Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark

 Today I return to the Horror/Suspense genre with the Guillermo del Toro  produced creep-fest called 'Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark'.  The film is a re-imagining of a 1973 TV movie of the same name starring absolutely no one you've ever heard of. However, the idea must have seemed good enough for someone of Del Toro's caliber to sweep in and re-write the script to make a major motion picture out of. I'm sad to say that I was not very impressed.

Guillermo Del Toro is the mind behind masterpieces such as The Devil's Backbone  and  Pan's Labyrinth, so I was more than willing to give 'Don't be Afraid of the Dark' a chance. Starring Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce, and also starring Bailee Madison as Sally, the little girl caught up in the madness of the ancient creatures living in the house her father and his girlfriend are renovating.

After they find a hidden cellar, Sally starts hearing the whisperings of small creatures coming through the heavily latched ash pit. They speak to her of friendship and tell her that her father doesn't care about her and they convince her to come down to the cellar and open the ash pit door and let them out. Big mistake, obviously. The creatures seem to be stalking and chasing Sally and doing grievous bodily harm to any and all who stand in their way. The rest is supposed to be a skin crawling attempt for Sally to convince her father and his girlfriend that these creatures actually do exist before it is too late.

I wanted so much to be utterly terrified of this film and its creepy miniature demons. Obviously there were several excellent scares and a few scenes where the suspense was masterfully executed. However, on the whole, it was far too much set up and not enough climax. There was several story elements about the creatures that could have been used but were not. The story of the creatures claims that they feed on the teeth of children (which is a terrifying thought) but it is never used as a plot device aside from the beginning of the movie where a man smashes out his own teeth to hopefully appease the demons so he can get his child back. I wanted more of that! But no dice.

There is always one part of a Guillermo del Toro movie that is never less than the best. The beast with the eyes in his hands from Pan's Labyrinth, all the creatures from Hellboy, and the demon creatures from Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark. The creatures are absolutely stunning. They scamper in the dark, they shy away from light, they whisper from behind your ear and they look like the most terrifying thing you can imagine.

So in the end, the movie lacked proper pacing and dragged out for what seemed like an eternity until the all too quick final attack. I liked the creatures and I also liked the acting, even so much as to say that I liked Katie Holmes. Unfortunately the movie failed to capture my full attention and failed to scare me. This movie should by all means give you nightmares and having an R rating should allow the filmmakers to be more gruesome and frightening but they held back and I think it hurt the final product.

I give 'Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark' 5 out of 10 teeth and I hope, this season, scary movies start living up to the genre that they belong in.

The Tree Of Life

To begin this review I must explain my love of cinema. I have always been pretty easily distracted and hyperactive and the only thing that really grabs me is movies. I am a sucker for story and also the beauty of what I am watching. There are several movies I have seen recently that the critics have quite simply slammed: The Green Lantern, Sucker Punch to name a few. Obviously, in my reviews I have stated that I disagree with the critics, and my friends like to suggest that the reason for this is simply that I do not dislike any movie for any reason. Also, I do not know of a movie that I will not watch or love because of a certain style or genre. I love films from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Fight Club to Pi to A Clockwork Orange. I have no problem with art-house movies or Independent films. In fact, I like quite a few of them. It is with great pride in my love for movies that I declare.... The Tree of Life sucked.

Directed by Terrance Malick (The New World, The Thin Red Line) and starring Brad Pitt (Thelma & Louise, Cool World), The Tree of Life is about a man, Sean Penn (who spends probably ten minutes on the screen in a 138 minute film), who remembers his childhood with an abusive father, on what appears to be the anniversary of his brother's death.... I guess.

Penn's character Jack brooding over the past

The movie begins with the father (Brad Pitt) and mother (Jessica Chastain) finding out that their child is dead. The emotion conjured up by Pitt is phenomenal and is captured beautifully by Malick. Jump to present time and Penn's character, Jack,  then begins to think about the first time he knew he loved his brother and the flashback begins. Starting at Jack's birth, which he can apparently remember vividly, we are shown in extensive detail the raising of him and after you can stand it absolutely no longer, the second child is born.

Here is where there was a 10-15 minute sequence involving scenes that appeared to come from the History Channel's Universe series and morphs into scenes from Planet Earth. Seriously guys, it lasts for a significant amount of time. It lasts for so long that you think the projectionist is playing a cruel trick on you, and then the Loch Ness Monster shows up and eventually dinosaurs. Yeah, dinosaurs. It appears it is symbolizing the beginning of life and it was absolutely beautiful, but it had no place in a period piece movie like this. Especially considering that nothing like it happens again in the movie.

Father realizing one of his sons shares his love for music

From here we are subjected to the beginning of a story which sees the children learning that their father is verbally abusive towards their mother and beginning to abuse them as well. Jack soon learns that their father has formed a special bond with the younger brother in the form of a love for music, curbing the cruelty towards the brother, which in turn makes Jack very jealous. Beginning to take on traits of the father, he begins to act out and become violent towards the brother. This part of the film has all the components needed to tell an excellent story about love, betrayal, redemption, death and understanding. The only problem is that none of that happens. There is literally no story or coherent plot involved in this movie.

Real quick I'll explain what a story consists of. A story has a beginning, a middle, the climax, and then an end. The Tree of Life seems only to have a beginning. No plot was ever outlined, no questions ever answered, no resolution ever made. It was a two hour and eighteen minute excuse for Terrance Malick to beautifully film Brad Pitt, achieving absolutely nothing and leaving the audience confused.

There are only a few things that I noticed worth mentioning that brought the movie up in my opinion and they are all about the actual film production or the acting. The emotion in the movie was breathtaking. Brad Pitt gives an excellent performance which I'm quite certain will earn him a nomination.  Cinematography was beautiful, but also at times distracting from what would be the story, but since I stated earlier that there was no story, it seams plausible that Malick understood that the distraction was necessary.

But in the end you're left with too many questions to call this a good movie. You never find out what happened to the brother, how he died, or why. You don't get a clear idea of what conclusion Penn's character comes to about these thoughts of childhood. Everything is shrouded in symbolism (symbology) to the point of utter incomprehensibility.

I give The Tree of Life 4 dinosaurs out of 10 for being a brilliantly shot and acted film about nothing.

Green Lantern

 "In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight
Let those who worship evil’s might,
Beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!"

Abin Sur is the best Green Lantern the Corp has ever known. He is the protector of sector 2814 and has successfully captured the greatest threat the galaxy has ever known: Parallax. The Green Lanterns are a space police organized by the Guardians, who have harnessed the green energy of willpower (the greatest source of energy known) and forged 3600 rings, one for each sector of the universe and have chosen a bearer from each sector to be a Green Lantern, a soldier to defeat evil. Parallax has harnessed the yellow energy of fear and broken loose from his cage only to return to sector 2814 and kill Abin Sur.  Mortally wounded, Abin Sur crash lands on earth and he entrusts the green power of his ring to choose a worthy successor to take his place as the next Green Lantern before he dies.

The ring of course, chooses Hal Jordan, played by Ryan Reynolds, a laid back, often lazy and thoughtless fighter pilot without focus or the ability to be serious. Whisked away to the crash site, Jordan is given his ring and lantern, which charges the ring.  He is informed that the ring chooses who will wear it next and that it only chooses the best. He is told to speak the oath (the beginning of this review) into the lantern and accept the responsibility that it holds.  Whisked away once more, to the home planet of the Green Lanterns, Hal must learn to harness the power of the ring and save humanity. To add insult to impending death, the ring has never chosen a human before and the leader of the Corps, Sinestro, sees Hal as an embarrassment to the Lanterns and claims he isn't worthy to wear the ring of such a hero as Abin Sur.

Enter Hector Hammond, played excellently by Peter Sarsgaard (Boys don't cry, Jarhead, Garden State), a scientist with the job of inspecting the body of dead alien Abin Sur. While digging through the cavity in the chest of the alien, Hector is infected with the yellow energy left from Parallax's attack. Now blessed with a sense of telepathic power that the former stepped on scientist has never known, the evil begins to morph him into a rather formidable foe.  But we can't forget Parallax, who has realized that Hal Jordan is the new owner of the Green Lantern Ring that once entombed him on a lost planet and will stop at nothing to kill the new lantern and consume planet earth to gain enough energy to destroy the home planet of the Guardians and kill every Green Lantern.

The overall theme of the story is that a mere mortal human who lives as if he has no fear, is secretly hiding an immense amount of it and in order to harness the full potential of the ring and defeat Hector and Parallax, he must overcome this fear.  It is a simple, easy to understand theme set to a backdrop of alien invasions and super hero powers.

With every superhero movie, several problems arise. How can it be made in a way that hardcore fans of the universe won't be upset with it but still in a way that newcomers will understand and enjoy it as well. I say work on story and back it up with special effects and action scenes. The Green Lantern did just that. The story and set up were explained thoroughly and most of the characters were explored deeply enough to warrant sequel status. Why then are the critics saying that "X-Men: The Last Stand and Wolverine are better than Green Lantern" (Jim Vejvoda of IGN)? I kind of liked The Last Stand, but Green Lantern stands several levels above the train wreck of Wolverine.

There is a lot of story involved with a universe as large as The Green Lantern. Obviously you can't explain everything in great detail if you want to appeal to a large crowd. It happens rather quickly that Hal is thrust into the role of the Green Lantern and once on the home planet of Oa, is trained by Kilowog (voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan) and Tomar-Re (voiced by Geoffrey Rush) in what feels like one day. Obviously training wouldn't take a day and you have to just assume that it took far more time, time that you can't devote to training in a feature film.

One of the few things I noticed that bring it down any, is the lack of superhero action. It is almost as if there is too much story and they forget to fully realize the power that the ring can produce. I also noticed the introduction of a few characters towards the beginning of the film that add to Hal's personality, such as his nephew, who are unexplainably absent after their initial introduction. And last but not least, it suffers from what I call quick ending. There are several chances for Hal Jordan to use superpowers towards the end and the problems are solved by thought instead of action. Here you see Hal giving the ring away to out-wit an adversary instead of just using it to destroy him.  An excellent plot choice, but not what you need out of a blockbuster summer super hero movie.





I give Green Lantern 6 power rings out of 10 for lack of action and not having a long enough final battle.


"To infinity and beyond? By the power of greyskull?"

Source Code

 

You wake up. You're on a train. The woman sitting across from you is a stranger, however she is telling you that your advice was excellent and that she is thankful. Somebody opens a soda can. Clumsy lady spills coffee on your shoe. You can't remember anything about the situation you are in. Your name is Captain Colter Stephens, but this woman keeps calling you Sean. Your reflection is not your own. Eight minutes goes by and that is when it happens...the train explodes.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stephens, a soldier who is being repeatedly placed (matrix style) into the body of Sean Fentress, a commuter on a chicago passenger train, for the final eight minutes of Sean's life. Stephens' job is to find out who planted the bomb on the train so they can stop the next attack. Repeating the eight minutes over and over again, trying desperately to find the bomber, he comes to the cold realization that the woman across from him is dead and he must do everything in his power to change the past.

I know I'm a week late seeing this movie, but still, as I sat, alone, in the movie theater this Friday, I couldn't help but wonder why nobody else was there. Had they all heard that Source Code was a terrible movie? Were they aware of some fact about the film that I was oblivious to? A few people trickle in right as the lights go down and several more during the previews, but it played to a pretty small audience and I don't necessarily understand why.

'Source Code' is directed by Duncan Jones, the director of 'Moon' which is one of my favorite science fiction films. (side note. Duncan is actually the son of David Bowie)  If you haven't seen 'Moon', you should go rent that immediately. 'Source Code' stars Jake Gyllenhall, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright in a fast paced, action-science fiction movie full of intense paranoia and a few twists along the way. The story is always moving forward, be it on the train in the simulations, or in the think tank where Colter relays his new information to the team of soldiers and scientists trying to catch the bomber. 

Only a few things stuck out as being sub-par for a movie like this and one of them was Jeffrey Wright (Casino Royale) who plays the scientist who has created the means to transport someones mind into the body of another person for the eight minutes before they died. I usually love Mr. Wright's acting, but in this film, he seemed way over the top and not as believable as the other characters. This might not bother you in your movie watching experience, but it took my attention away from the movie and I never like it when that happens.  Also, there were a few strange plot holes that I can't really discuss for fear of giving up too much information on the story. Lets just say that a few 'twists' that happen, are pretty easy to see coming.

Overall I really enjoyed the movie, despite its several flaws, so basically I think you should skip that new movie where the supposedly straight african american man dresses up like a woman because it is really the only joke he's got, and go see 'Source Code' instead.

I give 'Source Code' 6.5 exploding trains out of 10

"If I'm not back in 5 minutes...wait longer!"

SCRE4M

I can't even begin to describe how much I wanted to see this movie.  However, long ago, when they started letting word slip that there was another sequel in the works I was immediately scared that they would not try hard enough to make the perfect sequel and everything would be disappointing. I write here today to tell you that director Wes Craven (Scream Trilogy. A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hills Have Eyes, Swamp Thing, People Under The Stairs, Vampire in Brooklyn and Red Eye - This guy is good) and writer Kevin Williamson (Scream & Scream 2, The Faculty, I Know What You Did Last Summer - also pretty good at what he does) have done it again. They have built a perfect sequel that fits like a puzzle piece into the Scream world and brings everything together for another bloody, fright-filled stab-a-thon.

Sydney Prescott has returned to Woodsboro for the last stop on her self-help book tour. It has been 10 years since the last round of butchering in poor Sydney's life and this last stop falls on the anniversary of the original massacre here in the hometown. The Ghostface killings are hailed as local legend in the small town of Woodsboro and Sydney is a star in most of the locals eyes. Within the confines of the Scream universe, the story of Sydney's tragedy has been made into a series of films simply called 'Stab'. The high school cinema club is hosting a Stab-a-Thon that evening and showing all the Stab movies back to back with lots of teenager cliches and drinking. There is a rather large problem though, someone is brutally murdering people in the same fashion as the first 'Stab' movie. And of course, at the end of 'Stab', at the big party, almost everyone dies.

Filled with homages to the original Scream trilogy as well as updating the rules of the horror movie, Scream 4 is excellent in execution and brilliantly unfolds into quite possibly the best addition to the series since the original. I couldn't even try to compare this to any of the other slasher films that have been made (or remade as the film pokes fun at) in the last 10 years. Scream 4 blows every other contender out of the water. The only thing that even seemed slightly strange was the killers motivation. But I won't elaborate on that because I have too much respect for the twists and turns this movie takes you on. I loved it. A lot.

Series stars Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courtney Cox return for this next chapter of the horror comedy. Joining them are a new set of teenage targets and suspects including Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Marielle Jaffe, Erik Knudsen, Rory Culkin, and Nico Tortorella with other new additions such as Anthony Anderson, Adam Brody, Marley Shelton, Alison Brie, Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin.

With a cast that big you are guaranteed a massively larger body count and more interesting character development and situations. I am not going to give anything away about this movie because I think films like this one are the reason you go to the movies.

One more thing. See if you can figure out who the killer is. I dare you. And don't tell me you did guess it, because you're either lying or you took a stab in the dark (pun intended) and happened to be right. But you're not. You just guessed. Punk.

I give Scre4m 9 stabs out of 10.

"What's your favorite scary movie?"

HANNA

Hanna, a 16 year old girl who is living in the forest and is being trained as an expert assassin by her father, finally decides to stop hiding and takes control of her destiny. 

It doesn't get much more simple than that. One of the problems I had with this movie was the fact that the story IS so simple. The way the story is told is almost insulting to the audience because you are strung along as if you're learning incredibly complex things about the characters when in fact it is easy to guess several of these 'revelations'.  Also, we have already been introduced to the child girl assassin in the film 'KickAss', making Hanna seem even less original. It is going to be hard to review this movie because even with glaring plot holes, completely unrealistic stunt scenes, and characters simply vanishing from the film without explanation, I still kind of liked it.

Hanna is played by Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones, Atonement) who delivers a mind-blowing performance filled with extended close up scenes that even seasoned professionals can't handle. She fills her eyes with this dead and unknowing presence that only a trained killer could have but then they sparkle with wonder and excitement when faced with the new and strange world she has never known outside the forest. Cate Blanchett plays the CIA operative at the end of, and on, Hanna's trail. She obviously does an excellent job, I don't think I've seen a bad performance by her, but I don't believe she was the best person to play the role. There was something missing from her character, a general fear of Hanna I think, and I'm not sure if it was in the writing or the performance. Eric Bana plays Erik, surprise, Hanna's father and side plot of the film. He receives a few great fight sequences, one in a subway platform which is probably my favorite fight from the film, but on the whole, fizzles as a real character. There is no real emotional bond created with him and it is hard to introduce him back into the story in the later scenes.

As for the movie's entertainment value, it was great. The cinematography was nothing special, but the pace of the movie and the soundtrack (The Chemical Brothers) were excellent. It was humorous at times and even suspenseful at times. I don't feel like I wasted my money but I don't expect 'Hanna' to win any awards for best screenplay or story.  However the redeeming factor for this movie was definitely Saoirse Ronan. She held the movie up when it was dragging and played several scenes so excellently that you can't help but smile when the other characters realize they're getting their butts handed to them by a 16 year old girl.

One more thing. Title Cards.  'Hanna' is book-ended with title cards (when the title of the movie is flashed on the screen at the beginning and then immediately after the final line of the movie). I find this a brilliant and refreshing way to begin and end a movie. It made me appreciate this movie a little bit more. But I'm just weird like that.

Hanna gets 6.5 Child Assassins out of 10.

"And Then...."  "NO AND THEN!"

Sorry

So there isn't a mid-week review this time. I was going to watch 'Hereafter' this morning before work but I played Call of Duty: Black Ops instead, whoops.

So for the weekend review I need some help deciding which movie to see. Should I see 'Your Highness', 'Hanna' or 'Arthur'. Vote for which one I should see in the comments.

"Don't Panic"