Natural disasters in beachside communities have been the stuff of movie plots for years. Bruce, the great white shark from Jaws, terrorized Amity Island, eating swimmers and killing the tourism business. The good folks (those who survived, anyway) of Claridge, the small Maryland resort town of “The Bay,” however, would probably welcome Bruce to their town given the biological terror that befell them.
Using found footage unearthed by a WikiLeaks style website a journalist pieces together the horrific events of the 4th of July, 2009 in the Eastern Seaboard town of Claridge. The seaside town is the quaint kind of place where they crown a Miss Crustacean during the annual Crab Eating Spectacular. Little do the folks and families gathered to enjoy a day in the sun realize that a toxic soup of chemicals in Chesapeake Bay is unleashing a plague that may soon wipe out the entire town. When people start breaking out in a rash the local doctor is concerned. When his hospital is overrun by townsfolk with boils and something that appears to be eating them from the inside he calls the Centers for Disease Control for advice. When they tell him to leave the hospital, he knows the situation is out of control.
The found footage phenomenon in horror has, for the most part, played itself out. This year alone at last eight films have used the construct to offer up no-budget scares and wobbly camera work. Typically in those films a main character films the action, steadfastly refusing to turn off his camera despite imminent danger. Director Barry Levinson (“Diner,” “Rain Man” and “Wag the Dog”), however, has assembled an eye-catching array of fictional news footage, phone camera images, surveillance videotape, Skype and “homemade” videos to tell the story.
He uses the form to bring a sense of immediacy to the film. The narration, supplied by a newbie journalist who survived the infestation, is straightforward, a detailed account that blends the right balance of “fact” and shock. But it isn’t the narration that drives the movie, it’s the visuals and some tricky editing.
Multiple visual formats are missed and matched, but the most effective moments see (or rather hear) Levinson use overlapping news reports to capture the scope and horror of the situation.
“The Bay” is a lo fi horror film, clocking in at under ninety minutes, but its natural performances and plausible story of an eco-apocalypse provide some good chills.
“The Big Wedding” is is the kind of movie that you only buy a ticket for when everything else is sold out. You arrive at the theatre at 7:30, hungry for popcorn because you missed lunch, only to discover that “42,” the movie you really wanted to see, is packed. Ditto for “The Croods,” “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and even “Jurassic Park 3D.”
Then you see a poster for “The Big Wedding” and notice it stars Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton and that nice boy from “That 70s Show.”
“How bad can it be?” you think.
I’m here to tell you how bad it can be.
In a bit of farce that, no doubt, has Molière spinning in his grave, the movie has at its wizened dark heart an elaborate ruse. Alejandro (Ben Barnes) is the adopted son of a long divorced couple, Don (Robert De Niro) and Elle (Diane Keaton). Don is now happily living with Elle’s former best friend Bebe (Susan Sarandon). Al’s planned wedding to Missy (Amanda Seyfried) is going to be a big affair, but there’s a hitch. His devoutly Catholic mother is coming over from Columbia for the visit, and Al fears she won’t give her blessing to the marriage if finds out that Don and Elle are divorced, so he asks them to masquerade as a married couple for the weekend.
There’s more. Lots more. Topher Grace is the twenty-nine-year-old virgin doctor son who falls for Alejandro’s sister. Katherine Heigl is a sour-faced lawyer and Robin Williams plays a priest.
The supporting characters sound like the set-up to an old joke—A doctor, a lawyer and a priest walk into a bar!—except that there’s nothing remotely funny about any of them.
It’s frustrating not because it isn’t funny but because it wastes the talents of almost everyone involved. Forevermore when anyone tells me that De Niro is the greatest actor of his generation, my mind will flash back to his most painful scene, a bit of slapstick on a diving board. Maybe I’m in denial, but I chose to remember the good times.
The set-up sounds family friendly—everybody loves a wedding, especially grandma!—but the movie is far from it. Language and nudity make it inappropriate for kids, and the general lack of anything else makes it a no go for everybody else.
With a story as imaginative as the title and “jokes” telegraphed so far in advance you need binoculars to see them coming, “The Big Wedding” is as appealing as a cash bar at the reception. It’s bad even for a Katherine Heigl movie.
“Before Midnight” is the third part of an unlikely film series which started almost twenty years ago with ”Before Sunrise.”
That movie saw twenty-somethings Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as American tourist Jesse and Celine, a student at the Sorbonne, strangers who meet on a European train. They flirt and talk about life, death and everything in between, and in the process fall in love, if only for one night.
A second film, “Before Sunset,” saw the pair meet again in Paris nine years later. Jesse is now a successful author, having penned a steamy novel about their night on the train. They reconnect onthe French leg of a promotional tour for the novel and spend another day talking, but this time it’s different. They aren’t the flippant kids iof the first movie, and this time around they acknowledge the instinctual link that binds them. It also ends with one of the sexiest lines in the movies: “Baby, you are gonna miss that plane.”
The new film, “Before Midnight,” brings them together at yet another stage of their lives—as a committed couple with twin daughters. This time they’re on vacation in Greece contemplating the changing nature of their relationship over the years since they first met.
If you’re a fan of the “Before” movies—and I am an unabashed admirer—the experience of watching “Before Midnight” will be like reconnecting with old friends.
There is an authenticity to these films that comes from director Richard Linklater’s subtle style. Long documentary style conversational takes and terrific natural performances from the cast—particularly Hawke and Delpy who are required to carry the weight, emotional and otherwise of the film—allow the ideas and dialogue to take center stage.
Written by Linklater, Delpy and Hawke it delves into all manner of relationships. A dinner guest (Xenia Kalogeropoulou) movingly describes how she attempts to keep her late husband’s memory alive. A young couple (Ariane Labed and Yiannis Papadopoulos) discuss the future and an old married couple (Athina Rachel Tsangari and Panos Koronis) playfully spar.
The heart of the film, however, is the long conversations between Hawke and Delpy. They discover that fissures develop no matter how deep or solid the connection between two people.
“Before Midnight” is beautifully real stuff that fully explores the doubts and regrets that characterize Jesse and Celine’s love affair. Done with humor, heart and pathos, often in the same scene, it is a poignant farewell to two characters who grew up in front of us.
The release this year of two very different kinds of movies, “The Bling Ring” and “InAPPropriate Comedy,” brings us to a place where disposable culture—reality shows and infomercials—are becoming a force on the big screen.
The former, directed by Sophia Coppola, features two characters inspired by people from E!’s reality series “Pretty Wild,” while the latter was directed by the “ShamWow!” Guy. One transcends its inspiration, one does not.
Based on actual events, “The Bling Ring” centers around a group of narcissistic Los Angeles area teenagers, Rebecca (Katie Chang), Marc (Israel Broussard), Nicki (Emma Watson), Sam (Taissa Fermiga) and Chloe (Claire Julien).
Their modus operandi? They track the comings and goings of their favorite celebs on via internet. While one-named millennial stars like Paris, Lindsay, Megan or Audrina are out on the town or out of town completely, the Ring “go shopping,” breaking into their homes and help themselves to jewels, designer clothes and loose cash. More than that, they live vicariously through the lives of the rich and famous folks they’re burgling.
“The Bling Ring” plays like a “Law & Order” episode of “The Hills.” The crime spree is device that keeps the story moving forward, but the fascinating thing is the portrait of these self-absorbed kids who aspire to hosting reality shows or becoming a “lifestyle brand” as a career. They want fame and money, but are so tied up with the idea of fame and money they are blind to virtually everything else.
Emma Watson sheds Hermione once and for all in a performance that nails the vapidity that made the robberies possible. Dead eyed, with a bored infliction on every word she mispronounces, her take on Nicki shows there’s more to her than being the wizard’s sidekick.
Also strong is Katie Chang as Rebecca, the gang’s ringleader. She’s so obsessed with the lifestyle of the rich and famous when a detective tells her that he spoke to one of the robbery targets, instead of feigning contrition her eyes light up. “What did Lindsay say?” she asks, thrilled that Lohan might know who she is, and who knows? Maybe they’ll become friends.
Director Sophia Coppola is an observer here, choosing not comment on the proceedings, but to allow the story to speak for itself. Instead of delving into the reasons these kids behave the way they do, or satirizing the lifestyle–apparently Paris Hilton really does have pillows embossed with her face, so I guess there really isn’t much here to satirize–she keeps her distance and allows the empty characters and their vacuous behavior resonate.
“The Bling Ring” is a fascinating art-house glimpse of fame found, just not the fame the thieving teens sought. They are the robbers TMZ made famous, a group of kids who redefined narcissism in an already narcissistic town.
Almost twenty years after dressing up Brad Pitt as an undead marionette, “Interview with a Vampire” director Neil Jordan is back at it with “Byzantium,” a gothic tale of secrets and blood sucking.
Based on a play by Moira Buffini, “Byzantium” gives a new spin to the Dracula mythology. Clara (Gemma Arterton) and Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) are two-hundred-year-old vampire mother and daughter trying to survive in modern day England. Setting up shop in a British seaside town, Clara goes into business as a Madame, turning the dilapidated Byzantium Hotel into a brothel, while Eleanor, frozen in time at age sixteen, befriends a local hemophiliac boy named Frank (Caleb Landry Jones). Their lifestyle choices—prostitution, sanguinary pursuits and general melancholy—soon bring unwanted attention from the townsfolk and an ancient brotherhood.
Like “Interview with a Vampire,” this movie centers around an account of the past. Eleanor, a melancholy child tired of the burden of her family secret, pens a story outlining the lurid origins of their immortality. “It’s like Edgar Alen Poe and Mary Shelley had a very strange child,” says her teacher. As the story passes hands, the movie flits back-and-forth between modern day and 1804, slowly unfolding the bloody tale.
Atmospheric and gothic, “Byzantium” is a vampire tale that will leave “True Blood” fans wanting more. With no fangs—these succubae pierce their victims with pointed thumbnails before draining them dry—coffins or capes—although Clara does wear a bustier emblazoned with he word SUCK—in sight, these vamps are unlike anything we’ve seen before.
The revisionist horror history is engaging enough, but seems a little lifeless, even for a movie about vampires. Lacking any real dramatic tension, it meanders through time—past and present—failing to work up any real momentum. It’s slow and contemplative in Eleanor’s scenes, more rapid fire in Clara’s, who is a bit more enthusiastic about the wet work.
All in all “Byzantium” is an elegant, if slightly dull film, that tries to bring something new to the “Twilightized” vampire genre, but staked by flawed storytelling.
Woody Allen’s latest film centers on the single most annoying character of any film this year. Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) is the widow of a Bernie Madoff type (Alec Baldwin) who is now out of money and options. Her husband is gone, and so is the money he scooped out of the pockets of unsuspecting investors.
Broke and shunned by her friends, she leaves Park Avenue and NYC behind for a free place to stay with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) in San Francisco. The pair have never been close, but Ginger, whose investment with her former brother-in-law left her destitute and ruined her marriage, puts family first and welcomes Jasmine into her home.
Unfortunately Jasmine’s self-centered, haughty attitude, combined with her toxic past, make it impossible to build a future on the West Coast.
Darker than most of Allen’s recent output, “Blue Jasmine” doesn’t go for laughs—very often anyway—but is an astutely crafted psychological character study. Jasmine is a modern day Blanche Du Bois, a faded bright light now forced to depend on the kindness of strangers. Getting in her way are delusions of grandeur and a continued sense of denial—likely the same sense that kept her guilt free during the years the illegal cash was flowing—that eventually conspire to fracture her psyche. “There’s only so many traumas one can take,” she says, “ before you end up in the street, screaming.”
“Blue Jasmine” meanders somewhat—it’s nonlinear flashback setup recalls “Annie Hall”—but is brilliantly performed by the entire cast, including Hawkins, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Louis C.K., Peter Sarsgaard and Baldwin. But this is Blanchett’s show. She’s in every frame of the movie and will undoubtedly be nominated for an Oscar for her efforts.
