DAYS OF DARKNESS Rating: *** (out of ****) Cast: Marc Labreche, Diane Kruger, Sylvie Leonard, Caroline Neron, Rufus Wainwright, Macha Grenon, Emma de Caunes Writer: Denys Arcand Director: Denys Arcand
Opening Friday in limited release.
Days of Darkness, the latest from Denys Acrand, has not been ranking high on anyone’s list of the director’s finest achievements. Allegedly the third part of his trilogy that began with The Decline of the American Empire (1986) and continued with The Barbarian Invasions (2003), the new film feels more like a lighthearted American Beauty with touches of Brazil. The early reviews have been harsh (an inevitable problem with following a work as important as The Barbarian Invasions) and it undoubtedly would have benefited from another re-write to iron out some of the sloppiness in the script, but Days of Darkness emerges as one of the more entertaining mid-life crisis films of recent years. It’s that rare thing: a genuinely enjoyable art house movie.
Jean-Marc Leblanc (Marc Labreche) is a mousy, middle-aged civil servant who’s a dead-ringer for Alan Colmes. His day alternates between his stifling job and his even more stifling life at home, where his frigid wife and daughters ignore him. Leblanc’s only solace comes from his large pornography collection and his outrageous fantasies of a life with wealth and power. The fantasies are easy to spot: they usually end with a stunning woman demanding sex.
Days of Darkness is not the polished work one might expect from a filmmaker of Arcand’s stature. The first hour gets fairly repetitive and there’s a long, awkward scene at a medieval fare that could be confused with one of Leblanc’s dream sequences. It lacks the strong emotional centre of Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions, but what it does have is a droll, biting sense of humour. There are a lot of big laughs, particularly in Arcand’s depiction of an increasingly oppressive Quebec (the word “negro” is declared illegal, and security guards track down smokers like Big Brother). Labreche too is very funny and believable in his suburban everyman role. Days of Darkness may be a lark, but it’s the smartest and funniest lark currently playing.
FUNNY GAMES Rating: **** (out of ****) Cast: Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbett Writer: Michael Haneke Director: Michael Haneke
Opening this Friday.
An English-language remake of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997) directed by Haneke himself is perhaps the most unlikely major-studio venture of the year. In the original, two sociopaths hold an upper-middle-class family hostage in their summer home, forcing them to take part in torturous psychological games. That film was bleak, brutal, nihilistic, and emotionally unsatisfying – exactly the sort of difficult fare that Hollywood generally avoids.
How could Haneke possibly find American financing? I assumed he would be forced to compromise his vision, similar to how George Sluizer had to tack an incongruous happy ending onto his Hollywood version of The Vanishing.
Boy, was I wrong. The film Haneke has delivered is nearly identical to his 1997 original. Not only is the gloomy tone intact, but so is everything else, from the geography of the house right down to placement of the tables and chairs. Compared to this, Gus Van Sant’s shot-by-shot remake of Psycho played positively fast and loose with its source material.
In the rare instances when foreign filmmakers have directed American remakes of their own movies, the boredom is usually palpable, yet the new Funny Games turns out to be every bit as good as the original. It’s still powerful, suspenseful, and absolutely merciless towards its characters and its audience.
Seeing Funny Games for the first time is an ordeal. There were many walkouts when it played at Cannes in 1997, and I remember that fateful day when I watched it on DVD, thinking about how nice it would be to turn it off, go out into the sunshine, and reassure myself that the world wasn’t so terrible after all.
Haneke intended the film to be a dark, dark satire of the American media’s glamorized presentation of violence. “In many American films, violence is made consumable,” says Haneke in the press notes. “I want to show the reality of violence, the pain, the wounding of another human being.” His aim was to tell the audience that by being entertained by depictions of murder in film, we are on the same moral level as the murderers. At several points during Funny Games, the killers break the fourth wall and address the camera, as if conspiring with the viewer directly.
Haneke goes beyond attacking the viewer’s taste in movies: he attacks the viewer personally. I hated the contempt that I perceived Haneke had for his audience. Movies like Psycho and A Clockwork Orange trick the audience into sympathizing with their depraved heroes, but those films let us off easy by offering considerable entertainment value. Funny Games, on the other hand, is no fun at all. Frankly, I wanted a film that would reassure me that I was on the moral high ground. Why should Haneke make me accessory to the crimes just because I rented his movie?
Well… why not? Isn’t great art supposed to challenge us? Haneke has said he wants this remake to reach the multiplex crowd that supports the torture porn genre, but he is most skillful in challenging his own bourgeois art house audience. Most of his films paint less-than-flattering pictures of the upper-middle-class lifestyle (in Funny Games, the family’s elaborate gate keeps them from escaping), and in interviews he has said that this film was not meant as a rebuttal to lowbrow horror flicks, but to the work of Palme d’Or winner and critics’ darling Quentin Tarantino.
Watching the Funny Games remake, already knowing everything that was to come, I was able to appreciate just how meticulous Haneke is as a filmmaker. Notice his decision to not use non-diegetic music deprives us of one of the medium’s most reassuring artifices. Watch how he creates a stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere by frequently focusing the camera away from the characters that are talking. Look for moments where Haneke subverts the conventions of the typical thriller (near the beginning, the camera lingers on a knife, presumably to establish its importance. When the knife finally reappears towards the end, it’s as a cynical joke). And of course, keep in mind that most of the violent acts take place off screen, something I didn’t even realize when I first saw the original film.
So what’s new in the remake? Well, very little. In fact, the few times where dialogue has been dropped or shot constructions have been altered will stick out like a sore thumb for anyone with a good memory of the original. Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt and Brady Corbett now play the four central roles, and they fit their parts so perfectly that memories of the original actors rarely arise. Pitt in particular gives a great, creepy performance that deserves comparison with Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.
If you’ve seen the original Funny Games, do you need to see the remake? Maybe not. But then again, if your first reaction was as negative as mine, you may find that another viewing can be a revelation. I certainly didn’t “enjoy” either version of this film, but they both made me rethink many of the violent films I’ve enjoyed. For that alone, Funny Games is valuable.
CJ7 Rating: ** (out of ****) Cast: Stephen Chow, Xu Jiao, Kitty Zhang, Lee Shing-Cheung, Lam Chi-Chung, Fung Min-Hun Writers: Stephen Chow, Fung Chi-Keung Director: Stephen Chow
Opening March 14 in limited release
Stephen Chow’s attempt to conquer the American market continues with CJ7, a whimsical, effects-heavy sci-fi comedy. Chow, “the Jim Carrey of Asia,” has starred in over forty films and directed eight, but few of them, which depend heavily on Cantonese wordplay and unspeakably broad comedy, have made much of an impression outside Hong Kong.
With his films Shaolin Soccer (2001) and Kung Fu Hustle (2004), however, Chow replaced much of his colloquial sensibility for more accessible material: special effects, elaborate action sequences, and over-the-top visual comedy. He was rewarded with strong reviews and box office across the globe, but I don’t think his newest film, CJ7, is going to do much to broaden his appeal. Chow’s imagination is still on display, but this time his sloppiness gets the better of him.
Chow’s screen-time in CJ7 is surprisingly minimal. The real star is child actor Xu Jiao, who’s a cute little kid. He plays Dicky, the oft-bullied son of a poor construction worker named Ti (Chow). Dicky wants a high-tech toy called a CJ1, and is dismayed when Ti can’t afford it. Later that evening, during his daily search through the local dump, Ti finds a green egg deposited by a nearby spaceship, and gives it to Dicky, calling it a ‘CJ7.’ But wait, it gets better – the egg hatches and CJ7 turns out to be a superdog from outer space.
Chow has trouble maintaining a consistent tone. Silly scenes and moments of cloying sentimentality clash jarringly, and when the inevitable tragic situation arises about three quarters of the way in, it’s hard to care. Characters never extend beyond their broad archetypes. This is okay for a film like Kung Fu Hustle where story is intentionally pushed aside for rapid-fire comedy, but in a film with “heart” like CJ7, the script just looks undercooked.
Like Chow’s last few films, CJ7 uses CGI to a hyper-stylized, downright cartoonish extent. The CJ7 character, which is entirely computer generated, is pretty damn cute, and will probably sell a lot of toys. There are moments where the CGI is used to create some truly excellent gags, like when CJ7 pulls a little toolbox out of nowhere and makes Dicky a pair of high-tech shoes. Still, the Chow is a hit-and-miss comedian, and his misses outnumber his hits. Typical sight gag: one of Dicky’s schoolmates is a girl played by a massive, 250-pound man. Ho ho. This is the type of goofiness that goes over big in Hong Kong and doesn’t travel well overseas… except to kids.
But will kids see this? Sony Pictures Classics seems unable to decide whether to sell CJ7 to family or art house audiences, so a subtitled version is opening in limited release. I actually saw a trailer attached to the beginning of The Counterfeiters of all things. Strange tactics, because the grade school set might like it. But it’s no Kung Fu Hustle: it lacks that film’s relentless comic invention. It’s gentler, less chaotic, and, frankly, less enjoyable.
VIVA Rating: * (out of ****) Cast: Anna Biller, Jared Sanford, Bridget Brno, Chad England, Marcus DeAnda, John Klemantaski Writer: Anna Biller Director: Anna Biller
Now playing at the Royal
Anna Biller’s Viva is one of the most spectacularly misguided films I’ve seen this decade. It is a tribute/parody of the soft-core porn popular in the 1960s and 70s before Deep Throat and others essentially made hard-core legal. These films, produced by the likes of David F. Friedman and Harry Novack, are, for some reason, fondly remembered. Viva serves as a good reminder of why these films are better remembered than seen.
Coincidentally, a few weeks ago I watched a documentary called Mau Mau Sex Sex (2001), which centred around Friedman and Dan Sonney, two old veterans of the exploitation industry. They, along with filmmakers like Russ Meyer and Radley Metzger, spearheaded the ‘nudie cutie’ picture - essentially, films whose flimsy plots were clotheslines for scenes of topless women. Later on, when audiences began to tire of just breasts, simulated sex began being incorporated into their product. Well, “simulated sex” might not be the right phrase - there was a lot of rolling and kissing, but nothing resembling actual intercourse.
Apart from a few rare, rare, rare exceptions (such as the work of Russ Meyer), these films were awful. Bad sound, bad acting, bad scripts, bad cinematography. In Mau Mau Sex Sex, Friedman and Sonney happily admit to that. In fact, Friedman began his career as a carnival promoter, and approached film much in the same way: overpromise, underdeliver. He happily admits that he enjoyed the con. Friedman’s real genius was his skill at lurid marketing. People would leave a Friedman film, bored and unhappy, but excited by the trailer for his next one (”Next week we’ll REALLY see a show…”). At the end of Mau Mau Sex Sex, Friedman and Sonney meet the president of Something Weird Video, which specializes in restoring and distributing vintage sexploitation films on DVD. The two old shlockmeisters can hardly believe it.
They would probably be shocked by Viva, too. It’s clear that Anna Biller has studied the old sexploitation films quite carefully, to the point where Viva could probably be mistaken for one. Biller has recreated the milieu of these films effectively, but her achievement is about as worthwhile and useful as a solar-powered flashlight.
The plot: Biller and Brno play 1970s housewives who get ditched by their husbands. Shaken by their rejection but aware of the sexual revolution, they decide to become high-class call girls. At this point, I would like to direct your attention to the tagline on the poster, which reads, “They were housewives seeking kicks, in a world of swingers, orgies, booze and sin that was the sexual revolution!” Yep, that about covers it. This thin story lasts for a downright painful two hours. As bad as Deep Throat was, at least Gerard Damiano had the courtesy to call it quits after 61 minutes.
While fidgeting my way through Viva, I was reminded of a 2004 film called The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which did to Ed Wood/Roger Corman-level sci-fi was Viva does for nudie cuties. Lost Skeleton also failed for the simple reason that it wasn’t the real thing. One of the appeals of a bad old exploitation movie is the sincerity: those actors up on the screen were trying to be stars, and most of the people behind the camera probably thought this was their ticket to the big leagues. Viva is the work of an obviously talented filmmaker who is intentionally trying to be bad. A fairly hollow victory that she succeeded.
RAMBO Rating: ** (out of ****) Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Paul Schulze, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Ken Howard Writers: Sylvester Stallone, Art Monterastelli Director: Sylvester Stallone
Now playing
Let’s make something clear right off the bat: Rambo, the first film in Sylvester Stallone’s oily, beefy franchise in twenty years, is not good. It is a poor piece of filmmaking. At its best, it’s a plotless mess, and at its worst it’s borderline offensive. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a pretty good time watching it. Unlike his similarly unpromising Rocky Balboa, this is not a surprisingly good film. But if you get perverse enjoyment out of the manly posturing of ‘80s action cinema, it’s pretty good cheese.
The story is about as bare bones as you can get and still have a feature-length narrative film to project on a screen. We join Rambo in Thailand, where he spends his life capturing snakes and moping. One day, Rambo meets a group of white human rights missionaries who want him to take them to war-torn Burma so that they can spread peace, or some such other mission of questionable sanity. After some moping, Rambo agrees, but when they arrive, the missionaries are kidnapped by the Burmese army. Somewhat distressed, Rambo and a bunch of mercenaries take another long boat trip to find them.
Stallone gives the usual performance, but this time around he’s so pumped full of steroids (okay…ALLEGEDLY pumped full of steroids) that he barely looks human. It’s entirely possibly that he has fewer lines of dialogue than any leading man in a movie since Charlie Chaplin. He tries very, very hard to be a badass. Incidentally, Stallone also co-wrote and directed this film, which explains a lot. Let me treat you to some of the pearls in the dialogue: “You know what you are, what you’re made of. War is in your blood. When you’re pushed, killing’s as easy as breathing.” Or how about this: “You didn’t kill for you country…you killed for yourself.” Wait, there’s more: “Live for nothing…or die for something. Your call.”
This movie is one violent sonofabitch. People get mowed down by the dozens; call me insensitive, but is saving a few mercenaries hardly seems worth all the trouble. Take the kids to see Apocalypto before this one. Arrows are shot through heads, throats are torn out, limbs are chopped off, and bodies explode and fly in all directions. Interestingly, this epic bloodbath somehow received an R-rating from the MPAA, while the few minutes of thrusting in Lust, Caution were saddled with an NC-17. Is this an actual reflection of community standards?
Rambo is the sort of film that the Mystery Science Theater crew could do a real number on. It’s mired in clichés and testosterone, but never for a moment realizes just how campy and ridiculous it is. Interestingly, when I saw this film, I noticed that about half of the audience was laughing constantly at the over-the-top violence and fortune cookie dialogue. Unlike such attempts at so-bad-they’re-good cheesiness like Snakes on a Plane or Grindhouse, Rambo is the real deal.
SEMI-PRO Rating: ** (out of ****) Cast: Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, Andre Benjamin, Maura Tierney, Andrew Daly, Will Arnett, Andy Richter, David Koechner, Rob Corddry, Jackie Earle Haley, Tim Meadows Writer: Scot Armstrong Director: Kent Alterman
Opening February 29th in wide release.
You might find Semi-Pro funny if you find Will Ferrell funny. Not just funny as a capable comic actor: I’ve enjoyed several of his performances and I still didn’t care for Semi-Pro. No, you’ll need to find Will Ferrell intrinsically funny. If you open a magazine and see Will Ferrell’s face and immediately break into hysterics, you might like Semi-Pro. His particular brand of deluded, superiority complex characterization (or, if you prefer, shtick) is relied upon in the place of actual humour. This is an underwritten, wildly hit-and-miss film that may test the patience of all but Ferrell’s most loyal fans.
The film set in the 1970s for no particular reason, and takes place in, I swear to God, Flint, Michigan. (Throughout the film, characters repeatedly refer to it self-consciously as “Flint, Michigan”). I’ve been waiting all my life for a non-Michael Moore film set in Flint, and by golly, I’ve finally got one. Ferrell plays yet another egotistical blowhard, this time named Jackie Moon, a has-been soul singer whose most famous song is “Lick Me Sexy” (ho ho) and who is the self-anointed star of Flint’s semi-pro basketball team. But even Jackie’s modest star power cannot reverse the team’s precarious financial position – audience attendance is dwindling at a depressing rate.
Hope arises when it is announced that the NBA will take over the league, but all seems lost when they specify they will be dissolving all but the league’s best four teams. Jackie’s team is the worst in the league, and in a last-ditch swing at NBA glory, he brings on Monix (Woody Harrelson), a past-his-prime ex-NBA star who was traded for a washing machine.
Ferrell gives the usual performance. If you’re familiar with Ron Burgundy or Ricky Bobby, you’ve seen Jackie Moon. The supporting cast list is like a modern-day It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Take a look up at that cast list and marvel at the fact that I’m not even listing many of the gag cameos. Will Arnett and Andrew Daly get some of the biggest laughs as ringside radio announcers, and Jackie Earle Haley has a fun bit as a homeless man. Put to disappointingly poor use is Woody Harrelson, who is relegated to the role of Ferrell’s straight man. What a waste of one of the industry’s most consistently entertaining character actors.
Semi-Pro comes with an R-rating, in contrast to the PG-13s Ferrell’s films normally receive. Those hoping Ferrell and company might take this as an opportunity to tackle some edgier humour will be disappointed to find that the R-rating is mostly due to some strong language, which is used without purpose or style to simply get a cheap laugh. There’s a scene when Ferrell, in a moment of rage, yells at his teammates, “You mother****ing c*******ers!” and I swear you could hear a pin drop at the press screening. This is the type of joke that might have made me laugh when I was in third grade and was just beginning to discover the wonders of profanity.
Like all of Ferrell’s broader comedies, Semi-Pro gives the uncanny impression of having been more fun to make than to watch. Ferrell’s films usually feel like a bunch of kids putting on a show, and in the case of Talladega Nights, that translated into a film that was both frequently funny and slyly anarchic. This new film feels far more self-indulgent, as if everyone was so busy laughing at each other’s improvised shenanigans that they forgot to write any actual jokes. Some scenes linger awkwardly onscreen for too long, like a dream sequence where Jackie meets his mother in heaven or a strained subplot involving Harrelson and Rob Corddry as his ex-girlfriend’s current paramour. Then there are scenes like the one where Jackie announces that at the next game he’s going to wrestle a bear. The idea is genuinely hilarious, but then the film is obligated to follow up on it, leading to a scene that is long, predictable, and deeply unconvincing.
One of the biggest problems of Semi-Pro may be its sense of been-there-done-that. Jackie Moon is nothing more than Ron Burgundy with a new name, or Ricky Bobby with a new sport. Ferrell’s legions of fans seem to lap his formulaic comedies up (certainly more so than they do his occasional stabs at more highbrow filmmaking like Stranger than Fiction or Melinda and Melinda), and they may very well flock to see Semi-Pro as well. But make no mistake: the well is running dry. I just hope Ferrell realizes it.
GEORGE A. ROMERO’S DIARY OF THE DEAD Rating: * ½ (out of ****) Cast: Michelle Morgan, Joshua Close, Shawn Roberts, Amy Ciupak Lalonde, Scott Wentworth, Joe Dinicol, Philip Riccio Writer: George A. Romero Director: George A. Romero
Opening Friday in limited release
George A. Romero is some kind of living legend. Having pioneered the zombie subgenre with Night of the Living Dead (1968), one of the best horror films of all time, he returned to undead territory with three alleged sequels, Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), and Land of the Dead (2005), a big-budget studio production. Following the last film’s box office failure, Romero has returned to his independent roots with George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, a reboot to the already tenuously connected series. It’s also his weakest zombie movie to date: dull, tired, and very mistaken in what it thinks is profound.
Diary of the Dead comes advertised as “a new vision of terror from the legendary filmmaker.” This “new vision” is the decision to structure the story almost entirely from the perspective of the protagonist’s video camera (he’s documenting the action). Sound familiar? To be fair, Romero’s film made its festival debut several months before a certain J.J. Abrams monster movie did the same idea better. (Back then it only looked like a Blair Witch Project rip-off).
Apart from this creaky structural innovation, the monotonous plot should is familiar stuff: a group of college students making a cheapie horror flick learn that the dead have risen. They hop into an RV and head for a sanctuary. When they arrive, they find zombies, and someone dies. Repeat.
Romero has never been a very good director of actors. While this film’s unknown cast members don’t exactly humiliate themselves, they recite their awkward dialogue pretty stiffly, and the characters are painted with such broad strokes that very few make an impression. The unfortunate exception: Scott Wentworth as a middle-aged British professor in charge of delivering ominous pronouncements. He evoked quite a few titters from the audience I saw the film with. Is Wentworth trying to do camp? It certainly doesn’t work within the solemn context of this film.
Romero is known for infusing his horror films with social commentary – Dawn of the Dead famously attacked consumerism by having hordes of zombies heading mindlessly to a shopping mall. At the TIFF Q&A session, Romero said he was interested in exploring a culture that, with the proliferation of YouTube, MiniDV cameras and blogs, gives everyone the power to be a reporter. An interesting target, but Romero does little more than point out that an increasingly democratized media exists. The film hits its lowest points when Romero includes voiceover narration to hammer his few simplistic ideas home, a decision that will be appreciated by those who thought the image of zombies in a shopping mall was too subtle.
But what about the zombies? Well, there are some good, gory attacks here and there (dig the flesh-eater that gets his skull burned by acid) but the suspenseful/horrific moments are shockingly sparse and flat. It breaks my heart to accuse Romero of being behind the times, but compared to something like 28 Weeks Later, the shenanigans of Diary of the Dead feel downright sedate.
While Romero isn’t the subtlest of social commentators, he’s proven himself to be one of the best that the horror genre has, and the clever Bush-era satire of Land of the Dead showed that he still has teeth. The Weinstein Company has expressed interest in making another entry in the Dead series, and as a longtime admirer of Romero’s films, it would be nice to see him get his undead mojo back. As it stands, Diary of the Dead is a stiff.
Cast: Michael Stahl-David, Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, Mike Vogel, T.J. Miller, Odette Yustman, Anjul Nigam
Director: Matt Reeves
How strange it is to remember that in the weeks following September 11th, there was so much talk in the media about whether scenes of urban chaos and destruction would ever be permissible in popular culture again.Now just over six years after 9/11 comes the much buzzed-about J.J. Abrams-produced monster movie Cloverfield, which is a monster movie for the age of the ‘War on Terror.’Here’s my wacky pitch: Cloverfield is like Godzilla meets United 93.
If you’ve been thinking of seeing Cloverfield but haven’t yet, read no further.It works best if you know as little as possible going in.The plot, in general terms: in New York City during a going-away party held in honour of dashing young Rob (Michael Stahl-David), a giant monster attacks the city, without warning or reason.In the midst of the chaos, Rob and a few friends try to make it to the midtown Manhattan to save Rob’s girlfriend.
One of Rob’s friends is Hud, a drunken loser who happened to have been recording the party with a mini-DV camera.Hud takes it upon himself to document the evening so that future generations can “see how it all went down.”The gimmick of Cloverfield is that it is told entirely from the perspective of Hud’s mini-DV camera.
With a few more introductory scenes and a third-person, 35mm perspective, this could easily have been an unspectacular entry in the Godzilla cannon. The choice of filming Cloverfield from the perspective of a mini-DV camera gives it the blunt immediacy of…well, the amateur footage of the planes hitting the World Trade Centre.Cloverfield is uncanny in the way that it captures the confused feelings that was in the air on September 11th: frustration at not knowing the reason for the catastrophe, and anger at the catastrophe itself.
Apart from that, Cloverfield is a damn fine monster movie.It’s intense, suspenseful, and has a few legitimately scary moments.The minor story flaws (how can a character who has been impaled still work up the energy to run?) are redeemed by the ending, which is refreshingly uncompromising.This is also a richer and more complex film than the average monster mash: message boards are already swamped with theories about the movie’s near-subliminal background details (look carefully at the film’s final shot) and its legendary, complicated viral marketing campaign.But perhaps most astonishing of all is that Cloverfield has a genuinely compelling human story, no easy feat considering that the plot construction leaves little time for background details.
