Three Films Make A Post: A simple trip to Mars will become the journey of a lifetime

Kung Fu Elliot (2014): Depending on one’s position this film about Newfoundland’s very own self-made action hero and delusional dreamer turned manipulative asshole is either a pretty dull mockumentary (for once, I like the this term for a movie), or a documentary made by filmmakers who are either manipulative sociopaths themselves or completely incompetent. The filmmakers seem to insist on this being an actual documentary, which makes them look terrible: either, they begin a documentary with no research whatsoever on a subject, or they know things they only disclose to some of their subjects later own for maximum cinematic impact while egging on a guy who certainly is a manipulative liar but also psychologically not well at all, only to turn on him with the most hypocritical moral outrage imaginable.

If I had made this, I’d insist on it just being a very dull fake variant on American Movie, but if people insist on looking bad, who am I to disagree?

The Housemaid aka Hanyo (1960): I’m rather less happy I didn’t find much to connect with in Kim Ki-young’s classic of South Korean cinema. This is, after all a highly influential film on many of my favourite filmmakers from the country. Sometimes, I can appreciate the subversiveness of the film, and nod sagely at its social criticism, but for much of the running time, I found myself appalled at the melodramatic gyrations of plot and characters, none of which ever rang true to me even in the heightened realm of the emotional eleven this takes place in.

On an abstract level, Kim’s filmmaking is clearly stylistically very interesting indeed, but at this point in my movie watching career not in a way that works for me.

Cocaine Bear (2023): Then there’s this thing, a movie about a cocaine snorting serial killing bear that somehow manages to contain more continuity problems and gaffes than any film not shot in a backyard has any right to have. Also there and accounted for are gratingly unfunny humour, acting that’s all over the place and a script that’s trite, in love with an intelligence that’s never actually on display, and full of amateurish pacing problems.

From time to time, director Elizabeth Banks stumbles upon a cool gore gag or two, or manages to get a decent character note out of a cast – Keri Russell, Ray Liotta in his final role, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and so on – that could and should do so much more. Of course, as weirdly as this thing is edited, I’m not convinced coherent and great performances haven’t been left on the cutting room floor.

Three Films Make A Post: They Live the Sweet Life But They Play a Game of Sudden Death!

Antiviral (2012): Brandon Cronenberg's Weird SF horror piece surely is a very accomplished film, walking the line between strangeness, repulsion and attraction with great care. My problem with the film is how little there is to differentiate it from a mid-period piece of the director's father David; Antiviral may have a personality, but it seems to be the one of David, not Brandon Cronenberg. It's a rather confusing state of affairs when the son makes movies that are more like his father's films than those his father now makes, and I'm not completely sure what to think about that.

Mama (2013): I would have loved to love Andrés Muschietti's feature film enlargement of his own short film as produced by the always welcome and enthusiastic Guillermo del Toro. The film's basic plot idea is certainly intriguing, and the acting's certainly fine (particularly from Jessica Chastain and the child actors), however, the film doesn't really have any idea how to develop that basic idea into an interesting story. My, it's as if someone was trying to turn a short film into a feature without actually having enough substance to work with. Worse, Mama stumbles badly when a horror movie can least afford to stumble, in the horror set-pieces. Those scenes turn out entirely predictable, and even manage to be barely creepy at all, centring as they are on what never looks like anything but a bad special effect.

Dark Skies (2013): Speaking of horror films with fine performances by their female leads (in this case Keri Russell who seems to get a minor second career wind playing brittle yet capable women) that are completely let down by their supposedly horrifying scenes, Scott Stewart's Dark Skies comes to mind, though, given that Stewart directed Priest and Legion, an uninvolving piece of mediocrity like this is still a step up in quality for him. Dark Skies does Mama one better (or rather worse) in that its horror scenes aren't only not creepy, frightening, horrifying or exciting but more than once merrily jump over the line separating the creepy from the unintentionally hilarious.

The rest is an alien abduction movie by numbers, with a little (but only a little) added spice in form of the economically obvious "oh no! the working rich stop being rich when they lose their jobs" dance working class people may feel an impulse to sneer at, but demonstrating little imagination otherwise.

Technorati-Markierungen: canadian movies,american movies,in short,sf,horror,brandon cronenberg,andrés muschietti,scott stewart,jessica chastain,keri russell