31
Dir. Rob Zombie
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Homicidal clowns, backwoods hillbillies, brutal violence and mayhem: these are a few of Rob Zombie's favorite things. The hard rocker-by-day, horror director-by-night is back at it again with another movie that's best to leave grandma at home to see: 31, about a traveling group of carnival workers kidnapped by crazed aristocrats on Halloween night and forced to play a twisted game of life-or-death called "31." For 12 hours, they must fight to survive against an endless parade of increasingly dangerous maniacs, sort of like The Hunger Games as seen through the eyes of Charles Manson. While this horror movie had the potential to be a fast-paced, disturbing thrill ride through hell, ultimately Mr. Zombie rests a little too much on his laurels, staying inside his "comfort zone," making this film his most bland so far, and even strays into self-parody territory.
The story is set in 1976 (the decade in which Rob Zombie seems unable to escape), following a lovably degenerate group of traveling carny folk. It starts out pretty much exactly as you'd think, and Zombie's style of making every character supremely unlikable doesn't work very well here. While the murdering Firefly family in his first two pictures, House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, shockingly felt like a cohesive family unit when they weren't slaughtering people, here the characters - even though they are "good" guys - aren't interesting or developed enough to go beyond their initial nastiness (for instance, Sheri Moon Zombie sexually taunts a toothless gas station attendant and two characters having sex stop mid-coitus to tell a joke to their friend involving cake frosting that's "something else" - they're just general low lives). It's very difficult to root for these people to survive once the game starts, and even then, they make so many stupid decisions the film loses all sense of tension.
Rob's attempt at a social "commentary" here is laughably bad. Malcolm McDowell, playing the "game master," wears a powdered wig, and clearly there's meant to be a theme of wealthy-people-are-evil, but it's so broad and silly, it makes the Purge films look like nuanced social dramas. Many of the hired killers are also pretty cringe-worthy. The first is a Spanish-speaking, knife-wielding dwarf dressed as Adolf Hitler. I don't think I need to say more. After that there's a duo of chainsaw-wielding hillbilly clowns - more lazy stereotypes. The only stand-out is the final "big bad," Doom-Head, played by Richard Brake, who expounds on god knows what during ranting soliloquies before chopping people up. He's the only character that brings a strong, creepy presence to the film, but unfortunately his rants - which all feel like a desperate attempt to capture the same urgency of Tarantino's "Ezekiel 25:17" speech - just end up falling flat.
The best exploitation horror films, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Last House on the Left, and even Rob Zombie's own The Devil's Rejects, should make you feel unsafe, as if the filmmakers were possibly unhinged and that anything could happen. With 31, Rob Zombie promised to give us this same feeling. Unfortunately, 31, a movie largely funded by crowdsourced money from fans, pretty much wastes all that hard-earned fanboy cash on mostly uninspired, unintentionally silly, at times downright stupid filmmaking. Here Zombie simply regurgitates not only tropes we've seen before, but tropes we've seen before from Zombie himself.
Note: I saw this movie early thanks to a Fathom Events screening, where there was also included two new music videos, a Q&A with Rob Zombie, and a little behind-the-scenes snippet. In the Q&A, Zombie basically admitted that this film was the result of frustration of not getting his hockey film Broad Street Bullies made in a timely manner, so he shot out a random idea for 31 off the top of his head to his producers, saying that he could sell a simple idea like that very easily. And he did just that.
Rating: C-
Morgan
Dir. Luke Scott
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While it's easy to think Luke Scott's opportunity to direct this film is the result of nothing but nepotism (his daddy is Ridley "Alien-Blade Runner-Gladiator" Scott), I actually think that living in the shadow of such an iconic director actually may make things tougher, as you'll always have to prove to others that you're more than a simple lifeless clone of your parent. Unfortunately, Morgan does more to prove the opposite - it's very reminiscent of Ridley's past work, and overall feels more like a sci-fi genre retread than a definitive "Here I am, and here's my vision" first movie.
Morgan (The Witch's Anya Taylor-Joy) is a bioengineered being who learned to talk, walk, and many other things at an accelerated rate to the glee of the scientists working on her. Despite the scientists' initial joy, however, Morgan attacks one of her handlers one day, causing a corporate troubleshooter (Kate Mara) to come from HQ to their remote facility to assess the situation and whether or not to keep Morgan alive. But, as could be expected, the dangerous and synthetic Morgan manages to escape and proceeds to raise heck, as bioengineered super-beings are wont to do.
What's most unfortunate about Luke Scott's debut feature is how derivative it is of so many other, better sci-fi movies like Ex Machina, Alien, and even the Jason Bourne series. But even disbarring its unoriginality, it's still a real dud. The dialogue is pretty terrible all the way through, and the old moviemaking adage of "show don't tell" isn't employed well here. The movie relies so heavily on expositional dialogue that at one point, while Toby Jones informs Kate Mara's character about Morgan's background, she says something to the effect of "I know this already." But he then just nods and proceeds to continue explaining things that everyone around him should conceivably have already been briefed on. Characters continually make dumb decisions as well; at one point, Morgan is clearly upset, and like poking a lion with a stick, her psychoanalyst yells in her face and screams to "express" herself physically. Plus, the final "twist" of the film is broadcasted a mile away, which all combines to make this a petty chore to sit through. Besides a few solid performances, Morgan has nothing to offer the genre and doesn't exactly inspire hope that Luke Scott will become anywhere near the filmmaker his father is.
Rating: C-
The Light Between Oceans
Dir. Derek Cianfrance
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Derek Cianfrance is one of those directors that earned a permanent spot on my movie-watching radar ever since Place Beyond the Pines (which loyal readers will remember was my #1 movie of 2013). His style of intense character drama is never not compelling, and he's extracted two of Ryan Gosling's best performances to date. With The Light Between Oceans, Cianfrance is shifting gears a little bit; he still has a stellar cast working at the height of their powers and is brilliantly playing with notions of family and generations, but the intensity and "rawness" of Pines and Blue Valentine is replaced with a more classical, composed approach. He's also for the first time adapting someone else's work (ML Steidman's novel of the same name) instead of using an original concept - but despite these differences, Cianfrance yet again delivers a superb, beautiful, tragic, dramatic, and engaging film that works as an exemplary piece of modern melodrama.
The story follows a lighthouse keeper, Tom (Michael Fassbender), who finds solace on an isolated island in Australia, Janus Rock, after seeing the horrors of combat in WWI. On the mainland, he meets the local schoolmaster's daughter, Isabel (Alicia Vikander), and almost immediately their levels of "smitten-ness" with each other shoots through the roof. Soon enough they're married, living on the island, and Tom is learning to love again. Their happiness is short-lived after difficulties starting a family, but Isabel feels her prayers have been answered when a rowboat washes ashore with an unknown dead man and an infant girl on board. The film mostly explores Isabel's unyielding desire for motherhood and Tom's inner battle of principles and Catholic guilt as he has to make the choice of either reporting the lost child or granting Isabel's wish and letting her care for the mystery baby.
It's a little predictable where things end up in the film, and for those accustomed to the post-MTV quick cutting of modern movies the pace may feel a bit languid, but the performances on display here are fantastic. The chemistry between Vikander and Fassbender needs no dialogue to be palpable, and when emotions run high, every tear has the weight of an anvil. The key emotional, over-the-top scenes could very well have strayed into "camp" territory (as 1950s melodramas of the Douglas Sirk variety often do), but the subdued tone of the film, the delicate, piano-heavy score from Alexandre Desplat, and of course the genuine performances all add up to make this a believable, passionate film that I actually felt moved by. The Light Between Oceans may be a simple melodrama, but it's beautifully shot, well-adapted from its source material, and features two of the industry's best performers at the heights of their careers. It's a tear-jerkin' good time.
Rating: B+
Southside with You
Dir. Richard Tanne
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Southside with You has a pretty ballsy elevator pitch: "It's like Before Sunrise, only instead of Ethan Hawke, it's the President of the United States!" Contributing to the 'walk and talk' genre that Richard Linklater is popular for, Richard Tanne attempts to make a first-date movie with Barack and Michelle Obama, making this one of very few biographical films that shows a president before he was sworn into office (the last being John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln from 1939). Unlike Linklater's Before films, however, the audience knows exactly where this relationship is headed, and I personally found its winking nature, and its forced cutesiness to be very off-putting.
I think the key to my disliking the film overall was that I didn't buy the central relationship. Parker Sawyers does a great job conveying a young Barack Obama, then working as a law firm associate, as the perfect blend of a potential leader who's still under the spell of young adulthood. Admittedly it's interesting to see a figure we're used to seeing so composed lounging back in his bachelor pad, smoking a cigarette. Alongside his pep talks and activist spirit, he can't help but hope his talking and activist-ing also catches the eye of a certain young (first) lady. But Tika Sumpter, playing the then-lawyer Michelle, to me felt like she was never doing much more than an impression. I really liked the aspect of her character coyly reluctant to go out with Barack because it would look bad as a black woman to fall for the first black man that walks through the door, but after a while her schtick of refusing to call their day-long excursion a date got tiring. Not to mention that after a while of her refusing to date him, isn't it a little weird that Barack keeps pursuing her? If we didn't know how things worked out in real life, I think more people would have a problem with the film in this way.
While I think Tanne does nicely avoid making a straight political statement with this film, I do think you're probably pre-destined to either like or hate the movie based on your own personal politics. I mean, can you imagine a "date" movie like this earning the same critical praise if it was between Donald and Melania Trump? But even looking past any potential propagandistic leanings the film might have (which I don't believe it does), at the end of the day, for a movie literally consisting of two people chatting on a date, I never bought their connection. The pull quote often used for this film is "the best first date ever" - but how many first dates involve going to a community planning meeting?
Rating: C
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