Ridiculous Plots Abound
"Honeymoon"
starring: Rose Leslie, Harry Treadaway
written and directed by: Leigh Janiak
This is one of the few promising films in this posts. It takes a simple concept: a couple on their honeymoon and spins it into a fear-inducing trip in the middle of nowhere. We meet Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadaway), who are newlyweds and encompassing symbolic fears and emotional distress of marriage that perhaps many people feel when they embark on this journey. That's the interesting piece to this horror film, besides the mystery behind why Bea is sleepwalking all of a sudden and where the hell she goes when she sleepwalks.
The setting is the bride's family cabin in the middle of the Canadian woods. Bea and Paul certainly have the chemistry of a would-be real-life couple in everything down to how they interact and respond to each other. They seem familiar with each other just like a real-life couple. Then, things start going awry when Paul finds Bea in the woods at night, naked, and unable to explain things, seemingly in some kind of trance. And then her behavior changes, and becomes increasingly strange.
"Honeymoon" is very emotionally astute as the characters remain in a constant state of distress and despair as they try to maneuver through the claustrophobic cabin and the dark woods. The film takes an extremely relatable fear- the idea that the person who have chosen to spend the rest of your life with may, in fact, turn out to be someone else, someone who does not even love you- and makes that fear entirely literal.
Although, the ending is not satisfying, as we come to realize what exactly has happened to Bea. I won't give it away here, because the film is decent enough to take some time to watch. The acting is good, too.
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"In Fear"
starring: Alice Englert, Iain De Caestecker, Allen Leech
written and directed by: Jeremy Lovering
Lucy and Tom are the newly groomed couple, this one only dating. They been dating for two weeks, and as a way of celebrating, Tom (Iain De Caestecker) thinks it's a great idea to go to a music festival. And that's when their newly minted relationship is put to the test. The film starts with the couple leaving a pub and Tom springing the news of the music festival to Lucy (Alice Englert). He has booked a room at a remote country hotel for the couple. A mysterious Range Rover points them in the direction, but leaves them at a locked gate/entrance, and there is a fork in the road that was not present on the internet-provided directions.
This is a minor inconvenience for the couple, and relatable to anyone who has been on some kind of road trip sans GPS. The couple goes around and around in circles, following confusing signs that just seem to send them in those circles. As the audience, we realize that there is something sinister going on and the mysterious Range Rover could very well have some part in this weird, life and death game.
There's a small piece of the puzzle right at the beginning of the film that may have been lost on non-detail focused viewers that drives home the focal point of the filmmaker's reason for the story: Lucy notices/reads a small, creepy piece of graffiti while on the toilet at the pub: "If a man hunts an innocent person, the evil will fall back on him and the fool will be destroyed...Or not." And unbeknownst to Lucy, someone is spying on her through a peephole.
The interesting piece to this film was that filmmaker, Lovering basically set out to antagonize the two actors, by relying heavily on improvising throughout the whole film, from one dark and scary silhouette encounter in the middle of this country-side nowhere to another turn here and there as Tom and Lucy navigate their way through this sort of man-made maze that will inevitably lead to some kind of dead-end for the individuals involved. It's all very anxiety-induced, but unfortunately where the film falls apart is that all the actor improvising comes at times of distress and the scriptwriter does not seem very interested in allowing the actors to explore their characters or use this fear-riddled road trip in the dark as a way of getting to know each other. They have only been dating for two weeks and do not seem curious or interested in getting to know each other. The only real character development comes in the form of Lucy, as she is terrified from each disastrous turn, she wants to figure out why this is happening. She inquires what happened in the pub when she went to the bathroom. Did Tom say something to some guys who are now pissed off and taking their revenge.
The film relies on the power of suggestion, especially in a dimly lit, horse-blinder kind of way, when you can really only see what's in front of you, what the camera is allowing the characters to see.
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"American Mary"
starring: Katharine Isabelle, Antonio Cappo, Tristan Risk, Paula Lindberg, John Emmet Tracy
written and directed by: Jen and Sylvia Soska
This has been tagged as a slasher/horror film on Netflix and so I was intrigued, slightly, but with a simple, ambiguous title like "American Mary" you do not really know what to expect, other than the main character being American, and probably in a different country, and her name is Mary. Usually a piece of the fun in slasher films comes from the title, and you tend to know what you'll get (re: blood and guts, and more). This film does offer moments of that, but really it's more of a psychological character study imbued with horror elements to satisfy expecting viewers with dismemberment, mutilation, and torture, but not in a typical, bloody fashion.
Mary Mason (Isabelle) is a promising but broke medical-school student who starts performing elective plastic surgery on patients seeking to transform their appearances in unconventional ways. Her first patient is a Betty Boop look-alike who wants her breasts and genitalia to resemble a doll’s plastic features. Soon, Dr. Mason’s specialty practice is booming. Other clients request horn implants, tongue-splitting, and – in the case of identical twins played by the film’s sibling directors – transplanted appendages. For most of us, the subculture of extreme body modification is unsettling and incomprehensible. (Admittedly, today’s ubiquitous piercings, tattoos, and spray tans also alter human appearance, albeit less drastically.) American Mary doesn’t explore what motivates individuals to undergo such radical physical transmutations, which would have been an interesting subplot to the story, and a missed opportunity.
The bizarre plot vehicle for Mary Mason's revenge comes during a squeamish scene in which she is drugged and raped by her immediate authority figure, a doctor/professor at her med school. She exacts her vengeance on him with as much zeal and emotion as a zombie. Katharine Isabelle's lack of facial expressions and her really rather deadpan approach to acting out this revenge piece does not help the poorly written script. Mary Mason is supposed to be this good girl gone bad due to her circumstances, but the actress really lacks a true screen presence, and perhaps in the hands of another actress, this could have been a better film. She looks like a cross between Katy Perry and Susan Sarandon's actress daughter, Eva Amurri (who in fact, I think would have been a better choice, especially after I just watched her small role in season 3 of "Californication").
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"The Two Faces of January"
starring: Oscar Isaac, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortenson
written and directed by: Hossein Amini
Set in 1962 Athens, the film opens on Rydal (Oscar Isaac), an American tour guide whose year-long stay in Greece seems to have consisted mostly of leading groups of slender young women around the Parthenon and pontificating about Theseus's tumultuous relationship with his father. One late afternoon, Rydal chitchats with Colette (Kirstin Dunst), who happens to be vacationing with her husband, Chester (Viggo Mortensen), leading to the trio becoming holiday companions. In these initial sequences, director Hossein Amini frames the perfectly groomed and garmented actors with the same sense of luscious care that he affords the Greek geography, though that attention begins to wane once Chester's identity as a con man is revealed, forcing the three into hiding, and igniting a father/son-like rivalry between Rydal and Chester.
Amini moves about the film's events as if going through a checklist, finding the most suitable functional equivalent for any number of other stitching elements he could have presumably mustered. These aesthetic devices lend the film a sense of precision and refinement, but only to the effect of it being too calculated a concoction, ready-made for consumption as a film that's playing by the hard-and-fast rules of "quality" filmmaking.
The film sort of plays out like "The Talented Mr. Ripley" which was an excellent film in late-1990s starring Matt Damon. This film, though, finds the director/writer just too neatly packaging and wrapping up these unraveling characters. The male leads are the driving force and Kirsten Dunst finds herself, perhaps miscast, just kind of thrown into the mix.
Nevertheless, Amini wrings stellar performances from Isaac and Mortensen, which lessens some of the film's more wooden elements. In a particularly memorable scene, Rydal reveals his father was a university professor who taught him several languages, while insinuating that his strict discipline grew into resentment and hostility for his father. Chester, sipping scotch to excessive drunkenness, scoffs: "My old man drove a truck for a living; he didn't teach us very good English, nevermind French or Russian." That class divide cuts to the core of the interests of Amini's male characters, who grapple with their inflated egos and escalating capacity for deceit and physical violence without much concern for Colette, whose fate is ultimately out of either man's hands. And really, we don't seem to care too much what happens to her, because she comes off more as an annoyance than anything else, unfortunately, especially for Dunst, who seems to be trying harder in her choice of film roles since "Melancholia."
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"88"
starring: Katharine Isabelle, Christopher Lloyd, Tim Doiron, Kyle Schmid, Michael Ironside, April Mullen, Jesse McCartney
I'm not exactly sure what compelled me to watch this film, starring Katharine Isabelle, especially after just watching her less than desirable screen presence in "American Mary," other than perhaps I was hoping this film could/would redeem her slightly. I could tell almost immediately that this was the type of film that wanted to be considered among the great "Grindhouse" films, in that it has a bizarre plot, many interesting character quirks and interactions (complete with a scene involving Katharine Isabelle's character squatting in a convenience store and urinating on the floor while the store clerk looks on, that trashing an aisle and removing her clothes and changing into some other clothes that happens to be on the rack in front of her- which was probably the best scene in the whole movie, because it's just a WTF moment).
We open on Gwen (Katherine Isabelle) in a roadside diner, confused about what she's doing and where she is. When her purse spills and a gun falls out, things get ugly and she shoots a waitress accidentally. On the run, she has to figure out what's going on and why she was in the diner, which leads her to discover her plot to kill Cyrus (Christopher Lloyd, where has he been?) because he killed her boyfriend Aster (Kyle Schmid).
The key scene of 88 occurs about halfway through the film: Gwen has been hauled in by the police after a string of violent acts, and is being interrogated by a grizzled detective. He says something to the effect of "what the hell is going on?" That is precisely what most viewers will be asking, as the first half of 88 traverses at least three distinct time periods—Gwen with Asher, Gwen wanting revenge for Asher's death, and some unspecified "now." But these times and their relation are so hopelessly intertwined for us—because we largely understand them through the confused Gwen as she slowly pieces her memories together, we're stuck with her imperfect understanding of events. This should be the key scene in the film, because something gets laid out so that viewers can get a hold on the threads of the film, and by tugging on one perhaps unravel the narrative knot the first half has so neatly tied together. But no, our detective is ignorant of what's happening, Gwen is ignorant of what's happening, so there's no hope of us knowing what's happening either. So instead the film interjects another scene of violence to cover over the fact that it's not telling us what's happening.
The film does have an interesting way of telling the story, and maybe I need to watch it one more time and really focus harder and give it more of a chance, but it never really sucked me in.
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"Not Suitable for Children"
starring: Ryan Kwanten, Sarah Snook, Ryan Corr, Bojana Novakovic, Susan Prior
written and directed by: Ryan Templeton
You take a simple, ridiculous plot: a playboy type of guy, a womanizer, has a sudden tug of conscience when he finds out he has testicular cancer and will perhaps never be able to "father" a child (hence the title) and so, what does he do? Well, the only thing he knows- he looks for redemption for his past transgressions, first with his most recent ex-girlfriend whom he realizes he treated unfairly, and then when she denies him access, he looks elsewhere, finding refuge in a close, redheaded, girl-next-door-type of redeeming lady, played by Sarah Snook (who almost looks like Emma Stone, except Australian). The problem is, Ryan Kwanten (who is better and more famously known as the brother of Sookie Sackhouse on "True Blood") does not have the ability to really be a leading man.
Privileged party dude Jonah (Kwanten) runs raves for profit at the run-down, multi-story residence he owns in Sydney’s fashionable inner city. His business partners are smart, sassy, child-hating Stevie (Snook) and drugged-up music man Gus (Ryan Corr). But Jonah’s appetite for the high life plummets, and the party enterprise is threatened, when he discovers he has testicular cancer; while the news that he must have a testicle removed momentarily shocks him, it’s the revelation that he will be infertile post-op that really takes the lead out of his pencil.
With three weeks of fertility to go, Jonah decides to pursue fatherhood before it’s too late; he unsuccessfully approaches several women, including an ex-g.f. (Bojana Novakovic), and considers a formal agreement with a lesbian couple. The outrageous concept strains against the script’s mostly polite approach, which strenuously avoids jokes rather than risk having laughs fall flat. Things warm up, in terms of charm and sexiness, when Stevie becomes tempted by financial incentives Jonah lays out to increase his appeal as a co-parent.
starring: Rose Leslie, Harry Treadaway
written and directed by: Leigh Janiak
This is one of the few promising films in this posts. It takes a simple concept: a couple on their honeymoon and spins it into a fear-inducing trip in the middle of nowhere. We meet Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadaway), who are newlyweds and encompassing symbolic fears and emotional distress of marriage that perhaps many people feel when they embark on this journey. That's the interesting piece to this horror film, besides the mystery behind why Bea is sleepwalking all of a sudden and where the hell she goes when she sleepwalks.
The setting is the bride's family cabin in the middle of the Canadian woods. Bea and Paul certainly have the chemistry of a would-be real-life couple in everything down to how they interact and respond to each other. They seem familiar with each other just like a real-life couple. Then, things start going awry when Paul finds Bea in the woods at night, naked, and unable to explain things, seemingly in some kind of trance. And then her behavior changes, and becomes increasingly strange.
"Honeymoon" is very emotionally astute as the characters remain in a constant state of distress and despair as they try to maneuver through the claustrophobic cabin and the dark woods. The film takes an extremely relatable fear- the idea that the person who have chosen to spend the rest of your life with may, in fact, turn out to be someone else, someone who does not even love you- and makes that fear entirely literal.
Although, the ending is not satisfying, as we come to realize what exactly has happened to Bea. I won't give it away here, because the film is decent enough to take some time to watch. The acting is good, too.
................................................................................
"In Fear"
starring: Alice Englert, Iain De Caestecker, Allen Leech
written and directed by: Jeremy Lovering
Lucy and Tom are the newly groomed couple, this one only dating. They been dating for two weeks, and as a way of celebrating, Tom (Iain De Caestecker) thinks it's a great idea to go to a music festival. And that's when their newly minted relationship is put to the test. The film starts with the couple leaving a pub and Tom springing the news of the music festival to Lucy (Alice Englert). He has booked a room at a remote country hotel for the couple. A mysterious Range Rover points them in the direction, but leaves them at a locked gate/entrance, and there is a fork in the road that was not present on the internet-provided directions.
This is a minor inconvenience for the couple, and relatable to anyone who has been on some kind of road trip sans GPS. The couple goes around and around in circles, following confusing signs that just seem to send them in those circles. As the audience, we realize that there is something sinister going on and the mysterious Range Rover could very well have some part in this weird, life and death game.
There's a small piece of the puzzle right at the beginning of the film that may have been lost on non-detail focused viewers that drives home the focal point of the filmmaker's reason for the story: Lucy notices/reads a small, creepy piece of graffiti while on the toilet at the pub: "If a man hunts an innocent person, the evil will fall back on him and the fool will be destroyed...Or not." And unbeknownst to Lucy, someone is spying on her through a peephole.
The interesting piece to this film was that filmmaker, Lovering basically set out to antagonize the two actors, by relying heavily on improvising throughout the whole film, from one dark and scary silhouette encounter in the middle of this country-side nowhere to another turn here and there as Tom and Lucy navigate their way through this sort of man-made maze that will inevitably lead to some kind of dead-end for the individuals involved. It's all very anxiety-induced, but unfortunately where the film falls apart is that all the actor improvising comes at times of distress and the scriptwriter does not seem very interested in allowing the actors to explore their characters or use this fear-riddled road trip in the dark as a way of getting to know each other. They have only been dating for two weeks and do not seem curious or interested in getting to know each other. The only real character development comes in the form of Lucy, as she is terrified from each disastrous turn, she wants to figure out why this is happening. She inquires what happened in the pub when she went to the bathroom. Did Tom say something to some guys who are now pissed off and taking their revenge.
The film relies on the power of suggestion, especially in a dimly lit, horse-blinder kind of way, when you can really only see what's in front of you, what the camera is allowing the characters to see.
....................................................................................
"American Mary"
starring: Katharine Isabelle, Antonio Cappo, Tristan Risk, Paula Lindberg, John Emmet Tracy
written and directed by: Jen and Sylvia Soska
This has been tagged as a slasher/horror film on Netflix and so I was intrigued, slightly, but with a simple, ambiguous title like "American Mary" you do not really know what to expect, other than the main character being American, and probably in a different country, and her name is Mary. Usually a piece of the fun in slasher films comes from the title, and you tend to know what you'll get (re: blood and guts, and more). This film does offer moments of that, but really it's more of a psychological character study imbued with horror elements to satisfy expecting viewers with dismemberment, mutilation, and torture, but not in a typical, bloody fashion.
Mary Mason (Isabelle) is a promising but broke medical-school student who starts performing elective plastic surgery on patients seeking to transform their appearances in unconventional ways. Her first patient is a Betty Boop look-alike who wants her breasts and genitalia to resemble a doll’s plastic features. Soon, Dr. Mason’s specialty practice is booming. Other clients request horn implants, tongue-splitting, and – in the case of identical twins played by the film’s sibling directors – transplanted appendages. For most of us, the subculture of extreme body modification is unsettling and incomprehensible. (Admittedly, today’s ubiquitous piercings, tattoos, and spray tans also alter human appearance, albeit less drastically.) American Mary doesn’t explore what motivates individuals to undergo such radical physical transmutations, which would have been an interesting subplot to the story, and a missed opportunity.
The bizarre plot vehicle for Mary Mason's revenge comes during a squeamish scene in which she is drugged and raped by her immediate authority figure, a doctor/professor at her med school. She exacts her vengeance on him with as much zeal and emotion as a zombie. Katharine Isabelle's lack of facial expressions and her really rather deadpan approach to acting out this revenge piece does not help the poorly written script. Mary Mason is supposed to be this good girl gone bad due to her circumstances, but the actress really lacks a true screen presence, and perhaps in the hands of another actress, this could have been a better film. She looks like a cross between Katy Perry and Susan Sarandon's actress daughter, Eva Amurri (who in fact, I think would have been a better choice, especially after I just watched her small role in season 3 of "Californication").
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"The Two Faces of January"
starring: Oscar Isaac, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortenson
written and directed by: Hossein Amini
Set in 1962 Athens, the film opens on Rydal (Oscar Isaac), an American tour guide whose year-long stay in Greece seems to have consisted mostly of leading groups of slender young women around the Parthenon and pontificating about Theseus's tumultuous relationship with his father. One late afternoon, Rydal chitchats with Colette (Kirstin Dunst), who happens to be vacationing with her husband, Chester (Viggo Mortensen), leading to the trio becoming holiday companions. In these initial sequences, director Hossein Amini frames the perfectly groomed and garmented actors with the same sense of luscious care that he affords the Greek geography, though that attention begins to wane once Chester's identity as a con man is revealed, forcing the three into hiding, and igniting a father/son-like rivalry between Rydal and Chester.
Amini moves about the film's events as if going through a checklist, finding the most suitable functional equivalent for any number of other stitching elements he could have presumably mustered. These aesthetic devices lend the film a sense of precision and refinement, but only to the effect of it being too calculated a concoction, ready-made for consumption as a film that's playing by the hard-and-fast rules of "quality" filmmaking.
The film sort of plays out like "The Talented Mr. Ripley" which was an excellent film in late-1990s starring Matt Damon. This film, though, finds the director/writer just too neatly packaging and wrapping up these unraveling characters. The male leads are the driving force and Kirsten Dunst finds herself, perhaps miscast, just kind of thrown into the mix.
Nevertheless, Amini wrings stellar performances from Isaac and Mortensen, which lessens some of the film's more wooden elements. In a particularly memorable scene, Rydal reveals his father was a university professor who taught him several languages, while insinuating that his strict discipline grew into resentment and hostility for his father. Chester, sipping scotch to excessive drunkenness, scoffs: "My old man drove a truck for a living; he didn't teach us very good English, nevermind French or Russian." That class divide cuts to the core of the interests of Amini's male characters, who grapple with their inflated egos and escalating capacity for deceit and physical violence without much concern for Colette, whose fate is ultimately out of either man's hands. And really, we don't seem to care too much what happens to her, because she comes off more as an annoyance than anything else, unfortunately, especially for Dunst, who seems to be trying harder in her choice of film roles since "Melancholia."
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"88"
starring: Katharine Isabelle, Christopher Lloyd, Tim Doiron, Kyle Schmid, Michael Ironside, April Mullen, Jesse McCartney
I'm not exactly sure what compelled me to watch this film, starring Katharine Isabelle, especially after just watching her less than desirable screen presence in "American Mary," other than perhaps I was hoping this film could/would redeem her slightly. I could tell almost immediately that this was the type of film that wanted to be considered among the great "Grindhouse" films, in that it has a bizarre plot, many interesting character quirks and interactions (complete with a scene involving Katharine Isabelle's character squatting in a convenience store and urinating on the floor while the store clerk looks on, that trashing an aisle and removing her clothes and changing into some other clothes that happens to be on the rack in front of her- which was probably the best scene in the whole movie, because it's just a WTF moment).
We open on Gwen (Katherine Isabelle) in a roadside diner, confused about what she's doing and where she is. When her purse spills and a gun falls out, things get ugly and she shoots a waitress accidentally. On the run, she has to figure out what's going on and why she was in the diner, which leads her to discover her plot to kill Cyrus (Christopher Lloyd, where has he been?) because he killed her boyfriend Aster (Kyle Schmid).
The key scene of 88 occurs about halfway through the film: Gwen has been hauled in by the police after a string of violent acts, and is being interrogated by a grizzled detective. He says something to the effect of "what the hell is going on?" That is precisely what most viewers will be asking, as the first half of 88 traverses at least three distinct time periods—Gwen with Asher, Gwen wanting revenge for Asher's death, and some unspecified "now." But these times and their relation are so hopelessly intertwined for us—because we largely understand them through the confused Gwen as she slowly pieces her memories together, we're stuck with her imperfect understanding of events. This should be the key scene in the film, because something gets laid out so that viewers can get a hold on the threads of the film, and by tugging on one perhaps unravel the narrative knot the first half has so neatly tied together. But no, our detective is ignorant of what's happening, Gwen is ignorant of what's happening, so there's no hope of us knowing what's happening either. So instead the film interjects another scene of violence to cover over the fact that it's not telling us what's happening.
The film does have an interesting way of telling the story, and maybe I need to watch it one more time and really focus harder and give it more of a chance, but it never really sucked me in.
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"Not Suitable for Children"
starring: Ryan Kwanten, Sarah Snook, Ryan Corr, Bojana Novakovic, Susan Prior
written and directed by: Ryan Templeton
You take a simple, ridiculous plot: a playboy type of guy, a womanizer, has a sudden tug of conscience when he finds out he has testicular cancer and will perhaps never be able to "father" a child (hence the title) and so, what does he do? Well, the only thing he knows- he looks for redemption for his past transgressions, first with his most recent ex-girlfriend whom he realizes he treated unfairly, and then when she denies him access, he looks elsewhere, finding refuge in a close, redheaded, girl-next-door-type of redeeming lady, played by Sarah Snook (who almost looks like Emma Stone, except Australian). The problem is, Ryan Kwanten (who is better and more famously known as the brother of Sookie Sackhouse on "True Blood") does not have the ability to really be a leading man.
Privileged party dude Jonah (Kwanten) runs raves for profit at the run-down, multi-story residence he owns in Sydney’s fashionable inner city. His business partners are smart, sassy, child-hating Stevie (Snook) and drugged-up music man Gus (Ryan Corr). But Jonah’s appetite for the high life plummets, and the party enterprise is threatened, when he discovers he has testicular cancer; while the news that he must have a testicle removed momentarily shocks him, it’s the revelation that he will be infertile post-op that really takes the lead out of his pencil.
With three weeks of fertility to go, Jonah decides to pursue fatherhood before it’s too late; he unsuccessfully approaches several women, including an ex-g.f. (Bojana Novakovic), and considers a formal agreement with a lesbian couple. The outrageous concept strains against the script’s mostly polite approach, which strenuously avoids jokes rather than risk having laughs fall flat. Things warm up, in terms of charm and sexiness, when Stevie becomes tempted by financial incentives Jonah lays out to increase his appeal as a co-parent.
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