Foster on Film » Page 59

Titus (1999)

Sep 261999

Titus (Anthony Hopkins), an honored general, sacrifices one of his captives, a prince of the Goths. The queen of the Goths vows revenge which leads to betrayal and death.

Quick Review:This is what you get if Shakespeare wrote the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and ramped up the violence. I’ve never seen any film that is more grisly and shocking than Titus and that isn’t the result of additions by director Julie Taymor; Shakespeare wrote it that way. It is fascinating, but not for the squeamish. Before the end credits roll, there are gruesome murders, rape, cannibalism, and sickening mutilations. Taymor has set this horror tale in a strange, surrealistic world, partly modern, partly absurdist Roman. That fits as Titus couldn’t exist in a real place or time. Look for nothing of reality here, nor for deep meaning. This is tragedy for fun, and it is fun, in a really creepy way.

Reviews, Shakespeare Tagged with: Four Reels

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999)

Jul 281999

A group of peasant actors, including the blustering Nick Bottom (Kevin Kline), and four mixed-up lovers (Anna Friel, Calista Flockhart, Dominic West, Christian Bale) end up as pawns in a fight between faerie royalty (Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett) on midsummer night.

Lust. Lots and lots of lust. That’s what A Midsummer Night’s Dream is about. That and low comedy. It isn’t tricky to put on a successful production. Just make the faeries bold and sexy, the lovers foolish and sexy, and the acting troop ridiculous and crude. That’s it. It’s hard to fail. But director Michael Hoffman fails by missing all of those. He starts off well with casting a group of extremely attractive people: Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, Calista Flockhart, Dominic West, Christian Bale, Anna Friel, and Sophie Marceau. They sure have the basic material to be sexy. And the setting is lush and ripe. But that’s all he gets right, falling into the “proper Shakespeare” trap. Hoffman removes all the passion and cleans up the humor to the point that only a scholastic nun could be happy. There are scenes where you might smile, but you should be falling out of your chair. It doesn’t help that he has hacked the play apart, cutting out a substantial portion of the faerie dialog. He also moves the story to 19th century Tuscany, apparently in the belief that modern audiences would be unfamiliar with ancient Athens, but find the dawning age of bicycles in Northern Italy to be old hat. It does no real harm, but it also serves no purpose. That’s how I felt about the entire film: no harm, but no purpose. Lord, what fools these directors be.

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Reviews, Shakespeare Tagged with: One Reel

House on Haunted Hill (1999)

Jul 111999

A wealthy, amusement park owner, Stephen H. Price (Geoffrey Rush), in an unhappy marriage with his unfaithful wife (Famke Janssen), decides to have her birthday party in a closed insane asylum where atrocities took place. However, the guests (Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Chris Kattan, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson) were chosen not by him, but by the house.

Quick Review: 1999s second FX extravaganza remake of a haunted house movie (The Haunting is the other), The House on Haunted Hill is slickly crafted, B-movie schlock in an A-movie wrapper. The cast is filled with competent second tier actors, who are underused by a script that demands mainly screaming and frowning (but they do a good job of that). Unlike its competitor, there are some creepy moments, particularly when visions of the past appear on video screens. The setup supplies many possible mysteries. With the Price’s failing marriage, any strange occurrence could be the result of ghosts, or could be one of them trying to get at the other. However this bogs down the middle of the film, once it is obvious that there are malignant spirits everywhere.

Horror film clichés are in abundance. The group keeps splitting up. That’s reasonable early on, but absurd later. They meander around the lower levels because that’s what victims do, and die one by one, alone. And they are nothing more than victims as there is no character development. I’m less troubled by those shortcomings than by ghosts that can access a laptop and change documents via the phone line (which apparently the ghosts do).

The film starts much like the 1959 version but varies considerably in its second half. The millionaire is named after Vincent Price, the star of the first.

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Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

The Haunting (1999)

Apr 111999

Dr. David Marrow (Liam Neeson) brings three insomniacs, Nell (Lili Taylor), Theo (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and Luke (Owen Wilson) to a mansion for a psychological study. What he doesn’t tell the others is that he is really studying fear. What he doesn’t know is that the house is really haunted.

Quick Review: This is a case of style over substance, but when style wins with such gusto, why complain? Based on a Shirley Jackson novel that made it to the big screen in 1963, this version takes the opposite approach to the first’s less-is-more philosophy by indulging in spectacular sets and flashy FX. The story is a simple re-telling of the standard ghost story, with a few gaping holes. As long as you don’t look too closely, it’s a good ride. The characters are multi-dimensional, but never coalesce into anything sensible. Wilson plays the easy going one of the group and is the closest to appearing like a real, if clownish, person. Zeta-Jones is beautiful and sexy and plays a character who is beautiful and sexy (hey, sometimes casting isn’t tricky). Taylor’s Nell is dangerously close to being annoying, but manages, just barely, to invoke sympathy.

The real star is the impressive English manor used for exterior shots, and the colorful, elaborate, haunted house interiors. This is a beautiful, velvet blanket of a film that feels great to roll around in. In the end, it has the depth of a blanket, but who doesn’t love that feel?

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Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999)

Apr 021999

Four years earlier, Ayana Hirasaka’s parents were crushed by Gamera in his fight against the gyoas. Now she lives with her uncaring aunt and uncle in a miserable little town filled with terrible teens. Within a temple, she finds, and binds with, a strange creature that is related to Gamera and the gyoas. It grows, and she sees it as her opportunity for revenge against Gamera. Elsewhere, the gyoas have returned, attacking all over the world, and Gamera’s attempts to stop them have racked up a far greater death toll than the flying lizards themselves. Elsewhere, Mayumi Nagamine is again studying the gyoas problem and trying to find a solution, and she brings back now ex-Inspector Osako and Asagi. Meanwhile, government policy is being influence by a cultist and a strange game designer.

Now this is how make a sequel. It isn’t just the same old monster battles, but an inversion of the first film. In Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, we saw a few negative side effects of a giant monster hero, but for the most part, it is clear that Gamera is great and cheerleading was the way to go. Not so here. This is about collateral damage (from monster fighting, yes, but also from any military or police activity). There are brutal and beautiful shots of Gamera mowing down thousands of people. He slips and shoots a fire ball into a coffee house. He focuses all his attention on burning a gyoas, an attack that fries everyone on the street for blocks. He stumbles into a building and it crashes down on those below. We saw the good in having a powerful weapon on our side; here’s the bad.

Everything is about side-effects. Osako was destroyed by the events of the previous two movies. He’s suffering from PTSD on the streets until Nagamine finds him. It is possible that Gamera is what has drawn the monsters to Japan, and all of the damage is what has allowed kooks access to the highest level of government. And then there is Ayanna, who is the anti-Asagi. Asagi has faith, which is easy to have when things have worked out. The cult-lady has faith too, and that doesn’t work out well. Ayana has pain and longs for revenge. When another kid tries to tell her that Gamera is her friend, I (and Ayanna) wanted to kick him in the shin.

Too bad Revenge of Iris can’t keep up that level of storytelling. For three-fourths of the runtime, only Godzilla ’54 was in its league. But the filmmakers didn’t know what to do with the ending. That’s not surprising as while this isn’t a kids film, it still wants to play a bit in the young adult world, so it doesn’t go as dark as it needed to. We get some deaths, but the film needed more, as well as a better wrap-up for the theme. This is a very good movie, that was reaching for greatness, and couldn’t hold on. But very good will do.

Foreign Language, Giant Monsters, Reviews Tagged with: Three & 1/2 Reels

eXistenZ (1999)

Mar 021999

At a focus group demonstration of the new virtual reality game, eXistenZ, its creator, Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is shot by a fanatic “Realist.” Wounded, and with a bounty on her head, she escapes with marketing trainee, Ted Pikul (Jude Law). She fears the shooting damaged her game pod, and the only way to know is to jack in and play the game. But once in the game, how do they know if they are out again, and how can they tell what is real?

The third of 1999’s virtual reality movies (The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor were the others), eXistenZ is certainly the weirdest. And that brings me to my game (as I learned from eXistenZ that everything is a game): to see if I can use the word “weird” in this review even half the number of times I turned to my wife and said “weird” while watching the film. My wife, instead, said “Ewwww.”

It’s no surprise that this is a weird film; it was directed by weird-meister David Cronenberg who has made a career of examining society through the weirdest (I’m counting variants of “weird”) metaphors he could find or just looking at the weirdest subset of our culture. The grandest example of runaway weirdness was 1996’s Crash; Cronenberg took J.G. Ballard’s weird novel about people with a weird fetish for auto crashes, and turned it into an even weirder film where James Spader (a veteran of weird cinema) attempts to sexually penetrate Rosanna Arquette’s open wound.

In 1991, Cronenberg attempted to put a plot into the near random, weird, drug-induced ramblings of William S. Burroughs, a man who brings extravagance to being weird. The film, Naked Lunch, is fascinating in it’s stylish weirdness, with biomechanical typewriters weirdly issuing commands, but is unengaging. It is 1983’s Videodrome, a weird treatise on the media, reality, and obsession, that is eXistenZ’s progenitor. In it, reality and the video world merge with weird consequences, including gun-flesh combinations and video tapes being inserted into weird, vaginal stomach openings. eXistenZ could be thought of as a remake or a sequel, but with videotapes replaced by videogames. (Nope, I’m not even coming close. Oh well, at least we’ve established that the film is weird.)

The basic story of eXistenZ is surprisingly normal and the ending is obvious by the halfway mark. But the setting is anything but normal. It’s…well…weird. It’s clear early on that everything in the film is within one game or another, so anything can happen. Some things are subtle, like everyone and everything being labeled, while others, like mutated lizards and living game controllers, mock anyone thinking that reality still has meaning.

Jude Law plays the floundering sidekick better than I would have expected. Jennifer Jason Leigh, the princess of edgy cinema, is right on the money, as she so often is, as the exocentric, introverted, carnal game developer. Of course her lust isn’t for human flesh, but for the pulsing game controller. And Willem Dafoe puts in an excellent, twisted performance (see, now I’m trying to not say “weird”) as Gas, the gas station attendant; what else would you expect the guy at the gas station to be named? But this is a Cronenberg film, and even the best actor is swamped under his runaway symbolism. Luckily, it’s damn entertaining symbolism.

This is the most sexual movie I can recall that has no sex in it, at least with any of the normal human parts. Humans are fitted with bioports in their lower backs. Games are accessed by thrusting a fleshy umbycord into the port’s hole. Nothing sexual there. Ted doesn’t have a port, so must have one implanted by bending over as a gleeful Dafoe shoves a large tube into him. Hmmmm. Then, Allegra, wanting to jack in, sprays WD-40 on his port because new ones are often tight. There’s also quite a bit of lubing and fingering of these ports. All of this has a marvelous effect on the viewers libido as its like watching porn without genitals. Remember that word I was using so often before. Do you see why I was?

There’s multiple themes at work here, including the problems with devotion, geek culture, and commercialism (the video game is repeatedly called eXistenz by Antenna). But the blurring of fantasy and reality is the main point. The odd thing is the movie doesn’t make it clear if we are supposed to keep them clearly separated or to understand that there really is no distinction. More than any definite statement, it feels like Cronenberg is just taking out the concepts and playing with them. As Allegra says “You have to play eXistenZ to know why you’re playing.” And then points out that is just like life.

eXistenZ suffers more from the glut of VR films than the others. Remove the VR element from The Matrix and you still have an action film. The Thirteenth Floor would still be a mystery. And the 1990’s Total Recall would still have violence. But take away the VR element from eXistenZ and there’s nothing left. Everything is wrapped up in the concept of uncertain realities, and that is no longer an exciting new idea.

Cyberpunk, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

The Ring (2001) / Ringu (1998) / The Ring Virus (1999)

Oct 111998

The Ring (2001)

Anyone who watches a strange videotape dies one week later. A reporter (Naomi Watts/Matsushima Nanako/Shin Eun-Kyung) and her ex search for the origins of the tape, and how to stop the curse before it kills them and their child .

Horror films are rarely actually frightening. They can be sickening, repulsive, suspenseful, exciting, and funny, but rarely scary. Oh, some can startle, but that’s a cheap thrill (if thrill at all) that is gone as quickly as it came. Fright lasts longer. It builds, putting your nerves on end and causing your hair to standup, and stay that way. I am a hard case, as few people are scared less often than I am by movies. Only three have done it, and none in the last twenty years. The Ring didn’t change that, but it came close. For lack of a better word, I’ll say it made me apprehensive and it felt creepy (I don’t want to downplay the more adrenalin-filled effects of those other 3 films—you’ll just have to read my reviews to find what they are). If you are more easily frightened, then The Ring should send you over the edge. For nine-tenths of the film, it follows the haunting standard, with our heroes, who had nothing to do with the original event, trying to unlock the secret in order to end the ghostly assaults. It does this excellently, and I was ready to label this a successful, “creepy” picture, but then it all changes. Its ending is something new, and contains the most chilling scene in any horror film.

Ringu (1998)

Ringu is the Japanese original (not really the original as there was a TV version first). It was so successful with its stylish terror that it started a movement known as J-Horror (including sequels and prequels to Ringu, Dark Water and the Ju-On series). These films are highly atmospheric, seldom explain everything, and not for the faint of heart. They have been a welcome source of inspiration for Hollywood which is remaking many of them. The Ring changed little of Ringu besides putting it in English and raising the production values a bit. It is the same excellent story. Which is better? Well, as I don’t speak Japanese, that’s hard to say. I can’t tell if the dialog in the original is clever or emotional as sub-titles do not give me the nuances that a native speaker would get. If I was Japanese, I would switch my ratings. Ignoring language, a silly thing to do with a talking picture, I’d give the edge to The Ring. One difference between the films is in the character of the ex-husband/boyfriend. In The Ring he is a video expert, which is one of the reasons he’s brought into the mystery. In Ringu he’s asked to help because he is psychic. This adds something else I have to suspend my disbelief about, and pulls me away from the story as it is much harder to picture myself in the situation (you see, none of my friends can read minds). His powers are there just to speed the plot. Instead of spending time questioning people and looking through files, the ex just grabs people and gets the answers from their mind. The detective work is more satisfying. Either way, these are movies to see.

The Ring Virus (1999)

Ring Virus is the English name given to the Korean version. It varies more from Ringu than The Ring did, but still tells a good tale. I would rate it higher if the others didn’t exist as better choices. Even if I understood Korean, I would suggest one of the others first. Ring Virus increases the psychic activity of our heroes (which leads to statements like “The tape was made telekinetically; I can feel it.”). The main character’s associate is neither an ex-husband nor ex-boyfriend, and may have no connection to her at all; it is unclear. His behavior is inexplicable at times, no matter what he is. There’s a subplot dealing with one of the characters being a hermaphrodite, but it is not explored enough to be interesting. Less care has been shown with the English sub-titles than in Ringu and spelling errors and twisted grammar abound. If you view the DVD, be sure to switch the audio track to Korean (there is no English) as it defaults to the Chinese dubbed track, which was even more amateurishly done than the sub-titles.

Asian, Foreign Language, Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Five Reels

Ringu 2 (1998)

Oct 111998

Mai Takano (Nakatani Miki), the assistant/girlfriend of the professor and “ex” in Ringu joins with a journalist colleague of the reporter from Ringu to investigate the strange occurrences around a video tape that kills anyone who watches it seven days later. When Yoichi, the child from Ringu, starts exhibiting strange powers, Mia and a scientist decide to drain off the “evil energy” using psychic power, scientific equipment, and a swimming pool.

Ringu introduced J-Horror, a subgenre with compelling characters, nerve-racking concepts, and real frights. Ringu 2 offers up one-dimensional, third-banana characters from the first film in a bland plot that couldn’t scare an anxiety ridden mouse in a catnip canning factory, and serves it up with more techno-babble than ten Star Trek episodes focusing on Data.

Initially, Ringu was released with Rasen, a sequel based on the novels. While Ringu was a hit, Rasen left audiences cold, so director, Hideo Nakata, and screenwriter, Takahashi Hiroshi, were given the task of creating a replacement sequel that varied from Rasen, but did not contradict it. This third Ring-series film of 1998 strove for continuity by following two characters that were of no interest in the first film and continue to be of no interest here. They didn’t bother with plot continuity as evil-ghost-girl Sadako now has a brand new bag, possessing young Yoichi for no particular reason with powers that weren’t apparent before. As for the tape, that is ignored.

Thus begins the achingly slow tale of timid Mia, who, like every third character in this version of Japan, has psychic powers, but has no stake in anything that happens. She hasn’t seen the tape, isn’t haunted, isn’t going to be killed, and has no connection with Yoichi. It’s a little tricky figuring what she is doing in the film at all.

But then this isn’t a film about characters. It’s a film about absurd scientific gibberish. You see, the ghost is really evil energy (a commonly known scientific quantity which can be measured) and fresh water is a superior conductor of evil energy when compared to salt water, because…because… Well, they really don’t say, but it makes as much sense as anything else in this film. So, after a great deal of talking (man, do these people talk) about spirit photography, background information that strips Sadako of everything that made her frightening, and unnecessary psychology, we’re left with one of the dumbest lab scenes put to film as our personalityless scientist wires up Mia (with his psychic energy conducting wires?) and Yoichi (with his evil energy conducting wires?) to a bunch of machines that came from the 1960s but apparently have gauges for ghostly resistance. There’s no way to take this seriously, but no one who made this mess realized that.

Ringu 2 wastes some time on some police that end up doing nothing, and on Reiko Asakawa, who, as the lead in Ringu, really should have done something, but doesn’t.

The only redeeming quality is that it is so silly that it can easily be ignored.

Asian, Foreign Language, Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Whispering Corridors {Yeogo Goedam} (1998)

Oct 111998

Eun-young (Mi-yeon Lee) returns as an instructor to the draconian high school she attended. Her own cruel homeroom teacher was recently murdered by a ghost, and Eun-young sees a connection to the death of her friend many years ago in the school. Four students seem somehow caught up in the horrific events: the nearly catatonic Jung-sook (Ji-hye Yun), the bitchy rich girl, So-young (Jin-hie Park), the psychic Ji-oh (Gyu-ri Kim), and the needy Jae-yi (Se-yeon Choi). The four must withstand constant abuse and humiliation within a system that allows them little peace and no respect, so the very occasional ghostly violence is almost a relief for them. As Eun-young searches for the truth behind the deaths, it becomes clear that the girls will have to face the ghost, but first, they will have to stare off into nothingness for a very long time.

The thing I learned from Whispering Corridors is never go to a Korean school. Dictatorial, vicious, and degrading, it looks like a perfect breeding ground for psycho killers. Since I don’t know anything about Korean schools outside of Asian horror flicks, perhaps I’m overreacting. If so, then so is the Korean government, which tried to ban the film for painting a discouraging picture of their educational system. Hmmm. I think they protest too much.

Whispering Corridors is very successful at shining a light on the social status of young women in Korea, and asking questions about how they are taught and treated. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do that in a terribly entertaining fashion. I hated the system and teachers long before it was over, but I didn’t know any of the teachers. I hardly knew the students. There’s not much character development, and not much plot either. For you gore hounds, there’s not much blood. Keeping with this parallel sentence structure, there’s not much horror and not much of an explanation of anything. What is there? Staring. Lots of staring. And pausing, often accompanied by staring. If you can’t get enough of pausing and staring, then this is your movie.

Eun-young is as close to a protagonist as we’re given, but she doesn’t do anything. As a new teacher, she doesn’t teach. We never see her in a classroom. I can’t imagine why she wasn’t fired. She wanders around the grounds, stopping to stare, sometimes at a book, sometimes at a building, but most often, off into space. Jung-sook, who should have “red herring” painted on her forehead in neon green, only stares. That’s her role. She sits and stares and stands and stares. The others make sure to alternate their pausing and staring. First time director Ki-hyeong Park wants us to understand how important each and every line is by surrounding them with silence. That’s only a bit dull when someone is saying something about the murders or ghost, but it gets funny when we get the same long pauses around sentences like “Give me the cleaning buckets” and “Go back to the classroom and get a wash rag.”

I could have put up with the glacial pace if the payoff was more rewarding. There’s a nice twist which most people will see an hour earlier, and more pausing and staring. It’s not enough. There’s a good movie here (not great, but good) buried in all those pauses. Edit out thirty minutes and we’ve got something.

Whispering Corridors is one of the films that started the Asian-horror movement. The distributors would have you believe it is THE movie, but that honor goes to Ringu. However, it did have an effect, particularly in Korea where it spawned three sequels to date. If you’re a fan of the movement, you won’t mind spending a slow hour and a half in these corridors.

It was followed by Whispering Corridors 2: Memento Mori (1999), Whispering Corridors 3: Wishing Stairs (2003), and Whispering Corridors 4: The Voice (2005).

Asian, Foreign Language, Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

The Faculty (1998)

Oct 101998

Six students (Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Laura Harris, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall) observe that the faculty members of their high school (including Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, and Jon Stewart) are changing, and deduce that they have become infected by alien parasites.

Screenwriter Kevin Williamson (Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cursed) may not have had an original thought in his life, but at least he’s clever enough to state that before anyone else can. State it? He screams it while waving his arms wildly over his head and doing a little dance. In each of his Slasher pics, all the characters and every member of the audience know what’s coming next. Everyone, onscreen and off, have seen the standard Slashers films and know the rules. So now Williamson has turned his self-referential sensibilities loose on the alien invasion flick, penning The Faculty. Like his other works, this film tries too hard to be hip. But unlike them, it comes close to succeeding in its trendy goal. Helping it along are a string of worthwhile second string actors and director Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, Spy Kids, Sin City), who isn’t capable of being un-hip.

Constructed as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (or The Puppet Masters—both are specifically mentioned by the horror-aware students) meets The Breakfast Club, there are few of the scares of the former or the laughs of the latter, but there is a paranoid tone and plenty of knowing, fun nods to its predecessors. The characters are stereotypical movie teens: wimpy brain, bad-boy, jock, virgin, bitch, and goth chick. But as cutouts, they have surprising depth, invoking sympathy from all but the most jaded. It doesn’t hurt that the hero is the ring-wielding hobbit, Elijah Wood (he of the eyes-that-can-melt-teenage-girls).

Rodriguez keeps the action flowing fast. He’s got too many movies to reference to let the story sit for more than a moment. Since it’s obvious from the opening credits where the plot will end up, it is a relief that he doesn’t try to build an artificial mystery, instead rushing from one homage to the next. The characters do all their development while fighting or running from extraterrestrials. If some of it is silly, that’s OK as we’re not given time to dwell on flaws.

I’m sure I could paste themes of isolationism or nationalism or conformity onto the The Faculty, as those infused the films it steals from…ummm…pays homage to, but that would be taking it too seriously. It has a few nice moments that demonstrate the mindlessness and cruelty of non-possessed humans. It has even more moments that demonstrate that monsters like to attack teens. Yeah, that’s about as deep as it goes.

The Faculty is the cleverest and most skillfully made of the postmodern teen horror flicks that dominated the late ’90s. It works best if you have seen dozens of earlier invasion flicks so you can play along (note the two scenes lifted from John Carpenter’s The Thing), or seen none so you can pretend the material is fresh.

Aliens, Reviews

Target Earth (1998)

Oct 101998

Aliens already on Earth have implanted humans with mind control devices to be used for the upcoming takeover. Little Tammy accidentally becomes part of the secret resistance’s plan, and it’s up to her mother, Karen Mackaphe (Marcia Cross), and police detective, Sam Adams (Christopher Meloni), to save her and the planet.

There’s lots of ways to save money when making a television alien movie, but only showing the spaceships in crayon drawings is a new one. But then, Target Earth could have been written by kids with crayons. The story is tolerable, if underfed, but this is old stuff. Any six-year-old could construct the script from pieces of previous films. I say “construct” as I can’t see that anyone actually wrote anything—Just cut and pasted from a few dozen older invasion films.

The cast is above the material. Meloni gets by as the lead, but Cross is excellent and believable as an average mother tossed into an impossible situation. Too bad the performance wasn’t in a different film. Trace Dinwiddle is also good as the sexy female cop; there’s no reason for her to have had so few decent roles. Dabney Coleman as a Senator in-the-know does the same thing he does in every other film, which isn’t a bad thing. Chad Lowe is the one actor who can’t find his way, portraying the alien leader as if he’s on a high dosage of Prozac.

The film’s high points, which only register as small bumps, belong to John C. McGinley, who boldly attempts to bring some fun to this black hole of mediocrity. His dynamic, Agent Naples even makes a few of his lines enjoyable, but it is far too little.

Aliens, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Psycho (1998)

Oct 091998

Marion Crane (Anne Heche), a young, unhappy woman, steals $400,000 and leaves her old life behind, hoping the money can solve her boyfriend’s (Viggo Mortensen) financial problems, and maybe give her a future. During a storm, she stops at The Bates Motel, run by Norman (Vince Vaughn) for his invalid mother. Soon, Marion’s sister, Lila (Julianne Moore), and Detective Milton Arbogast (William H. Macy) are looking for her.

For those of you who missed the hoopla, this 1998 release is Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock genre-defining classic, Psycho. The question raised by…well, everyone, was: why? Hitchcock’s movie was a masterpiece. Apparently Van Sant knew this, because you don’t make a shot-by-shot remake of slop. But if he knew it was a masterpiece, why touch it at all? I suppose I could scream about that all day and not come any closer to making sense of it. I’ll just assume that Van Sant and several executives at Universal had their brains break, and with broken brains, they did foolish things.

OK, so besides being pointless, was Pyscho 98 any good? That answer is easy; No. Oh, there are plenty of worse films out there, and Van Sant had a master to steal from so the basic shots are good. But there is no tension, and no sympathy. Some of the failings are due to the actors. Heche manages meek, and not much else, so anything that happens to her doesn’t engage me. Far worse is Vaughn, who dumps Perkin’s complex portrayal in favor of a generic nutball Slasher killer. It was never clear what Perkin’s Norman would do, but there is no such ambiguity with Vaughn’s. At least Viggo Mortensen is no worse than the original’s John Gavins as the boyfriend, though he tends to draw too much attention to himself. The only unqualified success is William H. Macy as the obnoxious detective.

The very few changes that Van Sant does make are all wrong. He is able to put in sexuality that Hitchcock could not, so what does he give us? Well, there’s a shot of Mortensen’s butt in a scene that should be about desperation and loss. Then we’re given Norman masturbating (with shulurping sound effects that imply he walks around with a pound of KY-Jelly down his pants) while he peeps in at Marian. This should be a creepy moment, but with Vaughn vibrating to the shulurp, shulurp, shulurp, it becomes low comedy. Strangely, where a touch of nudity would have helped, for Marian in the shower, creating more vulnerability while using yet another approach to get the audience’s blood pumping, Van Sant skips it.

The events in the film have been moved to modern times (meaning 1998), which makes the ’50s/’60s style dialog and out of date sensibilities incongruous. And then there is the color. That is the fundamental, structural change. Is that the sole reason for this remake? I think everyone realizes that computer colorization of old B&W films didn’t work out well, but if it was simply a matter of needing a colorized version, then dropping a few million on advancing the field and then colorizing the original would have been a better use of resources. Sure it would have resulted in an inferior film to the B&W version, but it would still have Leigh, Perkins, and Hitchcock, making it far better than this. (Of course I realize it isn’t about color. It’s about money.) To make matters worse, nothing of interest is done with the color. There are no subtle shadings to suggest that something is wrong. No sickly greens or drab yellows. Color can create a dark and troubling mood even more effectively than B&W (Body Heat is a prime example). But not here.

While not the only shot-for-shot remake (the 1952 The Prisoner of Zenda matched the 1937 version in the same way), the 1998 Pyscho is a curiosity that proves that film is a collaborative art form defined not by a particular shot, but by every aspect of a project and created by every person involved. In 1960, all the pieces were in place. In 1998, not nearly enough of them were.

Reviews, Slashers Tagged with: One Reel

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