The Grouchy Editor

Scenario 1:  Lady A is late to the movie theater.  Parking is impossible to find, and the concession-stand line is endless.  As a result, Lady A misses the first half of High Lane.

Scenario 2:  Gentleman B watches the first half of High Lane, but receives an emergency call from his cousin Bertie, who urgently needs bail money.  Gentleman B departs the theater, and misses the second half of High Lane.

The following day, you bump into Lady A and Gentleman B, and ask both what they thought of the film.  “A crackerjack adventure with gorgeous scenery,” Gentleman B tells you, adding, “I highly recommend it.”  “It was horrid, cliché-ridden, slasher dreck,” says Lady A.  “By all means, avoid it,” she adds.  Who is giving you the best advice – Lady A or Gentleman B?  Answer:  both of them.

The first half of director Abel Ferry’s … well, “horror/adventure,” sports some of the best, tensest mountain-climbing scenes this side of Cliffhanger.   The mountain views (allegedly of the Balkans but reportedly shot in France) are breathtaking.   Ferry’s depiction of these nerve-wracking crags and crevices and their effect on one character’s vertigo is dizzying, indeed.

But for some unfathomable reason, at the 45-minute-mark the film makes a Wrong Turn and steers away from nail-biting action to tiresome, seen-it-all-before horror.  I suppose the idea must have looked good on paper:  Deliverance Meets Leatherface.

Our heroes, a group of five young and attractive (naturally) climbers, suddenly find themselves stalked and cocked by a sort of Croatian Keith Richards, an unwashed hillbilly who, in the grand tradition of all bogeymen, has no trouble snaring young people who sprint full-speed while he simply plods after them.  Everything you expect to see is included:  A young woman miraculously displays martial arts skills; people go places they shouldn’t, and do things they oughtn’t – all in the service of a plot gone spectacularly wrong.           Grade:  C

Director:  Abel Ferry  Cast:  Fanny Valette, Johan Libereau, Raphael Lenglet, Nicolas Giraud, Maud Wyler, Justin Blanckaert  Release:  2009

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I don’t care how old you are, 15 or 50, the beginning of the end of the Harry Potter saga is sad news.  But for me, this magical film franchise really began to fade about five years ago.

The Potter films were a marvel in the beginning.  Director Chris Columbus reached into a hat and produced a pair of movies that captured not only the essence of J.K. Rowling’s novels, but also their appearance.  Think about it.  All of the Potter films – including the five not directed by Columbus – have relied on the ingenious casting, sets, and music introduced in the first film.  Who supervised the construction of Hogwarts?  What genius cast Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid?  With all due respect, it wasn’t David Yates; nor was it Mike Newell or Alfonso Cuaron.  Rowling could not have asked for a better director than Columbus to transfer her vision to film.

Beginning with the third film, the series’s tone began to change.  Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the movies lost some of their charm.  As Harry, Ron and Hermione grew older and less innocent, the stories moved away from the wonder of magic and the mind-blowing concept of a school for wizards, and more toward standard teenage melodrama.  It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when the fantasy began to diminish, but the transition was unmistakable.   If I were handing out Harry Potter grades in the Great Hall, they would go something like this:  First two films – A;  third and fourth films – B+;  fifth and sixth films – B.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a good movie.  The franchise’s expensive production values, veteran actors, and commitment to quality ensure that all Potter films at least look and sound impressive.  It’s the tone, the ambience, that has changed – and not for the better.

Rowling’s books somehow managed to avoid this pitfall.  Maybe that’s because in the books we don’t actually hear Harry’s voice mutate from soprano to baritone (as we did in Chamber of Secrets), nor did we actually watch Ron grow so tall.  Or maybe it’s simply a testament to Rowling’s skill as a writer.

Here’s hoping that Deathly Hallows, which opens in a few days, can recapture some of that old magic … although I don’t expect that it will.   Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:    Grade:  B-

Director:  David Yates  Cast:  Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Jim Broadbent, Robbie Coltrane, Tom Felton, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith  Release:  2009

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Let’s take a little trip, shall we?  Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden.  While we’re there, maybe we can answer a few nagging questions.  Was Eve really a villain?  Are women more responsible than men for “original sin”?  And is life a matter of rational thought creating order … or does chaos reign?

Lars von Trier’s thought-provoking Antichrist has been attacked as a misogynistic film, but I didn’t get that impression.  In Trier’s hellish view of our time here on Earth, we are all of us pretty much screwed.  Here is an exchange between a wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her husband (Willem Dafoe):

She:  “If human nature is evil, then that goes as well for the nature of —“

He:  “Of the women.”

She:  “— the nature of all the sisters.”

Critics have seized on Trier’s storyline in which the wife, traumatized over the accidental death of the couple’s only child, gradually becomes an Eve apparently designed by the devil, leading to some graphically violent outbursts against her husband.  But prior to that, I had to wonder who was torturing whom — if your husband, a therapist, deals with his own grief by treating you like a psychological experiment in a Petri dish (“No therapist can know as much about you as I do,” he tells her), might not you snap, as well?  They say there’s nothing worse than losing a child.  After watching Antichrist, it seems there might be one thing worse:  marriage to a jerk who sidesteps his own problems by analyzing your every move and thought.

All of this sounds like dreary stuff, and it is.  There are a few graphic scenes, but nothing that fans of, say, Hostel haven’t seen before.  Trier has turned potentially off-putting material into an engrossing, visually dazzling, study of the nature of, well, nature.        Grade:  A-

Director:  Lars von Trier  Cast:  Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg  Release:  2009

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1988’s Night of the Demons was a true guilty pleasure.  It was a horror flick that never took itself seriously, but made sure to include all of the genre’s required ingredients – boobs, butts, blood, and boos (not necessarily in that order).  The acting sucked, the production values were cheesy, and the script was apparently concocted by Cub Scouts at a late-night campfire … but who cared?

Director Adam Gierasch’s remake gets some of this stuff right.  The story is still silly, the babes are on board, and the demons are suitably gruesome.  But other things are seriously out of whack.  The acting is superior in the new film – which is probably a mistake.  Part of the charm of the original was third-rate actors spouting third-rate dialogue.  Gierasch’s screenplay is corny enough, but these actors – like the movie itself – take themselves way too seriously.

As for the boobs and butts, well, where are they?  There’s a lot of teasing in Demons, but apparently political correctness rules the day over female flesh.  Gierasch includes a quick kiss between two of the male stars, but gratuitous female nudity – which is never “gratuitous” in this kind of flick – is in short supply.

This is how Gierasch explains it on the DVD:  “I don’t feel like you can get away with as much stuff now as you could back then [in 1988].  The audience is a lot more sophisticated.”  That’s the wrong attitude; it was the lack of sophistication that made the first film so much fun.

Star Edward Furlong, looking and sounding like someone who’s smoked, drugged, and drank way too much for a 30-year-old, says this of the remake:  “Lotta eye candy.  You got tits and blood – can’t really fail.”  Wanna bet?              Grade:  C-

Director:  Adam Gierasch  Cast:  Edward Furlong, Monica Keena, Shannon Elizabeth, John F. Beach, Bobbi Sue Luther, Diora Baird, Linnea Quigley  Release:  2010

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