Podcasting Them Softly

It’s hard to be a horror movie lover.  For many the genre is a guilty pleasure that most audiences publicly express disgust with, and to say the critical community usually sports Jason Voorhees-sized knives when crafting their cutting reviews is an understatement.  Weaned on Cronenberg, Carpenter and many others, I’ve long defended it as being every bit as probing, diverse and smart as any other category of cinematic storytelling, yet like fellow fans I find the best defenses of most horror films to amount to things like “the monster was cool even though the acting is terrible” or “that one scene is great, if you can get through the first 40 minutes and ignore the idiotic ending.”  Having a well reviewed entry come out, one that sweeps through festivals with universal praise and is immediately acknowledged as a chilling classic can be a rare treat, one the world received in 2015 with David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows.  Almost exactly one year later, Robert Eggers’ The Witch hits wide release with similar lofty goals, and it achieves them through a brutal, relentlessly dark descent.

The Witch works as something like a companion piece to Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu’s The Revenant, as early European settlers in each find constant danger in the beauty of a young America.  While the latter is concerned with man pitted against nature and indigenous inhabitants, the former throws man into the ring with pure evil itself, and the fight feels overwhelming, unfair and lost from the beginning.  We first meet William and his family as they are about to be banished from their settlement, with the patriarch making it clear that he finds this collective to lack the proper amount of faith to justify their flight from England.  He’s a deeply principled Christian who is unknowingly driving his family directly into the belly of the beast as their wagon ventures into the untamed forest for a supposedly more spiritual existence.  Soon after we are introduced to the witch herself, who bolsters her powers with a ritual that gives the audience a dreadful precedent to base our expectations on how the rest of this journey for William’s family will play out.  No friendly Wiccan here; this conception is, as promised at the beginning of the film, a folklore driven nightmare.  As is absolutely necessary in successful horror, we are fed a bitter balance between unsettling suggestion and horrid imagery, served here with stately framing and flawless natural lighting plus the requisite swelling score when things are about to go bad, which is to say regularly.  Eggers is a first time writer/director who swaggers cruelly and confidently into the job like the jaw dropping third act character cameo of the denoument, seemingly born to craft this compelling and thoroughly awful tale.

Oddly, The Witch is as much about the internal disintegration of a sympathetic family unit as it is a scare-the-audience horror film, and its success on all fronts falls both to the filmmaker and the cast.  Ralph Inseon’s William is surprisingly relatable as a man trying to do the best for his family, albeit by 1630s Calvinist standards; his wife Katherine, played by Kate Dickie, would do anything for her children, if only she knew of anything that would actually help them.  Son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) strives to please his father and live up to his ideals while trying to deal with his burgeoning sexuality in a literal and figurative wilderness, and young Mercy and Jonas, given great child actor turns by Ellie Grainger and Lucas Dawson, simply try to be naturally exuberant children in the midst of a barren existence that promises nothing but peril.  Then there is Thomasin, the oldest daughter of William’s family whose burgeoning womanhood, a familiar and dangerous theme in horror, forms something of a backbone to the proceedings.  Anya Taylor-Joy takes this central role and runs with it, all the way to the campfire-kissed pitch black ending.  The march toward said finale has an increasingly bloody inevitability to it.  This family simply isn’t equipped with anything approaching the tools to defend themselves; a central scene where they vainly flail about to make plans to escape and try to save one of their own exemplifies how helpless they truly are.  Apologies for being intentionally vague, but the “pleasures” of The Witch are best experienced firsthand.  This film boldly lives up to its hype, a modern horror masterpiece that will linger in your dreams like a curse.

I’ve long been a fan of the work of Nancy Meyers. She knows exactly how to make her brand of films – they look fabulous, have top notch actors, splendid production values, and they favor character based stories in an effort to create something overtly entertaining with a minimal of fuss. Her films aren’t game-changers, but rather, comfortable pieces of storytelling that frequently delve into the sentimental and the romantic. She’s also interested in older protagonists, and is one of the only filmmakers consistently telling stories at the studio level about the 60+ set. And despite the fact that she’s a populist filmmaker, you can enjoy her films without feeling stupid afterwards (fine, she does tend to delve into sitcom-y territory every now and again). Her latest film, The Intern, is an extremely solid piece of craftsmanship, with a sensitive and highly effective performance from Robert De Niro at its center, with Anne Hathaway doing very strong work in one of her more engaging roles (she also looks great). Without overcomplicating matters with manufactured drama or unnecessary side developments, Meyers sticks to her core story, that of a 70 year old widower (De Niro) getting an internship at an e-commerce clothing company run by hot shot boss Hathaway, and allows her thoughtful screenplay to rightfully poke at the declining standards of the modern American male in ways that seem appropriately cutting and observant. Gorgeously shot by the great cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt (Meyers ALWAYS hires a premiere director of photography, just check the IMDB), The Intern is an optimistic film, with zero cynicism running through its warmhearted veins, and its central message is a strong one: Don’t forget about the past and the people who helped to shape the future.

There’s no contrived villain or lame plot device in the last act, but rather, Meyers allows her story to organically unfold, and while she’s always been prone to the neat and tidy ending, she allows for plenty of moments that reflect life’s messy possibilities; the worst character in this film is still operating from a believable and somewhat understandable position. Meyers has had an absurdly successful and prolific career as a screenwriter, producer and director; films that sport her name in some capacity include It’s Complicated, Something’s Gotta Give, What Women Want, The Holiday, The Parent Trap, Father of the Bride and its sequel, Baby Boom, Private Benjamin, Irreconcilable Differences, Protocol, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, and Once Upon a Crime. Her confidence as a filmmaker is never in question, and because she values a classical sense of mise en scene with shots that last more than seven seconds each, her films feel like throwbacks that still have modern touches; she can’t help but include a shot of hanging copper kitchen cooking pots and pans in each one of her directorial efforts. A $100,000 kitchen is her filmic signature in the way that a helicopter flying at sunset is the visual trademark of Michael Bay. And not that it should be any surprise, but De Niro is really damn good in The Intern, showing a gentle side without any forced or cheap mugging, playing the well intentioned guy who you just want to see come out on top. There’s a sense of professionalism every time you sit down to watch one of Meyers’ films, and with the Intern, she’s done some of her best work in a while. I’m not surprised that it quietly legged its way to $75 million domestic and close to $200 million worldwide during last holiday season, as it’s the sort of movie that people find in time, and one that many will enjoy.

The 1982 film The Border, starring Jack Nicholson, Harvey Keitel, Warren Oates, and Miss Tessmacher, oops, I mean Valerie Perrine, feels like it could have been released last month, still as topical and as vital as it was upon first release. Directed by Tony Richardson (Blue Sky, The Hotel New Hampshire) and written by Deric Washburn (Silent Running, The Deer Hunter, Extreme Prejudice), Walon Green (The Wild Bunch, Sorcerer), and David Freeman (Street Smart), The Border is a slow moving and purposefully solemn film, one of grave consequences and ultimately desperate actions. Nicholson plays a tired and demoralized Texas border patrolman, who after years of viewing corruption of all forms from all around him in various posts, decides to do something good for someone else. He’s tasked with nighttime shifts looking for illegal immigrants trying to pass into the United States, and unfortunately, he’s allowed a front row seat to tragedy, dishonesty, and sadness all around him. The plot kicks into gear when the baby of a young Mexican girl is kidnapped with the intentions of being sold/adopted, and Nicholson decides to take a stand against his emotionally and spiritually bankrupt superiors, going up against them with the best of intentions but possibly not the best amount of resources.

Nicholson is constantly at odds with his bimbo wife (Perrine, perfectly annoying) and his morally corrupt coworker (Keitel, practically baby-faced here), and while there’s a simmering rage boiling from within the heart of his multi-layered character, he never goes over the top, letting everything come to him as opposed to attacking it with overt bravado. This is one of Nicholson’s more effective and unsung performances, and from what I’ve read, he’s long considered it one of his best contributions to cinema. And while he’s certainly gripping in an unusually low-key way all throughout The Border, I’m not exactly sure if everything about the film works, and I suspect that the ending went thru various discussions and versions, because it doesn’t necessarily play out as one would expect. The spirit of 70’s cinema is still very much in tact all throughout The Border, but the ending feels a bit soft for some reason. Richardson’s dry filmmaking style doesn’t bring a lot of visual spice to the proceedings, but I guess the dourness of the material suits the simple aesthetic. This is an angry, outraged film, with brutal violence during the climax, and it paints an ugly portrait of the harsh realities that await people of less fortunate status, and how people have more than likely continuously abused the faulty immigration system that’s been set in place for the last 30 years in America to maximize their own personal bottom line.

I love westerns. I really do. From the classics (The Searchers, Red River, Winchester ’73, My Darling Clementine, hundreds more) to modern efforts (Unforgiven, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Open Range, 3:10 to Yuma), it’s a genre that never fails to intrigue and satisfy. I was obsessed with HBO’s brilliant show Deadwood and I still lament the early cancellation that it received. David Milch’s creation was as bold and unique as anything that has ever been aired on television, and I can only hope that the recent TV movie rumors are true. Appaloosa, which was co-written and directed by Ed Harris and released in the fall of 2008, is an extremely solid genre entry for anyone who’s a fan of this milieu. Harris stars as Virgil Cole, a gun/sherrif for hire who rides into the dusty town of Appaloosa with his shotgun-toting sidekick Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen, one of my favorite actors), looking to find work. They are hired by the town organizers to take out the human trash that has been infecting the area, chiefly, Randall Bragg (a sneering Jeremy Irons) and his gang of thieves and murderers. The set-up is perfect: Two men who are quick with guns are assigned to take care of business. But a wrench is thrown into their plan with the arrival of the saucy Allison French (Renee Zellweger, in one of her best roles), a seemingly dignified woman who comes to town looking to start her life over after her husband’s recent death. Cole falls in love with French almost immediately. He’s a man who has spent his life frequenting brothels rather than looking for a wife, and the notion that this Angel out of nowhere has appeared in an otherwise dangerous town, well, that’s enough for him to want to become lover and protector.

Appaloosa explores classic themes of honor and betrayal and machismo, which are filtered through the lens of a classical western, turning this old-fashioned story into something that never feels out of date. Cole and Hitch are best friends, and Appaloosa, at its heart, is a modern buddy movie, much like most westerns tend to be. There are some well staged and appropriately gritty shoot-outs, but this isn’t a modern day action movie spiced up by western locales like James Mangold’s exciting 3:10 To Yuma remake. Appaloosa is more of a character piece, taking its time to explore the friendship between Cole and Hitch, with everything hinging on character and motivation as much as it does bloody showdown. All of the bullets fired in this film count (and hurt), much like they did in Kevin Costner’s underrated Open Range, with the script smartly saving its violence for the perfect moments. The dialogue between Cole and Hitch has a witty, crackling quality and all of the performances are top-notch, most notably from Zellweger, who was utilized to great effect in this film. Harris, as always, was intense and focused, and Mortensen downplayed his role as Hitch, bring a level of mystery to his character. The film looks nice but isn’t overly “pretty,” with the cinematography by Dean Selmer (We Were Soldiers, Dances With Wolves, Apocalypto), possessing a traditional sense of genre classicism. Appaloosa is solid in every respect, and enjoyable on all levels.

Rating in Stars: *** (out of ****)
Cast: Nilbio Torres, Antonio Bolivar, Jan Bijvoet, Brionne Davis, Yauenkü Migue
Director: Ciro Guerra
MPAA Rating: NR
Running Time: 2:05
Release Date: 02/17/16 (New York)

The religious fervor of the tribal West collides with the scientific discovery of the colonial East in Embrace of the Serpent, co-writer/director Ciro Guerra’s take on the Old World’s resistance toward the influence of the New by way of a kind of parable structure. At one end of a time frame, we have an explorer disappearing into the jungles along the border between Colombia and Brazil. At the other end, we have another scientist retracing his steps. It’s a way for the region to comment upon its own history, as these stories are based in truth. Guerra and co-screenwriter Jacques Toulemonde Vidal (taking inspiration from a diary written by its protagonists’ real-life counterparts Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evan Schultes) weave an intriguing tale rife with symbolism and haunting imagery.

In what we will call the “present day” (Although the screenwriters don’t put a specific date on the proceedings, these events took place roughly in the late 1940s), an explorer named Evan (Brionne Davis) searches the banks of the Amazon for traces of Theo (Jan Bivoet), a scientist who came upon this area in forty years previously and never returned from what was to be an exploratory trip. An elderly villager named Karamakate (Antonio Bolivar) meets Evan rather coincidentally, having  done the same with Theo perhaps upon that very shore. As Karamakate reluctantly helps Evan on the search, he recalls the time the “other white” arrived, very ill and in the care of a guide named Manduca (Yauenkü Migue), and asked Karamakate’s younger self (Nilbio Torres) to aid his own search for the yakruna plant (something which will cure his illness).

Interpersonal conflict of some sort exists within these characters from the moment many of them interact with each other. Skin color separates both Theo and, later, Evan from Karamakate by virtue of preconceptions on each person’s part. Both white explorers are wholly unprepared for the primitive lifestyle of the natives whom they encounter and with whom they travel. In the past, Theo, Manduca, and Karamakate come upon a settlement wherein the Christian faith is taught to children with such rigor that the priest whips the boy who welcomes outsiders into their midst. In the present, Evan and Karamakate encounter a tribe whose leader has convinced them that he is Jesus Christ incarnate, come to be married to a young, dying girl he insists be healed by Theo the scientist and to be given the cure to their own, likely nonexistent illness.

This latter encounter exhibits a problem shared by the film’s second half, which conflates symbolism with a kind of thematic opacity that makes much of it hard to pin down in any significant way. The business with the plant for which Theo is searching inspires an acid trip of sorts (the only instance of color in a film that is quite effectively shot by cinematographer David Gallego in stark, black-and-white hues), but it isn’t quite established what purpose the climax of the journey (which then cuts to credits rather insignificantly) holds.

It is also, ultimately, less relevant to the film’s impact as a cinematic effort. Flashbacks are an iffy tool to utilize and even more so to execute in a way that doesn’t make them feel like a gimmick. Here, they are used to inform Karamakate’s past; the shared performances by Bolivar and Torres are both very good at conveying a weariness with the world and with the West. Bivoet is also a highlight in this ensemble as Theo, whose fate is as uncertain as his real-life counterpart’s, the actor compelling in his portrayal of a sick man trying to make his mark. Embrace of the Serpent, in spite of its drawbacks, proves in this regard an unexpectedly tender treatise on the inadvertent marriage of two sides of civilization.

Begin Again is a pure delight from start to finish, filled with laughs, catchy music, and a bright spirit. A tad melancholy to be sure, but like John Carney’s previous heartfelt musical-romance Once, his newest effort is long on charm and inherently likable. Mark Ruffalo, in one of his very best performances, is a sloppy, beaten-down, old school music executive who, after a night of heavy, depressing drinking, stumbles into a NYC bar and just so happens to hear the voice of a talented, equally-down-on-her-luck singer (the effervescent Keira Knightley, who should have been Oscar nominated for her work in this film). Ruffalo hears Knightley singing, and in one of the best sequences of the year in any film, he imagines the musical accompaniments that would pair with Knightley as she’s singing and playing solo guitar, with Carney playfully visualizing Ruffalo’s imagination. It’s mutual respect at first sight for the artist and the producer, but will it blossom into something more? The two music lovers decide to record an original album, preforming all of the songs all throughout NYC, out in public areas, in an effort to create something special and organic and long lasting. Carney is a heartbreaker with a smile, a guy who loves the tropes of the romantic dramedy but enjoys tweaking the formula just enough so your expectations are subverted at almost every turn. He’s also a massive fan of keeping his potential love birds apart from one another for as long as humanly possible, which will annoy some, but delight those of us who know that life isn’t as simple as “I do” and “I don’t.” If Begin Again isn’t quite the movie-miracle that Once was, well, that would have been impossible to replicate for a variety of reasons, but it’s still a hugely entertaining movie that will likely prove impossible to resist for anyone who gives it a chance.

Make no mistake about it: John McTiernan’s original Die Hard is easily the BEST film of the franchise, and unquestionably one of the 10 best action movies of all time. However, my personal FAVORITE from the franchise will always be Die Hard: With a Vengeance. Taking the smart and credible plotting from the first entry and combining it with some of the over-the-top action of Renny Harlin’s icicle-in-the-eyeball sequel Die Hard 2: Die Harder, McTiernan returned to the series that made him famous with this brawny, beefy, explosive threequel, a film that over the last 20 years has stood the test of time as one of the most visceral, down and dirty, big-city action flicks ever produced. Shot on location in NYC, the verisimilitude of this movie is staggering, with a noticeable lack of blue-screen work, honest-to-goodness stunt-men doing their glorious, ballsiest best to defy the laws of gravity and physics for our personal amusement, with bravura hand-held camera work capturing all of the insane action, which brought an immediacy and danger to the proceedings. Shot by master action lenser Peter Menzies Jr., Die Hard: With a Vengeance is one of the roughest looking action movies ever shot. The camera is rarely not moving around (never chaotically though), always glimpsing here and there for some sort of visual information, with the anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen space constantly filled with bodies and vehicles and bullets in motion. Willis is paired up with a reluctant buddy in the form of Samuel L. Jackson’s hostile and angry Zeus, a hardscrabble man living and working in Harlem who is sucked into McClane’s whirlwind of city saving escapades. The two of them have immediate chemistry and a natural rapport, with their abrasive lines of racially charged dialogue bouncing off of one another with the same intense fashion that the bullets leave McClane’s various firearms of choice. It seems that someone has a grudge against McClane and is setting off bombs all over NYC. Played with vile charisma to the extreme by Jeremy Irons, his villain is an East German terrorist with as much smarts as ruthless killing ability, and the narrative twist that the filmmakers serve up with Irons’ character brings the film full circle with the first effort.

In Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the audience is treated to one sensational action set-piece after another. After the spectacular morning rush-hour bombing of the old Bonwitt-Teller department store in downtown Manhattan, we’re treated to a live-wire chase through Central Park, we get a hair-raising car chase along a rain-soaked Saw Mill River Parkway, a variety of close-quarters (and extremely graphic) shoot-outs, any number of vicious hand-to-hand fight scenes, with one featuring Willis facing off against a hulking, heavily accented henchmen which has to go down as one of the best fights of all time. There are exploding shipping vessels, crashing helicopters, and cars that ram their way thru highway guard-rails in an effort to land on the road beneath. All of this is done with zero CGI, tons of fake-blood-filled-squibs, and a constant stream of vulgarity pouring out of the mouths of the two battered and bloodied lead heroes. This is pack-it-all-in action filmmaking at its finest, and a further reminder of the cinematic muscularity that McTiernan was tossing around in his glory days. I can remember my father picking me up from high school early on the Friday that this movie opened (I ditched the last two classes so we could see the first showing) and I can still remember sitting in the theater and watching this masterwork of pyrotechnics and entertainment, my mouth completely left in slack-jawed amazement. This is one I’ll continue to re-visit for years to come.