Archive for January 2007
The Hitcher, as slasher films often do,
opens with a this-could-be-you! statistic – about annual fatalities
on highways. Not necessarily hitchhiker-related fatalities, mind you.
Not even how many serial-killer victims have been found near
highways. Just, you know, a factoid about driving dangers that the
filmmakers deemed relevant to the movie because, well, both involve
roads, I guess.
It’s just as silly as the now-yearslong Hollywood
trend to churn out horror-flick remakes, one whose numbers are making
each successive redo’s worthiness more tiresome to debate. But
here’s the most recent’s rundown: The Hitcher 2007, the directorial
debut of music-vid veteran Dave Meyers, is a nearly scene-by-scene
re-creation of the 1986 original. Written by Eric Bernt (Romeo Must
Die) and Jake Wade Wall (2006’s When a Stranger Calls) – with a
giant credit to the first movie’s scripter, Eric Red – the new
Hitcher swaps the lone, mousy traveler played by C. Thomas Howell for
Grace (Sophia Bush) and Jim (Zachary Knighton), a hot, young, blank
couple going away on spring break. They nearly hit a stranded
motorist (Sean Bean) in the middle of a rainy night; Jim wants to
help him out, but Grace refuses. When they stop at a gas station
shortly afterward, however, they run into the guy again, and when the
dopey cashier suggests Jim give him a lift, Jim’s too much of a wuss
to refuse. Kids, meet John Ryder, the psychopathic stranger your
parents apparently never warned you about.
Bean, scruffy and squinty,
certainly doesn’t look like the friendly type, but he doesn’t come
close to capturing Rutger Hauer’s inhuman, flat-out batshit chill as
his villain hunts the pair in nearly supernatural ways. Like the
original, you don’t have to completely buy the new Hitcher to feel
its tension. Meyers keeps the action unrelenting from beginning to
end, always shot snugly to mirror the characters’ predicament of
seemingly having no safe place to turn. The director does make a few
odd, laughable choices, such as morphing Grace into an expertly
arms-wielding Terminator. Vying the introductory stat for most
head-scratching disconnect, however, is a spectacular and particular
deadly chase that’s set to Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” — all the
way up to “I wanna fuck you like an animal.” It’s a small but
persuasive argument for leaving well enough alone.
copyright 2007 themoviebabe.com
1995’s calling; it wants its cell phone back.
Inspired by a true story; promoted by a
misleading ad campaign. Primeval, as you may now know, isn’t about
an African “serial killer” who’s taken 300-plus lives and remains
lurking. It’s about a crocodile. And to openly compare it to the
likes of Ted Bundy and BTK is just – how do I put this – stupid.
To further disappointment filmgoers expecting a slasher, Primeval
doesn’t even focus exclusively on the croc, instead trying to be a
looks-and-brains girl by mixing politics with its gore a la its big
stepsister, Blood Diamond. Don’t balk just yet, though: This at least
doubles the ways in which the annoying lead characters may die.
Catwoman writers – I should give up here, shouldn’t I – John D.
Brancato and Michael Ferris put American television journalists Tim
(Dominic Purcell), Aviva (Brooke Langton), and Steven (Orlando Jones)
in South Africa to report on the freshwater murderer dubbed Gustave.
Tim is dour and arrogant. Amazingly, perpetually wearing his shirts
half-unbuttoned isn’t the most irritating thing about Tim: He’s
condescending to Aviva because she’s pretty and a relative newcomer,
and is downright floored when he finds out she attended Columbia.
Aviva, on the other hand, is perhaps the most naive journo ever, some
breed who will risk her life to save a puppy and has no clue that the
natives’ civil war might put them in danger, too. Meanwhile,
cameraman Steven is the intended comic relief, somehow getting the
only lines that pass Dialogue 101. (For an example of the rest, how
about a wounded African boy muttering, “I catch Gustave. Maybe he
take me to America!”)
Though the cinematography is gorgeous from
the start – Primeval was actually filmed in South Africa –
first-time feature director Michael Katleman seems to have dropped
the ball at first, employing the shaky-camera, low-budget style of
sorta-showing a monster attack. We do eventually see the croc in its
entertaining entirety, however, with Katleman adding a couple of
unique touches to the gruesomeness (wait ’till you see one dude’s
head pop). And the corruption and brutality of the local government,
which keeps a gun-scoped eye on the crew, is, admittedly, an
interesting story in itself – it just belongs in another movie. As,
perhaps, do you.
copyright 2007 themoviebabe.com
Who wants to get a new tattoo?
A dumb name and Justin Timberlake may
sound like two good reasons to avoid Alpha Dog, another apparent
yawn about bitches, drugs, and wannabe thugs. Yet writer-director
Nick Cassavetes pushes Mr. SexyBack and the rest of his young cast to
fine, layered performances in a script that transcends what-up-yo
cliche.
Alpha Dog is – for real this time – based on the true
story of Jesse James Hollywood, a murder suspect who became one of
the FBI’s youngest Most Wanted and had eluded authorities right up
until the movie went into post-production. (Hollywood attempted to block the film’s release.) Hollywood’s filmic persona is
Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch), a midlevel dealer who’s supplied by
his father (Bruce Willis) and enjoys a hedonistic lifestyle with
friends and hangers-on in suburban L.A. The group, including the
goofy Frankie (Timberlake), devoted Elvis (Shawn Hatosy), and more
reluctant Tiko (Fernando Vargas), may crack a few skulls when
necessary, but they get themselves into deep shit when they
impulsively kidnap 15-year-old Zack (Anton Yelchin). Zack’s the
younger half-brother of Jake (Ben Foster), a tweaker who owes Johnny
about a thousand bucks.
Frankie and company think the hostage thing’s
just a lark, especially when Zack, having been coddled by his mom
(Sharon Stone), starts having a great time hanging out with
everybody. Johnny starts getting nervous, though, and one call to his
lawyer confirms the gravity of the situation.
Cassavettes, who claims that his script is 95 percent accurate, adds a car-crash
element by noting not only the dates and times of certain scenes but
by pausing action to label every future witness as the story unfolds.
The director does go a bit too far with the gimmicry, using
techniques such as splits screens and hypercolorization that distract
instead of amping the drama.
No matter, the actors leave you riveted
anyway, asking that the characters be inherently seen as likable kids
instead of felons: Timberlake is impressively natural in his biggest
role to date; Hirsch, as always, is magnetic as the bad boy who shows
hints of discomfort with his lifestyle; and Foster is flat-out
terrific playing the bugged-out Jake, often looking like he’s going
to bust out of his skin when, say, telling his boss that he’s
“totally. fucking. straight!” Nick, you’re officially forgiven
for The Notebook.
copyright 2007 themoviebabe.com
You’re never going to win this staring contest, little girl
Pan’s Labyrinth is one fairy tale whose
characters won’t accompany Happy Meals. Not for the kiddies is
writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s masterpiece, an intricate epic
in which an 11-year-old girl’s escapist fantasies are set against the
reality of fascist rule in 1944 Spain.
For Ofelia (Ivana Baquero),
the tyranny begins at home: She and her pregnant mother, Carmen
(Ariadna Gil), have moved to a rural military post to live with her
stepfather, Capitan Vidal (Sergi Lopez), an officer in
Franco’s army. One to kill first and question later, the captain
values Carmen only for the boy he’s sure she’s carrying and is openly
disdainful of his bookworm stepdaughter, who refuses to call him
father despite her submissive and sick mother’s argument that “it’s
only a word.” So Ofelia, though often scared silly in the captain’s
old creaky house, welcomes the way-more-terrifying adventures she’s
invited on after she excitedly pegs a praying mantis as a fairy.
Like
del Toro’s previous film, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth is painted in
shades of red, bleak, and blue, the latter suggesting a perpetual
twilight as Ofelia meets and obeys the orders of a monsterish faun
(Doug Jones) who says that, upon completion of his tasks, a royal
fate awaits her in an underground realm. The movie is brutally
violent, chillingly beautiful, and utterly original – del Toro, in
one of his nightmarish villains, has rendered one of the most
memorable images to hit a screen – as it follows the struggles of
good versus evil in both worlds.
Lopez, too, is unforgettable
as the frighteningly unflinching captain, his dark eyes occasionally
belying flickers of doubt in his character’s otherwise square-jawed,
stern facade as he, say, confronts Ofelia or realizes a political
resistance has developed from within his own home. But this is
Ofelia’s story, and Baquero is a worthy anchor: Old enough to rebel
yet still quite naive, wide-eyed, and desperate for grown-up
guidance, Baquero’s heroine is contradictory and expressive as she
grasps for a magical ending to her real-life unhappiness. Her books
have prepared her for the fantastic underworld she meets here; there
hasn’t been a film that’s done the same for us.
copyright 2007 themoviebabe.com
You’re never going to win this staring contest, little girl
Pan’s Labyrinth is one fairy tale whose
characters won’t accompany Happy Meals. Not for the kiddies is
writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s masterpiece, an intricate epic
in which an 11-year-old girl’s escapist fantasies are set against the
reality of fascist rule in 1944 Spain.
For Ofelia (Ivana Baquero),
the tyranny begins at home: She and her pregnant mother, Carmen
(Ariadna Gil), have moved to a rural military post to live with her
stepfather, Capitan Vidal (Sergi Lopez), an officer in
Franco’s army. One to kill first and question later, the captain
values Carmen only for the boy he’s sure she’s carrying and is openly
disdainful of his bookworm stepdaughter, who refuses to call him
father despite her submissive and sick mother’s argument that “it’s
only a word.” So Ofelia, though often scared silly in the captain’s
old creaky house, welcomes the way-more-terrifying adventures she’s
invited on after she excitedly pegs a praying mantis as a fairy.
Like
del Toro’s previous film, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth is painted in
shades of red, bleak, and blue, the latter suggesting a perpetual
twilight as Ofelia meets and obeys the orders of a monsterish faun
(Doug Jones) who says that, upon completion of his tasks, a royal
fate awaits her in an underground realm. The movie is brutally
violent, chillingly beautiful, and utterly original – del Toro, in
one of his nightmarish villains, has rendered one of the most
memorable images to hit a screen – as it follows the struggles of
good versus evil in both worlds.
Lopez, too, is unforgettable
as the frighteningly unflinching captain, his dark eyes occasionally
belying flickers of doubt in his character’s otherwise square-jawed,
stern facade as he, say, confronts Ofelia or realizes a political
resistance has developed from within his own home. But this is
Ofelia’s story, and Baquero is a worthy anchor: Old enough to rebel
yet still quite naive, wide-eyed, and desperate for grown-up
guidance, Baquero’s heroine is contradictory and expressive as she
grasps for a magical ending to her real-life unhappiness. Her books
have prepared her for the fantastic underworld she meets here; there
hasn’t been a film that’s done the same for us.
copyright 2007 themoviebabe.com
He’s, like, trying to kill us or something!
Funny that the maniac in the holiday
gorefest Black Christmas has a taste for tearing people’s eyes out –
it might just make you wish the guy would pay you a visit not long
after the opening credits roll. Sadly, writer-director Glen Morgan’s
remake of 1974’s original isn’t even the worst horror movie of recent
months; that doesn’t mean, however, that your mind won’t wander to
less mundane activities, such as cleaning up every last pine needle
dropped by your bone-dry Christmas tree.
Morgan, who has done some
fine, funny work as the scripter for Final Destinations 1 and 3 and
writer-director for 2003’s Willard, has uncharacteristically whiffed
here in adapting and adding to Roy Moore’s old screenplay. Billy
(Robert Mann) is the dude who makes the young girls cry, an escaped
mental patient (aren’t they all) who wears not a mask but a jaundiced
face from the liver disease that made his mother (Karin Konoval) hate
him (yeah – perhaps the caricatured boozehound was hoping she’d
given birth to a future donor).
This family 411 is already more
background than the first movie offered, but it goes on – and on
and on. Different characters are tasked with long, awkward
expositions about the freak who once was kept locked in the attic of
the very house where a bunch of blank sorority sisters are currently
ho-ho-ho-ing. (Among the recognizable actors are Lacey Chabert and
Michelle Tratchenberg, though it should be said that the cast is
uniformly bad.) But a hole can only be filled so much. Really, do you
need to know anything else once a murderer is shown baking a family
member’s flesh into Christmas cookies?
Worse than hearing about
Billy’s entire permanent record are master-of-the-obvious lines such
as “He’s in the attic!” (after somebody, while pointing upward,
twice calls the cell phone of one of the missing that can be heard up
above them) and typical but too-ridiculously drawn slasher-movie
cliches, such as the bad guy’s apparent teleporting abilities and
targets who are way, way dumber than usual. Morgan does get a
bronze-plated star for pulling off a few creepy visuals of the
stalker, and – well, actually that’s about it.
copyright 2007 themoviebabe.com
