Oct 31, 2020
Oct 30, 2020
TRICK (2019)
Oct 25, 2020
Oct 20, 2020
THE HAUNTING (1999)
I blame Mike Flanagan and his brilliant adaptation, The Haunting of Hill House, for how unimpressively 1999’s The Haunting plays in our modern era. Though both are based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, ironically, it’s the miniseries which strays far from the novel’s surface story that’s the most successful adaptation, whereas The Haunting, though sticking very close to its source material (until the stupid finale), totally dismisses Jackson’s moral – the implications of loneliness, the dangers of isolation, and the emotional damage inflicted by the inability to feel “part” of something – in favor of lame spookshow spectacle, lame third-act twists, and Owen Wilson. The Haunting didn’t enjoy high marks upon its release in theaters what feels like a hundred years ago, but it’s one of those perfectly reasonable titles to touch base with from time to time for some superficial popcorn entertainment – one of those late-‘90s relics which hails from that moment in cinetime where CGI was just starting to become front and center in large-scale genre filmmaking. There’s 1997’s Mimic and Spawn, 1998’s Deep Rising and Species II, and 1999 had so many examples that it would be obnoxious to list them all, but let’s take a quick stroll down Memory Lane with Deep Blue Sea, The Mummy, End of Days, and House on Haunted Hill. There are a reckless number of examples from this era where studios spent over a hundred million dollars on horror productions, and mostly because of their visual effects. This approach didn’t result in any good movies, but it did result in some fun ones, and for some audiences, that’s enough.
Because of this ‘90s CGI explosion, this era’s offerings all
look, feel, and sound the same – 9-0-C-G-I might as well be its own zip code in
Hollywood because of how hilariously primitive and concretely tied to an era its
films look when compared to some of the visual achievements pulled off by the recent
likes of War for the Planet of the Apes
or The Jungle Book. This was the
biggest complaint with The Haunting way
back when, and that complaint not only remains valid, but it’s actually much
more relevant because of how far CGI has come – this alongside the mini
revisionist renaissance we’ve seen and enjoyed regarding the rebirth of our favorite
horror properties, which had long succumbed to near self-parody, now rebranded
as serious and mature storytelling. NBC’s Hannibal
rescued Hannibal Lecter from the ho-humness of Red Dragon and Hannibal
Rising, purging Anthony Hopkins’ increasingly toothless take on the title
character; 2018’s Halloween wiped
away 40 years of baggage-filled sequels and made Michael Myers scary,
mysterious, and motiveless once again; and Mike Flanagan went back to the most
famous haunted house story in the land to create something beautifully
terrifying and terrifyingly beautiful. (Its follow-up, The Haunting Of Bly Manor, is streaming now on Netflix.)
If you’re familiar with Robert Wise’s adaptation of The Haunting from 1963, then you know his
approach was built on a foundation of suspense first and terror later – without
ever falling back on a single visual effect. Spooky offscreen noises, ominous
pounding on oaken double-doors, and the creepy insinuation that the other
living occupants of the house weren’t to be trusted – these are what made The
Haunting so frightening. It’s tempting to dismiss this no-frills approach
to genre filmmaking in the modern era, considering all the horror flicks that
have since come down the path that relied heavily on visual imagery – The Exorcist, Suspiria, right up to the modern era with The Conjuring (also starring Lili Taylor) or Hereditary – but 1999’s The
Haunting never had enough faith in itself to rein in some of the stupid CGI
in lieu of the fantastic production design of the house itself and the
character dynamics that still (somewhat) contained enough ambiguously sinister
behavior that suggested not everyone had Nell’s best interests at heart.
Ultimately, it’s for these reasons that The Haunting fails to leave any kind of lasting impression: the
distillation of the characters as presented in the novel, and the overreliance
on (poor) CGI instead of trying to establish a mood and tone, are enough to
keep The Haunting from being, at the
very least, a sturdy addition to the haunted house sub-genre. For the most
part, screenwriter David Self (Road To
Perdition) preserves the novel’s character archetypes with commendable
loyalty: Lili Taylor’s Nell is an outcast, ostracized and belittled by her
sister (Virginia Madsen) and brother-in-law, and desperate to forge her own
path in the world. Liam Neeson’s Dr. Marrow seems well meaning and genuinely motivated
by good doctorly intentions, even if his “sleep study” is a manipulation that
eventually leads to a situation he can’t control. Catherine Zeta-Jones maintains
Theodora’s passive aggressive flirtations and socialite-like flamboyance,
although her open bisexuality, which had been left purposely ambiguous in
Jackson’s story (a surprising addition for the 1950s) is just as broad and
obvious as the rest of her character. Lastly, there’s Owen Wilson, ably playing
Luke the California mimbo, exorcised of his implied substance addict canon and
his ties to the owners of Hill House that would’ve threatened to make him an interesting
character. (I still remember our theater’s audience laughing every time Owen
Wilson was on screen, even when he wasn’t vying for comedy relief.) Ironically,
in concept, everyone is perfectly cast to capture their characters as presented
in the novel: Neeson is esteemed and trustworthy, Zeta-Jones is airy and
free-spirited, Wilson is fun-loving and free of responsibility, and Taylor is
lost, lonely, and wanting nothing but to be accepted. The groundwork is there,
but for whatever reason, the film can’t seem to lure the performers’ take on
the characters across the finish line. The ensemble’s performances are fairly mundane
with most of the cast not going out of their way to overextend themselves for a
project that, in their estimation, didn’t call for it, despite this being one
of Steven Spielberg’s earliest producing credits through his brand new
Dreamworks Entertainment banner. Zeta-Jones’ Theo comes off as a teenaged girl,
rattling off some of the film’s most bone-headed dialogue, especially as she
refers to her boots as “savage kicks,” and poor Taylor does her best during the
final act when she’s forced to spew the kind of confrontational dialogue that’s
directed at the house’s main threat but is actually provided solely so the
audience knows what the hell is happening in the very movie they’ve been
watching for the last eighty minutes. If one of cinema’s Ten Commandments was Thou shall not have characters speak aloud
unto themselves for the betterment of observers’ understanding, The Haunting would be the most
blasphemous of them all.
Everything else aside, there remains the most important
question for a horror film, especially
a haunted house horror film: is it scary?
Well, you guessed it: no. It’s not. In fact, except for the demise of Wilson’s
character, in what remains one of the dumbest kill scenes in horror history, The Haunting is so neutered that its
PG-13 rating almost feels like an insult to kids twelve and under. I guess we
can blame Spielberg, who apparently hated the movie and had his name removed, for
the inadvertent overblown spectacle, as he
chose Jan de Bont, cinematographer-turned-director known for his previous
unsubtle action-adventure hits Speed
and Twister (and not-at-all-a-hit Speed 2: Cruise Control), to direct
the update of a classic flick known for its low-key subtlety. That de Bont had
never before (or since) directed a horror flick could certainly point in the
direction of his hiring being a mistake, but to date, he only has five
directorial credits, with a mere two of them enjoying solid reviews and healthy box office. (His last credit
as a director was the awkwardly titled Lara
Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life waaay back in 2003.) While The Haunting does have a fair bit to boast about, mainly Jerry Goldsmith’s
flourishing musical score, gorgeous production design, and Hill House’s
foreboding façade (the opening flyover shot of the house complemented by sounds
of massive and weathered preternatural breathing sets a tone that the rest of
the film fails to live up to), they’re all soon upstaged by some embarrassingly
dodgy CGI, as if the movie didn’t have enough faith in itself to rely solely on
its intricately designed environments to captivate audiences. In 1963, Wise
paid a grip to knock loudly on the other side of some bedroom doors. In 1999,
Spielberg paid a visual effects team millions of dollars to turn a bedroom into
an ominous face, complete with bloodshot window-eyes and a bed that sprouts
spider-like legs. The first is scary, the second is not. High on visuals, low
on creativity: that’s late-‘90s genre in a nutshell.
Neither time nor advances in approaches to classic material have been kind to The Haunting, which, even putting aside the CGI, very much feels like a ‘90s production, dated by its look, feel, and some accidentally hilarious moments like when Neeson reassures his sleep study group that, in case of emergencies, he has his “trusty cell telephone.” Old school audiences enjoyed the novel and the subsequent adaptation that came along four years later. Brand new audiences well acquainted with elongated storytelling as essayed by services like Netflix and HBO found much more substance to enjoy with 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House. This leaves 1999’s The Haunting lost entirely in no man’s land – not nearly frightening enough to command attention, nor “deep” enough to reach the audience’s hearts through its characters, The Haunting is just kind of there – a harmless but mediocre slice of popcorn entertainment that doesn’t come close to haunting its viewers.
Oct 12, 2020
YOU DON'T NOMI (2019)
Before we get into the weeds with You Don’t Nomi, let’s be clear about one thing: You Don’t Nomi, despite its marketing and its cataloging on the World Wide Web, is not a documentary. And that’s because a documentary generally has two things: facts, and a goal. You Don’t Nomi has neither of those things. That’s not to say that it doesn’t offer its fair share of entertainment, or that director Jeffrey McHale didn’t set out with a specific goal in mind, but by film’s end, the goal you take away is the foresight you’d already obtained on your own before you ever sat down to watch. More on that in a bit.
You Don’t Nomi is
less of a documentary and more of a visual essay and appreciation, comprised of
folks from all walks of life either raining down actual praise on the infamous 1995
flop Showgirls, directed by Paul
Verhoeven, or recognizing it for the over-the-top but entertaining piece of
shit that it is, or dismissing it as trashy, immature, and misogynistic…well,
trash. Obviously, your own opinion on this movie that everyone has likely
already seen will determine what you take away from it. Having seen Showgirls a few times during my
pubescence but not for a very long time since then, my opinion on it, over
time, faded into indifference and dismissal. Just one more movie in a sea of
movies that I saw, recognized wasn’t very good, and haven’t really thought much
about since. Except for the occasional reissue of the flick on Blu-ray with
some kind of included gimmicky swag, I assumed Showgirls was largely forgotten. I had no idea it went onto live
out a second life as a cult classic, with theatrical tours and Q&A’s and
live reenactments by actors both drag-queen and non-drag-queen alike. I had no
idea, after all this time, it was a film people were still discussing at all.
You Don’t Nomi includes participation from film critics, Showgirls
superfans and apologists, and pop culture enthusiasts, yet it doesn’t contain
any active participation from a single person involved in its making. Whether
this was purposeful, or because it was impossible to get anyone involved to go
on the record within the confines of a discussion where 2/3rds of its
participants recognize that Showgirls
is a terrible movie, we don’t know. What that leaves, ultimately, are a bunch
of people who had nothing to do with making the movie telling you that Showgirls is brilliant in ways you
didn’t notice, entertaining in ways that were never intended, or without any
redeemable value at all. Ironically, it’s those participants who deride Showgirls’ content as ill-informed,
misogynistic, and immature who come away sounding the most level-headed and thoughtful,
whereas those attempting to defend the film’s legacy really stretch the limits of legitimacy. One participant in
particular, who has dedicated a good portion of his life to defending Showgirls and trying to make people
understand that it’s a flick worthy of a second evaluation, completely
invalidates his position by then going on to lampoon other much more well
received films like Verhoeven’s own Basic
Instinct, or the generally well-regarded Forest Gump and American
Beauty, and calling critics who described Showgirls as being poorly made “fucking morons.” What’s supposed to come off as feisty and fun
instead reeks of elitism, and it tarnishes the otherwise honest and fair point
of “hey, you’ve misunderstood this movie;” and in almost the same breath where
he lavishes praise on Showgirls’ cinematography,
he calls American Beauty a piece of
shit, which has been nearly universally renowned for that very same thing. (For
the record, I don’t like American Beauty,
and I recall being fairly unimpressed by Basic
Instinct when I first saw it, but I also wouldn’t attempt to downgrade the
legacies they’ve gone on to achieve, nor speak for anyone else and dismiss the
people who enjoy them. Also, I love Forest Gump – fight me.)
You Don’t Nomi really
only comes alive during the moments where we get to see archival interviews
with Paul Verhoeven where he both defends and admits Showgirls’ shortcomings, and when there is an honest, critical
analysis done by critics who avoid hyperbole and outrageousness by sharing
their calm and honest thoughts. From a technical standpoint, You Don’t Nomi is engaging through its
clever use of editing, largely incorporating clips from all of Verhoeven’s
other films, either to highlight the director’s commonalities of sex, violence,
the street-justice vengeance of abused women (and vomiting), or even through
the use of editing clips of Showgirls
into his other works, as if Verhoeven’s
better received films are actually passing judgment on it. (Arnold
Schwarzenegger’s Quaid turns on the television in his apartment to see a news
report of Showgirls’ miserable
failure with critics and audiences,
and the expression on his face says it all.)
Despite all my misgivings, you should give You Don’t Nomi a shot if you’re even
marginally interested in Showgirls’ place
in cinema history. You won’t learn a blessed thing beyond the fact that some
people out there like it, and others don’t like it, which is something you
already know, but you may find some value in seeing how the “world’s first
mainstream NC-17 film” is enjoying a second life among the midnight movie
crowd. Plus, if you’ve ever wanted to see a supercut of everyone who’s ever
vomited in a film directed by Paul Verhoeven, you could do a lot worse.
Oct 4, 2020
LETTING OFF STEAM: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE HENCHMEN OF 'COMMANDO'
[The below interview originally ran on Cut Print Film in October 2013 to celebrate Commando's thirtieth anniversary. It is reprinted here with only minor updates.]
Q: Let’s start at the beginning. How did you end up working on Commando?
Sep 24, 2020
FOUR FROM HITCHCOCK
Throughout his career, Alfred Hitchcock directed 55 feature films, along with numerous shorts and documentaries. That’s not a bad haul, nor a bad legacy to leave behind to the world. Having said that, even the most ardent film fan couldn’t possibly name you half of his films in total. In fact, if you look at his filmography starting from the beginning, it would take you seventeen films before arriving at 1935’s The 39 Steps, really the first film, chronologically, that still enjoys discussion to this day. I’m not picking on Hitchcock, though – this is more just a reminder of the reality. Not a single director has a flawless track record when it comes to output (and if the names Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino just flashed in your mind as a challenge to that, I’m laughing at you). But by now, Hitchcock has reached legendary status, and not just from the strong crop of films he left behind: there’s his larger than life persona as a morbid spokesman for his work; there’s his reputation for being a hard-nosed director unwilling to compromise his vision; and there’s also his penchant for victimizing his cast for reasons both professional and personal.
Because of his infamy, he’s achieved mythic status, and as such, we assume everything he touched shocked audiences, changed cinema, and left an indelible mark. Not quite. If you asked that same film fan from before to name ten Hitchcock films, undoubtedly these four titles would be among them: Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds. They are sacrosanct, legendary, backbones of their respective genres, and sterling examples of a director fully in control of his talents and resources.
Photographer L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies (James Stewart) is in the
midst of recuperating from a broken ankle and is confined to a wheelchair in
his apartment. Sheer boredom leads him to watching his neighbors across his
apartment complex’s shared courtyard, keeping up to date on the various comings,
goings, and personal dramas unfolding in everyone’s tiny homes. It’s through
this passive observing that L.B. begins to suspect that one particular neighbor
across the way may have murdered his wife. With the assistance of his
“girlfriend” Lisa (Grace Kelly), who L.B. uses as a mobile quasi-avatar, they
investigate to see if L.B. really does live across the courtyard from a
murderer.
Like the other films in this set, Rear Window would inadvertently create an oft visited trope in
genre cinema going forward, either through presentation or in conception – in
this case, the idea of the voyeur, and of large open windows serving as movie
screens that depict the actions of those inside their own bubble, generally
unaware of their being watched…or sometimes being complicit in their
“performances.” John Carpenter would riff on this concept with a clever
reversal in his 1980 television movie Someone’sWatching Me! with Lauren Hutton and soon to be wife/ex-wife Adrienne
Barbeau. Australian filmmaker Richard Franklin, who would eventually helm the
extremely undervalued Psycho II,
would make a road-set homage with Road Games with Stacy Keach alongside a post-Halloween Jamie Lee Curtis (daughter of Psycho’s Janet Leigh). Finally, following his accident that left
him paralyzed and wheelchair-bound, Christopher Reeve would produce and star in
a Rear Window remake in the late
‘90s for ABC, with Daryl Hannah taking on the Grace Kelly role of the
adventurous troublemaker. It was…fine. Also like the other films in this set, Rear Window is one of many Hitchcock
films that sees a pretty blonde girl (Hitch’s fave) really going above and beyond to make an impotent or uninterested
man commit to her beyond mere petty flirtations and casual trysts. With L.B.
prone and imprisoned in his wheelchair, he’s powerless to stop Lisa as she
decides to take full control of the situation and break into the suspected
murderer’s apartment in order to validate L.B.’s beliefs – and this after the film opens with Lisa basically
nagging L.B. to marry her, which he declines with reasoning that makes the very
concept sound entirely objectionable despite the fact that he’s twenty years
older, has the physique of a snapped rubber band, and he’d be incredibly lucky
to have her.
A near-death experience leaves former police detective John
Ferguson (a returning Stewart) with acrophobia, a debilitating fear of heights,
and very retired. An old acquittance, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), hires him out
of the blue to follow his wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), who believes that she’s
the reincarnation of another deceased woman named Carlotta. Being we’re in
Hitchcock territory, after Ferguson begins his reconnaissance, it doesn’t take
long for him to discover, whether or not Elster’s beliefs have any merit, that
he’s definitely not on a routine job. And he couldn’t possibly have anticipated
how obsessed with Madeleine he would become.
At 130 minutes, Vertigo
is one of Hitchcock’s longer features, and most of that running time is filled
with heavy exposition and twisting/turning developments that, at times, feel
almost more appropriate for a James Bond caper mixed with brooding noir.
Hitchcock once again reigns over his use of cinematography to deeply unsettle
his audience, using camera tricks and extreme points of view to take away our
balance and feeling of stability. The opening scene has Stewart’s Ferguson
hanging for dear life from the top of a very tall building as the gutter he’s
grasping slowly tears off the wall, and as a nearby officer reaches down to
help him, the poor schlub slips and plummets to his death – in just one
sequence, both Ferguson and the audience confront the ultimate fear: not just
impending death, but our front-row view of our only salvation being whisked
away.
Look, no one needs the plot breakdown of Psycho; considering it’s widely
considered Hitchcock’s crowning achievement as a director (these things are
subject to opinion, of course, but…it is),
Psycho is a masterclass in filmmaking
in just about every way – from expert casting (Martin Balsam!) to maximizing
low budget filmmaking (the crew was almost entirely comprised of Alfred Hitchcock Presents personnel) to
wrenching tension out of every scene through the use of slow-moving cinematography
and off-putting angles. Psycho should
be taught in film classes exclusively for its use of the camera. There’s the
slow opening push into Marion
and Sam’s hotel room window (which, while possibly
borrowed from 1955’s Dementia aka Daughter of Horror, is
still expertly crafted), and obviously there’s also that whole shower-scene thing, but
my favorite shot comes as the camera slowly pushes in on Norman standing by the
side of the swamp and listening in the dark as Sam calls out for him back at
the motel. It’s chilling and perfectly engineered. Honestly, I could go on and
on about the 1960 classic that inspired four sequels, a (failed) television
show, a remake, another successful
television show, the next generation of filmmakers (Brian De Palma, John
Carpenter, Richard Franklin, Brad Anderson), and a perpetual mark on the genre,
not to mention the permanent ruination of the sense of security one feels while
taking a shower in a motel room…but we all know this already. Adapted from the
novel of the same name by Robert Bloch, Hitchcock and screenwriter Joseph
Stefano improve the well written source material in every way. Stefano’s
screenplay changes Norman Bates from a monstrous killer to a sympathetic
figure, and Hitchcock had the forward-thinking idea of casting someone with
charming, boy-next-door features instead of someone who more closely matched
the unsightly, stocky, balding, and frustrated virgin present in the novel.
Even the shower scene is a complete rebuilding, in which Marion Crane’s demise
is limited to a few sentences: “Mary
started to scream, and then the curtains parted further and a hand appeared,
holding a butcher's knife. It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her
scream. And her head.”
Loosely based on the 1952 short story by Daphne Du Maurier, Hitchcock’s adaption depicts a world being overtaken by angry hordes of birds, atypically flocking together in every species to wage an unexplained revenge against mankind – presumably for being the earth-raping assholes we always are. One of many folks caught in the swarm are Melanie (Tippi Hedren), who’s attempting to charm her way into the life of Mitch (Rod Taylor), who lives in an isolated coastal home. The attacks from the bloodthirsty birds increasingly mount until they find themselves trapped in Rod’s house and fending off the birds that manage to find their way in. Who will survive, and what will be pecked from them?
Truth be told, and in spite of its (deserved) reputation, The Birds is a mixed bag. As a youngin’
obsessed with JAWS and all the
animals-run-amok films that it introduced me to, I used to consider The Birds my favorite Hitchcock film,
but later viewings re-introduced me to a kind of silly film that’s actually at
its best when the birds aren’t on screen (school playground scene notwithstanding,
because that’s the kind of thing
Hitchcock did so well). However, once the opticals of marauding flocks are
overlain into the sky and birds both real and dummy are being thrown into Tippi
Hedren’s face, it all seems pretty nonsensical. It’s also hard to mentally dismiss
how much Hitchcock mistreated Hedren on set, which was the stuff of Hollywood legend
for years before HBO’s The Girl made
it mainstream knowledge in the earliest beginnings of the #MeToo movement.
Alfred Hitchcock is part of cinema history, taught in universities and film schools, still the subject of modern documentaries like the Psycho-deconstructing 78/52, and conjured in the modern descriptor “Hitchcockian.” The four films above are the top reasons why. Even if Hitchcock had directed four or four hundred films throughout his life, the merits alone of Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds would’ve been more than enough to secure his legacy.