Krampus
Dir. Michael Dougherty
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When today's kids are "naughty" before Christmas, all they're afraid of is getting coal in their stocking instead of a Nintendo 3DS. But in some European countries, children are afraid that a horned demon will visit their home and punish them accordingly. Krampus is an old folkloric beast from Austria that is sort of Santa's evil twin, and surprisingly, it's taken this long for a movie to exploit this concept. Taking a cue from other holiday horror movies like Gremlins, Michael Dougherty (Trick r Treat) has crafted a tongue-in-cheek, Tales from the Crypt-like story set around a family under siege by Krampus and his evil minions, in the form of demonic toys. The movie is surprisingly well made; the creatures are legitimately terrifying (using mostly practical special effects, hallelujah), the sound design is creepy, and its comedy/horror tone is pretty spot on. However, when it came to the story of the family, and the cliched ending, Krampus was a bit disappointing. It's a fun, alternative Christmas movie if you're sick of seeing It's a Wonderful Life for the umpteenth time, but it doesn't have the same staying power as Gremlins for sure.
The story follows a dysfunctional suburban family on their annual 3-night get-together: Tom (Adam Scott), his wife Sarah (Toni Collette), their children Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen) and Max (Emjay Anthony), Sarah's sister Lina (Allison Tolman), her husband Howard (David Koechner), their 4 children, Sarah and Linda's aunt (Conchata Ferrell), and Tom's German Grandmother (Krista Sadler), who secretly knows about Krampus before anyone else, as most grandmothers do. All Max wants for Christmas is for his family to be happy and continue their Christmas traditions in harmony, but after a terrible dinner involving evil cousins and macaroni and cheese with hot dogs, Max storms up to his room and tears apart his letter to Santa - the clarion call for Krampus to come to the neighborhood and raise heck.
The creepiness and creature design are spot-on here. I don't want to give too much away, but Dougherty brought to screen some really unique, creepy, but still fun creatures, like an evil jack-in-the-box that looks like it came from John Carpenter's The Thing, and an angelic doll with a lizard tongue and sharp teeth that was reminiscent of the tribal figure that went after Karen Black in the Trilogy of Terror. The film itself looks good as well; the blizzard keeping the family trapped inside the house makes for some scary, Shining-levels of lack of visibility, there's a nifty stop-motion sequence that explains Krampus's origins, and the slow-motion montage of rabid Christmas shoppers that opened the film was hilarious. The humor overall is pretty hit-or-miss though, and the characters are too broadly painted to be actually likable. I truly didn't care if they lived or died - we weren't given much to go with; with a such a large "ensemble" cast, we learn only 1 or 2 things about each of the characters before Krampus shows up. Still, I recommend the film for fans of comedy-horror, even if the experience is as hollow as a dangling Christmas bulb.
Rating: C+
Trumbo
Dir. Jay Roach
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Come Oscar-time, a series of obligatory "genius white dude" movies and "movies about people making movies" appear out of the woodwork, because those typically garner the most votes from the Academy. Trumbo combines both of these aspects, ensuring the substantial "old coot" demographic of voters are satisfied. Luckily the subject matter is worth it: in Hollywood during the "Red Scare" of the 1950s and 60s, where many industry professionals were grilled into "naming names" of communists, those who refused were blacklisted and couldn't find work. Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) was one such character, only he found a way to keep writing, producing scripts under false names and for smaller production companies, earning himself Academy Awards without his name on the trophy. It's a fascinating story that fans of film history (like myself) should enjoy. I actually teach this stuff, so it's fun to see people like Cranston and Louis C.K. portraying members of the "Hollywood Ten."
Bryan Cranston brings the character a fantastic genius/irascible quality that most actors probably wouldn't be able to handle without turning the audience against them. Even in such on-the-nose moments such as when Trumbo gives a talk to his daughter about communism, Cranston manages to make it feel real and not preachy. His one-liners are typically pretty funny, and the cast of side characters, like John Goodman playing a cigar-toting small-studio movie executive, and Helen Mirren playing a gossip columnist, makes Trumbo feel like an all-star retelling of this period of history. Although I think the film spends more time telling us that Trumbo was a genius screenwriter instead of showing it or even explaining why, I enjoyed the film overall and its performances.
Rating: B
Macbeth
Dir. Justin Kurzel
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Shakespeare. A name that high school students collectively shudder at. It conjures up thoughts of homework, difficult language barriers, and awkward students reading their "parts" out loud in class, getting most of the words wrong. I distinctly remember reading Macbeth in my high school english class and hating every second of it, but as I got older and wiser in my post-college years, I re-visited the play and, despite still struggling with its old English dialect and poeticism, I actually really got into it, likening the title character to such power-hungry contemporary pop culture figures like Walter White. There have been many adaptations of the work over the years, but I don't think any of them feature as much slow-mo as does Justin Kurzel's Macbeth.
The story in a nutshell, for those who aren't familiar with it and therefore aren't as cultured as I am (*tips pinky finger up*), is Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) and his buddy Banquo (Paddy Considine), after a tough battle, are told by three witches that Macbeth will be named king, but Banquo's sons will reign after him. This premonition basically turns Macbeth, and his conniving wife Lady Macbeth (Marion Cotillard), power-hungry enough to kill his buddy and his sons to ensure no one but he and his thus far non-existant future bloodline lays claim to the throne of Scotland.
The actors are all as "actorly" as you could imagine, but as intense as Fassbender and his cohorts are, the cinematography is the star of the show. The color palette is very striking in certain scenes, using the color red to emphasize blood and death, and the slow-motion photography and painting-like shot composition almost reminded me of a Lars von Trier film. The thing is though, this movie goes full-on with the dialect, and had I not re-read the play over the summer and been familiar with some of the film adaptations like Roman Polanski's version and Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, I would have been totally lost. Not only is the dialogue difficult to understand, it's hard to even hear: most of the characters seem to mumble in gravely serious tones, taking a cue from Matthew McConaughey in True Detective. Although I appreciate it on a purely visual and visceral scale, honestly, it was a slog to sit through. As someone who's hardly a buff on Shakespeare, my appreciation of the artistry Kurzel and his team brought to this adaptation still didn't heighten my interest level.
Rating: C
Victor Frankenstein
Dir. Paul McGuigan
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Every once in a while there's a film that completely flops, with both audiences and critics hating on it, but I end up enjoying a great deal (I feel like the single defender of Chappie on the planet), and Victor Frankenstein can now be entered into that pantheon of "guilty pleasures" for me. The story follows Igor (Daniel Radcliffe), a hunchbacked circus performer who is discovered by Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy) one night as being a gifted surgeon. Victor, your traditional mad scientist, offers Igor a position to aid in his research that will "change the world." Igor, who's never been outside the circus before, is wide-eyed and eager, and the two become besties - that is before he actually finds out the work Victor is involved in.
This is basically the Frankenstein story (moreso a retelling of the Universal film than the novel) framed as a "bromance" between Igor and Dr. Frankenstein. McAvoy is fantastic as an off-his-rocker mad scientist, and his intensity regarding his experiments is deliciously campy. Radcliffe also holds his own here; although I can't not still see him as Harry Potter, his physical performance here demanded a lot from his body. Frankenstein, in a weirdly homoerotic moment in the film, fixes Igor's "hump" by jamming a giant syringe in his back and sucking out some fluid, then putting on a posture-fixing back brace on him to walk upright for the first time in his life. Radcliffe's hunched stature in the beginning and his "fixed" posture afterwards gives his character this strange vulnerability, and when his "fixer" needs his help with questionable experiments, Igor is caught between his own morals and staying loyal to the man that in many ways gave him his own life (an on-the-nose, but nice parallel between their relationship and the monster).
The marketing made it look like a re-hash of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, but Victor Frankenstein was a lot of fun, in my opinion. Its aesthetic almost looks like something from the mind of Tim Burton, the performances are over-the-top (in a good way, I think), and it skews the Frankenstein story in interesting new ways. I don't understand all the crap it got - maybe I'm just totally wrong on this one. I probably need to get my bolts tightened.
Rating: B-
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