The Grouchy Editor

It’s hard to imagine anything more terrifying than being buried alive.  It’s a legitimate fear because unlike, say, meeting Freddy Krueger in a bad dream, premature burial is grounded in reality.  According to Wikipedia, George Washington so feared being mistakenly interred that he arranged to have his burial deferred until 12 days after his death.  Over the centuries, this type of horrific error was not uncommon.

Not to miss out on exploiting anything unspeakable, movies and TV are replete with stories depicting premature burial, from The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (“Final Escape,” 1964), to The Vanishing (1988), to Buried, now playing in a theater near you.  And because this Ryan Reynolds showcase takes place in another waking nightmare, the Iraq war zone, Buried plays on even more nerves.

Reynolds portrays Paul Conroy, a truck-driving contractor in Iraq.  After his convoy is ambushed, Conroy wakes up in a wooden box, presumably six feet under.  He learns that he’s been kidnapped (“one of the only functioning businesses over here [Iraq],” we are told) and deposited belowground by terrorists demanding a ransom.  The entire 94-minute movie takes place inside his coffin – and that presents a challenge for director Rodrigo Cortes.  The horror of Conroy’s situation is obvious, but how to generate suspense from the situation?  Through a cell phone, of course.

Cortes builds some tension, but only to a degree.  Aside from one sequence involving an unwelcome “visitor” to Conroy’s tomb, I did not experience what I’d call fear.  Discomfort, yes.   Claustrophobic anxiety, you betcha.  But fear?  Not really.          Grade:  B-

Director:  Rodrigo Cortes  Cast:  Ryan Reynolds  Release:  2010

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Monsters?  What monsters?

When this low-budget sci-fi flick opens in theaters later this month, I predict audiences will fall into one of two categories – and neither group will be happy. Group 1 will comprise viewers upset that the movie fails to live up to its scary title.  The promos for Monsters sure make it look like another War of the Worlds.  It isn’t.

There are aliens in the film, but if you run to the concession stand, you’ll miss them.  There is also suspense in the movie – but the suspense comes from wondering when the suspense will begin.

Monsters is an odd film, but not boring, and its promising beginning had me falling into Group 2:  viewers hoping for an original take on a stale premise (the aliens are here!).  But that promising beginning refuses to end (45 minutes expire before anything “happens”).  Thus, we spend lots of time with the lead characters, Andrew and Samantha, but they aren’t terribly interesting people.   Andrew is a photojournalist who is coerced into escorting the boss’s daughter, Samantha, through a Mexican “infected zone,” an area south of the border where aliens are sequestered by the government.  It is refreshing that – for once – a potential couple in a Hollywood movie is more curious than antagonistic about each other.  But this getting-to-know-you phase is lengthy and has zero suspense.  Maybe, I hoped, Monster’s climax would reward its audience’s patience.  It doesn’t.

With its obvious allusions to illegal immigration – there is an imposing wall keeping the aliens in Mexico, and out of the U.S. – Monsters makes a mild attempt at social commentary.  Says Andrew when the pair first spots The Great Wall of Texas:  “It’s different looking at America from the outside.  When you get home it’s so easy to forget all of this … in our, like, perfect, suburban homes.”  Would the conclusion of Monsters make a profound political statement?  Or might we finally witness all hell breaking loose?

Alas, the movie is what it is, a low-budget (reportedly $15,000) mishmash; part science fiction, part romance, and part social statement.  Of that stew, the only thing that stands out is the budget.  I suppose I could cut newbie director Gareth Edwards some slack for making his film with such limited resources but, hey, a ticket to Monsters cost me the same as a ticket to The Social Network.  So I won’t.   Grade:  C

Director:  Gareth Edwards  Cast:  Whitney Able, Scoot McNairy  Release:  2010

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“This brilliantly entertaining and emotionally wrenching movie,” says The New Yorker’s David Denby, “… is a movie that is absolutely emblematic of its time and place.”

I guess I can agree with the last part of Denby’s appraisal.  The Social Network is nothing if not timely.  No one questions the impact of the Internet in general, and Facebook in particular, on the world as we know it.  But does it necessarily follow that David Fincher’s movie about the rise of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is “brilliantly entertaining and emotionally wrenching”?

The Social Network is never dull; it has that going for it.  If you are 19, in college, and have big-time entrepreneurial dreams, you’ll probably love this movie.  For the rest of us, the film is primarily a voyeuristic character study and an opportunity to judge a big shot.  Who can resist having an opinion on the world’s youngest (26) billionaire?

A recent article in Entertainment Weekly portrays Social Network screenwriter extraordinaire Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) as almost apologetic for his script’s depiction of Zuckerberg.  In the story, Sorkin says, “I feel bad.  I – I wanna buy him [the real Zuckerberg] a beer.”

But despite all the media speculation about Zuckerberg’s reaction (or lack thereof) to his negative portrayal in Social Network, I think Sorkin’s beer money should to go to Zuckerberg antagonists Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.  As written by Sorkin, these two privileged WASPs are even less sympathetic than the arrogant-but-gutsy Zuckerberg.  When the Winklevoss twins claim “theft of intellectual property,” I had two reactions:  Do these pampered boys know how to spell “intellectual”?  And, will someone please explain how any of these college kids could claim “rights” to a concept that was – wasn’t it? – basically a rip-off of two existing sites, MySpace and Friendster?

None of this power grabbing makes for particularly gripping cinema.  It’s interesting, but no more than that.  It’s natural to be curious about how such a young man became so rich so fast.  And I’ll have to concede that the final shot, in which Zuckerberg the billionaire boy wonder is revealed as no different than the millions of lonely-hearts who frequent Facebook, is touching.  It’s a nod to the finale of Citizen Kane, but a 26-year-old man-child pining for the girl who dumped him is no burning Rosebud.          Grade:  B

Director:  David Fincher  Cast:  Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Rooney Mara, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Dakota Johnson  Release:  2010 

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The last time I was really fooled by a movie – by that I mean having my socks blown off, folded, and replaced in my bureau drawer – was in 1999, when writer-director M. Night Shyamalan gave us The Sixth Sense.   Shyamalan followed that ingenious thriller with a string of duds and, although I should know better by now, I continue to hope that someday he will rediscover his old magic.  That’s why I had (dwindling) hopes for Devil, the new horror film not directed by Shyamalan, but produced by him and based on his story.

I give up.  Devil does have a few nice moments, but those come courtesy not of the script but of director John Erick Dowdle, who manages to deliver a few jolts in the movie’s interesting locale:  a cramped office-building elevator in which five people are trapped.  One of the five is the devil – or so we are told in a lame narrative device.

One by one, the members of this little group are bumped off.  Whodunit?  Which of them is the devil?  This setup presents a storytelling challenge, because anyone who has ever read Agatha Christie, or seen more than a few films like this one, will probably anticipate Shyamalan’s obligatory “twist.”

What we are left with is yet another uninspired Shyamalan movie, a 30-minute Twilight Zone episode stretched out to feature-film length.  That’s not good enough, not from the man who gave us The Sixth Sense.  Shyamalan is either unwilling or unable to recapture that old magic, and so, like I said earlier, I give up.       Grade:  C

Director:  John Erick Dowdle  Cast:  Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green, Jenny O’Hara, Bojana Novakovic, Bokeem Woodbine, Geoffrey Arend, Jacob Vargas, Matt Craven, Joshua Peace, Caroline Dhavernas  Release:  2010

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I don’t know about you, but when I see adjectives like “heartbreaking,” “poignant,” and “unforgettable” in the blurbs for art-house movies, I tend to move on to something else.  Too often, those words are code for, “You might want to bring some Kleenex, and by the way, you can leave your brains in the lobby.”

Never Let Me Go, director Mark Romanek’s adaptation of the brilliant novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, is all of those adjectives – but it is also an experience that will make you think.

When I found out they were filming Ishiguro’s book, my first thought was, “They’re going to screw it up.”  I figured the producers would give Ishiguro’s layered story to some hack screenwriter who would butcher it into something unrecognizable.  They would also probably miscast the film, handing key roles to an action star and a starlet of the month.  The musical score would likely be wildly inappropriate.

So imagine my surprise when the film concluded, the end credits appeared and … I had no complaints.  Romanek captured both the beauty and the unsettling atmosphere of the novel, which is great news for lovers of the book – but quite possibly box-office poison.  There is not, last time I checked, a big market for movies that end like this one does.

It’s near impossible to describe the plot without ruining it.  I’ll just say it focuses on three students at a rather mysterious English boarding school.  Their fate is really all of our fates – just more poignant, heartbreaking and, most of all, unforgettable.       Grade:  A-

Director:  Mark Romanek  Cast:  Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley, Izzy Meikle-Small, Charlie Rowe, Ella Purnell, Charlotte Rampling, Sally Hawkins, Kate Bowes Renna, Hannah Sharp  Release:  2010

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