You can usually count on the critics to give you a good overview of a movie's merits. When you look at a consensus of reviews, you can usually determine, most of the time, whether a film is worth your time or not. In this case, however, the critical community was blatantly wrong. I don't know what happened, but somewhere along the way, this movie was blasted by almost every critic out there. And as a result of that, the studio dumped the film, and it only grossed $137,000. But I'll tell you the truth, right here and now: this movie is fucking good. It really is. What's more, it's actually one of the best movies of this past year. How's that for being incredibly, amazingly wrong?
Based on the novel of the same name, the story is this: A little boy is struck and killed by a car in a hit-and-run accident. The boy's father (Joaquin Phoenix) wants nothing more than to see the killer brought to justice. Meanwhile, the perpetrator (Mark Ruffalo) struggles with the issue of turning himself in, and deals with the fact that if he goes to prison, he might lose his own boy in the process.
Like I said, great fucking movie. This film is miles above Terry George's previous film, the Oscar-nominated Hotel Rwanda - which just shows you how much critics can band together for a common cause... or a common movie that they enjoy.
The performances are all wonderful, but special mention must be made of Mark Ruffalo. We were all introduced to him back in 2000 in the great You Can Count on Me, and he's continually turned in one great performance after another (particularly in Zodiac, one of my favorite movies from last year). Ruffalo's character is truly the glue that holds the whole thing together, and gives everything meaning. Without him, you'd simply have a revenge story, and that's why I can't understand the reviews that criticize the film for being nothing more than that. It has a lot more to offer.
I must make particular mention of the ending. While I won't spoil it for you, I must say that I was totally and completely satisfied with it. While there have been people who have drawn negative comparisons between this film and Mystic River (in terms of the "father out for revenge" angle) I must say that although I love that film, I found this ending to be somewhat more emotionally satisfying, and more true to what would happen in a real-life situation.
That's all I'm saying. Go see the movie. Enjoy it. Keep reading the movie reviews - just ignore the ones for this movie.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
The Mist, revisited
I saw The Mist in the theater back in November, and now that it's on video (well, it will be soon), it seems like a good time to bring it back up again. It's really unlike almost anything out there: it's a smart horror movie. Highly recommended; don't miss it.
What follows is my original review (dated Nov. 26, 2007), with a video clip added in. Enjoy.
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.
What follows is my original review (dated Nov. 26, 2007), with a video clip added in. Enjoy.
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.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Monday, March 03, 2008
Clip of Ida in HD
(I have like 20 minutes of footage, but this is probably the only thing I'll upload due to the long waiting time it takes to deal with HD footage... for a 3 minute clip, it takes almost an hour to render, and then 3 hours to upload on a DSL connection. Anyways, enjoy).
(I have like 20 minutes of footage, but this is probably the only thing I'll upload due to the long waiting time it takes to deal with HD footage... for a 3 minute clip, it takes almost an hour to render, and then 3 hours to upload on a DSL connection. Anyways, enjoy).
The end of the line for New Line Cinema
Well, I'm sure you've all heard the news: Warner Brothers (which owns New Line, and has for some time) has decided to fold the company and produce all further New Line films through Warner Brothers, effectively ending the company.
Well, we can't say we didn't see this coming. After years of smaller releases, New Line hit pay dirt with the Lord of the Rings movies, and, like anyone else, they got greedy. They released many more smaller movies - which tanked - and then attempted to start another franchise with The Golden Compass - which also bombed. This is a similar situation to Miramax... the company that started out with small pictures like Clerks and US releases of foreign films eventually used their success to produce big-budget films like Gangs of New York. In the movie business, you can't stay little forever.
I guess the thing that sucks about this is that throughout its lifetime, New Line always stayed true to its independent roots. Even while having mainstream success, it produced films like The Player and Short Cuts, and it was the longtime studio home of John Waters, who made many of his films there. Hell, they even released Boogie Nights and Magnolia (and had the balls to give this young guy named Paul Thomas Anderson final cut on just his second picture).
I guess it has to do with their humble beginnings. They started out renting 16mm educational films to colleges for instruction, until they took a chance by financing a little movie called A Nightmare on Elm Street. It took them a while to get past those horror-movie roots, but eventually even this little studio had an art house sub-division, FineLine Features, which released films like Hoop Dreams and even the recent Elephant (a co-production with HBO Films). They were eventually bought by Time Warner, and like they say, the rest is history.
It'll be sad to see these guys go, but I have to say, it's still nice to see the New Line logo pop up before a film. Every time I see it before Boogie Nights, I think: These guys had the balls to finance a film from a second-time director, starring Marky Mark and by-then-forgotten Burt Reynolds, about the porn industry, and they gave the director final cut. You have to admit, they had guts. RIP New Line.
Well, we can't say we didn't see this coming. After years of smaller releases, New Line hit pay dirt with the Lord of the Rings movies, and, like anyone else, they got greedy. They released many more smaller movies - which tanked - and then attempted to start another franchise with The Golden Compass - which also bombed. This is a similar situation to Miramax... the company that started out with small pictures like Clerks and US releases of foreign films eventually used their success to produce big-budget films like Gangs of New York. In the movie business, you can't stay little forever.
I guess the thing that sucks about this is that throughout its lifetime, New Line always stayed true to its independent roots. Even while having mainstream success, it produced films like The Player and Short Cuts, and it was the longtime studio home of John Waters, who made many of his films there. Hell, they even released Boogie Nights and Magnolia (and had the balls to give this young guy named Paul Thomas Anderson final cut on just his second picture).
I guess it has to do with their humble beginnings. They started out renting 16mm educational films to colleges for instruction, until they took a chance by financing a little movie called A Nightmare on Elm Street. It took them a while to get past those horror-movie roots, but eventually even this little studio had an art house sub-division, FineLine Features, which released films like Hoop Dreams and even the recent Elephant (a co-production with HBO Films). They were eventually bought by Time Warner, and like they say, the rest is history.
It'll be sad to see these guys go, but I have to say, it's still nice to see the New Line logo pop up before a film. Every time I see it before Boogie Nights, I think: These guys had the balls to finance a film from a second-time director, starring Marky Mark and by-then-forgotten Burt Reynolds, about the porn industry, and they gave the director final cut. You have to admit, they had guts. RIP New Line.
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