Wes Craven's New Nightmare

By the time Wes Craven’s New Nightmare came around, the character of Freddy Kruger had turned from antagonist to protagonist.  Yes, the later Nightmare on Elm Street films still had a formula of a dreamer battling Freddy to keep him from killing and sending him to the grave, but that is not what people went to the theatre to see.  They wanted to see the bad guy.  Freddy had turned into the attraction, the spectacle, and the whole show.  He now had a vocabulary that centred around funny quips, and audience members would cheer for the son of a hundred (or a thousand… I can’t remember this part of the overly done mythology) psychos.

Craven showed a daring ambition to turn him once again into the villain, and returned to the matchup, and relationship, between Freddy and Nancy.  It used the real life actors Heather Langencamp and Robert England to portray themselves in a story where Wes Craven was writing a new script, one that was mirroring reality as was no longer kept at bay from the dark tales of horror.

Craven’s genius came through in the script, and the manifestation of this was in the interaction between Langencamp and England, Nancy and Freddy.  Yes, she had only been the central character in one of the films, but she was the quintessential opposite force to the demented Kruger.  It was through subtleties in the first film that their relationship was established as one of the best horror duos of all time.  It is this relationship, and that of Langencamp and her vulnerable son (whom Kruger looks to mess with) that the weight of the story is held.

It looks in many ways to return Freddy Kruger back into the dark villain, and even pokes fun at his comical reception from audiences within the film.  Craven aims to show that he is not the star, that the evil is what we should root against, and that it is the good that we should identify.  If anything, this movie just proves the fact that any Nightmare on Elmstreet movie without Nancy is impotent at best.  That she is the forgotten force in a film that needs balance, and that through Langencamps acting, the invincible Freddy Kruger has a mortal foil.

The Breakdown of Wes Craven Podcast

For myself, hearing the news that film maker Wes Craven had passed away at the end of August was a big emotional gut punch.  The man had horrified me as a youth, and that was without having even seen one of his films. I remember my sister returning from a slumber party and telling me about a movie she saw called A Nightmare on Elm Street.  Once she told me the premise, my life changed.  Falling asleep was difficult and scary for a good long time, and I would get shivers every time my parents were driving and the car crossed paths with Elm Street.

It was the beauty of the premise that was so powerful.  Being attacked in your dreams, a place where you should be at rest.  Sleep is something that everyone needs, something that cannot be escaped, and to view that activity as death row was so simple yet so innovative.  Craven created a foe who could get you where nobody could save you.  Not the police, not your parents, and not even yourself.

But it was not just the horror that I was cursed with from the movie that made it so vital to me.  When I finally saw the movie, I was amazed at the quality of story telling involved.  The protagonist, Nancy (played by Heather Langenkamp), was a break from the horror scream queens.  She was not just a female who survived until the end, continually running, screaming, and wearing tight clothes.  She was the girl next door, normal and relatable.  She was scared but also brave, searching to learn more about the evil Freddy Kruger, willing to confront him.

It was inevitably the relationship between an ultimate protagonist and ultimate villain that added the appeal of the film.  It was layered and had a message of how the mistakes we make in the past can come back to haunt us.  Yes, it freaked me out when I was young, but it mesmerized me when I was older.  A classic tale that was vivid and psychological at the same time.

In order to give Wes Craven a proper send off, my podcasting partner in crime, Christopher Spicer, and I thought it appropriate to dedicate an entire podcast to the man who had affected both our love of film and story telling.  The podcast to a master of horror can be found here.  And, if you're willing, watch A Nightmare on Elm Street.  You will see one of the best female protagonists of all time rising to the challenge in a sturdy and gripping tale.

United Passions

Receiving a love letter is such a wonderful experience (unless the sign off consists of, 'I'm watching you').  It has been many years since I have received one, but the emotions that came from it are still present.  There was much gratification and warmth written in the words of the lady that would become my wife, and, to use the cliche, I felt like a million bucks.  Love letters, however, are much less sincere when you write them to yourself.

That is essentially what United Passions is.  It is the glorious and heroic tale of how FIFA came to existence and its rise to global financial awesomeness.  It is also funded mainly by FIFA (approximately ninety percent of its budget was covered by FIFA).  Interesting, no?  The source of the funding would indicate why watching this mess feels like sitting through an hour and fifty minutes of propaganda.

The timing of its release was fatefully appropriate, only a few weeks after the United States issued inditements for many top FIFA brass and a week after re-elected president Sepp Blatter claimed he was the president of everybody.  This helps shine a light on many of the misguided attempts throughout the film to show how this football association was all about the game.

Being 'all about the game,' the narrative focuses mostly about the goal to secure money.  While I am sure the business-minded backers at FIFA equate financial gain with success, the viewing audience who sees FIFA as a corrupt organization can't help but laugh at many of the scenes.  One of my favourite lines in the film, which shows such a lack of awareness from FIFA, is a representative from Uruguay mentioning how there is no limit to their resources, and that 'you (FIFA) need the money, we need the world championship.'

This is the central problem of a film overflowing with many problems (including actor Sam Neil not seeming to understand that Brazilians would not speak with a Spanish accent).  The script is one of the most horrendous ones I have encountered, and I have seen Troll 2 and Glen or Glenda.  I will criticize a movie for having expository dialogue and ham-fisted lines if there are, let's say, four to five instances.  That does not sound like a lot, but when there should not be even one, those five lines become eye-rollers and deal breakers.  In United Passions, if one played a drinking game where they had one ounce of beer every time there was expository dialogue or a ham-fisted line the person would be passed out by the time the credits roll.

Technically speaking, there is no merit to this film.  The editing is done in a way that is manipulative and with an agenda.  The music is doubly so.  I suppose there was some attempt at hair and make up, but not enough to season this spoiled and salmonella ridden dish to the point where someone would even want to sniff it.  The box office reflected this, with the film averaging $61 dollars per theatre the one and only weekend it was in release.  If there is a worse film than United Passions this year, I will probably end up crying.  The eyes and the mind can only take so much abuse.

Rating - 0 out of 4 stars

The Martian

Director Ridley Scott has dealt with a series of hit and miss movies over the past few years.  In the last two years he directed critical and box office misses The Counsellor (2013), and Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014).  Both films were poorly reviewed, getting 35% and 27% on Rotten Tomatoes respectively.  I cannot comment on The Counsellor, but I did see Exodus in theatres, and, believe me on this, it was a rather lifeless experience.  The present had been indicating a long and disappointing slide from the skills he showed earlier in his career.

One of the reasons why I love movies so much is that each film is a new opportunity for a talent to show that she or he still has it.  When I sat down to watch The Martian, the first ten minutes had completely convinced me that Scott had returned to pristine story telling and environment crafting form.

If one looks likes to draw comparisons that a film has with its source material, The Martian is a textbook example of it being done right.  What made Andy Weir's novel such an enjoyable and captivating read was the humanizing of the dry-humoured protagonist, Mark Watney (played in the movie by Matt Damon).  The poor lad was stranded on Mars after his team had to evacuate during a horrific storm, and we followed him through sadness, hope, excitement, and depression.  These emotions were mirrored by what the good folks back on earth were journeying through as they followed the story of Watney on Mars.  It was solid, popcorn munching literature that walked us through the spectrum of the human experience.

The film, which was incredibly penned by Drew Goddard (Cabin in the Woods, Cloverfield) was able to capture all of the beats and flow of the book, executing the humour and isolation of Watney with artistic perfection.  This is exalted by a tremendous cast of characters who all exceeded in nailing their performances.  Each character is written as a unique individual, and are all believable in their motives and actions, something that not every movie can boast.

Normally I balk at movies in 3D, but this is a key aspect in the story telling, much as it was in 2013's Gravity (hey, both movies were about shit hitting the fan in space!).  The depth that is created through this medium shows us just how small and insignificant Watney is when compared to the dangers offered up by the red planet.

Speaking of the red planet, this is somewhere we have been before in numerous movies.  I distinctly remember watching Total Recall with my father and being in awe of Schwarzenegger standing on the crest of a hill on Mars before having a fatal fall.  I had been to many different planets through Star Wars and other sic-fi tales, but Mars stuck out to me.  Probably because it was unimaginative.  It was bleak and dead.  That resonated with me about the reality of what the planet could actually be like, and left me never wanting to visit such a lonely and desolate place.

Well, if I thought it looked cool back then, it looks even more amazing now.  The visuals and construction of what we see of Mars by Ridley Scott absolutely look and feel real, with no hint of computer generated imaging at all.  It falls in line with the gauntlet for world building that Joseph Kosinski laid down when he directed Oblivion (not a great movie, but insane and seamless visuals).  It's one thing for a movie to have neat-o special effects, but it is another to create an environment that actually feels like the movie was shot on location.  The eyes are unable to detect inconsistencies, and the subconscious mind has nothing to grab onto to say this isn't a genuine place.  Scott also seems to shove a boot into the backside of the modern movie making system as this insanely special effect-heavy film brought with it a budget of just over one hundred million dollars.  When films with a reasonable budget look so perfect, there are fewer and fewer excuses for the exorbitant budgeted films.

Was this film created to be the greatest movie ever made?  Hell no.  Was it created to contend for one of the best popcorn munchers of all time?  Hell yes.  Movies don't need to be deep in thematic battles while being backed by Oscar baiting performances.  They need to tell a story that grips the audience and invites them into the experience.  That's all a film needs to do to be successful, and that is exactly what happens with The Martian.  In the theatres laughter will be heard, tears may be shed, and people will leave the screening smiling and talking about what they saw.  That, to me, is what the theatre experience is all about.

Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars

The Breakdown of Everest, Black Mass, and The Intern

For some reason I always forget to post a link on my blog for a weekly podcast that I do with my good friend and partner in crime Chris Spicer.  It could be the same reason I would spend ten minutes looking for my cell phone while holding it in my hand.  Yep, I am that guy.

This week on The Movie Breakdown we reviewed five movies from this year, with three of them existing in the dark screening rooms of theatres right now.  We chat about the disaster flick Everest, the 'based on real life' crime opera Black Mass, and the fish out of water soft comedy The Intern starring Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro.  If you read my possibly overly harsh review of Song One, then The Intern is the type of film that can restore faith in the abilities of someone as talented as Hathaway.

Also on the slate were rentals The Cobbler, starring Adam Sandler, and Ex Machina.  One of these two movies may rock your world and attempt to bend your mind.  The other may insult your intelligence.  One may be Oscar worthy in many different categories.  The other may be worthy of a Golden Raspberry or two.  I can't tell you which is which... you will have to check out the podcast to hear the thoughts.

You can find the podcast hosted here.

Song One

Anne Hathaway is terrific, wonderful, and any other positive descriptives that you could dole at her.  She holds within her a great dexterity, charisma, and a charm that flows off the screen and infiltrates the hearts of the audience.  So, what the hell happened in Song One?

Hathaway is the protagonist in a movie that focuses on the intimacy of family and friends while being closely connected through the lifeblood of music.  She plays Franny, a young woman working towards her anthropology Ph.D., who has to return home when her idiot brother gets hit by a cab when he crosses the road before looking both ways while wearing headphones.  Digital Projection Darwin says, 'you have been selected!.'  The dullard is a busker who quit college to... well, to busk I guess.  He also has a creepy obsession with an indie musician named James Forester (Johnny Flynn). Dullard has posters of James Forester on his bedroom wall, and all sorts of doodles in his diary.  When I said it was creepy, I meant creepy.

Well, surprise, surprise.  Franny meets her brother's hero and a relationship ensues.  The relational chemestry between Hathaway and Flynn is about as dry as five saltines crammed into your mouth at once, with very little happening through either dialogue or action to create a dynamic of charm or ye old stomach butterflies.  This is one of the most frustrating aspects of Song One, as it would be quite a feat to get such a flat performance from Anne Hathaway.  It reminds me of what Zack Snyder accomplished in Man of Steel, when he took the vibrant Amy Adams and transformed her into a mere placeholder character.

This is the feature film directorial debut of Kate Barker-Froyland, who also penned the script.  The last thing I want to do is to write someone off immediately, so don't think that I am going to curse down brimstone and the like over this.  From the feel and tone of Song One, I get the sense that perhaps this was just not the story that she was meant to tell.

It comes from the aforementioned drab relationship, but also the lack of influence that the music actually has over the audience.  In the very first scene we are greeted with the dullard busking (moments before he fails to look both ways.  Always look both ways, kids!).  When he sings, there is a passion and drive that emanates from both his strumming and vocals.  And then he is in a hospital bed, and we are unfortunate enough to then hear the music of his obsession, the one and only James Forester.

Forester's music is without life.  It sounds generic.  It feels like it could have been written and performed by anyone, giving no sense of how it would turn him into an indie sensation.  There is nothing recognizable about his songs, other than the fact that he uses a loop pedal during the performance.

This is where I feel the script fails the film.  It appears that the loop pedal (used by many performers and buskers in much better ways) is what the audiences flip out over, one of the instances in the film where it appears that Barker-Froyland does not fully understand the moving components music.  Another example of the misunderstanding of music is when Hathaway's mother, played by the wonderful Mary Steenburgen, talks about how when she dated a famous rock star, he taught her one of the hardest songs ever to play on the guitar, Blackbird by the Beatles.  This is like me trying to sound smart about food and mentioning that spreadable (or sprayable) cheese is as good as the real thing.  Blackbird, be it a nice song, is actually extremely easy to play.

It may sound like I am taking the music aspect too seriously and that I am just being a curmudgeon because the songs are not my cup of tea.  I really am not being that.  There is just a major disconnect between what the director believes music to be and what it is to the audience.  If you watch the movie Begin Again, which I highly recommend you do, you will see a terrific example of how music is made to tell the tale and capture the emotions and journey of the main characters.

With the two major components of what we are supposed to connect to and become passionate about, the relationship and the music, existing without life, there is little more to say about this movie.  I could mention the sound editing, which cuts with every camera cut, leaving a jilting feeling to the audio with very little continuity, something that may be helpful in a film where sound is so important.  What was needed was a flow, was a beat to Song One, for it to feel like it was music being made before our eyes.  What it was in actuality was a poorly edited and curated mix-tape that misses out on the over abundance of talent that the actors possess.

Rating - 1 out of 4 stars

Black Mass

I am always open to checking out a good gangster film.  The key word here is 'good.'  I have learned in the past that if the movie's title has to specifically tell you and sell you on the fact that it is gangster, such as Gangster Squad, it is most likely subpar to bad.  Or Awful.  It could end up being downright awful.

Having an organized crime film that is based on real events or characters can add an impressive depth to the film, unless it is called Gangster Squad.  In 2006 Martin Scorsese directed The Departed, a gripping tale that was based loosely on James 'Whitey' Bulger, the notorious, and legally untouchable, leader of the Winter Hill Gang.  To watch the world of The Departed play out with no knowledge of the source material that birthed it, the viewer may think that this tale is so bizarre that it could only exist in the realm of fiction.

Black Mass, directed by Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace), aims to tell the story from more of a fact centric stance, basing the film on actual events and using the real names of those involved.  The centre of the film, Whitey Bulger (played by Johnny Depp), tells the story of the rise of the Winter Hill Gang in south Boston in the seventies and eighties.  More specifically, it looks to shine light on the notoriety of Whitey and how he was able to be as brutal as he was without having to worry about law enforcement.

Cooper's film focuses on bringing the audience into the experience by incorporating south Boston as a true character of the story, taking us from main streets to tiny alleys, surrounding us with distinct architecture of the historic town.  While the story unfolds, the city remains living and breathing, even though some who cross paths with Bulger don't.  Adding another meticulous layer to the visual and atmospheric experience is the attention to detail that is payed with the wardrobe, hair, and make up.  Truly, Kasia Walicka-Maimone (Moneyball, Foxcatcher) nailed the outfits and costumes out of the park, and sadly I don't have enough room here to mention the entire makeup department, but they deserve loads of credit.


Most impressively transformed through the process were Depp and Bulger's childhood friend turned FBI agent John Connelly, played by Joel Edgerton.  It is difficult to see the actors true faces on display here, and while part of that is due to the cosmetic and physical alterations (I swear Edgerton must have packed on a good few pounds for this role) it is mostly because these two actors are standouts in completely embodying the characters they play.  The sad part is that a lot of the general movie going public may not even know Edgerton's name, and it will probably stay that way as I am predicting he will unjustly be left out of Oscar talk.  We all know what Depp is capable of, but the fact that Joel Edgerton was able to keep pace with him throughout was the main takeaway for me.

The movie is shot brilliantly, with great cinematography and soundtrack steering us through the scenes.  The problem, however, is the fact that the scenes stood out to me as just that... scenes, and seldom part of a flowing story.  The biggest problem with the film was the disjointed narrative, which switched from being told from the 'perspectives' (I use that loosely, because segments told from the view points of different characters felt no different from what we had seen prior) of those involved to third person.

The film takes place over a number of years, which could be difficult to tell seamlessly, but it is doable.  A great number of films do this, but Cooper seemed to struggle with how to pull it off and left me feeling like I just witnessed a scattering of moments and not a full story.  This is unfortunate, because there is a lot of gold here.  I have praised many aspects already, and within Black Mass are some truly memorable and unsettling scenes.  I will be quoting this film for years to come, and there is a good chance that I will be owning it as well.

The finished product, comprising of such wonderful technical displays of talent and lush acting performances, was a bit of a let-down.  The fractured narrative took what could have been a film that is held in the same regard as Goodfellas and bumped it down a notch.  It will be interesting to see what the shelf life of this film is, because I could see it sustaining in pop culture for a while.  There are just too many intriguing moments that take place for it to be totally forgotten, but not enough to guarantee its place in cinematic history.

Rating - 3 out of 4 stars