The Grouchy Editor

If there were any justice in the world, we’d all be learning a hot new catchphrase that would join movie chestnuts like “I’ll be back,” and “Make my day.”  And that catchphrase would be … “Close your eyes, kids!”

That line is senseless to the uninitiated, but I’m guessing it’s instantly recognizable to anyone who’s seen The Good, the Bad, the Weird, a Western joyride out of South Korea.  Yes, I said South Korea.  Director Ji-woon Kim’s film is a love letter to the Spaghetti Western that is both respectful and delightfully silly.

The story is about a whole bunch of bad guys trying to lay their hands on a treasure map in 1930s Manchuria. That’s pretty much all you need to know about the plot.  Here is what else you should know:  The movie is inventively shot, gorgeous to look at, and blessed with great performances.  “The Bad” (Byung-hun Lee) is a vain mercenary who struts about like Prince with bloodlust; “The Good” (Woo-sung Jung) is Korea’s answer to Clint Eastwood, and he’s featured in not one but two breathtaking action sequences that manage to reinvigorate that tired Western staple, the shoot-‘em-up; “The Weird” (Kang-ho Song) is on hand primarily for comic relief — and to utter the immortal “close your eyes” line.

Although the film is a bit on the long side (130 minutes), The Good, the Bad, the Weird is a screwball Western for people who think they burned out on Westerns a long time ago.      Grade:  B+

       The Good

The Bad      

       The Weird

Director:  Ji-woon Kim  Cast:  Kang-ho Song, Byung-hun Lee, Woo-sung Jung  Release:  2010

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Daybreakers is a vampire movie with a social conscience.  It’s a horror film that doesn’t settle for violence and gore; it also wants to make you think.  And that’s what’s wrong with the blasted thing.

As the movie unfolded and began to bombard me with allusions to 1) class warfare, 2) immigration, 3) vegetarianism, 4) capitalism, 5) conservation, and  6) the kitchen sink, I could picture the directors (two brothers again; what is it with all these sibling directors — do studio heads now demand them?) planning their DVD commentary.  No simple discussion of wooden stakes and garlic for the Spierig brothers.  Nope, they would discuss social issues!  That’s an admirable goal for a movie with just one hitch — a vampire film first and foremost needs to be scary.  If you get that part right, then you can discuss serious stuff on the DVD. 

(Confession:  I haven’t seen the DVD.  Perhaps there isn’t any commentary, but you get my point.)

I also kept thinking of another vampire movie I recently watched, called 30 Days of Night.  That film worked because it had a very simple plot.  A horde of scary-looking bloodsuckers descends on an Alaskan village and does battle with the townspeople.  That’s pretty much it.  Danny Huston plays a truly terrifying vampire, and not once as I watched him was I reminded of conservation.  Or immigration.

I’d go into the plot details of this film, but if you’ve seen I Am Legend, you pretty much get the idea.  A terrible virus or plague or something mutates most humans into blah, blah, blah.  Daybreakers, by trying to make big statements, is instead a pretentious little bore.          Grade:  C-

Directors:  Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig  Cast:  Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Michael Dorman, Claudia Karvan, Sam Neill  Release:  2010 

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Sometimes I wonder why England, Japan, Sweden, and other victimized countries haven’t united to file some sort of class-action lawsuit against Hollywood.  Tinseltown has an annoying habit of taking perfectly good foreign movies, stuffing them into the blender of American culture — adding car chases and rock music — and then spitting out unrecognizable glop it calls “remakes.”

Next up on the hit list is poor Sweden, which will see not one but two of its recent successes – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Let the Right One In – regurgitated by Hollywood.

Edge of Darkness, the Mel Gibson thriller newly out on DVD, is not a bad remake. It’s just incredibly mundane.  I haven’t seen the BBC Television series that the film is based on, but critical reviews of the time (1985) acclaim it as excellent drama.  The Gibson version has the same director (Martin Campbell) as the original series, so I guess this downgrade isn’t entirely America’s fault.

But a lot of people don’t give a hoot about old British miniseries.  They just want Mel to get mad, get armed, and get payback, all of which he does as a Boston detective out to avenge the murder of his daughter, who was out to expose criminal collusion between a nasty corporation and the government.  As if to remind us that another country once did this story much better, there is one sparkling performance in the new film – it’s the role of CIA agent Jedburgh, played by Ray Winstone who is, naturally, British.       Grade:  C

Director:  Martin Campbell  Cast:  Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Bojana Novakovic, Shawn Roberts, David Aaron Baker  Release:  2010

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The genius of Wes Craven’s original A Nightmare on Elm Street was its ability to seamlessly transition between dreams and reality.  Was Susie awake, or was she dreaming and about to encounter the psychopathic Freddy Krueger?  This kind of cinematic sleight of hand was ideal for Hollywood; who better to create nightmares than the “Dream Factory”?

A Nightmare on Elm Street, current edition, gets some of this stuff right with its darkly surrealistic sets, but not often enough.  Instead, Samuel Bayer’s remake relies on two tired, tired horror-movie clichés:  the sudden, deafening roar/bang/shout/scream on the soundtrack, and/or someone abruptly popping up out of a dark corner of the screen.

I used to work with a fellow who would jump through the ceiling if you snuck up behind him and did one little thing – softly clear your throat.  I suspect that it would not have startled him if someone were to instead sneak up and shout BOO!  The mild throat-clearing told his subconscious two things:  Someone is right behind me, and he or she might have been standing there for a long time.  Very unsettling.  The makers of movies like Nightmare would do well to learn that subtlety can be much more terrifying than, say, a screeching cat.

Still, if you are 15 years old and have not seen a gazillion horror flicks, like I have, this Nightmare does what it promises to do:  provide cheap thrills.  Nothing more, nothing less.  I have noticed one trend in recent horror movies.  Back in the good old days (1970s-’90s), it wasn’t really a horror film unless there was at least one gratuitous nude scene.  Nightmare does have a bathtub scene, yet there is no actual nudity.  I don’t understand this.  If your film is already a “guilty pleasure,” why hold back?       Grade:  C

Director:  Samuel Bayer  Cast:  Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker, Kellan Lutz, Lia D. Mortensen  Release:  2010

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How important are a good story and likable stars to a motion picture?  Let me recount my experience at a screening of The Secret in Their Eyes, this year’s foreign-language Best Picture winner.

About ten minutes into the movie, the theater’s sound system broke down.  It was fixed, but five minutes later the soundtrack again malfunctioned, this time blaring Muzak at us over the theater speakers.  The problem was eventually resolved.  An audience member’s cell phone began ringing.  And ringing.  And ringing.  Later, someone else’s cell began chiming.  The third time this happened, there was a near-riot as other patrons ran out of patience, demanding the offender “shut it off!” 

When you factor in the inherent demands placed on an audience by an Argentinean, subtitled movie with a complex plot, it’s a wonder we didn’t all march out in a huff, demanding refunds.  Or at the very least attempt to lynch the cell-phone owners. 

That didn’t happen, which I believe is a testament to Secret stars Soledad Villamil and Ricardo Darin, a first-rate supporting cast, and a multilayered plot with great romance and a better-than-average mystery.  There are two puzzles in director Juan Jose Campanella’s story:  Will the characters played by Villamil and Darin at long last  — 25 years after first meeting — become a couple?  And who brutally raped and murdered a young bride in 1974?

Villamil and Darin, as justice department colleagues drawn into the crime investigation, bring such believability and maturity to their roles that, mercifully, I forgot all about those damn ringing cell phones.       Grade:  B+

Director:  Juan Jose Campanella  Cast:  Ricardo Darin, Soledad Villamil, Guillermo Francella, Javier Godino, Pablo Rago, Carla Quevedo  Release:  2009

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As I suffered through the early stages of It’s Complicated, writer-director Nancy Meyers’s latest comedy, I came to the unhappy conclusion that the problem was my gender.  Clearly, I could not relate to this “chick flick.”  Probably I did not appreciate – or worse, even notice – a parade of designer clothes, kitchens, and bathtubs as it passed before my bloodshot eyes.  Probably I was genetically incapable of grasping the romantic plight of the film’s heroine, a middle-aged, divorced mother of three played by Meryl Streep.

Shortly after I reached this dismaying conclusion, I changed my mind and began to blame Meyers’ script, instead.  Streep’s character was being wooed by her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin), a one-dimensional, pot-bellied cad panicked by his loveless marriage to a one-dimensional shrew without an ounce of humanity.  Silliness ensued.  I’ve seen this plot before, I thought.  Too many times.

And then, like a bolt from the blue, the movie knocked me senseless in its second hour with not one, but two bursts of inspired comic lunacy.  The first involved Streep, Steve Martin, and a marijuana joint, and the second showcased Baldwin, Martin, and an invasive laptop computer.  It was as if old pros Streep, Martin, and Baldwin, just as tired of the insipid storyline as I was, suddenly told Meyers to just point the damn camera at them and see what they could do.

Those two scenes are very funny and they rescue the second half of the film.  Too bad, though, about that first half.      Grade:  C+

Director:  Nancy Meyers  Cast:  Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, John Krasinski, Lake Bell, Mary Kay Place, Rita Wilson  Release:  2009

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These thoughts were swirling in my head as I watched the final 45 minutes of The Human Centipede:  “You’ve got to be kidding me … What kind of career do these actors think they’ll have after appearing in this movie? … I can’t take my eyes off this thing … I used to think Cronenberg’s films were bizarre, but not after seeing this …  This must be why much of the Muslim world detests the decadent West … This movie is actually hypnotizing me, in a perverse sort of way ….”

I don’t know how better to describe the Dutch horror flick than by citing those random impressions.  It’s certainly not a film for everyone.  Some reviews imply that Centipede requires a viewer warning because it’s loaded with gore and violence.  Not true.  Although it does have some blood and guts, the film is disturbing because of the human degradation on display.  It’s a psychological freak show, at once repellent and absorbing.

Dieter Laser plays renowned German surgeon Dr. Heiter — surely one of the creepiest characters to grace movie screens in ages.  To say that Heiter is antisocial is like saying Hitler was a naughty boy.  Heiter kidnaps unwary tourists, takes them to his basement laboratory and, in a twist that elevates Centipede above other slasher flicks, treats his victims as combination students/patients, lecturing them as though they should be proud of participating in his groundbreaking “work.”  In this case, that means fusing their mouths to each other’s buttocks to form one long digestive chain or, as the title spells out, a human centipede.

That synopsis should tell you whether or not you can, sorry, stomach this movie.  The actual “centipede” effect is not shown in graphic detail — which somehow makes the proceedings even more horrifying.      Grade:  B+  (if you like this sort of thing)  Grade:  F   (if you don’t) 

Director:  Tom Six  Cast:  Dieter Laser, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura, Andreas Leupold, Peter Blankenstein  Release:  2010

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