One Could-Be Play, One Norwegian Film, and Others

"Only God Forgive"
starring: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm, Yayaying Rhatha Phongam, Tom Burk
written and directed by: Nicholas Winding Refn

Writer/Director Nicholas Winding Refn certainly knows how to polarize his viewers. You either love him and his films; or you hate them, perhaps despise is a better word. Or maybe you just don't "get" him. I've seen and enjoyed "Drive," his first collaboration with Ryan Gosling, which was a art-house kind of film, where the soundtrack really helped "drive" the film, pun intended. There wasn't much dialogue, only what was necessary to move the story along, as well as help explain the characters and their actions. Gosling was excellent in that film and Refn obviously saw something in him because he made "Only God Forgives" for his star. This is another beautifully crafted artsy film with savagery and gruesomeness, terrible, not-safe-for-children language. This is everything an R-rated movie could hope for, minus the nudity (although there's a brief encounter of masturbation).

Gosling plays Julian. Julian and his brother, Billy (Tom Burke) run a Muay Thai gym in Bangkok, which is really just a front for their drug ring. Within minutes of the film opening, Billy murders an underage prostitute and a retired Lieutenant simply named Chang is brought out of retirement to hunt Billy down. Billy is beat to death and then Crystal (Julian and Billy's mother played by the unrecognizable Kristin Scott Thomas) arrives to identify Billy's body, but to also conduct some drug business of her own. And that's when shit gets real, because she wants Billy's murdered tracked down, so she puts a hit out on him. It's like a never-ending cycle of violence.

Gosling's character Julian is another stoic presence, like a placeholder, a silent partner in a business. He almost doesn't even have to exist in this film, but yet he does, and he faces much of Chang's vengeance.

It's a very interesting message that Refn is telling us- one of anti-revenge- because of the way he presents it is very contradictory- through violence layered upon violence. It's a very intense, and beautiful film (showing the seediness and darkness of Bangkok at night) with no character development because really the characters just are not that important.

The violence is brutal, but cinematic. There are several motifs of hands, including the chopping off of hands and I wonder if that has some kind of symbolic relevance to the title of the film. I feel like I need to watch it again, perhaps to understand it a little better and to maybe appreciate it more. This is another film, like "Drive," that is really supported by the soundtrack. Refn is all about the mood through the music and it really works, again, for "Only God Forgives."

I'll definitely watch this film again, perhaps to study it and think about it further.
...................................................................................
"Thale"
starring: Silje Reinamo, Erlend Nervold, Jon Sigve Skard, Morten Andresen, Roland Astrand, Sunniva Lien
written and directed by: Aleksander Nordaas

Right from the beginning, the viewer isn't allowed to make a decision on what exactly "Thale" is attempting to be, in regards to what kind of a film it wants to be. Is it a deft comedy? Is it a serious, mythologic exploration? Is it an attempt at sci-fi? It's a Norwegian film that definitely explores the mythology of huldras-- a mythical wood creature complete with tail that has incredible speed and strength, as well as apparently psychic powers (as seen in a couple scenes where Thale touches someone else's head and transfers images to them).

Leo and Elvis are crime scene cleanup men, well Leo is and Elvis was just looking for some extra money to help support his young daughter. Elvis is seen vomiting at the beginning of the film, something perhaps many of us would also do when faced with the task of cleaning up bloody messes.

There’s a cabin-full of evidence at their next assignment, a remote house in the woods, around which a corpse has been strewn, presumably by animals who’ve found the dead man and distributed his remains. Inside the dwelling, the pair find a decades-old underground lair with weird tape recordings, surgical equipment, a freezer containing a severed tail and a milky looking bathtub containing a mute girl. She turns out to be Thale, a legendary huldra, or wood creature that possesses immense strength and speed. No one can stop her, not even the white-coated assassins who arrive halfway through Leo and Elvis’ increasingly problematic workday. The white-coated assassins is where the film really falls apart for me, because I just don't see the point of including them, other than to set up the climax of the film between Thale, Leo, and Elvis, in order to wrap it up nicely for everyone involved. 

The secret government conspiracy that’s tossed into the mix of Norwegian forest legend, and the occasional slathering of gore, make for an overload of information, much of it delivered via flashbacks to Thale’s worrisome childhood, or those tape recordings made by the unseen man who rescued her and kept her captive all those years. I think the story/film could have gone a different way and been much better. I was a bit disappointed, especially since I really enjoyed another, different Norwegian Film, "Trollhunter."

....................................................................................
"Two Girls and a Guy"
starring: Heather Graham, Nastasha Gregson Wagner, Robert Downey Jr.
written and directed by: James Toback

The plot is a simple one that can be told in one sentence: A two-timing actor returns to his Manhattan apartment to be confronted by both of his girlfriends, who've just found out about each other, while waiting outside of the actor's apartment. All the action takes place inside the apartment. It all works really well and could have easily been staged as a play.

The story behind James Toback's excellent late-'90s film is interesting: Toback worked with Robert Downey Jr. on his film "The pick-Up Artist," then he saw him in handcuffs going off to jail after his arrest on drug charges. Toback immediately wrote this film for Downey Jr. and I cannot imagine a better actor for the role at the time.

The film was written in 4 days and subsequently filmed in just 11 days.

Downey is not floppy-eared or sunny in this film as Blake, but he is resilient and unbowed. Confronted with both of his girlfriends, Carla (Heather Graham) and Lou (Natasha Gregson Wagner), he talks and thinks quickly, saying he meant it when he told them both he had “never experienced real love” before.

“He decided consciously to start with both of us at the same time!” Lou says. And as they work it out, it appears he did meet them at about the same time. He saw each girl three nights of the week, excusing himself on the other nights because of the illness of his mother, who neither one ever met.

The two women meet on his doorstep, break into his apartment and are hiding there when he returns from a trip and leaves phone messages for them both. When he sees them, he's at a loss for words, but soon they come tumbling out. Wagner (Natalie Wood's daughter) fires out high-energy dialogue.

What can be said, really? He's a cheating, lying SOB, and both women find even more colorful terms to describe him, both as a person and in terms of his various parts. The movie is essentially a filmed stage play in which men and women ponder their differences and complexities.

Downey, whatever his problems, is a fine actor, smart and in command of his presence, and he's persuasive here as he defends himself: “I'm an actor. And actors lie.” 

The movie doesn't pretend any of these three people is really in love. They're playing at being in love, but essentially all three are soloists, looking out for themselves, and the women can sustain outrage only so long before they begin to seek additional amusements and possibilities.

...................................................................................
"The Tortured"
starring: Jesse Metcalf, Erika Christensen
directed by: Robert Lieberman
written by: Marek Posival

This might be one of the worst interpretations of "an eye for an eye" vengeance that has been turned into a film, but then again, it's being made by the producers of the "Saw" franchise, who really go for the gold in terms of how grotesque can they be with a film that shows and shows without really telling much at all. The film does not at all try to help us understand the mind of its child-snatching perv and sicko, instead the filmmakers really do everything to dehumanize him as simply a shrieking, makeup wearing ghoul/pedophile who kidnaps and tortures and murders Ben Landry, a six year old white boy, right out of his front yard.

The film plays itself out like a terrible made-for-TV/Llifetime movie, if only basic cable allowed for the gore that we get here. Craig (Jesse Metcalfe) plays the father/husband who is also conveniently a doctor. And Elise (Erika Christensen, who really has never proved herself as a decent actress besides her role in "Traffic" but that might have just been because of great writing, anyway) is the wife/mother who goes through all the stages of grief- blaming her husband until she ends up wanting revenge, in the only way she sees fit- eye-for-an-eye. She wants to kidnap the pervert who murdered her little boy, which comes from a bizarre and completely unrealistic hijacking off the police van escorting him to jail after he is condemned to 25-to-life (Elise doesn't like the sentencing).

Nothing is realistic and the characters are not sympathetic as they should be, given the situation. It seems like the filmmakers just wanted a reason to be violent and gory. Nothing makes sense in this film and it completely misses the mark in what could have been a great existential crisis and moral dilemma that one might have when they bury their own child.

This is torture to watch because it's terrible.
.................................................................................
"Alone With Her"
starring: Colin Hanks, Ana Claudia Talancon, Jordana Spiro
written and directed by: Eric Nicholas

The film, shot entirely from cameras carried, installed or otherwise operated by Doug (Colin Hanks), follows its antihero's stalking M.O. from beginning to horrible and inevitable end. His chosen victim, Amy (Ana Claudia Talancon) excels in her portrayal of the quintessential everygirl; pretty but not unattainable, intelligent but not intimidating, creative but not tortured. 

As we watch her go through the motions of daily life via Doug's handheld camera, we discover that she enjoys drinking coffee before work, walking her Corgi in the park, going dancing on weekends with her best friend and painting in her massive, envy-inspiring (even with the hidden cameras) apartment. Ok, we get it, she embodies half the twenty-something women in the Northern Hemisphere, with the exception of a thousand or so extra square feet of living space.

As we watch Doug expertly break into said apartment to plant his camera arsenal, the audience can almost identify with his determination and singleness of purpose, if he wasn't such a creep and everything he's doing wasn't completely illegal. At first, his enduring devotion is sympathetic; he learns her favorite movies, researches her preferred bands, bonds easily with her dog and rushes to her side when she injures her foot in a household accident. Then come the increasingly stomach-churning moments (watching her shower) spiraling into the purely awful (watching her masturbate) to the unforgivable (dragging Q-tips coated in poison ivy across her bedsheets following her date with another suitor).

"Alone With Her" doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know: stalking is horrible, easily accomplished for those sick enough to try it, and can result in tragedy. Not exactly a shocking revelation for anyone who reads the news. 

Not a good movie, even though it's presentation was clever, all was lost.