I always look forward to the new Guillermo del Toro movie no matter the genre or premise. So much care and consideration and enthusiasm goes into every aspect of a movie that if it misses in one way, it still connects in another. There is always something interesting. This is true of del Toro’s Nightmare Alley. Even though I didn’t entirely enjoy it, I know I will see it again because so much about it lingers in my mind.
Bradley Cooper plays Stanton Carlisle, a quiet drifter who lands a job at a carnival during the late 1930’s. He listens and observes and comes across as a blank. He learns about the carnival, the flashy side of showmanship and its dirty secrets. Zeena (Toni Collette), the resident psychic/mind reader, takes him under her wing. Along with her severely alcoholic husband (David Strathairn), a now retired mentalist, Stanton helps with her show, all the while picking up how they "read the minds" of the audience. Then he starts talking, finds a stage and romantic partner in Molly (Rooney Mara), finds success, and stops listening and observing. He should have quit while he was ahead, but that’s not who he is and that’s not the kind of movie this is. (If you stop the movie at a certain point about a third of the way through, it’s a happy ending for most of the characters.)
The production design, costumes, and cinematography have all received Oscar nominations which is no real surprise since they are all quite remarkable. The production design and costumes are everything you expect from a Guillermo Del Toro movie set in the 1930’s that takes place in part at a carnival. The whole film is filled with intriguing, memorable imagery whether it is in the rundown carnival (the least whimsical carnival you’ve ever seen outside of a proper horror movie) or the large open spaces of the wealthy. The cavernous office of psychiatrist Dr. Lilith (Cate Blanchett), with whom Stanton partners for a dangerously ambitious con, evokes feelings of discomfort and danger.
This is a dark film thematically. The original 1947 version, directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Tyrone Power, and del Toro’s version both qualify as Film Noirs: exploring a dark, seedy world and its characters that proper, mainstream society turns away from. The 1947 version remains an effective, gripping, and intense movie despite the restrictions of the Production Code. It mixes in more humanity than the new version, making it more of a tragedy and giving it in some ways a more powerful ending.
More than one source I found described the 1946 novel, written by William Lindsay Gresham, as bleak. This new adaptation, written by del Toro and Kim Morgan, does not shy away from bleakness. Both versions include the lowest of the carnival performers, the geek, who bites the heads off chickens or snakes. Of course del Toro’s version is more upfront and graphic about showing what the geek does and how someone becomes a geek. “Man or beast?” the barker asks the crowd. It is a man, of course, usually a desperate alcoholic who is manipulated into taking the job and then controlled by feeding his addiction. There aren’t many sympathetic characters here. Controlling the geek or looking the other way is routine for the carnival. Learning the tricks of mentalism, how to do a cold reading on a stranger and trick them into revealing details about themselves, is an exciting thing at first. Then comes exploitation and hubris. The world of wealthy socialites is not much different, just with nicer clothes. Guillermo del Toro has given us many movies about monsters that act like humans, now he’s given us a movie about humans that act like monsters.
Nominees: Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale, Bradley Cooper, producers
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Screenplay: Guillermo del Toro & Kim Morgan
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Rooney Mara
Release Date: December 17th, 2021
Production Companies:TSG Entertainment, Double Dare You Productions
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
Total Nominations: 4, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Cinematography- Dan Laustsen; Production Design-Tamara Deverell (production design), Shane Vieau (set decoration); Costume Design-Luis Sequeira
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.
Night 9: Non-Supernatural Thriller Night
“My name is Roger Brown. I’m 5’6” tall. And you know what?
That’s more than enough."
I’ve only seen a handful of foreign thrillers and Headhunters, from Norway, released in
the states in 2012, is among the best and most exciting and thrilling. It hits
every note it should, and several you don’t see coming. The director, MortenTyldum, would follow up this film with the Oscar nominated biopic The Imitation Game. While that film goes
out of its way to be a conventional biopic, Headhunters
does not use genre conventions as crutch or let them hinder its story or
characters.
Headhunters stars Aksel Hennie as Roger Brown, our protagonist and narrator. He is 5’6” tall and
insecure, so he overcompensates. He lives in house he cannot afford and does
not like, but he thinks his statuesque wife, Diana, likes it so he goes along.
He is aware that she is out of his league so he goes out of his way to provide
her with a luxurious lifestyle that, though he is a successful corporate
headhunter, is beyond his means. To cover these expenses, Roger moonlights as
an art thief. He uses his day job to find new targets for his side job. One
such potential client for Roger’s headhunting job, and his art thief job, is
Clas Greve, played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (now of Game of Thrones fame). Clas
has inherited a painting believed to have been stolen by Nazis during WWII. To
Roger it sounds like the payday of his dreams; one so potentially lucrative he
may never have to steal art again. It sounds too good to be true, and it is. After
Roger steals the painting he finds himself in over his head in a dreadful mess.
At this point Headhunters
becomes an intense cat and mouse chase. No matter where Roger runs or hides,
even if he changes vehicles and clothes, Clas is always in pursuit; Clas becomes like
the Terminator. Coster-Waldau plays Clas as an intelligent, crafty, and
believable villain. He is relentless, cold, and charismatic.The chase takes on an almost absurd nature,
but Roger is aware of the absurdity all the while, so we as the audience
believe what we are seeing. There are no elaborate, unnecessary stunts just for
the sake spectacle. When Headhunters
does indulge in a thriller convention like a car chase, it puts Roger in an
old, slow moving tractor. The brilliance of this chase is that it is creative
but believable (Roger was hiding out in a barn). Everything in this film feels
plausible. This film takes place firmly in the real world, making it
effectively engaging and suspenseful.
The film does its best to begin Roger as an unlikable
protagonist, but then, thanks to a smart script and Hennie’s performance, does
a great job turning our sympathy towards him. Contrary to what studio
executives and screenwriting professors espouse, characters don’t have to be
likable, they just have to be interesting. At his worst, Roger is a very interesting,
complex character; he is also an intelligent one making him a match for Clas
and making the film very entertaining. Even characters we don’t spend much time
with feel like fully realized people.
Headhunters
combines the suspense of corporate espionage films like Michael Clayton or The Firm
with the violent intensity of The
Terminator. With its combination of a shadowy conspiracy and crime
elements, Headhunters also has the
feel of a Film Noir. This movie is well paced, grabbing you and never letting
go until it’s over. There is a great, effective score adding to the tension and
mystery of the film. It gets quite intense and bloody, but is also darkly
funny. While this isn’t technically a horror movie, it is still loaded with
shocks, thrills, and even scares. Most of all, it is a thoroughly satisfying
film that you can watch this Shocktober, especially if you don't like horror
movies.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.
In the early 1940’s RKO Pictures created a low budget
B-horror movie unit to compete with, and capitalize on the success of, Universal
Studios’ B-horror movies like Dracula,
Frankenstein, The Wolf Man and their
many sequels. Producer Val Lewton was put in charge of the unit and tasked with
churning out horror movies with sensational titles, miniscule budgets, and left
over sets from other movies. The result was a series of horror films that were
the opposite of what the studio was expecting, but were still box office hits.
Today they remain spooky and interesting films and Val Lewton is one of the few
producers that critics, film historians, and cinephiles consider to be an
“auteur,” or the author of a film. The first of these low budget horror movies was
Cat People, released in 1942, which
deserves to be included alongside horror movie classics like Dracula (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). If you are someone that doesn’t like graphic
violence or bloody horror, or even if you are, or if you want to become more
familiar with classic horror cinema, Cat
People is a great film to watch any Shocktober night.
Cat People stars
Simone Simon as Irena, a Serbian immigrant in New York City who meets and falls
in love with Oliver, played by Kent Smith. Irena lives in an apartment close
enough to the zoo to hear the animals at night and finds the roar of the big
cats comforting. She and Oliver fall in love and marry, but Irena’s belief in a
superstition of her homeland keeps her from becoming intimate with him, or even
kissing him. She fears that any passion or jealousy she has will change her
into a jungle cat and she will kill her lover. At a restaurant, a woman that
some characters say “looks like a cat” greets Irena by calling her “my sister.”
When Irena walks into a pet store with Oliver, animals go into a wild frenzy and
become calm once she leaves. Oliver is a good, decent husband and believes
Irena will overcome her superstitions with the help of a psychiatrist played by
Tom Conway, who exudes a cool, debonair, and condescending aura (not unlike
that of his brother, actor George Sanders). Oliver confides his marriage
troubles in his friend and co-worker Alice, played by Jane Randolph. Though
Alice is in love with Oliver her only intention is to be a friend and offer
advice, but Irena resents their closeness and becomes jealous and dangerous.
Lewton was a hands off producer when it came to shooting movies,
but there is a distinctive style to his RKO horror movies despite working with
different directors. The Lewton style was born out of necessity due to budget
restrictions, but he and his directors turned this handicap into creative
advantages. Cat People is shot with
stark shadows and low lighting resembling the look of a Film Noir. In fact, the
director of Cat People, Jacques Tourneur, perhaps Lewton’s best collaborator, would go on the direct the lauded Film
Noir Out of the Past.
It’s a well-established horror movie trope that you can scare
the audience more by showing them less; what you show them will never be as
scary as what they create in their own imaginations. Lewton and Tourneur fully
exploit this idea to great effect. They knew they did not have the budget for
decent special effects so the movie avoids showing the audience what they might
expect to see, namely a monstrous cat-person, and instead fills its spooky
scenes with shadows, dim lights, and darkness. Shadows are as important to Cat People as its characters, and they are
used along with a clear and effective sound design for maximum effect. They
hide the film’s low budget and put the audience at unease by denying them a
full picture and thus a full explanation. You may not see a lot of horror in Cat People but it builds a moody
atmosphere that primes the viewer for scares which the movie delivers, but
never quite how you are expecting. In one of the most memorable scenes Alice is
walking home through a park at night in shadows and small pools of light from
the street lamps. There is complete silence except for the clicking of her
heels and… another set of heels behind her. For just a brief moment, so
purposefully quick it’s easy to miss, we think we hear the growling of a big
cat, but the growl morphs into the rumble of a city bus. A few moments later,
however, large paw prints are found in the soft ground of the park.
Cat People plays
with the preconceived notions the characters and audience have about
superstitions and the supernatural. The movie begins in a thoroughly real world
in which there is no chance of anything supernatural. Then, slowly, it shows us
scenes to suggest otherwise and make the characters second guess their
rationale. Is Irena really a cat person of old world legend or does she just believe
she is so much that the people around her begin to unconsciously believe so as
well?
Cat People is the
antithesis of the Universal monster movies, in which the monster is the star of
the movie. It holds back showing you any horror or scenes of violence for as
long as it possibly can. The characters feel like full-fledged people, a rarity
in horror movies of any era, and their world feels like a real, lived in place. Cat People does all of this and more in
less than 75 minutes.
I didn’t have a very difficult time finding a copy of Alibi on VHS, but the DVD seems to have gone out of print. However, Alibi is readily available on DVD as part of the collection of early Academy Award Best
Picture nominees, The Envelope Please Vol. 1 (which also includes the rare
silent Best Picture nominee, The Racket).
The home video cover art for Alibi bears a quote from the New York Times declaring, “It is by
far the best of the gangster films.” I’m not well acquainted with other
gangster films of this time period, but I think it is safe to say that
audiences at the time had not seen a crime film quite like this one.
Alibi stars
Chester Morris as Chick, a criminal recently released from prison who uses his
date with a policeman’s daughter as his alibi for the murder of a police
officer. The policeman’s daughter, Joan, believes in giving people second
chances and that the police will railroad people just to get a conviction. Her
view of the police comes off as rebellious until the film proves her correct,
which is what sets Alibi apart from
the other gangster films of this era that I have seen. The Racket had corrupt cops and good cops. Nearly every cop in Alibi is a corrupt brute, and the
criminals are portrayed just as negatively. The police suspect Chick instantly
of the murder of the patrolman based on no evidence, just prejudice, and go
about bullying people into naming Chick as the murderer. In one scene two
policemen first threaten to frame a random ne'er-do-well for the murder if he
doesn’t name Chick; then they threaten to kill him.
Alibi indulges the
new spectacle of sound with as much enthusiasm as other early sound films.
Though not a musical, there are more than a few song and dance numbers in the
scenes at the nightclub hangout of the gangsters. The film’s opening scene is
loaded with sounds: a prison guard twirling his nightstick, a chiming bell, and
every step of marching prisoners lining up for roll call. The sound quality of
the DVD is mostly good, but becomes spotty at times and even cuts out completely for a
moment or two.
Alibi is a
visually impressive film and received an unofficial nomination for Art
Direction for its bold and stylish art deco sets. City streets rush toward us
in a POV of a speeding car. In one scene a character attempts to leap from the
roof of one skyscraper to the next only to fall to his death and the effect is
pretty impressive. The camera even moves a little bit more than the other early
sound movies I’ve seen. In one shot the camera pushes through a crowded nightclub to a line of
singing and dancing chorus girls. Perhaps most notable and interesting of all
is Alibi's use of light and shadow giving it a look that would become a staple of crime movies and
become woven into the fabric of Film Noir.
Alibi certainly
feels like an early sound film, as though it is still trying to figure out the
best way to use dialogue, images, and sound effects to tell a story. It feels
edgy due to the harsh and blatantly negative portrayal of the police, which I
admit had me stunned. This is a Pre-Code film, so the strict
and puritanical Hays Code censoring and restricting a film's content was not yet being enforced. That edgy portrayal of
cops and criminals is Alibi’s
defining trait but also its primary flaw. With both cops and criminals equally
bad and despicable (except for the one good, bland cop) there is no one to root
for. Some aspects of Alibi hold up
more than others making it an interesting but uneven early Best Picture
nominee.
Nominee: Feature Productions, United Artists
Producer: Roland West
Director: Roland West
Screenplay: Roland West and C. Gardner Sullivan, from the
play by John Griffith Wray & J.C. Nugent and Elaine S. Carrington
Cast: Chester Morris, Harry Stubbs, Mae Busch, Eleanor
Griffith
Release Date: April 20th, 1929
Total Nominations: 3, including Outstanding Picture
Win(s): N/A
Other Nominations: Actor-Chester Morris, Art
Direction-William Cameron Menzies
Summer doesn’t officially start until about a month from
now, but it has been summer at the movies since the first weekend of May. Summer
at the movies is synonymous with the big budget blockbuster movies (usually superhero movies) that you’ve
known were premiering this summer whether you are interested in them or not
(Captain America: Civil War, X-Men Apocalypse, Ghostbusters, Star Trek Beyond).
There are also some smaller scale movies coming out this summer that not
everyone may be aware of, but which I think will be a nice break from epic
CGI action:
Ryan Gosling takes a break from his roles in more experimental films to star with Russell Crowe as a pair of mismatched detectives in this
action-comedy film noir set in 1970s California. The Nice Guys is written and
directed by Shane Black, who wrote the screenplays for Lethal Weapon and The
Last Boy Scout (to name a few) and has directed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (another
great noir comedy about a mismatched pair of detectives) and arguably the best
Marvel movie, Iron Man 3. So far, his track record as writer/director has been
very good and, hopefully, The Nice Guys will continue his streak of clever,
quality cinema.
This is the movie I have been looking forward to the most this
year. The films of writer-director Whit Stillman have been described as "comedies of manners”
that follow privileged WASP types, but the way I describe his movies when
recommending one to a customer at the video store is: it’s like mixing a Woody
Allen movie and a Wes Anderson movie together. His latest film, an adaptation of a Jane Austen story, is the moment when critics and fans realized that
Stillman has been making modern day Jane Austen stories this whole time. Kate
Beckinsale stars as widow Lady Susan who, while staying with her in-laws, seeks to
find a husband for her daughter, and one for herself, too. Love & Friendship
has already been released in select cities and received many positive reviews.
It opens in Austin, TX on May 27th and I can’t wait.
This is the most hesitant I’ve been about seeing any movie
for quite a while. Writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn made one of my favorite
movies of this decade so far, Drive. He followed that up with one of the most
boring and excruciating movie experiences I’ve ever had with Only God Forgives.
I’ve watched some of his other films and it seems like Drive might be the fluke in
his filmography. However, the casting of Mad Men's Christina Hendricks got me to watch
the trailer for The Neon Demon and the trailer is pretty
intriguing. Elle Fanning stars as an aspiring model that finds herself in potentially dangerous surroundings. IMDB.com classifies this movie as Horror/Thriller and
if the coin flips one way, an intense, psychological thriller along the lines of
Black Swan might be in store; if the coin flips the other way, this movie might just be
very pretty and very frustrating. I’ll wait for reviews
for The Neon Demon come in before I venture out the theater, or just stay home and
watch Drive again. Here is the trailer, which, on its own, I highly recommend
watching.
Bryan Cranston finds himself in the world of illegal drugs
again in The Infiltrator. This time he is on the side of the authorities, U.S.
Customs to be exact, in this movie based on the true story of a drug and money
laundering sting aimed at apprehending Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Cranston is paired with John Leguizamo and they have to go undercover in the dangerous world of the drug trade. The
trailer plays up the action, but I’m interested to see what
Cranston does with this material.
I’m surprised The Founder isn’t being released later in the
year, during Oscar season, since this seems like a movie the Academy would look
favorably upon. Michael Keaton plays Ray Kroc, the founder (but not creator)
of McDonald’s. Kroc finds the small, but fast burger restaurant run by the McDonald brothers (played
by Nick Offerman and John Carrol Lynch) and expands their business into
a larger and larger franchise. It’s not exactly what the brothers
thought they were getting into, but Kroc is determined to make the business as
big and successful as possible, and he's not going to let anyone get in his way. The Founder has an interesting subject and a
great cast, so I am on board.
Bridge of Spies,
like fellow 2015 Best Picture nominee Spotlight,
is the most difficult kind of thriller to execute: a true story to which you
already know the ending. Spotlight
had the advantage of being a detective story in addition to being a procedural
to draw the audience into the plot. Bridge
of Spies is also a procedural except the main character doesn’t know what
the procedure is and has to figure it out along the way. That may be shaky
material to start with, but in the skilled hands at work both on and off screen
the result is an excellent low-key but suspenseful Cold War thriller.
Bridge of Spies
has two distinct settings each occupying a half of the film and presenting a
different challenge for our hero, insurance lawyer James Donovan, played by Tom Hanks. In New York in 1957, where the film begins, Donovan is selected by his
law firm for the task of defending recently arrested Soviet spy Rudolph Abel, played
by Mark Rylance. It is a thankless task since Abel certainly is a spy, but the
courts and Justice Department feel it is important that Abel appear to receive
a fair trial and competent defense. They want someone to give the minimum
effort required. They found the wrong man for that with Donovan. Abel’s trial
is just for show, but Donovan takes the case seriously saying that every person
matters and everyone deserves a defense. He gives Abel a more than competent defense
much to the chagrin and disdain of the judge, his firm, and anyone that
recognizes him on the street. I couldn’t help but be reminded of John Adams defending British soldiers after the Boston Massacre of 1770 to prove that
American justice is truly fair and impartial. I think it is safe to assume both
men share the belief that everyone deserves a fair trial and capable defense.
Hanks fits into the role of James Donovan with convincing
ease and brings his everyman persona to a character that is a low key, quiet
badass. In scene after scene we him doing what he does best, which is not just
practicing law, but also negotiating for “his guy,” unintimidated by whoever
the other person in the room is. Donovan is going to do not just what is asked
of him; he is going to do what he knows is right and fair. Hanks is great at
playing Donovan with believable confidence and conviction and without
condescension or any hint of self-righteousness.
The second half of the film gives Donovan an even bigger,
more complicated challenge and sends him to Berlin, just as final stones of the
wall dividing West and East Berlin are being set in place. He is asked by the
CIA, unofficially, to travel to Berlin and negotiate a trade with the Soviets:
Abel for recently captured U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was shot
down over Soviet airspace. Making things even more complicated, the East
Germans have arrested an American student that was caught on the wrong side of
the wall. Donovan becomes determined to get both Americans back even though he
has only one Soviet spy to trade, the U.S. doesn’t acknowledge the existence of
the German Democratic Republic, and the CIA has no interest in getting the
student back.
Both halves of Bridge
of Spies are interesting and engaging but the film feels like it really
takes off once Donovan is sent to Berlin. The people and bureaucrats that he
encounters, East German and Soviet alike, range from suspicious to bizarre. He
has a particularly amusing encounter with the dramatically expressive East
German Attorney General, and Abel’s supposed family is an odd bunch, too. Joel
and Ethan Coen co-wrote the screenplay and, unintentionally or not, the Berlin
scenes have the eccentric Coen Brothers feel to them.
Tom Hanks owns every scene he has in this movie, except for
those he shares with Mark Rylance. They do not have many scenes together, but
are immensely entertaining to watch. Rylance, nominated for a Supporting Actor
Oscar, is a quiet, unassuming presence on screen and provides some unexpected
wry humor. Whether we are watching Jim Donovan negotiating an impossible
exchange or watching Hanks and Rylance show us more by doing less, it is always
interesting to watching someone do something very well.
This may be a story about spies and the Cold War but it is
much more in line with the slow burn character heavy spy stories of John le Carrè, author of the novel that was adapted into the excellent Oscar nominated film, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). Most
of the action in this movie comes from people talking in rooms sizing each
other up, trying to find out what the other person knows while revealing as
little as possible of what they know. The tension of those interesting,
suspenseful, and entertaining scenes comes from the well-written and well
played characters. Human lives, more so than government secrets, are at risk,
and the only person aware of that in Bridge
of Spies is Donovan. He tells a Soviet representative, “We need to have
the conversation that our governments can’t.”
There are several things that have to be done well for a movie
like Bridge of Spies to work and,
fortunately, they are all done very well. The screenplay by Matt Charman and
Joel & Ethan Coen, which is deservedly Oscar nominated for Original
Screenplay, provides the actors with great material to work with. The cinematography
by Janusz Kaminski gives Bridge of Spies
the look and feel of a noir film. The dull, muted color palette of the costumes
and production design makes the New York and Berlin of the past feel genuine
and real and not like an exaggerated memory.
Nominees: Steven Spielberg, Marc Platt, Kristie Macosko
Krieger, Producers
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Matt Charman and Joel & Ethan Coen
Cast: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan
Production Companies: DreamWorks Pictures, Fox 2000
Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, Participant Media, TSG Entertainment,
Afterworks Limited, Studio Babelsberg, Amblin Entertainment, Marc Platt
Productions
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios, 20th Century
Fox
Release Date: October 16th, 2015
Total Nominations: 6, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Supporting Actor in a Supporting-Mark
Rylance, Original Screenplay-Matt Charman and Joel & Ethan Coen, Production
Design-Adam Stockhausen, Rena DeAngelo, Bernhard Henrich, Original Score-Thomas
Newman, Sound Mixing-Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom, Drew Kunin
