In Theaters: SAFE HOUSE (2012)

SAFE HOUSE
(US/Japan/South Africa - 2012)

Directed by Daniel Espinosa.  Written by David Guggenheim.  Cast: Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard, Ruben Blades, Robert Patrick, Liam Cunningham, Joel Kinnaman, Nora Arnezeder, Fares Fares.  (R, 115 mins)

The ominously-named Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) finds himself pursued by men with guns in Cape Town, South Africa, and when they close in on him from all sides, his only way out is to walk into Cape Town's US embassy.  Turns out he's a rogue CIA superagent who's been off the grid for ten years and wanted for espionage on four continents.  The honchos at Langley (among them Brendan Gleeson, Vera Farmiga and the always-authoritarian Sam Shepard) order him to be transported to a secret CIA safe house, where ambitious, low-level operative Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) spends his days listening to his iPod and throwing a tennis ball at the wall while waiting to be stationed somewhere other than Cape Town.  The extraction team--led by Kiefer (Robert Patrick)--arrives to interrogate the uncooperative Frost (who's such a badass that he can withstand waterboarding), when the same men who were pursuing him show up and kill everyone except Weston, who gets Frost out through a secret passageway.  No one knows about the safe house except the CIA, and Weston begins to doubt that Frost is the traitor his bosses say he is, and the two have to set aside their differences and work together.

If they don't kill each other first!

Watching SAFE HOUSE, one can be forgiven for assuming it's directed by Tony Scott, who's collaborated with Washington a number of times in the past, on films ranging from straightforwardly entertaining (UNSTOPPABLE, DEJA VU) to garish and barely-watchable (MAN ON FIRE, THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123).  Swedish director Daniel Espinosa definitely shows off his inner T-Scott here, utilizing a grainy, oversaturated look (lots of closeups, and you can see every pore on the actors' faces) and, especially in the second half, a lot of dizzying, hyper-edited shaky-cam.  The second half of the film goes in a mostly predictable direction, but Espinosa and screenwriter David Guggenheim do much better with the first half, which relies less on headache-inducing directorial wankery and more on character and suspense.  The entire sequence inside the safe house when Frost first arrives is knots-in-your-stomach intense, and the car chase when Weston and Frost first escape is one of the best in quite some time.  But once it's established that Frost isn't the bad guy after all, and that someone at the CIA wants him silenced, it becomes pretty standard fare.

Nevertheless, Washington, with his usual gravitas and expert command of the screen, is as awesome as you expect him to be.  It's a testament to his abilities that, with all the familiar things in his bag of tricks (cue the sarcastic slow clap and the mildly condescending "alright, alright...AH-HA-HAAA!"), he hasn't pulled a Nic Cage and completely succumbed to self-parody.  He's got a good chemistry with the consistently-underrated Reynolds, who holds his own with his co-star while seeming genuinely awestruck at the same time.  Also a big plus is the effective use of Cape Town locations (the City Bowl/Table Mountain; the Cape Town Stadium; the slums of Langa) in some of the many action sequences.  SAFE HOUSE is an entertaining time at the movies, but it does suffer from some overfamiliarity in the back-end.  Not that it runs out of steam, but just that it turns into something we've seen a hundred times before.  A riveting first hour and the seemingly effortless work of the ageless Washington (is he really 57?  One character refers to Frost as "the black Dorian Gray," and the line might very well have been improvised by co-star Ruben Blades) make it an overall solid action outing.

Cult Classics Revisited: Special "Canadian DELIVERANCE Ripoff" Edition

Often lumped in with DELIVERANCE ripoffs, these two Canadian productions have attained sizable cult followings in the ensuing decades since their release.  Neither really follows the plot of the 1972 classic, other than putting men in the wilderness, trapped in a situation spiraling out of control.  In short, there's no "squeal like a pig" moment in either of these films, and one actually plays more like a precursor to Walter Hill's 1981 film SOUTHERN COMFORT, itself lumped in with the post-DELIVERANCE subgenre without real cause.

SHOOT (1976) is an occasionally fascinating film that too frequently fails to live up to its potential, mostly due to a sluggish pace and lackluster direction by Harvey Hart (THE PYX).  SHOOT's strength is the commanding, quietly frightening performance by Cliff Robertson as Rex, a department store owner and gun enthusiast who oversees a local militia group and lives for weekend hunting excursions with his war buddies, among them Lou (Ernest Borgnine) and Zeke (Henry Silva), and a few others.  After a bad day where no one's bagged anything, they encounter another group of hunters on the other side of a creek.  They stare at each other, and a shot comes from the other side.  Zeke opens fire, killing a member of the other group.  Both groups flee the scene, and Rex reads in the paper that the other group told authorities it was "a stray bullet."  From this, Rex concludes a) they didn't want to tell the authorities they shot first, and b) they want to settle the score.  This is all Rex needs to dive back into his combat fantasies, and the other men, with the exception of the "bleeding heart" Lou, are only too eager to stockpile weapons and ammo to go into battle. 

The message is ham-fistedly clear:  these men never left combat and are only happy when they're killing, regardless of the success of their everyday professions (Rex's store, Lou's printing press, Zeke's barbershop--who the hell thought casting Henry Silva as a barber was a good idea?).  Robertson does his damndest to sell it, and there's intriguing character bits throughout--his dysfunctional relationship with his wife; two other women seemingly throwing themselves at him; all the macho talk; the willingness to bully and mislead his inexperienced militia group--mostly local guys barely out of their teens, just looking for something to do and a place to hang out--into what will certainly be a bloodbath.  But the pace is so slow and the energy so low that SHOOT just never gains any momentum, at least not until the stunning climax, but by then, it's too little too late.  Lots of interesting ideas--not just with Robertson's character but with some of the others as well, like Zeke's disgust at letting Rex's black store security chief into the group.  Most impressive is an extremely uncomfortable, awkward scene where Rex bluffs his way into the home of the dead man's wife (Kate Reid) under the guise of being an old friend paying his respects (he actually wants to find out how much she knows).  She starts off by asking if he's a gun nut as well, and we think she's going to go off on him, but instead, goes into an ugly, bile-filled rant about how guns are necessary "with all the hippies, druggies, and jigs that wanna break into your home and rape you," followed by her coming on to Rex and announcing that she isn't wearing any underwear.  There's a lot of moments like this that make SHOOT memorable, like it's better than it is, but as a whole, it's curiously not.  With all the things there are to admire about its occasional audacity, Hart too often drops the ball with clumsy editing (Silva just disappears from the climax, probably because he had to work on another movie), abandoned subplots (what about Rex being propositioned by another buddy's sexually frustrated wife?), and general incompetence (the boom mic peeks into the frame about four times).  I can see how SHOOT has found a cult, but it's still a bit of a letdown. (R, 95 mins)

RITUALS (1978), on the other hand, totally deserves its cult rep.  Almost unbearably grueling at times, the film, shot in 1976 and directed by Peter Carter, has five doctors on a six-day hiking trip in the remote wilderness.  They're dropped off by plane and totally cut off from civilization, which makes it very convenient for them to be systematically tormented, stalked, and eventually offed, by a madman occasionally seen as an ominously shadowy figure in the trees. It's hardly an original idea, especially in the 1970s, but RITUALS excels with some gritty, believable performances by Hal Holbrook (as Harry), producer Lawrence Dane (as Mitzi),  Martin (Robin Gammell), his brother D.J. (Gary Reineke), and Abel (Ken James).  Not only do they expertly sell the idea that they're old friends (my friend Marty McKee, at his Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot blog, has cited the way they talk in shorthand shows uncommon character development in low-budget, B-movie fare like this), but they have a willingness to dive right into the shit and live the terror these characters are going through.  These actors earned every penny of their paycheck on this one, out in the elements--climbing, crawling, dragging through mud, getting swept down rapids--with minimal use of doubles or stuntmen.

RITUALS is a smartly-written film with some truly terrifying set pieces (the shots of the killer watching them from a distance are extremely unsettling), that in many ways transcends its lazy labeling as "a DELIVERANCE ripoff."  I wouldn't put it in the same class as DELIVERANCE, but it's definitely near the top of the "wilderness horror" subgenre.  Code Red's DVD, released in April 2011 after a two-year delay, is the uncensored 100-minute version and, while not perfect, is about as good as this will ever look.  It's also available on some of those low-priced, public domain "50 Horror Classics" sets under its alternate title THE CREEPER, but it's a shoddy, fullscreen transfer that's probably the 89-minute edited-for-TV version that was released on VHS. (R, 100 mins)

If This Wasn't Streaming On Netflix, Would Anyone Remember It Existed? Vol. 5: HEAT (1987)

HEAT
(US - 1987)

Directed by R.M. Richards (Dick Richards, Jerry Jameson, Robert Altman).  Written by William Goldman.  Cast: Burt Reynolds, Karen Young, Peter MacNicol, Neill Barry, Howard Hesseman, Diana Scarwid. (R, 102 mins)

This review was originally published in a slightly different form on the Mobius Home Video Forum in April 2011

It was announced today that Brian De Palma was teaming up with star Jason Statham for a remake of this until-now forgotten Burt Reynolds vehicle that had a very troubled production, going through three directors, one of whom had an on-set altercation with the star. The film, scripted by Oscar winner William Goldman (BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN) was started by Robert Altman, who left after a day of shooting. He was replaced by TOOTSIE producer Dick Richards, who helmed most of the film (and got his ass kicked by Burt), then veteran TV director Jerry Jameson was brought in to finish it. Richards gets sole credit, under the name "R.M. Richards." To date, he has not directed or produced another film.

Made at a time when Reynolds was seeing his popularity dwindle and his critics grow increasingly hostile, the disjointed HEAT never had much of a chance. I rented it back in '87 or '88 and was bored silly by it, but looking at it again with fresh eyes, it's a noble misfire. This is actually one of Burt's better 1980s performances, finding him in low-key, melancholy SHARKY'S MACHINE mode as Las Vegas "chaperone" Nick "Mex" Escalante, a tough-guy for hire who dreams of leaving the Vegas sleaze behind and getting away to Venice. The episodic plot has Mex helping his prostitute friend Holly (Karen Young) get revenge on a mob-connected twerp (Neill Barry) after he beats and rapes her and sodomizes her with a gun. Then Mex meets up with a young software-industry millionaire (Peter MacNicol) who wants lessons in how to be tough. There's not a whole lot here in the way of plot, and indeed, it's more of a character study. But that's not what anyone wanted out of Reynolds in the 1980s, and the extensive reshooting is obvious. There's a couple of badly-assembled slo-mo action scenes that seem totally out of place, and Reynolds sports no less than four distinctly different hairpieces throughout the film. In one scene, he'll have a flatter, "serious" toupee (© Marty McKee at Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot), then he'll have the curlier CANNONBALL RUN one, and a couple of other slight variants throughout (but none on the MALONE bouffant level). It's also interesting to note that the film opens with Burt fighting with a guy in a bar, as Burt rips off the guy's rug and mockingly pets it, which is actually pretty hilarious.

HEAT isn't a very cohesive film and its behind-the-scenes issues are all too apparent. But it does have a good Burt Reynolds performance at its core, and, with the passing of a couple of decades, it seems to play a lot better now that one can view it without the baggage of the Reynolds expectations of that era. It's clearly not SHARKY'S MACHINE, but flaws and all, Burt was at least trying here, which is more than one can say for stuff like STROKER ACE and CANNONBALL RUN II. I think he went into this with the intention of it being a change-of-pace character-driven piece. Otherwise, why would a non-action guy like Altman be onboard to direct?   Altman and Burt must've been on good terms by 1992, because Burt's cameo as himself in Altman's comeback film THE PLAYER made reference to HEAT's troubled shoot.

It's also worth noting that the 1.33:1 print streaming on Netflix is an alternate version that features a different outcome for one major character and an additional scene with an uncredited Mickey Knox as a doctor (and Reynolds looks completely different in this added scene; not just his hairpiece, but his moustache is also trimmed differently). It seems this alternate version was released on the budget-priced R1 DVD by Platinum Disc, and is not the version released in US theaters or on the Paramount VHS.

On DVD: FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN (2011); THERE BE DRAGONS (2011)

FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN
(US - 2011)

These days, with the changing ways of theatrical distribution and the sheer number of movies being made, some films get unexpectedly spotty, limited releases or just get shelved for years before getting dumped on DVD/Blu-ray or VOD.  Having a bankable name no longer matters when it comes to getting a movie in theaters. Recently, we've seen it happen to the likes of Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman, Bruce Willis, and Richard Gere, just to name a few. Not even Julia Roberts is immune to this phenomenon, as demonstrated in the long-shelved FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN, shot way back in 2007 but unreleased in the US until it opened on five screens in October 2011.  It's not a bad movie and at times, it's a very good one.  Its problems lie more in the significant evidence of post-production re-editing and general indecisiveness:  it ran 120 minutes at the Berlin Film Fest in 2008 and in its initial theatrical releases throughout the rest of the world in 2008 and 2009.  The German theatrical cut ran 99 minutes.  It ran 98 minutes in its US theatrical cut, and now, on DVD, it's been whittled down to just 89 minutes. A 94-minute version also exists.  There's no extras on the DVD and no one involved seems too keen on talking about it, so now, losing just over 1/4 of its original running time and presented in no less than five different versions since the 2008 Berlin screening, FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN has been discarded rather than released.  It's hard to tell what director Dennis Lee's intended version looked like, but it certainly can't be what's here on the DVD release.

I've defended Ryan Reynolds in the past, and continue to do so here.  FIREFLIES is probably his best work as an actor, but again, his performance is one of many things severely compromised in this mangled version.  Returning home to attend the college graduation of his stay-at-home mom (Roberts), Reynolds is immediately greeted with tragedy when she's killed in a car accident.  What follows is sort-of a pruned-down TREE OF LIFE (minus dinosaur interludes) as Reynolds remembers his often-traumatic childhood with the loving Roberts (seen mostly in these flashbacks) and his cruel, demanding college prof father (Willem Dafoe), and how it's shaped him as an adult.  For about an hour, this is a well-acted, compelling drama, but at some point, it's obvious that a chunk of story has been cut out because there's a woefully underdeveloped subplot involving Reynolds' young cousin and his guilt over the car accident (the speeding Dafoe swerved to avoid hitting him, and drove into a tree, and Roberts wasn't wearing her seat belt), and everyone's suddenly upset with Reynolds, blaming him for all the turmoil with still-abusive Dafoe.  There's no consistency in many of these later scenes.  Dafoe has a total meltdown at the dinner table, but everyone's pissed at Reynolds two scenes later.   This is a case where there's chunks and pieces of a really good film, but it's just been cut down to the bone as it plows through the story, leaving entire subplots in the dust, racing to an abrupt conclusion that rings completely false.  The characters at the end of this film have almost no connection to what they were in the preceding 80-odd minutes.  I guess that's an inherent risk when 25% of the film has been cut, seemingly at random.  A fine cast gets lost in the shuffle: Emily Watson, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hayden Panettiere, George Newbern, and Ioan Gruffudd.  (R, 89 mins).


THERE BE DRAGONS
(Spain/US - 2011)

Roland Joffe directing 2007's universally-reviled post-SAW torture-porn travesty CAPTIVITY was one of the more shocking career turns for an established director in recent memory.  But even before his mind-boggling decision to direct that film (imagine, say, Michael Cimino coming out of exile to make HOSTEL IV or something), Joffe's never quite been able to recapture the magic of his two most renowned films: THE KILLING FIELDS (1984) and THE MISSION (1986), though 1999's underseen noir GOODBYE LOVER is worth a look if you happen upon it while channel-surfing.  For his first film since the CAPTIVITY fiasco, Joffe is back on somewhat familiar turf with THERE BE DRAGONS, which looks great but is an otherwise turgid religious epic filled with Cliffs Notes storytelling, whitewashed history, and miscast actors with unconvincing accents.  Ostensibly a biopic of Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva (played here by Charlie Cox), Joffe gets sidetracked with both a 1982 framing device involving fictional London-based Spanish journalist and aspiring Escriva biographer Torres (Dougray Scott) and his estranged, ailing father Manolo (Wes Bentley), who knew Josemaria when they were children and later became a Franco spy infiltrating rebel forces in 1930s Spanish Civil War.  Joffe has Josemaria being sympathetic to those against Franco, which doesn't really gel with most historical opinion that he, while not an outright fascist, was almost certainly a Franco sympathizer. 

No one in this film is properly cast, but the worst is Bentley, especially when he's in old-age makeup. Joffe even manages to embarrass the great Derek Jacobi, ill-used in a two-scene cameo as Josemaria's father's kindly boss, Honorio.  Derek Jacobi can do almost anything, except play a Spanish candy shop owner named Honorio, getting a deathbed visit from Josemaria, where Jacobi gasps, "Do you remember the chocolate bean?"  I don't even think Joffe knew what film he wanted to make: a reverent hagiography of Josemaria Escriva (who died in 1975 and was canonized in 2002) or an overbaked telenovela involving fictional characters who have little to do with the Escriva plot.  Also with Charles Dance, Olga Kurylenko, Jordi Molla, Ana Torrent, Golshifteh Farahani, and Geraldine Chaplin, THERE BE DRAGONS is all over the place and can't overcome so much crucial miscasting and lack of focus on Joffe's part.  It's a dull, endless, meandering misfire, and the wait for Roland Joffe's triumphant comeback stumbles into its 25th year.  (PG-13, 122 mins)

In Theaters/On VOD: THE INNKEEPERS (2011)

THE INNKEEPERS
(US - 2011)

Written and directed by Ti West.  Cast: Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, Kelly McGillis, Lena Dunham, George Riddle, Alison Bartlett, Brenda Cooney.  (R, 100 mins)

A couple years back, Ti West's THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL became an instant cult horror item with its distinctly retro '80s feel and its uncommonly slow build to pure terror and mayhem.  It took about an hour for anything to happen, but West skillfully let the tension build to an almost unbearable level, so much so that many felt the payoff wasn't worthy of the buildup.  I loved the film and thought West was an impressive new figure in cinematic horror. 

Sara Paxton as Claire

But then a skeleton emerged from West's closet: the long-shelved CABIN FEVER 2: SPRING FEVER, shot long before THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, but released after.  CABIN FEVER 2 is a shit-the-bed disaster of the messiest order, though in his defense, West claims the producers took the film away from him and has since disowned it.  So now, in limited theatrical release after a VOD premiere in late December, we have THE INNKEEPERS, West's true follow-up to his HOUSE OF THE DEVIL breakthrough.

And...it's not good.  In fact, it's quite awful.

Kelly McGillis as Leanne

West takes the slow burn practice to ridiculous extremes.  With the exception of one brief jolt in the vicinity of minute 50, nothing happens until around 80 minutes into this 100-minute film.  The Yankee Pedlar Inn, an old-timey hotel, is on its last weekend of operation, and the staff is whittled down to just two:  Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy).  Luke has created a web site documenting the hauntings at the Yankee Pedlar, which supposedly houses the ghost of Madeline O'Malley, a bride who was allegedly murdered in the hotel basement decades earlier.  Claire also buys into it and the two spend their spare time trying to record EVP phenomena throughout the hotel.  One of the two remaining guests happens to be psychic ex-TV star Leanne (Kelly McGillis), who warns Claire to stay out of the basement.  But of course, Claire and Luke get drunk and go into the basement.

Pat Healy as Steven Soderbergh

The one sequence in the film that West handles well is when the ghost of Madeline makes herself seen while Claire and Luke are in the basement.  It works to a point, and the fact that we never see what Claire sees is, in retrospect, a red flag of West's clear intention to stick it in and break it off with an infuriating non-ending.  It's a very real possibility that everything is in Claire's imagination (Luke never sees the ghost), including her encounter with a third guest who arrives, a mysterious old man (George Riddle, aka "DJ Nuss" from the Vistaprint TV ads, as well as The Onion's crotchety political commentator Joad Cressbeckler) who wants one last night at the inn for nostalgia.  The whole "slow burn" buildup worked with THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, but West's attempt to go back to that trough fails miserably with THE INNKEEPERS.  He clearly has so little material (probably just the contact scene in the basement) that he has to stretch out the mood and the characterization to absurd lengths, when all he's really doing is killing time.  THE INNKEEPERS stalls, pussyfoots, hems, haws, dithers, beats around the bush, sidesteps, shuffles, and finally weasels out with an awful ending that raises the bar for audience contempt. 

A random viewer after waiting for something...ANYTHING...to happen in THE INNKEEPERS

And the bigger crime than that is how West utterly wastes a charming performance by the appealing Paxton.  I think a more interesting film could've been made of her being alone for the night in the inn, as Healy's moping misanthrope just comes off like a cowardly dick and really adds nothing to the film. THE INNKEEPERS might've made a decent half-hour TALES FROM THE CRYPT episode, and even then it would've needed more material.  But as an hour and forty minute drag, it becomes all the more clear that West has nothing to say and just as much to show and people are mistaking that for "atmosphere."  Props where they're due:  THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL is a terrific little film, and it earned West enough credit that I'm not bailing on him yet, but his first attempt to replicate that magic definitely falls under "pretender" rather than "player."  I can't overstate it enough:  I hated THE INNKEEPERS.

In Theaters: THE WOMAN IN BLACK (2012)

THE WOMAN IN BLACK
(US/UK/Canada - 2012)

Directed by James Watkins.  Written by Jane Goldman.  Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Ciarin Hinds, Janet McTeer, Liz White, Roger Allam, Mary Stockley.  (PG-13, 95 mins)

Since the resurrection of Hammer, Britain's leading House of Horror, success has been elusive.  LET ME IN, a remake of the Swedish LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, was a fine film that tanked in theaters, while THE RESIDENT and WAKE WOOD got minimal theatrical exposure before being dumped on DVD.   The biggest problem with these films, aside from THE RESIDENT (which featured Hammer icon Christopher Lee) and WAKE WOOD not being very good, is that they seemed to be Hammer in name only.  There was no sense that these films really had anything "Hammer" about them other than attempting to coast on an established label. 

So in that respect, THE WOMAN IN BLACK is a huge step in the right direction.  It's a quaintly charming, chilling old-school gothic horror throwback with no gore, a leisurely pace that lets the tension build, and it proves that the old ways are still the best.  This early 20th century period piece is filled with creaking floors, howling winds, thick fog, marshes, ominous hallways illuminated only by candlelight, chairs rocking themselves, rooms full of creepy dolls, music boxes with unsettling melodies, wind-up toys that look ready to attack, and ghostly faces peering out of windows or materializing in the darkness.  For those in a particular age group, it's the kind of old-fashioned fright flick that normally exists only in our childhood memories of late-night Creature Features on TV.   You could almost picture Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, or Michael Gough in this and there'd be little difference.  I'm happy that a film like this can get released in 2012.  I'm not sure how much today's text-happy asswipes in theaters will like it (one cineaste a few rows back from me kept huffing "This is gay"), so the best you can hope for is that these shitbags don't ruin it for the rest of us.

A post-HARRY POTTER Daniel Radcliffe is a few years too young but acquits himself well as lawyer Arthur Kipps, widowed with a four-year-old son (his wife died in childbirth).  Struggling with his job and, it's hinted, the bottle, Kipps is given one last chance by his boss (Roger Allam), who assigns him to venture to Eel Marsh and close the estate of the late Mrs. Drablow.  No one in town wants Kipps there, and no one will take him down the long causeway leading to the Drablow house, a road that becomes impassable when the evening tide rolls in.  Kipps eventually makes his way to the house and uncovers long-buried secrets in the Drablow family.  And it doesn't take him long to realize that he's not alone.

Featuring solid supporting work from ALBERT NOBBS Oscar nominee Janet McTeer and the great Ciarin Hinds, THE WOMAN IN BLACK is directed by the promising James Watkins, who wrote and directed the disturbing 2008 film EDEN LAKE.  He also wrote the 2002 cult film MY LITTLE EYE, and, unfortunately, 2010's uninspired, superfluous THE DESCENT PART 2.  Obviously a disciple of vintage Hammer fare, Watkins shows a real knack for Victorian-era chills here.  By now, we're trained as viewers to expect a creepy face to materialize in the darkness, but Watkins still makes it work, often playing with your expectations of where they'll pop up, and even though it's familiar, it still scares.  And the production design is very nicely done, so much so that you can almost smell the dank mustiness when Kipps explores the house at Eel Marsh.  Written by Jane Goldman, and based on a novel by Susan Hill, THE WOMAN IN BLACK isn't reinventing the wheel, and doesn't try to.  It's an earnest exercise in mood and atmosphere that will thoroughly engross and terrify if you let it.  I'm cynical enough to think that most audiences will laugh this off the screen, but if it even encourages a handful of younger moviegoers to explore the classics from Hammer's past and develop and nurture an appreciation of those truly timeless films, then it'll be worth it even if it fails at the box office.  I thought LET ME IN was a terrific film, but it wasn't a Hammer film. With THE WOMAN IN BLACK, we finally have a film from the "new" Hammer where the legendary brand seems appropriate.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE MILL & THE CROSS (2011), OUTRAGE (2010)

THE MILL & THE CROSS
(Poland/Sweden - 2011)

THE MILL & THE CROSS is that rarest of happenings: a truly unique, original film experience.  It's admittedly a film of very limited interest and not without flaws, but Polish auteur Lech Majewski, whose work has been little-seen in the US, has created one of the most visually breathtaking films to come down the pike in a long time.  A mix of CGI, greenscreen, and old-school matte work creates a look that almost seems 3D without being as such.  Majewski's film deals with Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1564 painting "The Way to Calvary," and places Bruegel, played here by Rutger Hauer, in the middle of the painting as we observe his inspiration and creation of the famed work of art. 


The painting puts Christ's crucifixion in a contemporary 16th century Flanders, where Bruegel and his friend and benefactor Peter Jonghelink (Michael York) witness Protestant Flemish persecution at the hands of the Catholics of the Spanish Militia. Using the crucifixion as an allegory for the atrocities committed by the Spanish Catholics, Bruegel observes all and conveys it in his art, and Majewski, in effect, turns the film into a living, breathing painting.  It's hard to describe and I didn't really get what the film was going for just by reading about it.  But seeing it...you've never seen anything like it.  The detail and depth of every shot is simply astonishing, and the film is at its best when Majewski just lets the camera roam around "the painting" and we see the painstakingly recreated daily routine of Flemish life. 

Oddly, the weakest elements are the dialogue scenes, which come off as tediously lecturing in a way that recalls the dry educational films that Roberto Rossellini made at the end of his career.  It's no fault of the actors, but Hauer, for instance, isn't playing Bruegel as a character as much he is a tour guide.  Much of his dialogue could've come straight from Wikipedia.  The same goes for York, whose job is to basically ask Hauer "Do you really think you can express that?" and provide background info that makes Peter Jonghelink come off more like a 16th century Flemish ancestor of Basil Exposition.   THE MILL & THE CROSS is by no means a mainstream film, and will likely be relegated to screenings in college Art History courses, but from a purely visual, cinematic standpoint, it's highly recommended.  How did this not get any visual effects Oscar nods? (Unrated, 96 mins)


OUTRAGE
(Japan - 2010; 2011 US release)

Japanese actor-director Takeshi Kitano's first starring "Beat Takeshi" yakuza vehicle since 2001's BROTHER seems like little more than a series of escalating slights and insults between rival yakuza.  Almost every scene involves a bunch of pissed-off gangsters busting each others' balls until punches are thrown, shots are fired, or someone has to chop off their own pinky in disgrace.  Kitano, again acting as "Beat Takeshi," still has a powerful screen presence and it's great seeing him in this kind of film again, but his past works of this sort like SONATINE had a bit more substance to them.  That's not to say OUTRAGE isn't entertaining.  It is, and very much so.  There's a lot of dark humor, a synthy '80s-style score, and some inspired scenes of insane violence (Takeshi slashing a guy's face with a boxcutter; accosting another during a dental appointment and drilling deep into his gums; forcing another to stick out his tongue and then quickly cracking him on the chin; one guy getting stabbed in the ear with chopsticks), but the plot is confusing as hell and the fact that every scene ends with someone getting punched actually becomes comical. You could make a drinking game out of it and you'd be hammered by the 40-minute mark.  It's almost as if every character in the film is modeled on Joe Pesci in GOODFELLAS/CASINO mode.  The grim finale aside, perhaps Takeshi intended this to be a sick black comedy.  It certainly works when approached from that angle. (R, 109 mins)