Pair it with ‘pants’ and it evokes memories of childhood summers. Match it with the syllables ‘and sweet’ and it conjures up a pleasant feeling but when you partner it with the word film, as in short film, you open up a world of possibilities. Just ask Tim Burton, Paul Thomas Anderson or Sam Raimi.
Each of them started by making shorts, several of which were later expanded upon to become well known features.
Burton’s Frankenweenie first saw life as a Disney short way back in 1984. The Dirk Diggler Story is the 1988 mockumentary short written and directed by Anderson that became the basis for Boogie Nights and Within the Woods was the short calling card that helped Raimi get Evil Dead made.
This weekend short films inspired two big releases.
The Babadook is the feature directorial debut of Australian Jennifer Kent. The horror movie plays up the most terrifying aspect of a primal relationship—the bond between mother and child—coupled with a young boy’s fear that a storybook beastie, the titular Babadook, is going to spring from the page and eat them both. The ideas that make The Babadook so unsettling first took shape in a ten minute short called Monster that screened at 40 festivals worldwide.
“I had a friend who had a child that she was really having trouble connecting with,” Kent told Den of Geek. “He was little and he kept seeing this monster man everywhere. The only way she could get him to calm down was to get rid of it as if it was real. And then I thought, well what if it was actually real? That’s how the short idea came about.”
Eleven years ago District 9 director Neill Blomkamp’s short Tetra Vaal asked the question, What would happen if we could build a robot to police developing nations?
The answer may lie in his new feature, this weekend’s Chappie. The South African-born, Vancouver-based director said Chappie is, “basically based on Tetra Vaal,” with the spirit of the South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord infused in the story. The minute-and-twenty-second short features Blomkamp’s signature mix of gritty realism and high tech computer generated images and stars the “ridiculous robot character” with wild rabbit ears—inspired by Briareos from the manga Appleseed—played by Sharlto Copley in the big screen adaptation.
Blomkamp said he made his shorts as “a collection of work so I could get representation as a commercial director,” but they soon opened a world of possibilities for him when they caught Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson’s eye. To paraphrase Dave Edmunds, “from small things baby, one day big things come.”
“Unfinished Business” is a good title for a movie that feels fragmentary. It has a beginning, middle and end, so it technically qualifies as a story, but its reliance on mawkish sentimentality and non-sequiturs to forward the plot and an overload of narration to tie the loose ends together leave it feeling unfinished, unsatisfying and worst of all, unfunny.
Vince Vaughn plays Dan Trunkman a consultant who impulsively left a high powered job rather than take a pay cut. Now in business for himself—“I only have two employees,” he says, “one’s too old and one’s too young.”—he’s on the cusp of the biggest contract of his career. The oddball trio—Trunkman, Timothy McWinters (Tom Wilkenson) and the unlikely named Mike Pancake (Dave Franco)—travel to Portland, Maine in what should be a routine trip to close the deal.
But because this is a Vince Vaughn screwball comedy there is nothing routine about the trip.
Upon arrival he finds himself in a Davey and Goliath situation as his former boss, Chuck Portnoy (Sienna Miller), is pulling out all the stops to snag the business for the multinational company Dynamic Progressive Systems. Out gunned and on the verge of bankruptcy, Trunkman pulls out all the stops by flying to Berlin to meet with the top brass and show them a good time in hopes of winning their goodwill and the business. Instead they end up in a tiresome tour of Germany’s fetish bars, rave scene and unisex saunas.
“Unfinished Business” in its current unfinished-feeling state will make you wonder what could have happened if someone like Judd Apatow had been allowed to have a crack at the same material. Apatow is a master at finding the balance between heartfelt social commentary and socially inappropriate fratboy jokes. It’s the tone director Ken Scott, in his sophomore effort with Vaughn after last year’s charming-but-slight “Delivery Man,” seems to be going for but falls short on. Way short.
The gags mostly involve poking fun at Pancake’s reduced intellect, gay panic and tone-deaf sex jokes. It is occasionally amusing to see the usually oh-so-serious actor Tom Wilkinson let it rip as a randy old man and Nick Frost make the best of a bad situation, but for the most part the laughs feel like leftovers from a rejected “Hangover” script.
As a look at modern life it hits on some hot button topics, like bullying and providing for a family in a world where full time employment can be elusive, but even the serious stuff, meant to give the movie some heart, veers to the saccharine side and is about as insightful as a philosophical debate on twitter.
Ultimately the failure of “Unfinished Business” falls on Vaughn’s desk. He’s the boss at the center of the story but not even his natural charisma can salvage this very bad day at the office.
Imagine “Short Circuit” shot with hand held cameras. Or maybe “Bicentennial Man” with better special effects. Or a less politically astute “RoboCop.” No matter how you wire it “Chappie” is a movie that feels like a bucket of nuts and bolts borrowed from other films.
Set next year in Johannesburg, “Chappie” is the story of Scout 22, an “officer” in a droid police force created by arms corporation Tetra Vaal lead designer Deon (Dev Patel). The mechanized cops use ultra-violence to subdue drug dealers, gangsters and other assorted criminal riff raff.
Deon’s creations are a success but he wants his androids to be more than just killing machines. He wants them to think and feel, to write music, appreciate art [and] “have original ideas.”
When Scout 22 is injured in the line of duty, Deon Wilson—counter to Tetra Vaal’s CEO, Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver) and hardline hardware designer Vincent’s (Hugh Jackman) wishes—scoops up the ‘bot’s broken bits and pieces with the idea of reprogramming him to become sentient. “I brought you into this world. A machine that can think and feel,” says Deon.
Before Deon can create his new synthetically sensitive robot, however, he and the pile of damaged droid parts find themselves held hostage by a trio of gangsters, Yo-Landi, Ninja (Die Antoord’s Yo-Landi Visser and Ninja) and Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo), who want Deon to shut off Jo’burg’s robocops so they can roam free and pull off a heist with no police interference.
When the terrified programmer explains there is no off switch for the crime fighters, a plan is hatched to turn Scout 22, now dubbed Chappie (a motion-captured Sharlto Copley), into “Indestructible Robot Gangster Number 1.”
The reprogrammed Chappie is “raised” by his “maker” Deon and the gangsters, with whom he forms a defacto family. From Deon he learns creativity; from Ninja and Co. he finds an appreciation of “Masters of the Universe,” street lingo and bling. While Deon is busy trying to prevent Vince from sabotaging the Scout project, Ninja and Amerika manipulate Chappie into doing the one thing he swore he would never do—break the law.
“Chappie” feels like a kid’s movie; a violent and action packed children’s film. The character has a childlike wonder about the world, and there are several almost Disney-esque moments—but the feel-bad Disney where parents die and defenceless characters are left to fend for themselves. Trouble is none of those moments have the same oomph as “Your mother can’t be with you anymore, Bambi.” For all of Chappie’s childlike innocence there’s nothing particularly endearing about him and without an emotional connection to the main character he is little more than a computer with legs and funny rabbit ears.
Director Neill Blomkamp’s trademarked mix of gritty realism and sleek state-of-the-art CGI are present in “Chappie” but one-note performances—I’m looking at you Ninja!—and a story that feels cobbled together from other, better robot movies makes one wish for more intelligence—artificial or otherwise—in the storytelling.
That’s the line in “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” that explains the motivation of almost every character in the story. The retirement comedy paints old age in broad strokes, but nails the dark humour of the twilight years with clear, concise and funny dialogue.
As we learned in the first instalment, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a slightly ramshackle retirement home in the Indian city of Jaipur. It’s the kind of place where the proprietor, Sonny (Dev Patel) takes roll call every morning to ensure no one has passed on during the night. His guests are mainly British expats looking to comfortably live out their remaining days… and maybe get a new lease on life.
The original hotel is almost fully booked, and with everyone is looking hale and hardy, there likely won’t be many vacancies for some time. Always a big thinker Sonny looks to expand his business with the backing of an American retirement home chain. The first hurdle in deciding whether the Best Exotic Marigold becomes a “franchise or a footnote” is quality test administered by an undercover guest. When two new guests arrive on the same day director John Madden cues the screwball comedy, injecting a mistaken identity element into the feel good story.
“The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” is like a mini-Bollywood epic, there’s a bit of everything—dance numbers, comedy, romance and even a murder plot. Ordinarily that would be too much for a two-hour movie—an attempt to please everyone which usually means you please no one—but here the elements fit together. Sure, sometimes the plot shards creek almost as much as the joints of the oldsters we’re watching on screen, but the goodwill the cast—who much have upwards of a 1000 years of combined screen experience—is the cinematic Voltaren that greases the script’s tired bones.
Of the headliners, Judy Dench is reliably great, touching and sincere while Bill Nighy is heartbreakingly moon-faced in love but it is Maggie Smith who steals the show. She stares down mortality with a mixture of poignantly observed insight and on-target barbs. She delivers lines like, “Just because I’m looking at you while you talk doesn’t mean I’m interested,” and “How was America? It made death more tempting,” with the precision of a neurosurgeon and elevates every scene she’s in.
“The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” is review proof. It’s a charm offensive from a group of actors aiming to please, and for the most part, they do.
Wondering what “Kidnapping Mr. Heineken” is all about? The title says it all, which is too bad because it feels like they left out the most interesting part of the story.
Set in 1982, this true crime drama stars Sam Worthington as Willem Holleeder, Jim Sturgess as Cor van Hout, Ryan Kwanten as Jan Boellaard and Mark van Eeuwen as Frans Meijer, down-on-their-luck owners of a construction company. To raise some quick cash they turn to a life of crime and kidnap one of the richest people in the Netherlands, Freddy Heineken (Anthony Hopkins), chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Heineken International. They’re chuffed when the news refers to them as dangerous, professional crooks but amateur mistakes and personality clashes ultimately put an end to their newfound criminal careers.
Since this is based on true events, the movie ends with updates as to what all the characters got up to after the kidnapping caper. Some went to jail, one escaped from a mental institution and fled to Paraguay while Holleeder and van Hout went on to become the notorious Godfathers of the Netherlands, as in Dutch crime kingpins. That sounds more interesting than the kidnapping story and yet it is only alluded to in the film’s closing moments.
Instead we’re told a movie-of-the-week kidnapping story about a group of wannabes torn apart by greed and paranoia. Heineken, trying to get under the skin of his captors, tells them, “There are two ways to be rich in this world. You can have a lot of money or you can have a lot of friends—but you can’t have both.” He’s right. The 35 million guilder ransom cleaves the tight knit group, but despite the film’s prominent heart-pounding score, there’s no real drama to much of it. There are car chases and rubber masks, which all feel like movie action circa 1982 when the film is set, but the story is as flat as an open Heineken left in the midday sun.
Modern horror has come to rely on gore or jump scares. Torture porn and paranormal activities like sudden loud sounds and unexpected “Boo!” moments have taken the place of real, pulse-racing scares. “The Babadook,” the directorial debut of Australian Jennifer Kent, brings back true horror, playing up the most terrifying aspect of a primal relationship, the bond between mother and child.
Amelia (Essie Davis) is at a loss. Her husband died violently on the day her now six-year-old son Samuel () was born and since then she hasn’t bonded with the child. On top of that, he “out of control,” convinced that a monster from a picture book called “The Babadook” means them harm. His obsessions weigh both mother and son down to the point where Amelia takes the boy for help—both of the psychological and pharmaceutical kind. She burns the book, but soon learns, “you can’t get rid of the Babadook.”
“The Babadook” is a remarkably self-assured and sophisticated first feature. Kent delves into the psychological terror of the situation, unafraid to trust the story to provide the scares. It’s a chilling horror story but the true terror is derived from the mother’s reaction to the situation and her son. Davis is a raw nerve, unpredictable and paranoid, a character who wouldn’t be out of place in an early Roman Polanski movie.
Wiseman is a wide-eyed creepy kid, lovable but strange, a seemingly normal kid with a weight on his back that threatens to crush him and his mother.
“The Babadook” doesn’t need the tropes of modern horror to be effective; the film’s heavy atmosphere is enough.
Josh Duhamel and Dean Winters had never met before starting work on the new police dramedy Battle Creek.
“I was actually driving onto the lot in Manhattan Beach for a fitting,” says Winters, the actor known for his roles on Oz, 30 Rock and the Allstate Insurance commercials, “and I wasn’t looking where I was going and literally, true story, almost ran Josh over. That was our first encounter.”
Their jarring introduction could have been useful as they created their characters, a Battle Creek, Michigan cop and FBI agent who butt heads on police procedure and everything else, but they decided not to be too method in their approach to the work.
“To me that is a sign of insecurity in people who don’t know what they are doing,” says Winters.
Instead the pair relied on-the-job research to get under the skins of their characters.
Duhamel spent time with Battle Creek cops, doing ride alongs with their undercover officers, drug enforcement team and gang unit. “There is some real stuff happening in that town,” he says. “Nobody would ever suspect because it sits right in between Detroit and Chicago but they get a lot of riff raff fleeing either city and hiding out there. They get a lot of crime you wouldn’t expect in what seems to be a very all-American town.”
Winters says “the best part of the ride alongs is actually listening to the cops talk. They have their own language, their own rhythms in the way they talk to one each other. It’s really fascinating. I don’t think anyone has ever really captured it to be honest with you.
“It truly is a whole different world. I really do the relationship Josh and I have is pretty close, especially when we’re driving down the street in the Suburban. A lot of those conversations are priceless. I think [Canadian series creator and writer] David Shore has a real ear for that.”
On screen the pair investigate a series of wild cases—“The crimes we are investigating on the show you won’t see anywhere else,” says Duhamel.—like an illegal maple syrup ring and the murder of a cereal company mascot. “We have to take it seriously as police officers,” says Duhamel, “but it is kind of funny.”
With thirteen episodes in the can Battle Creek Duhamel and Winters have had time to get to know one another since their first meeting and have become close.
“I just really like him and wanted to be his friend,” laughs Duhamel.
“I just want to stand near him.” Winters says of his handsome co-star. “He makes you look good.”
