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.