Seven Psychopaths: written and directed by Martin McDonagh; starring Sam Rockwell (Billy), Colin Farrell (Marty), Christopher Walken (Hans), Woody Harrelson (Charlie), Tom Waits (Zachariah), Olga Kurylenko (Angela) and Abbie Cornish (Kaya) (2012): Writer-director Martin McDonagh's In Bruges was an enjoyable film for those of us who miss the earlier, funnier, and most importantly shorter Quentin Tarantino, he of spicy gangster stories and not hyperviolent historical epics from Earth-Bizarro. And there are apparently a lot of people in Hollywood who miss that Tarantino, given In Bruges' Oscar nominations and what-have-you.
Here we've got another chatty, violent meta-drama with a twisty plot and extremely eccentric characters. This one's about a writer's-blocked, alcoholic screenwriter (Colin Farrell) whose buddy (Sam Rockwell) steals people's dogs with another man (Christopher Walken) so as to collect the reward from a grateful owner when they 'find' and return the dog. The screenplay Farrell's working on is entitled Seven Psychopaths. And there are.
Violent fun ensues, along with a certain amount of Bazooka-Joe-level philosophizing. Laughs come from some surprising places, including the revelation of the identity of the Zodiac Killer. Not great, but not boring. Recommended.
Total Recall: adapted by Kurt Wimmen and Mark Bomback from the screenplay for the 1990 film of the same named adapted by Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, Jon Povill, and Kurt Wimmer from the short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick; directed by Len Wiseman; starring Colin Farrell (Quaid/Hauser), Kate Beckinsale (Lori Quaid), Jessica Biel (Melina), Bryan Cranston (Cohaagen), and Bill Nighy (Matthias) (2012): Surprisingly enjoyable, relatively non-campy remake of the 1990 film that was itself a very loose adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story. Neither film has the courage to go all the way with the mind-fuck that Dick's story ends with, but it's Hollywood, where Inception is the height of reality-bending.
This Total Recall leaves out Mars entirely and instead posits a future Earth where chemical warfare has reduced the world to two liveable zones, one a British Federation (though few have British accents) and the other the Australian Colony that supplies the Federation with manual labour. Travel between the two zones is with a massive and fairly nifty elevator through the centre of the Earth. Admittedly, I'm pretty sure a civilization capable of building a massive elevator through the centre of the Earth would probably find a little chemical warfare clean-up to be an easy task. Oh, well.
As with the first film, a visit to Rekall, a company that imprints false fantasy memories into the minds of people looking to escape their humdrum lives, causes Doug Quaid to discover that his own memories are false. Or are they? Much shooting and exploding ensues.
The original was funnier, and there's no substitute here for Kwato, but the three-breasted hooker does have spectacular breasts. Three of them!!! Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale are decent as good and bad love interests, while Colin Farrell invests his character with humanity and a seriousness of purpose that actually make one care about what happens to him. Recommended.
Chernobyl Diaries: written by Oren Peli, Carey Van Dyke, and Shane Van Dyke; directed by Bradley Parker; starring Ingrid Berdal (Zoe), Dimitri Diatchenko (Uri), Olivia Dudley (Natalie), Devin Kelley (Amanda), Jesse McCartney (Chris), Nathan Phillips (Michael), and Jonathan Sadowski (Paul) (2012): Oren Peli, patron saint of the second generation of found-footage horror movies, here supplies some of the writing for a conventional narrative horror film that nonetheless borrows all its camera tricks (by which I mean shaky-cam, and lots of it) from Peli's Paranormal Activity movie.
Six stupid twenty-somethings and one Russian guide visit the area around Chernobyl, long evacuated of people, still somewhat radioactive. You know hilarity will ensue. And it does! The stupidity quotient is quite high here -- for everything to happen as it does, the guide has to do something inexplicably stupid in the middle of the night.
I'm pretty sure I know more about the effects of radiation than the people who made this film. Disappointingly, none of the film was actually shot around Chernobyl. Serbia apparently has a lot of abandoned stuff. The characters range from unlikeable to just plain stupid. And the shocking climax lacks both shock and horror. If you figure out what the 'Diaries' of the title refers to, please contact me. Not recommended.
The Pirates! Band of Misfits: adapted by Gideon Defoe by his book of the same name; directed by Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt; starring the voices of Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant, Jeremy Piven, Brian Blessed, and Salma Hayek (2012): If not for Paul Meahan, I would have gone to my grave believing this was another one of those crazy-ass Christian Veggie-Tales movies. Instead, it's an enjoyable romp from the people at Aardman (Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run).
Much pirating, Charles Darwining, and poking fun at Queen Victoria fills the movie. It's not the greatest animated movie I've ever seen, but it's funny, with a number of fine set-pieces and some nice voicework from everyone involved. There are also a surprising number of gags based on the reaction that occurs when baking soda meets vinegar. Recommended.
Fright Night: written by Marti Noxon, based on the 1985 movie written by Tom Holland; directed by Craig Gillespie; starring Anton Yelchin (Charlie Brewster), Colin Farrell (Jerry), Toni Collette (Jane Brewster), David Tennant (Peter Vincent), Imogen Poots (Amy) and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Ed) (2011): Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran Marti Noxon manages to rewrite Fright Night so as to make it a lot better than its original. Only Roddy McDowall's delightful horror host Peter Vincent is sorely missed here, though former Doctor Who David Tennant does the best he can with a somewhat unfocused role as a Criss Angel-like Vegas magician who's also an occult collector a la Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page.
Frankly, the Vincent role would be funnier (and truer to the original) if we had someone like Steve Coogan playing Vincent as an aging, occult-obsessed rock star suddenly faced with the real thing. Oh, well. Tennant does have a terrific smoking scene. But I'd still like to see an old rock star with a fetish for Aleister Crowley and The Lord of the Rings taking on the hounds of Hell. Wouldn't everybody?
The bare bones of the story remain the same as in the original: geeky Charlie Brewster comes to believe a vampire has moved in next door to him. Almost no one believes him, but he's right. Vampiric shenanigans ensue.
The movie cleverly moves the action to Las Vegas, where despite the anti-vampiric sun, there's lots of good eating in a town with a lot of itinerants and a large population of people who are already nocturnal due to their night jobs at the casinos and hotels. There's real wit in our first look at Charlie's subdivision, which seems to sit in the middle of an empty desert.
Yelchin and the other actors do nice work here, though the character of 'Evil' Ed gets shoved off-stage rapidly so as to focus more on Charlie's ass-kicking girlfriend Amy, played by hellacute Brit Imogen Poots (!). The always reliable Toni Collette, who now seems to be the go-to actress for American single moms, also gets to be a bit more pro-active on the vampire-fighting front.
Colin Farrell plays the vampire (incongruously named Jerry) as an Alpha Male thug, and it works nicely as a counterpoint to all those more refined vampires out there. Director David Gillespie stages some nifty setpieces, most notably a funny/scary car chase in which a realtor's sign makes a surprisingly welcome appearance. All in all, an enjoyable romp. Recommended.
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins, based on the 1973 movie of the same name written by Nigel McKeand; directed by Troy Nixey; starring Bailee Madison (Sally), Katie Holmes (Kim) and Guy Pearce (Alex) (2011): As with Pan's Labyrinth, this film can either be viewed as a fairy story told not to but by a child, or it can be viewed as a story with annoying plot holes and lapses in character motivation.
I'd go with the first choice, as the tone, the atmosphere and even the performances would support such a view even if one didn't know that Guillermo del Toro had something to do with this.
Based on a 1973 TV movie that got del Toro interested in horror in the first place. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark features plucky, misunderstood 10-year-old Sally, a girl suffering through the divorce of her parents and, soon, persecution by tiny monsters living beneath the basement of the old New England house her father is renovating for profit.
Oh, it's Rhode Island -- that an H.P. Lovecraft allusion whether one wants it or not. Explicitly referenced in the film is Welsh fantasist Arthur Machen, whose stories often featured the monstrous real creatures behind the myths and legends (Machen's "The White People" and "The Shining Pyramid" are the two stories most relevant to this one). A doomed 19th-century painter and naturalist gets named (Ralph Waldo?) Emerson (Algernon?) Blackwood. Hoo ha.
The father is distant and somewhat thick (remember the fairy tale elements here or you'll obsess over stupid parents a bit too much), his new girlfriend sympathetic to Sally and, ultimately, an ally. The little, talkative monsters are a bit of a letdown -- they're basically Gollum crossed with a rat -- but occasionally scary, though if someone had the sense to buy a tennis racket, they'd be a lot less dangerous. Troy Nixey summons a lot of atmosphere and a real sense of place; the opening titles (directed, I assume, by someone other than Nixey) are stunning. Recommended.
