The Crazies (2010)
The Crazies (2010)
Production Company: Overture Films and Participant Media present in association with Imagenation, an Aguilar/Gergaris production
Producers: Michael Aguilar, Dean Gerogaris, Rob Cowan
Executive Producers: George A Romero, Jeff Skoll, Jonathan King
Director: Breck Eisner
Screenplay: Scott Kosar, Ray Wright, based on the 1973 motion picture by George A Romero
Cinematographer: Maxime Alexandre
Editor: Billy Fox
Music: Mark Isham
Production Designer: Andrew Menzies
Costume Designer: George L Little
Visual Effects: Trevor Adams/Zoic Studios, David Burton/With a Twist Studio, Tim Carras/Comen VFX, Mike Uguccioni
Special Makeup Design: Erik Porn, Robert Hall, Jonah Levy, Toby Sells (Almost Human, Inc), Ron Thornton
Second Unit Director: EJ Foerster
Sound Designer/Editor: Jeremy Peirson
Stunts: Chris Carnel/EJ Foerster
Running Time: 101 mins.
Locations: Iowa, Georgia, USA
Budget: circa $25 million
Cast: Timothy Olyphant (David Dutton), Radha Mitchell (Judy Dutton), Joe Anderson (Russell Clank), Danielle Panabaker (Becca Darling), Christie Lynn Smith (Deardra Farnum), Brett Rickaby (Bill Farnum), Preston Bailey (Nicholas), John Aylward (Mayor Hobbs), Joe Reegan (Pvt Billy Babcock), Glenn Morshower (Intelligence Officer), Justin Miles (Scotty McGregor), Larry Cedar (Ben Sandborn), Gregory Sporleder (Travis Quinn), Mike Hickman (Rory Hamill), Lisa K Wyatt (Peggy Hamill), Justin Welborn (Curt Hammil), Chet Grissom (Kevin Miller), Tahmus Rounds (Nathan), Brett Wagner (Jesse), Alex Van (Red), Anthony Winters (Town Pastor), Frank Hoyt Taylor (Mortician Charles Finley), Marian Green (Mrs McGregor), E Roger Mitchell (Fire Chief Tom).
Synopsis: Ogden March, Iowa. Following an incident at a High School baseball game, it becomes clear that inhabitants of an isolated farming community are slowly turning into violent psychopaths. After the discovery of a downed government plane, Sherrif David Dutton, his wife Judy, and deputy Russell Clank realize that the infection is spreading through the town's water supply, just as an armed force of government troops seal off the area and begin arresting or killing everyone who lives there.
Review: Breck Eisner has to overcome more hurdles than most on his sophomore big screen effort, saddled with the "son of former Disney chief, Michael Eisner" moniker and all the intimations of nepotism that entails, he presided over two of 2005's more spectacular failures, the overblown $130 million Matthew Matthew McConaughey/Penelope Cruz flop, Sahara and, as Executive producer, the ill-fated Ray Bradbury adaptation A Sound of Thunder (filmed in 2002 and released with unfinished effects after production company Franchise Pictures filed for Chapter 11 following a messy Battlefield Earth-related court battle). It's a pleasure to report, then that The Crazies is a perfectly serviceable remake of George A Romero's 1973 original that delivers in post 28 Days Later thrills, even if it lacks Romero's political bite.
Blessed with four of the better genre actors in Timothy Olyphant (A Perfect Getaway), Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black, Silent Hill), Joe Anderson (The Ruins), and Danielle Panabaker (Friday the 13th), the script by Scott Kosar (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Amytyville Horror remakes, The Machinist) and Ray Wright (the Pulse remake and Christian Alvart's MIA in the USA Case 39) shifts the focus from 1973's pregnant nurse Judy (albeit promoting her to Doctor) on to her husband David (now the town sheriff) and his deputy Clank (a role closer to the original) but, in one potentially fatal alteration, leaves the authorities as largely faceless automatons, with the exception of a panicky Private and a cameo from Glenn Morshower ("24", the Transformers movies) as an intelligence Officer.
Romero's original, steeped in post-Vietnam and Watergate paranoia and the realization that our own government was as much the enemy as Communism, was a ragged patchwork of effective scenes that lacked the potency of both Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the film that followed it, Martin (1977), remaining unreleased outside the US until 1978–9. While Eisner is more in control of his material and does a creditable job of matching some of the parenthetical high points (a befuddled pensioner repeatedly asking "Did Peter call?" is particularly effective), the sense of a town at war with itself as the authorities descend is mostly jettisoned, along with any potential satire of the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina (a surprise from Participant Media, who normally produce films with socially relevant content), in favor of roller-coaster action and gore. Even at its best, nothing here matches up to the scene from the original, featuring an unsuspecting soldier and a sweet little old lady with a knitting needle.
What we do get, courtesy of Alexandre Aja's favorite cinematographer, Maxime Alexandre (Haute Tension, The Hills Have Eyes) is an Hitchockian sense of isolation and vulnerability in an open landscape (the location switch from Pittsburgh to Iowa is inspired), albeit in suitably grainy 16mm-style visuals, and Eisner's deft hand with a set-piece, particularly in an episode in which the two females are threatened by a pitchfork-wielding headmaster whilst tied to gurneys, and well-handled scenes in a child's nursery, a car wash, and an oil change pit. These, allied with an elegiac score by Mark Isham (The Mist), make for a breezy 100 minutes and one of the better horror remakes of recent years, even if the film throttles back on the nihilism and doesn't quite reach the heights of gut-wrenching, primal emotion that Eisner – and fans of the original – might have hoped for.
Shutter Island (2010)
Shutter Island (2010)
Country: USA
Production Company: Paramount Pictures presents a Phoenix Pictures production, in association with Sikelia Productions and Appian Way
Producers: Mike Medavoy, Arnold W Messer, Bradley J Fisher, Martin Scorcese
Executive Producers: Chris Brigham, Laeta Kalogridis, Dennis Lehane, Gianni Nunnari, Louis Phillips
Co-Producers: Joseph Reidy, Emma Tillinger, Amy Herman
Director: Martin Scorcese
Screenplay: Laeta Kalogridis, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane
Cinematographer: Robert Richardson
Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker
Production Designer: Dante Ferretti
Costume Designer: Sandy Powell
Music Supervisor: Robbie Robertson
Visual Effects: Rob Legato
Special Effects: Rick Thompson
Special Makeup Effects: Stan Winston Studios/Michael Ornelaz
Sound: Philip Stockton, Eugene Gearty
Stunts: Blaise Corrigan
Title Designer: Randall Balsmeyer
Running Time: 138 mins.
Locations: Medfield State Hospital, Wilson Mountain Reservation, Acadia National Park, Borderland State Park, Massachusetts.
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Teddy Daniels), Mark Ruffalo (Chuck Aule), Ben Kingsley (Dr Cawley), Max von Sydow (Dr Naehring), Michelle Williams (Dolores), Emily Mortimer (Rachel 1), Patricia Clarkson (Rachel 2), Jackie Earle Haley (George Noyce), Ted Levine (Warden), John Carroll Lynch (Deputy Warden McPherson), Elias Koteas (Laeddis), Robin Bartlett (Bridget Kearns), Christopher Denham (Peter Breene), Nellie Sciutto (Nurse Marino), Joseph Sikora (Glen Miga), Curtiss I'Cook (Trey Washington), Raymond Anthony Thomas (Orderly Ganton), Joseph McKenna (Inmate Billings), Ruby Jerins (Little Girl), Tom Kemp, Bates Wilder (Ward C Guards), Lars Gerhard (Dying Commandant), Matthew Cowles (Ferry Captain), Jill Larson (Manacled Woman), Ziad Akl (Tattooed Man).
Synopsis: Boston, 1954. US Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule are sent to investigate a missing female inmate at Ashecliffe Asylum on an island in Boston Harbor. The employees and inmates of the facility, run by Doctors Cawley and Naehring, treat the interlopers with suspicion and appear to have been coached in their responses. As the search for the girl unravels, Daniels, haunted by the death of his wife and his experience liberating the concentration camp at Dachau, becomes openly hostile as he begins to suspect the patients are subject to experimental procedures, and reveals an ulterior motive for requesting assignment to the case…
Review: Largely viewed as Martin Scorsese's return to his B-Movie roots, Shutter Island arrives as yet another delayed major studio release, albeit held over just four months from October of 2009, due to Paramount's ongoing financial problems. Based on Dennis Lehane's brilliant exercise in pulp, the film is a twisted nightmare of unreliable narration, gothic angles, hurricane-force storms, infanticide, and deep, tormenting guilt, with elements of The Wicker Man, Shyamalan, Sam Fuller, Val Lewton and Hitchcock, that make for a mind-twisting, if not entirely satisfying, upscale psychological potboiler.
All the familiar Scorcese elements are here, Leonardo DiCaprio, in his fourth collaboration with the director, is intense in that slightly distancing way of his, and receives able support from Mark Ruffalo (Zodiac) as his partner, Ben Kingsley and Max on Sydow as the suspicious doctors (the former on top form, with clipped Simon Cowell-like intonation), and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) as his dead wife.
Cinematography and Production Design from Robert Richardson (Natural Born Killers, The Aviator, Inglourious Basterds) and Dante Ferretti (Interview with the Vampire, The Aviator, Sweeney Todd) are exemplary, Thelma Shoonmaker builds appreciable tension, showing why she's edited all Scorcese's films since Raging Bull, and Robbie Robertson curates a fine collection of ominous and emotional music from Mahler, John Adams, György Ligeti (a Kubrick favorite), Brian Eno and Max Richter (do yourself a favor and stay for the closing titles), which only overplays its hand (a fault of Scorcese's last flirtation with terror, Cape Fear), in the use of the overly-portentous "Passacaglia" from Penderecki's Symphony No. 3 as the two Marshals first approach the gates of the asylum.
As ever with Scorcese, it's the scrupulously faceted density of this world that lifts Shutter Island above the run-of-the-mill. Not least in a parade of small but incredible effective performances that add depth to the story and cause the viewer to constantly question its direction. John Carroll Lynch (Fargo, Zodiac) as the stalwart but oddly threatening Deputy Warden, Emily Mortimer (Transsiberian) as the missing murderess, Jackie Earl Haley (Watchmen, the upcoming A Nightmare on Elm Street remake) particularly effective as an inmate from Daniels' past, Patricia Clarkson (The Woods) as an escapee holed up in a cliffside cave, Elias Koteas (The Haunting in Connecticut), looking like DeNiro's Frankenstein monster as Teddy's nemesis, all deserve praise but Ted Levine (Silence of the Lambs) practically steals the film in one key scene as the deeply twisted prison Warden.
Period is evoked perfectly from the shadows of World War II – flashbacks to Dachau and a resultant mistrust of Germans – to 1950s fear and suspicion surrounding nuclear weapons and the House Un-American Activities Committee, as well as the costume design of Sandy Powell (Oscar-winner for The Aviator and Shakespeare in Love) and the spot-on cadence of the leads.
If there are weaknesses, they lie in the screenplay of Laeta Kalogridis (Night Watch, Pathfinder, Cameron's Battle Angel), with certain elements explained twice and a too-soon realization of the story arc, as well as, in Scorcese and Shoonmaker's court, a hurried pace to the last 15 minutes with a surprising lack of emotional impact to the final revelation.
There's also a feeling that Kalogridis and Scorcese have over-intellectualized the material - a little less about the duality of man and the nature of violence might have tightened the structure and led to a more satisfying thriller. Scorcese's early mentor, Roger Corman, once said that every film could be improved by cutting 20 minutes and adding an exploding helicopter, one can't help feeling that in this case Scorcese should have paid heed.
These deficits, however are counteracted by a wealth of detail that bears repeated viewing, with every character quirk and fumble, each drop of water and lit match proving to have resonance in the end. And the sense that Shutter Island may, in time, fit into Scorcese's canon the way that The Shining complements Kubrick's.
Shutter Island was released in the US on February 19th, 2010 and receives a UK premiere on 12th March.
Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009)
Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009)
Country: USA
Production Company: Morningstar and Deerpath Films present, in association with Tunnel Inc, a Tonic Films Production
Producers: Lauren Vilchick, Patrick Durham, Jonathan Sachar
Co-Producers: Sam Froelich, Evan Astrowsky
Executive Producers: Susan Jackson, Jerry Kroll; Carr Miller Entertainment, Everett Miller, Chris Rutter; Tunnel Post, Kyle Dean Jackson, Alan Pao
Co-Executive Producers: Jeff Rice, Mary Aloe, Max Sinovel, Tre Lovell, Deborah Davis, Kelly Wolfington, Jason Hewitt
Director: Ti West
Screenplay: Joshua Malkin, from a story by Randy Perlstein and Ti West
Editor: Janice Hampton
Cinematographer: Eliot Rockett
Music: Ryan Shore
Music Supervisors: Alicia Miles, Matt Biffa
Sound: Richard Burton
Production Design: Tim Grimes
Special Makeup Effects: Quantum Creation FX/Christian Beckman
Special Effects: William Purcell
Second Unit Director: Terry Moews
Costume Designer: Leigh Leverett
Post Production Supervisor: Sebastian Perez-Burchard
Stunt Coordinators: John Copeman, John Gilbert
Main Title Animation: Lawson Deming
End Title Animation: Ana Maria Alvarado
Location: Wilmington, NC
Budget: $1 Million [estimated]
Running Time: 86 mins.
Cast: Rider Strong (Paul), Noah Segan (John), Alexi Wasser (Cassie), Rusty Kelley (Alex), Marc Senter (Marc), Giuseppe Andrews (Deputy Winston), Mark Borchardt (Herman), Michael Bowen (Principal Sinclair), Judah Friedlander (Toby), Larry Fessenden (Bill the Water Truck Driver), Amanda Jelks (Frederica), Thomas Blake Jr (Rick), Angela Oberer (Ms Hawker), Taylor Kowalski (Darryl), Alexander Isaiah Thomas (Dane), Lindsey Axelsson (Sandy), Lila Lucchetti (Karen), Caitlin Coons (Mary), Andrea Powell (Lucille), Regan Deal (Liz), Michael Nesbitt (Johnny Janitor), Marvin Cooper (Bus Driver), April Turner (Lady in Diner), Randy Bernard (Road Block Officer), Gabrielle Tuite (Jane), Stefani Wallace, Mary Katherine White (Topless Limo Girls) Stephani Drapeau ("Echo" the Stripper), Jesus Delgado, Mario Ramos, Josiah Authier, Tanner Wiley, Steve Josefson, Justin Milley (Strip Club Patrons).
Synopsis: The disease that laid waste to five friends in Cabin Fever (2003) has now taken hold on the water supply and infected production at the Down Home Water Company. After Paul, the last survivor of the group is killed, a truck arrives at the local high school to deliver a supply of bottled H2O for that evening's Prom…
Review: The "Alan Smithee" name was used from 1968 to 2000 by members of the Directors Guild of America who wished their names to be removed from films over which they had lost artistic control (usually in the edit suite). That Ti West requested this credit and was refused (he's not a member of the DGA and the pseudonym has long since been retired), should be taken as an indicator that Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever has some serious problems. The fact that the version released is at all watchable is down to West's original skewed vision - the influence of John Waters and Paul Bartel has been mentioned in interviews - even if the final result feels more Class of Nuke 'Em High than Multiple Maniacs or Eating Raoul.
The producers (all 18 of them) claim that the film is 90% West's vision, while West says that his original edit (he was replaced by Waters regular Janice Hampton) focused as much on off-kilter comedy as over-the-top gore. Either way the film stands or falls on the version released and while it is an unholy mess, there are flashes of brilliance that make it worth the rental.
Opening with an homage to Robocop, as an infected body explodes on impact with a moving vehicle, the film brilliantly bridges its predecessor with an animated opening title sequence - a nod to Eli Roth's original concept of a necrophiliac Song of the South - backed by The Cave Singers' perfect "Dancing on Our Graves". Indeed the music choices throughout are excellent with standouts including Sarah Burton's "One Way Ride to Hell", the Ramones' - or "The Rawones" as it's spelled in the closing titles - "Somebody Put Something in My Drink" and "Tonight It's Prom Night, All Night" from Paul Zaza and Carl Zittrer's 1980 Prom Night soundtrack).
From there we're deposited firmly in Superbad territory with Noah Segan (Deadgirl) as John, pining for an unattainable girl, Cassie (Alexi Wasser, in an ill-advised blonde wig), Rusty Kelley as Alex, his Jonah Hill-surrogate best friend, and Marc Senter (Wicked Lake) as Cassie's unconvincingly crazy ex-boyfriend. After a well-staged biology lesson dissection scene, the problems set in and bodily fluids begin to flow with a highly unlikely revenge blow job and an early death (Larry Fessenden in a cameo) that shows traces of truncation as Bill the Water Truck driver bleeds out through a tracheostomy valve that would have made more sense if we'd heard him talk before he died (kudos, though for the pancake cameo in this scene). The introduction of heroine Cassie is also oddly handled, with her repeated exclamations of "Ohmigod" initially leading us to think of her as a vacuous bimbo.
West has fun with some of the clichés of the genre, the getting-ready-for-Prom montage, played out to Patrick Hernandez's "Born to Be Alive", is good, but awkwardly intercut with scenes of Alex's early symptoms (an admittedly wince-inducing sequence with a loose fingernail and some Superglue) and would have been much better if allowed to play out on its own, like its obvious influence in Brian DePalma's Carrie (1976).
This sequence stands as a metaphor for the whole film, as throughout the remaining running time, the good - decent cameos from Judah Friedlander ("30 Rock") and Mark Borchardt (American Movie), an increased role for the original's Deputy Winston (Giuseppe Andrews), a couple of heartfelt and effectively-acted scenes from Noah Segan - are consistently undermined by the bad - Andrews' improvised lines are hit-and-miss and sequences involving a cool dude doing a fat chick for a bet, and the death of a pregnant teen are just mean spirited.
But the main deterioration happens in the final third, where all sense of logic and pace goes out the window. Cabin Fever's success was in contrasting the gross-out humor with a Cronenbergian progression of bodily decay. Here any sense of body horror is quickly jettisoned for projectile vomiting and oozing orifices, fine in and of themselves, but here the disease kills too quickly and the film rushes to an ending that the producers clearly felt was overly subtle compared with the preceding mayhem. We're then presented with a horribly misjudged coda (filmed without West's involvement), set in a strip club, that plays statutory rape for laughs and adds nothing other than running time. This is then compounded by a second animation sequence, vastly inferior to the first (illustrator Lawson Deming was unavailable), that magnifies the overall feeling of a great opportunity having gone terribly to waste.
Extras: “Prom Blows: Gore Reel” (3:07) a montage of gross-out scenes, “The Making of Gore” (12:47) behind-the-scenes featurette (made notable by West's absence), and red-band trailers from other Lionsgate releases (Blood Creek, Saw VI, Cabin Fever).
Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever was released on DVD on February 16th, 2010. An Unrated Director's Cut of Eli Roth's original Cabin Fever was released on Blu-ray the same day.
2000 Overview: Part 3. Theatrical Sci-Fi Movies
In one of those occasional coincidences/clashes of ego that crop up in Hollywood from time to time, the year 2000 saw two big-budget Mars movies, which together set the cause of serious cinema space exploration back a decade. First out was Brian de Palma's Mission to Mars, which aims for 2001/Abyss-style awe, but falters with some dodgy set-pieces and terminally dull chat between otherwise excellent actors Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Connie Nielson and Don Cheadle (Armin Mueller-Stahl also appears, uncredited). The script by Jim and John Thomas (Predator) and Graham Yost (Speed) contains a nice concept involving the human genome as a key to the Martian's secret, but this is one of the weaker entries in De Palma's canon and followed the equally dire Snake Eyes (1998).
Despite its short-comings and perhaps propelled by interest in the Mars Rover, Sojourner, which briefly transmitted pictures back to Earth in 1997, Mission to Mars raked in $110M at the Spring box office (not a huge sum compared to its $100M budget) and was followed by the November release of Red Planet, which proceeded to flop miserably, its worldwide take of $33.46M falling way short of the $80M budget. Which is a shame, as it's a more enjoyable film, replacing lofty ambitions with the straightforward tale of a team investigating the failure of a terraforming project and dealing with a malfunctioning killer robot and a newly indigenous lifeform. South African commercials director Anthony Hoffman (who made his name with ads for Nike and Budweiser, winning Cannes Golden Lion awards in 1997 and '98), has yet to make another feature and while his work does lack flair, it's bolstered by cinematography from regular Cronenburg collaborator Peter Suschitzky (who also lensed The Empire Strikes Back and Mars Attacks!), and Production Design by Owen Paterson (The Matrix, V for Vendetta), which together transform the desert outside Coober Pedy, South Australia into a thoroughly believable Martian landscape.
Also filmed around Coober Pedy, and beating both Mars projects to the punch was David Twohy's Pitch Black. Twohy had previously had a patchy career as screenwriter (Critters 2, Warlock, Waterworld) and director (Timescape, The Arrival), but here took a story by Ken and Jim Wheat (Nightmare on Elm Street 4, The Fly II), and delivered a taught horror/sci-fi hybrid that launched Vin Diesel on an unsuspecting world and introduced the under-rated Radha Mitchell (Silent Hill). Sadly, the sequel was an overblown let-down (another is in development) and Twohy would't regain this kind of form until 2009's A Perfect Getaway.
Sandwiched between disappointing cop thrillers True Crime (1999) and Blood Work (2002), Space Cowboys is an amiable romp in which Eastwood's astronaut Frank Corvin gets his long-delayed chance at a space shot when a Russian satellite, running bootlegged code he created, needs to be rescued. Naturally he wants his old team with him and James Garner, Donald Sutherland and a somewhat too-young Tommy Lee Jones go along for the ride. The film breezes along nicely in that making-it-all-look-so-easy way unique to Eastwood's directorial style.
The rest of the year saw a collection of weird and wonderful, bizarre and disappointing science fiction movies, including Tarsem's The Cell, which is either a visionary masterpiece or pretentious crap, depending on who you talk to, but uses a good cast (Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D'Onofrio) well and lacks nothing in ambition and scope. It would be good to see Tarsem re-attach his last name (Singh), overcome the hatred people have for the single name director (McG anyone?) and harness his love of surreal art to make a really great film - his follow up The Fall (2006) was even more ambitious and left most viewers cold. The Cell 2 from TV producer/director Tim Iacofano ("24"), starring Frank Whaley (Vacancy) went straight to DVD in 2009 and bears little relation to the original.
Supernova was originally marked as the US directorial debut of Australian Geoffrey Wright (he helmed Cherry Falls instead and then returned home), until the reigns were handed to Alien producer Walter Hill (Southern Comfort), who presumably had no more success with the powers-that-be, given that he took the pseudonym "Thomas Lee" after Jack Sholder (The Hidden) was hired for reshoots and Francis Ford Coppola re-cut the film. Starring James Spader, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, Lou Diamond Phillips, Peter Facinelli, and Robin Tunney, it's doubtful that anything coherent could have been made of this, but the production looks handsome, the effects are good and it's mercifully short.
Hollow Man felt pretty mainstream for a Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop) project, but still had plenty of the leering stupidity that made Showgirls such a hoot. The first thing Kevin Bacon's character does once invisible is to attempt to spy on his naked neighbor (Rhona Mhitra), an understandable impulse and probably forgivable if the rest of the film didn't descend into standard slasher fare. Verhoeven's heart doesn't seem to be in it - unusually for him the film didn't run into problems with the MPAA – and he took a break from directing after this and has yet to return to genre film-making having completed only one film, the World War II-set Black Book, in the last 10 years. Hollow Man 2 with Christian Slater, Peter Facinelli and Laura Regan followed in 2006, with a script by Joel Soisson (Dracula 2000, Mimic 2),directed by Claudio Fäh (producer of Starship Troopers 3: Marauder and Joe Dante's The Hole).
In 1999, Arnold Schwarzenegger claimed that, while interested in politics, he had no plans to run for governor of California. All that would change in 2003, but in the meantime he still had three lead roles left in him and The 6th Day is a competent but forgettable $82 million cloning thriller, directed by Roger Spottiswoode (Terror Train, Tomorrow Never Dies), from a screenplay by The Wibberleys (Bad Boys II, National Treasure), which gives us two Arnies for the price of one and not a lot else.
Frequency was Gregory Hoblit's third film as director, following Primal Fear (1996) and the silly Fallen (1998) and the first as writer and producer for former music executive Toby Emmerich (The Butterfly Effect, Snakes on a Plane). It's premise, set against the 1969 World Series is given legs by good performances from Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel as a father and son, separated by time and premature death, who reconnect via ham radio and some handy solar flares. Unfortunately it descends into fairly standard serial killer nonsense and has an extremely sentimental ending. Early appearances by Michael Cera and Elizabeth Mitchell ("Lost") enliven proceedings.
Left Behind followed the limited success of The Omega Code (1999) with more End Times rumblings, aimed at scaring poor sinners into the arms of fundamentalist Christianity. However where Omega Code had Caspar van Dien, Michael York and Michael Ironside, Left Behind can only manage Kirk Cameron ("Growing Pains"), Brad Johnson (The Birds II: Land's End) and Gordon Currie (Puppet Master 4 and 5) in the tale of events following the raising of 142 million souls to heaven. The film was initially released on video, selling 2.8 million copies (the highest from an independent that year) and then to 900 theaters in February 2001 where it pulled in a further $4.22M (budget was an estimated $17.4M), enough to ensure two sequels: Left Behind: Tribulation Force (2002) and Left Behind: World at War (2005). Producer Peter Lalonde's Cloud Ten Pictures also gave us Tribulation (aka Apocalypse III: Tribulation) the same year in which Gary Busey sees the light, along with Howie Mandel and Margot Kidder, neither of whom apparently realized they were in a Christian flick.
All of the above are classic of their kind, compared to the monumental folly of Roger Christian's JG Ballard adaptation, Battlefield Earth, which Franchise Pictures claimed cost $75 Million, but was discovered in court to have cost a mere $44M. The court case bankrupted the company (which also produced duds The Boondock Saints, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, and FeardotCom) and left John Travolta, and Scientology as a whole, looking very silly indeed, killing Barry Pepper's career in the process. Universally panned, the film opened against Gladiator in its second week and died a quick and painful death with eventual worldwide earnings of just $29.72M.
If "straight" science fiction hit a black hole in 2000, then things were even worse in the benighted sci-fi comedy arena, with Garry Shandling's leading man status still-born in Mike Nichol's painful What Planet Are You From? from a screenplay by Shandling, Michael Leeson (The War of the Roses), Ed Soloman (Men in Black), and Peter Tolan (Analyze This), in which the former "Larry Sanders" plays an alien with a whirring phallus looking for a mate. Quite how this nonsense attracted Annette Bening, Greg Kinnear, John Goodman, and Linda Fiorentino we may never know.
Much better was Happy Accidents, the follow-up to Sundance hit Next Stop Wonderland from writer/director Brad Anderson, whose career would take a darker turn with Session 9 (2001) and The Machinist (2005). Pre-figuring the following year's K-PAX. Vincent D'Onofrio plays Sam, the current boyfriend of unlucky-in-love directory assistance operator, Ruby (Marisa Tomei). Sam claims to be from the 25th Century and the film hinges on whether or not Ruby should believe him.
From the arthouse came Possible Worlds, the only English language film to date from French-Canadian director Robert Lepage, more famous for his stage work with Peter Gabriel (Secret World and Growing Up tours) and Cirque du Soleil (Kà). The film stars Tom McManus as a man found dead with his brain missing and follows his relationships in parallel worlds with versions of the same woman (Tilda Swinton). Beautiful to behold but cold to the touch (mainly thanks to Swinton's performance), it's difficult to see in the US these days, but is available on Region 2 DVD.
The Wolfman (2010)
The Wolfman (2010)
Country: UK/USA
Production Company: Universal Pictures presents in association with Relativity Media, a Stuber Pictures Production
Producers: Scott Stuber, Benicio Del Toro, Rick Yorn, Sean Daniel
Executive Producers: Bill Carraro, Ryan Kavanaugh
Co-Producer: Stratton Leopold
Director: Joe Johnston
Screenplay: Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self, based on the motion picture screenplay by Curt Siodmak
Cinematographer: Shelly Johnson
Editors: Dennis Virkler, Walter Murch
Production Design: Rick Heinrichs
Art Director: Andy Nicholson
Special Make-up Design: Rick Baker
Music: Danny Elfman
Costume Design: Milena Cononero
Sound Editors: Per Hallberg, Karen M Baker
Sound Designer: Peter Staubli
Visual Effects: Rhythm & Hues, The Moving Picture Company, Double Negative, Peerless Camera Company, Plowman Craven and Associates
Special Effects: Paul Corbould
Stunts: Vic Armstrong
Titles: Neil Huxley/yU+co
Length: 102 mins.
Budget: $120 Million
Locations: Chatsworth House, Derbyshire; Castle Combe and Lacock, Wiltshire; Black Park and Stowe Gardens, Buckinghamshire; Bourne Woods and Richmond Theatre, Richmond, Surrey; the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich.
Cast: Benicio Del Toro (Lawrence Talbot), Anthony Hopkins (Sir John Talbot), Emily Blunt (Gwen Conliffe), Hugo Weaving (Inspector Abberline), Art Malik (Singh), Geraldine Chaplin (Maleva), Antony Sher (Dr Hoenneger), Clive Russell (MacQueen), Cristina Contes (Solana Talbot), Simon Merrells (Ben Talbot), Michael Cronin (Dr Lloyd), Roger Frost (Reverend Fisk), Nicholas Day (Colonel Montford), David Sterne (Kirk), David Schofield (Constable Nye), Rob Dixon (Squire Strickland), Olga Fedori (Maleva's daughter), Lorraine Hilton (Mrs Kirk), Shaun Smith (Carter), Jordan Coulson (Wolf Boy), Gemma Whelan (Gwen's Maid), Mario Marin-Borquez (Young Lawrence), Asa Butterfield (Young Ben), Malcolm Scates (Butcher), Oliver Adams (Gypsy Boy), Rick Baker (Gypsy Man/First Killed), Emil Hostina (Gypsy Man/Bear Handler), Barry McCormick (Asylum Orderly).
Synopsis: England, 1991. Summoned by his missing brother's fiancée, Shakespearean actor Lawrence Talbot returns home and is reunited with his father after being institutionalized and sent away to America as a child. Discovering his brother has been found dead, seemingly savaged by a large beast, Lawrence determines to uncover the killer, only to come under suspicion himself as the murders continue and a Scotland Yard Inspector arrives in the local village.
Review: It's been a long, strange trip to the screen for The Wolfman, with director, Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, Jurassic Park III) replacing Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo), just three weeks before principal photography (after original replacement, Brett Ratner dropped out) and faced with the daunting task of persuading Anthony Hopkins to stay on board. Originally intended for release in April 3rd, 2009, then announced as "sometime next fall", when November came we were greeted with the news that Paul Haslinger (Underworld, Death Race) was replacing Danny Elfman as composer. Along the way, $20 Million of new effects were added (ironic, as Romanek departed over budget disagreements) and finally Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now) was brought in to re-edit the original cut by Dennis Virkler (Batman & Robin, The Chronicles of Riddick). The only bright spot in all this was the surprise announcement that the film would receive an 'R' rating.
The good news is that Danny Elfman's baroque score is intact and this puppy looks gorgeous, thanks to the astute hiring of Coen Brothers and Tim Burton collaborator Rick Heinrichs (Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes) as production designer. Soaked in atmosphere, Heinrichs successfully transforms Chatsworth House in Derbyshire from a model tourist attraction to a rotting hulk, draped in vines and weary with neglect. Cinematography by Shelly Johnson (Jurassic Park III) complements the design, with a steely blue/grey palette that pays sufficient homage to the black and white origins of the 1941 Wolf Man. Indeed, kudos is due to Johnston for being respectful to the source material and having the decency to attempt a grown-up remake with largely physical effects, as opposed to the usual Universal CGI kiddy-romps like The Mummy franchise and Van Helsing.
While there is two-thirds of a good movie here, things start to go wrong early, with the introduction of Hugo Weaving as Inspector Abberline, an awkward import from the hunt for Jack the Ripper, which is mentioned but carries no weight (it would have more resonance if there was a hint that Abberline had been sent up north as some kind of punishment - the film is set three years after the unsolved Ripper murders). Confusingly, the Inspector seems intent on pinning the early attacks on Talbot, despite the fact that he is clearly a victim, and was playing Hamlet on stage in London when the first deaths occurred.
But still, the rich atmosphere and the twinkle in Anthony Hopkins' eye carry us neatly through the first half, despite clunky dialogue from scribes Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en, Sleepy Hollow) and David Self (The Haunting, Road to Perdition) and the ham-handed handling of a gypsy camp attack (which features a nice cameo from make-up maestro Rick Baker), an event that could have built slowly, with mounting confusion, but instead lurches along like the title character, violent and shaggy.
Things really take a turn for the worse when we arrive in London (which looks beautiful thanks to those extra $20 Million), with Talbot betrayed, captured and ensconced in the asylum to which he was committed as a child, following his mother's apparent suicide. Here, despite a sadistically Dickensian proto-waterboarding sequence that brings to mind the Hughes Brothers From Hell, Anthony Sher's chief doctor sports a comedy German accent straight out of Young Frankenstein and we realize with mounting disappointment that Talbot will return north for an obvious, silly and frankly embarrassing final showdown.
Johnston's lack of facility with actors (he started out as an effects designer on Star Wars, before moving on to effects art direction on The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Return of the Jedi), is also evident in scenes with Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt, where Johnston avoids close-ups of Del Toro, leaving us gazing at Emily Blunt's porcelain beauty and the back of Talbot's head as he speaks. This, along with Del Toro's glowering one-note performance means we lack the sympathy we felt for Lon Chaney (a vastly inferior actor) in the original and, in spite of Blunt's stirling efforts, deprived of emotion in the inevitable tragic denoument.
Not a total failure then and it seems odd to wish for less horror in a werewolf film, but it's tempting to imagine how a smarter director with a less troubled production and the courage of his convictions might have used the myth as a metaphor for the rot of the English upper class and given us a lycanthrope Howards End, or a gory Gosford Park, instead of this well-meaning but confused hybrid.
The Wolfman is released today, nationwide.
Tony (2009)
Tony (2009)
Country: UK
Production Company: AbbottVision and the UK Film Fund present an AbbottVision Production
Producer: Dan McCulloch
Co-producer: Kirstie Edgar
Executive Producer: Paul Abbott
Director: Gerard Johnson
Screenplay: Gerard Johnson
Cinematographer: David Higgs
Editor: Ian Davies
Music: The The
Production Designer: Naomi Reed
Costume Designer: Suzie Harman
Makeup Designer: Anna Cash
Sound Mixer: Tom Barrow
Sound Editor: Jovan Ajder
Sound Effects Editor: Peter Crooks
Length: 73 mins.
Cast: Peter Ferdinando (Tony), Ricky Grover (Davey's Dad), Kerryann White (Davey's Mum), Vicky Murdock (Dawn), Neil Maskell (Mike Hemmings), Lorenzo Camporese (Alex), Francis Pope (Smudger), George Russo (Mackey), Cyrus Desir (Dealer), Frank Boyce (Publican), Lucy Flack (Prostitute), Ian Groombridge (CID Detective), Ian Kilgannon (TV License inspector), Mark Mooney (Sunbed shop owner), Greg Kam (DVD seller), Sam Kempster (Davey), Neil Large, Rob Seth-Smith (drug takers), Jill Keen (Madam), Callum Madge (Corpse in lounge), Adrian Walker (Corpse in bed).
Synoposis: Tony is a socially awkward loner who hasn't worked in over 20 years. Victimized or ignored by those around him, he spends his time alone in his grim council flat watching action videos and looking at porn. His bland exterior hides the fact that he's a serial killer, preying on drug addicts and cruising the local gay bar for victims. However his world begins to disintegrate when he is forced to take a job and then a local 10-year-old boy goes missing.
Review: Filmed in 12 days in the rundown neighborhoods of London's Hackney district of Dalston, home to Mike Leigh's Naked and Stephen Frear's Dirty Pretty Things, Tony is a slice of British kitchen sink realism (with added entrails) that recalls the work of Leigh, Ken Loach and particularly Shane Meadows, succeeding brilliantly where Stephen Sheil's similarly grim but much less satisfying horror hybrid Mum & Dad (2008) - which starred Meadows regular Perry Benson – disappointed.
Beautifully shot on Technicolor stock, the film makes excellent use of London locations, with the miserable grey council blocks and rundown market places giving way to the neon signs of Piccadilly Circus and the bright lights of the West End as Tony reaches a form of catharsis and broadens his hunting ground. The biggest delight here is the performance of Peter Ferdinando, who dropped 35 pounds to play the title character and is pitch-perfect in capturing the social awkwardness of this pathetic loner, desperate to make a connection but unable to do so other than with a lump hammer and a mains lead.
Ricky Grover as a violent father who causes Tony some grief.
The character's awkward interactions provide some welcome humor - asking a bootleg DVD seller whether he prefers karate or kung fu after admitting he only owns a video recorder; scanning a prostitute's hand-written price list before asking "how much for a cuddle?"; offering a cup of tea to a clearly long-dead bed partner - but his impotent quoting from action movies pays off in a brilliantly acted scene as Tony quotes a Gene Simmons/Rutger Hauer interchange from Gary Sherman's Wanted: Dead or Alive, before unexpectedly screaming at his reflection - the effect is both shocking and hugely sympathetic.
Director Gerard Johnson infuses the set piece scenes with style and tension, a visit to a poetry-quoting drug dealer with a comatose girl companion ("She's been bled") is more David Lynch than Guy Ritchie and the scene where Tony offers to show two visitors some of his VHS collection (name-checking such 80s obscurities as Peter Manoogian's Enemy Territory and Roger Corman's Cocaine Wars) is notable for the fact that we feel more concern for Tony's safety than those of his potential victims - at least until he whites his face and produces a carrier bag and some duct tape.
Peter Ferdinando as Tony contemplates his newest friend.
The film is not without its problems, one character, allowed to go free early on, is never heard from again and there's a questionable depiction of a homosexual character as deserving of death because he seeks a one night stand with the wrong man – he also snorts coke, demands alcohol and likes trance music in case we need further reason. However these are small matters when measured against such strong performances (Ricky Grover is also terrifying as the grieving father whose bulk and impotent rage are the antithesis of Tony's repression and skeletal frame), haunting sound design and music from the director's brother Matt Johnson of The The (it's a family affair, as Peter Ferdinando is their cousin) and, the odd severed limb notwithstanding, a laudable commitment to avoiding the clichés of the horror film, leading to a downbeat - some will say anticlimactic - ending that makes perfect sense for the character but refuses to pander to genre conventions.
Tony will be released on DVD by Revolver Entertainment on April 6th.
