Pose Reviews A Movie. #33: Caché (2005)

Michael Haneke's Caché is a rare type of suspense-thriller.

It's minimalist. It's super-creepy. And it's refreshingly open-ended.

Caché is the story of Georges and Anne Laurent, an ordinary couple in France who begin to receive ominous videotapes on the doorstep of their home. At first the cassettes, which appear to be shot in high-definition (a technological impossibility, for all intents and purposes), contain surveillance-style footage of the area outside the Laurent's home.

To be fair, this is unsettling at best.

But the theme of the tapes gradually evolve--they depict more and more specific instances and settings, and for Georges, the subject matter gradually gets closer to home (in the strictly non-literal sense).

Caché is an excellent film, not least of all for its commitment to postmodern storytelling. Not only is the film self-reflexive (a film about film) but it also manages to avoid conclusive elements. (The explanation for this can be found in an interview with director Michael Haneke, included on the DVD--he provides some really interesting perspective into what the film is actually about, but I'd recommend watching it after the feature).

Haneke's film manages to be highly compelling despite being somewhat abstract and relatively uneventful. It's one of the more accessible examples of postmodern film that I've seen, and it takes an irresistible premise and totally pulls it off without getting too caught up in lame twists or illogical character leaps taken in service of advancing the plot.

Certainly, the genius of Caché lies in its simplicity, but incidentally that's where the suspense comes from too.

I'd certainly recommend Caché for fans of the suspense/thriller genre, but also to those looking at getting into the films of Michael Haneke. Haneke is known for tackling some pretty dark territory in some of his films (Funny Games certainly comes to mind without hesitation), but Caché is very nonthreatening in its content. The gripping psychological element of Caché subverts the need for shocking images or disturbing scenes, which makes it a great starting point for anyone interested in trying out Haneke's catalogue.

Overall, Caché is the ideological opposite of the most recent film I reviewed, 2003's Canadian feature, Nothing. It takes a cool premise and makes it into a cool movie, and in no way did I find its delivery of the goods unsatisfactory.

So if you're interested in this little gem, don't be shy--Caché is hidden in the Austria section.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #42: Shutter Island (2010)

It had been years since I'd seen a Scorsese film and I was really excited to learn - I had it from a good amount of people - that Shutter Island was worth the watch. I'd also had it from some that it was an unsatisfying experience due to the movie's twist, a twist so large it could be seen from a mile away. Or, in this case, thirty or forty minutes into the movie.

Well, on watching Shutter it's certainly true that the twist is obvious, but I didn't find the movie diminished for it. I don't think the movie ever tries overly hard to hide its plot secrets, and instead wants you to figure out what's going on early enough to follow the psychological movements of the protagonist with an extra insight. The crux of the film isn't the plot reveal, it's the haunting choice that's made during the movie's final minute. The plot itself is pretty much a MacGuffin.

So: Great amosphere, great visuals, and an ending I really liked.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #37: The Wild Hunt (2009)

All you need is LARP.

I'm really glad that this didn't suck. I'd been waiting for this one to hit the Princess pretty eagerly, since hearing of it and its concept. I dared hope that I could look forward to a Canadian film I could actually endorse with honesty. It's not perfect, but it's good, and left me with the kind of reflective aftertaste that films like Apocalypse Now and Deliverance left me with - that is, a strong brooding on the lizard-brain, violent animal nature in humanity, lurking on the periphery of consciousness and waiting for a chance to assert itself. Powerful film titles to evoke, I know, but the first that came to mind. Wild Hunt doesn't approach their mastery, but is certainly effective in its conceits and is able to work within its own logic.

Wild Hunt follows Erik, a young guy who's girlfriend, Evelyn, has been seeming disaffected towards him and her life. She decides to leave him, and he finds out that she's been immersing herself more and more heavily in the secluded LARP camp that she frequents. Catching some looks from the LARP boys in the car she jumps into, Erik suddenly starts to think that Evelyn has been dishonest in her motivations for leaving and that she's left him for another man. He decides to track her down and speak to her, in a bid to win her back. Things get bad for him. Indeed, the film was much rougher than I had expected, and gave me some sequences I had to work not to flinch from. And not for any gratuitousness.

For those unfamiliar with LARP (Live Action Role-Playing), it's basically Dungeons and Dragons ramped up to its logical conclusion - people in detailed costumes, pretending to be historical or fantastical characters of their own creation in an immersive role-play driven environment. Their conflicts and interactions are governed by Dungeons and Dragons-like game rules, and typically, these activities take the form of large camping events in specialised camp grounds lasting days at a time.

Oddly enough, I actually hadn't expected Wild Hunt to play up the nerdiness of the characters to the degree of comedic effect it went for, and whenever it did it felt pretty hokey and reminded me that I was watching a movie, likely in a theatre with a handful of actual LARPers. I wondered how they were reacting to their representations on the screen. At any rate, it was a bit of fan-service that could probably have been put aside for the much weightier and more interesting characters through which the film does its best work. There are tender and profound moments to be seen, and an ending I absolutely loved.

So: Check it out if you get another chance and support some Canadian filmmaking worthy of your loonies.

"Survivors 1975," Season One and a Bit

I had extremely low expectations of "Survivors," mainly because it was created by Terry Nation.

I associate Nation with some of the most plodding and formulaic Doctor Who scripts, usually involving some combination of killer virus, invisible monster, deep chasm, and cowardly-character-makes-brave-sacrifice. Nation's hack jobs for Doctor Who were notorious; the show's producers had a running joke about him just selling them the same Dalek script over and over again.

So when I heard that Nation had created a television series about -- you guessed it -- a killer virus, I just HAD to find out how the invisible monster fit in. But I'm sad to say that "Survivors" is anything but formulaic or plodding...in fact, for the first half, it's absolutely brilliant.

These are not your typical Terry Nation characters; they are complex, understated, and always interesting to watch. Sure there's a funny little Welsh tramp that you can laugh at...but then comes episode nine, "Law and Order," which is the first of two truly harrowing treatments of the "survival" theme: what do you do with a funny little Welsh tramp who isn't so funny anymore?

This theme is pretty simple: when almost everybody in the world dies suddenly, and the diverse survivors have to...well, survive...how do they live through the first few days when they can no longer rely on anybody else, let alone the creature comforts they've known since birth? How do they cope with their shock and grief? How do they find each other? What sort of communities can they form, and how do those communities relate to other groups who disagree with their philosophy? Who the hell knows how to make coal, and what will they do when the tea runs out?

That's the basis of season one, but it's so much more than that, because all of this is approached in a quiet way: no music, no big moments, no flash or spectacle. By contrasting the 1975 series with the new 2008 remake, the Outland Institute explains what is so wonderful and refreshing about this approach, compared to the way it would be (and is) done today. The 1975 series is has an almost documentary style, complete with atmospheric filmed outdoor footage.

Until halfway through the season, however, when things go downhill a bit. First of all, this was the transition period when the BBC was switching from film to "O.B." for their program inserts, and the outdoors look far less "real" when they start using videotape.

This is made worse by the simultaneous arrival (in episode seven) of Hana Maria Pravda, a woman who stands out from the otherwise excellent cast by turning all of her scenes into overwrought babooshka-stereotype cartoons. Combine her with the quietest bunch of cheerfully-prancing "feral dogs" -- especially in one scene when she must actually be ATTACKED by them -- and you get the first glimmers that things are going downhill.

And they do. The plots become more heavy-handed and deliberate, each episode involving the destruction of yet another hard-won and essential social advancement due to the stupidity of others, often the stupidity of the children whose sole purpose is Get Into Trouble or Get Others Into Trouble.

I also have to mention what I refer to as "The Tritovore Technique" (using convenient accidents to get rid of characters who would be too burdensome to keep around) and "The Lucy Saxon Technique" (using secondary characters to kill villains because the primary characters are too principled to do it themselves), which become more and more obvious as the show goes on.

I thought I'd give up after watching the first season, but the second season -- following a truly ridiculous Tritovore-style character-purge of last-season's dross -- has introduced Ruth, a character who harkens back to the complicated and interesting survivors of old. And the second story of the season ("Greater Love") is, once again, unpredictable and beautiful and terrible.

Here's to Ruth and Jenny and Greg and the rest of the survivors. May their wheat ripen, may their sheep multiply, may their babies survive and their horses never go lame. And may they never suffer the indignity of a crappy remake.

Oh, well that already happened.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #30: Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008)

So I saw this for its Canadian debut with London Colin and Mission ImPoseable at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto last night, and it was beyond my wildest dreams.

In case you might not have come across this phenomenon of a film before in your journeys through the interwebs, Birdemic: Shock and Terror is this independent film written, directed, and produced by James Nguyen for about 10 grand. Styled by James as a "romantic thriller" of the same school as Hitchcock's cinema, Birdemic presents audiences with one of the most hilariously inept films ever made and asks them a very serious question. The question is as follows. When global warming drives eagles and vultures mad, who will survive? The answer can be found somewhere amidst the terrible cast and terrible dialogue, ridiculous special effects, piss-poor sound work, laughable camera handling, and hamfisted politics.

Birds divebomb the pumps, exploding on impact.

In our Mystery Science Theater 3000 and internet meme savvy world, this is of course exactly the kind of film that many would be pay to see, and Birdemic seems to be a hit - as The Room and Troll 2 was. It was a pretty amazing experience to laugh and clap along with a crowd of people indulging in the lowest dregs of cinema, and just as amazing to meet James Nguyen himself in the Q&A session that occurred afterwards. Heartbreakingly, he's an earnest man who seems completely unaware that his film is popular for none of the reasons he'd intended.

So: Catch the film while you can before Birdemic 2: The Resurrection hits our faces!

Colin's 2010 Movies #2: Shutter Island

I wanted to like this movie a lot more than I did. From a technical standpoint Martin Scorsese does a phenomenal job crafting a creepy, foreboding, 1954 period atmosphere around Ashecliffe, the island-bound asylum for the criminally insane where two federal marshals are called to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Leonardo DiCaprio also does a great job portraying the driven, haunted marshal Teddy Daniels, whose wife died in a fire caused by an arsonist (Elias Koteas in a brief but memorably slimy cameo) who may or may not have been committed to Ashecliffe. Teddy must uncover the truth of what goes on at Ashecliffe while coping with vivid dreams of his dead wife and his wartime experiences liberating Dachau from the Nazis.

The problem lies with the ending. Certain twist endings need to be banned. After being used over and over, there’s just no way they can be surprising or compelling any more. Shutter Island’s third act reveal is one that most people could probably guess at from the trailer and once you get there, it’s hard not to feel disappointed that it’s all the story amounts to.

It’s a shame because the film has so much else going for it. It looks absolutely beautiful especially the overhead shots of the storm-beaten, dreary island, and there are lots of clever editing tricks used to heighten the tension, like the continuity of a person’s movement or expression being jarringly mismatched between shots, and shots that seem to last a little too long or too short before cutting. It manages to make everything subtly unnerving.

While Shutter Island is less of a horror film than the trailers seemed to suggest there are a few impressively creepy sequences, the standout being a trip through Ashecliffe’s ward C, a medieval dungeon-like fortress reserved for the most violent inmates, filled with dripping water and dark stone passageways. I wanted the film to spend more time there.

There’s no faulting the acting either, with Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow playing the eerily polite but infuriatingly unhelpful psychiatrists running the facility, and Jackie Earle Haley in another neat cameo as a badly beaten up psychopath. DiCaprio really sells the emotional impact of the story, keeping us grounded in Teddy’s increasing paranoia and grief-stricken memories.

When it was all over, everything Shutter Island did right just increased my disappointment. All the talent on display made me wish it was in service of a better story. Other reviews I’ve read have been willing to look past the script’s predictability and just enjoy the brilliant filmmaking technique at work but for me it just wasn’t enough to justify trotting out that lame twist for the umpteen thousandth time.

VOYAGE THROUGH THE STACKS

CASE NUMBER #0005

TITLE: The Game
TAGLINE: Players Wanted
DESCRIPTION: Wealthy financier Nicholas Van Orton gets a strange birthday present from wayward brother Conrad: a live-action game that consumes his life. [IMDB]
DIRECTOR: David Fincher
YEAR: 1997
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United States
RUNTIME: 129 min
SUBTITLED/DUBBED: N/A
IMDB PAGE
ROTTENTOMATOES
REVIEW:

The Game was the first film novelization I read as a child -- a fact I distinctly recall because I didn't realize the book came from a movie until a couple years after. And oh, the betrayal I felt at this discovery, alongside a terrible shame for being hoodwinked! After all, I understood books being converted into films was a sort of tribute to the ideas therein -- one that could then bring attention to the original texts -- but why on earth would anyone want to go backwards? Surely it was cheaper (if not less time-consuming) just to watch the film? And how could a novelization ever be better than the film -- if it was bound to the fully realized format of the latter, how could it live anything but a half-life on the page?

I was so angry with the whole perceived scam of the thing, and how much love it stripped in me for the compelling story laid out in a book so long out of print neither Wikipedia nor Amazon now have any memory of its existence, that I steadfastly refused to watch the film. Nonetheless, a mere eleven years later, I finally put aside that childhood prejudice and let the story wash over me anew, in its original, cinematic form.

By this point, I'd been watching enough of a run of '70s horror that a film presenting an entirely different atmosphere -- just as soft, and dark, and gritty, but for all its action sequences still a much more interior piece -- was itself a delight. More so was how well-suited Michael Douglas seemed for his role as Nicholas Van Orton, a business magnate brooding on his fortieth birthday about his father's suicide at that same age. In deft, quiet strokes, Douglas sketches in the first few scenes a man whose whole adult life seems a series of cold-hearted choices predicated on a deep, internal uncertainty about the possible inheritance of such fatal inclinations.

Director David Fincher wisely gives Douglas wide berth for this portrayal, inserting rough film footage to help enhance Van Orton's memories of his father's death, but not so much as to detract from the audience's primary fixation on Douglas's emotional state at the outset of the film. This is crucial, because so much of the cinematography focuses on Douglas in close-up that scenes where the camera pulls away are clearly intended to make us feel his isolation as much as we feel our own isolation from him -- and neither would be possible if we didn't have reason to care about him first. And yet, for all his asshole traits in the lap of riches and luxury, we do: thanks to Douglas, the smoldering undercurrent of his character's emotional pain is quite clear.

Then we meet Sean Penn as Nicholas's brother, Conrad, and when he presents Nicholas with a gift of an enigmatic, purportedly life-altering game, the thriller element kicks in. After a day-long run of pre-game aptitude tests, coy conversations with either ex-game players or paid props of the game itself, and even a formal rejection from the company initially offering the game, Nicholas's wild ride begins -- starting with seemingly simple insertions but quickly amounting to situations that leave him with the terrifying realization that this game is just one big trick to get at his money and ruin both his and his brother's lives. By the end of the film, Nicholas is left with nothing -- except, of course, a choice: or rather, the choice that took his father's life. What emerges from this point on drastically changes the lens through which the bulk of the film should be viewed -- and for most viewers, is the final test of suspended disbelief. If you can accept what happens after as even moderately plausible, the whole film fits together like a perfect puzzle; if you can't, those two hours and nine minutes will just feel tedious and overlong, and most assuredly not that thrilling.

To outline this divide in viewer reactions, and arguments for or against it, would unfortunately be to spill the heart of the story's premise -- and yet, having read and vividly recalled the novelization all throughout my viewing experience, I can confidently, pleasantly say that knowing the outcome (unlike with The Sixth Sense) in no way diminishes the quality of the atmosphere or the character development in the piece (although parts in the middle did feel a little heavy, and dragged on). Ultimately, Michael Douglas does an exemplary job building and maintaining the protagonist's character; Fincher does an equally strong job staging the shots so as not to treat his viewers as morons; and supporting actors Sean Penn and Deborah Kara Unger provide very distinct, believable offsets in the scope of this universe. Is it a quiet film? Yes. Is it a ground-breaking film? Not really. Did I feel satisfied having finally put aside the childhood prejudice? Definitely.

And yet, since we're already talking about twist endings, I might as well end with a doozy for this review: Even if only for the more thoughtful explanations laid out in print, as opposed to the stark brevity of those on-screen, I have to say, that piddling film novelization I read a good twelve years back? Might just have been the better of the two after all. Too bad it's long since out of print.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING AIDS: Patience, and a strong conviction that the decision-making processes of any one human being can be mapped and anticipated even when they're under duress.

VOYAGE THROUGH THE STACKS

CASE NUMBER #0003

TITLE: Cold Eyes of Fear
TAGLINE: N/A
DESCRIPTION: A young London lawyer finds himself in a prickly situation after taking home an escort and discovering his butler dead, and a ruffian on hand with a gun. After maneuvering a delicate phone call from his uncle, a judge, requesting information at the young lawyer's disposal, the judge sends an officer to the house with a legal missive. But the officer is in on the hold-up, too! And it soon emerges that a quest for vengeance against the judge is the driving force behind the whole, muddled hostage situation.
DIRECTOR: Enzo G. Castellari
YEAR: 1971
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Italy
RUNTIME: 95 min
SUBTITLED/DUBBED: Dubbed
IMDB PAGE
ROTTENTOMATOES
REVIEW:

After an agonizingly tedious pre-film introduction, care of the Redemption Films brand, Cold Eyes of Fear opens slowly but surely into the seedy underbelly of 1970s London life. Just as the tone of the opening encounter, between a lawyer and the escort he's just picked up, lulls you into the expectation of a rather underwhelming "mood piece," director Enzo G. Castellari does something interesting with his lighting: he has the young couple knock into a low chandelier, pointedly drawing the audience's attention to the light source that then frames, in pendulous passing, a very striking set of close-up images of the young lawyer falling over his escort on a table. Then the body of the lawyer's butler falls into view, interrupting the whole affair.

In that moment, I knew Castellari had the capacity to intrigue and surprise, and with this in mind I watched closely as a coarse criminal with a terrible English accent entered the fray; as tense close-ups of each character's eyes lit up the screen over and over in various, overdone sequences; as a phone call from the lawyer's uncle, a judge, in the middle of the enigmatic hold-up raised the stakes; as all hope for rescue from a subsequently dispatched officer fizzled as the man behind the uniform turned out to be the brains behind the hold-up after all.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, my interest thinned again. A strained attempt to cast the escort and coarse criminal as peas in a pod (and similar with the "higher intellects" of the lawyer and upper-class criminal) fell irredeemably flat when a bonk to the coarse criminal's head conveniently gave him a comic bout of amnesia. And the script was especially useless around the matter of the escort, who, having been trapped in a scenario that truly didn't involve her, frittered away this great potential tension on stiff and oddly-timed outbursts.

This failure to adequately divide or unite the conflicts between lawyer and past-defendant, and between low-brow criminal and "woman of loose morals," is a fairly good metaphor for the whole film's failure to divide the strengths of two distinct sub-genres resonating in Cold Eyes of Fear -- the home invasion piece, and the giallo, or criminal mystery. The former demands a great deal of exploitation and related action in their confined quarters, of which this film has precious little. Meanwhile, the latter demands a certain precision and logic to the developing story that fits in with the scope of the criminal's actions... and the viewer instead gets an overly complicated revenge plot existing solely so the criminal and lawyer-nephew have the opportunity to haggle about vague, meandering nuance surrounding a case never clearly laid out for the audience to consider on its own.

However, Castellari hadn't entirely nodded off in the course of this exhausting second act -- and when an explosion does occur in the third, the audience chances upon another striking snippet of excellent cinematography. Sadly, that's the last interesting twist (plot- or cinematography-related alike) in the whole, sordid affair, leaving this viewer with the following question: Did Castellari just assume the best surprises are doled out in exceptionally tiny increments, or did the man capable of creating those two bright moments of cinematic intrigue also think the rest of the piece equally up to snuff?

I'm left, therefore, with little to praise about this particular film except for a redeeming soundtrack, care of Ennio Morricone, but as giallos were far from Castellari's specialty (he directed, among other things, The Inglorious Bastards and a slew of spaghetti Westerns), and as he showed himself to have very clear moments of insight in his cinematography for Cold Eyes of Fear, I know I will be looking forward, with great curiosity, to the next Castellari flick that falls my way.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING AIDS: A sharp-shooter's eye for brief moments of very interesting cinematography, and a stiff drink for all the rest.