"Wild" Reese Witherspoon
"Wild"
starring: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Keene McRae, Gaby Hoffman
directed by: Jean-Marc Vallee
written by: Nick Hornby and Cheryl Strayed (novel)
It's these time of movies that strike a nerve with me, because I envy the type of people that allow themselves to set out on an adventure of equal measures freedom and grueling mentality and physically. Every time I see these type of solo-adventure films, it makes me want to drop everything and go on my own trip; or I come up with some kind of task for myself, but really I want to become a traveler. Being a traveler is about stepping out of your comfort zone, into unfamiliar territory and pushing yourself to grueling extreme.
Now, with that being said. I have made a couple of my own adventures. First, back in 2003, I traveled to Washington D.C. during my spring break and stayed in a hotel for an entire week, right outside of Georgetown University and walked all around the capital city. I checked out every museum, for free, saw all the great, larger-than-life monuments, walked all the way to Arlington, VA (well, just over a bridge). But, the thing was- I survived that adventure, all on my own. In fact, the adventure was perhaps even better because I was alone, because I didn't have to answer to someone else's needs or wants. I seem to have been that way for a long time, probably my whole life. I have always enjoyed my time alone. I have always lived without a roommate (excluding two stints with ex-girlfriends now, which I can chalk up to experiences which I've learned from).
I have also gone on 5 summer road trip experiences (for two weeks, on a bus full of other baseball-loving enthusiasts, so not necessarily on my own, but I did go out of my comfort zone and ended up making some lasting friendships).
Then, came the summer of 2009. I had just finished my first year of teaching and was, to be frank and honest, quite jaded about education and my career, in general. I started planning a solo road trip during the last couple of months of the school year. The idea was to finish seeing every Major League Ballpark (and I almost met my goal, to this day, I only have 6 left) as well as seeing Minor League ballparks wherever I could, depending on where I stayed. Originally, I planned all my stops for the night on baseball towns. I ventured out after the last day of school with a car full of snacks and one suitcase of clothes, a few books to read and my laptop. My plan was to couch-surf with people I'd met online through a great website called www.couchsurfing.com (originally, everyone thought I was going to stay with one strange, creepy person and end up dead-- totally not the case at all- I actually met some amazing people throughout the country and I think couchsurfing saved and/or made my adventure even better). This was an incredible journey, where I learned a lot about myself, met some amazing people, had some of the best conversations with now-friends, saw some great sites (besides ballparks, hello Grand Canyon and Hollywood Boulevard, to name couple). It was a life-changing experiences, perhaps even more so than what I was looking for, but then again, I also learned to stop creating expectations in my mind for things in my life, and instead go at things with a positive intention- something I've carried on throughout the rest of my life (going on about 7 years now from that fateful trip). I think I could talk about specific experiences for a long time, but I want to talk about the film "Wild" with Reese Witherspoon in the role of real-life adventure seeker, Cheryl Strayed.
It begins with a woman alone on a mountain. She is Cheryl Strayed – a real-life writer, whose bestselling memoir about hiking solo 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail the movie is based on – and she’s played by Reese Witherspoon, an actress with a smile dazzling enough to earn her the silly sobriquet of “America’s Sweetheart” more than once in a 25-year-long career. Here, she’s a lethal fount of four-lettered rage who isn’t afraid to let that smile go slack, the features harden, the eyes go dead. Cheryl has seen a lot.
Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay. The same man behind "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy." I think he has proven he has quite a way with words, especially if they are his own creation. I think the script falls apart because he is interpreting someone else's words, a woman's words. A woman who has clearly gone through a bunch of shit in her life, albeit a lot of it was self-induced (drugs, drinking, and screwing around). Hornby does a great job of staying on a clear path to telling the Cheryl Strayed story. We get an excellent mixture of Reese Witherspoon hiking alone on the Pacific Crest Trail, enough to see exactly how difficult and strenuous it truly is; and then there's the flashbacks, mixed into her adventure on the Trail. The flashbacks give us a taste of why Cheryl is on the hike- flashbacks of an abusive childhood, a failed marriage, and the early death of her beloved, young-ish mother (Laura Dern), and the path of self-destruction that Cheryl found herself on. Her reasoning for the hike is plain and simple: to hike 1,100 miles so that by the end she can be the woman her mother wanted her to be. Cheryl must sort through these memories (some good and some bad) while grieving and facing her own demons, but all the while, she must also stand up for herself and defend herself from the real life threats on the Pacific Crest Trail (the director certainly does not shy away from the fact of how dangerous hiking this 1,100 mile trail truly is for a woman, alone, but Jean-Marc Vallee does a great job being rather subtle about it without making the audience pity her). There's a certain anxiety throughout the whole feel, but not in a sympathetic way.
Films like "Wild" throw and land some hard punches, but they also feel a bit rushed for a two hour movie. We all know the movie has to end, but the idea that the voices and conversations in your head that are happening for these characters (like Cheryl and Christopher McCandless from "Into the Wild" which had a completely different, heartwrenching ending) do not end is hard to settle down with.
I did really love this film though, because of the well-written script and the directing/editing of the film. Reese Witherspoon does a great job encompassing a complex woman, too.
..................................................................
"Oculus"
starring: Karen Gillian, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackoff, Rory Cochrane, Annalise Basso, Garrett Ryan
written and directed by: Mike Flanagan
For a supernatural thriller and horror film, "Oculus" is quite entertaining and gripping enough to keep you watching, like most paranormal activity-type films, because you ultimately want that pay-off in the end, where you finally get told the answer.
"Oculus" is notch above the usual paranormal activities that seem to be fully formed but are essentially hollow fare for horror fans. It boasts more story and one badass mirror from hell that makes Alice’s looking glass seem downright cloudy in comparison. For all its darkly reflective glamour, however, the increasingly knotty narrative eventually strains even genre credulity and, as oculi go, it’s all a bit dim as to why, what, when, where – and especially how – the hauntees are being haunted.
The story involves orphaned siblings Tim (Thwaites) and Kaylie Russell (Gillan) reuniting long after the untoward death of their parents, and Tim’s subsequent incarceration and release from a mental hospital. While the twentysomething Kaylie has been busy researching her family’s fraught history – mom and dad committed suicide – as well as tracking down an ornate mirror known as the “Lasser Glass,” which she believes to be the dark force behind her family’s disintegration, Tim has managed to convince himself it’s all a childhood fantasy.
The film never really fully develops and goes from the past to the present a bit too much, so it becomes rather confusing, until the past and present collide, providing answers that Kaylie has been searching for all those years. The ending, though, isn't as good as it could have been. I give credit to the filmmakers, because their original idea was apparently just a 30 minute short film, which they've expanded for this film, which is actually one of the first productions from the wrestling company WWE.
...................................................................
"Shadow of the Vampire"
starring: John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Cary Elwes, Eddie Izzard, Udo Kier, Catherine McCormack
directed by: E. Elias Merhige
written by: Steven Katz
The original Nosferatu (the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula novel) still holds a singularly haunting and majestic power over its audience. F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent horror classic, with its typically Germanic use of stylized shadows and sly symbolism, invokes an eerie enchantment that is apparent in virtually every frame. The wonderful, unspoken spectacle of mysterious actor Max Schreck's vampiric Count Orlok does not soon fade from memory; mental snapshots of his repellent, sallow, pointy-eared, rat-faced visage emerging from the bleak darkness linger eternally in the collective subconscious.
With genuine, loving reverence for this classic source material, the creative team behind Shadow of the Vampire have fashioned a unique, darkly comic take on the making of Nosferatu, a fictional "what-if" scenario full of wit and cerebral imagination, and perhaps even a bit of truth. What if the pseudonymous Max Schreck (surely not a real name) was in fact a genuine bloodsucker, a bona fide vampire knowingly employed by Murnau to elevate his terrifying, visionary parable into the ultimate horror film for the ages? That is precisely what holds this film together- exploring this Hollywood myth that has been going around town for decades.
Cinematic pioneer F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich), whose copious amount of talent and directing skill is matched only by his equally abundant level of compulsive arrogance, has grand designs on finally filming his true masterpiece, Nosferatu. Bent on making a purely authentic vampire film, free of sanitized sets and superficial trickery, Murnau elects to shoot only on actual locations, leaving behind the vibrant city decadence of Berlin for the dank, dark, rural mountainsides of Germany.
Once on site, Murnau introduces his special find to the rest of the cast and crew—the "ultimate method actor" Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe), to portray his vampire, Count Orlock. Schreck's acting methods soon prove to be quite unconventional, to say the least. Schreck shoots his scenes only at night, remains in costume at all times, and, like Herman Munster, his ghoulish mug never seems to require any additional makeup to terrify all around this nocturnal backdrop. Then the cinematographer mysteriously disappears.
It soon becomes apparent to all involved that something is amiss in this production. The eventual question is, to what lengths of madness will the obsessive Murnau go to complete the final reel of his masterwork? At what point does the alluringly lasting legacy of visionary art become more important than the value of human life itself?
Shadow of the Vampire explores the dedication behind the creative process and the extent the artist goes to bring his/her vision to fruition. It's a meditative riff on all artistic endeavors, a metaphor for this go-for-broke creative spirit, using Nosferatu as a starting point of reference. It likewise uses vampirism as a metaphor for cinema in general, where reality is reduced to flat images and shadows on the film stock, removed of all the flesh and blood of living vitality, and deceased movie stars still exist eternally on screen, forever haunting us with their enduring celluloid visage long after they are merely dust and bone.
Willem Dafoe exudes creepy coolness as Max Schreck, the ghoulish actor whose vampiric tendencies may just be the real deal. Even with his progressively repellent look, with its grotesque, elongated shadow that precedes him always like an evil omen, Dafoe still manages to give a restrained, organic take to this multilayered performance, no doubt culling upon his theater background for inspiration.
Dafoe, in his horrific makeup, dominates the film and embodies the essence of Schreck—he is tall, thin and bald, with a skull-like face, pointed ears, piercing eyes and fingernails like daggers. The Oscar-nominated Dafoe has a face that, sans makeup, still looks like a skull beneath a skull, if that makes sense. His vulpine and aggressive disposition is responsible for much of the film's finest moments. Yet he really makes you feel for his plight, accursed with eternal vampirism, unable to ever experience a sunrise, unless watching it on film through a movie projector in his stale, lifeless lair. Really, as trite as it sounds, this was a role that Dafoe was born to play.
With his funky goggles and stringy strands of hair hanging adrift on the converging extremities of his forehead, John Malkovich plays cinema pioneer F.W. Murnau to the hilt, accentuating the director's notoriously flamboyant knack for obsessive detail to perfection. He perfectly conveys the detached self-absorption within the silent filmmaker, equally balancing Murnau's egotistical, pampered mannerisms with his creative drive for perfection. Through his subtle physicality and seemingly limitless facial gestures, Malkovich is one of those rare actors who adds a certain intangible quality to every project he's associated with.
This is a great mythical film that belongs to Malkovich and Dafoe, with Dafoe clearly stealing the show as the creepy Max Schreck. It is worth watching just to be creeped out by him. It's no wonder he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar back in 2000 (when the film came out).
Now, with that being said. I have made a couple of my own adventures. First, back in 2003, I traveled to Washington D.C. during my spring break and stayed in a hotel for an entire week, right outside of Georgetown University and walked all around the capital city. I checked out every museum, for free, saw all the great, larger-than-life monuments, walked all the way to Arlington, VA (well, just over a bridge). But, the thing was- I survived that adventure, all on my own. In fact, the adventure was perhaps even better because I was alone, because I didn't have to answer to someone else's needs or wants. I seem to have been that way for a long time, probably my whole life. I have always enjoyed my time alone. I have always lived without a roommate (excluding two stints with ex-girlfriends now, which I can chalk up to experiences which I've learned from).
I have also gone on 5 summer road trip experiences (for two weeks, on a bus full of other baseball-loving enthusiasts, so not necessarily on my own, but I did go out of my comfort zone and ended up making some lasting friendships).
Then, came the summer of 2009. I had just finished my first year of teaching and was, to be frank and honest, quite jaded about education and my career, in general. I started planning a solo road trip during the last couple of months of the school year. The idea was to finish seeing every Major League Ballpark (and I almost met my goal, to this day, I only have 6 left) as well as seeing Minor League ballparks wherever I could, depending on where I stayed. Originally, I planned all my stops for the night on baseball towns. I ventured out after the last day of school with a car full of snacks and one suitcase of clothes, a few books to read and my laptop. My plan was to couch-surf with people I'd met online through a great website called www.couchsurfing.com (originally, everyone thought I was going to stay with one strange, creepy person and end up dead-- totally not the case at all- I actually met some amazing people throughout the country and I think couchsurfing saved and/or made my adventure even better). This was an incredible journey, where I learned a lot about myself, met some amazing people, had some of the best conversations with now-friends, saw some great sites (besides ballparks, hello Grand Canyon and Hollywood Boulevard, to name couple). It was a life-changing experiences, perhaps even more so than what I was looking for, but then again, I also learned to stop creating expectations in my mind for things in my life, and instead go at things with a positive intention- something I've carried on throughout the rest of my life (going on about 7 years now from that fateful trip). I think I could talk about specific experiences for a long time, but I want to talk about the film "Wild" with Reese Witherspoon in the role of real-life adventure seeker, Cheryl Strayed.
It begins with a woman alone on a mountain. She is Cheryl Strayed – a real-life writer, whose bestselling memoir about hiking solo 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail the movie is based on – and she’s played by Reese Witherspoon, an actress with a smile dazzling enough to earn her the silly sobriquet of “America’s Sweetheart” more than once in a 25-year-long career. Here, she’s a lethal fount of four-lettered rage who isn’t afraid to let that smile go slack, the features harden, the eyes go dead. Cheryl has seen a lot.
Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay. The same man behind "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy." I think he has proven he has quite a way with words, especially if they are his own creation. I think the script falls apart because he is interpreting someone else's words, a woman's words. A woman who has clearly gone through a bunch of shit in her life, albeit a lot of it was self-induced (drugs, drinking, and screwing around). Hornby does a great job of staying on a clear path to telling the Cheryl Strayed story. We get an excellent mixture of Reese Witherspoon hiking alone on the Pacific Crest Trail, enough to see exactly how difficult and strenuous it truly is; and then there's the flashbacks, mixed into her adventure on the Trail. The flashbacks give us a taste of why Cheryl is on the hike- flashbacks of an abusive childhood, a failed marriage, and the early death of her beloved, young-ish mother (Laura Dern), and the path of self-destruction that Cheryl found herself on. Her reasoning for the hike is plain and simple: to hike 1,100 miles so that by the end she can be the woman her mother wanted her to be. Cheryl must sort through these memories (some good and some bad) while grieving and facing her own demons, but all the while, she must also stand up for herself and defend herself from the real life threats on the Pacific Crest Trail (the director certainly does not shy away from the fact of how dangerous hiking this 1,100 mile trail truly is for a woman, alone, but Jean-Marc Vallee does a great job being rather subtle about it without making the audience pity her). There's a certain anxiety throughout the whole feel, but not in a sympathetic way.
Films like "Wild" throw and land some hard punches, but they also feel a bit rushed for a two hour movie. We all know the movie has to end, but the idea that the voices and conversations in your head that are happening for these characters (like Cheryl and Christopher McCandless from "Into the Wild" which had a completely different, heartwrenching ending) do not end is hard to settle down with.
I did really love this film though, because of the well-written script and the directing/editing of the film. Reese Witherspoon does a great job encompassing a complex woman, too.
..................................................................
"Oculus"
starring: Karen Gillian, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackoff, Rory Cochrane, Annalise Basso, Garrett Ryan
written and directed by: Mike Flanagan
For a supernatural thriller and horror film, "Oculus" is quite entertaining and gripping enough to keep you watching, like most paranormal activity-type films, because you ultimately want that pay-off in the end, where you finally get told the answer.
"Oculus" is notch above the usual paranormal activities that seem to be fully formed but are essentially hollow fare for horror fans. It boasts more story and one badass mirror from hell that makes Alice’s looking glass seem downright cloudy in comparison. For all its darkly reflective glamour, however, the increasingly knotty narrative eventually strains even genre credulity and, as oculi go, it’s all a bit dim as to why, what, when, where – and especially how – the hauntees are being haunted.
The story involves orphaned siblings Tim (Thwaites) and Kaylie Russell (Gillan) reuniting long after the untoward death of their parents, and Tim’s subsequent incarceration and release from a mental hospital. While the twentysomething Kaylie has been busy researching her family’s fraught history – mom and dad committed suicide – as well as tracking down an ornate mirror known as the “Lasser Glass,” which she believes to be the dark force behind her family’s disintegration, Tim has managed to convince himself it’s all a childhood fantasy.
The film never really fully develops and goes from the past to the present a bit too much, so it becomes rather confusing, until the past and present collide, providing answers that Kaylie has been searching for all those years. The ending, though, isn't as good as it could have been. I give credit to the filmmakers, because their original idea was apparently just a 30 minute short film, which they've expanded for this film, which is actually one of the first productions from the wrestling company WWE.
...................................................................
"Shadow of the Vampire"
starring: John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Cary Elwes, Eddie Izzard, Udo Kier, Catherine McCormack
directed by: E. Elias Merhige
written by: Steven Katz
The original Nosferatu (the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula novel) still holds a singularly haunting and majestic power over its audience. F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent horror classic, with its typically Germanic use of stylized shadows and sly symbolism, invokes an eerie enchantment that is apparent in virtually every frame. The wonderful, unspoken spectacle of mysterious actor Max Schreck's vampiric Count Orlok does not soon fade from memory; mental snapshots of his repellent, sallow, pointy-eared, rat-faced visage emerging from the bleak darkness linger eternally in the collective subconscious.
With genuine, loving reverence for this classic source material, the creative team behind Shadow of the Vampire have fashioned a unique, darkly comic take on the making of Nosferatu, a fictional "what-if" scenario full of wit and cerebral imagination, and perhaps even a bit of truth. What if the pseudonymous Max Schreck (surely not a real name) was in fact a genuine bloodsucker, a bona fide vampire knowingly employed by Murnau to elevate his terrifying, visionary parable into the ultimate horror film for the ages? That is precisely what holds this film together- exploring this Hollywood myth that has been going around town for decades.
Cinematic pioneer F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich), whose copious amount of talent and directing skill is matched only by his equally abundant level of compulsive arrogance, has grand designs on finally filming his true masterpiece, Nosferatu. Bent on making a purely authentic vampire film, free of sanitized sets and superficial trickery, Murnau elects to shoot only on actual locations, leaving behind the vibrant city decadence of Berlin for the dank, dark, rural mountainsides of Germany.
Once on site, Murnau introduces his special find to the rest of the cast and crew—the "ultimate method actor" Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe), to portray his vampire, Count Orlock. Schreck's acting methods soon prove to be quite unconventional, to say the least. Schreck shoots his scenes only at night, remains in costume at all times, and, like Herman Munster, his ghoulish mug never seems to require any additional makeup to terrify all around this nocturnal backdrop. Then the cinematographer mysteriously disappears.
It soon becomes apparent to all involved that something is amiss in this production. The eventual question is, to what lengths of madness will the obsessive Murnau go to complete the final reel of his masterwork? At what point does the alluringly lasting legacy of visionary art become more important than the value of human life itself?
Shadow of the Vampire explores the dedication behind the creative process and the extent the artist goes to bring his/her vision to fruition. It's a meditative riff on all artistic endeavors, a metaphor for this go-for-broke creative spirit, using Nosferatu as a starting point of reference. It likewise uses vampirism as a metaphor for cinema in general, where reality is reduced to flat images and shadows on the film stock, removed of all the flesh and blood of living vitality, and deceased movie stars still exist eternally on screen, forever haunting us with their enduring celluloid visage long after they are merely dust and bone.
Willem Dafoe exudes creepy coolness as Max Schreck, the ghoulish actor whose vampiric tendencies may just be the real deal. Even with his progressively repellent look, with its grotesque, elongated shadow that precedes him always like an evil omen, Dafoe still manages to give a restrained, organic take to this multilayered performance, no doubt culling upon his theater background for inspiration.
Dafoe, in his horrific makeup, dominates the film and embodies the essence of Schreck—he is tall, thin and bald, with a skull-like face, pointed ears, piercing eyes and fingernails like daggers. The Oscar-nominated Dafoe has a face that, sans makeup, still looks like a skull beneath a skull, if that makes sense. His vulpine and aggressive disposition is responsible for much of the film's finest moments. Yet he really makes you feel for his plight, accursed with eternal vampirism, unable to ever experience a sunrise, unless watching it on film through a movie projector in his stale, lifeless lair. Really, as trite as it sounds, this was a role that Dafoe was born to play.
With his funky goggles and stringy strands of hair hanging adrift on the converging extremities of his forehead, John Malkovich plays cinema pioneer F.W. Murnau to the hilt, accentuating the director's notoriously flamboyant knack for obsessive detail to perfection. He perfectly conveys the detached self-absorption within the silent filmmaker, equally balancing Murnau's egotistical, pampered mannerisms with his creative drive for perfection. Through his subtle physicality and seemingly limitless facial gestures, Malkovich is one of those rare actors who adds a certain intangible quality to every project he's associated with.
This is a great mythical film that belongs to Malkovich and Dafoe, with Dafoe clearly stealing the show as the creepy Max Schreck. It is worth watching just to be creeped out by him. It's no wonder he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar back in 2000 (when the film came out).
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