By Joe Leibovich
In the decade since The Blair Witch Project‘s release, there have been a number of efforts to recapture the lightning in a bottle that small budget horror film produced. These have been mainly disappointing efforts (Cloverfield, anyone?).
Paranormal Activity, however, not only matches Blair Witch on every level. It destroys it.
The set up for Paranormal Activity is fairly simple. A San Diego couple is dealing with some kind of apparent haunting. We learn very quickly that Katie (Katie Featherstone), an English major, has been sporadically dealing with these issues throughout her life. Her slight jackass boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat), a day trader (!) decides to buy a video camera to try to capture the phenomena.
The film plays out strictly on the tapes that Micah’s ever present camera picks up. In other words, the entire movie is seen from the perspective of a camcorder.
The movie starts off with relatively minor occurrences…a noise here, some keys that fall off a counter there. And, it’s clear that Micah finds the whole thing to be kind of fun. But, as you might expect, things escalate and we watch the horror grow and the characters break down over the course of the movie.
Paranormal Activity is genuinely scary. This is a low budget movie – $16,000 – and it does not rely heavily on special effects. It also doesn’t feature a musical soundtrack or score. What it does feature, is a series of overnight time elapse shots of the couple’s bedroom with an open door to a hallway. We watch this footage in abject fear of what may or may not be outside that door. And when things do happen within the bedroom, the events can be riveting and terrifying.
Both of the lead actors are unknown (well, until now), and both turn in terrific performance. Katie Featherstone is the emotional center of this film. Whatever is (or isn’t) happening in the movie is centered on her. It is made clear very early on that the two simply can’t get out of the house to avoid danger, as the danger is following her. Featherstone is terrific, and conveys a wide range of emotions and horror. If there’s one distracting thing about her performance its that she is a dead ringer for The Office’s Jenna Fischer, and at times that takes away from what’s going on.
Micah Sloat is also convincing in his role. He starts out as bemused and obnoxious, but over the course of the movie he clearly is seeking safety behind the camera.
Paranormal Activity is a well paced, well made, and at times genuinely horrifying movie. It’s something different, and is a real treat for folks who like to be scared.
Yes, there is some hokey stuff in the movie. Why would a certain piece of physical evidence be available to appear? Yeah, there are times when the acting is not 100% natural. And, then there is the ending. Steven Spielberg took an interest in this movie, and reportedly suggested a new ending to director and screenwriter Oren Peli. It’s kind of unfortunate that Peli listened to him. I am not going to reveal the ending here or the original ending. Suffice to say, from what I have read, the original ending was more true to the movie as a whole, instead of the more “pat” ending that is now on the film.
Paranormal Activity has some real scares of both the “sudden bump” type and those of psychological nature. The Paranormal Activity is not a great work of cinematic artistry. But it is well made and different from what we usually get in horror films. It’s a testament to the film’s effectiveness is how scary a simple shot of a character standing still is.
Paranormal Activity is an original, scary movie. It will create a lot of sleepless nights and nightmares. It’s well worth seeing. If you can take it.
On the movie report card, I give Paranormal Activity a B+.
There is a great deal of magic in director Spike Jonez’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. It is a movie that creates a very palpable world of wonder and beauty. However, I am not entirely sure who the target audience is for this film and I am not entirely sure the magic lasts through the entire film.
Jonez, along with Dave Eggers adapted Sendak’s very short book into a fully realized film vision. It is the story of a young boy named Max (played to perfection by neophyte Max Records) who feels alienated and abandoned by his single mother (Catherine Keener) and sister. One evening, after his sister’s friends destroy his snow fort and his mother has a date over for dinner (an inexplicable usage of Mark Ruffalo, who may have 2-3 lines), the energetic and angry Max throws a tantrum and flees the house. He finds a boat and sails away to an island inhabited by huge and wonderous monsters. Through trickery, he avoids being eaten by them to become their king. And that, as the book and movie say, is when the wild rumpus begins.
The Wild Things are true marvels. They are a actual costumes, not CGI creations. And that choice gives this film a feeling of reality and warmth. The visuals on the island of the Wild Things are stunning. From the creatures themselves to the various structures and landscapes that are gilmpses from Max’s “real life” are quite amazing.
The acting by all the participants is excellent. Max Records is a true find, and is absolutely perfect in his role. The voice actors who portray the Wild Things fill their roles with humor and feeling. Each of the Wild Things seems to be a piece of Max or people in Max’s life. James Gandolfini is Carol, who is Max’s closest surrogate on the isle. He gives a nuanced and emotion filled performance as a beast with anger issues who feels ignored, just like a certain little boy in a wolf suit. The entire ensemble of beasts is terrific, from Catherine O’Hara as a “downer” monster, to Forrest Whittaker as a creature who likes to put holes in trees, to Lauren Ambrose, the mother/sister figure on the island.
The first half of Where the Wild Things Are is captivating, and unlike anything I have ever seen before. No film has ever captured the feelings of being a boy so well.
About halfway through the movie, Gandolfini gives a speech about losing teeth slowly- how day by day they can get looser, and day by day the spaces between them grow larger, until one day you wake up and have no teeth left at all. It’s a wonderful metaphor for alienation and loss. It is, also, however, somewhat how I felt about the movie.
At a certain point, and I am not sure when it happened, I was no longer under the spell of this movie. The emotional connection to Max had dissipated, and the movie simply did not have the impact on me it had held before.
This is not to say Where The Wild Things Are is not a good movie. It is. Spike Jonez has put together something very special. I wonder if young children will truly enjoy this PG rated film from beginning to end, or if they may grow restless. To its credit, Where The Wild Things Are deals with a lot of serious, emotional issues – childhood anger, loneliness, control issues. But it does it subtly, and in such a way that it shouldn’t bore the audience. Still, I wonder if it may be too much for children. And, if that is the case, who is this movie aimed at?
All that said, Where The Wild Things Are is a Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (sorry…), and it is a wholly original, sweet, and magical piece of filmmaking that will stick with you for “through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year” if not longer.
On the Movie Report Card, I give Where The Wild Things Are an A-
Inglorious Basterds may be, and I don’t say this lightly, Quentin Tarantino’s best film to date.
Inglorious Basterds is Tarantino’s spin on the World War II genre. This is not, however, a “war” movie per se. It is more of a Hitchcockian thriller set during the second world war. Don’t expect scenes of the invasion of Normandy or the Battle of the Bulge. As we’ve come to expect from Tarantino, the structure of Inglorious Basterds is unusual. The action pivots around several primary groups or characters in what is a truly amazing ensemble film.
The title (and intentionally misspelled) Basterds are a group of ruthless Nazi killing Jewish American soldiers led by Lieut. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). Their brutal exploits, which literally include scalping Nazis, are but one part of this film. Another major portion of the film centers around Shosanna Dreyfus (French actress Melanie Laurent), a young woman who has escaped the clutches of Col. Hans Landa (Austrian actor Christoph Waltz) in France and has gone on to open a cinema in Paris under a false name. Landa, known as “the Jew Hunter” plays a major role in the film, as do members of the Nazi high command, a British intelligence agent, and a double agent or two, in a story that culminates in a plot that draws all these characters together. I won’t go into the details of that, as that is part of the fun.
Inglorious Basterds is at times horrifically graphic (scalping scenes are not for the faint hearted) and shockingly intense violence. But most of this movie is nerve racking tension that is masterfully delivered. There are scenes of dialogue which create more genuine suspense than practically any movie ever seen. I called Inglorious Basterds a Hithcockian thriller, and that is a very apt description in part. Tarantino’s screenplay and the way he films the scenes are stunning in the anxiety they produce. The opening sequence of Inglorious Basterds can go toe-to-toe with any scene of palpable tension that any director has ever produced. It is a masterful scene.
The acting in Inglorious Basterds is uniformly excellent. Laurent is the emotional center of the movie, and she does an outstanding job of playing a woman battling specters from the past while eyeing her own plans. She is a real find.
Brad Pitt is the marquee actor in Inglorious Basterds, and he is terrific as the leader of the Basterds. He provides a good deal of the film’s needed comic relief, and he does so with skill and ease.
The brightest spot among the cast, however, is Waltz as SS Col. Hans Landa. Waltz is absolutely chilling in his portrayal. He plays the role as a seemingly conversational gentlemen, who can ferret out the truth. His manner is downright frightening while on the surface being genial, and Waltz is simply stunning in this role, and helps Tarantino ratchet up the tension. He deserves an Academy Award nomination for this role.
Inglorious Basterds is simply brilliant. Tarantino has orchestrated a thrilling, violent, nerve-wracking film that is filled with amazing dialogue, fantastic sequences, a complex and entertaining plot, and exceptionally funny dialogue. He also manages to make a film that has large chunks of dialogue in French and German without being distracting. Despite it’s brutal violence in parts, it is arguable that Tarantino restrained himself a great deal with this movie. He is no longer trying to prove he’s genius. He’s demonstrating it without being flashy about it. Sure, there are those odd Tarantino touches (the “chaptered” format of the movie, the effective use of music, and the odd foot fetish), but he has basically made a relatively straight forward narrative. Tarantino has masterfully mixed extreme violence, gut-wrenching tension, and appropriate comedy into a film that deserves attention and praise.
It’s very difficult to compare Inglorious Basterds to Tarantino’s other films. It certainly isn’t as ground breaking as Pulp Fiction; it is not as ambitious as the Kill Bill saga, and it doesn’t have the snappy dialogue throughout as Reservoir Dogs did. But, Inglorious Basterds is a complete, amazing, tension filled ride. So, it may not be breaking barriers like some of his earlier works, but it is arguable that as a movie, Inglorious Basterds is Tarantino’s best.
Inglorious Basterds is appropriately R rated, mainly for graphic violence and some language. It runs around 2.5 hours, but never once feels long.
On the movie report card, I give Inglorious Basterds an A+.
By Robert Callahan
My first priority upon deciding to write this review was to come up with a clever title that would both draw you in and set the tone for my review. As I thought, I arrived at the conclusion that “Funny People” perfectly sums up my impression of this film. Funny People is brimming with comics, comedic actors and people who have for decades staked their careers on being able to recognize hilarity and properly exhibit it. Judd Apatow, considered by many untouchable after his smash hits 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, directs box office standby and (shut up people, you know its true) all around funny man Adam Sandler, co-starring with Seth Rogen, who could probably make a Roman Polanski film funny if he wanted to. Everyone from Andy Dick, to Eminem, to original Star Search winner Al Lubel makes a guest appearance in this movie. For god’s sake, Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn wrote most of the material. And yet, it stops at that.
If Be Cool taught me anything, it was that no matter how many stars you cram into a movie, sometimes a project is just beyond help. With an uncomfortable run time of 146 minutes, Funny People‘s who’s who of living comedians solidified that for me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed what everyone did in this movie, but as I said to begin, it stops with the characters. The distinction between this Apatow film and his first two is that they had focused, driven plots through which the actors worked. For this movie, the idea of Adam Sandler’s character George Simmons dying felt like a poor excuse to tell jokes around an aimless plot. The audience had time to wind down in between the hilarity; so instead of building anticipation towards the end, the final scenes felt like a let down. Sandler’s character, obviously meant to be a caricature of himself, was played so intentionally as an a–hole that there was nowhere for viewers to identify with him. And the subplot of being a struggling comedian wasn’t addressed long enough to make sense.
Overall, I’m not disappointed; I got exactly what was advertised. Unfortunately I think this movie suffers from high expectations, and doesn’t live up to its predecessors. It was a valiant attempt, and I give it three stars. Hopefully everyone involved can recover from the blow of knowing that some guy in Memphis didn’t care for their film, and find some way to salvage their multi-million dollar careers.
On the Movie Report Card, I give Funny People a C+
We tend to like our movies all neat and tidy and wrapped in a bow. Doubt is not that movie. What it is is a series of stunning performances in an intriguingly ambiguous film.
Meryl Streep is Sister Beauvier, the strict, joyless head sister at a Catholic boy’s school in the mid 1960′s. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is Father Flynn, the priest at that school/church, and Amy Adams is a young, somewhat naive sister who believes in the sunnier side of people in general. For a variety of reasons, Sister Beauvier begins to believe that Father Flynn is molesting a boy at the school.
At first, the primary characters seem fairly one dimensional. Sister Beauvier is almost a stereotypically harsh nun; Hoffman is a jovial priest who wants the church to be more friendly, and Adams is a sunny optimist. But, as the film progresses, each character subtly gains additional dimensions. What is absolutely fascinating about Doubt is that the viewers’ sympathies and beliefs shift throughout the movie. Doubt offers no easy answers. Sister Beauvier is a tyrant and zealot, but she does believe she is doing her best to protect the children. Father Flynn may or may not have secrets, but, if we believe him, he is simply trying to help a child who is on the outside with no friends.
Doubt is based on a play by John Patrick Shanley, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film. Certainly, Doubt feels like a play. The language and pacing clearly belie its origins. This is not a bad thing, and the screenplay is compelling.
However, it is the performances in Doubt that are the most compelling. Of course Meryl Streep is amazing. She usually is. In fact she’s so good, we tend to not give her the credit she deserves in each individual role. She absolutely inhabits the role of Sister Beauvier, and provides the nuances necessary for this character to carry the movie. In lesser hands, Sister Beauvier would simply be a dragon lady. Streep makes her so much more. Hoffman is equally good in his role. Without a strong performance, it would be easy for Father Flynn to appear to be simply a falsely accused priest. But, here, Hoffman gives such a layered performance that Father Flynn seems very real with very real secrets and very real concern for his flock. It’s really a fascinating performance. Amy Adams is given a thankless job with her role, but she pulls it off as well. Streep, Hoffman and Adams all received Academy Award nominations, and rightly so.
Viola Davis was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her brief role as the mother of the child who may have been molested. Her brief time on screen is electrifying, and the combination of her and Meryl Streep together makes their scene one of the most compelling on screen in recent years.
Doubt is a compelling film that generates a great deal of thought. An impressive screenplay combined with powerful performances make Doubt a film that should not be missed. If there is a fault, it is in some ham-fisted symbolism and the fact that it is all too clear that Doubt is a play that has simply been transposed to film. Minor complaints, to be sure, in light of the stunning performances.
Doubt is now available on DVD.
On the Movie Report Card, I give Doubt, an A-
