Quick Thoughts : "The Thing" (2011)

As a devout loyalist to John Carpenter's 1982 version of "The Thing," I approached this prequel/remake with an admittedly great deal of skepticism, but I feel confident in saying, even with my biased outlook, that Matthijs van Heijningen's update just isn't very good.
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Showing us what happened at the Norweigan camp which found and accidentally let loose the imitative title creature, the film is almost dead-on-arrival, going through the motions of Carpenter's vision with very creative touches of its own outside of perhaps a creepy dental identifier and a female lead.
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Instead of Rob Bottin's spectacular practical effects, we get CG mock-ups, instead of Ennio Morricone's eerie, persistent score, we get tired sound design and jump scares and instead of Kurt Russell and his sombrero, we get generic movie scientist Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
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When attempting to judge the relevancy and stand-alone effectiveness of a remake, prequel, sequel or otherwise, I always ask myself, "does the film do enough to establish its own identity or is it purely imitation?" Ironically enough, the answer is firmly the latter. [C-]

Review: "Take Shelter" (2011)

An oncoming storm plagues the visions of a young husband and father in Jeff Nichols' sophomore effort, "Take Shelter," a keen, deeply psychological portrait of a man either at wit's end or God's beckoning. 
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Michael Shannon plays said man, Curtis LaForche, a construction worker caring solely for his wife (Jessica Chastain) and their hearing-impaired daughter (Tova Stewart) in rural Ohio. Curtis begins having recurring dreams of increasing intensity in which he is helpless to protect his family from nature's wrath, most frequently the threat of a violently thunderous, tornadic storm. 
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Curtis slowly recognizes his surreal, illogical fear and seeks help (his mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was just ten), yet he can't resist the urge to take out an expensive loan to stock and expand upon the old backyard storm shelter, which occupies most of his time. 
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Shannon, no stranger to playing fragile, psychologically-strained characters like in Sam Mendes' "Revolutionary Road," is in tremendous form here, bringing surprising vulnerability and empathy to his blue-collar family man. We don't root for Curtis' decent into madness, but rather wish him to healthiness, like a loved one of our own. 
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Writer/director Jeff Nichols (whose 2007 debut, "Shotgun Stories", starred Michael Shannon as well) says that he wrote "Take Shelter" while dealing with fits of anxiety himself. Using the storm shelter and its accompanying visions of nature's wrath, he finds a fitting metaphor for not only the threat of change and uncertainty (the storm itself), but the place of solitude and then salvation (the shelter). 
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And in this way, the film is not only about the question of literal sanity, but the uneasy weight of dependability. In this way, the film becomes akin to the parental anxiety of responsibility as seen in David Lynch's "Eraserhead". 
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But even at its most base, most instinctual level of genre, "Take Shelter" represents, along with Sean Durkin's "Martha Marcy May Marlene," a new wave of existential horror far more frightening for its acute, fragile depiction of the human psyche than any demonic, house-possession folly that the studios can drum up these days. [B+]

Quick Thoughts: "In Time", "Anonymous"

Andrew Niccol's sci-fi thriller and corporate allegory "In Time" is, almost from the first few minutes, some kind of disaster. Even with a cast of young, sexy up-and-comers, the film is so logically nonsensical that to call it "half-baked" is a disservice to the word "half". 
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Like most science-fiction these days, "In Time" is simply a pastiche of genre tropes, except the film doesn't even have a fresh coat of paint to help wash it down. A "Logan's Run" introduction gives way to a shoddy against-the-system uprising a la "Bonnie and Clyde" or "Robin Hood", with the film's rob-the-rich-to-give-to-the-poor bassline ringing timely, if obviously so, as we watch protesters in Wall Street and around the country condemn the imbalance of power. 
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Yet for what the film has in opportune thematic timeliness, it completely lacks in narrative traction or sensibility, essentially dissolving into a film about people running around looking at their wrists. Money is currency in "In Time," and if that's the case, 2 hours is too steep a price to pay for what you get here. [D]
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Well, Roland Emmerich has done it, he's gotten old people to see one of his movies. My sparsely attended, elderly-skewed audience spattered with an approving golf-clap at the conclusion of his latest, "Anonymous," an Elizabethan Era yarn of historical conjecture regarding the perceived work of William Shakespeare. 
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The film nearly loses its audience in the first thirty minutes, clumsily framing its quill-and-ink, ruff-and-puff mystery-thriller in a bevy of storytelling devices, testing our ability to decipher and memorize each name with its proper face. 
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And although the film occasionally, eventually comes through in a way, it never quite sinks its hooks into the viewer, resembling one of Emmerich's least bombastic and restrained works, which, in fact, turns "Anonymous" into a bit of a middling costume drama - what no apocalypse? [C+]

Game 7

After last night's devastating loss in the World Series, (fuckin' Cardinals) I'm going to try and get on with it today and see a 10:45 of Andrew Niccol's "In Time" followed by Roland Emmerich's "Anonymous". 
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I was going to see Bruce Robinson's "The Rum Diary," but the more I think about it, the more I'm not that interested in dipping into a mid-level, Hunter S. Thompson bizarro exotic jerk-fest with Johnny Depp being Johnny Depp - I just sort of clam up every time I think about it.

M4

I saw Sean Durkin's "Martha Marcy May Marlene" back in August, I believe, but now that it has expanded somewhat and people are actually getting out there and seeing it, I just wanted to reiterate how much of a fan I am.
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I described the film, in my review dated 8.26, as a thriller that "burns and unsettles with a protracted, detached sense of dread." 
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"As the film progresses, promise of past and present colliding makes for anxious, nervy paranoia that debut filmmaker Sean Durkin exploits into a perturbed, teasing conclusion."
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I can't recommend it enough, not merely for Elizabeth Olsen's debut performance, but for Durkin's slow-burn mood pacing and some of the best, most overlooked below-the-line technical work of year. In a just world, "Martha Marcy May Marlene" would get serious awards attention for its editing and cinematography (both of which are my favorites so far this year), and it quite honestly dwarfs Debra Granik's "Winter's Bone" in many ways. 

"Weekend" : A (Boxer) Brief Encounter

It's a fairly cold day here in DFW - 50's, cloudy, breezy - basically the first cold chill of the season, and I've just seen Andrew Haigh's "Weekend", the British gay independent film, and it's quite lovely as far as these kinds of films go. 
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It's a "brief encounter" story of two lovers (who just happen to be gay men) who meet one day and talk and chit-chat and have sex, discuss art, relationships, their sexuality (which appropriately contrast from overt to subvert) and talk movies and such, all over the course of a weekend. 
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I'm not the biggest fan of these films (which, from the American independent mumblecore movement to the European art-house set, are all the rage these days) and other than the fact that this is a gay relationship drama, "Weekend" seldom breaks new ground, yet if writer/director Andrew Haigh and his two excellent principle actors Tom Cullen and Chris New don't quite make magic, they spin a thoroughly convincing, spontaneous, tingly universal quasi-love story that's sweet and of-the-moment, yet far from tedious. 
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I don't know what it is, I greatly appreciate these films in some way, from Abbas Kiarostami's "Certified Copy" to Alex Holdridge's "In Search of a Midnight Kiss", yet if there wasn't another of these two-people-meet-and-talk relationship dramas, I don't know that I'd miss them all that much. Weekend: [B]

Addio al giallo

With my giallo horror marathon concluding last week, I'd have to say that on the whole, I was rather disappointed with the quality of the films, or lack there of. There is a quotient of enjoyment to be had with them, but overall (especially watching them in succession) the films seemed consistently adventurous as technical showpieces yet narratively dull and frightfully formulaic. 

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There were certainly exceptions, like the ending of Lucio Fulci's "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin" and the seedy, sexy power plays of "The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion", but I thought Argento's "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" and "Deep Red" really stole the show. 

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But it's on to new pastures, as I try to fit in as many horror films as I can before next Monday.

Giallo #12: "The Black Cat" (1981)

Edgar Allan Poe and giallo in the same breath sounds like either a match made in heaven or an awkward fit and, truth be told, Lucio Fulci's "The Black Cat," loosely based on the author's short story, likely falls somewhere in the middle.
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Set in rural England, the film naturally begins with a gruesome death, the apparent doings of a green-eyed black cat, seemingly in cahoots with a local psychic who can communicate with the dead, played by Patrick Magee, whom I immediately recognized as the handicapped man who was so wronged by Alex De Large in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange". 
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Once two teenagers go missing, a Scotland Yard detective and a photographer begin to sniff around the mysterious deaths around tow, enough to lead them to the psychic and his mysterious little kitty.
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If there's one major criticism of the film, it's that there are no surprises to be had (as the viewer, we see the perpetrators in plain sight) and the overall atmosphere is dingy, dark and frankly, obscure to the point of illegibility. (Never mind the fact that the audience is expected to quiver in fear from a cat.)
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No, really "The Black Cat" is much more of a bland piece of gory detective fiction (I can't say mystery, since there really is none) that's more or less a standard-entry film in giallo timeline, uniquely framed around a deadly feline. 
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As usual, there are a few noteworthy scenes, like a plummet from a high loft in an abondaned building impaling a victim to the spikes of rusty rebar, or "The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion" star Dagmar Lassander diving head-first out of a window with her body aflame. 
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There's also a cute reference to Alfred Hitchcock, the genre's obvious overriding influence, in which photographer Jill Trevers, in a late scene, uses her flash to temporarily blind her potential assailant in a dark room, a cue taken from Jimmy Stewart at the conclusion of "Rear Window". [C-]

Giallo #11: "The House with Laughing Windows" (1976)

I had a sneaking suspicion going into Pupi Avati's "The House with Laughing Windows" that it was going to be a difficult sit (a no-name director, a relatively long running-time) and my gut feeling wasn't off-base in the slightest.
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An art-conservationist arrives in a scant, rural Italian village to specifically restore a rotting fresco of Saint Sebastian, which would you believe, is a source of controversy regarding its creator (the mercurial painter Legnani) and his method regarding his work.
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As he peels off layers of neglect from the church walls, he's also revealing the true nature of a town that seems bent on scaring the living hell out of him. Although "The House with Laughing Windows" may, at first glance, appear a once-removed offspring of its more evident giallo family, the film's icky, deglamorized feel gives way to the genre's consistent characteristics of bait-and-switch tactics, dark and creaky old houses and a slim mystery that takes far too long to solve.
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And thus the problem with not only this film but many giallo in general, is that it's enslaved to formula. Thus, when the material is flaccid and malevolent and the execution is dull, the deficiencies become alarmingly, distressingly evident. (Particularly when the conclusion is as insipid and anti-climactic as it is here.)
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Nicolas Roeg's minor 70's masterwork "Don't Look Now" (a kind of giallo film in its own right) occupies similar territory as "The House with Laughing Windows," yet while the former is a blazingly splendid, tense and acutely psychological piece of work, the latter frankly reeks of savage ineptitude, in both subject and form. [D]

Giallo #10: "Deep Red" (1975)

Dario Argento was in peak creative form by the time "Deep Red" came out in the mid-70's. Having already released his bewildering "animal trilogy," a trio of classic giallo films concerning innocent bystanders being dragged into the path of a psychopathic killer, "Deep Red" continues the trend while upping the technical virtuosity and bloodlust. 
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It's true that "Deep Red" was certainly Argento's most violent film to date, but perhaps the biggest discernible discrepancy between this and his previous work is his adoption of Italian prog-rock band Goblin, who step in as his regular composers.
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It becomes clear after the first drop of blood that this is no Ennio Morricone knock-off, Goblin's cymbal-tappin', jazzy bass-and-drum assault seems to accentuate the most innocuous of clue-searching, ushering in "Deep Red" as possibly the first so-called jam-band giallo film. 
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Sticking with the tried-and-true Argento blueprint, an innocent pianist named Marcus Daly witnesses a murder from a distance, his psychic neighbor who lives a floor below him. The police are nowhere to be found, yet Daly and his partner-in-detection, the feminist reporter Gianna Brezzi, become neck-high with their involvement in the case.
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Argento, as he so often does, dodges direct interaction with the killer (who here uses a nice hatchet or meat cleaver as his/her preferred method of torture), instead concealing their identity through sterling, resourceful camera movement, utilizing effective first-person shots, props and even eyeballs as indirecr methods of identification. In "Deep Red," his camera (and his soundtrack) seem to get excited at the prospect of steel meeting skin. 
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I mentioned that "Deep Red" was easily Argento's most violent of giallo films, and certainly one who views a scene in a bathroom in which our killer submerges its victim in a scalding bathtub of hot water will have difficulty arguing otherwise. (Also keep an eye out for the most deadliest pushing of an elevator button in the final reel - ouch!)
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And as he is on record as saying, Argento's giallo films are centered around recollection - the critical remembrance of a seemingly trivial clue, the circumstances of a crime scene - which conveniently don't rear up until the final moments, yet the last shot of "Deep Red" will likely please those who enjoy this sort of thing - I know I did. [B]

Giallo #9: "All the Colors of the Dark" (1972)

After a beautiful, quiet opening shot over the titles, Sergio Martino's "All the Colors of the Dark" begins with a lurid, batty dream sequence, one of many tormenting Jane Harrison, a mourning, mentally fragile young wife who just recently lost her unborn child in a car accident and witnessed her mother being murdered as a child.
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Talk about the post-traumatic double-whammy, as Jane, surrounded by men (her husband, her psychiatrist), fears that a blue-eyed man from her nightmares is out to get her.
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No doubt the film is another entry into the 'woman-in-peril' sub-genre of giallo - a pretty good one at that. Jane's overwhelming psychological distress allows her neighbors to exploit her in ways that mirror Ruth Gordon, especially once she finds herself within the grasps of a satanic cult.
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Shooting in high-rises and apartment buildings, the film is certainly influenced a great deal by Roman Polanski's urban paranoia as seen in the aforementioned "Rosemary's Baby" and "Repulsion". The film doesn't really approach that level of artistry - the combination of acute psychoanalysis and genuine horror - but "All the Colors the Dark" is just garish, stylish enough to win us over. [B-]

Giallo #8: "The Black Belly of the Tarantula" (1971)

A sadomasochistic killer paralyzes his victims with an acupuncture needle before carving their bellies in Paolo Cavar's "The Black Belly of the Tarantula," another offspring of Mario Bava's "Blood and Black Lace" and Dario Argento's "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" - your standard-order serial killer mystery routine.
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Following Inspector Tellini, however, as opposed to a hapless socialite or innocent prog-rock drummer, provides "The Black Belly of the Tarantula" with a unique framing device, turning the film into a Fincher-esque detective-mystery instead of a paranoid Argento hack-and-slash, which is quite fun in its own right.
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The film begins with a seedy massage, as the camera focuses on the penetrating hands of the masseuse, similar to the way that the camera will later rely on the killer's gloved, latex-hands during the many brutal killings.
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Inspector Tellini (Giancarlo Giannini) is a relative newcomer to the force and feels incompetent as he attempts to track down the killer, which includes a perilous rooftop chase (a giallo tradition, apparently) at the halfway mark.
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The killer's hat-and-trench coat also seem straight from "Blood and Black Lace," yet, with those nasty methods and creepy home decor (that lamp!), the killer leaves an impression beyond the dopey Rorschach outfit. 
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For those who enjoy high body-counts over paranoia, "The Black Belly of the Tarantula" should appeal mightily and though the film inevitably proved predictable, its unique framing device provides this giallo with an inimitable perspective. Plus, Barbara Bach gets killed in it, come on. [B-]

Giallo #7: "The Cat O'Nine Tails" (1971)

Part two of Dario Argento's "animal trilogy," "The Cat O'Nine Tails" is the only title in the trio which does not refer to a literal aspect of the film, but rather an arbitrary line of spoken dialogue referring to the number of leads available to the film's unlikely pair of amateur detective, who are both on the trail of a vicious killer.
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Although hardly an apt description of the film, the title does inevitably get the point across that this far more of a procedural (and less a sleazy, paranoid mystery) than either of Argento's other works, including "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" and "Four Flies on Grey Velvet".
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As such, it's easy to dismiss it as a work in a genre known for its lack of taste and its surplus of blood, torsos and shiny objects. But strict as it is, the film is not without its moments of genuine suspense and ingenuity, including a - let's call it "fall from grace" - close out the film.
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Karl Malden (in a rare bit of globalized casting) plays the ostensible lead as a blind man who stumbles upon the case by chance (and by personal intrigue) along with Carlo, an investigative reporter, as the two set out to solve the case of a mysterious break-in at the mystifying Terzi Institute. 
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Needless to say, the investigation leads the two makeshift sleuths into the crosshairs of the offender, while concurrently unraveling a mystery about the peculiar death of Terzi employee Dr. Calabresi by oncoming train.
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It appears as if giallo fanatics find "The Cat O'Nine Tails" a bit stale and compromised (heck, even Argento apparently wasn't the biggest fan), yet the film's lack of gratuity and, let's face it, brevity, do not hinder the connect-the-dots mystery at hand and some grueling, tense set pieces, including a particularly unsettling visit into a desolate graveyard and a climactic rooftop chase. [B-]

Giallo #6: "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin" (1971)

A woman awakens from a recurring dream, an apparent lesbian fantasy, in which she in fact, murders her lover, who is in actuality, her next-door neighbor. When the police knock on the door and every aspect of her nightmare has indeed come to fruition, Carol (played by Florinda Bolkan) becomes frightfully worried that she's been set-up, or indeed the rightful killer.
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Sound familiar? This 'woman-in-peril' trope of the giallo movement continues here (and will show up again in 1972's "All the Colors of the Dark") with Lucio Fulci's "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin," a film that conceptually may appear mightily familiar, but in fact, has a remarkably noticeable difference.
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As mentioned previously, Florinda Bolkan (who looks quite a bit like Juliana Marguiles) plays Carol, a rich married woman who's not only suspected by the police but suspected by herself in the death of her next-door neighbor, a veracious partier and seldom-clothed Julia.
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Carol's hightened paranoia takes extreme turns during a midway chase through an abandoned church (featuring some terrifically Italian wide shots), an encounter at a dilapidated theater (which looks quite like the one from Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange," I might say) and then highlighted by a terrible fright from a pack of resting bats - yeesh. 
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Without divulging too much, "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin" (also known as "Schizoid" in the United States) adeptly, surprisingly, turns from standard-order womanized paranoia to a complex, psychoanalytical thriller with more than a few twists to the timeworn formula.
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If nothing else, the film (a grisly, half-diverting psycho-mystery) makes good in its effort to divert our expectations from the typical giallo exercise, managing to legitimately surprise us with its frank, unsuspecting conclusion. [C+]

Giallo #5: "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" (1971)

The third, final and frankly, greatest part of Argento’s introductory Animal Trilogy, “Four Flies on Grey Velvet” is also one the director’s best works. Sticking to his hand-rails, the film carries the same “wrong man” plot of an innocent man who is dragged into the path of a serial killer, set-up in an empty theater, with incriminating pictures of him holding the knife, standing over the dead body.

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The innocent man in question is rock drummer Roberto Tobias, who is in turn taunted by the assailant with the victim’s identification arriving later in the mail. Roberto then becomes paranoid and haunted by images of a beheading – a premonition, perhaps?

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“Four Flies on Grey Velvet” may have wrapped up his coincidental Animal Trilogy, but honestly, the film bears an even stronger resemblance to his later work in both structure and technique.

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As he would also employ in “Deep Red,” Argento showcases his unique, virtuoso camera work with an especially extravagant array of first-person shots (murders, even) as he concurrently alters our perspective and conceals the killer’s identity.

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“Four Flies” also continues Argento’s fascination with recollection, either the misremembering of past events or the realization of them, and it continues in the way that Roberto discovers the identity of the killer, which directly relates to the film’s title.

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This would also be the last film that Ennio Morricone would work on for Dario Argento (who would switch to the progressive rock band Goblin henceforth) and it’s probably the composer’s best work for the director. The film begins with thrashing drums and ends with a slippery, string-piece with soothing vocals that, quite appropriately, sounds like the wings of a fly. [B]

Giallo #4: "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" (1971)

Acclaimed Italian horror director Dario Argento made his debut here with this early giallo prototype, "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage". Part one of the director's coined "Animal Trilogy," (which has more to do with the films coincidental titles than anything else, with "The Cat O'Nine Tails" and "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" being the other two) the fact that the film, viewed in a particular binge of giallos for this feature, barely registers in my retrospective thought should say it all.
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Like most films of the genre, it begins with a mysterious murder (our protagonist Sam Dalmas witnesses a stabbing sandwiched between two glass walls in an art gallery) and its resulting repercussions. Like the other two films of Argento's aforementioned "Animal Trilogy" (which we'll discuss - with more fervor - soon enough), the film hinges on the detective work of a common man (the drummer from "Four Flies on Grey Velvet," Karl Malden's blind man from "The Cat O'Nine Tails") while eventually leading us to the rightful assailant. 
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Like "Four Flies," the film hilariously hinges on a logical-yet-preposterous solving of a vital clue, which leads Sam and the authorities to nowhere but the zoo. I'll stop there, but this debut generally lacks the grip and technical veracity (if you ask me) of Argento's later works, particularly the latter two portions of this perceived trilogy. 
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Even yet, it's still a modest, above-average entry into the genre, if a bit slim and underwhelming for a professed cornerstone film in the giallo movement. Cherished and adored by many, I'll just have to eat my words on this one. Since my brief introduction to the genre, "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" is far from the worst, yet very nearly the most forgettable. [C]

Giallo #3: "The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion" (1970)

Sounding like a parodic mash-up of three shorter titles, this mouthful of a film deals less with the serial killer route of the common giallo (to be established and then perfected in short time by the likes of Dario Argento) and more with one of the genre's ever-present influences, Alfred Hitchcock.
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A libidinous, intoxicatingly sordid brew, "The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion" combines its 'woman-in-peril' paranoia with the genre's trademark eroticism and sadomasochistic overtones, an amalgam that strikes as fearlessly exploitative and one of the more unique entries in this ongoing feature, if not the giallo canon as a whole. 
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Minou (the gorgeous Dagmar Lassander) is married to Peter (Pier Paolo Capponi), a suit-and-tie businessman whose motives are called into question when Minou is blackmailed by a stranger who claims he has evidence condemning Peter of murder. (The film also seems ignorantly misogynist when it essentially suggests that the only thing a woman can do to protect her husband is to sell her body.)
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Complicating matters is the fact that Minou's best friend, the voluptuous, voracious Dominique has pornographic photos in-bed with the blackmailer. What's to make of all this?
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It's all a deliciously sleazy game of sex, lies and murder and although we hardly wrap our heads around the mystery even upon the film's conclusion, it's all quite a bit of imitative, guilt-induced fun. In the pantheon of gloved, hooded and doll-faced killers, "The Forbidden Photos of the a Lady Above Suspcion" is a different kind of beast, an example of the kind of distasteful pleasures that the genre can sometimes supply. [B-]

Review: "The Ides of March" (2011)

Perhaps far more minor and far less revelatory than it would have you anticipate, George Clooney's "The Ides of March" is nevertheless a pleasing, bristling suit-and-tie political thriller that serves best as a piece of populist entertainment rather than an indictment on political corruption and treacherous campaigning. 

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Ryan Gosling's Stephen Meyers, a brilliant, brash and idealistic young campaign manager, is faced with a series of ethical conundrums and crises as he is quickly sucked in under the pressure of a heated Democratic presidential primary, and the film is more and less about how Stephen decides to deal with it.

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Stephen believes in his candidate, Mike Morris (a sharp, charismatic George Clooney) and is willing to go up to bat for him, even going so far as to say that "he's the one person who can actually change people's lives". 

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The film sets up his disappointment perhaps a bit too noticeably and the third act feels neither genuine nor unforeseeable, yet the film's pleasures lie in its seedy, delectable confrontations and perfidious workplace environments, with experienced, venerable actors delivering pat, singeing dialogue with a delicious pungency. 

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But what stood out amidst all of the backdoor sleaziness and roll-up-your-sleeves dirty work is the brave way that Clooney, co-writing with Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon (working off of his own play, "Farragut North"), essentially washes his hands of his characters and dismisses the notion of simple heroes and villains. [B]

Giallo #2: "Blood and Black Lace" (1964)

Whereas director Mario Bava introduced the more fragile psychological elements of giallo in "The Girl Who Knew Too Much," with "Blood and Black Lace," he racks up the body count in this highly influential slasher film, an early incarnation of the masked serial killer formula.
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But what particularly distinguishes "Blood and Black Lace" (and by extension, the giallo genre as a whole) from the slasher film's significant uptick in the late 70's and early 80's is its more literary roots, particularly its influence of classic mystery fiction, chiefly the work of Agatha Christie. 
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As Bava maneuvers his camera adventurously around the vibrant, devious fashion house (epicenter of this bloody whodunit), he pauses on all manner of models, artists and photographers who could credibly be persuaded of their guilt, enough so that you might feel compelled to shout out names, locations and murder weapons like a sporting game of Clue. 
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The killer, who here wears a trench coat, hat and white stocking mask, seems to be targeting hapless, beautiful fashion models and one pesky, slippery red diary. Each murder is carefully, brutally plotted, including a prolonged cat-and-mouse session in a cavernous antique shop.
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But "Blood and Black Lace," not only set the standard with its soon-to-be-timeworn body-count structure, but also with its technical ingenuity and nifty camerawork, which would serve as inspiration for the later masters, namely the always bold Dario Argento. 
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Bava wheels, slithers and zooms his camera around his interiors with both a subtle grace and a spirited naivety. It seems to serve his purpose less as a genuine method of fright and more as a mere showcase, and the film, for as many bodies that seem to pile up, eventually becomes tedious. "Blood and Black Lace" is certainly influential in giallo circles, but as a standalone piece of filmmaking, it's quite honestly, a technically resourceful drag. [C]

Review: "Real Steel" (2011)

A starry, blue-eyed cheek-pinch of a film, Shawn Levy's "Real Steel" is a transparent, highly illogical amalgam of every smothering, cloying cliché of middle-American resolve, set, of all places, inside the world of robot boxing. 
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John Gatins' disastrous, leaky script (which is based on a frankly ludicrous premise) touches on everything from a father-son drama, to a washed-up tale of redemption, an underdog sports drama and finally, a boy-and-his-creature nostalgia trip. (The film also serves as yet another edition to 2011's tributes to Amblin, with Steven Spielberg serving as Executive Producer here under his DreamWorks banner.)
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Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a former-boxer who know makes his living traveling the backroads robots boxing circuit, up to his eyeballs in and deals and debt, scraping together has-been bots in attempt to squeeze out some cash, as he drives his beat-up trailer across the Southern landscape, where good and bad actors like Anthony Mackie (good) and Kevin Durand (bad) spit into ringside microphones mugging for the crowd and the cameras. 
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Then, Charlie is informed that his ex-girlfriend has died, and he is the next of kin to take custody of his 11 year-old son, Max (Dakoto Goyo), whom coldly sells to "Evil Aunt" Debra (Hope Davis) and Uncle Marvin (James Rebhorn), who are away to Italy, and need Charlie to watch Max for the summer. 
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Conveniently, Max is a huge World Robot Boxing (WRB) fan, as he and Charlie snap at each other through illegal boxing rackets in the underground circuit, in which Charlie's impulsivity, recklessness and debt bury him into an even bigger hole. 
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Their fortunes take an appropriate, foreseeable turn for the better as Max finds an old secoond-generation sparring bot (named Atom for the steel-insignia on his chest) in a junkyard and decides (or rather, demands) to fight him in a match.
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The film seems set-up to turn Max into Charlie's voice-of-reason, yet when Max takes Atom to his first fight, he practices the same reckless naivety that got Charlie into trouble in the first place, only to see it blindly work in his favor this time around. 
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Needless to say, Atom, who is taught to box mirroring Charlie's custom moves, works his way up the robot boxing ladder until he's soon fighting in front of millions of fans. Even though Max is the face of "Team Atom," and he dances quite a bit with his Robo-BFF, we're a bit confused on the his role, exactly, given that Charlie not only controls Atom in the ring, but trains him as well.
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Marketed as a quasi-dystopian future-sports drama, "Real Steel" is much more of a vehicle for the imaginations and wonders of those Max's who are sitting in the theater, looking up at the screen in awe of these ten-foot-plus robots battling it out. After all, they're the only ones who can overlook what a colossal mountain of processed cheese this is, with lines like, "I want you to fight for me. That's all I've ever wanted."
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And even as the film slowly strides (or weeps) to its climactic bout, it has spent so much of its energy bowling us over with father-son bonding and tearful monologues that we're practically spent before we learn that the film's biggest shower of schmaltz has yet to wash us out of the theater. 
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Essentially, the film is a testament to the human instinct - of man over machine - as Charlie's washed-up boxing moves (and fatherly influences) eventually make the difference over artificiality. The essence of the film will be lost upon children who just want to take Atom home for themselves - everyone else is simply a witness to this mawkish massacre, one of toughest sits of the year. [D-]

Giallo #1: "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" (1963)

Mario Bava is commonly referred to as the founding father of the Italian giallo film ("giallo" meaning yellow, referring to the gaudy yellow covers of pulp crime stories and potboiler mysteries) and his one-two punch of "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" and "Blood and Black Lace" both usher in the common tropes that we now associate with these trashy, virtuoso films.
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With "Blood and Black Lace," (which I'll be discussing later as part of this feature) he introduced one of two common narratives, the body-count slasher, and with "The Girl Who Knew Too Much," he expounded on the genre's greatest influence (Alfred Hitchcock) while producing one of its most common tropes, the paranoid woman-in-peril. 
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It is uncommonly shot in black-and-white, yet its high-contrast outdoor photography (particularly those numerous shots on the Piazza di Spagna) retroactively give the film a uniqueness that its garish successors do not. 
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The film charts the "Roman holiday" of American Nora Davis (naturally played by an Italian, actress Leticia Roman) who is traveling to visit her elderly aunt. Quite rudely, Nora is mugged, her aforementioned auntie passes away, and she's also a witness to a brutal murder - all in the first night!
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Ah, but did she really witness a murder or simply dream up the whole thing? After all, Nora is an avid reader of the very same cheap murder mysteries that the genre is founded on and the police can find no evidence (except a murder taking place there over ten years ago) of anybody getting a knife in the back. 
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She learns of the "Alphabet Killer," who kills victims in tidy, alphabetic order (I wonder what he's planning on doing for 'X'?) and would you know it, 'D' for Nora Davis is next in line! Thus the rest of the film concerns Nora's quest for either her survival or her sanity, as no one seems to be buying her hysterical paranoia. 
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Eventually we're given our clues and resolution, and like most giallo films, the answers take too long to crop up and once given, too long to explain. "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" may not retrospectively hold up to later, more virtuoso technical achievements in the genre (namely from Argento), nor is it going to satiate those who crave high body counts and candy-red blood, but it remains a modest, trendsetting work in the giallo timeline. [C+]

TimeOut London's Top 50 Westerns

TimeOut London always has put out very thorough, iconoclastic film lists and their "Top 50 Westerns" is no different. 
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I have my own list of the Top 30 Westerns coming out pretty soon here (likely after October), and as a pretty big fan of the genre, I have a discerning, argumentative opinion regarding TimeOut's particular picks. 
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That being said, the list is pretty good for the most part. I appreciate their respect for the great Budd Boetticher, for Robert Aldrich's "Vera Cruz" and for the inclusion of Robert Dominik's "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". Plus their #1 and #2 picks of "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" are especially inspired. 
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But every time I see "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and "The Searchers" anywhere near the Top 10 I get a little queasy. And I love Anthony Mann, but I don't believe that "Winchester '73" is in his personal Top 4, much less one of the top 4 westerns of all-time. 
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Here are TimeOut's Top 10:
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1. "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" (1971)
2. "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (1973)
3. "The Searchers" (1956)
4. "Winchester '73" (1950)
5. "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976)
6. "Dead Man" (1995)
7. "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962)
8. "Johnny Guitar" (1954)
9. "Decision at Sundown" (1957)
10. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966)

Movieline Sends Love Letter to "Australia"

The folks over at Movieline have a funny, if a bit inconsistent, feature that I try and check out every once and a while, and that's there "Bad Movies We Love" list. 
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This 10.5 post digs into Baz Luhrmann's sunset-colored outback epic "Australia" and I couldn't agree more. I remember seeing it Thanksgiving week of '08 as the second-half of double bill between it and "Milk" and I distinctly remember not really hating it all that much - in fact, I was sort-of entranced by it.
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Obviously it succumbs to some of Luhrmann's worst instincts and it's an overlong, schmaltzy, throwback historical romance with bland, broad archetypes, and although a second-viewing at home rendered it a bit too difficult to sit through a second time, I remember that feeling I had after seeing it opening day, which was, "that was sort of irresistible in a sense".