The Grouchy Editor

If I told you that this review was written by Zargon, a 10,000-year-old wooly mammoth that was recently discovered in Antarctica, unfrozen by scientists, and then taught typing skills by an English teacher, you’d have to admit that the possibility is fairly imaginative.  Hopefully, we could also agree that it’s a profoundly stupid claim.  But that’s what you get with The Cabin in the Woods — an imaginative but profoundly stupid horror movie.

Esteemed film critic Roger Ebert has written of Cabin’s plot, “You’re not going to see this one coming.”  With any luck, that’s because you’re a somewhat rational human being who expects at least a modicum of realism in your movies, even silly movies like this one.

Everything in Cabin is culled from countless kids-in-peril flicks of the past.  You already know the story:  Five kids party at an isolated cabin, where bad things happen to them.  The kids are all archetypes from other slasher movies, which isn’t entirely bad because it does mean we get an obligatory topless scene from one of the girls, this time courtesy of actress Anna Hutchison.

Much has been made of Cabin’s supposedly novel take on a tired genre, but imagination with no discipline is also what you get when a three-year-old draws pictures on the wall.  With his own poo.       Grade:  C

Director:  Drew Goddard   Cast:  Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Brian White, Amy Acker  Release:  2012

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The gripping war movie Lebanon is unpopular with some groups in Israel because, according to a news report, “the film will deter young men from volunteering for the [Israeli] army.”  I don’t entirely buy that argument.

Does Lebanon emphasize the horrors of war?  Yes, indeed.  As you might expect from any war film, there are graphic scenes of violence, gore, and sheer terror.  Does Lebanon also glamorize war?  I’m certain that it does — at least for some members of the audience.

I feel confident that many young men will identify with at least one of the film’s four main characters, young Israelis confined in a hellish tank at the onset of the 1982 conflict in Lebanon.  This kind of viewer-identification is nothing new;  audiences sided with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker when Bonnie and Clyde was in theaters.  And I’m guessing that more than one Nightmare on Elm Street fan would enjoy being in Freddy Krueger’s blood-stained shoes.  Some young men who watch Lebanon will be repelled by what they see; others will leave the movie and seek out an enlistment officer.

For me (an old man), the most compelling reason to see Lebanon is its stunning photography.  Director Samuel Maoz, who wrote the script based on his own experience as a gunner in the 1982 battle, also has a background in art direction and photography — and man, does it show.  Shot almost entirely within the confines of a leaking, creaking tank, Maoz’s visuals are a luminescent feast, with green and gold patinas casting an eerie glow onto a drop of sweat falling off a soldier’s chin, or a crushed cigarette floating in a pool of oil.

You might think that a 93-minute movie restricted to the inside of a tank is about 90 minutes too much, but you’d be mistaken.  We feel the men’s claustrophobia, but there is also suspense because we see what they see:  kaleidoscopic snapshots of chaos on the dangerous streets outside of their metal cocoon, all viewed through the lens of a rotating gunsight.

Some people will likely experience Lebanon as a big-screen videogame: cool-looking, violent, and with clearly defined good guys and bad guys.  Others will see it as a harrowing anti-war statement.  Some people will see it as pro-military; some will see it as anti-army.  That’s just the way we are.       Grade:  B+

Director:  Samuel Maoz   Cast:  Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen, Michael Moshonov, Zohar Shtrauss, Dudu Tassa, Ashraf Barhom, Fares Hananya, Reymond Amsalem   Release:  2010

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