The Conjuring 2 (2016)

☆ ☆ ½

The Conjuring 2 (2016) – J. Wan

You’ve seen this one before (and not necessarily in the first The Conjuring, 2013).  All the various tics and tropes of the haunted house picture are dutifully trotted out by director James Wan, along with a healthy dose of The Exorcist (1973).  The film takes place in the 1970s (mostly England) and is based on a “true” story taken from the adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren, psychics and investigators of the supernatural for the Catholic Church.  Can one really complain about genre pictures that don’t innovate (beyond updating slickly to 21^st century technology and methods)?  After all, you get what you pay for and I certainly didn’t check out the Conjuring 2 hoping for Ingmar Bergman.  So, does it deliver?  Yes and no.  There is a good effort to generate the requisite creepy atmosphere and there are a few unfair shocks, but the film feels overlong with a few too many bits of furniture thrown around the house.  The primary evil spirit is pretty scary but its underling, an angry old man, is more pathetic than frightening.  Everything wraps up rather quickly and defeating the evil was surprisingly easy.  But I still felt a bit wary heading off to bed in the dark, so I guess this sequel works at some fundamental level.

Black Friday (1940)

☆ ☆ ½

Black Friday (1940) – A. Lubin

Karloff is dapper as the doctor who illegally performs a brain transplant to save his friend, a professor of English literature.  But the picture really belongs to Stanley Ridges who, as the professor who has the brain of a gangster inserted into his head, has to act out these dual personalities.  Of course, Karloff has ulterior motives for the transplant as well – the gangster had hidden $500K just before he was killed (by Bela Lugosi and other former gang members) and Karloff hopes that the professor will remember where it is, with his new brain.  But things take a turn for the worse when the professor essentially becomes the gangster.  Since the film begins with Karloff being walked to the electric chair, you get no points for guessing how this will end.  Solid tale from the Karloff and Lugosi heyday (but the latter has only a bit part this time). 

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) – D. Trachtenberg

I couldn’t quite remember the first Cloverfield (2008) but that didn’t matter because this film has seemingly nothing to do with that NYC monster movie (although producer J. J. Abrams may be threatening a possible third movie that ties them both together somehow).  For what it is, 10 Cloverfield Lane manages to achieve its (limited) goals in a satisfactory fashion.  If that doesn’t sound like a rave review, it’s not.  But as a chamber drama set in a small space, an underground fallout shelter decked out by Howard (John Goodman) and occupied by him and two possible captives played by Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), this manages to produce a good deal of suspense.  We don’t know Howard’s motives for keeping the two prisoners down there and we can’t quite trust his explanation that a chemical or nuclear attack has occurred up above.  Of course, the plot unfurls from there and gradually more is revealed, as Michelle (our chief protagonist) fights to uncover the truth.  And mostly new director Dan Trachtenberg manages to pull this off, aided by Winstead’s strong performance.  I had trouble accepting Goodman as a (potential) bad guy but that’s more a function of his charismatic past performances than his acting here.  So, if you like this sort of B movie produced as an A movie (in Abrams’ terms), then you might like this—or it might be disappointingly shallow.

  

The Hateful Eight (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Hateful Eight (2015) – Q. Tarantino

Here’s another example where “style” seems to dominate “substance” – and usually I don’t mind that.  However, Tarantino’s latest film overstays its welcome (even watching it in two sittings) and becomes a bit ponderous, rehashing his familiar mannerisms (talky colloquial script laced with profanity, sudden bloody violence, suspicion between characters with unknown loyalties, flashbacks to tell us what really happened) a bit too readily. On the plus side, the film must have looked spectacular in Ultra Panavision, projected in 70 mm on the widest possible screen; Tarantino’s compositions for this canvas are great, particularly those that capture panoramic Western vistas (of Telluride standing in as Wyoming).  Many familiar faces returned to the Tarantino fold for this one with the lion’s share of the plot falling to Samuel L. Jackson, a bounty hunter and former Union soldier (the film takes place just after the Civil War) and he is charismatic in his usual way, but subject to a lot of derogatory racial attacks.  Kurt Russell acquits himself well in John Wayne-mode as another tougher bounty hunter.  Jennifer Jason Leigh is Russell’s prisoner and she is given a rather one-note role, grunting and grimacing and receiving enough gratuitous physical violence to think that Tarantino himself must take pleasure in all the misogynistic (and racist) actions in his films.  Tim Roth and Michael Madsen also return, alongside Bruce Dern and a few other new faces.  All told, the film, despite its widescreen, seems strangely stagey, like a play transposed into Minnie’s Haberdashery, where most of the action takes place.  Perhaps eight central characters, all needing to be killed violently, was too many to handle.  Tarantino claims he will only make two more films, but perhaps that is two too many – he seems out-of-steam.

  

CSA: The Confederate States of America (2004)

☆ ☆ ☆

CSA: The Confederate States of America (2004) – K. Willmott

Faux documentary (in the style of Ken Burns’ Civil War) that imagines a future after the South won the “War of Northern Aggression”, complete with commercials hawking real racist products (that actually faded away as America became enlightened).  So, it turns out that after a few decisive battles and aided by European powers, Jefferson Davis takes the White House and Lincoln is tried as a war criminal but flees to Canada (aided by Harriet Tubman who is caught and executed) where he survives until the early 20^th century. Slavery remains a political and economic commodity for the new nation (CSA) and this leads them to eventually side with Hitler becoming isolated from the rest of the world after WWII (except for South Africa).  JFK (elected as a Republican) is assassinated for promoting abolition.  And so on.  Things are a bit uneven but the points are well taken.  However, it is hard to laugh at the bitter comedy here and even more so on the evening when Trump was elected.  Staring down an alternate reality seemed like a good thing to do but it might be harder to put into practice in the next four years.  

  

Crimson Peak (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆

Crimson Peak (2015) – G. del Toro

Dreamlike in its pacing and its visuals, del Toro’s latest ode to horror takes the form of a gothic woman-in-peril picture (e.g. Gaslight, Rebecca), set at the end of the 19^th century. The opening scene, a flashback to a childhood brush with a ghost for Edith (Mia Wasikowska), is fantastic in its Bava-esque colour scheme and spooky CGI ghost (embodied by Doug Jones from Pan’s Labyrinth).  But the film becomes rather deadly matter-of-fact after that, as we follow Edith’s grown-up story:  she is seduced by Baronet Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) who is visiting America with his sister (Jessica Chastain with black hair – this is goth, after all) and when her father is murdered, she marries Sharpe and moves to England to the weird house they share.  Apparently del Toro had the house actually built and it is a monstrosity with a working lift at its heart, creepy apparitions within its dark hallways, and blood red dirt oozing up through the snow around it.  Of course, Sharpe and his sister have secrets that they are hiding and Edith is soon in danger – but the ghosts, scary though they are in del Toro’s gruesome depictions, may be helping her.  Overall, del Toro manages to keep things together by worshipping the themes of the gothic noir and not letting things get too over-ripe or cartoonish (as Tim Burton might do).  But some judicious tightening would surely have helped matters and Wasikowska is probably miscast, as her underplaying contrasts with the florid surroundings. Still, there is no denying the stylishness of what’s on offer.

  

The Big Short (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Big Short (2015) – A.McKay

In the end, there are just too many players and the “macguffin” is just too damned hard to understand but for a while there Adam McKay’s film about the events leading up to the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 and 2008 holds some genuine suspense.  Not surprise, but suspense, because we know how this is going to turn out, we just don’t know what will happen to these individual characters.  Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt use the tricks of their trade to present us with some recognisable “types”, eccentric or otherwise, but no one is given a chance to become three-dimensional (though Carell and Bale give it their best shot).  All of these guys and a few others played by non-celebs took a chance by creating deals that would pay out if the subprime mortgage market collapsed – so they basically bet that the economy would fail because the banks were greedy – and they won.  Ultimately, this is a depressing story with a highly depressing ending (cheaters continue to prosper).  McKay exerts himself strenuously, directing this dry material to death, with a lot of ironic asides to the camera, some funny cameos to explain difficult concepts, a lot of mid-2000s montages (wow, 10 years can change things), and the requisite music to keep things moving.  So, it’s somewhat breathtaking but in a car-crash sort of way, without too much effort to get at real characterizations, understandings, or even outcomes.  But I guess I’m glad it’s there, as a warning/reminder/harbinger of things to come.

  

The Docks of New York (1928)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Docks of New York (1928) – J. von Sternberg

Vividly realized silent tale of a stoker who comes ashore to find drunken fun and winds up rescuing a girl from drowning and marrying her.  One of von Sternberg’s late silent films (before he hooked up with Marlene Dietrich), showing his interest in “painting with light” – there is smoke or fog in many of the scenes.  George Bancroft is compellingly lout-like but ultimately sympathetic as he overcomes his primitive male instincts to sacrifice himself for his “wife”.  Betty Compson has less to do and looks rather ambivalent about Bancroft but throws her lot in with him anyway; such may have been the fate of a good-time gal in the 1920’s – no other options.  Unlike other silent films of this period, von Sternberg doesn’t take things truly wide, trying to stun us with amazing set-pieces (a la Murnau), so I was a bit disappointed.  But keeping the drama small and focusing on the characterizations may be the strategy that led to his later success with Marlene – it was all about her and everything else was stripped away (or really everything else, indulgent as it became, glorified her).   

Whirlpool (1949)

☆ ☆ ☆

Whirlpool (1949) – O. Preminger

In the end, it’s ludicrous – but in some ways that’s what makes this film noir from Otto Preminger good.  Gene Tierney is a kleptomaniac hiding the fact from her psychoanalyst husband, Richard Conte (badly miscast).  Slick and evil hypnotist/astrologer Jose Ferrer finds her out and offers to treat her, by which he means control her and make her do his bidding.  About halfway through there is a murder, but Ferrer, the obvious suspect, has an alibi – he’s in the hospital for a gall bladder operation.  Police Detective Charles Bickford (gruff but lovable) is on the case but doesn’t believe for a minute that you could hypnotize yourself not to feel pain.  Perhaps the film would have succeeded more if Preminger just cranked it up to 11 and let the weird melodrama take over? As it stands, you aren’t quite sure whether the events shown are meant to be believable to the audience or not.  Poor Gene Tierney may have seen echoes of her own real life in this character, as she may have been hiding mental illness and alcoholism from her public just as her character hides her own inner troubles from others.  However, Ferrer is the only one to really capitalize on the bizarreness here, playing his vile charmer to the hilt.  Preminger’s other noirs are better (Fallen Angel, Where the Sidewalk Ends).