Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Of Fairies and the Ticking Crocodile (Being a Review of Finding Neverland, and Other Things Besides)
By David Hontiveros

Johnny Depp’s come a long way from A Nightmare on Elm Street and 21 Jump Street. He’s one of that rare breed of working actor who’s not just a celebrity, he’s also a talented, respected thespian. He manages to star in derivative Hollywood dreck like The Astronaut’s Wife and emerges virtually unscathed. He ended up on the Oscar shortlist, bizarrely enough, because of the film franchise he’s suddenly found himself a part of, Pirates of the Caribbean, a movie based on, of all things, an amusement park ride! He’s collaborated with Tim Burton three times, and has reunited with him for the long-awaited Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well as the stop-motion animation film Corpse Bride. And at the tail end of 2004, he found himself playing J.M. Barrie, the Scottish author and playwright who wrote Peter Pan, in Finding Neverland.

Sometimes, though not often, he had dreams, and they were more painful than the dreams of other boys. For hours he could not be separated from these dreams, though he wailed piteously in them. They had to do, I think, with the riddle of his existence.

It’s 1903, London, and Barrie is just coming off his latest play, a resounding flop. His marriage to former actress Mary Ansell (Radha Mitchell) is becoming increasingly strained and loveless. He’s a man in danger of losing himself, when a fateful expedition and romp with faithful hound Porthos, crosses his path with that of widow Sylvia Llewellyn Davies (Kate Winslet), and her sons, George, Michael, Jack, and Peter. What follows quite literally changes all their lives, and becomes the inspiration for Peter Pan.

Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) directs Neverland from a screenplay by David Magee, based on Allan Knee’s play “The Man Who Was Peter Pan.” Forster does a commendable job of handling this moving tale of growth and loss, of hope amidst pain, steering it clear of the overly maudlin, melodramatic waters that the usual Hollywood tear-jerker traverses.

The ingredients are there, after all. Four children bereft of their father. One in particular, Peter (Freddie Highmore), taking the death much harder than his siblings, withdrawing into himself, unwilling to play childish games of pretend. A mother beset by “chest colds.” A domineering grandmother (the still radiant Julie Christie as Davies’ mother, Mrs. Emma du Maurier). A troubled marriage. It’s all there, and yet Forster turns in a wondrously magical piece that not only evades TV movie of the week territory, but also makes believers of us all.

In Neverland, the harsh realities of life and the act of living are beautifully counterbalanced by Barrie’s fanciful view of the world, which turns an awkward dance with a dog into a stately fairy tale waltz. It’s to Forster’s credit that these sequences—often Barrie’s playtime with the Davies children—are transformed into subtly wondrous set pieces which are fantastical without being baroque or overly extravagant. In another director’s hands, the CGI would have run wild, the production design would have stolen centerstage. Instead, and paradoxically, the restraint effectively amplifies the wistful nature of these moments, fleeting as they are, like time, and fairy dust.

Odd things happen to all of us on our way through life without our noticing for a time that they have happened.

However, this being a film “Inspired By True Events,” some fudging is done, particularly with chronology. Whereas in the film, the initial encounter with Davies is in 1903, in reality Barrie met her and her children in 1897, while her husband Arthur was still alive. The events depicted in the latter section of Finding Neverland (which actually occurred in 1910) are likewise telescoped, and the 1902 publication of The Little White Bird—which mentions Peter Pan for the first time in print, before the play opened in 1904—isn’t even mentioned. Thus are the perhaps necessary pitfalls of the dramatization of real-life events. The slow, boring bits are excised, the drudgery of passing time erased, the terrible tick-tick of the crocodile, muted, so the pathos of the moment is magnified.

In cases like this, where history falls prey to drama, all you can hope for is that the spirit of the story is true to the lives of the people it depicts, and here, Forster and crew succeed admirably. Of Barrie’s fervent need to both rediscover a childhood he’d missed the first time around, and to ensure Peter doesn’t experience the same premature adulthood, pitted against the reality that that innocence we must treasure eventually flies away, oftentimes in a single, unheralded instant (the scene where Barrie acknowledges George’s passage into adulthood is a quiet, surprisingly moving moment); that, we are shown, in all its fragility and splendour.

And in the end, this is film after all (a rather good one, it should be emphasized), and not documentary. If facts are what one is after, there are biographies. Film, as with any story, is about drama, and about the paradox of finding truth within that fiction.

In that respect, Finding Neverland has much to impart, about pretense and truth, growth and change, and the possibilities of discovering one’s self in the face of loss.

“Pan, who and what art thou?” he cried huskily.
“I’m youth, I’m joy,” Peter answered at a venture, “I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”
This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that Peter did not know in the least who or what he was, which is the very pinnacle of good form.


Quotes from James M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy (1911).
Welcome back to Stepford
by David Hontiveros


Like Keanu in bullet time, Nicole Kidman is dodging bullets as fast as they come.

An injury on the Moulin Rouge set forced her to bow out of David Fincher's Panic Room, which, along with The Game, turned out to be one of Fincher's least notable works. She was also supposed to star in Jane Campion's artily-shot but horribly flawed adaptation of In The Cut; Kidman remained co-producer, even as Meg Ryan ended up in the buff for the role.
At certain points in their development, Kidman was also attached to star in last year's Catwoman and The Forgotten, the less said of both, I believe, the better. Instead, for 2004, she starred in Jonathan Glazer's Birth, and Frank Oz's The Stepford Wives. And though neither was a box-office hit, either one was certainly better than The Forgotten, and, from all I've heard about it, Catwoman as well.

The review for Birth should appear in close proximity to this issue, but for now, we take a look back at The Stepford Wives, in time for its release on original VCD.

The Stepford Wives was originally a novel written by Ira Levin, the same man who gave the world Rosemary's Baby, Roman Polanski's film adaptation of which, in turn, gave us the enduring, indelible image of a frail, paranoid Mia Farrow, painfully pregnant with the Devil's child, on the run from a cult of Satanists. The Stepford Wives was no less frightening, though here, the terror was not supernatural, but rather stemmed from the realm of science.

A work that studied the horrors of conformity (for which the term "Stepford" has come to mean, informally joining the English language as an adjective), The Stepford Wives had a film adaptation in 1975. Directed by Bryan Forbes, that version delved more into the horror aspect of the tale. Frank Oz's version is, at first blush, a lighter, more comedic look at the material.
Career-driven network president Joanna Eberhart (Kidman) is suddenly and unceremoniously fired after an unfortunate incident during the unveiling of EBS' new season line-up. Following a nervous breakdown, she asks for a chance to start over with her husband Walter Kresby (Matthew Broderick) and their two children Kimberly and Pete. Off they go to the suburbs of Connecticut, to the exclusive community of Stepford, where all is not what it seems.

From its opening credit roll, accompanied by visuals from old adverts of the latest in modern technology, of products designed to make life easier and more convenient, it's evident that behind the comedic veneer of the film, there are some serious statements to be made, just as there is something deeper behind the Tupperware smiles of the eponymous Stepford wives.
In that respect, as well as its overt idea of a return to a simpler time-- in Stepford, there is "no crime, no poverty, and no pushing"-- it is similar to M. Night Shyamalan's The Village. (Incidentally enough, both are quite possibly last year's most misunderstood and underappreciated films.) But, whereas Shymalan never loses track of his narrative while aiming to get his Message across, Stepford's script by Paul Rudnick seems both weak in its rhythm, and genuinely confused as to the exact nature of the change the women undergo, not to mention rudely dismissive of Joanna's children, who are no sooner introduced, before they completely drop off the face of the film, mentioned thereafter, but never actually seen.
While the Stepford process in the original source material is pretty much straight-forward, in Oz's revision, there is talk of nanochips being inserted into the brain, chips which contain the Stepford program, which should mean these women are still organic after being "perfected" by the treatment. And yet we are treated to the sight of an eyeless and bald mannequin that is Kidman's dead ringer, as well as the ATM sequence (the single most chilling and disturbing visual from the entire film); both incongruous and illogical, if these are really still women with some computer chips stuck in their heads.

Given though that the narrative could have been stronger, the idea of perfection taken to its extreme, of the forced submission and commodification of women-- of a wife as the ultimate consumer product, complete with personalized remote control-- is difficult to ignore. Amidst the scathingly funny one-liners are harsh observations of the gender wars, of, to paraphrase the film, women wanting to become men, and men wanting to become gods.

Arguably, the reversal that comes at the film's climax might be seen, on the one hand, as a clever little reference to the third sequel of the 1975 version. On the other hand though, it could actually subvert the whole piece in one fell swoop, reducing the entire idea of homogenizing the world into the Stepford ideal as a plan born of lunacy, and not a cold, calculated conspiracy.

Whichever the case, this version of Levin's novel, with its wistful, pastel nostalgia for days long gone by, is funny. The script has zingy wit and irony to spare, and with a cast that includes Bette Midler, Christopher Walken, Roger Bart, and Glenn Close, the comic timing is near-perfect.

By and large, it's sad and ironic that the film doesn't live up to the Stepford ideal, and isn't the perfect movie it could have been. But then again, as Joanna says, perfect doesn't work. In this case though, imperfect doesn't exactly work, either.

Panned by the critics, by turns confused and narratively-challenged, The Stepford Wives is nonetheless a funny comedy, and has quite a lot to say about men and women, and the world they live in, and if only for that, must be seen. (And honestly, a couple of years down the road, should I find The Stepford Wives and The Forgotten both on cable at the same time, I know which film I'd zap myself to with the remote. Do you?)

The Stepford Wives is available on original VCD from MagnaVision.
The wonderful(ly dark) world of Snicket
By David Hontiveros


Little Red Riding Hood is eaten by the wolf. Sleeping Beauty is impregnated as she sleeps and wakes to discover she is the mother of twins.

These are just some of the fairy tales (or marchen, as they were called in German) in their original forms, before the Age of Enlightenment dealt them a crippling blow, and Disney all but obliterated them. They’re still there though, these dark, rather adult tales, there for the curious and the enthralled.

Which brings us, in a roundabout fashion, to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is not unlike a dark, traditional fairy tale, though without the magic. What it lacks in spells and cantrips though, Series makes up for in mystery and deaths.

Oh, yes, there are deaths here, children. In fact, the film’s plot is triggered by death.
In one fell swoop, at the hands of a mysterious fire, the Baudelaire children (Violet, Klaus, and Sunny) suddenly find they are the Baudelaire orphans, left in the care of frustrated actor—and villain of the piece—Count Olaf (Jim Carrey). What follows is, as the title may suggest, a series of close calls, near-mishaps, and fatalities (both apparent and actual).

Clearly, this is not a Disney family movie, and early on, we are invited by Jude Law—who does a tremendous voice-over job as Lemony Snicket, relating the sad and woeful tale of the Baudelaire children to us—to leave the theatre, if we are expecting light, fluffy cuteness. He actually does this twice, and if by the second time, those of the audience who have no appreciation for the dark and the macabre are still in their seats, then they’ve effectively forfeited any right to complain.

Now, having firmly established its darkling nature, it’s time to examine the film itself.
To begin with, the star of Series is clearly its production design. It has that otherworldly feel peppered with Gothic chic that is Tim Burton’s greatest gift to mainstream cinema. Small wonder, as Series production designer Rick Heinrichs collaborated with Burton on the pretty-to-look-at-but-not-much-else Sleepy Hollow. The world of the Baudelaires is Dickens on absinthe: grand and gloomy, shadowy and cobwebbed, like a skewed cartoon where the figurative animals neither sing nor dance, but stare at you furtively from the nooks and crannies.

Don’t think this is another Sleepy Hollow though. You can actually look at other things aside from the sets. As I’ve already mentioned, Law is excellent here, as is Meryl Streep, as the overwrought, overly neurotic Aunt Josephine. As far back as She-Devil and Postcards from the Edge, Streep proved that she wasn’t just adept at accents and drama; she had a killer sense of the comedic as well, which serves her well in Series, so much so that you wish she had far more screen time than she actually does.

And Emily Browning and Liam Aiken, who play Violet and Klaus Baudelaire, respectively, though not giving breakthrough performances on the level of a Haley Joel Osment, are certainly a sight better than the three Harry Potter principals were in the first film of that franchise. (The comparison arises from the fact that Series is based on the Lemony Snicket children’s novels, The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window, enjoying the current wave of popularity kid lit is experiencing in this post-Harry Potter world of ours.)
Given that Count Olaf is a central character to the tale, it’s sad then that the weak link, performance-wise, is Jim Carrey. Let me make it clear though, that I am not the biggest Jim Carrey fan; I find there is a certain tolerance level I have where he’s concerned, which, once crossed, subsequently makes me inured to his antics. In Series, I reached that level rather quickly, so much so that I found I was happiest when Count Olaf was off-screen. The script, with its occasional modern colloquialisms in its dialogue, isn’t much help either. (Of course, it’s tricky telling where the script ends and Carrey’s ad-libbing begins.)

It’s curious that Brad Silberling ended up directing Series, which is so far afield from his most recent film, Moonlight Mile, where Jake Gyllenhaal, Susan Sarandon, and Dustin Hoffman play the fiancĂ©e and parents of a recently-deceased woman, coping with their grief and sense of loss. Not only is the scope of Series so much larger than Moonlight Mile (or anything else he’s done for that matter), but the tenor of the piece is vastly different as well.

I bring this up not because Silberling botches the job, but rather because there’s nothing specific and peculiar to the direction of Series that makes it stand apart. For all I know, it could have been Barry Sonnenfeld—who directed The Addamms Family and its sequel, as well as the Men in Black films—at the helm. Perhaps if Series had been allowed to linger a little more on its characters, we might have seen some of the insightful character bits evident in Moonlight Mile. But, preoccupied as the script of Series is with how Violet, the family inventor, gets to McGyver her way out of the latest precarious predicament the dastardly Count has put her and her siblings in, there’s precious little time for those pesky things called “emotions” and “character development.”

Uneven as it is though, A Series of Unfortunate Events is an agreeable piece of macabre entertainment. It’s also a good introduction to the darkly wonderful world of Lemony Snicket. And the cameo by Dustin Hoffman (reunited with his Moonlight Mile director Silberling, and his Kramer vs. Kramer co-star, Streep, though they don’t actually share a scene together) is a nice touch, to boot.

Perhaps if we’d just seen more of the children, and more of Jim Carrey being Count Olaf (as opposed to Count Olaf being Jim Carrey), then we would have discovered characters equally as strange and interesting and darkly delightful as the world they live in.

Friday, April 28, 2006

(movie review: R-POINT)

Point not taken
By David Hontiveros


R-Point is Asian horror by way of Korea. Directed by Kong Soo-Chang from a screenplay he co-wrote with Phil Young-Woo, R-Point is set in 1972 during the Vietnam war and tells the story of 1st Lieutenant Choi Tae-In (Kam Woo-Seong), who must lead a group of eight men to uncover the fates of the missing soldiers from Battalion 53, their last known position six months ago, somewhere in the middle of R-Point, designated a “non-combat zone” in military jargon, but considered sacred ground by the Vietnamese.

Despite the welcome change of setting for an Asian horror film, sadly, R-Point doesn’t really show us anything new and also lacks any sort of real tension in its story and pacing. And though it tries to give us tiny character notes on each member of the squad to make them more than just mere cannon fodder, this is a tactic used in all war films, a convention of the genre, really, and thus, nothing new, either.

Liberated as we are from the usual urban or rural setting of the standard Asian horror film, it’s sad that the Vietnam setting isn’t exploited well at all. Adrian Lyne’s brilliant Jacob’s Ladder manages to do more in a single Vietnam sequence than R-Point does in an entire feature-length film. It’s unfortunate that Kong and his fellow scriptwriter didn’t pick up on the rich potential of distilling the true horror of the Vietnam conflict and transposing it onto the ghost story template. There isn’t even a hint of the idea of War as Death, as the ultimate faceless spectre which consumes lives indiscriminately, cutting them off short, possibly leaving hordes of restless souls in its wake.

The arenas of horror and dark fantasy have always been rich and interesting places from which to tell stories that reflect back upon the real world. An indie horror film like The Ghosts of Edendale, an allegory on the price of success and the difficulties of making it in Hollywood, is a good example of using the template to tell multi-layered stories. And though The Ghosts of Edendale was far from perfect and wasn’t really all that scary, it did have something it wanted to say. R-Point is a straight-forward ghost story with no discernible layers to it, which is, in and of itself, not necessarily a bad thing; but then, if it’s a ghost story that isn’t particularly scary in the first place, then what is it, in the final analysis?

There are, to make matters worse, plot holes that weaken the film even further. Was the Lieutenant that preoccupied that he didn’t even make a headcount? Is a battalion that big that a member of it wouldn’t even recognize a fellow comrade? (Of course, I’ve never been in a war myself, so maybe these are natural enough mistakes, but somehow, they just seem like conveniences to set up the film’s latest “scare.”) And the leaps of logic Lt. Choi makes in the final set piece—which seems terribly derivative of a similar scene in John Carpenter’s astounding remake of The Thing—are stupefying, to say the least.

By the film’s climax, the truth of R-Point is as much of a mystery as it was at the beginning, which may have been the idea, but such as it is, it’s a dissatisfied feeling I have coming away from the movie. At a time when the Asian horror film bubble is showing signs of strain, I had high hopes for R-Point, but it just doesn’t deliver.

Not particularly noteworthy as a war film or a horror film, R-Point doesn’t have all that much going for it, save for a couple of creepy moments. It feels rather like one of those ghost stories told to you by a friend or acquaintance: no real flair in the tale-telling, and the scares seem generic and tired.

With Asian horror films practically a dime a dozen these days, and where even the not-particularly-good ones are being gobbled up by the Hollywood remake machine, it’s only the exceptional ones that truly deserve our attention. The quiet, subtle horror of Fruit Chan’s Dumplings was way ahead of last year’s pack, including Takashi Miike’s One Missed Call. And ultimately, as far ahead as Dumplings is from One Missed Call, so is One Missed Call from R-Point. Though some might think One Missed Call is derivative of films like Ringu and Ju-On, it at least was saying something and was scary as well; R-Point is just limp and wan, an anemic entry in the Asian horror film scene, at a time when we need films with hot, boiling blood in their celluloid veins to keep the movement vital and alive.
Stale blood, rusty Blade
By David Hontiveros

Okay. First, score card.

Based on the adventures of the Marvel comic book vampire hunter, Blade was written by David Goyer and directed (using the term very loosely here) by Steve Norrington; for my money, the only saving graces of the film were Udo Kier and Stephen Dorff.

Then, Blade II came along, and Goyer seemed to understand (as he didn’t seem to on his first go-around) that a Blade film should be a Wesley Snipes action vehicle—let the man do what he does best. Well, Blade II was that. What’s more, as film is a director’s medium, a Blade film, like any other, needs a director; and Guillermo Del Toro (Cronos, and El Espinazo Del Diablo or The Devil’s Backbone) fit that role admirably, crafting a popcorn horror film smothered in butter, blood, and adrenaline. Top that off with key design people like comic book artist Mike Mignola (whom Del Toro would work with again on the film adaptation of Hellboy), and Tim Bradstreet (an artist who has made a name for himself doing art for, among other things, a role-playing game called Vampire: The Masquerade), who did “vampire design,” and you’ve pretty much got a kick-butt vampire movie.

Now, we’ve got Blade: Trinity, with Goyer not just returning as scriptwriter, but now also as director.

“In the movies, Dracula wears a cape, and some old English guy always manages to save the day at the last minute with crosses and holy water. But everybody knows the movies are full of sh*t.”
-- Hannibal King


That little bit of voice-over opens Blade: Trinity, and ironically enough, truer words were never spoken. The plot (such as there is) involves a group of vampires led by Parker Posey’s Danica Talos, who have just discovered the progenitor vampire (TV’s John Doe, Dominic Purcell, currently on Prison Break) who has gone by many names in his long existence, including… Dracula.

They’ve woken him up from his self-induced slumber to, 1) hunt and kill Blade (the raison d’etre of the Bloodpack in Blade II), and 2) perhaps make them able to walk abroad in daylight as well (Deacon Frost’s motivation for hunting Blade in the first movie).

Kick-starting their anti-Blade campaign by framing the vampire hunter for a crime he mistakenly commits, Posey and her Fang Gang manage to place Blade in a dangerous position, where even the government and local authorities are actively seeking him out as a menace to society. This might have been an intriguing angle from which to approach the story, if it hadn’t turned out to be a mere plot device to introduce Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds from the TV series that began life as Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place) and his Nightstalkers, most of whom, predictably enough, turn out not to be characters at all, but rather, motivation for Abigail (Whistler’s daughter, played by Jessica Biel, from TV’s Seventh Heaven) to continue her vampire hunting.

Thus armed with a script that freely ransacks elements from his own closet of already-produced ideas, Goyer ends up giving us a film that serves generic, by-the-numbers action, when it should be knocking our proverbial socks off. There is no sense of the frenetic movement Del Toro brought to Blade II here in Trinity, and even the action sequences, normally a trademark of a Blade film, seem half-hearted, as if they’re there precisely because they’re a trademark, because they’re required, and not because there’s anything particularly new or even worthwhile to put on display.

Additionally, any film of this sort needs a good, charismatic villain. We had that in Blade II’s Damaskinos (Thomas Kretschmann, from The Pianist and recently, King Kong) and Nomak (Luke Goss), and as I mentioned earlier, Blade’s only good points were Kier and Dorff as baddies. Trinity’s Drake hardly registers as a character, much less an antagonist to be fearfully respected, or the ages-old bloodthirsty creature he’s supposed to be. He’s simply there, and it’s not just the performance that’s lacking; the script really doesn’t give him any sort of presence. As it is, Posey’s Danica is a more amusing villain to watch, thus making Drake’s final confrontation with Blade obligatory, rather than something the audience looks forward to with anticipation. Even Wesley Snipes, who has always brought a raw physicality to the role of Blade, seems abstracted here, as if he’s not all there, as if his heart really isn’t in it this time out.

To be perfectly honest, after having seen the not-too-thrilling Trinity trailer, my biggest motivation for actually watching it boiled down to Parker Posey. (What can I say? I love her.) Even then, we hardly see enough of her in the film, as a significant portion of screen time is handed over to Biel’s Abigail, the oh-so-cool-I-listen-to-hip-music-on-my-iPod-while-vampire-slaying hunter whom Marvel is hoping will beget a spin-off, as Jennifer Garner’s Elektra did from another woeful Marvel production, Daredevil.

Having mentioned Posey, it’s interesting to note that it took two of indie film’s best and brightest, Posey and Natasha Lyonne—who plays blind Nightstalker Sommerfield—to offset one WWE superstar (Triple H, as vampire Jarko Grimwood, who follows in the footsteps of fellow wrestlers The Rock and Rob Van Damme, in making a bid for big screen stardom). Two-to-one. Sad, but true.

Ultimately, Blade: Trinity joins two of my personal lists. It settles snugly beside Scream 3 and Josie and the Pussycats, on my list of Films Where Parker Posey Is One Of The Few Saving Graces, and joins the ranks of Bad Comic Book Films, where I’ve relegated recent Marvel movies like Daredevil and The Hulk. To make matters worse, Trinity is also a step back for vampire films as well.

As it is, it may take a while for me to wash the taste of stale blood out of my mouth.

Monday, April 10, 2006

TAKOD, reviewed in Sunday Inquirer Magazine
http://news.inq7.net/sunday/index.php?index=1&story_id=72181

“Takod” by David Hontiveros, Visual Print Enterprises

SOMETHING’S rotten in what was once the little settlement of Mapayapa. And now, years later, Mike Lasombra returns to this place from his past with a curious pendant around his neck. After encountering a wizened old woman who knows more than she’s letting on, Mike will discover the throbbing dark secret of Mapayapa. The bloody, frightening shadow behind Mapayapa will require more of Mike than he ever imagined. All this, in straightforward horror and in allegorical manner, is stuffed into Hontiveros’s compact and creepy novella. RSDV

Friday, March 17, 2006

(movie review: Suspect Zero)

A VIEW TO A KILL

By David Hontiveros

A few years back, E. Elias Merhige gave us Shadow of the Vampire, the canny exploration of creativity set against the backdrop of the filming of the classic German silent film Nosferatu. Now, Merhige returns with Suspect Zero.

“A 50 foot shark. Ever see one?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”

FBI Special Agent Tom Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart) has been relegated to the Albuquerque field office after a six-month psych evaluation following a much-publicized breach of Bureau protocol. As it turns out, Mackelway has become the obsession of Benjamin O’Ryan (Sir Ben Kingsley), a man who claims to be a former FBI agent, and is apparently a remote viewer, a psychic individual able to “see” things happening in distant locations. Shortly into the film, Mackelway becomes embroiled in the investigation of a man murdered by O’Ryan, a man whose eyelids have been sliced off.
If you’re beginning to get the impression that Suspect Zero is a grisly, disturbing piece of film, well, you’re partially right. Though certainly nowhere near as grisly and sordid as Seven or Saw was, Zero is a subtly disturbing exercise in the building of mood. With masterful editing and the use of eerie audio tracks and an eclectic and interesting musical score, Merhige manages to construct a movie that keeps itself afloat by virtue of atmosphere.

“Okay, but a serial killer, by definition, is condemned to repetition, isn’t he? I mean, isn’t that what he’s all about?”

Where Zero falters however, is its script (by Billy Ray and Zak Penn), which doesn’t allow itself to build any momentum to carry us forward. The fact that there doesn’t seem to be any sort of urgency to solving the case doesn’t help matters much either. Unlike The Silence of the Lambs or The Cell, where we are given a specific victim in current jeopardy to identify with, the victims in Suspect Zero are too much of ciphers for the audience to care about, except in the most abstract of ways.
Though not as handicapped as Seven is when stripped of its technique, Zero nonetheless lacks a certain something to make it a film of substance. Or perhaps, there is a little too much there to make it a tight, coherent piece. Much like the frantic and cluttered writing and art of O’Ryan, one detects a certain busy-ness of plot elements and details that only serve to obscure the merits of what could have been an excellent film.
Fortunately, we have Eckhart and Sir Kingsley to keep us occupied. Eckhart, with his past work with Neil LaBute (In The Company of Men, Possession), has proven to be an engaging performer, and Sir Kingsley brings both a borderline psychotic intensity and world-weary humanity to O’Ryan that is a privilege to watch. Given that, it’s sad that Carrie-Anne Moss, who proved in Memento that she can do more than just fancy martial arts on wireworks, isn’t given much to do by the script.
And once again, the script is the culprit, which I believe is the case with practically all the post-Silence of the Lambs serial killer thrillers, including its sequel Hannibal, and its prequel, Red Dragon. Not even Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter could save Copycat, and as I alluded to earlier, bereft of David Fincher’s moody technique, Seven’s script isn’t a lot to write home about.

“We saw things men shouldn’t see. Agony. Torture. Evil.”

In trying, among other things, to posit a new sort of serial killer for the new millennium, the metaphorical “50 foot shark,” which may exist despite not having been seen by mortal eyes, Suspect Zero only succeeds in giving us a muddied view of a grab bag of ideas that never quite comes together into a cohesive whole. Perhaps if Ray and Penn had trimmed down some of the story’s minutiae, focused less on ideas and more on the story’s rhythm, Suspect Zero could have been the film it clearly wanted to be. As it is, though it isn’t a total waste of time, it also isn’t an entirely satisfying cinema experience.
(movie review : Paul Abascal‘s Paparazzi)

REALITY THROUGH A CRACKED LENS
By David Hontiveros

Mel Gibson returns to the secular world as one of the producers of Paul Abascal‘s Paparazzi, a revenge fantasy for those weighted down by the terrible burden of popularity.

Bo Laramie (Cole Hauser) is the up-and-coming star of Adrenaline Force, whose sequel is even now being filmed. But Laramie and his family quickly become the targets of a gang of paparazzi led by Tom Sizemore, who make the star’s life a living hell of popping flashbulbs and covertly-taken pictures. This harassment culminates in a car accident which injures Laramie’s wife (Robin Tunney), and puts his son in a coma. Unable to convince the police that the paparazzi caused the accident in the first place, fate conspires to put Laramie in a position to pass judgment over one of the guilty party. And thus begins his vendetta to punish those who have done harm to his family, while a detective, played by Dennis Farina, begins to grow suspicious of the action star.

Now, the inherent problem of the revenge fantasy as entertainment is the brand of morality it presents to the audience, given that these are films where individuals take matters into their own hands, and a body count is racked up, in the name of justice.

Laramie goes off the deep end and engages the sleazy paparazzi in a dangerous war to exact revenge. Okay. He does it since his family was hurt. We know this sort of thing happens.

The problem presents itself when there is no apparent consequence for the actions Laramie takes. There doesn’t even seem to be any psychological toll on him, for actions that include, among other things, premeditated murder. It seems to be just another script he’s acting out. Just another role he’s taken on: the alpha male defending his brood from predators.

And the paparazzi here seem like nothing more than a pack of ravening wolves, salivating for that next compromising photo, systematically destroying lives and reputations by distorting the truth to sell tabloids. Now, though it is possible that every single paparazzi in the world is irredeemable scum, it’s also entirely possible that they’re not. But as it is, in the film, it’s pretty black and white. These “photo journalists” are bad, and show no remorse whatsoever for the reprehensible acts they take to make a buck. So, in that sense, the film is definitely slanted. In that sense, there could possibly be a distortion of truth here as well; perhaps not on the level of the tabloids making up stories from thin air and suggestive photos, but a distortion nonetheless.

And though of course, granted this is a work of fiction, we must acknowledge that on a certain level, the revenge fantasy is a vicarious thrill for the audience. Every goon punched, every murderer shot, is a surrogate for every boss/employee/co-worker/random stranger we’ve ever had the irrational urge to hurt and maim. The revenge fantasy is exactly that: a fantasy that allows us to enact bloody, Technicolor surround sound rampages of righteous fury, while enabling us to go home with our hands and consciences spotless.

But when a revenge fantasy is presented to us as a real world scenario, as opposed to the hyperreal falsity of a Kill Bill, I feel there should be a responsibility to portray the consequences of the action on-screen. If the ostensible “good guy” is allowed to take the law into his own hands, and then allowed to get away with it without any scars, what does that say to us, the audience?

And don’t get me wrong. I’d hate to play the Morality Police. I just try to take any film on the ground upon which it stands. This is no hyperreal, ultraviolent tale that is so over the top, no one could ever mistake it for “reality.” Paparazzi is the story of a man, a husband and a father, pushed too far, who acts outside of the laws of man and God, to redress the wrongs done to him and his family.

What is doubly odd for me is the fact that Mel Gibson produced the film. For someone who faced so much furor over The Passion of the Christ because of his faith to back a film with a script such as this strikes me as strange.

But let’s leave that tack for awhile. Barring any sort of morality or message, the storytelling itself is just plain faulty. Laramie doesn’t get away because he’s particularly smart or has thought his way ten steps ahead of the paparazzi and the police; it just turns out that way. And quite suddenly, whatever suspicions the detective may have had just conveniently evaporate for no apparent reason. Plus, the cameos of certain Hollywood personalities are so gratuitous, they’re irritating. And I won’t even touch the Lady Di parallels.

Ultimately, Paparazzi is the worst sort of film to me: the kind that doesn’t seem to have consequences, where characters are allowed to act without any repercussions; the kind of film that seems to mirror not reality, but rather the false portrait of it Hollywood seems to favor. A world where we all have the impunity to do whatever we want, because in the end, just before the credits roll, everyone’s happy and smiling, safe and content in the knowledge that they have done right by acting in their own self-interest.

This is the world as seen through the lens of Paparazzi. I don’t know about you, but that’s not the world I choose to live in.
(movie review : BIRTH)

BORN AGAIN?
by David Hontiveros

You've been mourning for your spouse for the past ten years, and finally, you feel ready to move on. You have a fiancee who is devoted to you, and you've set the date for your wedding.

Then a ten-year old child comes into your home and your life, claiming to be your dead spouse, asking you not to get married. What do you do?

This is the predicament Anna (Nicole Kidman) finds herself in, in Jonathan Glazer's Birth. Taking this unconventional premise, Glazer is able to craft an elegant tale of loss and hope, of the possibility of finding love in the most bizarre of situations. He is also able to elicit yet another stunning performance from Kidman, who continues to mature as an actress after having left the blinding glare of being Mrs. Tom Cruise behind.

There is a definite European feel to Birth, with its studied and measured pace, and its muted emotions. Had this been a Hollywood production, the histrionics and manipulative tear-jerking scenes would have come fast and furious. As it is, there is only one real outburst of repressed anger and frustration; all else is even-toned conversations, teary eyes, and moments of silent, private agony, while the stirring score of Alexandre Desplat moves us to empathize with the characters' inner turmoil.

Though Birth could be considered a variation of the spouse-comes-back-from-the-dead scenarios depicted in films like Anthony Minghella's Truly, Madly, Deeply, or Steven Spielberg's Always, the tone and feel of Glazer's film is decidedly different. In this respect, it actually reminds me of Todd Haynes' Safe and Far From Heaven, both starring Julianne Moore, Kidman's co-star in The Hours, both equally measured in their staging and emotion.

There are no cathartic outpourings here, but rather, an almost gentle stirring of pain and longing, like a subtle undertow that, before you realize it, has drawn you out into the middle of the ocean. It doesn't drown you though; it just leaves you stranded.

That's one thing about Birth: the ambiguity.

Dialogue can get pretty sparse in the script (written by Milo Addica and Jean Claude Carriere), and since some actions of certain characters are pretty extreme, the lack of solid motivations could be a source of audience frustration. I'm all for ambiguity, so long as the audience is given enough clues and signposts to work with. In Birth, there is one major character action whose motivation is left hazy by story's end, and unfortunately, we don't know enough about the character to make any inferences, much less assumptions, regarding motivation, so that's a sad shortcoming of the film.

Also, I don't think we see enough of the reactions of the other characters to the return of the dead spouse (Sean) in the body of a ten-year-old. True, this is a love story of sorts, but why pepper the story with so many other characters if we don't actually see them as people? Certainly we know some characters are definitely on the side of, "No, he can't be your dead husband," but there are others who we can't really read properly. Lauren Bacall (who plays Kidman's mother) has one telling line of dialogue which could indicate why she takes her chosen stance on the matter, but we never really are certain what she thinks or feels, which is the way with most of the other characters. We're never truly sure if they just believe the ten year old Sean is lying, or they're unwilling to consider the impossibility of the situation.

For that matter, we don't see enough of the boy's parents to see how this strangeness is impacting on their lives. Not that I'm asking for a Hollywood cue-the-power-ballad moment when Sean's mother looks through a photo album wondering where her son has gone, to be replaced by this cold, detached stranger who claims to be some woman's dead husband. Certainly not that. But perhaps a little more parental presence would have helped the proceedings.

With all that said though, let me make it clear that I don't hate Birth. I don't even dislike it. I just don't think I actually love it. (Or maybe its ambiguity has rubbed off on me.)

It's a well-crafted film with a certain, assured pace that never falters in its storytelling, and in addition, has commendable performances. It is also able to pose questions, from the general-- Do you believe in reincarnation?-- to the provocative-- What would you do in this situation, given all that society says is taboo about romantic love between adults and children?

It's just that the emotional distance, coupled with the ambiguity, give it the sort of arty feel that makes the whole package a wee bit difficult to access. Call me a Philistine, but perhaps in this case, a little Hollywood may not have been such a bad thing.