Crimson Peak

CRIMSON PEAK (Guillermo del Toro, 2015)

In CRIMSON PEAK Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is an aspiring writer of ghost stories, although the publisher wishes she would come up with something more conventional and romantic. Edith admits that the ghosts are metaphors for the past, but she has been visited by the spirit of her mother bearing the warning not to go to Crimson Peak. She meets Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) when they come to Buffalo to find investors for his invention. Thomas and Edith become romantically involved against her father’s objections, but after tragedy strikes, Edith weds Thomas and accompanies him to his crumbling family estate in England.

Director and co-writer Guillermo del Toro has made it a point of emphasis while doing the publicity rounds that despite the film’s ghosts, CRIMSON PEAK is not a horror film but a Gothic romance in the tradition of JANE EYRE and REBECCA. In truth there’s not really much romance in it either. Edith and Thomas’s marriage is an arrangement of convenience and exploitation. Although feelings change, CRIMSON PEAK never boils with erotic passion between husband and wife or inside one of them.

And yet while CRIMSON PEAK lacks heat or surprises in its conventional story, del Toro captures the imagination with sumptuous visual treats throughout. The spacious, decrepit house is a marvel of production design and art direction. The intricate costumes manifest the emotional undercurrents, with Edith dressed as though she’s wearing a chrysalis while living at Allerdale Hall and Lucille bound in what she wears as tightly as she and her brother are connected to their home. The clay-reddened snow that looks like it’s been bloodied is such a striking image, especially with that imposing manor looming over it. These elements contribute to the mood, which del Toro treats with primary importance rather than investing energy into the familiar plot. The romance, it turns out, is with the look and feel of rotting mansions and scarred psyches. In that CRIMSON PEAK has more than enough to keep one captivated.

Grade: B

A Most Violent Year

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR (J.C. Chandor, 2014)

While teaching his salespeople how to secure contracts for his heating oil company Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) says, “You will never do anything as hard as staring someone straight in the eye and telling the truth.” In A MOST VIOLENT YEAR, set in 1981 New York City, Abel wants to be an honest man in a dirty business in which competitors steal from and kill one another, but his shortcoming is failing to be honest with himself about how his business is able to survive. Still, that willful blindness allows him to take the necessary steps to get by each day. Thus he can believe he is a good man facing persecution for the wickedness of others.

Abel worked as a driver for the Standard Heating Oil Company before he and his wife Anna (Jessica Chastain) bought it from her father, who is widely recognized as a Brooklyn gangster. Over twenty years Abel has grown the business and attracted unwanted attention because of such success. District Attorney Lawrence (David Oyelowo) has been investigating the company for two years and is preparing to file a fourteen-count indictment. Abel’s drivers are being attacked, and thousands of dollars of fuel is being stolen.

These problems are also making it difficult for Abel to line up an investor to help with purchasing a piece of property that will give him a major strategic advantage. With a substantial nonrefundable portion already paid, Abel is desperate to scrounge up another $1.5 million but can’t obtain it from legitimate sources. He doesn’t want to be indebted to crooked men because he envisions himself as an upstanding businessman, but with time running out and pressure mounting, he may have no other choice.

Writer-director J.C. Chandor is interested in studying how power, be it political or financial, is aligned out of sight and what the consequences of this process are for those not benefiting from it. Cinematographer Bradford Young drapes A MOST VIOLENT YEAR in low light so that the action literally takes place in and among the shadows. Abel is comfortable there, even when his back is against the wall, because the shroud is meant to protect people like him. For his drivers threatened by an unknown enemy, even going into hiding is not a safe place. They are the little guys, and they will always be the first to pay because of their low position on the hierarchy.

Hard work and good luck may factor into Abel’s achievements, but determination and effort are not the only traits responsible. Isaac does outstanding work as a compromised man who has the luxury of not knowing how much of his prosperity comes from the grease and grime he hasn’t been required to touch. He shows the depth of Abel’s conviction and righteousness while dwelling in the darkness unaware of his slow descent. Chastain’s fierce performance paints Anna as a kingmaker of sorts. Anna knows her role and carries it out with ruthless efficiency without drawing notice. Through her Chastain manifests a different kind of toughness, the type that isn’t necessarily front and center but quietly acquires dominance through proximity and savvy.

Although the drama is fraught with tension, Chandor finds room in A MOST VIOLENT YEAR for two terrific chase scenes. Both also make tangible the anxiety, terror, and anger pumping through the narrative and remove standards of fair play. To Chandor the nature of business and politics isn’t Darwinian so much as it is a guided by those setting the rules in their favor.

Grade: A-

2013 Pop Culture Journal: Week 3

January 15-21, 2013

Film

10. MAMA (Director, 2013) (35mm) (Arena Grand) (January 18)

In short time Jessica Chastain has become one of the best working actresses.  It’s surprising to check her filmography and find little there prior to her breakout 2011. Granted, she amassed several projects that all happened to see the light of day in the same year, but her emergence felt like it occurred overnight even if it didn’t.  While she won’t be winning any awards for MAMA, she’s very good in this contemporary fairy tale by way of a horror movie.  This kind of film can often feel like it comes off the assembly line, but MAMA displays some thoughtfulness and visual flair to set it apart. (Review)

Grade: B-/63

11. BROKEN CITY (Allen Hughes, 2013) (35mm) (Arena Grand) (January 18)

Forget it Mark Wahlberg, it’s the Big Apple.  Allen Hughes tries to make New York City’s version of CHINATOWN.  He has the look and feel down, but the intricate twists and turns in Brian Tucker’s screenplay lack much in the way of surprises.  

The more interesting elements tend to be in the margins.  The girlfriend of Wahlberg’s character is an aspiring actress, and they attend the premiere of her independent film. What we see of it are pretty terrible--intentionally so--and hysterically funny.  This section provides a more incisive and witty look below the surface of official public statements than the political scenes.  I also liked Alona Tal as Wahlberg’s administrative assistant.  Her give-and-take with the boss snaps.      

Grade: C/47

12. THE LAST STAND (Kim Jee-woon, 2013) (2K DCP) (Rave Polaris) (January 19)

I elected to keep these observations out of my review, but this seems like the right space for them.  Can THE LAST STAND be read as a conservative fantasy?  The hero is jaded about life in the big city and gives it up for peace and quiet in quintessential small town America.  The feds are either corrupt or unsuccessful at their job.  It falls upon the local officials to get the job done properly.  The good guys even require a citizen’s private arsenal to fight back.  The hero and villain chase and duel with American-made cars.  Or maybe it’s just the form and this is all reading more into it than is intended? (Review)

Grade: B-/60

13. BEVERLY HILLS COP (Martin Brest, 1984) (HD stream) (January 20)

A by-the-numbers crime story drags down this would-be comedy.  As the fast-talking and ingratiating prankster policeman, Eddie Murphy shows why he’s a star even though his films are, by and large, not very good.  He’s very appealing in BEVERLY HILLS COP as he orders room service for the officers staking him out and stuffs bananas in their tailpipes to shake them, but Murphy’s personality isn’t enough to carry a film more devoted to the boilerplate TV procedural plot.  There’s literally zero mystery in the investigation.  The tepid fish-out-of-water humor fails to mine the comedy in a streetwise Detroit detective visiting swanky California.  And hey, there’s Jonathan Banks as a bad guy!  There’s nothing remarkable about what he does here, but for anyone who’s seen him on BREAKING BAD, it goes to show the talent that often goes unnoticed in disposable parts like this one.

Grade: C/46

14. ZERO DARK THIRTY (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012) (35mm) (Arena Grand) (January 21)

Just as riveted seeing it a second time. And what I said about Chastain in MAMA?  That goes double or triple for her here. (Review)

Grade: A/90

Shorts

9s. REJECTED (Don Hertzfeldt, 2000) (YouTube) (January 16)

“My anus is bleeding!”  Proof that I don’t always need humor to be sophisticated.  I laughed myself silly when I saw this in THE ANIMATION SHOW and did so again when showing it to some students the day after taping a show in which we reviewed IT’S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY.

Grade: A/90

Literature

1. GONE GIRL (Gillian Flynn, 2012)

Through a conventional mystery Gillian Flynn dissects a troubled marriage and explores what we think we know about the people we see, be it in everyday life or in the media. She alternates chapters of the husband’s thoughts when his wife goes missing on their anniversary and her diary entries.  It’s an ingenious way of studying how individuals construct the selves they reveal to others and the assumptions society makes based on available information, especially in sensational news stories.  GONE GIRL can be very cynical about how men and women relate to one another and how people use others for their own purposes, but it’s a fascinating and often thrilling read.

While reading the novel, I felt like it could be best translated as a short order TV series, maybe two or three seasons.  After I finished GONE GIRL, it was announced that David Fincher may direct the film adaptation.  He’s a sensible choice.  Reportedly Reese Witherspoon may play the lead female role.  This should be a whale of a part.  The only thing of note she’s done in recent years is HOW DO YOU KNOW, so it would be nice to have her return with something worthy of her talent.  

Music

10. Van Halen THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS (2004)

Other than excluding “Ice Cream Man”, this 2-CD greatest hits set includes pretty much all the album-oriented rock radio staples by one of the biggest rock bands of the 1970s, ‘80s, and early ‘90s.  A collection like this would be hard to mess up, yet the sequencing has to be among the worst of any band’s best-of compilation.  The listener can fix this in the MP3 era, but if you pop this into a car CD player, as I did this week, the order is maddening.  

The first disk begins with “Eruption”, inexplicably separated from their cover of “You Really Got Me”, and three mediocre-to-bad new songs.  From then the set lurches between eras, alternating between songs with David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar as lead singer.  The only consecutive Roth-era songs are tracks 13 and 14 on the second CD, and they’re promptly followed by three live cuts with Hagar plowing through Diamond Dave classics.  Clearly the sequencing is a middle finger from the band to Roth, but they’re also insulting fans and making themselves look bad.  If anything, the stark contrast makes the Hagar-era songs pale in comparison to when Roth was the front man.

I used to prefer the so-called Van Hagar lineup, probably because those songs were more melody-inclined, but put me down now as recognizing that the group was far superior when Roth was in the band.  His goofball persona used to be what put me off, but listening now I can hear how he’s a better fit, especially at selling the double entendre-laden lyrics.  Hagar sounds too earnest in comparison.

Key tracks: “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love”, “And the Cradle Will Rock...”, “Unchained”, “Panama”, I’ll Wait”, and “Runnin’ with the Devil”

11. The Walkmen HEAVEN (2012)

At this point when Spoon puts out yet another great album, it’s taken for granted.  Quietly The Walkmen are in the process of doing the same thing.  I’m slowly trying to put together a favorite albums of 2012 list, so I popped their latest in and was reminded (and kind of stunned) how great it is.  Maybe I should have gone down to campus this week to see them in concert again.  (I caught them in Cincinnati opening for The New Pornographers in 2011 and was suitably impressed.)

Key tracks: “We Can’t Be Beat”, “Love is Luck”, “The Witch”, and “The Love You Love”

TV

-BUNHEADS (ABC Family)

Also file under Unfortunately Named Television Series.  I’m clearly not the target audience for a program about a Las Vegas showgirl reassessing her life while instructing ballerinas in small town California.  I’ve never watched anything on ABC Family or an episode of creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s GILMORE GIRLS. Nevertheless, I don’t know if there’s another current show that leaves me feeling as good after an episode as this one.  Delightful repartee, appealing characters, and inventive dance numbers make it the complete drama-comedy package.

I don’t dance and possess little understanding of the art, but over the years I’ve noticed that I really enjoy dance films.  THE RED SHOES is an all-time favorite. I also like the Japanese original and American remake SHALL WE DANCE?, THE COMPANY, STEP UP 2: THE STREETS,.and CENTER STAGE, among others.  There’s just something about communicating feeling through motion that moves me immensely.  For example, Jeanine Mason gets a beautiful single shot solo in the third episode of the first season’s second half that is unspeakably light and charming, which says everything about the idealized character she plays.  Julia Goldani Telles caps that BUNHEADS episode with an emotional piece expressing her character’s fear.  For a series so reliant on fast-flung words, the dance scenes can be the most revealing and powerful.   

I can’t write about BUNHEADS and not mention Sutton Foster, who I first saw in ANYTHING GOES on Broadway in 2011.  She has the old-fashioned entertainer qualities that surely would have made her a film superstar in the screwball era.  Her comic timing is aces, and she looks effortless in her dancing. 

Live sports

1. Detroit Red Wings at Columbus Blue Jackets (Nationwide Arena - Columbus, Ohio) (January 21)

During the NHL lockout I was ambivalent about the season being saved.  The Columbus Blue Jackets were likely in for another bad season, and I was busy enough with other things that its absence in the fall didn’t stand out.  I was a little disappointed to miss out on attending the All-Star skills competition, but once the lockout reached deep enough into the original schedule, it was all for the better.  What fun would All-Star game activities be they were being performed as a duty in a compromised season?

Nevertheless, when the lockout ended and a revised 48-game schedule was released, I found myself ramped up for hockey’s return.  I even bought a ticket for opening night. Deals were plentiful because the CBJ had a week to sell tickets for the first game and needed to make overtures to fans angry about the lockout.  As a quarter season package owner, I was offered lower bowl seats for $25 through February.  Ticketmaster fees were even waived for the first week.  They got me.

Opening night in Columbus, the team’s second game, was a lot of fun.  The place was sold out, no doubt due to the ticket bargains and the opponent, the hated Red Wings. The mammoth new scoreboard is a beauty and was utilized better in terms of showing replays and keeping the “fan experience” stuff (kiss cam, movie clips to prod enthusiasm) to a minimum.  The crowd was as energetic as I’d experienced it in some time, perhaps since the first (and only) year the Blue Jackets made the playoffs.  The team played hard and almost pulled out a win.  Losing 4-3 in a shootout was not the preferred outcome, but it was an entertaining game that suggests maybe this team will be a fun one to watch.  Realistically, that’s what I’d like.

Mama

MAMA (Andrés Muschietti, 2013)

A distraught father of two little girls comes home, kills their mother, and takes the kids with him before the authorities arrive in MAMA.  His reckless driving results in the car sliding off the icy country road and being totaled.  All three escape with just some scratches and bruises and make their way to a ramshackle cabin deep in the forest, but the one- and three-year-old sisters have not found safety.  Their tearful father still intends to murder them.  As he’s about to pull the trigger, a spectral figure comes to the rescue.

Regardless of the time and expense, their Uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) pays men to search for the missing girls.  Five years later six-year-old Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse) and eight-year-old Victoria (Megan Charpentier) are found, but his nieces have turned feral in the intervening time.  While under psychiatric supervision, they draw pictures and speak of someone they call Mama.  Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash) wants to get to the bottom of this mystery, so he helps Lucas and his girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain) become their custodians on the condition that he will continue to have access to the troubled siblings.

Victoria and Lilly resist adapting to their new home environment.  The girls are still drawn to someone or something they know as Mama and often hostile to their caregivers, especially Annabel.  She wasn’t necessarily eager to become a mother and is put in the difficult position of watching them on her own when Lucas is hospitalized after nearly being killed by the jealous and protective entity that has followed his nieces to the house.  

Within the context of a modern Brothers Grimm fairy tale MAMA considers the range of maternal instincts from dutiful indifference to selfish sheltering.  Director and co-writer Andrés Muschietti lays out an ingenious comparison and contrast between Annabel and Mama in which more admirable qualities are associated with the antagonist.  Mama is a fierce guardian of the girls from the moment she encounters them whereas Annabel struggles with the role she’s forced to adopt.  Mama plays with Victoria and Lilly while Annabel prefers to bide her time sticking to her interests and relates to the kids as required in a legal capacity.    

Chastain has developed into one of today’s best actresses through more reputable fare than this horror film, yet she invests the role with the same commitment given to characters embodying eternal grace and searching for Osama bin Laden.  Under an unflattering black pixie wig, Chastain reveals rock band bassist Annabel as a reluctant mother torn between her inclinations and obligations.  In what becomes an affecting journey, Chastain gradually exposes her character’s evolving feelings for the girls as Annabel is able to step outside herself.

MAMA has its share of screenplay contrivances to be overlooked, which is often par for the course with genre films, but it succeeds where it matters most.  Muschietti utilizes screen space well, particularly in scenes in which Mama is present but unseen to Annabel.  He maintains a good balance of atmosphere to jump scares and enhances the former with sepia tone visuals suggestive of legend.  (The brown-tinted images pop the most in a haunting flashback/nightmare sequence.)  Thrillingly, MAMA builds to an ending that summarizes its theme in a beautiful and astonishing manner.  

Grade: B-

Zero Dark Thirty

ZERO DARK THIRTY (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

As the years after the 9/11 attack pass, information regarding the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden becomes less frequent.  The push to find him also diminishes, but CIA investigator Maya (Jessica Chastain), who is first seen at a black ops interrogation site in Pakistan in 2003, refuses to give up the search.  She believes that if they can find a specific al-Qaeda courier known to many terrorists, they will find the organization’s leader.  Nearly a decade after the hunt began, intelligence work suggests that bin Laden could be hiding in a compound in Abbottabad.  No direct confirmation can be made that he is there, but Maya insists that this is the place.      

ZERO DARK THIRTY is based on first-hand accounts of actual events.  While there isn’t a person who will see it who doesn’t know how the film will turn out, how the characters go about their jobs can be plenty surprising.  As with all fact-based films, the assumption must be made that liberties have been taken with the true story for the sake of narrative clarity, creative license, and, especially in this case, the protection of confidential documents.  

ZERO DARK THIRTY is concerned with the process, not the characters.  The real-life inspiration for Maya played an important role, but this mission was far bigger than any one person.  Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal go into painstaking detail depicting the dead ends, setbacks, breakthroughs, and direct action taken that culminated with bringing bin Laden to justice.  The filmmakers set a business-like tone, which is not to say that the work isn’t personal for the agents.  Clearly it is but letting emotion cloud judgment does not help to achieve their goal.

The no-nonsense action scenes crackle with tension despite unfolding as though these are rather common, albeit highly dangerous, assignments.  The climactic raid on the Abbottabad compound is the standout sequence, yet what is most remarkable is how small it feels.  The same goes for other scenes that could have come straight out of any number of thrillers, like the trailing of the man believed to be the courier.  Bigelow’s great achievement is stripping down the action from the exaggerated theatrics in movies and television shows so the missions feel no less exciting and immediate. 

In an extraordinary performance Chastain projects a tough exterior as Maya.  Resolute in her purpose and unyielding in her actions, Maya can appear closed off as she invests every fiber of her being to completing the job.  Practically nothing is known about her life outside work--the same goes for her co-workers--but with few words Chastain says volumes about the core of this character through the quiet intensity with which she pursues her objective and responds to developments.  When she permits more outward displays, the effect is as bracing as a slap to the face.

Those responsible for finding and killing bin Laden are hailed, but Bigelow resists making ZERO DARK THIRTY into a rah-rah patriotic movie.  The matter-of-fact manner in which she handles this subject feels like the only appropriate way.  Pride can be felt in achieving a hard-fought result.  Satisfaction is earned in eliminating an enemy; however, as the film’s identifying figure expresses, relief in the moment cannot ease past wounds, especially as the larger undertaking still goes on unresolved.

Grade: A

Take Shelter

TAKE SHELTER (Jeff Nichols, 2011)

Where is the line that separates a prophet from a madman?  For Curtis (Michael Shannon) in TAKE SHELTER, his vivid delusions and hallucinations of an impending storm have him struggling to ascertain if he is foreseeing danger or losing his mind.  Now in his mid-30s, the Elyria, Ohio construction worker is at the age when his mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.  While he takes steps to address the potential onset of mental illness, Curtis doesn’t discount his dreams either.

Curtis doesn’t want to worry his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) with the burden of what he is seeing, not when she already has their hearing-impaired daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart) to care for and a house to keep.  For a time his actions don’t suggest anything significant is wrong, but she can’t overlook his gradually strange behavior and fixation on the backyard storm shelter.

For a husband and a father the needs to provide and protect are paramount.  Curtis’s visions motivate him to fulfill the role he has been capably serving, but the nightmares also put at risk his ability to be in the family.  If he is experiencing an emotional disorder’s blossoming, then he is speeding toward the ruination he is working so hard to prevent.

In an outstanding performance, Shannon portrays this conflict with great sensitivity and control.  He’s played his share of characters with some faulty wiring, but this role is more down to earth than the colorfully disturbed individuals he’s been in BUG, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, and MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE.  In TAKE SHELTER Shannon conveys the quiet torment that prods Curtis’s worst fears while he does his damnedest to keep it together for those he loves. When the pressure can no longer be contained, the slow boil of a performance explodes in a spectacular scene at a Lions Club fish fry in which he releases what are either the ravings of an ill person or the impassioned warning of someone who spots trouble on the horizon.

TAKE SHELTER writer-director Jeff Nichols takes great care in detailing Curtis’s journey and surrounding him with concerned loved ones.  Chastain’s deeply empathetic work displays the anguish that a spouse goes through in supporting a partner who may not be well.  In his single scene Ray McKinnon makes an impression as Curtis’s older brother Kyle.  His visit to Curtis’s home and their subsequent conversation tiptoes around the main subject, as men will often do, but the message Kyle sends and what he observes shows genuine worry.

Nichols keeps the narrative taut by not tipping off whether the protagonist is rational or not until the very end, although the answer may be more oblique than it appears. What matters is following the progression of Curtis’s mental dilemma and feeling the strain that comes from agonizing over a man’s capacity to do right by his family.

Grade: A