Catching Up: Mini-Reviews

The summer is flying by, and the movies keep on coming. I wanted to make sure these films got some ink before they get overshadowed by Inception, so it's time for another round of mini-reviews (and at this point, if Inception doesn't overshadow the rest of this summer's fare, this truly will be the worst summer for film ever...)


Predators

I should not have found this film to be as charming as I did. The original Predator is a film whose enjoyment level for me rarely rises above "loathe," so take this review with a grain of salt. I found that most of the performances worked very well, especially Topher Grace (perpetually underrated) and Walton Goggins (perhaps the best character actor working today). The film smartly takes the Jaws approach, hinting at what's out there without showing it for probably half the run time. It's ultimately little more than a violent, crass, silly action film, but it's one of the better films of its kind we've gotten in a while. The film does take itself a bit too seriously, and the running joke of not telling us Adrien Brody's character's name is misguided, as I couldn't name any of the other characters either. Still, this film is exactly what it sells itself as, and you can't really go wrong with it if you're looking for an above average creature feature.





Life During Wartime

What exactly constitutes a sequel? That's one of the many questions Todd Solondz grapples with in Life During Wartime. A sequel of sorts to his masterpiece Happiness, it recasts every character, often turning them into someone completely different from who they were originally. And yet, the film so explicitly continues all their stories from the first film, you'll be lost if you've never seen it. It's a fascinating, if ultimately hollow experiment. Few actors are able to achieve anything approaching what the original actors did, with only a few trying to make the characters completely their own (Paul Rubens and Ciaran Hinds making the biggest impacts). If you've never seen a Solondz movie, you really shouldn't start here. The things I love about his style are still on display here, though a bit more subdued. It's ironic that this might be his most mainstream film yet, but it's also the least accessible due to its constant callbacks to a film most people never saw from 12 years ago. I'd recommend you see Happiness instead, but it is probably too shocking for 99% of audiences out there.





The Kids Are All Right

Here's a film that tells a familiar story, with familiar themes, yet it works so well because of the actors on display. All five lead actors give career best performances, and while the adults might be getting all the awards talk (Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo), I found the two children to be far more interesting and nuanced. Mia Wasikowska, fresh off of Tim Burton's recent disaster, is infinitely charming here as the daughter. She gave such a wooden performance in Alice, so it comes as a bit of a shock to see her flourish in a real role. And Josh Hutcherson is an actor I've had my eye on since Bridge to Terabithia. Here he realizes his potential as the confused and lost son of two lesbians. His story is the one I wish had been explored more. His need to find out who his father is should have played a much bigger role in the film, but it often gets glossed over in favor of bickering between Bening and Moore. Had this movie put the kids front and center, it might have been a much more original and interesting film.





Cyrus

Jonah Hill makes it 3 for 3 this year with great films. Here he absolutely nails the role of Cyrus, a strange man-child who still lives with his mother. What really could have been a one note performance is given a lot more depth by Hill, who had to improvise most of his dialog, along with the rest of the cast. John C Reilly is just as good as the man wooing Cyrus' mother. I found the loose style of this film very refreshing. While it hits some familiar beats, it hits them with wit an charm. You can almost certainly guess where this film will end up, but how it gets there is pretty fun. The women in the film haven't got as much to do, but Marissa Tomei and Catherine Keener (two of my favorite women in film right now) both give it their best. Cyrus very well might be the best comedy of the summer, one one you should check out when it comes to your neck of the woods.

Splice

There was a time, long ago, when horror movies were more than just jump scares and loud noises. More than a lot of other genres, horror has allowed filmmakers to address social issues in unique and exciting ways. By taking current political issues and combining them with monsters and thrills, a director could smuggle his message out to audiences without them explicitly knowing it. Everything from race relations (Night of the Living Dead), to religion (The Exorcist), to Communism (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), anything was fair game for the horror genre. Sadly, that seems to have faded since the 90's. Now we are inundated with torture porn and hollow remakes that miss the point of the originals. But once every so often a film will sneak through in the same vain as classic horror cinema. Such is the case with Splice, a film with a lot on its mind, even if it's never quite sure what to do with all that creativity.

Taking a page straight from Cronenberg, Splice is pure body horror. What would happen if someone combined the genes of a human with those of other animals? Such is the question two award winning scientists ask (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley), resulting in the creation of Dren. Dren is human-like in appearance, but animalistic in nature. Instead of aborting the creature when they realize how dangerous it is, they adopt it as a surrogate child, trying to help it tap into its human side. Much of the fun to be had comes from the tension between Dren's opposing sides. Dren seems to have human emotions, but also has a very violent side, and you're never sure which side will win out in a given scenario. Armed with a poisonous stinger in its tail, Dren can wreak bloody havoc when it wants to.

Brody and Polley play the parts of surrogate parents perfectly, with Polley especially standing out. Polley is so protective of Dren, she seems willing to sacrifice everything she has for Dren. There is an obsessive, almost deranged quality to the character, and you can see why she would latch on to Dren so strongly. The movie has a lot of fun playing with the idea of these three characters being a deformed family of sorts. All the problems they have with Dren are like perverted inversions of the kinds of things a normal family would deal with when raising a child. The film can often be as funny and silly as it can be scary. Indeed, it's often much more of a dark comedy than a horror film at times. This is a wise choice, as playing this deadly serious would not work at all. The tone can still have some issues, but it mostly works, often because the actors understand what kind of movie they are in.

Because the film doesn't simply go for cheap thrills, but actually allows its audience to think and consider what is happening, Splice works. Stem cell research is still a complicated and divisive topic, and Splice has some interesting things to say on both sides of the argument. On the one hand, using human genes to create Dren results in some serious medical breakthroughs. On the other hand, it causes far more damage than it may be worth to those who create Dren. If the film does have a problem, it is the ending. For the majority of the run time, the film is content to be a character piece with grotesque visual moments and dark humor. But the end suddenly changes tone completely, turning into something other than what the film was before. The end feels cheap and unearned, and more than that, unnecessary. We spend so much time getting to know and understand Dren, that when something changes in Dren, it undermines what time we spent with the creature. It feels like the filmmakers couldn't figure out how to end the film they'd started, so they switched gears and took the easy way out. Too bad, as an ending in a similar tone with the rest of the film would have been much more satisfying.

Why is it so hard for horror films to be about something more than just violence? Splice is able to have some great bodily horrors in addition to interesting characters and thematic arcs worth thinking about. While it won't likely appeal to those looking for simple thrills, it is definitely more engaging than any other horror film released so far this year. And at its center is Dren, certainly one of the more complex movie "monsters" of recent memory.