Film Week

A review of the films I've seen this past week.

THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN (1938)
A letdown. I'd heard all kinds of stories over the years about how bizarre this movie is, but I think it's only bizarre if you're one of those weirdos who gets all creeped out and scared at the mere sight of little people. Grow up. It's a Western where the entire cast is made up of little people. Otherwise, it's just as turgid, melodramatic, and boring as a lot of Westerns of the 1930s. And there's no terror whatsoever, unless you're scared of losing an hour of your life realizing there's nothing gonzo coming at all. * star.

CHILDREN OF THE CORN (1984)
This should be a lot more relevant today; kids in a rural town kill all of the adults and start worshiping a religious leader--seems tailored for today's kids, who just get weirder and more conservative. And while some of the horror works in the beginning, the couple driving through town who become targets of the children--Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton--are just boring, and the film kind of drags on and on without being very engaging. ** stars.

HOUNDDOG (2007)
AKA "The Dakota Fanning Gets Raped Movie." Fanning, in one of her better performances (and I've always thought she was more talented than your average child actor), is ill-used as a lust object. Even before the rape occurs, the camera and the director keep putting her in set-ups where we're supposed to, you know, notice her, and it's really uncomfortable. She's a backwoods girl in the fifties who is obsessed with Elvis and has an alcoholic father (David Morse) who gets struck by lightning. Fanning is very good, but the movie around her is cruel and bleak for no good reason. There's nothing to really say here, and putting a rape in the middle of it just seems like a desperate move on the part of the writer. It's kind of a juvenile, amateurish movie that tries to shock just to be shocking. * star for Dakota's performance.

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (2007)
Boring. There's no other word for it. Oh, wait, here are some more: slow, ponderous, and dull. Great cast, good idea, but it's a very, very dull movie. The film has fantastic cinematography by Roger Deakins, but after a while my eyes glazed over and I just couldn't pay attention to it any more. See The Long Riders or the underrated Frank and Jesse instead. ** stars.

CHERRY CRUSH (2007)
Bullshit movie about bullshit teenagers starring bullshit-meister Nikki Reed. Anything with this chick after the movie Thirteen seems to be guaranteed bullshit. No stars.

PROM NIGHT (2008)
After a great, bloody, creepy opening, the film becomes both tired (seen the stalker-killer before) and silly (it's a psychological thriller, not a slasher film). Not terrible, really, but not worth paying attention to, either. ** stars.

DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID (1964)
One of Luis Bunuel's more straightforward films, but no less interesting for that (and dig the cryptic ending). Jeanne Moreau plays a chambermaid from Paris who comes to work at a country estate. She's urbane; her employers are repressed bourgeoisie. Though the morals are all pretty ambiguous, Moreau keeps deflecting the advances of every man who comes into contact with her. Morality among the unprincipled seems to be part of the point, but I like the way the story touches on all manner of politics--sexual, domestic, even national. Very subtle, a real work of art. Bunuel is astounding. **** stars.

MON ONCLE ANTOINE (1971)
This Canadian film reminded me a lot of Bergman with its minimalism. It takes place in a Quebec mining town that is frigid and barren, and so white with snowfall that somehow the brightness becomes a darkness. The overbearing cold is met with the warmth of the people who live there, and the film is a series of vignettes painted with nostalgia about a time in childhood when real learning begins. Very poignant, but also very meandering; there's no real dramatic tension, and it takes a while to get to its real story. Patience is required, but it is rewarded. Slow-moving, but very nice. ***1/2 stars.

THE MIST (2007)
It's nearly a great film. A bunch of townspeople in smalltown Maine are trapped in a grocery story when a mist descends. There are strange things in the mist, things which kill anyone they can find. The townspeople are a metaphor for modern society, basically divided into those with the drive to survive, the skeptics (and you know what always happens to those people in a Stephen King story), and those who grow more desperately religious as things get more hopeless. It takes its time, but except for one or two dull spots I didn't mind the deliberate pacing. It's gory enough, too. And some of the performances--especially Marcia Gay Hardin and Toby Jones--are very good. What bugs me, though, is the ending. I think if the movie had ended just about four minutes earlier than it does (ending on Thomas Jane's scream), it would've been the bleak mindfuck it sets out to be. Unfortunately, the ending cops out to reassure the audience (to an extent), even though it's already made a great point about how society only works as long as the machines are running. It's King's Cthulhu story, and for the most part, it really works. ***1/2 stars.

ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL (2008)
This movie took me by surprise. I have to admit, for the longest time, I thought this movie was a joke. I'd never heard of Anvil, and it looked like a This Is Spinal Tap repeat to me; the drummer is even named Robb Reiner. But as the show went on, I found myself really moved by it at times. It's a documentary about the heavy metal band Anvil, who made a brief splash in 1982 and never stopped playing, despite the lack of fame and fortune and financial success. That's what's so fascinating about these guys; we follow them on a European tour that's a financial wash and watch them play venues where less than 100--sometimes even less than 50--people show up. But then they go back to their day jobs and look for another opportunity to record or play or keep living their dream. It's an amazing thing; two guys in their fifties who have a love of music and love being in a band and refuse to give it up even though they haven't become massive stars. What's important is not money or fame, but their friendship and their shared dream of playing in arenas to hundreds of metal lovers. It's powerful and touching. **** stars.

BLIND TERROR (1971)
Mia Farrow plays a British woman who has recently gone blind in a riding accident. She goes to the country to stay with relatives, unaware that someone has murdered them and left their bodies in the home around her. Great concept, but it meanders a bit, and Farrow isn't quite up to the challenge of playing a blind woman--she's too aware of her surroundings and too aware of people around her. There are some genuine scares, though, and ultimately it comes off. It would've come off better with a tighter running time, though; perhaps as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. But I did like it. *** stars.

WHITE ZOMBIE (1932)
Love Bela Lugosi, but this movie was dull. * star.

LA BETE HUMAINE (1938)
Jean Renoir made this movie about a train engineer (Jean Gabin, whom I always like) who falls in love with the station master's wife (Simone Simon, who could blame him?). Apparently this is based on a novel from a 20-volume series by Emile Zola, which explains why this movie is a little bit harder to grasp; the characters are treated as though they are firmly established already, so you're sort of left catching up with it. Certain character traits are taken for granted without being established. That said, Renoir is an amazing filmmaker, and Gabin and Simone are two very talented actors, and the film is never boring. ***1/2 stars.

QUEEN MARGOT (1994)
Historical epic about the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 16th Century France. It's touched off by the marriage of Catholic Margot, sister of King Charles IX, to Protestant Henri de Navarre for political reasons. Amidst the bloodshed, there is a lot of deliberate treachery going on, while Margot falls in love with the Protestant La Mole. It's a beautiful-looking film, and I like the way the French tend to make their historical epics with an eye towards humanity and not pomp or spectacle, but it's just incoherent at times and often difficult. Isabelle Adjani is very good in the title role, and the cast is great, but it just threw me. **1/2 stars.

ALIENS IN THE ATTIC (2009)
I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I expected I would. A group of kids on a family vacation in the country try to repel an attack by small aliens. One of the kids (the oldest) is Ashley Tisdale, to whom I remain devoted, and I really thought she was full of shit when she compared this movie to The Goonies and Gremlins. It's not as good as either of those films (which I consider classics), but it reminded me particularly of Joe Dante's movies, and I like Joe Dante movies. If this movie had come out when I was 8, I'd have been all over it. As it is, I still really enjoyed the hell out of it; it takes the time to pay attention to quality and entertainment as opposed to a great deal of other movies aimed at kids, which seem to feel they don't have to try too hard because their target audience is less sophisticated. It's not for everyone, maybe, but I'm going to ***1/2 stars just because I had so much silly and engrossing fun with it. And partially because, well, Tis wears a bikini. (Also, I liked the original title, They Came from Upstairs, better than the one they went with.)

9 (2009)
The character design and animation on this science fiction film is stunning. The script, however, is not. It's just not a compelling film, which is too bad, because I was really hoping for some interesting postapocalyptic science fiction. The only real bright spot is John C. Reilly's vocal performance as one of 9 robots at the end of civilization. ** stars.