Category: Film Review

When I left the theater after seeing The Raid, I said to myself that it was the best action movie I had seen. Nothing could prepare me for how intense and focused that film would be, and it made me excited all over again to be a lover of action movie cinema. When I left the theater after seeing The Raid 2: Berandal, I was nearly in tears, not because I was sad, but because I was overly ecstatic, as I had seen something that actually bested what the first film had accomplished. Within the realm of the shoot-em-up action thriller, I have never seen anything as unrelentingly amazing as The Raid 2: Berandal, and my guess is that I won’t see anything better than it until director Gareth Evans delivers the third chapter in this extra-assaultive series of films. Out of all of the genres that one can pick from, the Action Film is easily my favorite. More than most types of cinema, it exists to exhilarate and to transport, and when in the hands of a master like Evans, the results are nothing short of extraordinary. This film completely and utterly eviscerates the competition; American movies pale in comparrison to this blood-drenched effort. There’s nothing else that even remotely comes close to matching the cumulative level of bad-assery that you’ll find in The Raid 2. It’s two and a half hours of punching, shooting, maiming, garroting, car-chasing, slicing, dicing, hammering, base-ball-batting, kicking, and shanking. And yes, if you can believe it, there’s more plot to choke a horse, with developments that make sense, and a fully sympathetic lead character you entirely root for.

Picking up mere moments after the obscenely bloody events of The Raid, this sequel ups the ante in every regard — characters, plot-lines, set-pieces, and the overall level of lunatic abandon when it comes to the mind-blowing action sequences. You’ll see one of the very best car chases ever captured by cameras in The Raid 2, and you’ll also see the single most vicious and bloody one-on-one fight that I could ever possibly imagine. Honestly – after the stuff done in this film – I’m not sure what else needs to be attempted with this sort of thing. But leave it to Evans to try, as he’s currently working on The Raid 3. This is legendary action cinema, taking cues from genre masters like John Woo, Takashi Miike, and Paul Greengrass, mixing an undercover-cop-in-prison narrative ala The Departed with classic tribal feuds straight out of a Japanese Yakuza picture. Iko Uwais is a living legend, and the same can be said for Yayan Ruhian; these guys ostensibly have zero limits and are willing to go above and beyond what’s physically expected from a human being. The Indonesian setting makes for an exotic backdrop for all of the insane bouts of mayhem, with the impossibly agile cinematography covering all of the action from the most eye-popping angles possible. This is a movie where you feel every punch, hear every bullet whizz past your ears, and every single scene seems to have been designed to top the last. This is outstanding action cinema that will be very, very tough to beat.

There’s a considerable appreciation to be had for a solid, mostly intelligent genre exercise such as Mike Flanagan’s HUSH. Sometimes, smart and inspired is enough, and ever since his well-above-average debut (ABSENTIA), Flanagan has been hard at work giving his audience just that and something a little more to boot. There are almost zero pretensions to be found in this short, simple, efficient, and surprisingly clever home invasion yarn; it’s merely a welcome addition to a familiar (often to a fault) genre that doesn’t really aspire to reinvent the wheel so much as it does to have its fair share of fun breathing new life into it by challenging conventions and expectations in near-equal measures.

A deaf writer alone in the woods with, save for a couple neighbors she’s quite friendly with, only her thoughts as company is terrorized one night by an intruder (John Gallagher Jr.) whose motivations are certainly more ambiguous than his identity – this is the simple but convenient logline of Flanagan’s film if there ever was one. Immediately, the viewer is thrust into the unique world of its protagonist, only to be taken out of it as soon as the assailant makes his presence known, and for the remainder of the run-time we are (mostly sonically) taken in and out of these two respective points of view. It actually sounds LESS ambitious on paper than it is in execution, though this ends up being one of the film’s most striking features.

Kate Siegel turns in commendable work as the heroine, who we learn from the back of one of her published novels has been living with her particular ailment since the age of 13, and sharing writing credits with Flanagan himself seems to have provided the proceedings with a refreshingly non-self-congratulatory female touch. HUSH empowers its protagonist without practically begging the audience to sympathize with her plight, which registers as something of a surprise in today’s cinematic landscape, and the narrative doesn’t rely on the usual slasher idiocy to remain constant (the film not really exploring the motivations of the intruder doesn’t strike me as idiocy so much as a desire to keep things interesting); instead, the mistakes made by Siegel’s Maddie Young are for the most part logical and notably human given the situation she finds herself in. A bit of naivety on the part of this particular character is believable, and the scribes have a grand old time building up both her external and internal worlds only to creatively break them down as they go on into the night.

The manipulation of space here is also most impressive. A single-location thriller is like a strange and dangerous dance, but it’s one that Flanagan seems comfortable to temper with, and for good reason. His visual language is thoroughly immersive, following the majority of Maddie’s more urgent actions on Steadicam, bringing to mind the Italian Giallo without the expected flashiness (the lighting set ups here are evocative and appropriate, but never invasive). The soundscape is also genuinely effective – and with such minimal dialogue it’s got to be – but even more impressive than the film’s technical achievements are its confrontations with cliché. Flanagan displays a certain obsession with Maddie’s material possessions and seamlessly integrates a certain number of them into her fight for survival. For example: an exceedingly loud fire alarm with bright flashing lights introduced in one of the earliest scenes is brought back in a creative way later on – and there’s even a fairly clever subversion of the old lost pet trope. Even a sequence in which the voices in Maddie’s head run through the various escape routes throughout the house is ultimately justified by the aforementioned information delivered via book jacket, though it at first serves to catch the viewer off guard when they least expect it to.

While overall, Flanagan isn’t aiming for anything more than a film that amounts to precisely the sum of its parts, there’s something to be said for it getting there in the end with such a thoroughly organic grasp on form. It’s clear from the get-go, and from his debut (I regrettably missed OCULUS but intend to fix that ASAP), that Flanagan has a lot of love for the horror genre and wishes only to contribute in positive ways to its future whilst injecting it with much-appreciated intimacy and emotional honesty. HUSH is the kind of taut home invasion thriller that the world could certainly use a little more of – that being one which understands that sometimes the only way to truly progress is to not make a big deal out of doing so, to raise awareness for genre issues of importance (in this case, strong female representation in horror is a big one) in a quiet, coherent manner. Ultimately, it makes for surprisingly thoughtful and consistently engaging Saturday night-type viewing; a film that is significantly more interesting in its technique than in its conception. Keep a look out – it may just sneak up and surprise you.

 

Somewhere in Movie Heaven, there exists a double bill with Richard Rush’s The Stunt Man and Paul Mazursky’s Alex in Wonderland. I’ve seen this film a few times now, and it’s never not entrancing or fully engrossing. Released in 1970, this was Mazursky’s eagerly awaited follow up to his hugely successful Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, with the story centering on a movie director named Alex Morrison (Donald Sutherland, incredible), who is stressing out over what to do next after his first movie was a huge success. Sounds a bit like reality for Mazursky, no? Co-written with Larry Tucker, Mazursky used his second feature as a venting and homage session, crossing his real life insecurities as a filmmaker with the age old narrative conceit of an artist struggling with a crisis of artistic conscious. He even cast himself as a Hollywood producer (in one of the film’s best scenes), further upping the satirical spin to the picture. Federico Fellini and Jeanne Moreau also made cameos which boosted the wink-wink inspiration factor, with Mazursky and Tucker even explicitly referencing 8½. The heady narrative dabbles in the past, present, and possible future, with thematic nods to cinema history in general explored all throughout, while the script constantly tackled the almost impossible balance that artists face between family life and “the biz.” Ellen Burstyn played Alex’s put-upon wife while László Kovács handled the varied, dreamy, and always interesting cinematography. This is a seriously cool movie that gets better each time I revisit.

Rating in Stars: ***½ (out of ****)
Cast: Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne
Directed by: Taika Waititi
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements including violent content, and for some language)
Running Time: 1:41
Release Date: 06/24/16 (limited)

Here is a goodhearted film, delightful and somber, zany and full of truth. Hunt for the Wilderpeople weaves a tale of a patchwork family whose members all came from different places nevertheless united in loneliness. The father was a bushman who fell in love and subsequently became civilized. The mother was already a part of this civilization, charmed by the man from the woods in spite of the probability of a future with no children. The son has arrived at his newest foster house, after an absentee father left the mother who in turn abandoned her child. Writer/director Taika Waititi’s comedy of manners eventually becomes a road-trip comedy, but for about twenty minutes, he allows us to examine the chemistry of this unique trio.

The father is a lovable grump who clearly finds his own situation almost entirely improbable. He is Hector (Sam Neill)–“Hec” for short–who has applied his formerly wild ways to something of an adaptation to rural life. The mother never knew her own family growing up, and one can imagine that she might have taken to fostering children even if she had met a man capable of producing them. She’s just that kind (and kind of) a woman, Bella (a phenomenal Rima Te Wiata, whose all-too-brief performance deserves every positive accolade one can afford). The foster son is a “real bad egg,” according to the child services official (Rachel House) who drops him with this elderly couple. But even after we receive a lengthy list of Ricky’s (Julian Dennison) wrongdoings, we actually meet the kid and are reminded that one’s attitude rarely truly reflects one’s character.

That’s all the wrongdoing was, after all: a personification of his attitude. He’s a lost kid who, though he denies it the one time he’s asked, desperately wants to meet his own mother (As for his father, well, some may know how that is). Bella is welcoming and kind, singing him a silly song for his birthday, and then suddenly the character exits the narrative in a way that is, perhaps, predictable but not easily acceptable. The film is divided into chapters (The idiom used by the official to describe is the title for one of them), and the occurrence happens right at the end of the first. Hec’s solution to retreat into the woods, and then Ricky gets the bright idea to join him.

Tracked by the government official and her bumbling policeman of a sidekick (Oscar Kightley) under the suspicion that Hec has kidnapped Ricky, the two spent almost half a year on the run through the New Zealand, and their excursion makes up roughly six of the remaining chapters. Waititi (who also has a funny cameo as an entirely unhelpful priest with a curious allegory for finding faith after tragedy), adapting a novel by Billy Crump, then turns on the comic switch, with Hec and Ricky meeting the likes of a forager named Psycho Sam (Rhys Darby) whose governmental paranoia knows no boundaries and a father/daughter pair who take Ricky in one night and treat him like a celebrity and saving the life of a diabetic park ranger.

All of this is funny stuff, which means that the touching moments work all the more because of the chemistry between Dennison, whose Ricky is a loner this close to bursting out of his cocoon, and Neill, whose Hec is a very sad man who merely wants to be alone for a while after losing the only person for whom he became civilized (One guesses from his decision to retreat back into the woods that he probably wasn’t always a man of the woods anyway). Some ancillary distraction occurs with the inclusion of a trio of hunters who infer something scandalous and proceed to pop up now and then, but even so, Hunt for the Wilderpeople is often–to adopt Hec’s mistaken but well-meaning replacement for the term’s real counterpart–majestical.

One of the funniest movies ever made. I also played hockey for 15 years so that might have something to do with my obsession over this film. The screenplay is absolutely genius, operating as both brilliant sports satire and multi-pronged buddy film within the context of the underdog narrative. Every single laugh is either born out of character traits and personality or because of the organic quality of the plotting. Nothing is forced in Slap Shot, with George Roy Hill’s smooth yet rough-house direction somehow being a perfect match with the extraordinarily vulgar screenplay by Nancy Dowd, who also wrote Hal Ashby’s tragic Vietnam drama Coming Home. Everything about Slap Shot is note-perfect, from how astute it is about the game it so lovingly showcases, to every single performance, both big and small, nuanced and over the top. Paul Newman was perfectly cast as the broken-down player-coach, and would go on record as saying that making Slap Shot was one of the most fun times he ever had shooting a film. Michael Ontkean was so damn good, all rugged charm and sweaty-macho posturing, with serious ice-hockey skills to match his roguish on-screen aura. The prolific and amazing cinematographer Victor J. Kemper knew precisely how to frame all of the on-ice action so that every shot, every face-off, every goal scored felt believable and true to the sport. The Hanson brothers inject serious idiocy into the proceedings, with the various brawls that they instigate resulting in huge laughs. The final sequence is an all-timer, and honestly, there isn’t one thing about this movie on a creative level that I don’t agree with or love.