Based off of the Spanish-language short film (real short at under five minutes) of the same title and director, this Guillermo del Toro-produced horror picture from first time feature director Andres Muschietti couldn't have been released at a better time, where Jessica Chastain is hot off her success in Zero Dark Thirty. The film is about a couple little girls, who after a horrible and gripping series of events are left alone in a cabin by their father. After five years of their disappearance, the girls' uncle (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) finally tracks them down, but they've basically devolved into feral children. Him and his rocker girlfriend (Chastain), who has her reservations about becoming an aunt, adopt the kids and try to help them re-integrate into a normal life. But those kids didn't live in that cabin alone - they were mothered by a malevolent ghost which came home with them.
The first half hour of the movie is grade-A magnificence. It plays as a pure psychological drama and both the leads and the girls give the material a huge boost in believability. Through a chilling but simple opening credits sequence you understand how the girls lived in the cabin without wasting any time. The movie gets the tone completely right and there's enough doing on dramatically to recommend this to any fan of the genre.
That being said, this film does lose some steam after a while. There's a lot of untapped potential from the 'parent' angle, and due to certain elements of the story, it focuses mostly on Chastain's character (we never really see how the uncle has to deal with being a new parent). At a point the plot becomes all about jump scares and the creepy ghost (which is an actually scary design for a creature), but the most interesting stuff was happening in "reality." If this was only about feral children, or if the ghost stuff was left more ambiguous, this could have been a classic. As it is it's a very well-done, but flawed first feature.
Rating: B-
This film has been in limbo since 2008. Having been one of many blacklisted scripts in Hollywood, the project finally got off the ground when Alan Hughes (who co-directed The Book of Eli with his brother) got a hold of it. Pretty much the opposite of a "passion project," this destined-for-the-bargain-bin title is not worth your time.
Mark Wahlberg plays a private eye working for the mayor of NYC (Russell Crowe) to find out who is cheating on his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones). But is the mayor really doing that, or does he have something up his sleeve, trying to set Marky Mark up in a confusing, convoluted manner? The answer is yes, and this is possibly the most mediocre, boring film I've seen in a long time. I don't even know what to say about it. My strongest memory about this movie is sitting in the theater having to listen to the old lady in front of me, eating both a cheese stick and a stalk of celery, repeat almost every line of dialogue to her equally-withered friend. Broken City is a broken movie, and I can't even think of a single positive thing about it. There was unanimous grumbling coming from my audience once it was over. Besides the actors giving it their all, on a fundamental script level this is a poor excuse of a film.
Rating: D-
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