Crimson Peak

Released:  October 16^th, 2015

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Universal Pictures

Starring:  Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam

Directed by:  Guillermo del Toro

Written by:  Guillermo del Toro, Matthew Robbins

Personal Bias Alert:  loves Pan’s Labyrinth, mixed feelings about the cast

5.5 of 10

            With the revival of Hammer Films and the popularity of FX’s American Horror Story, the indulgently thrilling subgenre of gothic horror has been making a healthy comeback over the last few years.  It’s a perfect fit for director Guillermo del Toro, who makes lush films that unapologetically dive into whatever genre he’s selected.  Commitment has never been an issue for his films, and commitment is what you need to pull off the gothic high wire.  Unsure footing easily leads to camp or lethargy, and even an assured director like del Toro can stumble and make something subpar like, well, Crimson Peak.

            Named for a creepy mansion that oozes red goo and lets the snowfall in through its ruined roof, the film is about a young author, Edith (Mia Wasikowska), who falls for the dashing British man who owns the estate.  The house proves to have some less-than-hidden demons, and soon Edith finds herself warding off strange occurrences in every cranny of the house.

            Crimson Peak certainly wears the mantle of gothic horror with pride, seizing every opportunity to ratchet up the flair surrounding its simple story.  This is a gorgeous film that understands how delightful it is to see intricate tapestries and frilly dresses surrounding its monsters.  It’s got a rather traditional aesthetic, all greys and reds that, when paired with del Toro’s inventive vision, gives you some awe-inspiring moments of visual splendor.  Expect to hear its name called out many times come Oscar season and for it to take center stage in the program’s clip packages, because short snippets of this film is really the best way to take it in.

            The issues start piling up whenever Crimson Peak tries to tell its story, which despite a long script process that dates back to 2006, never feels more than half-baked.  Part of this is because of misleading expectations; the studio has marketed it as pure gothic horror, but long portions of it is really gothic romance.  That may seem like splitting hairs, but when someone goes in expecting Mary Shelley and gets a slightly bloody Jane Austin instead, they’ll almost certainly be disappointed.  The simple fact is that, despite a clear effort, Crimson Peak isn’t actually scary.  The pacing is all off, the ghosts are neither well designed nor clearly rendered, and the ending trips all over itself.  It’s possible that this stumbling be due to the film’s age.  Back in 2006, some of the twists del Toro takes us on may have seemed genuinely shocking, but now that we have American Horror Story and Penny Dreadful bringing bloody, shocking horror into our homes on a weekly basis, the story that Crimson Peak ends up telling seems decidedly quaint.

            The more detrimental error, though, is the film’s complete inability to form full, consistent characters.  It only needs to establish four people for the film to work:  Edith, her childhood beau Dr. Alan (Charlie Hunnam), Thomas, and Thomas’s sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain).  But del Toro and fellow writer Matthew Robbins fail to make any of them interesting throughout, most notably with Lucille and Alan, who are barely-drawn sketches that Hunnam and Chastain do their best to bring to life.  Thomas and Edith get a bit more attention, but the interesting traits they are given (Edith is a bit of a feminist and Thomas is an unacknowledged inventor) are picked up and tossed away on the fly.  As gothic stories tend to be slow movers, of which Crimson Peak is no exception, the lack of characters that you really care about cripples the film’s slow progress.

            Despite these disappointing setbacks, Crimson Peak will keep your attention throughout.  The cast does their best with what they’re given, and several of them are charming enough to watch even in their most flawed roles.  Sitting back and letting its visual charm wash over you is really the best way to take this film in, as you sure as hell aren’t going to get anything from its story.

Other Notes:

Ø  What a waste of Jessica Chastain.

Ø  Those ghosts really need to give more specific warnings.

Ø  Proposed drinking game:  drink whenever the shoulder ruffles on Chastain or Wasikowska’s dresses are larger than their heads.  You will get very drunk.

The Martian

Released:  October 2^nd, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  20^th Century Fox

Starring:  Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Aksel Hennie

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Written by:  Drew Goddard

Personal Bias Alert:  loved the book, likes the cast

7.5 of 10

            It must’ve been hard to decide on a release date for The Martian.  It staunchly doesn’t fit into traditional categories, proving far too light to be an awards season contender, too sciency to be a blockbuster, and too sprawling to be a thriller.  These oddities can be traced directly back to the book’s author, Andrew Weir, who first self-published the story chapter by chapter for free on his personal website.  Without the influence of editors or the publishing gristmill, Weir was free to craft the story as he pleased, and his chosen blend of hard science fiction with survival grind struck a chord with readers.  A legit publishing deal and a long stay on the New York Times bestseller list led to this most improbable situation:  a big-budget movie adaptation with an A-list cast and a legendary director.

            The story itself is a blend of the extraordinary and the mundane, following the world’s attempt to save an astronaut stranded on Mars.  It’s extraordinary to think of a man alone on an entire planet, while it’s mundane in the logistics and coordination.  This is a 100 million dollar movie that features a PR spokesperson, physics, chemistry, and potato farming.  It’s not edge-of-your-seat thrills, but for most of us, the endless strategy meetings and the small victories will hit closer to home than Ethan Hunt taking down mysterious international criminals.  Because of this familiarity, there’s moments in The Martian that hit you like an emotional sledgehammer, without warning making you realize how much you’ve connected with astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon).  This realism, a hallmark of hard science fiction, is the film’s greatest strength, and it’s something that audiences are clearly clamoring for.

            Coming in just behind this highlight is the extraordinary performance by Matt Damon.  He must pull off the smart, optimistically dark-humored astronaut with no one to play off of, not even a sentient computer like HAL or GERTY.  It’s hard to think of anyone besides Damon who could command the screen and make you care so deeply for a man without the manipulative trappings of a wife and kids left behind.  In fact, you only get a brief mention of his parents back home, and the connection you form with Watney is directly due to Damon’s vivacious performance.

            The rest of the star-studded cast breeze in and do their jobs, all of them correctly choosing to appear as average joes supporting the extraordinary Watney.  There’s almost no plot outside of the struggle to save the astronaut, which becomes both a strength and a weakness for the film.  The upside is that the story focuses on its strongest aspect:  the convoluted problems that must be worked through to even have a chance at saving him.  The downside is that there’s nothing to back that mystery up.  If, as many have, you’ve already read the book, then you’ll know all the solutions and problems that crop up along the way.  It’s still a pleasant ride to see it all play out, but without anything additional to sink your teeth into, the film feels a bit flat for long periods of time.  You’ll likely feel the same way if you attempt to watch the film multiple times, which will greatly affect the film’s staying power.

            Director Ridley Scott, who’s had lots of experience filming space movies, gives the film a solid if uninspired visual palette.  The rocky redness of Mars is occasionally beautiful, but in adhering to the book’s spirit of accuracy, the space stations were designed to look cleanly familiar.  As an offset to this occasional beauty, there’s also occasional stumbles on small things like the simulated weightlessness of space, evening out any high points and leaving Scott’s contributions rather unremarkable.  The visuals simply aren’t enough to demand rewatching, fitting in with the rest of the film’s one-off greatness.

            Most filmgoers will likely find The Martian to be a crowd-pleasing mystery populated by likable characters in an extraordinary setting.  They won’t catch on to the only other thing this film has to offer, which is a subtle love letter to space exploration and the wonders of science.  This element is much more prominent in the book, and as wonderful as it is that it remains here at all, its diminishment lessens the film as a whole.

Other Notes:

Ø  I’ve heard some pessimistic rumblings about the involvement of the Chinese space program.  This plot point is present in the book and serves to emphasize the cooperation that large scientific efforts encourage.  The fact that people don’t pick up on this proves how detrimental the downplayed pro-science stance becomes.

Ø  Drew Goddard was initially going to direct this.  I’m curious what his film would have looked like.

Ø  Spoiler alert:  Sean Bean doesn’t die.

Ø  That’s all I’ve got.  Now I need to go science the shit out of something.

Interstellar

Released:  November 7^th, 2014

Rated:  PG-13

Studio:  Paramount Pictures

Starring:  Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine

Directed by:  Christopher Nolan         

Written by:  Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan

Personal Bias Alert:  likes the Nolan brothers, not a big McConaughey fan

7 of 10

            I tried to avoid hearing about Interstellar, but with the amount of times I go to theaters, seeing the trailer was almost inevitable.  Watching it took me on a bad roller coaster ride, with the good (an intriguing Michael Caine voiceover, excellent visuals, and the ever-steady Jessica Chastain) alternating with the bad (an overwritten line and references to the vague but mighty power of love), causing emotional whiplash between excitement and apprehension.  Still, I showed up for the first possible screening, an IMAX 70mm showing at 8pm Tuesday.  This is Nolan, after all, a director with a proven track record of making intelligent entertainment pieces.

            It would be easy to go on and on about what Interstellar isn’t.  It isn’t a perfect blend of smarts and spectacle.  It isn’t Nolan’s masterpiece.  It isn’t enough to carry him to Oscar glory.  But framing a review like that misses everything that Interstellar is:  an ambitious, messy, and at times wonderful piece of work.

            Matthew McConaughey stars as a single father recruited by NASA to pilot a small expedition that must travel through a wormhole and skirt the edges of black holes to save humanity.  You see, Earth is no longer able to support human life, so a new, hospitable planet must be found in a hurry.  McConaughey’s Coop is reticent to leave his children, a plot point that feels natural thanks to the time the Nolan brothers take to establish the family’s relationships at the beginning of the film.  Too often this sort of plot point is taken for granted, and the audience is expected to accept the parent’s tormented when we’ve only seen the entire family together for one or two scenes.  It’s not that we’re monsters; we understand intellectually the bond between parents and children, but it’s much more resonant if we’re allowed to see that bond play out.

            This early portion of the film also allows us to see just how bad it’s gotten on Earth.  I’ve long considered the American dust bowl the most terrifying time I’ve ever heard of, and Interstellar is clearly lifting from this time period’s problems.  There’s crop failure, dust storms, and economic hardships.  It’s the dust storm that give us the film’s first grand visual, and it’s truly a wonder to behold.  This and later sequences of space and foreign planets are high points of the film, impeccable to look at and lingered on just long enough to instill a sense of wonder.  If the film could have maintained the early part’s balance between story, character, and spectacle, this could have gone down as Nolan’s masterpiece.

            But Coop and company must leave Earth, after which the nuts and bolts of complex space travel and Nolan’s insistence on big action sequences take over.  Not enough time is dedicated to characters or emotional arcs, and these aspects remain largely stagnant until the very end of the film.  It’s really a failure of setup.  Only four people go on the mission:  the fully realized Coop, the erratic and hyperbolic Brand (Anne Hathaway), and two other men who have no character traits I can remember.  Sticking your main character in a situation like that leaves little room for meaningful interactions and leads to the stagnation and eventual regression of character that Coop undergoes.

            Then you get the failure of the actual story.  I won’t get into spoilery details, so let’s just say that it doesn’t make sense.  There’s a troublesome ontological paradox (look it up) and an ending that unsuccessfully tries to land the emotional arcs that the film had dropped during its long middle section.  There’s few ways to leave the audience less satisfied than to muck up the ending both intellectually and emotionally.

            Even with a bad ending and a lackluster middle section, there’s more than enough here to make this a good movie.   That early portion is almost flawless, and the spectacle of experiencing the film in theaters shouldn’t be missed.  The bar for this film was simply set too high by audiences and the Nolan brothers alike.  They bit off more than they could chew, and we saw the potential for what this could be and expected them to pull it off.  Interstellar is a lesser film than we all wanted it to be, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad.

            Other Notes:

Ø  This is paced very much like other Nolan films.  There’s the steadily building tension interspersed with big action sequences, but it lacks a true climax.

Ø  Once characters start talking about love transcending time and space, I check out.

Ø  McConaughey feels like a Coop.