benedict Cumberbatch)--each goes on forever. Before the heroes end up imprisoned in Thranduil's castle, they cross paths with elves Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly). Legolas, a fan favorite of the LOTR books and films, is the son of Thranduil but was not in Tolkien's The Hobbit, and is only here to make Bloom part of this trilogy as well (he's also been given that distracting, waxy CGI sheen that the original trilogy's returning actors got in AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY to make him look younger, though considering Legolas is already several hundred years old, it hardly seems necessary). Tauriel is a character completely invented by Jackson, and much time is devoted to her mutual crush on dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner), a subplot that the audience will find almost as irritating as Legolas does. So, it's not enough that he's bloating the novel into three films by incorporating material from other Tolkien works, but now he's creating additional characters and plotlines? Just adapt the book, Mr. Jackson. I'm no Tolkien purist and it's been years since I've read it, but you're fixing something that isn't broken.
Amidst the endless and eventually exhausting action sequences--yes, Jackson resorts to that zoomy, circling video-game look with characters pinballing around the frame--there's a lot to appreciate in the performances. Freeman is spot-on as Bilbo and Armitage is again a strong Oakenshield. The camaraderie among the dwarves is nicely-handled, Luke Evans does some good work as Bard, a widowed, down-on-his-luck boatman who helps smuggle the crew into Esgaroth, and Stephen Fry is amusingly hammy as the callous Master of Lake-town, a sort-of Middle-Earth one-percenter prone to bitching that the commoners want food, shelter, and work. Jackson made some late-in-the-game editing decisions and bumped some scenes to next year's THERE AND BACK AGAIN, resulting in Hugo Weaving (Elrond), Andy Serkis (Gollum), and Christopher Lee (Saruman) getting cut from SMAUG, and Cate Blanchett (Galadriel) reduced to one shot. Presumably, these changes affected Ian McKellen's Gandalf as well. McKellen gets top-billing here but only has a few scenes. After leaving Bilbo and the dwarves to attend to other business, he runs into Radagast (Sylvester McCoy) and has a confrontation with the Necromancer (also Cumberbatch), and...that's it. Absent for long stretches of time, McKellen's got maybe 10-12 minutes of screen time here, and it's one of the film's major letdowns. He owns this character and it's an absolute joy watching him relish playing it. But hey, at least we've got a budding romance between Kili and Tauriel to look forward to in the next film.
Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Written by Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro. Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Clifton Collins, Jr., Burn Gorman, Max Martini, Rob Kazinsky, Santiago Segura, Brad William Henke, Robin Thomas. (PG-13, 131 mins)
While squarely in the confines of "huge summer blockbuster," fantasy auteur Guillermo del Toro makes a concerted effort to put PACIFIC RIM in the realm of his distinct cinematic universe. The colors, the production and costume design, the creatures...all have that vivid del Toro feel, but when it's all over, it's still just another example the same kind of gargantuan big-screen destruction porn you'd find in any random summer multiplex colossus, with the similar fast, video-gamey editing (though not to the extreme degree) that causes your eyes to glaze over like most of the second half of MAN OF STEEL and almost all of STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS. PACIFIC RIM gets a nice boost from the heart and soul put into it by del Toro, who dedicates the film to monster masters Ray Harryhausen and Ishiro Honda, but it also stands as an example of the struggle filmmakers like del Toro face when they're given $200 million to spend on pet projects: del Toro gets enough of "del Toro" in there to keep the fans who've followed him in the 20 years since CRONOS from crying "Sellout!", but once the CGI overload kicks into high gear in the second half, I dunno...I just kinda checked out.
In the near future, alien creatures known as kaiju burrowed up from beneath the Earth and attacked major world cities. The governments of the world set aside their differences to work together, building giant robots called jaegers, controlled by the body movements and thoughts of two military pilots stationed in the head, their minds melded by a process called "drifting," to attack and defeat them before they reach the shorelines. Within five years, the jaegers are a triumphant force, with jaeger pilots being treated like global rock stars, but the evolving kaiju begin to anticipate their actions. The jaeger program's decline starts when cocky ace pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) loses his co-pilot/older brother in a battle. Seven years pass, and Raleigh, living on his own and picking up construction jobs, is called back to service by his jaeger commander Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) for one last hurrah before the faltering program is terminated by the UN: working with dweeby, motor-mouthed comic relief scientist Dr. Geiszler (Charlie Day), Pentecost has a plan to nuke the breach between the center of the earth and the tunnel burrowed by the kaiju. Things get complicated when Geiszler attempts to "drift" with part of a still-living kaiju brain, enabling him to get a first-hand look at the kaiju memories where he finds out their true origin and purpose.
At its core, PACIFIC RIM is a B-movie. But with no expenses spared, it loses some of the feeling of the classic kaiju films that inspired it. It works best when del Toro is free to be del Toro, but once he starts fulfilling his obligations to Warner Bros. and bringing on the large-scale CGI destruction, it just starts to feel like any other routine Hollywood product. You can make these things as huge and with as much state-of-the-art technology as possible (and to its credit, PACIFIC RIM's CGI is very well-done), but when you start thinking how much more fun it would be to just watch an old-school Toho GODZILLA flick instead, with guys in rubber suits throwing themselves around a cheap set, well, then something's missing. I don't mean to be curmudgeonly about it--PACIFIC RIM is an overall entertaining movie with much to like--but it just left me a little cold. I guess it's a matter of bigger not always being better.
Directed by Andy Muschietti. Written by Neil Cross, Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti. Cast: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nelisse, Daniel Kash, Javier Botet, Jane Moffat. (PG-13, 100 mins)
Old-school jolts and some unusually strong performances for genre fare of this type elevate a potentially shopworn premise like MAMA's to a higher level. Yes, it's another story about a vengeful, malevolent spirit invading a house, but with the proceedings overseen by Guillermo del Toro (who's a bit more involved when he "presents" something than, say, the way Wes Craven would allow his name to be thrown on anything in the years right after SCREAM if the price was right), it's a cut above the norm, which, these days, usually mandates a found-footage premise. Not here. Del Toro protege Andy Muschietti, who also co-wrote the script with his sister Barbara (they dedicate the film to their mother), expands his 2008 short film of the same name and fashions a relentless, old-fashioned scare machine of a fright flick with no gore and only some occasionally wonky spirit CGI.
Two young girls, ages 3 and 1, are taken to a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere by the Wall Street broker father, who's just killed his business partners and his estranged wife. He's about to kill the oldest daughter when something comes from the wall and grabs him. Five years later, the girls' uncle Luke (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of GAME OF THRONES) and his girlfriend Annabel (the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain, who will probably have three more films in the can by the time you finish reading this), a bassist in a punk rock band, are notified that the girls have been found. Victoria (Megan Charpentier) is now 8, and Lily (Isabelle Nelisse) 6, and both have been living in the wild all this time. Victoria already had an established vocabulary and remembers their dog who now lives with Luke and Annabel, so her reintegration into a normal life is going much smoother than Lily's, who was still a baby at the time of their abandonment is now completely feral, crawling on all fours, unable to form sentences, eating nothing but cherries and the occasional insect, and refusing to even wear shoes. Both girls keep referring to "Mama," and their psychologist (Daniel Kash) thinks this is a separate personality that Victoria has developed in caring for Lily, who literally clings to her sister. But when the girls call for "Mama," Victoria's eyes are filled with fear. She knows to be afraid of what Mama is capable of doing. Mama has followed them from the cabin to Luke and Annabel's house, a spirit residing in the wall at the back of their closet, fiercely protective of the girls she's loved and cared for over the last five years and not about to let anyone usurp that position in their lives. When Luke ends up in a coma after a Mama-provoked tumble down the stairs, Annabel is forced to take care of the girls, a job she flat-out doesn't want (she's introduced in a state of joy over a home pregnancy test coming up negative), but she steps up when it matters, and when she manages to make a breakthrough with each girl, a bond is formed and affection develops, and, well, Mama is upset, to put it mildly.
From a strictly technical standpoint, Muschietti does a terrific job with the staging of the film's many effective scare sequences. One in particular, with the stationary camera showing a hallway and the parallel entrance to the girls' room, as activity takes place in the girls' room (Lily is playing with what we initially assume to be Victoria, but Victoria is then seen in the hallway, and then we see a strange shadow in the room with Lily) is the kind of scene that's guaranteed to make future "100 Scariest Movie Moments" TV specials. It's one of several that had the audience buzzing throughout the film. I like the way Muschietti and cinematographer Antonio Riestra let the camera roam around the house, almost to the point where the house itself becomes a character. The script takes some real chances, especially in the way it handles Annabel. Not really the motherly type and not afraid to make it clear ("This is not my job!"), it falls to Chastain to make the audience care about this cold, stand-offish, and frequently selfish character, and much the way she did in ZERO DARK THIRTY, she pulls off the difficult task making such a character accessible. Chastain establishes a real chemistry with Charpentier and Nelisse, both very expressive young actresses who turn in a pair of remarkable performances. Nelisse, especially, doesn't say much other than "Mama" but conveys volumes with just a smile on her face, or even in the unsettling way she crouches under the bed or in a corner, like an animal waiting to attack. MAMA has its share of expertly-orchestrated scares, but the film's secret weapon is the work of these three actresses. The male characters aren't handled nearly as well, with Luke sidelined for much of the story, and the child psychologist filling the horror film's requisite idiot role by making moronic decisions that no reasonably intelligent or sane person would make. And, of course, in a plot development that's not even worthy of a spoiler alert, he pays for it.
One gets the sense that this is the vision of the Muschiettis to a point. Del Toro acts as a mentor in these producing situations and largely leaves those under his wing to do what they do, but his influence does become significantly more apparent in third act, which seems like a variation on the del Toro-produced THE ORPHANAGE (2007). I'm not sure who's responsible for the ending, but it's a courageous decision that probably had some studio execs at Universal concerned. I'm going to guess that it was the Muschiettis' idea and Del Toro backed them up. What transpires is unexpected and downbeat, but in a strange way, probably best for all concerned. It's an unexpected and emotional finish for what will likely be one of the top horror films of the year.
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (US/New Zealand - 2012)
Directed by Peter Jackson. Written by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Guillermo del Toro. Cast: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis, James Nesbitt, Ken Stott, Sylvester McCoy, Graham McTavish, Barry Humphries, Manu Bennett, Lee Pace, William Kircher, Stephen Hunter, Dean O'Gorman, Aidan Turner, John Callen, Peter Hambleton, Jed Brophy, Mark Hadlow, Adam Brown. (PG-13, 170 mins)
Other than greed, hubris, and self-indulgence, is there really any need for J.R.R. Tolkien's 300-page book to take three three-hour movies to play out? After a long pre-production delayed by lawsuits and MGM financial issues, and a change in director from Guillermo del Toro to Peter Jackson, the eagerly-awaited prequel to Jackson's landmark LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy is finally here, and not without controversy. Jackson initially planned THE HOBBIT as a two-part film, but it was expanded into a trilogy of its own. If this first installment is any indication, there's definitely a sense of bloat and overkill, especially in the way Jackson brings in elements that weren't in Tolkien's book (incorporating some material from The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, including most of the backstory for the eccentrically disheveled wizard Radagast the Brown, played by former DOCTOR WHO Sylvester McCoy) as a way of giving what was a smaller-scaled, significantly less epic-feeling tale the same heft and spectacle of the original trilogy. The 1977 animated, Rankin-Bass produced TV-movie of THE HOBBIT managed to get the story across in about 80 minutes. AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY has assorted detours, asides, and completely new elements that aren't entirely necessary (and it's in higher-priced 3D) and really only seem to be there as a way to get as much money out of moviegoers as possible.
The bigger story, at least in the select theaters that are presenting it this particular way, is Jackson's decision to shoot the film in the High Frame Rate of 48 fps (frames per second) instead of the industry-standard 24 fps. The HFR 3D version is playing on less than 500 screens in the US, but it does represent Jackson's preferred vision of the film. While you get used to it as the film progresses, it's initially very jarring and disorienting. AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY looks traditionally "cinematic" maybe 15% of the time, usually in close-ups of certain cast members (Ian McKellen as Gandalf seems to have the least CGI enhancement of the cast). The rest of the film has an overwhelmingly artificial look to its ultra-HD appearance. The high frame rate brings out every minute detail (you can clearly see the line of the prosthetic footgear worn by the actors playing Hobbits), and it gives most of the epic action and battle scenes an annoyingly video-gamey look that's nothing less than a total distraction. Elsewhere, many scenes look almost entirely CGI animated. The interiors fare the worst of all, with the film having a completely stage-bound, soap-opera look that resembles a remastered version of a shot-on-video PBS or BBC TV production from the 1980s. Walk in on a scene of people talking indoors and it could pass for a filmed version of a HOBBIT stage performance. And in these interior scenes the high frame rate gives the actors a jerky, sped-up movement that frequently resembles something being slightly fast-forwarded. When it comes to anything LORD OF THE RINGS, Jackson wields enough power that he can do anything he wants, and like George Lucas, is likely surrounded by yes-men who are happy to indulge him as long as the money keeps rolling in. I imagine the traditional 24 fps version (also in 3D and regular screenings) plays better, or at least more "cinematically," but Jackson's 48 fps experiment really only works in the shots of the stunning natural terrain of New Zealand's hills and mountains. In these all-too-brief scenes, the film takes on an almost PLANET EARTH quality that's a beautiful sight to behold.
Having said all that...I did find AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY generally enjoyable, at least from the standpoint of the story and the performances. Martin Freeman makes a likably fussy young Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm again plays the aged Bilbo in a framing sequence with Elijah Wood as Frodo), it's great to see McKellen play Gandalf once again, and a mere decade in technological advancements have made Andy Serkis' motion-capture Gollum even more expressive and lifelike. The film's strongest performance comes from Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield, leader of a band of Dwarf warriors who adopt a reluctant Bilbo to help them reclaim their home on Lonely Mountain, lost 60 years earlier when the dragon Smaug took it as his own, forcing them to live as marauding outcasts. The camaraderie of Thorin and his cohorts with Gandalf and Bilbo, and the ways Bilbo proves his worth and earns their respect are the kinds of things that are hard to bungle, and, as in the original trilogy, it's in these rousing and emotional scenes that AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY finds its true strengths.
Christopher Lee (as Saruman), Cate Blanchett (as Galadriel), and Hugo Weaving (as Elrond) briefly reappear from the original trilogy. The elderly cast members, like 90-year-old Lee and 81-year-old Holm, have some very noticeable CGI retouching done to their faces, as they're a decade older but playing younger, and they have a waxy, glossy, artificial appearance that looks a lot like extensive noise reduction on a Blu-ray. This is likely due more to the use of 48 fps, which just represents another issue with the format. AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY might visually play better on Blu-ray, but I think I've seen enough of Jackson's love of the high frame rate to go with the standard 24 fps version when THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG hits theaters in December 2013.
