Month: November 2009

Director Richard Kelly loves to play around in the science fiction genre, and he really likes to get strange with it- with his first movie, Donnie Darko he put something out there on the screen that no one had really seen the likes of before, and it met with cult success. With his second movie, Southland Tales he got really ambitious, going way larger in scale, with a bigger cast and really big ideas, and it met with derision at the theatres (I liked it quite a bit my own self though), Now his third film is here, The Box and it’s easily his most accessible film to date, and at the same time, he manages to twist up the genre a bit, though this one has qualities that are much more classic.

It’s 1976 and the place is Richmond, Virginia. Arthur and Norma Lewis are a nice couple, he’s an engineer with NASA working on the Mars probe program and she’s a school teacher and they live an ordinary life with their young son Walter. There are struggles though, they live paycheck to paycheck and they further deal with a deformity of her foot that Norma suffered in her youth, but still this family gets by. One morning a mysterious figure by the name of Arlington Steward leaves a box at their doorstep, with instructions that he will come back to see them the next day with instructions for the contents of the box. The box contains another box, with a button on top of it and they are told that if they push the button on the box, a person that they do not know will die and further they will receive one million dollars tax free to do with what they will.

And that’s the starting premise of The Box, which is freely adapted from a Twilight Zone story that Richard Matheson wrote called “Button, Button.” Though Richard Kelly uses that as a pure springboard, for something even larger, building his own mythology for this with all sorts of twists and turns that come later- but further and most importantly, they all fit together and make for some extremely smart science fiction and at least in my opinion, Kelly’s best movie to date.

His setting is 1976, and he’s chosen to make the movie in such a way that it’s reflective of the period, though he certainly does use the benefits of today’s technology in telling that story, it’s nothing that’s too overt, so you’re not seeing massive amounts of CGI in place, no this is far quieter than that, but still very effective.

His story is very well layered, and touches on all sorts of areas, and while it’s strong in it’s sci-fi elements, it’s not at the expense of his human elements, in other words, you do give a damn about Arthur and Norma and of course that’s always welcome. I’ve already read complaints of the movie’s slow-pacing, and personally, I think it works here, events unfold naturally and not at all forced, but I think you have to be willing to let a movie do that to enjoy it- if you just want this to hit the high points all the time, then this won’t be for you.

While watching this, I was put in the mind of another science fiction film from earlier in the year, Alex Proyas’ Knowing with Nicolas Cage, both deal with some classic sci-fi elements and put their own twists to it, and at leas tin my mind, rather successfully.

Kelly’s cast is really strong here- James Marsden and Cameron Diaz are cast as Arthur and Norma and they are both just really great. I get more impressed with Marsden in everything I see him in and this might just be one of the most vulnerable parts I’ve seen Diaz play to date (and she still looks fantastic). Most importantly, they do have a solid chemistry together, which certainly pays off in the film’s climax. Frank Langella plays the mysterious Arlington Steward and he does a fine job here, though his role is to be somewhat cold and detached in what he’s doing, there’s still a subtle charm to him, and yet with this underplaying, he’s very much a presence in the film.

My expectations for this were relatively low when I went to see it, though I do have a fascination for Richard Kelly’s work, but still, this was the first of his movies that was getting a wide theatrical release and so the expectations are there somewhat that it’s final product might be a little diluted. While it is easily his most accessible movie to date, it’s not at the expense of elements that have been in his other movies- being a hard core science fiction element and multi-layered writing, they’re both still evident here, so I expect the biggest thing that’s changed is Kelly’s maturity as a filmmaker, and if The Box is an example of things to come from Kelly, then I can’t wait to see what he has in store for his future projects. The Box is highly recommended and if you don’t see it in theatres, at least manage it on DVD down the road.

A young Ann Arbor, Michigan journalist named Bob Wilton is going through a bit of a crisis of self- his wife has ran off with his editor and he finds himself really going nowhere where he’s at, and at the start of this story, he’s been introduced to man who is a psychic and has revealed to him a story about the army trying to create a group of super soldiers using psychic abilities. In a fit of wanting to prove himself, Bob leaves the safe confines of his home and decides to go to Iraq to cover the war (this takes place between 2003 and 2004) and while there he meets with Lyn Cassady, a man mentioned in his earlier report, who reveals to Bob that he’s there for a secret mission and so Bob tags along with him, hoping to find out the true story of this super soldier program, called the New Earth Army

That’s the basic premise to The Men Who Stare At Goats from director Grant Heslov (better known as an actor and one of George Clooney’s close pals), and this is the case where you have a movie that has an absolutely terrific trailer that works for it, but unfortunately comes up way short in the end, though there are some bright spots along the way.

One of those big bright spots is the extremely high-powered cast that this has going for it- George Clooney as Lyn Cassaday, Ewan MacGregor as Bob Wilton, Jeff Bridges as Bill Django, the man who starts the New Earth Army and Kevin Spacey as Larry Hooper, a failed sci-fi writer with his own abilities and his own ideas of what the psychic soldier program should be about. And in the background, you’ve got some notable guys like Stephen Lang, Robert Patrick and character guys like Stephen Root and Glenn Morshower. The main cast actually does a nice job with what they have, in particular Clooney, who is absolutely doing his level best to sell this, but it still comes up short.

From it’s title and it’s casting, it seems to me that Heslov is trying to make a Coen Brothers movie in the worst way, yet never quite goes far enough. There’s a jumble of “messages” in the film with none of them ever quite coming through and a lackadaisical pacing that makes this very short movie (around 90 minutes) seem way longer than what it is. There are some bright spots along the way, in particular flashback sequences showing the origins of the New Earth Army, and some great ironic dialogue between MacGregor and Clooney near the start, where Cassaday refers to these soldiers as real life Jedi Knights and explaining to MacGregor abut that concept, with MacGregor not knowing anything of what he’s talking about (the irony of course being that MacGregor has played one of the greatest of the Jedi Knights, Obi-Wan Kenobi, in the Star Wars movies).

But these bright moments come to little and not often enough, and where Heslov fails is in making something that strives to be more cute than cutting, and had this been a Coen Brothers film, it probably would’ve been plenty cutting. It plays it all pretty incredulously until it’s very end, and really what this should’ve had you wondering all along is that this whole thing very well could be true (stating at the start that most of the movie does have it’s basis in truth) and instead your left with a few really nice sequences, a few good laughs, but not enough to really make for something that was satisfying (at least to me) in the end.

As a husband and wife are making love, their small child crawls to the window sill and plummets to his death, and the wife sees all of this, but is too engaged in her “rapture” so to speak to do anything about it. She suffers tremendous guilt over this and her husband, a therapist, seeks to cure her of her guilt, though he already knows this may be wrong, but he wants her to put herself into a situation that would leave her at her most vulnerable, forcing her to confront her fears, and thus move past this… only that’s not quite what happens…

This is what physically seems to be the premise of Lars von Trier’s latest movie, Antichrist, which of course made big news in Cannes for the extreme reaction that it was met with by critics. Now I’m a big fan of von Trier’s, I think the guy is a brilliant filmmaker (he thinks so too and won’t hesitate to let you know it) and though I may not necessarily agree with his worldview on things, I most certainly admire the fact that he puts it out there, totally un-compromised, and leaves it in the minds of his audience to ponder over after the fact.

This deals extremely with the nature of man and woman, religion, misogyny, witchcraft (as a means of feminine control), genital mutilation and more and totally does it in a way that screams pure art house at the audience. von Trier is known for being a cinematic provocateur, and he’s certainly at that with Antichrist pretty much taking a sledgehammer over your head pounding in his own ideas, and of course wanting it’s audience to bring something to the table as well.

There is a sense of impending dread that permeates the entire movie, starting slow and building to an extreme crescendo of violence, by it’s end. The violent acts are gut-wrenching and very hard to watch and in some cases, extremely sexual in nature. I was put in the mind of David Lynch’s Eraserhead through a good portion of this, and I think, that if you’ve seen that movie, then your own reaction to that might be a way to gauge what your reaction to Antichrist would be.

On a technical level, this is amazingly well done, and nothing less should be expected from von Trier, as almost all of his films display an amazing technical proficiency. I found it interesting that in his end credits, there credits given to researchers for both misogyny and horror films, which of course just makes me curious to the inner workings of how this all came together.

Antichrist stars Willem Dafoe and French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg and with the exception of their young child, they’re pretty much entirely who were dealing with this entire film. And it’s extremely brave performances from both, in particular Gainsbourg, who’s asked to do some things on-screen that I don’t think you’d ever see too many American actresses willing to even think about. let alone perform them on-screen. Dafoe has previously worked with von Trier on Manderlay and supposedly had such a good rapport with the director that he sought out a new project with him, well he certainly got something way more demanding here and fortunately Dafoe is up to the task, but then he’s never been one to shy away from anything controversial either.

As I said at the start, I’m a big fan of Lars von Trier, and pretty much look at seeing a new movie from him in about the same way that I used to with the films of Stanley Kubrick or currently do with the films of David Lynch, which is of course for me, a special event. Antichrist didn’t disappoint me in that regard and left me with much to ponder over after the fact. I’ve seen some say that they wouldn’t necessarily want to experience this one again, but of course I’m looking forward to eventually owning this one and pouring through it often. Supposedly, von Trier’s next project will be a science fiction movie, and of course I can’t wait to see it, but hope eventually he returns to make Wasington the third part of his trilogy started with Dogville and Manderlay. I can only recommend this to the most adventurous viewers out there, those willing to put up with some most certain pretentiousness (always present in von Trier movies, and I don’t see that as a negative) and willing to bring something to the table as they’re watching it… all others, need not apply…