Fury

4 Stars (out of four)

When the mayor of Atlanta pleaded with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman not to burn down the city, Sherman was famously quoted as saying, "War is Hell."  Claushwitz went further to say, "Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war.  Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed.  War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst."  These quotes lay at the heart of Fury, the new WWII tanker movie starring Brad Pitt.

The movie itself is pretty simple.  It is April 1945, and the crew of the tank Fury have been fighting in WWII since North Africa.  They recently lost their assistant driver who has been replaced by a young recruit Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) who is in the Army for 8 weeks and has no tank training.  It is through Norman's inexperienced eyes the story unfolds.  The tank crew is sent to rescue a platoon, liberate a town and finally stop an SS battalion single-handedly with a damaged tank that can't move.  We see how in a short time, Norman goes from wide-eyed greenhorn to seasoned veteran and his changing relationships with his crewmates.  Brad Pitt plays the tank's commander, Don 'Wardaddy' Collier, who mercilessly instructs Norman on the realities and horrors of combat and war.  Michael Peña, John Grantham, and an unrecognizable Shia LaBeouf round out the rest of the crew.

I've said before that the best war movies are anti-war movies at the same time.  Like Saving Private Ryan before this, it is an unflinching look at WWII combat and how gruesome it was.  If one were to watch the totality of movies about WWII, they have a fairly mild take on the issue.  War is glorious and celebrated as we defeat the evil Nazis and Japanese Empire.  In fact, I think most people look to WWII as the "good war" because of the fairly black-and-white morality that surrounds it. There are good guys and bad guys and we fought to overcome some of the most evil regimes in history at great cost.  It is easy, then, to make films with larger points that sterilize the horror of it, to gloss over the gruesomeness of what war really is.  It is easier to imagine war is dirty and sick when the original motives or objectives of the war are unclear at best.  But it is hard to imagine the greatest generation stabbing a german soldier in the eye to kill him as is in the opening scene.  I don't object to the reasons behind WWII, far from it.  War has a time and a place, and should NEVER be entered into lightly.  Movies like The Sands of Iwo Jima, To Hell And Back or even Patton do a great disservice to the men who actually served, injured or died fighting to its end.  They make war look like a fun, macho picnic where people die cleanly and gloriously, not shivering as they die because their guts have been spilled in the mud.  As hard as it is, the real face of war should never be hidden.  People should see the horror and the blood and the inhumanity involved because war is such a terrible business and should be avoided if at all possible.  The fact that we now can use drones and hit targets thousands of miles way in a precision, almost videogame-like environment makes remembering the cost involved even more significant lest war seem an easy way out of a jam.

There is not a bad performance in this movie.  The tone is perfect, veering wildly from the evil that men do to finding humanity in the oddest of ways and places.  Aside from its anti-war stance, this movie is not really taking a stand one way or another, just saying how it is.  People die quickly, unexpectedly when a moment before the scene was boredom.  The fact it takes place in cold, misty and muddy environments just adds to the misery overall.  Beauty is fleeting and can be snuffed out in an instant.  This is not a happy movie nor is it a pumping action movie, although there are some very exciting scenes.  There are also some very visceral scenes of violence that sear into your brain and not easily forgotten.  Approach this movie with caution if you don't want to be affected by it.  Definitely not one for children.  Many movies use the backdrop of WWII to make a greater point about the human spirit, like the upcoming  Unbroken, which Pitt's wife Angelina Jolie directed.  While these movies certainly have their place, Fury is all about the truism Collier says to Norman: "Ideals are peaceful.  History is violent."

Let The Right One In

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Wow, do I love it when I am thrown a curve and get to see a great film I knew next to nothing about!  I have seen many lists and critics praise the 2008 Swedish film Let The Right One In for some time now.  I even think I tried to see it at the theater but didn't get around to it.  This movie totally blew away my expectations and is one of the better horror films I have seen.  Period.

The movie is about a bullied 12-year-old boy named Oskar.  One night, a mysterious family moves in next door to him and quickly after that, strange murders begin to happen.  Oskar then meets a mysterious girl Eli (pronounced EE-lee, not EE-lie) who only comes out at night.  They strike up a fast, very close friendship.  She is very elusive whenever he asks her personal questions.  Eli becomes a great friend to him, encouraging him to stand up to the bullies, which he does.  Gradually, Oskar begins to realize Eli is a vampire, and rather than being repelled by it, he grows even closer to her.  When events around town begin to point to Eli, she says she has to leave, but ends up rescuing Oskar from the vengeful punks he stood up to earlier and helps him take revenge on them.

This was nothing what I expected it to be.  It is a movie sympathetic to both the vampire and its victims.  It portrays a vampire for what it is, not the particular aspects that make them attractive like The Lost Boys, Twilight, or even Tru Blood.  The vampire myth holds our interest for many reasons, overtones of sexual lust, power, control, eternal youth and whatnot.  What separates this film from all the others is its portrayal that a vampire it is what it is, a predator rather than an evil monster.  By making the vampire a 12-year-old girl, she is both strong and weak. Strong because of the obvious powers of a vampire.  Weak for the same reason Anne Rice said of the child vampire in Interview With The Vampire; as a child, they cannot exist in society, they cannot blend.  They will always need an adult with them or they will instantly stand out, which can be a problem for a creature that has to kill to survive, burns up on the sun and whose biggest defense is they look like everyone else.  But a great twist on this movie is that it deals with the results of a vampire's killings, the plight of the victims.  A key plot point comes when Eli kills a friend of one of the townspeople, which gets him obsessed with finding whatever killed his friend, with tragic results.

Also, many vampire movies, or at least the actors in vampire movies, put on this affected aristocratic air when they play vampires.  The Underworld and Blade movies demonstrate this propensity particularly vividly.  It's become almost cliché that if you play a vampire, you have to be an heavily-accented, boorish snob.  Eli is the exact opposite of that.  She is almost a waif, seemingly brittle to the touch until she actually kills a victim.  Even then, it looks like a small girl attacking a much larger person.  Most of the supernatural aspects of her powers are offscreen, making them scarier from what is implied.  But unless she is covered in blood, the juxtaposition of what she did versus her small frame is refreshingly off-kilter.  You don't really believe she can do these things until she does.

But the real heart of this film is the relationship between Oskar and Eli.  These are not two experienced adults doing a sensuous dance like in most vampire movies, but more of an innocent first love.  It is obvious Eli is much older than she looks.  Indeed, her "father" is actually someone who has devoted himself to her and her safety.  She obviously loves him, too, but she is also the power in the relationship.  There are very tender moments between her and her protector, but at the same time, she mercilessly scolds him when he messes things up.  It is almost like he has the mind of a child, utterly incapable of making his own decisions and serving her every whim.  At the end of the movie, it seems the same will be the fate of Oskar, yet he is happy about it.  The movie's is vagueness about this is intriguing.  Does Eli love Oskar, as she says multiple times throught the story, or is she manipulating him for her needs, or a combination of both?  It's left up to the viewer.

The only complaint I have is the film is that it is a bit ponderous like many european films tend to be.  It takes awhile  to get to the point, but when it does, this film does not disappoint.  Despite the fact the two main protagonists are twelve, this is really an adult movie.  It is not some schlocky gore fest, but rather a plot-driven character study that is utterly engrossing.  It doesn't rely on cheap thrills or even a sense of dread, just an amazing story from start to finish.  When you watch the DVD, it is dubbed, but not too badly.  I always prefer subtitles in foreign films so you don't get the chop sucky bad overdubs.  But I also like them because I hear the actors' original performances which usually get lost in the dubbing process.  All in all, this is an excellent film that I really can't recommend more highly.  If you want to see something truly original, this is the movie for you.  I may have to read the book now.

Kill The Messenger

3 Stars (out of four)

So, having a soft spot the fourth estate, when I heard what this movie was about, I got in line.  I love most of the movies that deal with news guys, particular the state of the news industry, especially investigative journalism.  I truly believe that a free press is an essential part of a free society since they keep everyone in line.  Except tabloids.  They can all die a thousand deaths.

Anyway, Kill The Messenger is about a San Jose Mercury News reporter who, during a fairly routine story, gets handed a grand jury testimony that says that the crack epidemic of the 80s and 90s was helped along by the CIA as it turned a blind eye to smugglers who were assisting the Contras in Nicaragua.  The drug sales were funding arms purchases that would be funded back to Nicaragua.  At first, the story is a bombshell that catches the national interest.  But very quickly, it all unravels as the government begins to harass him and his paper, and rival papers turn to discredit him.  Very quickly, he becomes a pariah among the news industry as his paper does not back him.  Eventually he is forced out of journalism and as we find out in the end, he was killed by two shots to the head that was ruled a suicide.

So basically, this is All The President's Men with a much more depressing ending.  The movie is a little conspiracy theorist, but it does try to be fair by repeatedly mentioning that the plot was not necessarily hatched by the CIA.  It is kind of intense, but the movie does not seem to have the urgency like many of its better predecessors.  I just doesn't grab you and the movie suffers for it.  It desperately wants to be more than it is, but ultimately falls kind of flat.  It was worth the price of admission, but it is one of those movies you probably could wait for the DVD release.  The high point is Jeremy Renner.  He was not very well utilized as Hawkeye in the Marvel movies, but he has a very expressive face that does belie what he is thinking.  I think he will eventually become quite the actor if he continues on this trajectory.  I really enjoyed his performance without it being bombastic or calling attention to itself like Al Pacino or Joe Pesci.  I am excited to see him tackle tougher material like this.  Ultimately, this is a good movie that wants to be great.  It has the right material, a very interesting plot, but ultimately falls flat.  There are better news movies than this, but ultimately, it is worth a watch.

Annabelle

2.5 Stars (out of four)

As we frolic into one of my favorite seasons (Halloween), along comes the usual crop of horror movies, with this prequel to the (surprisingly) good 2013 film, The Conjuring (see earlier review).

Annabelle takes place approximately 5-7 years before the events in The Conjuring and longer than that for the events in The Amityville Horror, two celebrated cases from the the husband-wife paranormal team Ed and Lorraine Warren.  Annabelle starts even before the events described in The Conjuring where a demon-infused doll ended up in the hands of the nursing students and finally the Warrens.  This time, the unfortunate victims are a lovely young, married couple about to have their first child.  It takes place in the late 60's when there was a lot of occult-inspired crimes going on like the Manson family murders.  Indeed, the couple is attacked in their home by a pair of these devil-worshipping types which brings the problems in the first place.  Soon after, mysterious forces begin to...ahem..."devil" the young mother and her child.  After the couple move to another town, the events follow them and grow even more malefic and intense until they discover the a demon has anchored itself onto the creepy Annabelle doll.  It becomes obvious the demon wants the kid's soul and so the couple must do spiritual battle against the demon with tragic results.

Okay, so I went to Annabelle not expecting much aaaaand...I kind of got what I expected.  The movie is not bad per se, but it is lackluster.  Based on the success of The Conjuring, we are now entering the cycle of crappy (pre)sequels that will continue until the original great idea has been flogged to death into a degenerate downward cycle of ever-increasing irrelevance and gore.  Warner Bros. has already said they are excited about another sequel, so prepare yourselves.  However, shockingly, the movie is not too bad.  It keeps the gore quotient to a minimum while preserving some good old fashioned scares.  Now, don't be fooled.  This is a "boo!" movie, plain and simple.  There is nothing deeper or interesting about it, but it's a pretty good one.  The makers valiantly attempt to make a horror film, not a slasher; that is, keeping a pervasive sense of dread throughout the film.  This is hard to do, but ultimately, more satisfying.  It is the difference between Halloween and Friday the 13th.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Toolbox Murders.  Hostel and Saw.  The Blair Witch Project and Apollo 18.  The Exorcist and The Gates of Hell.  John Carpernter's The Thing and Pihranna.  Se7en versus The Bone Collector.  Deep Blue Sea and Sharknado.  Yes, even the schlockfests Nightmare On Elm Street versus The Human Centipede or Scream and Scary Movie.  Hollywood loves to make horror movies because they don't cost a lot and most of its dumb audience (yes, I see you looking at me...) not demanding something better.  At least for this time, it was okay.  It seems a little too preoccupied to reference its better precursors by referring to the Warrens through implication twice and a quote from Lorraine at the end.  There were some fun scares and some creepy imagery, but ultimately Annabelle is a lightweight and an unfortunate harbinger of things to come.

On a personal note, if they are going to continue on a franchise of Ed and Lorraine Warrens' ghostbusters adventures, I would love to see Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprise their very sympathetic roles.  They were both great in them and very likeable protagonists.

Suspiria

3 Stars (out of four)

So, I decided to tackle Dario Argento's Suspiria because it's been awhile since I've seen it and ranks as probably one of the best horror films you've never seen.  (And it's Halloween time, so why not?). I love to introduce people to new, good movies, so for my 125th review, I thought I'd give you one from the darker side of the street from the cult movie section.

First, Suspiria's plot is pretty simple.  Jessica Harper plays Suzy Bannion, a dancer who has transferred to a prestigious ballet school in Germany.  She arrives during a horrific thunderstorm, and when she comes to the door, another student rushes out babbling incoherently.  This student is later horrifically killed at a hotel where she takes shelter.  The next day, Suzy comes to the school and is greeted warmly by the school's headmistress Madame Blanc.  Madame Blanc also has a German assistant headmistress named Frau Tanner, a severe Teutonic woman who looks like she belongs as a guard at Dachau, not a ballet school.  Strange events and crimes begin to happen to Suzy and people associated with the school.  Suzy suspects all is not what it seems and eventually finds out the school is being run by a coven of malefic witches who are intent on killing her.

Suspiria, Latin for sighs, is co-written and directed by the great Italian horror film director Dario Argento and is generally considered his masterpiece.  It's easy to see why.  This film was one of the last ever to be shot in Technicolor, and uses a color saturation process (also used in The Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind) that causes a very stylized, hyper-colorized palette that does not look quite real.  This film is filled with bold, primary colors (especially red), slashes of light and creeping shadows that form a very creepy atmosphere.  In fact, this film is all about atmosphere and would not be very effective or memorable without it.  Argento's masterful use of anamorphic lenses (which distort pictures slightly), light, color and shadow, combined with a 70's-creepy score by the band Goblin, gives the film an otherworldly, some say, not unfairly, hallucinogenic aura which suits the subject matter quite well.  The overall feeling we get is that we are standing inside the Gates of Hell when we are in the school and it succeeds quite well because of the bold color schemes.  In fact, this movie has the best use of color, shadow and lighting I have ever seen next to Gone With The Wind.  Everything is so deliberately placed that it forms a sumptuous visual feast.  It takes away from what would have normally been kind of a Grindhouse schlockfest and makes it a movie that demands to be seen alongside any great director's work.  It's that good.

The multi-cultured cast recited their lines in their native languages (English, German and Italian).  Because of a bad sound recording, much of the dialog was relooped (recorded again in post-production over the original soundtrack, usually meant to spice up bad performance tics or remove extraneous noise-just in case you didn't know...) or dubbed in post-production.  Obviously, the cast knew what was happenening in the story and they react to each other accordingly, but the relooping process makes the voices sound like they don't belong in the world they were shot.  They sound like they're in a studio, which takes us out of the reality of the film somewhat.  The in-studio performances are a little wooden as well.  In fact, most of the acting is a little melodramati, like most Italian productions of the time.  This detracts from a realistic portrayal of events in the film, but oddly adds to the off-kilter atmosphere that pervades the entire film.  It works and doesn't work at the same time.

The film is a bit of a product of its timeframe, 1977.  Around this time, there were a lot of popular films focusing on occult themes (The Exorcist and The Omen being the most popular and notable), especially in the Grindhouse movie circuits.  Suspiria has one foot firmly planted in the Grindhouse film genre, but also stands with the other foot squarely in films that are really good.  Argento's efforts in this film are too good to be dismissed as Grindhouse banality.  While the film is not particularly complicated, and in fact is kind of abrupt and even a little incomprehensible in parts, it is just too well-made to be dismissed.  While it is ponderous by today's hyper-kinetic standards, it is not a "boo" movie, unlike so many horror movies of today. Argento tries for real horror here, with mixed results.  The climax is just incredibly creepy and is pretty good, but the story up to that point can drag in places, but also genuinely scares in others.  This is a film, if you haven't seen it, that should be experienced if you like good, scary creepy stuff.  While there is some gore, especially at the beginning which starts the movie with a bang, that is not the focus of the film like today's slashers.  As I said, Argento tries for the more difficult task of being horrifying rather than shocking.  It is really good and I think if you are a fan of horror, this may be one of those hidden gems you missed.

Gone Girl

3.5 Stárs (out of four)

So, we have now passed through one of the most underwhelming summer blockbuster seasons in recent memory and are now coming into Oscar season, which is looking promising if Gone Girl is any indication.

Without giving anything important away, Gone Girl is about two writers who are in what may not be the most healthy of marriages; but from the outside, look like a picture-perfect couple.  Nick Dunne, played by Ben Affleck is married to Amy Dunne, played by Rosamund Pike.  Amy is the inspiration for her parents' massively popular children's book series Amazing Amy, so she is a bit of a beloved celebrity.  After the recession causes Nick and Amy to lose their jobs, they move from New York to Nick's native St. Louis, when they find out Nick's mom had cancer.  After his mother died, they put down roots and Nick bought a bar.  The move and the bar cause friction in his marriage with Amy until one day, he comes home to find the house overturned and Amy is missing.  The police start an investigation, and as clues start to mount up, it seems Nick may or may not have killed his wife.  Because of Amy's celebrity status, the case quickly becomes tabloid fodder and is being tried in the media.  The rest of the movie hinges on did he or didn't he?

Another deliciously twisted movie by David Fincher, a director who has made a career of filming very unpleasant people and subjects (Alien 3, Se7en, Zodiac, Fight Club, The Social Network) with often very entertaining results.  Parents of young people and prudes be warned, this is a very adult movie.  While not gratuitous, it does have some pretty twisted imagery that isn't meant for the faint at heart.  That said, it is a truly adult film that is a joy to watch.  I actually found myself giddy in anticipation, smiling like an idiot as one plot twist after another drew me further and further into this excellent slow-burning potboiler of a story.  I've been to enough of these films to usually see what's coming, but in this case, I was surprised time and again.  This movie was so much fun, it reminds me of why I love them so much, to be so drawn into a story you are almost breathless in anticipation over what will happen next.  The only reason I didn't give this film four stars was the final denouement, which contained a total flip flop on some characters' basic personalities.  However, it could also be the movie does not take an easy way out.  It sat wrong with me somehow, but as I think on it, seems totally in line with the movie's twisted pathways.  Many of these types of movies paint themselves into corners they can't escape with twist after twist needing greater and greater leaps of faith.  Gone Girl is not like that at all until the end as it seemed to me.  While it lessened the impact of an otherwise excellent film, I don't believe it ruined it.

And if that wasn't enough, the film actually has something important to say.  In our post-MTv, insta-celeb, JWow/Snookie, Honey Boo Boo, Kim/Kanye-obsessed culture, the power of the media has become paramount.  Gone are the days when news programs actually had to report things of substance, or at the very least fact-check.  All one has to do is flash a boob of scandal and the press becomes a pack of salivating, rumor-insinuating dogs with no accountability to the truth.  The movie is not-so-subtly pointing the finger at Fox News and its news entertainment pundit shows in particular, but applies equally to all news programs.  The 24-news cycle has created a style beast that ripped apart and swallowed the substance animal whole.  Does it get in the way of Justice?  Does it affect the normal course of a police investigation?  And what kind of a voyeuristic, busybody society are we becoming that delight in the pain and troubles of others?  In either case, evil has never been quite so fun as in this movie.  If you love a story that will pull you in and not let go, this is the film for you.  I loved every minute of it.