Chris: In May and June of 1960, two of Britain’s most famous and respected directors released films that centered around the murderous exploits of psychotic, troubled young men. One of those films–Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho–is considered one of the great, classic horror films of all time; a movie with scenes that are an essential part of Western popular culture and characters and settings recognized around the world.
After the jump, the other film Continue reading →
Tom: This one was a triple heartbreaker for me. I quickly realized we weren’t watching that movie about the Goodyear Blimp ramming a football game. The second heartbreak came from my confusion that this was Black Sabbath, a horror anthology with one incredibly effective segment involving a nurse who has to sit up all night with the corpse of an old woman who’s just died. I rewatched that a few years ago and, oh boy, does it hold up! But this is not Black Sabbath. This is Black Sunday. And then my third heartbreak came after I called this up on Netflix and saw that I’d previously given it one star. You ever do that? Go to watch something on Netflix and see that you’ve already rated it and think to yourself, “I’ve seen this already?”
After the jump, I sure have. Continue reading →
Chris: The second film in our tour was fairly disappointing. Despite using the same production crew and lead actors as Curse Of Frankenstein, Hammer’s take on the legendary vampire hasn’t aged nearly as well.
After the jump, dead and hating it Continue reading →
Chris: This movie felt like a good place to start the journey into this era of horror films, mostly because it has a number of “firsts” going for it: first color (and how) Hammer Films monster movie, and the first mainstream color horror movie with red blood…and lots of it.
After the jump, it was alive Continue reading →
You know those movies that rely on the character doing really stupid things to get the plot underway, and then to keep it going? A Single Shot is one of those. But as the story plays out, you discover Sam Rockwell’s hapless backwoods hunter isn’t doing what he’s doing just because he’s stupid. This is a movie about a small, powerless, and deeply frustrated man at the tail end of a series of bad decisions, trying to keep terrible situations from getting worse. Rockwell’s likability and charm occasionally surface, but they’re buried under a layer of pain and confusion, hidden behind his considerable beard and furrowed brow. This is yet another role that establishes Rockwell as a Serious Actor. See also Moon and Assassination of Jesse James.
A Single Shot is an atmospheric slow-burn hillbilly noir that knows noir is at its best when it’s uncompromisingly bleak. In addition to Rockwell, it features a cast of memorable actors (brace yourself for a searingly good Jeffrey Wright performance) drawling the script’s dense hillbilly argot so well that you can’t always tell what they’re saying. But you don’t need to. The inevitable events will carry you along, just as they do Rockwell’s character. You’re not here to untangle the plot so much as you’re here to watch one man dig himself a deep hole. Imagine a Chinatown in the damp hills of West Virginia, but without someone as sharp as Jake Gittes to unravel the threads.
Nothing on director David Rosenthal’s short list of slight films suggests he’d do a movie this dark, languid, rural, and uncompromising. Nothing on composer Atli Orvarsson’s list of credits suggests he could do a score this eerie and quiet. Edward Grau’s gloomy cinematography is spectacular, which is no surprise from the man who shot in the dark confines of Buried (Ryan Reynolds in a coffin), the moody atmosphere of The Awakening (Rebecca Hall in a haunted Victorian manor), and the lush period fashion of A Single Man (Colin Firth in bitchin’ Italian glasses). This is one to stream in HD or hold out for the Blu Ray.
A Single Shot is available for VOD. Watch in on Amazon.com to support Qt3.
The problem with eco-terrorists is that they’re just misunderstood by the people trying to infiltrate them. That’s the premise of Zal Batmanglij’s The East, a less interesting but more lavishly cast reskinning of Sound of My Voice, which was about time travel instead of eco-terrorism. Guess which movie is more preposterous. Nope. Guess again.
These eco-terrorists are played by hale good-looking actors pretending to be filthy hippies, or at least rapscallions from some carefree place where people don’t wash their hair so much. Oregon, maybe. It’s really funny when these eco-terrorists bathe and put on suits so they can go on “a jam”. That’s what they call their operations. Jams. “This is my jam,” one of the eco-terrorists says jealously when another eco-terrorist expresses doubt. On their jams, with their hair combed and their nice clothes, they have the carefully calculated scruffy look of a trendy clothes catalog or a TV series about an apocalypse.
Brit Marling, who was fascinatingly cryptic as the guru in Sound of My Voice, just seems lost. She seems equally lost whether she’s kissing Alexander Saarsgaard, kissing Ellen Page, or fishing around someone’s guts with her fingers to look for a bullet. For the conclusion of her character arc, she eats an apple out of the trash in front of her boss, who is played by the similarly lost Patricia Clarkson. Clarkson puts on an evening gown and flies away in a helicopter. Because that’s just what the privileged do. Oh, big pharma, corporate security, and utilities companies! Flying helicopters to parties and throwing away perfectly good apples! You deserve to be eco-terrorized.
The whole movie is trite, from the politics to the performances to the premise. It’s the exact opposite of Sound of My Voice, where Batmanglij’s chief sin was picking the least interesting ending to an interesting story. But by the time The East winds up where it’s going — eating an apple out of the trash — there aren’t even any interesting endings to not be picked.
The East is currently available on DVD and VOD. Watch it on Amazon.com to support Qt3.
The best thing you can say about Drinking Buddies is something you can say about far too few romantic comedies: there’s a lot of emotional nakedness here. It’s not a conventional romantic comedy, but it hits all the conventional beats in its story about two people who work at a brewery and how they each triangulate with their set of significant others. It might sound complicated, but it’s not. We’ve all been there. You’re with her and she’s with him, and it sometimes bubbles up in the back of your head perhaps something’s backwards. It’s not about hashing it out or making a big complicated deal out of it or turning into some grand dark thing. It’s just happening. Or not. Drinking Buddies has a heady uncertainty in terms of how it unfolds and where it may or may not go.
Director Joe Swanberg — also an actor — gives the actors room to move, to improvise, to exchange gestures, to sit in silence, to just breathe. For better or worse — mostly better — this is a seriously mumblecore movie. Somewhere there’s a producer immensely frustrated that Drinking Buddies isn’t at least ten minutes shorter, because all this extra air is going to confound the people who showed up because Jake Johnson is so funny in New Girl or because Olivia Wilde is hot. But everyone else will be delighted at their effusive effortless chemistry. They both seem to bubble with joy as they work with each other, slipping into an easy back-and-forth as if they’ve been friends all their lives, as if they belong together, as if the camera just happened to be sitting in front of these two people close enough to have their own private wordless language. Johnson is a real natural with this kind of laid back whatthefuckever style, but it’s a delight to see how he carries the more conventionally Hollywood Wilde along with him, almost like slipstreaming. Plus you’ve got the always reliable and eminently watchable Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingston providing back-up. And you’ll even get a glimpse of director Joe Swanberg and Ti West, each unharassed by crossbow bolts.
Drinking Buddies is available now on VOD. Watch it on Amazon.com Instant Video to support Quarter to Three.
It’s been a long time since director Renny Harlin dropped a screaming blonde woman down a chasm, sucked Cary Elwes up into a tornado, and fed Samuel Jackson to a shark. Those were the days. And what is he reduced to now? Giving cameras to good-looking talentless actors and letting them traipse around the wilderness for yet another half-assed Blair Witch Project found-footage wanna-be. Welcome to Devil’s Pass. You might think Harlin could wring some local flavor out of the story’s attempt at a Bermuda Triangle in the Urals, where the characters ponder whether they’ll face a yeti, UFOs, or Russian secret experiments. But all you get is 90% dull travelogue — “Whee, we’re in Russia!” — and 9% Grave Encounters rip-off in which CG monsters shriek at the camera in that familiar night-vision green. The remaining 1% is a CG avalanche. At night. Dark Pass’s real accomplishment is making Chernobyl Diaries, another horrible movie about found footage in secret Russian installations, look good. You’re better off just reinstalling STALKER, where the abandoned Soviet military bases are free of annoying actors and poorly shot found footage.
Dark Pass is available on VOD. Don’t bother.
The early parts of Alyce Kills are pretty grating as pretty Alyce and her prettier friend Carroll descend into a vapid rabbit hole of partying, girl angst, faux improvised dialogue, and more partying. I don’t necessarily recommend sticking around for the twist. You’re better off watching Angela Bettis in May or Charlize Theron in Monster or Beatrice Dalle in anything. In fact, just go ahead and watch Jennifer’s Body. But soon enough, the middle act kicks in. As guilt spirals into self-destructive behavior, the movie wisely focuses on the better actress, Jade Dornfeld as Alyce, doing her level best. Some gruesome special effects make an appearance, along with a fascinating turn from an actor named Eddie Rouse as slightly more than your average drug dealer. In fact, the scenes between Alyce and this drug dealer belong in a better movie, minus the tedium, the thin but forced Alice in Wonderland angle, the caricatures that pass for other characters, and whatever political point is made by having Alyce masturbate to news of war in the Middle East. But then, about twenty minutes before it’s over, Alyce Kills comes alive with some wickedly black humor that shows off what Dornfeld and director Jay Lee could have been doing all along. Where was this movie during the other 70 minutes?
Alyce Kills is available for video on demand. Support Qt3 by watching it here.
No One Lives is so obvious and predictable. A couple is passing through. They stop for dinner and get waylaid by a band of murderous thugs. You can see where this is going. The couple is going to have to fight to survive. There will be screaming and stabbings and whatnot.
But it makes an early misstep that doesn’t bode well. There’s a serious problem with the casting. The most psycho of the thugs sits down at the table to intimidate the couple. The thug is played by a pretty TV actor who’s shaved his head to look hard. And the man in the couple is played by Luke Evans. The chiseled god-like Luke Evans who has played Zeus, Apollo, and the best Musketeer. As the lightweight TV actor attempts to cow him, it becomes clear Evans’ is going to have to defend himself. His fingers inch tentatively towards a steak knife on the table.
“Don’t,” his girlfriend says softly. They don’t want any trouble.
“Yeah, don’t,” says the pretty TV actor. “You’re not the type. Trust me. I know the type.”
But Evans, as an actor, is totally the type. He played Zeus, Apollo, and the best Musketeer. He has faced down boys as pretty as Paul Walker in Fast and Furious 6. He would eat this latest guy for breakfast. He wouldn’t take any guff from him and he certainly wouldn’t need to fumble for a steak knife to do it. Who does this movie think it’s fooling?
Me, for one. Because No One Lives isn’t obvious at all. It’s an entertaining danse macabre of reversals and unexpected turns, and it’s cast very well. Among the other actors is the always reliable Lee Tergesen as the aggrieved leader of the thugs. Lindsey Shaw, who voiced the wholesome Trip opposite Andy Serkis in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, talks about someone getting a “deep dicking” and then engages in a very unladylike fight scene with Bitch Slap’s America Olivo. Michelle Williams doppleganger Adelaide Clemens is a formidable partner in the series of escalating pas de deux mind games.
Director Ryuhei Kitamura got his start in 2000 with Versus, a movie about a bunch of dudes out in the woods fighting each other. Way back then, he showed an eye for choreographed action and gore. No One Lives affords him plenty of opportunity for both. There’s not a character here whose face isn’t sprayed with blood at some point. And that’s about the only thing that’s predictable.
No One Lives is available for video on demand. Watch it here to support Quarter to Three.
A lot of bad horror movies start with teenagers heading into the woods for a vacation. Very rarely, good horror movies also start this way. Such as Sebastian Silva’s Chilean tale of missed social cues, superstition, paranoia, madness, and worse. Magic Magic is partly one of those “foreigners are evil” movies, about the strangeness of Chile through an American visitor’s eyes. But the foreigners here are the Americans, which is the exact opposite of Eli Roth’s crassly ignorant stories of otherness, where he couldn’t care less if it’s South America or Eastern Europe. Silva’s intimacy with his own country, and particularly the way he conveys menace in the mundane, gives Magic Magic its power.
Next to Silva’s insidious direction, the key to Magic Magic is Juno Temple. This is the sort of fiercely discomfiting and fearless performance you expect from, say, Gena Rowlands. It’s hard to watch. She’s a fascinating actress, singularly committed in a way that’s all too rare for actors of her generation. And although it might give you pause at first, Michael Cera’s role is perfect. He’s just Michael Cera, but he’s in exactly the right place doing exactly the wrong things right. To Cera’s credit — he’s one of the producers, along with indie heavy hitters Christine Vachon and Mike White — he’s not forcing himself into new types of roles so much as finding unexpected and appropriate places to situate himself. This Is the End, for instance.
The rest of the cast is exemplary, with actors far more talented than the usual horror fodder playing roles that transcend the slut, jock, virgin, and nerd archetypes that venture into the woods. Director Silva’s brother, Agustin Silva, is the movie’s scruffy heart. The icily Latina Catalina Moreno (remember Maria Full of Grace?) is its voice of reason and perhaps its villain. One of my favorite shots features Moreno in the background and out of focus, and it’s a sign of Silva’s skill as a director. And the ageless Emily Browning, looking more 14 than ever, is all heart and empathy. Finally, if you’re going to shoot a horror movie in a mysterious foreign country, who better for a director of photography than the amazing Christopher Doyle to bring the color alive and shine shards of light into the dark? All told, Magic Magic is an almost magical concoction of Hollywood talent and arthouse horror storytelling.
Magic Magic is available on video on demand. Watch it here to support Quarter to Three.
Rodrigo Gudino is the founder of a horror enthusiast magazine called Rue Morgue. Those aren’t really the credentials I look for in a director. So I can hardly blame you if you suppose his latest movie, The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh, wouldn’t be worth watching, even though he somehow finagled Vanessa Redgrave into lending it her stately voiceover. But rather than read anything I have to say to the contrary, watch this minor masterpiece of tableau. Seriously. Just watch it. It’s only six minutes. And it’s the six minutes that sealed the deal for me wanting to see Gudino’s latest movie without knowing anything else about it.
Last Will and Testament presumably stars Aaron Poole — I know him from Ed Gass-Donnelly’s fascinating Small Town Murder Songs — as a man staying in his mother’s house shortly after her death. But the real star of the movie is the production design for the house. If you watched the short I linked above, you’ll see in this movie’s set the same amount of lovingly eerie detail. You’ll also see the camera once again as an active participant. Gudino uses it to prowl the house with otherworldly intention. Is he showing us things? Is this someone — or something — looking at things? Is this a ghost’s point of view? And how does he explain Redgrave’s voiceover? Although it’s ultimately more mood than plot, I’m convinced it all makes as much sense as it needs to make. And although it’s slow, creepy, and subtle, it’s perfectly willing to be shocking. There are at least two “what the effing eff did I just see?” scenes, including one where I couldn’t see half the scene. But when Gudino wants to show you something, he sure knows how to show it.
The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh is currently available on VOD services. Watch is here on Amazon.com to support Qt3.
Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland “there’s no there there”. Fruitvale Station begs to differ. The movie from first-time director Ryan Coogler tells the story of an Oakland man restrained by BART police and then shot in the ensuing scuffle. This happened back in 2009 and it’s been a piece of the city’s identity ever since. Coogler’s movie is partly a portrait of Oakland as he follows his main character around town, unfolding his day and his neighborhood with the warm grainy glow that only filmstock can afford.
But the genius of Fruitvale Station is that it’s not preoccupied with the particular. This isn’t a biopic. It isn’t the politically charged cause celebre you might expect. Of course, you can’t help but think of Trayvon Martin’s shooting as the movie unfolds, but what you’re thinking of isn’t the controversy or the legal proceedings or the aftermath of Zimmerman’s acquittal. What you’re thinking of is the incontrovertible fact of a life needlessly lost. The pervasive sense in Fruitvale Station is sadness. Not anger. Not outrage. Not indignation or a call to action to fight the power. This is a heartachingly simple story about something that shouldn’t have happened, but did.
Fruitvale Station reminds me of Paul Greengrass’ first movie, Bloody Sunday, as a careful chronicle of mounting dread. It reminds me of John Singleton’s first movie, Boyz n the Hood, as a story of people whose stories aren’t often told. It reminds me of Taxi Driver in that it’s directed with a keen eye and acted with stunningly powerful insight into a fascinating frustrated character pulled between two worlds, struggling to make a decision, a victim of his own nature rather than society. In the lead role, Michael B. Jordan is nothing short of a revelation. The way anger and frustration play across his face and twist his mouth, the deep pools of his eyes, his transition to studied easy charm, the way he crumbles into a ball of vulnerability opposite his girlfriend, fiercely played by Melanie Diaz. If I see another scene this year as good as the prison visit with Octavia Spencer as his mother, it will be a very good year indeed.
Fruitvale Station opened last week in select cities.
In Apollo 18, a dreadfully dopey found-footage space horror movie, the big reveal is that moon rocks are actually space spiders. Which isn’t much of a surprise considering the movie’s failure to play out like a convincing astronaut procedural. Of course there are space spiders waiting at the end. But Europa Report is like Apollo 18 done right, or Apollo 13 done more fantastically. Think Sunshine, but with the hearty indie spirit you’d expect from a movie about a privately funded mission to one of Jupiter’s moons.
The space procedural stuff is top notch because it’s not afraid to be mundane. It helps that the international cast of actors doesn’t look like an international cast of actors so much as an international astronaut crew. You might recognize Sharlto Copley from Disrict 9, Michael Nyvquist from the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies, Anamaria Marinca from 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and the other serial killer from the first season of Dexter. But not a one of them looks out of place. Okay, maybe the hot marine biologist is a bit much. But this is mostly a convincing cast working on a lovingly detailed set. What a grand collection of down-to-earth space hardware.
One of the problems with watching this sort of documentary style found-footage, complete with testimony of characters recalling what happened, is that you know which characters are going to be okay, and that furthermore the footage has to find its way back to Earth, where it will be edited and even marked to direct your attention to certain parts of the screen (unless the movie is Apollo 18, which is surprisingly unconcerned with the fact that it’s showing you footage that will blow up in space at the end of the movie). But I love how Europa Report — this is a report, after all — plays with the idea and even earns it.
My main concern watching Europa Report was that at some point it would go off the rails into space spider territory. No such thing happens. It’s too smart for anything other than a gratifying reveal that doesn’t betray the grounded movie you’ve been watching.
Europa Report is available for video on demand now and will have a limited theatrical release next month. Watch it here to support Quarter to Three.
It’s been too long since indie horror director/producer Larry Fessenden made his own movie. The Last Winter, his clumsy bigger budget attempt to follow-up on the sublime Wendigo, came out in 2006. And now Beneath completes the trajectory from sublime to clumsy to ridiculous, plopping into a tiny lake and barely making a splash.
Beneath starts with the usual beats for a crappy horror movie. Stereotypical smirking teens going out into the woods, their bewilderment at not getting cell phone reception, an elderly harbinger warning them away, a cat scare, and so on. You might think Fessenden — once a smart, subtle, insightful filmmaker and even actor (in the movie Habit, the bathtub explanation about his missing tooth is a memorable heartfelt instance of non-acting acting) — is doing this stuff knowingly. You might think he’s going to cleverly subvert it.
No such thing happens, perhaps because Fessenden is working from a script by two guys who wrote Bird Flu Horror. I didn’t see Bird Flu Horror. I’m confident I don’t need to see Bird Flu Horror. I’m also confident that Beneath has more in common with Bird Flu Horror than with Wendigo, Habit, or even The Last Winter. Because once the giant catfish shows up, everything plays out exactly like any other crappy creature feature, inept even in its half-hearted attempts at titillation and gore. You might be inclined to applaud a horror movie that relies exclusively on practical effects, but you can only get so far dragging a big rubber bug-eyed catfish through a small lake. These are the kind of practical effects that make you long for a little CG.
If you want a movie about people trapped by something in the water, see Black Water. Actually, see Black Water anyway. And if you want to see what a brilliant filmmaker Fessenden can be, you’re going to have to go back to Wendigo.
Beneath is currently available on various video on demand services. If you must watch it, support Quarter to Three by using this link. Or, better yet, this one.
