The Grouchy Editor

Hausu

Seven schoolgirls visit an old woman’s house in the country and get more than they bargained for in this standard-issue horror film from Japan. Just … kidding. There is nothing “standard issue” or normal about this 1977 mind-fuck from director Nobuhiku Obayashi. I suppose it’s what you might get if you tossed Where the Boys Are, The Haunting, and an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon into a blender – and then dropped acid before watching the result. Release: 1977  Grade: A, B, C, D and F

*****

 Oslo, August 31st

Absorbing drama about a day in the life of a drug addict (Anders Danielsen Lie), a young man on leave from rehab for a job interview and who decides to revisit old pals and haunts in Oslo. What keeps this compelling film from cinematic greatness is its tone of clinical detachment, which makes it difficult to care all that much about the young man’s fate. Release: 2011 Grade: B+

*****

Alone with Her 

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Déjà vu, baby. I’m pretty sure I saw this movie before, way back in 1982. Back then, it featured a film star’s son (Andrew Stevens, Stella’s boy) cast as a perverted loner who is obsessed with a beauty (Morgan Fairchild). He spies on her when she’s naked, attempts to ingratiate himself with her, makes her life a living hell, and is finally unmasked in time for a climactic showdown.

This go-round, in Alone with Her, the film star’s kid is Colin Hanks, son of Tom, and the victimized girl is Ana Claudia Talancon. But as was the case with 1982’s The Seduction, Alone is more unpleasant than suspenseful. Fairchild and Talancon take showers in their respective movies;  after watching this creep-out, you might need one, as well.  Release: 2006 Grade: C

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Byzantium

It’s a vampire movie, and so parts of it are a tad silly, but when you have a skilled director at the helm and two actresses of above-average caliber in the leads, you get a movie that’s classier and more intelligent than most of its bloodthirsty brethren. Sultry Gemma Arterton and somber Saoirse Ronan play mother and daughter undead on the run from both human and nonhuman tormentors. Neil Jordan’s moody movie is so absorbing that it’s not until the end credits roll that you realize just how much of it strains credibility.  Release: 2013  Grade: B+

*****

Roger Dodger

Who’s the real “ladies’ man” — smooth-talking, bar-hopping, misogynistic Roger Swanson (Campbell Scott), or Roger’s naïve, teenaged nephew (Jesse Eisenberg), whose innocence melts female hearts? We find out the answer, sort of, when 16-year-old Nick spends a wild night on the prowl in New York with his playboy uncle. Eisenberg is good in his first feature film, but Dodger is delicious black comedy mostly thanks to Scott, whose Roger is a pathetic-yet-fascinating train wreck.  Release: 2002  Grade: B+

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Escape

After her family is slaughtered by a band of vicious bandits in 14th century Norway, teenage Signe must run for her life. Escape is nothing more than a 78-minute chase movie – but there’s nothing wrong with that when you have a likable heroine (or two) with grit and gumption, and a truly hiss-worthy villainess (Ingrid Bolso Berdal).  Release: 2012 Grade: B

*****

Antarctica: A Year on Ice

Fascinating documentary about the 700 or so hardy souls who spend winters at a research base in Antarctica, enduring the most inhospitable climate on Earth and, as the film points out, the closest environment we have to that of Mars. You can enjoy the film on two levels: Sit back and enjoy the spectacular scenery, which filmmaker Anthony Powell captures with state-of-the-art time-lapse photography (best seen in high definition), or marvel at a cabin-fever social experiment that puts the close environs of Big Brother to shame. Release: 2013  Grade: A-

*****

Foxcatcher

Here’s evidence that not every gunman who snaps and wreaks havoc is a young male living in his mother’s basement. Sometimes, they are middle-aged men living in mansions. If you can get past Steve Carell’s prosthetic nose, which is a distraction, and Mark Ruffalo’s average physique, which is unconvincing for an Olympic athlete, Foxcatcher – based on the true story of tycoon John du Pont — is an absorbing study of one sad rich man’s desperate search for relevance. Release: 2014 Grade: B+

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Common

A gripping British drama about a working-class teen who, having driven some friends to a pizza parlor, finds himself on trial for murder after one of those friends fatally stabs a customer. The movie doesn’t hide its real goal: the repeal of England’s “joint enterprise” law, which critics claim targets the poor. I have no idea whether or not the law is just, but Common is genuinely affecting. Release: 2014  Grade: A-

*****

Zombeavers

If you dig Troma-style camp, you’ll dig Zombeavers, which follows the Troma formula of sex, stupidity, and low-budget effects as a group of youthful dimwits fight off crazed beavers at a lake cabin. The Good: 1) The beavers are more hand-puppet than CGI; they wouldn’t be as funny if they looked real. 2) Gratuitous nudity; the problem with similar exploitation on SyFy is that SyFy is too timid (or censored) to truly exploit. 3) The runtime is a brisk 77 minutes – although even that might be a bit long. The Bad: 1) A dumb subplot about the bratty young people cheating on each other. 2) They kill the dog. Film School 101: you never, ever kill the dog. Release: 2014 Grade: B-

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Hot Girls Wanted

A common question put to guys who watch porn (or who frequent hookers) is, “What if the girl was your sister?” The documentary Hot Girls Wanted, by focusing on a handful of girls not long out of high school and fresh into porn, does a great job answering that question: Life is not pretty for a young porn actress, and it’s often downright depressing.  Even more depressing: the fact that millions upon millions of us ensure there’s always a supply of new girls to meet our voracious demand.  Release:  2015   Grade:  A

 *****

Whiplash

Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons joins the Hollywood brotherhood of drill sergeants, coaches, and other molders of young men who employ “tough love” – or abuse, depending on your perspective – to drum success into their protégés in this absorbing drama about the world of competitive jazz bands.   But when the story shifts from the battle of wills between instructor Simmons and student Miles Teller, it stumbles over weak subplots involving the boy’s girlfriend and his father.  Release: 2014 Grade: B+

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The Trap

Mladen and his wife Marija are young professionals living in Belgrade, where they rent a small apartment, drive a beat-up Renault and raise their 8-year-old son. When the boy is diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, his desperate father considers desperate means to pay for an expensive operation. The Trap begins as a Strangers on a Train-type thriller (“you solve my problem, I’ll solve yours”) but it’s most effective as an absorbing riddle:  How far would you go to save your child?  Release:  2007  Grade: B+

*****

The Last Days

A moderately compelling thriller from Spain about an environmental plague that wipes out humans – except for the people who stay indoors, where the transportation system consists of rat-infested sewers and thug-patrolled subways. Days contains a few silly scenes, but it also has some good ones. The filmmakers were smart enough to realize that if we care about the characters, which we do, we won’t snicker (too much) when they get attacked by … oh, say a bear in a church. Release: 2013  Grade:  B-

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Life Itself

I liked Roger Ebert. He was that rare celebrity who would reply to reader comments on his Web site, or respond to e-mails, as he did once or twice to mine. I think Ebert was America’s most popular film critic because he merged an “everyday Joe” persona with keen intelligence to produce thoughtful, accessible reviews. And it didn’t hurt that his TV pairing with Gene Siskel was a movie-buff’s delight.

But Ebert could also be, as we learn in the documentary Life Itself, something of a jerk. And so when Steve James’s camera records Ebert’s lengthy battle with cancer, the movie is honest, but perhaps not as moving as it might have been with a more sympathetic subject.  Ebert was a superb writer with unpredictable taste in movies, so it’s hard to know what he might have thought of Life Itself, but my guess would be “thumbs up.”  Release:  2014   Grade:  B+

 *****

Flu

Here’s a big, dumb, special-effects-heavy disaster pic from Korea, inspired by big, dumb, special-effects-heavy disaster pics from Hollywood, but featuring that peculiar Korean mash-up of 1950s wholesomeness and modern sensibilities (the heroine is a single-mother virologist).

The action scenes are well done and exciting, but what ruined the movie for me was snippy Dr. Kim who, for unfathomable reasons, puts our hero, a virtuous emergency-services worker who is smitten with her, through hoop after romantic hoop.  I mean, seriously, how many lives does the guy have to save – including those of Dr. Kim and her daughter – before she’ll give him the time of day? The plot involves an infectious disease spreading through the Korean peninsula, but I found myself hoping the flu would infect Dr. Kim.  Release: 2013  Grade: B-

*****

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Critics adore this movie, presumably because 1) it’s an Iranian story (shot in California); 2) it has a female Iranian-American director; and 3) it is a mash-up of — according to some reviewers — the vampire/western/romance/graphic-novel genres.  (I might debate the inclusion of “western.”)  What most critics don’t mention are Girl’s artsy, pretentious asides and the interminable pauses during which the plot grinds to a halt and the audience falls asleep.  Nice cinematography, though.  If you want to see a better movie about a lonely, female vampire who finds love with a cute Muggle, I recommend Let the Right One In. Release: 2014  Grade: C

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 Housebound

The plot is both clever and ridiculous, but Housebound is one entertaining comic thriller from New Zealand.  Morgana O’Reilly plays a young woman who is not – I repeat, not – the clueless ingénue we’ve come to expect in movies like this one – you know, the pretty-but-dim heroine you can’t wait to see with an axe planted in her skull.  No, O’Reilly’s character is a street tough sentenced to house arrest at the creepy old home where she was raised, sharing close quarters with her scatterbrained mother and mealy-mouthed stepfather.  But there are strange doings in the house, and they don’t seem to be caused by the oddball family.  Housebound is great fun, with colorful actors and oh, yeah, a superb musical score.  Release:  2014  Grade:  B+

*****

Force Majeure

What does it mean to be a man?  In particular, what defines a “family man” in 2015?  Like any good Swedish drama, Force Majeure raises lots of provocative questions … and then fails to answer any of them.  But that’s OK because we know that it’s the journey – in this case, a ski vacation in the French Alps – that matters, and it’s a bumpy trip indeed for a family of four when the husband’s reaction to a sudden avalanche ruins everyone’s good time.  Release:  2014      Grade:  B+

 *****

King of Devil’s Island

Well-done Norwegian drama about the grueling conditions on an island prison for boys, circa 1915.  Too bad so much of the story is familiar; if you’ve seen Cool Hand Luke, The Shawshank Redemption, etc., you can likely predict much of the plot in King.  Still, the acting is superb, and the Nordic scenery is suitably chilling.  Release:  2010  Grade:  B

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 The Station Agent

Tired of movies with world-weary, cynical points of view?  Had enough of characters who don’t speak dialogue so much as argue and snipe at each other?  Then you might dig The Station Agent, a quiet little film about quiet little people who find friendship in rural New Jersey.  Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) plays a dwarf who moves to Mayberry– er, Newfoundland, to live in an abandoned train station and, with any luck, to escape society’s jerks.  But his new neighbors (Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale) won’t leave him alone.  That’s the plot – take it or leave it.  I took it.   Release:  2003   Grade:  B

*****

Septimo

Ricardo Darin, star of Argentina’s Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes, teams with Belen Rueda (The Orphanage) in a thriller about the hunt for two children who vanish from an apartment-building stairwell. I complain about Hollywood’s recent penchant for stretching every movie, no matter how deserving, to interminable runtimes, but Septimo might be one film for which 88 minutes are not enough.  After a tense opening hour, in which estranged parents Darin and Rueda deal with the apparent abduction of their kids, the ending is abrupt and leaves more than a few loose ends.   Release:  2013   Grade:  B

*****

Women Aren’t Funny

The title lies.  Some women are funny, like Bonnie McFarlane, who wrote and directed this behind-the-scenes peek at the life of a typical stand-up comic — or in this case, two comics:  McFarlane and her husband, Rich Vos.  The documentary, during which McFarlane conducts short interviews with a gaggle of American comedians, is more amusing than laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s hard to diss a flick in which the writer/director/star flashes her own bare butt while strolling bottomless through a field.   Release:  2014   Grade:  B

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Gone Girl

Screenwriter Gillian Flynn’s adaptation of novelist Gillian Flynn’s bestselling book is certainly faithful to the source material, but I don’t see that as such a good thing. Flynn’s twist-filled story – I refuse to call it “clever” because there are so many far-fetched developments – follows the plight of poor Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), who becomes Suspect A when his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing.  Unfortunately, the head-scratching plot holes that marred Flynn’s book are also present in the film.  On the positive side, this is a David Fincher project, and that means silly story or not, the movie is always watchable.  Release:  2014  Grade:  B

*****

Fruitvale Station

I have no idea how accurately Fruitvale Station depicts the events of New Year’s Day 2009, in which 22-year-old Oscar Grant was slain by police responding to a disturbance at an Oakland train station.  I suspect that the filmmakers put a bit too much sunshine on Grant, portraying him as a young man who was unfailingly kind to strangers, children, dogs, and his mother.  But as a dramatized snapshot of the disconnect between two Americas — black and white, rich and poor, law and lawlessness — Fruitvale is powerful and thought-provoking.  Release:  2013    Grade:  B+

 *****

The Interview

Critics want us to believe that when they sit down to review a film, they can be open-minded and objective.  But we all have expectations, and I’ll admit that mine were low for the notorious comedy, The Interview.  The movie, in which James Franco and Seth Rogen play TV journalists asked to assassinate North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, is actually … not bad.  Not great, but not bad.  A lot of the humor is sophomoric, and a little bit of Franco’s mugging goes a long way with me, but the film looks good, its heart is in the right place, and there are some genuinely funny scenes.   Release:  2014   Grade:  B-

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