The Mist

Film adaptations of Stephen King's work usually go one of two ways: you get great movies like The Shawshank Redemption or Stand By Me, or you get something like Maximum Overdrive. Thankfully, this film falls into the former category. While adaptations of King's non-horror work are usually solid (films like Shawshank, Stand By Me, and The Green Mile come to mind), his horror novels hardly ever translate well to screen. While the rare film like Carrie succeeds, usually these movies go down in flames. I've always thought that the reason these films never work is the failure to translate King's great characters to the screen. While the plot is full of spooky shit, the well-drawn characters are really what make King's horror novels rise above simple pulp.

Now we have The Mist, a film from Frank Darabont - the go-to guy for film adaptations of Stephen King's work. His previous films include both Shawshank and The Green Mile and the underrated The Majestic. In fact, you could even say he owes his directorial career to King, who started him off by giving him the rights to adapt his story "The Woman in the Room" into a short film. Who could blame him for continuing to come back to the well?

Darabont somehow understands Stephen King's work in a way most directors can't seem to grasp. Characters are front and center in his novels, and even this story - Darabont's first horror film - is more about character interactions than the monsters lurking outside. In fact, without giving too much away, the people trapped inside while all this is going down are in some ways more dangerous than the creatures attacking them. As people confront each other and conflict arises, it begins to look a lot safer outside with the man-eating monsters.

I was surprised to see this much bold content in a studio horror film. References to Iraq and George Bush and even religion are woven into the film. Sometimes it's clunky, but it's never unwelcome and always interesting. The fact that the main antagonist of the film becomes not the monsters but a religious fanatic who proclaims these events an act of God and that the only way to drive the creatures away is to start throwing people out the door as sacrifices... let's just say I'm surprised a major studio allowed that. Not just that, but the fact that the scared crowd becomes brainwashed and starts to believe her... obvious allegories to the dangers of religion and even to the unquestioning faith of Bush supporters... not what you'd expect to see from a rubber monster movie. Like I said, it doesn't always work, but when it does, it's great.

Darabont shot this film in a gritty, documentary style, with handheld camerawork and frequent quick-zooms. It could have been cheesy, but it really adds to that "you-are-there" mentality they were going for. They didn't have much money for this, so some of the CGI effects (especially an early monster appearance) look fake. But the caliber of the actors really do serve to obscure most of the technical shortcomings. A great cast, and I won't go over all of them, but you'll see some familiar faces from Shawshank, and Marcia Gay Harden is fucking scary in this... she won an Oscar for Pollock, but she's actually better in this.

It has some shortcomings, and not everyone's going to like a horror movie, but it hits far more than it misses, and it really is one of the best horror films of the last 10 years, hands down.

Lars and the Real Girl

I remember thinking while watching this movie: this is what independent filmmaking is all about. A unique, passionate vision that a studio wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. Independent filmmaking his become quite the narrowly defined genre over the past few years - even the term has taken on a different name. Independent has been compressed to indie, and the output has quickly become hip, coming-of-age teen films. In essence, something that the studios can easily market. When all the independent distributors went out of business or were bought out by the big guys, we were given a bunch of "arthouse" sub-labels (i.e. Focus Features, which is part of Universal) which were nothing more than studio pictures with smaller budgets.

This film hearkens back to the independent films of the 90's - something easily identifiable as independent and something the studios would never produce. Simply read the plotline: A young man, lonely and confused, becomes delusional and begins to pretend that a life-size female doll is actually alive and is his girlfriend. Now, put something like this in the wrong hands, and you have a gross-out comedy or a sketch on SNL. Handled deftly by newcomers Nancy Oliver and Craig Gillespie (writer and director, respectively) however, and you have a touching, layered film that examines loneliness, isolation and love, albeit with a quirky sensibility.

I kept coming back to Harold and Maude while watching this film. Another film with a plot that could be obvious for jokes (an 18-year-old has a relationship with an 80-year-old woman), it instead prefers to go deeper, and look at motivation and underlying issues. It skirts a fine line, and almost always stays on the right side of it.

Ryan Gosling, a recent Oscar-nominee for Half Nelson, could have easily cashed-in on his new found popularity with a string of romantic comedies, but here he takes on a particularly challenging role, and he's simply a revelation. Lars is warm and likable, and the movie simply can't work without him. The rest of the cast is uniformly wonderful. I was especially impressed with Paul Schneider (All the Real Girls). Because of its strange plot, the film will most likely be ignored come awards time, but if it was up to me, I'd give him a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He's funny without being broad, and he gives his character substantial weight and sympathy, which makes his transformation from disappointed brother to a supportive backbone in Lars' life that much more touching.

This movie won't be for everyone, but people with an open mind and a hunger for something different will find one of the best films of the year.

The Great Movies

This is the result of a couple of nights of boredom. I actually think it turned out really well. The objective was to show the power of film through clips of some of the best movies of all time. I think the moving score behind it (Jerry Goldsmith's theme from Rudy) really helps. Check it out, and enjoy.

Click here to watch The Great Movies