The Grouchy Editor

I love Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining — even though the man who wrote the original story, Stephen King, does not.  I have never understood King’s disdain for the 1980 film adaptation of his novel.  King’s stories, after all, have been bastardized on screen many times (sometimes by King himself), from Sleepwalkers to Thinner to Maximum Overdrive.  And yet, this is the movie that rankles him?

But much as I like Kubrick’s movie, my admiration is nothing compared to that of some fans, five of whom describe their Shining obsession in Room 237, a documentary about hidden messages in the film.  Or so these people believe.

According to these conspiracy theorists, who have laboriously studied the movie (often frame-by-frame), Kubrick, a meticulous filmmaker, planted subliminal messages throughout his movie.  The Shining, they say, is an allegory about the Holocaust (look how often the number 42 appears!).  Or, The Shining is a commentary on the “white man’s burden” — a burden our ancestors relieved by committing genocide against the American Indian (see those cans of Calumet in the background of the pantry?).  But wait:  Kubrick is the man who helped the United States government falsify footage of the 1969 moon landing, and the evidence of that hoax is scattered, confession style, throughout The Shining.

A problem with Room 237 is that there are so many conspiracy theories proposed that they tend to cancel each other out.  Assuming Kubrick did insert subliminal comments about the Holocaust, did he also plant messages about manifest destiny, and about Apollo 11?  Not likely.

Personally, I was intrigued by the patterns in the carpeting of Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel and their alleged symbolism.  Then again, if you are going to spot Minotaurs in pictures of snow skiers on the wall, you might as well analyze every other picture on the walls of the hotel — or every cloud in the sky, for that matter.  Wait, someone does analyze the clouds … and spots Kubrick’s “face.”

When I was in college, I took a film class where we studied Hitchcock’s Psycho.  I noticed something in a scene in which Norman Bates disposes of evidence by pushing a car into a swamp.  As the vehicle sinks, Hitchcock shows a close-up of the license plate, and we can clearly see the letters “NFB.”  In my class paper, I speculated that the letters might be a wink from the director to his audience:  NFB = Never Find Body.  My professor loved this theory and gave my essay an A.

But who knows?  Maybe the letters NFB were completely arbitrary.  Maybe The Shining is simply a great horror film littered with continuity errors and an art director’s whimsy.  Sometimes a monkey tossing a bone into the air is just a monkey tossing a bone into the air.       Grade:  B

Director:  Rodney Ascher   Featuring:  Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, John Fell Ryan, Jay Weidner, Buffy Visick   Release:  2013

Can you see the electrical cord for the TV?  Of course not, because there isn’t one.

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Going in to an “evil kid” movie, you know it’s just a matter of time before all hell breaks loose.  In Come Out and Play, a low-budget remake of a 1976 Spanish cult film, the evil kids eventually do come out and play — but the wait is a bit of a drag.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Vinessa Shaw play young Americans who are also in a holding pattern.  Beth, seven months pregnant, and husband Francis decide to enjoy some pre-baby free time by vacationing at a picturesque Mexican island.  When they arrive at Punta Hueca, there are children playing and fishing off the dock.  Upon further exploration of the village, Beth and Francis make an unsettling discovery:  There are, seemingly, only children on the island.  Where are all of the adults?

(The director of this film is a strange character called “Makinov” who seems to have one or two bones to pick with the world.  In a YouTube video, Makinov shields his face beneath a hood, a la pick-your-favorite-serial-killer, and rants against modern society.  During the end credits of Play, Makinov dedicates his movie to “the martyrs of Stalingrad.”)

Think what you will of Makinov the politician, the man knows how to stage a creepy scene.  When children perch atop a fence lining a village street, silently watching as Beth and Francis pass by, they resemble nothing so much as the ominous crows in The Birds, at rest on a schoolyard jungle gym between attacks.  Makinov, like Hitchcock, takes something that’s everyday normal — children, birds — and turns it into an object of fear.  When you do something like that, you run the risk of generating unintentional laughter; to his credit, Makinov generates suspense.

But this movie is not The Birds.  Despite an eerily effective soundtrack, arresting visuals, and a pair of surprising plot turns, Come Out and Play simply takes too long to get to the fun stuff.       Grade:  B-

Director:  Makinov  Cast:  Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Vinessa Shaw, Daniel Gimenez Cacho  Release:  2013

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I’m not sure why, but something that Hollywood used to be pretty good at — the moody, psychological thriller — seems to have migrated south of the border.  It’s been 14 years since M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, and those of us who prefer an O. Henry twist to special effects and gore have had to get used to reading English subtitles.

And so we have The Hidden Face, a Spanish-Colombian production in which a rippling pool of water in a sink is more significant than any number of bloody hatchets — and way more entertaining.

Adrian (Quim Gutierrez) is a rising star with the Bogota Philharmonic Orchestra, a young conductor whose good fortune does not extend to the women in his life.  When his live-in girlfriend (Clara Lago) goes missing, Adrian finds solace first in alcohol, and then in the waitress, Fabiana (Martina Garcia), who serves his drinks.  But the police are suspicious, and so is Fabiana when things start to go bump in the night at the rented mansion she begins to share with Adrian.  Is there a ghost in the house?

The Hidden Face is short, sweet, and satisfying, like an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents with South American scenery and South American nudity.  There is nothing profound about it, but it sure beats bloody hatchets. *          Grade:  B+

*  Note:  Beware the trailer for this film, which inexcusably reveals a major plot twist.

Director:  Andres Baiz   Cast:  Quim Gutierrez, Martina Garcia, Clara Lago, Maria Soledad Rodriguez, Jose Luis Garcia, Marcela Mar, Humberto Dorado   Release:  2011

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Cold Sweat is one of those horror flicks in which people constantly do illogical and stupid things — like hiding where the bad guys can (or should) find them, or failing to locate the front door — and in which the plot degenerates from the implausible to the silly to batshit crazy.  But because director Adrian Garcia Bogliano is on top of his game, bringing energy, mischief, and style to his movie, Cold is eminently watchable.

Bogliano has said that he wanted to lace his horror with a little history, reminding young Argentineans that there are real-life bad guys walking the streets of their country:  aging holdovers from a military dictatorship that conducted a reign of terror in Argentina dating to the 1970s.  To that end, the villains in Cold are — I’m guessing you haven’t seen this before — two geezers living in a ramshackle house in the heart of Buenos Aires.

And what sort of skullduggery are these deranged coots up to?  “Catfishing,” of all things.  Locating young, attractive women on the Internet, the codgers lure these gullible girls to their creepy abode, sprinkle a nitroglycerine derivative onto their bodies, and then force them to … solve math formulas on a chalkboard!  (Please refer here to the opening sentence of this review, i.e., people doing stupid and illogical things.)

It’s nonsensical, but if you’re willing to simply absorb Cold Sweat on a visceral level, it’s a fast-moving hoot.  Bogliano knows how to pace a thriller, and visually his movie resembles The Texas Chainsaw Massacre redone as music video.

Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t credit Bogliano with one of the more creative means of getting an actress to go nude:  Apparently, once your body is sprinkled with an ultra-sensitive nitroglycerin derivative, your wisest survival course is to completely disrobe.  I did mention the words “stupid” and “illogical,” did I not?       Grade:   C+

Director:  Adrian Garcia Bogliano   Cast:  Facundo Espinosa, Marina Glezer, Camila Velasco, Omar Musa, Omar Gioiosa, Noelia Vergini, Daniel de la Vega, Victoria Witemburg   Release:  2010

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