Case 39: Ferland –1. Zellweger – 0.

How many times do we get to see the same damn movie repackaged slightly with new actors and new titles but which are all essentially the very same film? A lot is the answer - especially in Hollywood’s own formulaic take on the ‘creepy child’ horror sub-genre.

Now, I don’t mind the occasional good horror flick with a creepy/evil child at the centre. The Japanese and Koreans nailed it pretty darn good as did Richard Donner back in the 70’s with young Damien in The Omen (less said about the shite remake the better) And so did us Brits with the great Village of the Damned. And then, of course, there’s the ultimate creepy/evil movie child: Regan Macneil. This is a sub-genre of horror that seems to be (understandably) popular and to hit a nerve with the film going public. To see what is supposed to be the most innocent and pure twisted in to evil is incredibly disturbing. And when it’s done well it certainly works. Unfortunately that is a pretty rare occurrence nowadays. Which brings me to Case 39.

Case 39 has sat on the shelf since 2007. The film company didn’t know what to do with it. Early word was pretty bad. And, let’s face it, star Renee Zellweger isn’t the draw she once was. Um…actually…was she ever really, truly a draw? I really liked her as Dorothy in Jerry Maguire (one of my fave films) but after that I just found her kind of annoying. In Case 39 Renee is overworked social worker Emily Jenkins who comes to the aid of apparently abused ten year old Lillith Sullivan (Jodelle Ferland). Along with a cop friend (Ian McShane???) Emily manages to rescue Lillith in the nick of time before her pale and zoned out parents can gas the child in an oven. Feeling a connection with the little girl, Emily arranges for Lillith to stay with her until an appropriate foster home can be found. She also gets the child some much needed counselling in the form of bearded love interest Bradley Cooper. But all too soon nasty things start to happen around Emily now that Lillith is in her life including deaths of people she knows and cares about. And all the clues lead back to Lillith. So far, so bog standard by the numbers storytelling. And it doesn’t get any better. The format is followed precisely complete with the occasional and obvious jump scare (sudden dog barking, alarm clock going off etc.) and the inevitable investigation by Emily in to the truth about Lillith and then no one believing her once she knows what’s actually going on. Yawn! This all leads to a highly anticlimactic ending even if it does tie in psychologically to Emily’s own past and her feelings about her own mother. Worth noting about the end sequence is that it’s obviously shot day for night but looks really unconvincing in a 1970’s Hammer film kinda way.

Case 39 was yet another workmanlike and utterly uninspired effort from Hollywood. The director creates no atmosphere or tension whatsoever and the script is just plain lazy. Zellweger is ok but looks creepier than the film’s creepy kid with her terminal squint and puffy face. Cooper is just death fodder as is McShane and as such they both just phone it in. So, as in most of these lazy efforts, it is left to the child star at the centre to carry the film. And Jodelle Ferland does a very good job as the calculating and creepy Lillith. Ferland can do cute and vulnerable with so much ease; her big, dark, innocent eyes alone can pluck at the heartstrings. But she can also switch on the cool, calm, calculating, threating attitude. And then she can combine both in to a weird yet cute and sweet malevolence. There is a pretty good scene where she turns the tables on counsellor Bradley Cooper and ends up giving him a major case of the wiggins. Ferland’s a good little actress who has impressed before in the likes of Silent Hill. I’m glad to see that her latest role is in Joss Whedon’s up coming horror flick The Cabin in the Woods. Unfortunately she has to get past a role in Twilight: Eclipse first. Poor kid.

Anyway, Case 39 was average as average can be. I didn’t hate it like I did the recently viewed and thoroughly unlikable Sorority Row, but nor did I particularly like it. It’s a rung below the superior averageness of the similar Orphan, which at least had a half-decent twist and was shot in a more stylish manner. But like Orphan, Case 39 is saved from falling in to complete obscurity by having a strong central performance from its requisite creepy child.

Whip It: Juno meets Gertie...on wheels.

Whip It is Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut. And storywise it is nothing original whatsoever.

But that’s perfectly fine as the one time E.T. moppet, then hell raiser, then acclaimed movie star’s first stab at film direction is a hugely entertaining, quirky and affecting little comedy/drama that shows its newbie director has a potentially big future behind the camera lens.

Seventeen-year-old misfit Bliss Cavender (the always great Ellen Page) lives in the tiny Texan town of Bodine with her mum (the wonderful Marcia Gay Harden) and her dad (holy crap it’s Daniel Stern) and her little sister (Eulala Grace Scheel – real life daughter of Marcia Gay Harden). Bliss spends her time either at school, or working as a waitress with her best friend Pash (the funny and charming Alia Shawkat) or attending witless beauty pageants to please her mom who used to do the same in her youth. Then, one day, while on a shopping trip to Austin, Bliss catches sight of a bunch of cool looking girls on roller-skates giving out flyers for a Roller Derby league. Bliss is fascinated. And so, lying to her parents about what she’s really doing, she goes along for a look-see. And loves it. So much so that she gets invited for tryouts for the Hurl Scouts, the local rag tag, underdog roller derby team. Due to her impressive speed on wheels (plus lying about her age), Bliss makes the team despite her general lack of aggression. Now a full fledged Hurl Scout she adopts the moniker Babe Ruthless and quickly bonds with her new teammates - a gaggle of rather eccentric women in their twenties and thirties who don’t seem to really care anything about winning much to the exasperation of their long suffering coach. However with the addition of Bliss the Scouts do now actually start to win…much to their surprise. This soon leads to some big time rivalry in the form of Juliet Lewis (on good bad girl form) as Iron Maven, leader of the top team in the league, who has takes an instant dislike to Bliss and her rising Roller Derby stardom.

Now, its gotta be said…

The Hurl Scouts are a fantastic creation!

Every single one of them is a wonderfully drawn character with a daft-yet-funny team name, the only names we get to know them by. But the standouts are Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), the kindly den (single) mother of the bunch who takes Bliss under her wing and helps her out when things get tough at home. Then there’s the awesome Smashley Simpson (Drew Barrymore) who is just so crammed full of excitable aggression that in virtually every game she ends up being sent off for beating up a rival player after being smashed bloodily in the face or sent flying on the roller rink. And a special mention goes out to Zoe Bell as Bloody Holly. It was great to see Zoe onscreen again after her cool role in Tarantino’s Death Proof where she essentially played herself, a tough-as-nails stuntwoman. Zoe’s not the best of actresses but she does have an undeniable screen presence and an easy, likeable charm to her. Plus you just know she could kick your arse well and truly.

And so with Bliss/Babe Ruthless now a crucial part of the Scouts new found success the stage is set for an extremely fun and funny coming of age/underdog tale. Can Bliss continue to help the Scouts win? Will her new life alienate her best friend, Pash? Will her lying to her parents about what she’s been doing as well as to her teammates about her real age come back to haunt her? Will Bliss’s parents - especially her mother – see that she is truly good at something she loves and allow her to live her own life and not the one they want for her?

Like I said before, this is nothing original. And it doesn’t matter one jot as the execution of Whip It is wonderful. The script by Shauna Cross from her own semi-autobiographical novel is fun, spiky and also quite insightful in its own way. It is filled with some great characters and moments that Drew Barrymore as director translates expertly on to the screen in her own slightly offbeat way. I’ve always loved Drew. She’s a talented comedy actress full of natural charm and charisma who has now proven with Whip It that she is just as adept at staging and directing comedy as she is at performing it. But amongst all the funny she also finds the moments that work as pure cinema and pure emotion. Two that jumped out at me were when Pash and Bliss dance together around the diner to Dolly Parton’s Jolene…only making up their own lyrics about their sucky town. And a beautifully shot and edited love scene in a swimming pool using only music and no dialogue. There are plenty of other great moments too including everything with Marcia Gay Harden as Bliss’s mum. For at its heart Whip It is a story about a mother and a daughter who have to come to terms with each other. The mother must learn to let go of her growing up child, to let her begin living her own life. And the child needs to learn to listen to the wisdom and to the emotional maturity of her mother, which is there albeit hidden under a layer of hypocrisy (e.g. the running gag about mum hiding her smoking). And it is here that you can see thematic parallels to Drew’s own troubled relationship with her own mother, the stuff of tabloid news now for years.

The visual style of the film is also something worth mentioning. The story is clearly set in present day. However the aesthetic mixes in the 1970’s (music, hairstyles, décor, record players, 8 track tapes etc.) with our contemporary world outside. There is a distinct indie vibe to the whole thing including the sorts of music used and the quirky feel to the direction. This is enhanced by the stylised and colourful photography by regular Wes Anderson collaborator Robert Yeoman. Put this all together and you have a very funny and warm comedy/drama that stands with one foot firmly in the mainstream but the other tiptoeing lightly in indieville.

Sadly Whip It made no impact at all at the US box office last year where it grossed a paltry total of $13m despite gaining positive critical reaction. Perhaps the cheesy idea of Roller Derby put people off. Or maybe they found the film just a bit too quirky for mainstream audiences. I dunno. But hopefully Whip It will eventually find itself an audience. It deserves to. It’s a hugely enjoyable little flick that had me smiling and laughing all the way through.

Way to go Gertie!

[Rec.] 2 - Zombie Buggaboo

Three years ago the Spanish gave us a brilliant little horror mockumentary about a TV crew who are making a documentary about fire fighters on the night shift but who end up documenting something all together more terrifying than the usual emergency call outs. No cat stuck up a tree or house fire this. No, this was a viral outbreak in a city apartment block, which rendered its infected victims as homicidal red eyed loons. Very 28 Days Later ala Blair Witch for the Big Brother /reality TV generation. It was in the films closing minutes that the real source of the outbreak was hinted at in a night-vision shot scene as tense and scary as anything ever could be.

[Rec.] 2 picks up directly after the first film ends. We follow a SWAT team, each with their own helmet-mounted cameras, as they enter the quarantined building along with a mysterious new boss on a secret mission to document what happened and find the one remaining blood sample from the original infected person – a young child locked away in darkness. What follows is a claustrophobic, chaotic, intense and bloody flight around the wonderfully dark and labyrinthine corridors, rooms and staircases of the apartment block. Needless to say the ordered plan of the team soon falls apart leading to a desperate fight to survive and to find an answer to the infection before either the building is destroyed or it spreads outside.

[Rec.] 2 is awesome! I loved it just as much as the first one…maybe even more.

It is short, scary and violent and built around one central and brilliant concept, which I won’t reveal here. Just to say it is an original take on several separate horror genres blended together. The film’s main set up is basically the same as Aliens. But then it takes a cool narrative leap halfway through by switching pov to a second group of people who have stumbled in to this apartment block from hell. We first see this second group (kind of) from the pov of the SWAT team earlier, but then the movie switches on us and replays some of the action from the second groups pov before then joining up in to one combined narrative to get to the end.

This film is rushed and panicky and grim and nasty. Which is all to its credit. The pacing is at high speed from the off. Characterisation and thematic depth is non-existent. This is a film about the situation and the concept and scaring you pee-less. Nothing more. It’s a rollercoaster and you ride it through the dark with hissing, screaming monsters clawing at your flesh from all sides. There is some great camera work and direction here. It is all shot from either soldier’s helmet-cams or hand held video cameras or from a TV camera with night-vision. But cameras are dropped or damaged or muted or accidentally switch focus etc. which lends to some wonderfully creative moments and some nightmarish images. We even get a spot of video game first person shooter action, which looks like we’ve entered a Resident Evil game, and it blows the shit out of that awful Doom movie that did the same thing a few years back. Then there is the films location, the apartment block. I just love it. It’s simply one of the scariest places in modern horror cinema. I don’t know if it is real or a set (probably a set) but it is fabulous. The high central staircase is a great feature (great for bodies plummeting down) as are all the many rooms and narrow corridors that seem to lead people in circles. And then there is the penthouse, the centre of hell itself. A dark and filthy place with hidden rooms and ceiling crawlspaces and narrow shafts, which can only be crawled down on your belly. Finally there is the films ending. It’s not as pant wettingly scary as the original but is still a creepy and grim ending in the best traditions of John Carpenter and George A. Romero. It leaves us ready (hopefully) for a third journey in to Spanish hell.

The US remake of [Rec.] called Quarantine was actually pretty good and mostly identical to its original except for a few things – one of which being the key that leads to this wicked sequel. If Hollywood does do Quarantine 2 then it will be interesting to see if they follow this films path or if they do something different. Personally I don’t really care. I just want [Rec.] 3…like now!

Mintage.

Wolfman's got nards!

I saw The Wolfman last night.

Now, being the major werewolf geek that I am I was really looking forward to this and hoping that, despite the delays and reshoots and dodgy reviews, it wasn’t going to suck.

Guess what? It doesn’t suck.

Despite what some sniffy reviewers will tell you The Wolfman is a fine slice of gothic monster movie mayhem. I enjoyed it a fair bit. Okay, so it's far from a perfect film - you can see the joins where scripts have been cut and pasted together and chunks sliced out - but I did have a howling good time with its camp, gory goofiness. I loved the look of the film with the design and photography being wonderfully gothic and moody and the Rick Baker make-up as excellent as expected. The acting ranged from okay with Del Toro a bit dull when human but great when hairy, to very entertaining in Hugo Weaving to the 'I don't care cuz she's lovely' Emily Blunt. Hopkins is okay as daddy Talbot but seems to be a teensy bit bored by it all. But at least he isn’t overacting. A special shout out to Hugo Weaving as Inspector Abberline who once again reminds us just why he’s such a cool actor. His scene in the pub where he orders a beer and patiently explains to the landlady why he isn’t out hunting the killer is hilarious. Definitely channelling Agent Smith there. Apart from Agent Smith and its overall look, the best stuff in the film are the wolfman rampages - especially the first one in the gypsy camp. That was a truly great sequence where the beast is so fast and mostly in shadow and yet causes so much bloody mayhem.

So what about the actual story?

The Wolfman (2010) bares minimal resemblance to the original 1941 Universal classic with only character names and the basic set-up of estranged son returning home being the same. The new story is fine and adds a bit more depth than the original even if the resulting plot twists are fairly predictable. The pacing is good and nicely swift. Following a very obvious three-act structure, the film whips along at quite a pace with dialogue and character building being sparse so as to quickly get to the…er…guts of the story. Tonally The Wolfman takes itself seriously while also enjoying piling on the lurid bloodletting, flesh rending and limb lopping - all of which is very cool and just how a proper monster movie should be.

Now I gotta say that watching The Wolfman I wasn’t so much reminded of an old Universal horror as I was of a Hammer horror. For despite its serious tone there is also a rather camp feel to the film with its hirsute beasty climbing walls and buildings, leaping around and menacing English yokels who hang out in old taverns and race carriages through dark woods. That combined with the gleeful goofy bloodiness and Del Toro’s admitted homage to the late great Oliver Reed by sporting his haircut from Curse of the Werewolf, The Wolfman, to me, works better as a modern ode to the best of British Hammer. If only there was some heaving lady cleavage then the effect would be complete. Another good point to note is Danny Elfman’s score. It’s probably the best thing he’s done in ages. It is big and dramatic with some nice themes, the main one sounding a lot like the great main theme from Coppola’s Dracula, which helps sell the films grand gothic feel.

Anything I didn’t like? Yep, the use of CGI. The CGI transformation looks exactly how you’d expect a CGI one to look – it looks fake and cartoony. Some people will defend this. I won’t. I just don’t like it. Period. It looks exactly like what it is – computer graphics. However it could have been worse, it could have been Van Helsing. Ugh! And once Del Toro is in full on wolf mode then the CGI (mostly) goes and you get great Baker make-up and some nicely savage gore.

So, in summary, I enjoyed The Wolfman a great deal. It’s a fun ride with a few nice jump scares and a great gloomy gothic look. It zips along while revelling in its gory monster mayhem. It’s not perfect and is not the classic that the original is or comes anywhere near challenging the best werewolf movies for genre supremacy. But for a fun, bloody, gothic romp you could do a whole lot worse.



"Wolfman's got nards" quote courtesy The Monster Squad (1987) AROOOOOOOOO!

Some tales never grow old...

Dorian Gray stars Colin Firth (A Single Man) with Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian) in the title role and is based upon the 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

The film tells the tale of a young man, Dorian Gray, who comes to London after inheriting his family estate. He is naive and innocent and also exceptionally attractive and charismatic yet unaware of the effect he can have on people. Dorian is taken under the wing of Lord Henry Wotton who imbues the impressionable young man with his own hedonistic worldview: the unfettered guilt free pursuit of pleasure. At the same time Dorian has his portrait painted by Basil Hallward, a talented artist who has become besotted with his young model. Dorian succumbs to Lord Henry’s temptations of unadulterated pleasure seeking and enjoys himself so much he makes an unwitting Faustian pact to always keep what according to Sir Henry are “the only two things in life that mean anything…youth and beauty.” And so begins a story of corruption, vanity, morality and murder that ultimately leads to Sir Henry having to confront the monster that he has made to protect his grown up daughter who, now twenty years later, has fallen for the still youthful Dorian just returned from years spent travelling.

I’ve never read Wilde’s novel nor seen any of the previous adaptations (except for Stuart Townsend in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) but I was familiar with the story as I expect many are. It is a classic fable of corrupted youth, of unhinged vanity and absent morality. I’m told by people who know that this film version directed by Oliver Parker remains pretty faithful to Wilde’s original novel and its themes. It certainly shows the overt and quite graphic sexuality that Wilde had to tone down in his revised 1891 edition. The film is handsomely mounted with convincing art direction and very fine cinematography by the great Roger Pratt (Brazil, Batman, The Fisher King, Chocolat, Harry Potter.) The use of subtle digital effects to recreate Victorian London also works well as they do in creating Dorian’s monstrous true self. In the title role Ben Barnes looks the part and does a reasonable job in showing the transformation of a young innocent who gradually strips away all conscience and morality to begin enjoying the wild times, before, many years later, realising he is living a hollow, haunted, pointless life. Barnes is okay, but to me he doesn’t have the charisma to make you believe that all these men and women would be so easily in awe of him. On the other hand, Colin Firth, an actor I’ve never really cared for, is excellent as the corrupting older man/monster maker who ultimately comes to realise what he has created when his own daughter falls under Dorian’s spell. They are well supported by a strong cast including Rachel Hurd-Wood, Ben Chaplin and one time Bond girl Maryam D’Abo. Parker directs in an unflashy manner just telling the story through the actors and the solid script using no great flourishes of style, which is a smart move. Wilde’s brilliant story simply doesn’t need any flash, as such things would only detract from its power.

Watching Dorian Gray I was reminded a great deal of Interview with the Vampire, one of my fave books and films. I wouldn’t be surprised if Anne Rice is a fan as they share many of the same themes. The attraction of eternal youth and beauty and its almost hypnotic power over others, the deliberate moral corruption of another, the idea of freedom being achieved when released from conscience, guilt and consequence. The eventual hollowness, loneliness, stagnation of never changing or growing. And the ultimate realisation of the price that has to be paid for ones actions and decisions. For there is always a price to be paid sooner or later. And then of course there is the strong homoerotic subtext in both works with Dorian Gray’s being rather more overt – at least in this version.

A solid, good looking, entertaining fable with strong production values and a simply brilliant story to tell, Dorian Gray is worth seeking out even though you won’t be quite as entranced by his power as you should be.

The Na'vi finally conquer the UK

On Sunday 7 February 2010 Avatar became the highest grossing film release of all time in the UK as this weekend's $5.2m boosted the cume to $114.7m (£71.6m) overtaking previous record holder Mamma Mia’s £69.2m final gross.

Yay! Thank Christ for that. Mamma Mia gets squished by the mighty Na'vi. Take that Abba!

The international weekend gross for Avatar was $76m boosting cume to $1.58bn. Including the US, Avatar's total worldwide gross now stands at $2.21bn and counting. Can it get to $3bn worldwide? Maybe.

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