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Movies

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) a (mildly) belated review

A while back someone wrote about their favorite “guilty pleasures” and it got me thinking about what mine were/are.  This proved to be both an easy and rather hard thing to do.  The first thing that sprung to my mind was the Resident Evil movies.  Hard because, other than that series of films, I found it difficult to think of anything else that fell into a genuine “guilty pleasure” category…for me.

“Guilty pleasures,” I feel, are things you know in your heart are not all that good (you may even be willing to describe them as “bad”) yet you can’t help but enjoy the product, be it a book, a movie, or an album.  To my mind, the Resident Evil movies are far from (a) original or (b) terribly coherent.  But what they are…or at least have been…are reasonably enjoyable time killers and, yes, the definition of a “guilty pleasure”.

Until now.

Resident Evil: Retribution, the fifth installment in the franchise, starts with the finale of the previous film, 2010’s Resident Evil: Afterlife.  But immediately after this, the film goes off into its own direction and for the most part ignores pretty much everything that happened after that previous movie’s cliffhanger.  It’s telling that the film’s makers could have cut that recap sequence out completely and simply started the movie with our imprisoned heroine, Alice (Milla Jovovich), and move on from there.

So what does this latest movie in the series offer?

Well, we do have the return of some old characters, from Michelle Rodriguez’s Rain to Sienna Guillory’s Jill Valentine to Oded Fehr’s Carlos Olivera.  If you’re familiar with the series, you immediately realize that two of the characters mentioned above were killed in previous Resident Evil films, and part of what got me interested in seeing this newest film was to see how they went about returning these characters to the series.

Alas, it turned out the returning characters were both good and evil clones.  Period end of story.

Speaking of story, the story here is beyond simple.  Alice wakes up after the events of the previous film’s cliffhanger, finds she is trapped in some kind of Umbrella Corp. base, and works to break out while a group of ally soldiers are heading toward her to meet in the middle of the base and then, together, get out.  Much mayhem follows.

Sadly, the characters this time around are incredibly, ineptly defined.  It almost seemed like the film’s makers decided to focus entirely on the action set pieces and move everything forward to the end so that they could set up the cliffhanger to the next film (which, by the way, they most certainly do).  The problem lies in the fact that because the characters are so badly defined this time around we simply don’t care about any of them.  When one after the other mercenary/soldier sent to help Alice dies, we’re not bothered in the least.  There’s also the insertion of a child into the story that I couldn’t help but feel was a too blatant attempt to tap into the whole Aliens story dynamic (one of the more obvious “inspirations” to this series as a whole) of Ripley trying to save the last survivor of LV-426.  But while Aliens built up the tension and relationship between the characters extremely effectively, the relationship between Alice and her child was, like all else in this film, presented in a too rushed manner.

So, overall, my guilty pleasure really let me down this time around.  This movie, like the other Resident Evil films, made a ton of money and I suspect the sixth film in the series is already in the works.  Whatever they decide to do, I hope they focus on giving us more of a story and character next time around.

Who am I kidding?  It’s Resident Evil.  I suspect the next film will offer much more of the same.

Movies

Total Recall (2012) a (mildly) belated review

First, a confession:  I am not a big fan of the original 1990 Paul Verhoeven directed/Arnold Schwarzenegger starring Total Recall.  While I was a HUGE fan of Mr. Verhoeven’s first American sci-fi film, Robocop, Total Recall, in the end, felt to me like a missed opportunity.  The film, which involved a worker drone named Quaid (Schwarzenegger) who longs to live a fantasy adventure and finds this possibility via Rekall Inc., an early version of a “virtual reality” vacation, perhaps is one of the first films to deal with the technology that confuses reality and fantasy, not unlike the more successful (in my opinion) The Matrix.  The more astute views of the original Total Recall were left wondering at the end of the film whether we witnessed something that was “real” or whether Quaid was permanently locked in a fantasy world, never to emerge again.

The 2012 remake of Total Recall lifts the story with only some minor cosmetic differences.  The primary change regards the movie’s setting as there is no trip to Mars.  One can’t help but be impressed with the future world as presented.  The movie’s dual settings (Great Britain and Australia) are a visual feast.  I would even go so far as to say this may be the best full scale futuristic setting I’ve ever seen committed to film.  If there is a critique to be made here, it is that this futuristic world looks heavily inspired by Blade Runner, another movie based on a story created by the late Phillip K. Dick.

The second big change is that the new version of the film has Kate Beckinsale’s villainous Lori Quiad pursue her “husband” throughout the film.  In the original, Sharon Stone’s character was disposed of early on.  This particular change turns out to be a positive for the remake as Kate Beckinsale is certainly the showiest of the characters.

Where the remake most diverges from the original is in tone.  While Mr. Verhoeven’s original featured plenty of over the top action material and in your face humor, the remake is far more somber and “serious”.  Alas, this ultimately hurts rather than helps the remake.

Now, I already confessed to not being a big fan of the original Total Recall.  Yet I have to give Mr. Verhoeven credit for delivering something that moves.  Yes, the original film is at times goofy and silly and cheesy and doesn’t give you anything approaching a resolution as to whether we witnessed imagination or reality…but audiences can forgive quite a bit when you have Verhoeven’s “in your face” direction and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the lead.

In the remake, apart from Kate Beckinsale, we have far too subdued work from Colin Farrell (as Quaid), Jessica Biel (as Melina), and Bryan Cranston (as the ultimate villain of the piece, Cohaagan).  All the actors mentioned above have done good work, in my opinion, but in this film they are all so very, very…flat.  There were no sparks (romantic or otherwise) between Quaid and Melina.  Bryan Cranston’s Cohaagan, similarly, never reached the sneering, way-over-the-top villainy of Ronny Cox’s Cohaagan.  The action scenes, while at the start quite good (the first big action sequence at Rekall, in particular, is a highlight), eventually became repetitious.  When we finally reached the movie’s climax, I was more than ready for things to wind down and end, never a good feeling.

There is a “surprise” ending after this ending, a final confrontation between Quaid and his villainous “wife”, but even that felt obvious.  I couldn’t help but wish the movie’s writers had surprised us with a different conclusion, perhaps one where our villainess does something truly surprising…like have Quaid completely at her mercy…yet she chooses to let him live.  The circumstances being what they are, it was pointless for her to still try to kill him.  Perhaps at that point, as she’s walking away, she makes Quaid truly wonder whether he is experiencing reality or illusion.

Having said all that, Total Recall 2012 is not a “terrible” film by any means.  If you haven’t seen the original, it might even prove a pleasant diversion.  At its worst, it is a distressingly mediocre film dressed in a great film’s clothing.  Given all the money, truly amazing effects, and big name cast, one wishes it could have been a little more than it ultimately was.

Movies

The Ghost Writer (2010) a (mildly) belated review

There are times I bemoan the lack of quiet, intelligent thrillers and the seeming surplus of the often more vacuous and noisy “action” thrillers.

But that’s not to say there aren’t quiet, intelligent thrillers out there.

Director Roman Polanski (no stranger to controversy) has released some intelligent thrillers in his time, and The Ghost Writer is certainly a good -though ultimately, and unfortunately, not great– example of the same.

The story involves “the Ghost” (Ewan McGregor), a mild mannered writer who is hired to polish and finish a manuscript/autobiography “written” by former UK Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan in what amounts to an extended cameo playing a character suspiciously similar to Tony Blair).  The ghost writer who did all the work until now, we find in the movie’s opening scenes, drowned.

So Ewan McGregor’s “Ghost” takes the well paying -but very tight deadline- job and, after flying to the United States and entering the bunker used by Lang and his entourage, barely gets to work before finding himself in the middle of an international maelstrom.  Adam Lang, you see, has been called out by his one-time ally as having engaged in complicity to use torture to pursue terrorists.  Soon there is the very real possibility that Lang may be dragged before the World Court for his actions while serving as Prime Minister.  And, to make matters worse, the “Ghost” begins to suspect the manuscript’s original writer’s death by drowning was no accident.

Will this “Ghost Writer” wind up like his predecessor?

Though it is a thriller, the first half or so of the film slowly builds tension while offering plenty of black comedy.  The “Ghost” finds the world of Adam Lang is a maze and its hard to tell the motivations of those around him…not to mention what exactly goes on in the mind of Lang himself.  In time, the “Ghost” begins to see his way through the secrets while tension builds.

Unfortunately, as good as the first half to two thirds of the film is, the movie unfortunately began to lose steam.  It’s hard to pinpoint where this happened, but as we headed toward the climax and conclusion, the carefully built tension dissipated.  By the time we reached the movie’s climax and ultimate conclusion, the movie fell again, presenting some rather large plot holes that rendered much of what we experienced up until this point confusing and, worse, pointless.

Again, without giving away too much, the audience is expected to accept the fact that a large conspiracy initiated by very powerful political figures is behind some of the mystery in the film…and yet these incredibly powerful political figures aren’t powerful enough to get a ghost writer who is a puppet to their cause to fix Lang’s manuscript rather than bringing in an innocent who may just expose this conspiracy?

Indeed, the ending had me scratching my head so much, especially considering the cleverness of the story up until that point, that I wondered if maybe there were some cut scenes or explanation in the script that was not filmed that accounted for these plot holes.  Suffice to say there is a point in the film where it seems the “Ghost” and Lang are about to have a heart to heart talk and we might finally get some idea of what’s going on…and how much Lang actually knows.  Ultimately, that talk never happens.

And yet, in spite of these complaints, I can’t entirely dismiss The Ghost Writer.  For long stretches of time the movie is quite entertaining even if, in the end, it does stumble.

Movies

Supernova (2000) a (very) belated review

La vittoria trova cento padri, e nessuno vuole riconoscere l’insuccesso. (Victory has a hundred fathers, and no one acknowledges a failure.)  1942 G. Ciano Diary 9 Sept. (1946).

After a truly great run of movies from 1975 to roughly 1984, director Walter Hill reached the proverbial bump in the road.  While it was a pretty damn good film, 1984’s Streets of Fire didn’t light up (ouch) the box office.  Nor did many of the films he directed that followed, including the truly bad sequel to his biggest box office success, Another 48 Hrs.  Mr. Hill was hardly hurting.  He was, after all, the producer of the original Alien and Aliens, and would go on to produce all “Alien” related movies, up to and including last year’s controversial Prometheus.

But before the Alien universe truly blew up with sequels and Predator related spin offs, Mr. Hill made his thus far one and only directorial foray into sci-fi with Supernova.  Yes, Streets of Fire had a quasi-sci fi/alternate 1950’s type reality, but Supernova was a full on sci-fi spectacle complete with starships, alien worlds, and…horror.

I caught the film many years ago on DVD and found it an intriguing mess.  Mr. Hill’s original cut of the film was deemed unsatisfactory by the movie studios and they called in others, including Francis Ford Coppola, to re-edit it into something they were more comfortable with.  Ultimately, Supernova’s director credit was listed as “Thomas Lee”, a pseudonym not unlike the infamous Alan Smithee.  (That, folks, is the reason the quote is listed above)

The DVD I saw featured the “uncut” version of the film.  The other day, while watching oddball cable channels, the theatrical version of Supernova aired and, like a moth to light, I sat through it.  The theatrical cut differs from the “uncut” version in that we see a little less nudity from Robin Runney and, if memory serves, a slightly less gory death of (SPOILERS!!!!!) Lou Diamond Phillip’s character.  Otherwise, it was mostly what I remembered watching years ago.

And a fascinating watch it is.

The difference this time around, however, is the release of Prometheus.  When I first saw Supernova, Prometheus, of course, did not yet exist.  Now, however, watching Supernova proved something of a curious revelation.  For in Supernova I couldn’t help but notice that some of the movie’s elements wound up appearing in Prometheus.  That’s not to say that Supernova is something of a “rough draft” of Prometheus, just that you can see some of the elements coalesce.

To begin, Supernova involves a group of “space medics” who receive a distress signal from some far away planet (this is not unlike Alien, too!).  They head to the planet and find one person, Karl Larson (Peter Facinelli) who had a previous relationship with Dr. Evers (Angela Bassett), one of the members of the medical crew.  She finds Larson, however, very different from what she recalls.  Their relationship had grow very sour before he left her, but now, as she finds him, he looks very different…younger, stronger.  If you’ve seen Prometheus, this particular element of Supernova bears at least a little echo in the relationship of Shaw and Holloway.

Larson, we find, has discovered a strange object on that mining planet, a thing left behind by some alien culture.  In the course of the film we find that the object was made by an alien race to effectively eliminate other races they don’t want to have continue -and compete- with them.  In Prometheus, the alien engineers were upset with humanity and wanted to eradicate it with their oddball biological weaponry.  In the case of Supernova, the alien race (which in this movie remains unseen) has created a device that will entice its discoverer to take it to the heart of humanity, where it will detonate and destroy the offending race -and pretty much all the universe!- and then creating a “new” context for alien life.

What follows in Supernova is the cast and crew being killed off one by one by the infected Larson.  The way the villain is dispatched by the movie’s end is particularly groan inducing.  It involves “Flyboy”, one of the more bizarre (and extremely silly) concepts in Supernova, a robot that for no reason at all looks like a World War I flier enticing Larson into a hold before blowing him up.

Other than curiosity, it’s hard to come right out and recommend Supernova.  This is a genuinely flawed film (not that Prometheus wasn’t, as well!) that features some really good special effects but an obviously toyed with presentation.  Nonetheless I am curious about Mr. Hill’s original version of the film.  Given the fact that Supernova was a big flop, I doubt we’ll ever see a “special edition” of the film featuring Mr. Hill’s original cut.

But if one is ever released, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious to see it. Now, “enjoy” this truly awful trailer for the film.  The musical choices, none of which were in the film itself, really do no services for this already flawed film:

Interestingly, as I looked around YouTube, I found this, the alternate ending for the film.  I vaguely recall finding this on the DVD release mentioned earlier, and it features a far darker ending than the recut theatrical release:

Finally, this is another interesting cut sequence from the film.  Again, I’m getting vibes of Prometheus here, when the cast first meets up with the alien engineer creature. Perhaps its just me:

Movies

Men In Black III (2012) a (mildly) belated review

I love reading reviews of movies, books, and music, the three forms of entertainment that most occupy my increasingly minimal free time.  With reviews one can, at best, glean an interesting insight into the creative work, be it what elements make it a success or, conversely, where the creative minds behind the work may have lost their way.  At worst, reading a review involves wasting only a few minutes of your time but almost always gives you an insight into someone else’s thought process. After many years, I’ve no doubt read many thousands of reviews.  Interestingly enough, there are parts of only two reviews that I can quote almost verbatim, small sentence length thoughts that to my mind perfectly captured the flaws of two particular movies.

The first such review came from a local TV personality who was reviewing the 1989 James Cameron directed film The Abyss.  While he loved most of the film, he had this to say:  “Watching The Abyss is like seeing a runner have the race of his life, well ahead of all competitors, but stumbles and falls only a few feet away from the finish line.”  To me, that was The Abyss in a nutshell, a potentially great film hobbled by a muddled ending.  An ending made no better by the extended version offered in the home video release.

The other such film was the original 1997 Men In Black.  Upon seeing it, a now forgotten (by me) critic stated this film felt like watching “an extended preview of a great film.”  The original Men In Black, to me, felt exactly like that.  The movie had some astonishing special effects, a truly bizarre, almost Looney Tune level craziness, but the film felt…undernourished.  It was like going into a restaurant expecting a heavy buffet but being served a chocolate bar.  There should have been more there there.

The movie’s sequel, released in 2002, was considered by many less of the same: Another wild and crazy special effects extravaganza…but with less of a story than the original film.  It seemed like the whole Men In Black franchise was done…until this year.

There were some scary rumors concerning the creation of Men In Black III.  Most frightful was that there was word filming began without a complete script.  The budget of the film was also very extravagant, rumored to be well over 200 million dollars.  Add to the fact that the last film in the series came out some ten years before and you couldn’t help but wonder if the film was a fiasco in the making.

In the end, the film did well, grossing some $600 million worldwide and earning a very healthy 70% positive rating among critics and a similar 72% positive rating among audiences at Rotten Tomatoes.

Having finally seen the film, I would tend to go positive.  Strangely enough this film, even though filming was supposedly started without a full script, feels the most complete of the three Men In Black films, story wise.  Yes, you still get those wacky aliens and even wackier special effects, but the story feels far more complete and features Agent J (Will Smith) going back in time to the late 1960’s to save his partner Agent K (played in the present by Tommy Lee Jones and in the past by Josh Brolin) from being killed and wiped out of time.

No, the story isn’t some kind of blazingly original concept…in fact, it seems most filmed time travel stories nowadays involve the old “going back in time to kill someone so they don’t exist in the future” saw.  In fact, we saw this similar plotline in Looper, also released this year.

Still, I have to give Men In Black III credit:  It is a generally fun and breezy film, the type where you put your mind in neutral and let things happen and, if you don’t think about it too much, you should have a good time.  On the other hand, I kind of hope this is the last of the Men In Black films.  As enjoyable as this film was, I couldn’t help but feel the premise is a little used up.  Worse, Tommy Lee Jones looked really old and uninterested in the whole thing this time around.  Given how truncated his role was in favor of Josh Brolin, one can’t help but wonder if he did this film more as a favor/paycheck than anything else.

The bottom line is this: Men in Black III turns out to be a surprisingly good popcorn film despite the by now familiarity audiences may have to this particular subject matter and whatever intrigue happened behind the camera.  If you’ve got an hour and a half to kill, you could do far, far worse than spend some time with the Men In Black.

(The trailer below, by the way, features a sequence involving a grafitti artist.  This scene was not in the home video cut of the film I saw)

Movies

Safe House (2012) a (mildly) belated review

What’s worse:  (a) A low budget film featuring a cast of unknowns in what turns out to be a mediocre to poorly conceived action/adventure story or…

(b) A very big budget film featuring well established actors in what also turns out to be a mediocre to poorly conceived action/adventure story?

For me, (b) will always be worse.  In the case of (a) I tend to go easier on the people before or behind the cameras for I suspect they had to deal with more difficulties regarding creative choices…if only because of budgetary limitations.

But with films like Safe House, one comes away wondering what it was that drew all this talent and big money to make what turned out to be a very predictable and ultimately disappointingly mediocre film.  How predictable was Safe House?  Let me put it this way:  If you can’t figure out who the “real” bad guy is the very moment he first appears on the screen, you’re clearly a movie newbie.

The film’s plot goes like this:  Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is a young CIA agent stationed in South Africa whose job it is to sit bored for hour after hour at a secret CIA “safe house” and await any sort of “company” company.  He’s little more than a high tech housekeeper as he’s been at this obviously very boring job for a few months now and nothing has happened there.  In the brief glimpses we have of him, we’re to understand he’s itching to move up the CIA ranks.

Meanwhile, we’re introduced to Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), a renegade ex-CIA agent wanted for treason who appears in South Africa, contacts an ex-MI6 agent, and is given some kind of microchip with some kind of “explosive” information on it.  Before he can leave clean with his prize, he is assaulted by a mysterious group of killers and is forced to retreat into an American Embassy and admit who he is.  From there, he is cuffed and taken to, you guessed it, Weston’s safe house and soon all hell breaks loose and the young agent has to move the seasoned (and dangerous) ex-agent/traitor away from the killers.

The movie strives to be perhaps a more “serious” attempt at something along the lines of the Bourne films, but the action sequences never really resonate and, after the first fifteen or so minutes, the film falls into a groove and never really rises or falls below that level.  We move from one scene to the next and are never as invested in the characters or the situation as we should be.  Ultimately, the film climaxes in another safe house and the “real” bad guys -you know, the one’s you should have figured out a very long time ago- are revealed and…well… it doesn’t really amount to all that much.

While Safe House is certainly not a terrible film, it never engages or surprises.  It never rises above being another mediocre action film, in spite of the big budget and A-list cast.  What a disappointment.

Movies

The Expendables 2 (2012) a (mildly) belated review

So you have this old friend who tells you a new story involving people from your youth.  This story plays on nostalgia and features plenty of old faces in familiar situations.  By the end of the story, you smile.  You’ve enjoyed yourself perhaps a little more than you would have because of the nostalgia value.  The story presented, after all, wasn’t all that earth-shattering or, to be blunt, particularly good.

But the nostalgia had you.

That’s the way I felt about the first Expendables film released back in 2010.  It wasn’t a great film, in fact I felt that the almost concurrently released The Losers featured roughly the same concept (a motley group of modern warriors) but, in fact, had an overall slightly better story.  Still, I enjoyed The Expendables more because, again, of the nostalgia.  I loved seeing Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger share the screen together, even if their collaboration in the film amounted to about five minutes of movie time, if that.

With the success of The Expendables, a sequel was a natural, and this time around a greater effort was made to show more of what the audience demanded.  Thus, instead of a few minute cameo, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger share considerable more screen time (and actually fire weapons!) in The Expendables 2.  And if that wasn’t enough, the movie increased your ’80’s action stars quotient by adding Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme (effectively menacing as the movie’s villain, a character named…Vilain) to the mix.

…but…

It didn’t work as well for me.  Despite the fact that I feel The Expendables 2 is an overall better movie than the first Expendables, that nostalgic feeling I had has since dissipated and I’m left focusing more on the film before me rather than the thrill of seeing all these older actors together.

And, frankly, the film only worked in spurts.  The opening was pretty good, if a little too (CGI) gory.  Then we get a long slow buildup to the main story and…well…there’s not much there there.  Something about plutonium buried away and forgotten and the villain trying to get it out in a hurry (no real explanation for why) which leads to the heroes chasing said villain until a final, bloody, confrontation.  It all plays out like a video game, with the bad guys having a near army of red shirts ready to bite the dust with no real repercussions felt (bad guys, after all, have no family or friends!).

The Expendables 2 is a mediocre action film, alas, a return trip that may charm (if that’s the right word!) those who still have those feelings of nostalgia for the heroes of the ’80’s.  Others may have less patience.

Movies

Killdozer (1974) a (very) belated review

I saw Killdozer exactly one time before yesterday.  Back when I first saw this film, I was an 8 year old boy and it aired for the first time in 1974 on television.  Despite the fact that thirty eight (OH MY GOD!!!!) years have since passed, I still had memories of this film.

When I got my DVR setup, I put the film under the que, to record whenever it might show up.  A couple of years passed and the film never did show up on any channels.  Then, a few days ago, I casually made a search of the film on Amazon and, to my surprise, the film was available as a “manufactured on demand” DVD via Universal.

After thirty eight years (CHRIST I’M OLD!!!), I had a chance to finally see this film from start to finish.

Would it live up to my childhood memories?  Would it still be the suspenseful film that eight year old enjoyed so much back then?

Frankly, I was expecting the worst.  I had a couple of memories of the film -three to be exact (including the ending)- but I couldn’t help but fear that this long-forgotten-by-most film might not have aged particularly well over time.

As it turned out, I was pleasantly surprised.

No, Killdozer isn’t one of the best of the “machines gone homicidal” suspense sub-genre…I still feel the Steven Spielberg’s 1971 breakout movie (and probable influence to Killdozer) Duel is the best of the lot there, but the movie is still quite entertaining.

Based on a short story (and teleplay) by noted sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon, the plot of Killdozer is simplicity itself:  On an island off the coast of Africa a group of six construction workers have been tasked with clearing a section of the island.  The group is led by Lloyd Kelly (Clint Walker, still as tall and massive as a mountain), a man who drives his workers perhaps a little too hard.  There is some resentment among his men, but nothing terribly serious until their main bulldozer rams a meteorite and Mack McCarthy (a very young Robert Urich in one of his earlier roles) is fatally burned by the radiation (or whatever) emitted by bulldozer slamming into the rock.

Things go from bad to worse quickly as the bulldozer begins operating on its own.  Isolated on this island, the construction crew rapidly comes to the realization that the bulldozer has a homicidal mind of its own and that they must somehow stop the machine before it kills them all.

As I said before, I came into watching Killdozer after all these years (whimper) fearing the worst.  I’ll grant you that modern audiences may find the pace of this film wanting.  Further, this being a TV movie there is virtually no gore (and not a single drop of blood) at all to be found.  Still, the implied brutality of various crew members’ deaths shocked me as a child (particularly the first person to actually fall to the “kill” dozer).

All in all, I’d recommend this film to those who, like me, have a fondness for these type of films and are forgiving toward the pace of films from the past.  Killdozer may not quite live up to Duel, but it is worth a look-see.

Movies

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) a (very mildly) belated review

Having caught up with many of the “must see” films recently released, I had a chance to explore some recent vintage films that were a little farther down on my radar yet intrigued me.  None did so more than the 2012 romantic comedy/sci fi (?) film Safety Not Guaranteed.

Written by Derek Connolly and directed by Colin Trevorrow, Safety Not Guaranteed concerns a (at first) obnoxious journalist for a Seattle magazine who takes two geeky interns off to a nearby coastal town to find and investigate the man who posted a strange notice in the want ads concerning looking for a companion to time travel with.  The second to the last line of the want ad states that “safety not guaranteed”.

Without giving too much away, we quickly find that the outwardly obnoxious lead journalist, Jeff (Jake Johnson) could care less about this assignment and, in reality, asked to do it so that he could reconnect with an old love of his that lives in that town.  Thus the main investigator of this story becomes the shy and (possibly) damaged Darius (Aubrey Plaza) who, after finding and befriending Kenneth (Mark Duplass), the man behind the mysterious ad, begins to wonder if perhaps he’s not quite as crazy as he seems.

I really liked most of this movie.  It had a great independent vibe to it and, despite presenting some of the typical “romantic comedy” tropes (in particular the “main character gets close to other main character for secret reasons and falls in love but when the secret is revealed will love survive?!”), the movie nonetheless delivers plenty of fresh material and oddball situations to keep us involved in the story’s progression.

If there’s a complaint to be made, and it is a minor one to me, it is that the film’s ending felt a little too…obvious.  I wish that instead of giving us such a concrete ending the filmmakers had instead offered us a more ambiguous conclusion that hinted to the possibility of Kenneth being right but also left the door open to him maybe being…off.  In the end, love can still conquer all.

Having said that, let me reiterate:  It is a minor complaint and Safety Not Guaranteed is certainly worthy of your attention.  Recommended.

Movies

The Unknown (1927) a (ludicrously) belated review

A few days ago I reviewed the “recreated” version of the Tod Browning/Lon Chaney lost film London After Midnight (read the review here, if you are curious).  Yesterday I finally saw the film the duo made just before that film, The Unknown.

The Unknown, running a mere 63 minutes, is probably one of the most twisted love stories you’re likely to run up against.  Director/Writer Tod Browning was known to make some pretty bizarre films, and while this one isn’t quite as bizarre as, say, his 1932 film Freaks, it certainly falls within the ballpark, at least with regard to setting.

For The Unknown, like Freaks, features a circus setting.  In this case, there are no actual “freaks”, though Lon Chaney stars as Alonzo, a man seemingly without arms who specializes in trick shots and throwing knives…with his feet.  Mr. Chaney’s work in the film is nothing short of astonishing.  I doubt there are many actors today who could portray Alonzo as well as he did and with as much dexterity in the use of his feet as surrogate arms.

As for the plot of the movie, Alonzo is in love with his assistant/target, Nanon, played by legendary actress Joan Crawford in one of her earlier roles.  My own personal greatest exposure to Ms. Crawford was through her work from roughly the very late thirties/early forties and on, so it was pretty eye opening to see her in her formative years.  Ms. Crawford’s Nanon is the object of affection to the scheming Alonzo, who we quickly find out is a criminal on the lam that actually has both arms.  In one of the movie’s greatest scenes, we are given a look at how Alonzo (and Chaney, of course) “hides” his arms and makes it appear he is armless.

Alonzo loves Nanon but Nanon has feelings for the Circus’ strongman, Malabar (Norman Kerry).  However, she also has psychological issues regarding men.  She hates the way men try to “paw” her with their arms, and therefore feels safe around Alonzo (who, as noted, appears not to have any arms and therefore cannot “touch” her).  Meanwhile, whenever Malabar tries to take her in his arms, she is repulsed.  One gets the feeling, purely by implication, that Nanon suffered some kind of sexual abuse in her past and it may be why she has such trouble “giving in” to her love of Malabar.  Of course, this opens the door for Alonzo to try to gain control of her, acting as a friend to Malabar and Nanon while working to keep them apart and ultimately bring Nanon to his side.

Pretty wild stuff.

I don’t want to get into the big plot twist toward the later half of the film, but suffice to say it is a doozy and shows the lengths Alonzo goes to to try to win Nanon’s heart.  Though he is clearly the “bad guy” of the feature, Lon Chaney’s Alonzo winds up being surprisingly sympathetic, especially in the scene where Nanon announces her love (and upcoming marriage) to Malabar.  The mix of grief, anger, and, yes, utter madness shown by Mr. Chaney in that one take is a thing of acting beauty.  Though Mr. Chaney may be known to some more for his incredible make up work in features such as London After Midnight or The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Phantom of the Opera, there is little doubt he was an extraordinary actor.

Do I recommend this film?  To film fans, absolutely, though I recognize modern audiences may find it difficult to sit though this relatively short film because it unwinds at a much slower pace to modern films.  Regardless, if you’re curious to see the great Lon Chaney at his most devious and Joan Crawford at her most beautiful, by all means give The Unknown a look.