Attention readers: did you miss our review of Daybreakers from our Toronto International Film Festival coverage in September? If so, you missed out on a bloodbath, literally. Packed full of dismembered bodies, vampires and more Willem Dafoe than you can shake a stick at, horror aficionados are no doubt lining up for this one.

What did we think of Daybreakers? Head on over and read our review to decide for yourself!

Attention loyal readers: did you miss our review of Up In The Air from our Toronto International Film Festival coverage in September? If so, you’ve come to the right place then. The latest film from Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You For Smoking) this one has already begun racking up the accolades and awards — some even place it (controversially one might argue!) as the Best Film of the Year.

Head on over and read our review to decide for yourself!

Up in the Air

OPENING: 11/13/2009

STUDIO: Paramount

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
The story of a man ready to make a connection.

Opening Statement
The third film by filmmaker Jason Reitman (son of Ivan, Juno, Thank You For Smoking) Up in the Air establishes itself quickly as his best film to-date; very impressive, considering how strong his oeuvre is. The man has a knack for turning the simple into the profound, for releasing films timed so expertly with the mental climate of audiences. Up in the Air is a near-perfect balance of lighthearted comedy and bittersweet introspection, wrapped up into social and economical criticism, and received standing ovations during its screening at TIFF. This one is going to turn heads in November.

Facts of the Case
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a “career transition consultant” – he fires people for a living. He lives his whole life out of his suitcase. He travels almost every day of the year. He spends more time in first class on airplanes than in his real apartment which he despises. For him, his home is on the road, in the endless suites of hotel rooms, in concierge lines being catered to. His company gets hired to go on-site and lay off dozens of employees at one time, listening to their moans, their threats, their tears with faux-sympathy and support. In an economic climate sliding further into the tubes, business is booming for Ryan.

He even meets like-minded travelers on the road, like the beautiful Alex (Vera Farmiga), who lives a life as perpetually on-the-move as Ryan. They try and coordinate their schedules to meet up whenever their paths cross for a late-night rendezvous, and Ryan enjoys the casualness of it all, of his entire life. Ryan is happy. All his emotional baggage has been stowed safely away. For him, total mastery of the business class lifestyle is his reason for living—and one day, he’ll even reap the exclusive rewards of logging over ten million miles as a frequent flyer, his scorecard to success.

But when his corporation hires a young hotshot graduate named Natalie (Anna Kendrick) who threatens to “revolutionize” the business by laying off employees via webcam, Ryan takes her on as an unwilling protégé to show her exactly how the job really works—the endless traveling, the tears of dejected and devastated workers losing their entire place in the world. By showing her exactly how isolated and mobile his life needs to be to succeed at his job, and by juggling increasingly romantic rendezvous with Alex, he veers dangerously close to developing real relationships for the first time. Suddenly, the ties that bind everyone else that seemed so onerous—mortgages, families, spouses, children—now act as spotlights, illuminating exactly how isolated he really is.

The Evidence
A marvelously enjoyable film, Up in the Air is a perfect example of how profound and powerful a filmmaker can be when he simply stops and listens to his audience. Here is a film that captures so perfectly so many anxieties, worries, delights and joys in modern America—a struggling economic climate, the constant anxiety of losing jobs and livelihoods, loneliness and alienation, the new emphasis to put career first and family second—all of it wrapped so effortlessly and enjoyably.

In Ryan, we find a man who struggles with his lot in life, not as a “mid-life crisis” so much as a culture crisis. Imagine his representation as an entire generation of American salarymen, eschewing family life and connections, binding ties and baggage in favor of a highly mobile and materialistic lifestyle. For Ryan (and for so many of us today) career comes first, at the exclusion of every other element traditionally embraced by our culture. Traditionally, one worked hard for their house, their family, their children, but for millions like Ryan, today, the work itself is the reward. All the other bits just weigh you down. Consider that for many of us up-and-coming children of Generation X, we are at an age still struggling with financial obligations, debts, immaturity and finding a career path that can support our dreams and aspirations. Flash back thirty years, and by our age, our parents had it all: a house, a career, a family and children, with not a care in the world. It must have been nice.

Up in the Air gets it, absolutely nails this anxiety on the head. If we live a life entirely devoted to the materialistic, to the mobile and modern lifestyle, eschewing the traditional values—what do we have at the end of the day? Ryan is happy as a clam with his life, and his ethos acts as nails on a chalkboard to everyone around him. Estranged from his own family, they have no understanding or appreciation of why he puts distance between them. His young protégé looks at him as if he is from another plant when he sings the virtues of total freedom of bonds. And it works for him, perfectly, brilliantly—right up until the point where it stops working. We watch it happen in a sequence of facial expressions on George Clooney, like bricks slowly tumbling out of a decrepit wall causing the entire thing to collapse. It is a heartbreaking moment.

A brilliant mix of comedy and drama, of loneliness and loss, heart and humility, Up in the Air feels so right, so profound, despite not really saying much of anything. Call it a populist film in subject and delivery; the film manages to speak at length on a variety of critical emotional, social and cultural issues, without really creating any debate on the issue. This is just a simple slice of one man’s life, and whatever we infer or take away from it is ours to decide. There is little challenge here. It is a gentle and kind film with its audiences, never too probing or solemn in its observations or critiques, but this casual approach works extremely well, in part because we can believe it. Ryan lives a lifestyle that most audience members would never choose to live, but in watching his own fiery pride flicker and burn out, his own ethos come heavily into question, we cherish and value our own relationships by proxy. His heartbreaks manifest as our own introspect.

Most films struggle trying to harmonize disparate elements, mixing and matching genres, but Jason Reitman appears to have quite the knack for it. As a writer, producer and director, he seemingly has an uncanny talent to attach to projects that span genres with ease. Up in the Air is equal parts social commentary, spiritual philosophy, romantic comedy and family drama. Like a Benetton commercial, all elements are in harmony. The jokes all land perfectly and are uproariously funny, the family elements are warm and approachable, the introspection never comes close to being preachy or manipulative, and the romance is tender and sincere. Adding to this, Reitman reveals himself as having some serious talent behind the camera. This is a beautifully shot film, full of quirky close-ups and exquisitely framed compositions sure to delight those who appreciate the finer technical elements of cinema.

Clooney delivers a wonderful performance as a man slowly coming into (or out of) his shell. The cool and calculated Ryan we meet at the beginning of the film peels away to reveal a man not unlike all of us—unsure of where his place in the world is, how he will pay the bills, lonely for affection but too proud to admit it. It is a marvelously nuanced performance by the veteran actor, and will no doubt earn him great praise. An unusually reserved Jason Bateman plays his boss, a corporate raider type satisfied with his lot and unsympathetic to his report’s plight. Vera Farmiga lights up the screen as the chromosomal counterpart to Clooney, a female Ryan with no hesitation or reservations. Watching the two fall into love is as satisfying of an experience as even the finest romances can offer. The hapless protégé, played by Anna Kendrick is plucky and spunky, full of big ideas and fresh out of school (as we all were once). By the end, she learns some unpleasantly hard lessons about how the world really works (as we all did). Her performance is quite good; funny and feisty and by the end, just a bit deflated, all very realistic. Small cameo appearances by Zach Galifianakis and the eponymous J.K. Simmons round out the cast nicely.

Closing Statement
Up in the Air captures almost every element about going to the movies that we love, balancing them equally and effortlessly into a single, simple film. Lighthearted but profound, heartwarming while distant, humorous and heartbreaking, you get the idea. The final product is a masterful contradiction, bittersweet and lovely and wholly enjoyable—absolutely one of the best movies of the year.

The Verdict
9/10

The Road

OPENING: 10/16/2009

STUDIO: The Weinstein Company

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
“We are not gonna quit. We are gonna survive this.”

Opening Statement
Based on the dystopic award-winning novel by esteemed American writer Cormac McCarthy, The Road is a faithfully bleak adaptation, offering compelling performances from its two leading actors. It never quite captures the full emotional bludgeoning of the literary experience, but has more than enough potency to knock audiences out in their seats. Bring tissues.

Facts of the Case
The world is dead, destroyed. All the plants and animals have died. The sky is gray, and grows more dark and cold with every passing day. A father and son slowly trek across the land. They push a shopping cart filled with what little posessions they have in the world: a few canned goods, a gun with two bullets, some torn blankets.

They are heading for the coast, because that is all they can do to survive. The landscape is torn, full of ruthless gangs and cannibals. They hide in ditches, shiver in forests and fight illness, scraping what little they can from the land as they travel. The boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) has never known a normal life, and the man (Viggo Mortensen) struggles to forget his. Together, they are all they have in the whole world.

The Evidence
The Road is a film that starts bad and gets progressively worse, which in most situations would be harsh criticism. Here, it is by grim design. Set amidst a brutal post-apocalyptic backdrop, the emotional impact of The Road lies between the simple love of a father and his son, of the father trying to protect his boy and raise him right in a chaotic world. The novel is terse, blunt and uncompromising, full of agony and heartache, and the cinematic adaption follows suit. Translating a book to film is always tricky business, but The Road gets most of it right, adhering rigidly to the source material, even copying entire sequences verbatim from the novel. The end result is a composition of silence, of grimaces and groans, of endless walking through a perpetually gray landscape.

The Road sets its scenario in the most abjectly cruel environment possible, a devastated world with no plant or animal life. We assume nuclear fallout, but it is never directly referenced or explained, nor is it required to be. All that matters is the boy and his father, surviving. Roving gangs, cannibalism, starvation, desperation, isolation; none of it matters, because they are together. The pair are headed to the eastern coast, because they might find solace there. They have no way of knowing, but it is a goal, and they stick to it despite all odds. As long as they remain together, they will be okay, even though their gun only has two bullets in it—one for each of them, if it comes to that.

Mortensen and his young co-star, Kodi Smit-McPhee delivers intimate and impressive performances. Despite the sweeping destruction and devastation that surrounds them, one of them is always on-camera; they are the entire universe in the film, disheveled in filthy clothes and crouched together in the cold. As hunger sets in, they grow pallid and wraithlike, both actors obviously losing quite a bit of weight for the part. Some cameo appearances are interjected here and there, but these are superfluous: Guy Pierce and Robert Duvall make short appearances, and we see Charlize Theron in flashback as the mother and wife, but these are secondary to the plot at best. The film is an exercise in isolation between the man and the boy, and all other sequences are but brief respites.

For such a solemn film, The Road is surprisingly hard to articulate discussion on. It is a film that will either connect with audiences, or fail to entirely. Judge it on the merits of its surface, and critics may find it dull and abhorrent, unnecessarily plodding and uneventful, and endlessly drawn out. It is all of these things, but explaining why they work in the film’s favor is challenging. This is a desperate film, one that pleads with every fiber of its being for hope that never comes. There is no salvation, no happy ending, no resolution—the world is lost, dead, destroyed and mangled beyond recognition. There is only the man and the boy, and whatever semblance of a normal life they can scrape up. With a growing sense of desperation, the man tries vainly to harden the boy, to teach him about the world he must now live in. The boy struggles and digs his heels in, refusing to abide by his father’s proclamations, wanting to experience his life his own way, damning the consequences. It is all allegorical, of course; The Boy and The Man, with no given names should give testament to this fact. Perhaps those of us who struggled in their relationships with their fathers (or likewise, fathers with their sons) will find greater meaning in the tale.

And yet, something is amiss. The adaptation, while faithful, lacks the emotional resonance we expect from McCarthy’s brutal and uncompromising tale, rarely capturing the true emotional desperation of the novel. The Road is a very good movie; a sad and taxing movie that asks much of its audience to endure, but is naught but pale simulacra compared to the novel. The movie is emulation, not adaptation, and anyone who hasn’t read the novel owes it to themselves to seek it out and experience it first-hand. Certainly, there is enough potency in The Road to deliver success to the film with critics and fans alike, but one cannot help but hope for something extraordinary here, something transcendental. Maybe the Coen Brothers set unrealistic expectations in this area.

Director John Hillcoat (The Proposition) has crafted an impressive cinematic vision full of ash and burned forests, earthquakes and endless skies of gray. Ominous shooting locations and some CGI tweaks create a wholly believable and despondent world with two lone inhabitants, wandering endlessly, with nary a soul in sight, elegant in its austere and torched beauty. The film’s biggest misstep is the score, flowery and flowing, far too melodramatic and active for such a bleak production, always trying to eke out that extra tear with the crescendo of strings during the sad moments. It is pure sappy overkill.

Closing Statement
At the festival screening, actor Viggo Mortensen wryly stated to the audience that we should not view The Road as “heart-breaking”, but rather, a “heart-opening” film. There is wisdom in this statement, a strange ethereal beauty to be found in this road tale of despair and damnation; an idyllic American stubbornness to keep on pushing despite overwhelming odds, holding onto the ties that bind us at all costs.

Even though The Road fails to capture the full emotional spectrum of the novel, it ends up a moot point. The elements that it gets right—the celebration of the protective bond between father and son, the desire to protect one another against all odds in a world gone to hell—it gets perfectly, absolutely, brilliantly right.

Seriously, bring tissues.

The Verdict
8/10

Daybreakers

OPENING: 01/08/2010

STUDIO: Lionsgate

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Vampires that don’t sparkle! Hooray!

Opening Statement
Daybreakers stretches a modest budget to impressive lengths, creating a dystopic and gritty future where the world is overtaken by vampires, who are absolutely not interested in dating high school girls. Well, maybe to tear their limbs off. The plot and acting derail themselves faster than a freight train, but it’s refreshing to see a vampire movie get back to the basics of blood and guts.

Facts of the Case
In the year 2019, the world is a very different place. Vampire outbreaks have decimated the human population, who live on the fringes of society, hunted for their blood. The world continues as normal, but now the vast majority of the humans are vampires. Ten years into the new vampire world, the human population has been hunted to verge of extinction, and the vampire population simply cannot survive on the current supply of blood.

Edward (Ethan Hawke) works as a hematologist for a multinational vampire corporation that controls the blood supply for the planet, with walls of hapless individuals strapped to machines constantly pumping out their blood. Recognizing the fragile state of their own existence, Edward and his team search for an artificial substitute to satiate the masses, but all their efforts have disastrous (and messy) results. His boss, Charles (Sam Neill) urges him on, anxious to find a new market to capitalize on. For Ethan, he finds his work necessary to save the human species. Despite his own vampire nature, he finds himself feeling sorry for the humans, avoiding human blood at all costs.

Through a series of accidental events, Edward comes in contact with a small resistance group of humans harboring an earth-shattering secret. Their leader Elvis (Willem Dafoe) asks Edward to help them on a different approach to the vampire food problem: a cure for vampirism. As the vampire population starves slowly, blood riots break out and threaten to tear society apart, and Edward thinks he has a chance to save his world. But his corporation may not want a cure…

The Evidence
Directed by the Spierig brothers (Peter and Michael), who rose in the Lionsgate ranks after their low-budget Aussie zombie film Undead cleaned up with cult fans, Daybreakers is a serious upgrade from their previous work. During the Q&A at the screening, one of the brothers remarks that the entire budget of Undead was overtaken by the contact lens budget in Daybreakers. With an influx of cash and a surprisingly all-star cast, the duo spent the last few years perfecting the film, which lands a release date just as the world is finally getting tired of vampire pop culture. Don’t mention this to the Sperigs. They swear they started to work on this long before vampires were “cool” and “sparkly”. You won’t be seeing any romance in this movie, trust me.

Imagine the world of Gattaca if overrun by vampires, and you have a pretty good visual image of Daybreakers. The film makes great use of CGI and artistic design to create a dystopic world a mere ten years in the future where vampires are now the dominant species on the planet. People still go to work, live in nice houses, order coffee (20% blood) and take the subway, but they’re vampires. Life moves on. The movie is crammed full of newspaper articles, television news reports and sly technological working solutions to how a vampire manages to live a day-to-day existence, like cars that have special tinting that allows them to drive (via cameras) during the day, and a PA system in every neighborhood giving advanced notice of the exact time of sunrise. These geek-out moments are everywhere, and the nerds among us will delight in seeing all the attention that went into them.

As the film progresses, we learn of the human resistance movement; a loose rag-tag army constantly on the run from vampire hunters looking to farm their bodies for the growing demand for blood. It isn’t a David vs. Goliath situation, more like mice constantly scurrying and cowering from the army of cats on their heels. Edward, being sympathetic to the human cause, finds himself accidentally aligned with a group of on-the-run humans, who hope that his hematologist skills can aid them in finding a cure for the vampire condition. The logic behind the solution devised is questionable at best, drunken at worst, but it’s a moot point anyway, because Daybreakers is the kind of film that if you think too long about its premise, or its scientific explanations, blood will shoot out your nose. Don’t do it. Resist the temptation.

A fun horror film full of carnage, shocks and some great “boo” moments that will get audiences screaming, the experience of Daybreakers is easily ruined by the unauthorized use of brain cells to ask questions about the acting quality (horrible by any measurable standard) or the plot (riddled with puncture holes large enough to drive a car into) or the scientific justifications for the events on screen. Don’t ask why the cars are all current-models with glowing blue grills, or what logic dictates how vampires can go out in daylight sometimes, but catch on fire other times, or how you can cure somebody of vampirism via the method explained in the film (a genuine brain-killer), or why when you shoot a vampire with a crossbow they explode lie a canister of gasoline. Actually, I know the answer to the last one: because it’s @#$% cool. I think a lot of decisions in the conceptual drawing up of Daybreakers were answered this way.

Take for example the casting: Sam Neill as the primary villain figure, an expensive-suited vampire CEO plays his role with such over-the-top sneering contempt that you can hear the vitriol dripping from his tongue. He isn’t scary or menacing, just goofy. And speaking of goofy, Willem Dafoe, whose purpose in the film is so bizarre as to represent the single greatest casting decision ever in the history of the world. His name is Elvis, and he drives muscle cars, and he kind of affects a southern accent, but only on 25% of the words he speaks—the rest, Dafoe forgets about it. Every bit of dialogue is a hackneyed one-liner, every conversation an atomic bomb of logical fallacy. It is as if the Iraqi propaganda ministry wrote the dialogue for Dafoe’s character, piecing it together from every B-reel John Wayne film and archival episodes of Hee Haw. A performance this over-the-top stupid could tear a lesser movie in half, but Daybreakers feeds off it, channels it, turns it into an ironic “so bad it’s good” extravaganza you can’t help but laugh at. Ethan Hawke plays his Edward character as a wussy human sympathizer, cowardly and sniveling, but his performance is satisfactory—he doesn’t really have a chance at outperforming his two senior cast members, because they’re just so over-the-top bizarre.

All told, Daybreakers is a triumph of low-budget excess, pulling off complex sequences and spectacular gore with minimal financing. It looks great, sounds great and will entertain on a pure aesthetic and visceral sense, provided you avoid thinking about it too much. The blood and bullets fly, vampires and humans explode in equal numbers, and the dystopic world comes crashing down with glorious chaotic fury. No one is going to give the Sperig brothers an award for “Screenplay That Makes The Most Sense”, but the two have talent for the action and horror genres that will no doubt take them far in Hollywood.

A random observation: the score is a massive orchestral affair, sweeping and epic and grandiose, and feels mismatched to the grey-tinted fluorescent light themed future full of vampires. A score more low-key and gloomy would suit the subject matter better.

Closing Statement
Daybreakers emerges into the light of day with buckets of blood, frenetic vampire action and much style. The premise is a refreshing twist on an increasingly clichéd subject matter. If all you expect from your action/horror hybrids are slick one-liners, buckets of blood and hewn limbs, Daybreakers will deliver. The story and acting are laughably bad, so check your sensibility and logic at the door.

The Verdict
7/10

The Men Who Stare At Goats

OPENING: 11/06/2009

STUDIO: Overture Films

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
More of this is true than you would believe.

Opening Statement
A surrealist and psychotropic exploration into the more unconventional nooks and crannies of American defense budget allocation, The Men Who Stare at Goats is a charming film without a purpose. Adapted from a nonfiction account into the more eccentric areas of military defense spending, hilarious performances from its top-tier assure an easy victory for audiences.

Facts of the Case
Reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) is in a funk. A stagnating career, a fiancé who leaves him for his editor, his life lacks purpose. To attempt to find deeper meaning (and impress his ex) he volunteers in 2003 to cover the Iraqi war, but ends up on the sidelines in Kuwait. While waiting for something, anything to happen, he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a surreptitious businessman who quickly reveals himself to be a complicated individual. Cassady was a member of the First Earth Battalion, a government funded project during the Cold War attempting to develop an army of “Jedi warriors” who could pacify enemies non-violently, walk through walls, perform remote viewings and combat the Ruskies with the power of thought.

Cassady tells the story of the program founder, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) and how his experiences in Vietnam led him to explore an alternate way to fight a war—through compassion and respect for mankind. Taking advantage of a demoralized and cash-laden Cold War military budget, the First Earth Battalion was formed. Applying New Age philosophy to combat training often lead to dubious results, but Cassady was the star pupil.

Wilton writes his new associate off as a madman, but lacking any other purpose, agrees to follow Cassady into Iraq. The now-retired mind warrior, it seems, has been “re-activated” for a new mission… except that he doesn’t really know what it is yet.

Did I mention this movie is based on true events? Because it is.

The Evidence
Adapted from the nonfiction journalistic exploration of Jon Ronson (a delightful book now surging back in popularity and print via “now a major motion picture” editions) The Men Who Stare at Goats is in many ways an ambitious cinematic project. The work on which it is based—a series of essays and interviews with eccentric cooks and cult leaders—does not lend easily to a cinematic adaptation. When the project was announced, I was skeptical as to how a film version could be executed. The solution is a deforesting of the source material, axing away most of Ronson’s narrative and interviews and replacing it with a original story encircling the same fundamental premise: the United States government funding of research and training into creating “psychic warriors” that could battle the Russians (who rumor had were already researching their own paranormal troops). If 10% of the original source material in the book remains, it would be generous.

Still, what remains is good, good stuff. A healthy combination of ass-kicking in Vietnam combined with excessive military budget spending in the Cold War gave the government license to fund practically any oddball experiment it wanted, provided it had national defense at its core, and the idea that American soldiers could incapacitate enemy forces with the power of their mind didn’t seem too crazy. After all, Star Wars was a hit, so maybe Jedi powers were worth exploring. When the notion of the First Earth Battalion was suggested, it was never implemented—at least not officially—but many of the ideas resonated throughout various levels of the intelligence community. The US tried its hand at remote viewing, teleportation, retrocognition, psychokinesis, and of course, staring at goats, with varying degrees of success. The Men Who Stare at Goats captures all this in glorious, surreal detail by way of its hapless protagonist, Bob Wilton, a reporter (like Ronson) who inadvertently stumbled upon a story nobody else was talking about. He meets Lyn Cassady, an ex-First Earth Battalion Jedi Warrior (who now owns a dance studio) in Kuwait, and the whole story unfolds.

From this point on, the story is in artistic license mode, sending Wilton and Cassady into Iraq on a series of bumbling misadventures interjected with flashbacks covering various key historic events from the novel. The film relies heavily on narration and voiceover work, a negative element to most feature films, but in The Men Who Stare at Goats, there is little choice. The film would make no sense without the backdrop of the absurdities of the stories contained in Ronson’s book, so the narrative is essentially cut into two strips—one following Wilton and Cassady in Iraq, the other following the early proponents of the First Earth Battalion (an increasingly typecast Jeff Bridges) and a young Cassady.

A lot of detail gets left on the editing room floor, but the film moves easily and carefree; a string of zany comedic dialogue, physical comedy and svelte camera framing swings the suffering Wilton between complete disbelief and hope in putting faith in “the mission”. In terms of humor, The Men Who Stare at Goats will be a crowd-pleasing film, full of lighthearted sight gags and excessively zany performances by its cast. Directed by Grant Heslov, actor and longtime Clooney collaborator, the film has style and aplomb, and rests on the performances of its all-star cast do the comedic heavy lifting. Ewan McGregor’s American accent is a bit weak, but he makes a great straight man, and the constant references to him having “Jedi potential” are deliciously ironic. Clooney gives the same performance as in Syriana, if he was a raving LSD-tripping lunatic with psychic powers, and gets more laughs than anyone else. Jeff Bridges plays The Dude from The Big Lebowski in a military uniform, a role in which he seems to find himself in more and more these days, and Kevin Spacey tries (but fails) to be the movie’s chief villain. The problem of course is that there really is no villain, no catharsis, and no real plot to speak of. This is just a sequence of misadventures both hilarious and unbelievable, and the lack of a cohesive plot ultimately hinders the film from greatness.

The two storylines, past and present day eventually correlate in the third act, and The Men Who Stare at Goats derails here. In the eleventh hour, it occurs to the screenplay author that a finale is required full of spectacle and pathos, but it comes out of nowhere and doesn’t really many any sense. This is the consequence to adapting a subject that belies convention. After all, it is hard to write a sensible screenplay about such an inherently nonsensical subject matter. The crux of the film rests on the lamentation that the First Earth Battalion ideas failed to find traction, that the inherent goodness of the project—however drug-addled and hippie-oriented its origins may have been—failed to find resonance. There were good intentions at work, and the ending tries to spin this all back into focus for audiences, illustrating the absurdities of the modern army by way of grizzled and burned-out psychic Jedi warriors running amuck in an army base. The ending is weak, and here is where we see the nonfiction wheat separate from the cinematic chaff, but the journey is sufficiently entertaining that most audience members won’t mind one bit. All the good bits are loaded into the first two acts anyway. The film has heart and passion for its subject, and it’s hard not to be enthused.

Closing Statement
Lighthearted and zany, The Men Who Stare at Goats is an easy victory, provided you don’t expect much from the plot. A star-studded cast of unhinged performances and a subject matter so crazy it has to be true, make this one an easy recommend.

The Verdict
8/10

Jennifer’s Body

OPENING: 09/18/2009

STUDIO: Fox

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
She’s evil… and not just high school evil.

Opening Statement
A genre mix-up from the 1980s, Jennifer’s Body is fun by way of homage, evoking pleasant memories of Carrie and quirky John Hughes teen drama films. Problem is, I never met anyone who actually wanted to see Sam from The Breakfast Club turn into a flesh-eating demon and murder her high school. It is the kind of idea that sounds marvelous on paper, discussed animated over a few beers, but feels ill-conceived and confusing the next day while hung over.

Facts of the Case
For awkward teen Needy (Amanda Seyfried) high school life is a complicated affair. Her best friend from childhood, Jennifer (Megan Fox) is the prettiest cheerleader in the school who terrorizes the boys and gets all the attention. It gets more complicated when Jennifer drags her out to a local bar to see a band from the big city, and vanishes into the back of their van with handsome singer Nikolai (Adam Brody). When Jennifer returns, she is covered in blood and howling in a decisively demonic fashion. Needy watches in horror as Jennifer acts normal on the surface, but begins picking off the male population one at a time. Needy tries to convince the school that Jennifer is evil (not just high school evil) but no one believes her. But when Jennifer sets her eyes on Needy’s boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons), all bets are off. Best friends forever doesn’t extend to demonic activities, and Needy is about to redefine their relationship.

The Evidence
In Jennifer’s Body, a teenage girl turns into a flesh eating demon and goes preying on dumb, hormonal teenage boys, eating their entrails and tearing them from limb to limb. If ever there was a metaphor for the collective high school experience, this is it. One wonders why no one has thought to make a serious go at combining the awkward teen comedy genre into the glorious excesses of the horror film circa 1980s. They pair well together. Sommeliers everywhere would be proud. Oh sure, horror films are usually about high school students, and teenage hormones are definitely a factor, but these plot elements are mere delivery devices to set up the next homicidal slaying, not to actually develop a character base. In classic horror, once the girl takes off her shirt, her role in the film has ended, usually by machete. Not so in Jennifer’s Body where the women hold all the cards, have all the power, do all the butt-kicking and end up murdering the boys.

And leave it to Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody to turn the brain-dead horror film into a teenage comedy worthy of introspection and pop culture irony. Imagine Juno, but instead of a teenage knocked-up girl, she was a demon that murdered and ate you. All the snappy dialogue, the witty repartee, the sassy pulp culture references remain intact, and you either love her style or hate it. No loosely scripted horror film, this; Jennifer’s Body is a fully-functioning film full of character development, romantic entanglement and cathartic drama. The most satisfying moments are the same in which Juno found its success: the tender yet awkward courting and mating of teenage lovers, the embarrassingly awkward fashions, the well-meaning but totally lame parents. In many ways, Jennifer’s Body runs on the same fuel that drove the career of John Hughes for the better part of a decade. It just makes pit stops regularly to murder people in orgiastic fashion.

When you consider the previous work of director Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Æon Flux) her attraction to this screenplay is immediately evident: she likes to make strong films about strong women kicking butt. One can definitely view Jennifer’s Body through empowered eyes; the film glows with the gleeful power of the women in control of her own horror film destiny, with two “BFF”s battling tooth and nail over their boys, rather than being consistently on the run. In this film, men are weak and childlike, hormonal and sex-obsessed, easily lead astray and muted like cattle, happy to wait like slobbering fools for Megan Fox to take off her top and eat their spine. They are brainless jocks and whiny emo boys. The girls, on the other hand, rock. It is a refreshing twist, and nice to see a bit of gender reversal in the horror film genre. Well, horror-ish. Jennifer’s Body isn’t really a gore-fest of terror; it’s too hip and cool and sassy to actually terrify its audiences. People looking for genuine thrills should check their expectation levels at the door, as most of the violence hovers at a PG-13 level. The film scores its points in the irony department only.

Megan Fox is perfect in the role as the slutty teen-turned-demon, maybe a little too perfect. Having seen her in real life at the screening, I can attest that she is the living embodiment of a sex demon, one of those alarmingly attractive people able to make people dizzy and fall down. Having her play the role of a sex demon on film is sheer excess, like cutting off the arm of a patient to treat a hangnail. Sticking her in short skirts, low-cut shirts and big shiny red lips is like overkill to the atomic bomb degree. As for her acting, one never actually sees her do much of that in the film. Much more surprising and impressive is the performance of Amanda Seyfried, the main character in the film, although you wouldn’t know it from all the advertising laden with the scantily-clad Fox. Seyfried is cute and charming, dorky and endearing, beautiful and awkward, essentially the perfect casting for a teenage girl. She brings life to the role far beyond the expectation of any horror film, and makes it easy for audiences to sympathize with all her problems, social and demonic alike.

As a tongue-in-cheek girl answer to the horror genre, Jennifer’s Body entertains with some decent laughs, but the film struggles with its own burden of being hip and clever and edgy at all times. Having borrowed heavily from at least three movie genres, the film feels like a deck with too many playing cards in it, a random shuffling of too many approaches to the same film. Is this a comedy? A teen drama? A horror film? An exercise in verbiage from Diablo Cody? There are some genuine harmonious moments where the stars align and everything just feels perfect—the ridiculous emo band parody with Adam Brody as a struggling musician-turned-Satanist, the burning down of the local bar and the surreal small-town reaction (“very”, as they say in Heathers), but there are many more moments that just feel like square pegs in round holes. Cody’s script is a love-it-or-hate-it affair, and you either adore her clever wordplay and sassy one-liners, or you loathe them within an inch of your life. To be fair, Jennifer’s Body will give audiences numerous opportunities to experience both sides of that particular coin.

Closing Statement
A mash-up of iconic horror and teenage romance films set to march at a clipping pace by the rapid-fire pop culture verbosity of screenwriter Diablo Cody’s screenplay, Jennifer’s Body is cinematic recycling at its most calculated. It feels like a concerted effort to be “the next cool film”, the new Heathers, the new Carrie, the new sensational pop culture film, and covers its bets like penny chips at a roulette table.

When taken individually, all the elements are well-executed—the horror is squeamishly fun, the teenage romance is heartfelt and believable, and Cody’s dialogue is as witty and clever as one expects. These disparate elements in of themselves are enjoyable, but the film tries excessively hard to equally represent all three genres simultaneously. Try going to the theater and having the screen spit into threes, with three separate movies playing side-by-side, constantly overlapping and self-referencing. It gets messy, and keeping the concentration up can be challenging.

The Verdict
Cute, but way too schizophrenic . But that’s high school girls for you.

7/10

Ahoy, film festival readers! We represented last night at the premiere of Jennifer’s Body and managed to take some very poor photographs we felt like sharing with you all. Please do forgive the photogenic quality here–you couldn’t get within sixty feet of Megan Fox last night without being permanently blinded by a barrage of flashes. It was like a wall of white. My poor camera simply couldn’t cope.

But hey, photos are photos! More photos after the break to feast upon.

Director Karyn Kusama, producer Jason Reitman

Producer Jason Reitman, writer Diablo Cody

Actors Johnny Simmons and Adam Brody

Actors Adam Brody and Amanda Seyfried

Actors Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox

Actors Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox

And yes, in person? Very pretty. Especially Jason. < rawr >

Antichrist

OPENING: 10/23/2009

STUDIO: IFC Films

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
“Chaos reigns”.

Opening Statement
Antichrist, the newest film by auteur Lars von Trier, debuted at Cannes this year to a decisively mixed reaction, kind of the way that a Ferrari going at 60 miles per hour and a brick wall “mix” after one too many martinis. Audiences were polarized, incensed, alarmed, disgusted and horrified. Some fainted, while others walked out in protest. The film was derided as misogynistic, hateful, offensive and excessively violent, even perverse. One could argue it was a rousing success, because there is no doubt von Trier (who wrote the film during a fit of crippling depression) set out to do exactly this. Even the title borders on the scandalous and inflammatory.

Is it all of these things and more? Oh yes. It is even worse, more horrible and unsettling, more soul-crushingly bleak and despondent than mere words can articulate. It may be the saddest and cruelest film ever made. Is it worth seeing? Absolutely it is.

Speaking of things worth seeing, here’s hoping you like the idea of seeing Willem Dafoe’s penis, because you’re going to be seeing a lot of it.

Facts of the Case
After the death of their young son, who tumbles out their apartment window while they make love in the next room, an unnamed couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) struggle through their grief. The woman ends up hospitalized over her grief, and the man (a psychologist) sets out to help his wife work through the pain and loss. He throws her medicines away, takes her into a reclusive cabin in the woods named Eden—a place she is terrified of—and slowly, painfully breaks down her mental defenses and emotional barriers.

As the woman grows more despondent and irrational, the environment around them changes; nature becomes foreboding and dangerous, animals behave strangely. As the man and woman try and work through their pain, destruction and torment slowly seep into their lives, causing them to lash out in increasingly sexual and violent ways.

The Evidence
There are good films, and there are bad films. A third, more dangerous category of film is one that belies such conformist categorization, opting to lay eggs in your brain that gestate, grow and explode, tearing your skull wide open. Antichrist may be the first film I have ever encountered to easily satisfy the criteria of all three categories, and in that order. The raw power and emotion contained in this film, the sheer ferocity and fury of its convictions and ideology is almost frightening. Antichrist is a dangerous film unlike any before it, full of vitriol and bile, contempt and hatred, depression and angst and a penchant for genetic mutilation that will knock you off your chair and into the fetal position faster than you can cry out for your mother. And you will be.

To observe that Antichrist is a film loaded with strong opinions on religion would be an understatement. The title is no joke. This is a film about Sin, with a capital “s”, usually preceded by “Original”; this is a film about evil and good, of mankind itself, in all its hideous cruelty and glorious debauchery. There are two characters in the film, each archetypal representative of the origins of Man and Women. When they are not screaming and causing horrible violence to themselves and to each other, they are having wild, animalistic sex. Most of the best sequences in Antichrist have them doing both at the same time. This is the Garden of Eden tale in horrible reverse, by way of pain and misery and sexual dysfunction. Those raised with Catholic ideological values are in for a serious kick in the teeth with this film. One might argue that the notion of Satan is not an abstract concept here, but a third cast member.

It is difficult to put one into the head space of von Trier. Much of Antichrist is straightforward; the plot at its core is simplistic, but so much of the film is metaphorical that any (and all) interpretation of the film is subjective at best. The film is divided into four chapters: grief, pain, despair, and The Three Beggars (an allegorical combination of the aforementioned three), which sound self-explanatory, but in actuality are just as vexing. The Eden and biblical elements are the easiest to appreciate, but perhaps the most challenging to truly comprehend, especially in the epilogue. Antichrist is a film about the nature of the world, both literal and pejorative: the nature of humanity, the nature of good and evil, Mother Nature, human nature, et al. The very elements of nature seem poised to strike out at any moment: forests hang full of darkness and dread, hailstones and acorns pummel the man and woman at every opportunity, and foxes have surprisingly profound statements on the subject of chaos.

This is a film that will haunt audiences brave enough to see it. The sexual and violent imagery is shocking, make no mistake—people fainted during the screening at Cannes, and I hardly blame them—but the true discontent in the film is subcutaneous, just below the surface, suggesting darker evils and deeper currents than we can truly fathom. There is no hope of any kind in Antichrist, only a vicious kind of sadness that is sharpened at the molecular level and wielded like a broadsword, slicing through all in its path. Nature itself bends to the grief and nihilism of the man and woman, foreboding and monstrous. The film is fascinating from an academic level, and lovers of the cinematic art will find this one of the most curious and debatable films in the last decade. On a personal level, do not expect to enjoy the experience: Antichrist is like a viral infection, feverish and clammy and nauseating; a deep sense of wrongness occurring at a level beyond our rational understanding. It is the cinematic equivalent of being shaken like a child, of sheer loss of control, of being hoisted up by our collar by forces larger and stronger than us, and being throttled within an inch of our emotional and spiritual life.

Women will find this film particularly challenging. Many have observed elements of misogyny in Antichrist, and I find it hard to rebuke them entirely, although I have faith in the artist that things are not quite as they seem. On first glance, things look grim: the woman has been working on a thesis about gynocide, or gendercide, and even suggests that the nature of women may be intrinsically evil. It is one thing to feel this way about women, say after a bad break up and a few beers, but another entirely to set the emotional premise of a film around it. As reality undulates and the allegorical metaphors pile up in Antichrist, the woman begins to behave oddly, erratically, violently towards herself and to the man in increasingly explicit ways. It would be easy to give a cursory glance towards Antichrist and criticize it on these elements. A film about the nature of evil and the intrinsic worth of humanity as a parable to the Garden of Eden mythology is, by its very nature, not going to be particularly flattering towards women.

There is something important here in Antichrist, a window into a kind of madness and passion that few films have ever approached. The film will terrify and alarm audiences to the core of their being, especially for those squeamish of constitution and faith, but the beauty in the craft cannot be denied. The performances by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are two of the finest performances ever put to camera, a career-topping tour-de-force of emotion and fury. This is the kind of role that could kill a lesser film career, but for a venerable actor like Dafoe, it merely cements his places as a master of the craft. Gainsbourgh walked out of Cannes with a Best Actress award, which is a testament to exactly how good her performance was. Despite all the controversy and disgust towards von Trier and the film itself, no one can overlook her. A stripped-down, emotionally bearing performance from both, their performances are horribly believable, tearing away at body and mind alike, with humongous commitments of emotional damage and full frontal nudity that would destroy lesser actors and actresses. An Oscar nod for Gainsbourgh is virtually assured.

A lyrical and enigmatic film shot with cutting-edge high definition digital cameras, the first five minutes alone of Antichrist are elegant and stunningly beautiful composition and cinematography. It sounds ironic, but Lars von Trier has crafted the most beautiful ugly film in the world, a film rotten and viscous at its core, but elegant and artistic in appearance and direction. Slow motion sequences of incredible depth and profundity give way to beautiful compositions of color, light and shadow. Eden alternates between earthy paradise of lush greens, bubbling brooks and drifting fog to the stuff of nightmare. Hands drift up from the roots of trees, animals become horrifying monsters, and shadows loom ominously. There is no score to speak of, save for an operatic piece from Rinaldo in the prologue and epilogue, but the film is far from silent. Chaotic and cacophonous ambient noises buzz and hiss ominously during key moments, alarming and unsettling in their pitch and fervor—only suddenly to vanish, and the silence is somehow worse.

Closing Statement
Antichrist is a beautiful and terrifying tapestry of immense complexity, full of spiritual and sexual dysfunction and unapologetic rage. To participate in its viewing is akin to assembling a jigsaw puzzle in the dark. We can sense the greater picture, we can feel the edges, and we can even snap something into place now and again, but the true understanding of the project eludes our senses.

Critics will rail against the cruelty and excess expressed in this film, as they should. The ideas being communicated to audiences in this film are almost entirely negative, full of spite and anger, sadness and repulsion, but it is how Antichrist communicates these ideas that will fascinate audiences and make this film one of the most talked-about of the year. Painfully nihilistic, Antichrist is a triumph of artistic cinema, a film that strives and communicates on levels that transcend the film, beyond sight and sound, beyond man and women, and beyond good and evil.

The Verdict
To paraphrase Douglas Adams, watching Antichrist is unpleasantly like being drunk. Ask a glass of water how that feels.

9/10

If you’re in town, drop us a line and let us know what you’ll be seeing this year. With hundreds of films on the schedule, it’s impossible to see everything, as much as we might want to eschew toilet breaks, sleep and feeding in order to try. What films are you most excited about?