Six years ago writer/director Drew Goddard deconstructed the slasher movie genre with the whimsical and exhilarating “Cabin in the Woods.” A mash-up of horror and humour, of post-modern self-awareness and gruesome gags, it simultaneously adopted and challenged the conventions of the slasher genre. He returns to the big screen—his day job is writing, producing and directing TV shows like “Daredevil” and “The Good Place”—with “Bad Times at the El Royale,” an inversion of a 1990s broken timeline crime drama.
The El Royale is the kind of seedy hotel that dotted the highways and byways of 1960s America. Split down the middle by the California/Nevada border, it’s a perfect slice of mid-century kitsch, like the same guy who decked out Elvis’s rec room designed it. When we first lay eyes on it a shady character (Nick Offerman) with a bulging suitcase and a gun wrenches up the floorboards and hides a case of money before replacing the carpet and the furniture. It’s an act that establishes the El Royale as a home-away-from-home for transients and ne’er-do-wells and sets up much of the action to come.
As for the action to come, you’ll have to go see the film to find out what happens. I will tell you that the film takes place ten years after the suitcase was hidden in the hotel and begins with a disparate group of folks checking in well after the El Royale’s heyday. There’s slick talking vacuum cleaner salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), Reno-bound singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a priest with tired eyes and hippie chick Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson). All three pay front desk manager Miles (Lewis Pullman) the $8 deposit and take to their rooms.
Secrets are revealed about the guests and the hotel as an aura of menace clouds the sunny California/Nevada border. “We’re in a bit of a pickle,” says Father Flynn in what may be the understatement of the year.
Goddard takes his time setting up the narrative drive of “Bad Times at the El Royale.” He bobs and weaves, playing with time, slowly revealing the intricacies of the story. For the patient—it runs two hours and 21 minutes—it’s a heck of a ride but may prove too opaque for casual viewers. Large conspiracies are hinted at, secrets are kept and no one is really who they seem to be. For those willing to submit to the grimly funny and admittedly indulgent proceedings, it’s a Tarantino-esque web of intrigue and unexpected violence that plays both as a crime drama and a metaphor for the decay of 1960s idealism.
“Bad Times at the El Royale” is a good movie filled with bad people. It asks you to care about people who do terrible things and by the end, thanks to inventive storytelling and good performances—Erivo is s standout—you just might.
“It’s nice to know there are still some heroes out there making sacrifices so I can go play dress up,” says Geoff Stults, “and I loved playing dress up on this one.”
Stults co-stars with Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon and Michael Peña in 12 Strong, the tale of one of the most successful missions in military history. In just three weeks, 12 Green Berets, with the help of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, battled the Taliban to take back the occupied city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Based on Doug Stanton’s non-fiction book Horse Soldiers, 12 Strong is both conventional and unconventional in its approach. Structured like a traditional war film, it’s also the first time in memory we’ve seen modern warfare on horseback on the big screen. Once in Afghanistan, the Green Berets discover the best method of transport through the rocky and treacherous terrain is on the back of a horse.
“I grew up part-time in Colorado so I grew up with trail rides,” Stults says. “Certainly hadn’t been on a horse in years. The first day of getting on this horse was interesting.
“The wranglers would throw marks on the ground and we would have to ride up and stop and hit our marks-ish. The good news is the horses were trained better than the actors were trained. They knew what they were doing but they’re temperamental animals. Sometimes they didn’t want to stand there on a weird angle, on a weird hill, for 10 takes in a row while the actors got their lines right. Harder than riding was getting the horses to stay still. Between takes, just to keep the horses chill, we’d be moving them around.”
As the first American soldiers to take on the Taliban on their home turf after 9-11, the soldiers portrayed in 12 Strong endured impossible odds, outgunned and outnumbered 5,000 to 1.
“These guys were already in service and said, ‘What are we going to do to make sure nothing like this ever happens again?’ It’s a story about 12 guys who were willing to make what could have been the ultimate sacrifice.”
Stults is quick to mention that the movie is not only an American story.
“9-11 happened on American soil,” he says, “this is an American skewing story but it wasn’t an isolated American experience. It changed all our lives.
“It is also about the people of Afghanistan and their heroics. This couldn’t have happened without them and Gen. Dostum’s partnership. These people have been occupied, oppressed, dealing with the Taliban coming in and out of their villages.”
“12 Strong” tells the tale of one of the most successful missions in military history. In just three weeks twelve Green Berets with the help of General Abdul Rashid Dostum of the Northern Alliance battled the Taliban and inhospitable terrain to take back the occupied city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Chris Hemsworth leaves the mighty hammer of Thor on Planet Asgard to play the earth bound hero and Green Beret Captain Mitch Nelson. On leave when 9/11 happened he immediately reported for duty, asking that his team be reinstated to fight the Taliban. “You break his team up,” says Chief Warrant Officer Cal Spencer (Michael Shannon), “and you cut the head off your most venomous snake.” Named Task Force Dagger, they are shipped off to Afghanistan with orders to team with Northern Alliance General Abdul Rashid Dostum (Navid Negahban). Outgunned and outnumbered 5000 to 1 this uneasy partnership must endure impossible odds to defeat the Taliban on their own turf.
Based on Doug Stanton’s non-fiction book “Horse Soldiers,” “12 Strong” is both conventional and unconventional in its approach. Structured like a traditional war film, it’s also the first time (to my memory) we’ve seen modern warfare on horseback on the big screen. Once in Afghanistan the Green Berets discover the best method of transport through the rocky and treacherous terrain is on the back of a horse. In a clash of old and new, the cavalry battle tanks and rocket launchers and it makes for some striking images.
Like so many war flicks before it, in it’s opening minutes we see Nelson, Spencer and Sergeant First Class Sam Diller (Michael Peña) with their loving families before they are sent to battle. It’s standard shorthand to create empathy for the characters. They are family men driven by a sense of duty to their country. All well and good. We’ve seen it before but actors like Hemsworth, Shannon and Peña rise above the cliché to bring some heartfelt moments to those scenes. But what about the other nine guys in the troupe? We never learn much about them and, as a result, they are just bodies on a screen instead of fully rounded characters.
Having said that, for every war cliché—“Let’s get this war started,” howls Nelson at one point—there is another scene that offers insight into the difficult and confounding task the men have ahead of them. There is much talk of the struggle of fighting an ideological war against people who believe their great reward is in the afterlife. “There’s no playbook for this mission,” says Nelson. “We have to make it up as we go along.” As the first American soldiers to take on the Taliban after 9/11 they face a steep learning curve, finally coming to understand that this will be a war of small victories with no clear endpoint. They may win the battle but still need to fight the war. The confounding nature of this situation will be familiar to anyone who has followed the news coverage of the war in real time but is concisely summed up by Dostum. “There are no right choices here. This is Afghanistan. The grave of many empires.”
Over the course of six movies, Thor has been portrayed as a muscle-bound sex symbol; a larger-than-life hero with Shakespearean tendencies, but New Zealander Taika Waititi thinks he has fully realized the character’s potential.
“How do you get the audience to relate to superheroes?” asks Waititi, director of Thor: Ragnarok. “If you take all of them individually from these Marvel or DC movies, they’re very hard to relate to. I can’t relate to the Incredible Hulk other than I get angry sometimes. Thor is essentially a rich kid from outer space. I can’t relate to that so how do you bring them down to our level and give them our kind of problems? That was something we focused on quite heavily in this film even to the point where we have Hulk and Thor sitting on a bed after an argument talking about feelings. We humanized them a bit more and put them in situations we’ve all been in.
“We also took away his hammer and banished him across the universe. He’s really just trying to get home. We’ve all tried to get home at four in the morning, lost, wandering the streets. That’s what this is. We’ve basically made After Hours in space.”
Thor: Ragnarok’s plot sounds like it could be from any generic Avengers film — a world is at stake — but there is no other superhero movie that would see their champions escape through an interdimensional portal named The Devil’s Anus. Yes, there is serious subtext about genocide and displaced persons but thanks to Waititi this is the first Marvel movie to really value comedy over spectacle.
“I had to be respectful of the source material and where the film fit in with all the other things they are doing,” Waititi said. “My whole thing was to give my take on this film and try and make the best film I could whilst letting Marvel keep me in my lane, making sure I didn’t veer off too far to the left or right with their precious character.”
Waititi has remained true to the core of what fans will expect from the crown prince of Asgard as played by Chris Hemsworth, but this time around the Norse God is not exactly your father’s Thor.
“This is a way more colourful and vibrant take on the character and the kind of adventures he has,” the director says. “We borrowed a lot of that design from the great artist Jack Kirby. So right from the start we pulled away from that desaturated, dark style from a lot of other superhero movies. We’re being unapologetic about wanting for this to be a fun adventure through the cosmos and filling it with incredible characters and monsters. It feels like this film was made by six-year-olds. I don’t know if there is any colour left that we haven’t either put into the poster or into the movie.”
Thor: Ragnarok is the Oscar-nominated filmmaker’s first Hollywood movie. He’s best known for oddball work like Boy, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and the horror comedy What We Do in the Shadows, but says his Marvel film shares the same DNA as his smaller movies.
“I definitely feel like this is a Taika Waititi film,” he says. “It could live comfortably in the box set.”
Depending on which side of the interdimensional divide you sit on, superhero movies are either the best thing to happen to Hollywood since the invention of buttered popcorn or the worst thing to happen to film since Steven Seagal.
Before we decide if The Hulk et al are ruining Hollywood, let’s define what a superhero movie is.
This weekend’s Thor: Ragnarok is most definitely a superhero film. It features characters with godlike abilities dedicated to protecting the public from archenemies.
Most superhero flicks — a genre David Fincher refers to as “spandex, blockbuster tentpoles” — whether they are comedic outer-space operas like Guardians Of The Galaxy or heist flicks like Ant-Man, are bound by straightforward morality and the idea that good always prevails over evil.
“It’s a very delicate time right now on Earth,” said Man Of Steel’s Michael Shannon, “and there’s a lot going on that is pretty frightening. It would be nice to believe or think that there was somebody that could protect us from that.”
Director James Wan adds, “All the good superheroes have some kind of social commentary about why they are who they are. It teaches values and so it’s a very important thing.”
The studios — with Marvel leading the charge — have raked in billions of dollars peddling bigger-than-life movies to fan boys and girls but are they self-defeating? Are Batman and Wolverine really ruining the movie business?
Oscar winner William Friedkin thinks so. “Films used to be rooted in gravity. They were about real people doing real things. Today cinema in America is all about Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Avengers, Hunger Games: all kinds of stuff that I have no interest in seeing at all.”
Marvel Cinematic Universe architect Kevin Feige, the man largely responsible for the influx of cinematic superheroes, disagrees. “If you look through the decades of people who’ve been accused of that — Star Wars ruined Hollywood, Steven Spielberg ruined Hollywood —I’ll be in that company any day of the week.”
That’s a flippant answer to a hotly debated and complicated question. At the heart of the discussion is the notion that bigger is always better. Does Hollywood’s love of bombast come at the expense of new ideas? Has the sheer scale of Avengers and Company movies made studios greedy, interested only in brands that will gross hundreds of millions. Why spend $5 million to gross $25 million, the theory goes, when you can spend $180 million on an established brand and make $1 billion?
Others worry that the episodic, homogenous nature of continuing superhero storylines aren’t challenging.
The truth is Wonder Woman and Friends haven’t sucked all the oxygen out of the room. The superhero bubble exists but the commercial and artistic success of movies like Get Out and Colossal balances out the equation. Superheroes may provide bang for the buck but smaller, original films are coming back into vogue.
The world of cinema is a big place. There’s room for both Thor: Ragnarok and The Florida Project. The fact we’re seeing a renaissance of small films playing alongside their risky bigger budget cousins like Dunkirk, signals studios walking back on their commitment to only making astronomically priced superhero movies.
So superheroes haven’t ruined Hollywood. They may be popular now but as Feige says, “As soon as there are a bunch of them that are terrible, that’s when it will end.”
“Darling, you have no idea what is possible.” So says Hela (Cate Blanchett), Thor’s Goddess of Death sister.
She’s a piece of work who thinks nothing of drowning a whole race of people in their own blood to get what she wants, but she has a point. Up until this point no one really knew what was possible with the Thor (Chris Hemsworth) character. Over the course of six movies we’ve seen the crown prince of Asgard as a larger-than-life hero with Shakespearean tendencies and a muscle-bound sex symbol but it took director New Zealand director Taika Waititi to fully realize the character’s potential. Thor has always been quick with a line, but this time around Waititi puts the comedy upfront.
The plot of “Thor Ragnarok” is less interesting than its tone. In a nutshell Thor’s sister, the hella-deadly Hela is back from exile and with Odin (Anthony Hopkins) out of the way, is first in line for the throne of Asgard. She, equipped with an impressive set of black antlers and ruthless nature, plans to go Ragnarok on the citizens of Asgard to fulfill her appetite for destruction.
After some tomfoolery with giant demon Surtur (Clancy Brown)—“Oh, that’s your crown,” Thor purrs. “I thought it was a big eyebrow.”—Thor returns to Asgard, reunites with mischievous brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) before literally locking horns with Hela and hurled through space and into the hands of the quirky Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum), a colourfully dressed ruler who offs people with his dreaded Melt Stick and pits the Norse god against his old friend Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) in a gladiatorial match. With Asgard at stake Thor recruits the giant green world breaker and a warrior Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) to save his planet.
That sounds like it could be the plot from any generic Avengers film—a world is at stake—but there is no other superhero movie that would see their champions escape through an interdimensional portal named The Devil’s Anus. Yes, there is serious subtext about genocide and displaced persons—we hear Led Zep’s “Immigrant Song” twice—but this is the first Marvel movie to value comedy over spectacle. The trademarked Marvel blockbuster action is still there but the gags carry the show.
Certainly “Thor: Ragnarok” is the polar opposite of rival DC’s dark universe but even in its own house, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s a breath of fresh air. Seventeen movies in Marvel has taken a chance, handing the reins over to an idiosyncratic helmer. Waititi’s (who also plays a talkative Groot-like gladiator named Korg) first big studio movie after whimsical indies the adventure comedy “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” feels as close to an auteur film as we’re likely to see in this genre. He brings a zippy sense of fun that showcases Hemsworth’s comedy chops.
Like the rest of the Avengers movies “Thor: Ragnarok” is a tad long and, near the end is overrun by creatures and CGI. Some will complain that the glib tone completely overrides the film’s serious side but the gags and the home-is-where-the-heart-is message make this one of the most human and humane MCU movies yet.
Alfred Hitchcock made three of his greatest films with Grace Kelly and tried to lure her back to the big screen long after she retired. Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have a seemingly unbreakable cinematic bond and the world of movies would be far less interesting if Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski had never met. John Ford and John Wayne inspired one another to do their best work and Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s shared eccentricities gave us unforgettable nights at the multiplex.
Muses inspire their directors to aspire to new heights, to push the limits of their creativity.
Add another to the list: Melissa McCarthy.
Over the course of four films — including this weekend’s Ghostbusters — she has upped director Paul Feig’s game and in turn he gave her the roles that broke her out of the TV sidekick treadmill and turned her into a big screen star. “It’s not even like we go, ‘We’ve got to do the next movie together,’” Feig says.
“It’s just that suddenly the next movie will pop up and I’m like, ‘You know who would be great for this?’ So it’s funny that people think we have an agenda to keep doing this.”
Agenda or not, their creative chemistry is undeniable.
Feig describes McCarthy’s audition for the first film they made together, Bridesmaids, as a “religious moment.” She was less sure.
“The whole ride home from the audition,” she says, “I was thinking, ‘I got too weird. Should I turn the car around and do that cheesy actor thing of I can do it better! Give me another shot!’”
The director cast her in the scene-stealing role of Megan — imagine a feral, female Guy Fieri — and it was her flashpoint.
Her wonderfully weird performance, complete with sexual hijinks and an explosive bout of diarrhea —“It’s coming out of me like lava!” — stole the show out from under other, better-known stars like Kristen Wiig — and earned her an Oscar nomination.
Next up for the dynamic duo was The Heat, an odd couple, buddy cop movie set in Boston co-starring Sandra Bullock.
McCarthy plays a tough-talking street cop who forms an unlikely alliance with the uptight Sandra Bullock to bring down a murderous drug dealer.
The role riffed on McCarthy’s signature character, the aggressive but damaged comedic persona. “I’ve played a lot of characters who are very vocal, very aggressive,” she told me in 2014.
“For the women I’ve played there is a reason why they are so ballsy and it is nice when you see the crack in the veneer and you realize, ‘It’s part of their insecurity. They stay loud so nobody yells at them.’”
Feig knows when to let McCarthy off the leash — there are some wild slapstick scenes here — but he also knows when to pull her back and let the script do the work.
This week McCarthy headlines Feig’s all-female Ghostbusters reboot alongside Bridesmaids co-star Kristen Wiig.
Will that be their final collaboration? Don’t count on it.
Feig is reportedly writing a Spy sequel as we speak.
“She’s so good,” he says, “and we just really have the same sense of humour.”
Director Paul Fieg and Company are not the Ruiners of Your Childhood. Your youthful “Ghostbusters” memories are alive and well, in your head, in your DVD drawer or digital download file folder. Ghostbros, upset their 1984 favourite is being rebooted with an all female cast, flooded the internet with low-to-no star reviews. As it turns out, the time they spent trying to torpedo a movie they had not yet seen, might have been better spent making room on their basement shelves for the new “Ghostbusters” figurines. Feig hasn’t desecrated a classic, he has added a new chapter, creating a light and fluffy concoction that moves the franchise into the future while paying homage to the past.
When we first meet Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) she’s a professor at Columbia trying to hide her past as a paranormal investigator. When a ghost-hunting book she co-wrote with Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) comes to light she is let go. Like Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler before her, she leaves academia and becomes a professional New York City ghostbuster alongside Abby, proton pack engineer Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) and former subway worker Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones).
After making a name for themselves they uncover a major plot hatched by hotel janitor Rowan North (Neil Casey). Upset his genius has been ignored by the world, he plans on unleashing an army of undead to come back and “pester the world” in an event he calls the Fourth Cataclysm. He has created a vortex that will allow whatever it is on that plane to come crashing down on this plane and flood New York City with ghosts. By the climax the movie dissolves into regular summertime C.G.I. tomfoolery as the Ghostbusters battle spirits in Times Square.
There is a sense of déjà vu hanging heavy over “Ghostbusters.” The new film doesn’t continue the original story, it reboots it, taking us back to the origins of the group. In other words, it’s a lot like the 1984 movie. From class four semi-anchored entities and proton streams to cameos from Slimer, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Annie “Ghostbusters, whaddaya want?” Potts plus a glimpse of a Harold Ramis statue, the movie feels familiar but has been freshened up.
The cast doesn’t try to imitate Murray, Aykroyd, Ramis and Hudson. The new characters are just that, new creations plunked down into an existing world.
McCarthy and Wiig, reteamed for the first time since “Bridesmaids,” are solid and Jones is a formidable presence but most interesting is McKinnon as engineering nerd Holtzmann. She is unapologetically weird, as strange as her unruly asymmetrical haircut and a glorious addition to the “Ghostbusters” family.
Also welcome is Chris Hemsworth as the dippy receptionist who doesn’t have glass in his eyeglasses and says things like, “An aquarium is a submarine for fish.” He’s a walking non sequitur and very funny.
Like the old Abbott and Costello horror comedies, “Ghostbusters” doesn’t have any real scares but it will make you laugh. The script, co-written by Feig and “Parks and Recreation” writer Katie Dippold, is funny, if not exactly in a slap the knee kind of way, then in a slow boil constant giggle respect. Is it an out-of-this-world hit like Feig’s “Bridesmaids” or “Spy”? No. It occasionally suffers from a weird rhythm where scenes end suddenly and at least one of the cameos feels wedged in, but the overall effect is one of a respectful resurrection of a beloved franchise.
Best of all, it is self-aware. Reading on-line comments Erin comes across one that reads, “Ain’t no bitches going to hunt no ghosts.” Later Abby says, “Don’t read what crazy people write in the middle of the night online.” Are you listening Ghostbros?
In polite society no one would dare ask a stranger about his or her father’s violent death, but celebrity culture is not polite society.
Over the years I’ve heard interviewers ask questions ranging from the innocuous — “What are you wearing?” — to the silly — “How do you keep your bum in such great shape?” — but rarely have I heard anything as unnecessarily meddling as the query aimed at Charlize Theron during a press conference I hosted several years ago.
A reporter asked the actress about seeing her mother shoot her abusive, alcoholic father dead when she was a teenager. But instead of breaking down Theron said, “I’m not talking about that,” with an icy finality that made everyone freeze.
I admired her for not over sharing, not spilling the intimate details of her life à la the Kardashian Klan. She’s careful what she says to the press, avoids scandal and damage controls the ones that inevitably pop up in every celeb’s life. For instance, recently she said, short and sweetly, “We both decided to separate,” when accused of “ghosting” on her romance with Sean Penn.
She understands some things should only be spoken about when and where she chooses and not at the behest of an aggressive reporter looking to dredge up painful memories for the sake of “good television.” Theron is media savvy so I was surprised a few weeks ago when she caused a media hurly burly with comments about the burden of being beautiful.
Chatting up her new film The Huntsman: Winter’s War with British GQ she said, “How many roles are out there for the gorgeous, BLEEPINGing, gown-wearing eight-foot model? When meaty roles come through, I’ve been in the room and pretty people get turned away first.”
She is a beautiful woman, that is as clear as the perfectly positioned nose on her face, but is she intimating that being beautiful has harmed her career?
Turns out she wasn’t, or so she claims. Alleging a misquote, she later apologized, saying that playing “deconstructed characters” appeals because, “how many characters really are there out there for a woman wearing a gown? You have to play real people.
The mea culpa was unnecessary. She works in a business where beauty is a commodity.
The problem with her earlier statement is that publicly acknowledging one’s own looks carries with it a hint of arrogance, a suggestion that winning the genetic lottery somehow makes you superior, but she simply said something others already have.
Keira Knightley claims she almost lost the role in Pride and Prejudice because the director thought she was too pretty and Jessica Biel says being Esquire’s 2005 Sexiest Woman cost her work.
Theron may have missed out on a job or two because of her looks, but it’s also an element of what made her a star.
That and talent, and just as you wouldn’t apologize for skin colour or having red hair or being tall or short, she doesn’t need to say sorry for being beautiful.
