TFR: The Haunted Issue

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Because some day you might be so famous that someone will want to tie you up and break your legs!

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Note from the editor Dear Reader, If you have just picked up this periodical then I suggest you put it back down post-haste. For it contains nothing inside but despair, woe and a selection of horror themed articles.

Inside you will ďŹ nd reviews of bad movies, an interview with an up and coming Irish director and other things so utterly abysmal I cannot bring myself to write them here.

It is my sad duty to assign these features to other poor souls and then edit them until they are presentable but there is nothing stopping you returning this horrid publication to the stand in the Arts Block or the bench in the Hamilton where you found it. You could wait until the release of the next issue of the Bull, if you prefer that sort of thing.

With all due respect, Louie Carroll.

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CONTENTS FEATURES 06 - The Horror of David Lynch 12 - Modern Masterpiece: The Babadook 14 - In The Basement People...

24 - Underrated/ Overrated 26 - The Horror of Taking Offence 28 - Macbeth on Screen 31 - A Graduate’s review of The Graduate

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REVIEWS 16 - Crimson Peak 18 - Mississippi Grind 20 - The Last Witch Hunter 22 - Listen To Me Marlon

Trinity Film Review It is funded by a gr Committee. This Pu rights or privileges addressed to The E Trinity College, Du to the Press Counc

INTERVIEWS 08 - Ciaran Foy 30 - Adam Kempanaar

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STAFF EDITOR

Louie Carroll

CO-EDITOR / LAYOUT & DESIGN Jack O’Kennedy

EDITORIAL STAFF Thomas Emmet Liam Farrell Cathal Kavanagh Clare Martin James McGovern

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CONTRIBUTORS

Rebecca Wynne-Walsh Conor O’Donovan

COVER DESIGN SEAN NOLAN

BACK COVER

m Review is a Trinity Publication. d by a grant from the DU Publications e. This Publication claims no special rivileges. Serious complaints should be to The Editor, Trinity Film Review, 6 lege, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed s Council of Ireland

CONOR O’ DONOVAN

PRINTED BY Grehan Printers

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WILD AT HEART & WEIRD ON TOP: THE HOrrOR OF

DAV I D LYNCH LIAM FARRELL EXAMINES THE SURREAL HORROR OFTEN FOUND LURKING IN THE GREAT DIRECTORS FILMOGRAPHY In an artistic career that has lasted for almost fifty years, filmmaker, artist, and musician David Lynch has managed to craft a distinctive style, brewing together elements of horror, the erotic, and the downright bizarre to enrapture viewers. At his best, his films manage to unnervingly replicate the world of dreams and nightmares.

Lynch’s early forays into the world of filmmaking were in animation. As a young painter, he produced a series of short films, first animating his paintings, before gradually moving into live action with shorts like The Grandmother and The Amputee, which show the origins of the style which blossomed in his cult classic first feature Eraserhead (1977). The film’s script was allegedly inspired by the young Lynch’s anxiety surrounding the birth of his daughter.

Eraserhead is a brooding surrealist body horror, shot in a dirt-black monochrome, and set in a post-industrial ghost city seemingly stuck in a permanent state of gloom. The story follows the downtrodden Henry Spencer (Jack Nance), who must marry his girlfriend when her family finds out that she is pregnant with his child. Henry’s luckless life continues when it emerges their child is an unrecognisable creature, which resembles the shrieking skinned carcass of a small animal.

After its lengthy five year production, Eraserhead found underground success, and the mainstream industry came calling for

Lynch, recognising his talent. Abandoning the development of his still-unproduced screenplay Ronnie Rocket, Lynch worked with executive producer Mel Brooks on directing The Elephant Man (1980), from a pre-existing script. The film, based on a true story, depicted the life of John Merrick (played remarkably by John Hurt), a severely deformed man rescued from a life of Victorian freak show cruelty by a London doctor, Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins). While often unfairly dismissed by Lynch fans as the most accessible of his films, the director proved to be adept at telling an unusually humanistic story, while not losing his visual and thematic trademarks in the process.

Lynch once again filmed in black-and-white, painting a smoky and grubby underbelly of Victorian London, while the scenes showing the mistreatment of Merrick and other performers range from being strange and unsettling, to gut-wrenchingly traumatic.

The commercial and critical success of The Elephant Man meant that Lynch was hot property in Hollywood. He turned down an offer from George Lucas to direct Return of the Jedi, instead choosing to adapt Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune (1984) for the screen. Dune was a flop, panned by critics and underperforming at the box office. After the studio rejected Lynch’s three-hour cut of the film, they took control of the final edit from him, and ever since its release he has tried to distance himself from the work due to the compromises made to his initial vision

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for the project. The film’s critical reputation as a muddled mess precedes it, and Lynch has shied away from the mainstream ever since.

In 1986, Lynch returned from his outer space adventures to delve into the psychological horrors of the subconscious with Blue Velvet, an erotic homage to film noir set in the fictional middle-American town of Lumberton, shown in a dreamy opening sequence to be a suburban idyll transported straight from Lynch’s 1950s childhood, although unnervingly subverted by the image of a disembodied human ear crawling with ants. The film follows Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), whose voyeuristic obsession with nightclub singer Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) leads him into a seedy world of kidnapping, intimidation, and extreme sexual perversion. Dennis Hopper gives an iconic performance as Frank Booth, the foul-mouthed, sadistic sociopath whose abuse of Dorothy leads to an oedipal struggle as Jeffery intervenes.

Lynch returned to the small-town American life for beloved cult TV series Twin Peaks (1990-1), and its cinematic companion piece Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). Both

“This is Tinseltown through the looking glass, a place of spectral midnight cabarets, sexually charged soap opera auditions, and unknown terror right around the corner from the diner.”

followed FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) exploring the sordid events surrounding the murder of high-schooler Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), as well as the supernatural phenomena surrounding the titular Pacific North-West town. While both series and film are frustratingly inconsistent, at their best they place Lynch’s brand of surrealist horror and stylish eroticism in a suburban setting, resulting in some ground-breaking television. Angelo Badalamenti’s lush score, and an unforgettable cast of supporting characters have also contributed significantly to the Twin Peaks universe’s lasting appeal.

Lynch made two other features during the 1990s. Wild at Heart (1990), which earned Lynch the prestigious Palme D’Or award, is a curious hybrid of romantic crime thriller and road movie, starring Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern as Sailor Johnny and Lula, young lovers on the run. The characters are cartoonish, and the film heavily references The Wizard of Oz and Elvis Presley.

1997 saw the release of Lost Highway, a dark and disturbing neo-noir. An elusive film featuring identity shifts, distrust, and unsettling dreams, it’s a challenging psychological horror that often seems to operate on a symbolic level as much as a narrative one. The plot is purposely convoluted, and viewers looking to interpret are advised to look more at the film’s visuals and themes than at its storyline for help.

The turn of the millennium brought per-

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haps Lynch’s crowning achievement, the culmination of the style that began with Blue Velvet. Born from an idea for a television pilot, Mulholland Drive (2001) is a Hollywood fever-dream, drifting almost episodically from scene to scene and twist to twist. The plot loosely follows Naomi Watts’ aspiring actress as she helps a woman who is suffering from amnesia (Laura Harring) to regain her identity, though the film contains so many detours and vignettes as to nearly render the notion of a plot irrelevant.

Taking cues from Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard and Bergman’s Persona, it paints a queasy portrait of the medium and the industry that Lynch calls his own. This is Tinseltown through the looking glass, a place of spectral midnight cabarets, sexually charged soap opera auditions, and unknown terror right around the corner from the diner. Ultimately, Mulholland Drive defies definition. Like the best of David Lynch’s work, it transcends genre, and eschews most of the conventions which give us comfort in our viewing. Over the length of his career, his films have not lost the ability to shock, deceive, and disturb us, and he has proved himself one of the great artists of the cinema.

LIAM FARRELL

SHPOOKY BUACHAILL Ciarรกn Foy is an Irish filmmaker hot off his first major American studio production in the form of horror sequel Sinister 2. After an excellent feature debut with Citadel in 2012, Foy was selected by series creator Scott Derrickson to take over the reigns for the sequel. The IADT graduate spoke with TFR editor Louie Carroll about his college experience, getting started in the Irish film industry and making the jump to Hollywood.

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Let’s start at the start. What was your experience of film growing up? Was there a moment when you realized you wanted to be a filmmaker and is there a film or films that stick in your mind as being particularly informative?

awards for “worthy” and “issue driven” content. We wanted to make entertaining shorts and thought of ourselves as filmmakers who happened to be Irish, as opposed to Irish filmmakers. We wanted stories that appealed to bigger audiences. Thankfully things were changing back then, the tutors came around to the kinds of things we wanted to do and when I left college the film board was also becoming more genre friendly. It certainly wasn’t easy but there was an appetite to broaden what was considered an Irish film.

I grew up on a diet of Spielberg, Cameron, Lucas, Zemeckis and Verhoeven. I loved any sense of the otherworldly, the extraordinary.

The idea that there is something else out there beyond the world we see everyday. The first movie I ever saw in the cinema was The Return of the Jedi in 1984, a year after it’s release - I think in Ireland we had to wait longer for movies back then. I was 4 or 5 and I was enthralled.

That stayed with me for years as I tried to repeat that intoxicating feeling of awe and wonder. The 80’s were a good time to grow up for these kinds of movies. At first I wanted to work in visual effects, for companies like ILM. Then I wanted to design video games for a time, but when, aged 12, a friend’s brother sneaked a bunch of us into Terminator 2 at the newly opened UCI in Coolock, I came out and knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. I spent my teen years using a friends camcorder and we made our own little sci-fi and horror epics!

What was your first film related job when you left college?

I worked as a runner in Screen Scene for a time. That was back when they paid a minimum wage and it allowed me to eat! I loved working there and met many more collaborators and colleagues. I didn’t want to become an editor but I learned even more tricks of the trade in there that would become useful. I also got a job writing a feature project through the Irish Film Board. In my twenties I wrote 6 screenplays and I made a short film called The Faeries of Blackheath Woods. That, unexpectedly, did become an award winner around the globe and got me an agent and soon producers were knocking on my door wanting to know if I had any feature film ideas.

If my extensive research is to be believed, you went to film school in Dun Laoghaire. What was that experience like and do you think it set you up well for a career in the industry?

Making the jump from a student filmmaker to professional can seem like a daunting process. How did you manage that?

Dun Laoghaire was great for building contacts, many of my colleagues and class mates were people I’d go on to work with in the real world once college finished. There was also access to good equipment. That was the main thing I got from college, access to equipment and meeting like-minded filmmakers. You’ll learn far more by doing that than you will from lectures, reading theory or listening to DVD commentaries. It’s only by making mistakes and taking risks that we really learn. Film is a craft and needs to be practiced. There were a handful of us who were like the black sheep of the film department. We didn’t want to make kitchen sink dramas, we had no interest in aiming to win

It’s not daunting. It’s the same thing. We are all perpetual students in this game. It doesn’t matter if you’ve made 2 or 22 feature films you learn so much on everything you do. It’s only daunting when there’s no clear way to make that jump. When you’re 4 or 5 years out of college and nothing seems to be happening no matter how hard you are trying - that’s testing. When you see others get ahead in film through nepotism or the fact that they are independently wealthy - that’s frustrating. When you see friends, who did other things in college, now working in paid jobs, climbing a career ladder - that’s panic inducing.

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The only thing that kept me going was a combination of positive sentiment - encouragement from my parents and my wife, who was then my girlfriend and my own blind belief that it would happen and that I would wither and die if I did anything else - and a more negative sentiment that came from a more envious place - which was me looking at the movies that were being funded and made and getting upset at how bad they were.

It was a feeling of “I don’t care what anyone says, but I could certainly make a better movie than that!”

How long did it take you to get your first feature Citadel off the ground, from the time of writing to when you started shooting?

Almost 6 years. We were trying to get money in 2007, which was just bad timing with the recession. So it took a lot longer than usual.

You’ve spoken elsewhere of how Citadel was informed by a traumatic event that happened in your life. Is your writing process always imbued with such a personal edge or was this an exceptional case?

This was an exceptional case in that I was directly referencing experiences I went through and trying to put an audience inside the head of someone who was suffering with agoraphobia brought on by post traumatic stress, but that said, I do think you need to imbue a personal angle into anything you write. If you are just referencing other movies than you write something derivative and diluted.

“The only thing that kept me going was a combination of positive sentiment encouragement from my parents and my wife...and my own blind belief that it would happen and that I would wither and die if I did anything else”

How was your experience on the set of Citadel, was it a big adjustment from directing shorts or did you feel well prepped from your previous experiences?

The Citadel shoot was so chaotic and crazy. I had no choice but to sink or swim. It was 23 days in the worst winter Glasgow had on record, with a cast of kids and infants and 16 locations. So it was like going to war after having only done a little target shooting. I felt a somewhat prepared but it was baptism by fire. It could have written an easier debut I think!

What kind of films influenced you in the making of Citadel? I saw touches of Guillermo Del Toro with The Devil’s Backbone and The Orphanage, a film he produced. Were those in your mind at all?

I think all your favourite movies and influences are in the back of your mind, no matter what you direct. But I try not to just reference other movies. Like I said, you don’t want to just make a cheap trace drawing of something else. You want to bring a certain personal flair to things. In prep we looked at photographs, paintings other influences. I was also drawing upon things I’d seen or experienced first hand. From the film world I would say my biggest influences were The Brood, Jacob’s Ladder and the videos of Chris Cunningham.

More generally, what are your favourite horror films?

It totally depends on what mood I’m in. I tend to swing from Jaws to Jacob’s Ladder via The Exorcist!

You’ve spoken about how you got the Sinister 2 job through some fairly strange circumstances involving a twitter exchange with the director of the previous installment Scott Derrickson. Do you think the film industry is changing in terms of how filmmakers get their work seen and how they make their break?

Absolutely. In my case Scott saw my movie on Netflix, tweeted about it on Twitter and I pitched to the studio on Skype. There are people who make a living with their youtube videos. The landscape is totally changing and evolving.

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If IMDB is to be believed, Sinister 2 is the first film you’ve directed that you haven’t written. Not only this but you’re also working within a world that’s already been established. Was that challenging? Did it make it easier or was it more restricting? And did you have any creative say when it came to the development of the story or the characters.

The studio side of things didn’t really come into play until we were in post.

They utilise test screenings. We had three of them. They were fascinating.

300 people watch your movie and have no idea you are in the audience.

Then they fill out surveys. The results can be eye opening. The trick is in knowing what opinions to take on board.

I think one of things that led Scott to thinking I was a good choice was my aesthetic sensibilities and tastes. We share a number of similarities in that respect but we are also very different directors. So that gave him confidence that I could certainly make this feel a part of the same universe but I was free to bring my own flair to it too. Otherwise what’s the point in doing it? If I had been asked to do direct a sequel to Tucker and Dale vs. Evil I simply couldn’t have done it. That movie is one of my favourite horrors of the last few years but it’s not close to my aesthetic sensibilities.

So I approached Sinister 2 like I’d approach any work - you need to find a personal way in, a connection to the characters that you can relate to. I got to bring some ideas to the table in prep but they had to percolate through the writers. I don’t suspect I’ll write everything I direct and some of my favourite movies were not written by the director. So the approach is exactly the same.

Do you want to keep working in and around the horror genre? Are there any other genre’s you’d like to work in?

Was Sinister 2 another big leap in terms of the size of the production compared to Citadel?

I’d say a hop rather than a leap. Citadel was 1.2 million euro, Sinister 2 was 5 million dollars. We got 30 days to shoot it as opposed to 23 for Citadel.

It was equally as difficult. Time was tight. You can’t afford to shoot a scene from 5 or 6 different angles when you’re shooting 4 pages in a day, you almost have to see it and edit it in your head and then shoot exactly what you see. And you’re working with a large cast of kids, which has it’s own challenges.

How did you find having to work within a studio system? Blumhouse Productions seem fairly unique in this day and age, giving interesting directors moderate budgets to make very profitable films.

In many ways my favourite movies are more science fiction than they are horror. I would love to do a cool sci-fi. But a good story is a good story no matter what the genre. However there are something’s I don’t imagine I’ll ever do, like a rom-com!

Do you know what you’re working on next?

I’m developing another horror (that would shoot in Ireland) and a science fiction. So whichever one happens first. I’m also getting sent a lot of material to read, so we’ll see.

And finally it’s the obvious one but I have to get it in. What advice would you have to students who want to make a career out of filmmaking?

As Yoda said to Luke in The Empire Strikes back - “Do or do not, there is no try”. Just do it. Make stuff. Today even our phones can shoot in HD! That’s a good and a bad thing. Good in that anyone has access to it, bad in that there is more of challenge to stand out from the ever-growing crowd.

There is no excuse not to make something. The real trick is in making something unique. My real advice - do something personal, take risks, be different. Don’t just try and ape what someone else has already done.

Since this interview, Blumhouse productions announced another film with Foy at the helm. An Irish set thriller entitled The Shee. He’s also set to direct the pilot for a new series called The Wilding, from the creator of Heroes.

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Modern Masterpiece:

The Babadook

Louie Carroll takes a look at director Jennifer Kent’s stunning debut feature and considers its place in the pantheon ”BAA...BA...DUKDUKDUUUK” If you’ve seen The Babadook then you almost definitely read that with a particular voice in your head. If you haven’t seen it then here’s an argument as to why you should rectify that immediately.

Horror films like The Babadook are a rarity these days. This offering from director Jennifer Kent has more in common with classic’s such as Rosemary’s Baby and Don’t Look Know than it does with any of its contemporaries. In these films the event that unfolds on screen is only half of what the film is about. Scratch beneath the surface and there’s something even darker taking place.

The film charts single mother Amelia’s (Essie Davis) struggle to raise her extremely difficult son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) in the wake of her husband’s tragic death. The introduction of the titular monster into their lives only makes the existing situation much worse.

It’s not bloodsuckers or ghosts roaming the halls that makes the film so unsettling, ultimately it’s not even Mr. Babadook. Although he is one of the greatest horror creations in recent years (more on that later). The real scares come from something much closer to home.

The first half of the film, which doesn’t even feature the monster, features some of the most distressing drama you’re likely to see in any film anywhere, let alone a horror. This is primarily a mother dealing with her brat of a son.

And what a brat Samuel is. He shouts, breaks windows, pulls hair and grapples with his mother in bed. By the time supernatural elements make their presence known, Amelia and the audience are already emotionally drained.

The Babadook is an incredibly well directed film.

Kent weaves the cinematography, art direction and sound design seamlessly to create a cacophony of dread that pervades every corner of the film. The suburban Australian house where most of the torment takes place would give any haunted mansion or torture porn dungeon a run for its money in terms of fright factor. Every floorboard and door groans unforgivingly. In fact everything that can creak does so. The grey

paint on the walls is ever so slightly cracking and chipping away, not unlike Amelia’s own psyche.

Apparently lampshades are less of a thing in Australia, every scene is harshly lit, exaggerating the gaunt features of both mother and son.

“Kent weaves the cinematography, art direction and sound design seamlessly to create a cacophony of dread that pervades every corner of the film.”

Kent realizes that the most affecting horror to be seen anywhere in the film emanates from Davis’ face. The camera lingers on her in close up for long periods of time. The director wisely trusts her actor to do most of the dramatic heavy lifting.

Davis’ performance, the strongest of any last year is tough to watch throughout. Her hair always unkempt, any alone time is spent with her head in her hands. At times the character simply looks vacant, opting out of her deeply unpleasant situation. It’s an incredibly challenging performance, one that requires the actor to go from distressed but loving mother to something a bit more unsettling, a feat she manages without the transition ever feeling jarring.

It’s a general rule in recent horror movies that they are unable to sustain their premise over the length of their runtime, often collapsing in the final third. Thankfully Kent steers the film flawlessly towards the climax even when the stakes increase significantly.

Whether the Babadook is real or a figment of Amelia’s imagination is a question the film plays out until its final moments. The often monstrous nature of our protagonists offsprng is never in doubt however and Noah Wiseman’s performance as Samuel is at times as scary as anything that lurks in the shadows. Contorting his face to resemble Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

Horror is a genre that lends itself to a metaphorical subtext, The Babadook is a great example of this. It functions as a highly effective scary movie, although perhaps not the kind you bring a date to. On a deeper level it is a meditation on grief and parenthood. The film’s final scene might feel a little on the nose but by that stage the film has earned any small missteps it makes.

It’s a testament to the excellence of The Babadook that this article has gone on so long with so little mention of the eponymous monster.

Mr. Babadook isn’t just a Bogeyman, he towers over the lives of Amelia and Samuel as a manifestation of all that causes them grief.

However, when it comes to actually showing the creature on screen, the film doesn’t skimp.

Part boggart, part Nosferatu, the Babadook scuttles in the shadows, his top hat and long spindly fingers sure to pass into the horror canon as instantly recognizable iconography. He’s brought to stunning life mostly through stop motion and sound design. and dear God that sound! It’s nigh on impossible to think of the Babadook’s guttural groans without shuddering.

Ultimately, The Babadook stays in the mind long after you’ve stopped watching. Kent’s direction and Davis’ performance can be admired and pondered over for the rest of your day. And when you’re finished doing that, good luck trying to sleep at night!

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Louie Carroll

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IN T BASEM PEOP IN T BASEME

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS Basement’s can be dark and scary places at the best of times, how about if you’re stuck down there with a serial killer who has the benefit of night vision goggles. That’s the predicament Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) finds herself in in Silence of the Lambs. Director Jonathan Demme shoots this entire scene from Buffalo Bill’s perspective, making great use of the extremely claustrophobic setting. We watch as Clarice stumbles terrified in the dark. It’s deeply unsettling having to watch our hero in such a distressing situation and feel complicit with her tormentor.

Luckily Clarice reacts quickly enough to get herself out of the situation.

The scene is an excellent example of how to use the basement setting to terrifying effect. LC

THE ROAD John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac MacCarthy’s novel didn’t quite live up to the hype. Nonetheless, it has its moments of terror. Mortensen and McPhee descend into a basement in the countryside, and witness a naked, starving, seething mass of humanity being kept as food for a band of cannibals. If the film wants to show us the depraved depths to which humanity can sink, the scene in the basement condenses it into seconds. And then they run, for fear of being harvested themselves.

Suspense, horror and disgust all rolled together. The post-apocalyptic road trip mightn’t have been too memorable, but there are moments you can’t forget. CK

ANY SELF RES SPOOKY HOU EQUIPPED SPOOKIER BA THE TFR STA LOOK AT SOME O UNSETTLING IN CINEM

ZODIAC David Fincher’s Zodiac is scary because of how mundane and random the outbreaks of violence are. Unlike other films in the serial killer genre, the murders are less embellished by shady lighting and tense music, one even takes place in broad daylight. On top of all that it all actually happened. The one time the film does make a foray into more traditional horror territory is no less terrifying. Jake Gyllenhaal’s obsessed cartoonist follows a lead to the house of an old man to look for evidence, only to realise he might just have wandered into the killer’s lair. Here Fincher opts for harsh lighting and creaky floor boards.

Although the scene is an outlier in the rest of the film, Fincher manages the transition like the master that he is. LC

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THE EMENT OPLE...

THE EMENT...

THE EVIL DEAD Basements didn’t come out of director Sam Raimi’s horror comedy looking too well. The basement is where our unlikely hero Ash comes across the skin bound (which should have been warning enough, frankly) book of the dead, the Necronomicon. After playing a mysterious tape recording he unwittingly unleashes an evil curse that quickly turns his friends into crazed monsters now known affectionately to us all as “deadites”,Ash spends the rest of the film frantically trying to keep his suddenly murderous friends locked downstairs whilst simultaneously repelling a dark force emerging from the surrounding woods. To add insult to injury a rogue piece of basement piping bursts at random spraying Bruce Campbell’s cult character with a simply ludicrous amount of blood. By the time Raimi had completed his trilogy with Army of Darkness, Ash had grown into a wise cracking, boomstick wielding legend but back in 1981 he was just an ordinary guy having a really bad time in the basement of a cabin. Hail to the king baby! JOK

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER Charles Laughton’s 1955 ‘The Night of the Hunter’ is surely the most terrifying children’s film ever made. The film follows Robert Mitchum’s deranged preacher as he attempts to extort a hidden fortune from two small children in rural America. When the action descends into the cellar of their house, the film is at its darkest. Mitchum’s bear-like growl is used to chilling effect as he threatens to slit the boy’s throat with zealous menace. His younger sister is in tears. Expressionistic shadows fall over the action, and the camera pulls back to give a dollhouse view of the cramped set. This is far beyond your worst childhood nightmares. LF

F RESPECTING HOUSE COMES PPED WITH A ER BASEMENT. R STAFF TAKE A OME OF THE MOST LING CELLARS CINEMA...

FIGHT CLUB You might say this is a bit of a cheat considering Fight Club isn’t a horror in any shape or form. Regardless, it does contain some deeply disturbing scenes in a basement like setting. consider Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) allowing himself be pummeled half to death before jumping on his aggressor, spitting blood and shouting “you don’t know where I’ve been”. Or edward Norton’s unnamed protagonist beating Jared Leto to the point of disfigurement just because he “wanted to destroy something beautiful”. Fight club might not be a horror but it’s subterranean scenes demonstrate human nature at its most ugly and base. Best not to talk about it. LC

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Reviews

Crimson Peak DIRECTED BY GUILLERMO DEL TORO WRITTEN BY GUILLERMO DEL TORO & MATTHEW ROBBINS STARRING MIA WASIKOWSKA, JESSICA CHASTIAN & TOM HIDDLESTONE RELEASE DATE OCTOBER 16TH What on earth has happened to Guillermo del Toro? After the fun if dispensable Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak was supposed to be the Mexican master’s return to form in the genre that made him. After failing to get a number of projects off the ground, not forgetting his struggles with The Hobbit, del Toro deserved a break, unfortunately this isn’t it.

The director cut his teeth on relatively small scale supernatural stories like Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone. What has always stood out as one of del Toro’s great strengths is his ability to create supernatural worlds that feel vibrant and lived in, largely through the use of practical effects like puppetry. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in his masterful Pan’s Labyrinth.

This time around del Toro returns to the ghost world with added bells and whistles, namely a reported budget of 75 million. This increase in scale does the

film no favours, but more on that later.

First, let’s get down to the plot. Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is an American wannabe author in Victorian-era New York. Through a convoluted set of circumstances she meets and falls in love with Englishman, Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston). This is much to the disapproval of Edith’s father, a wealthy business man. After much faffing around that amounts to a good third of the screen time, the couple are on their way to Sharpe’s dilapidated, rural English mansion, with his brittle sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) in tow.

From there, things get very creaky and windy as ghosts occasionally roam the halls.

Speaking of ghosts, they are at the heart of what’s wrong with Crimson Peak, which is clearly a problem for a film about a haunted house. Del Toro has stepped away from the brilliant practical effects of his earlier work in favour of all out CGI. Computer effects just don’t lend themselves to scare’s, particularly in this case. Crimson Peak steers clear of the Jaws the approach of only hinting at the ghost’s presence before a big reveal. From the very first scene we are treated to a fully realised phantasm, and they appear in full view throughout. This approach is fine, so long as the ghosts are well realised. The film would have been better served by a smaller budget which necessitated more creative and old school effects.

At one point, Hiddleston’s character criticizes Wasikowska’s writing, exclaiming she “writes with other people’s voices”. Perhaps this is del Toro’s way of acknowledging the fact that Crimson Peak borrows so heavily

from previous works, both in terms of plot and aesthetics. Any story featuring the supernatural and a big house is going to invoke the granddaddy of the genre, Jack Clayton’s The Innocents. Other films like The Others and The Orphanage, have taken this trope and either put a different spin on it, or stuck rigidly to the format. Crimson Peak goes for the latter, there’s nothing wrong this of course, however, the execution needs to be spot on. Unfortunately in this regard, the film does little to justify its own existence.

Fatally, del Toro and his co-writer Matthew Robbins have failed to integrate the ghostly encounters with the nuts and bolts machinations of the plot.

This leaves most of the supposedly scary scenes feeling inconsequential.

Visually, the film is just as derivative. The first spectral appearance is a straight lift from F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu. The overall aesthetic has an artificial quality, barely a frame appears to have been left untouched in post production.

In terms of the performances, Wasikowska has a difficult task carrying this film. Lines of dialogue like “Ghosts are real, this much I know” don’t make her job any easier. The character passes through the narrative relatively unphased by the computer generated horror unfolding around her.

To be fair to her, this is probably down to how she was directed...sorry Guillermo.

Chastain’s performance is in keeping with what’s expected of her in this genre, tiptoeing around her lines of dialogue in a fragile British accent, occasionally erupting in hysterics. Hiddleston, normally a charisma machine enveloping all around him, is uncharacteristically bland. And who could forget Charlie Hunnam, he’s also in this film.

Right now Crimson Peak feels like a massive step in the wrong direction for Guillermo del Toro. Hopefully he won’t have too much trouble getting another project off the ground - the sooner this is put further down his IMDB page, the better!

LOUIE CARROLL

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Mississippi Grind

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ANNA BODEN & RYAN FLECK STARRING BEN MENDELSOHN & RYAN REYNOLDS RELEASE DATE OCTOBER 23RD Mississippi Grind is sluggish, lacks direction, overall it’s a pretty un-enjoyable film.

It saunters along at an uneven pace and ends without anything approaching a resolution. But then again, maybe that’s the point. Perhaps it’s meant to be, as the title would ever so subtly suggest, a grind of a film.

Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck Mississippi Grind charts the story of indebted Iowa gambling addict Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) and the enigmatic Curtis (Ryan Reynolds), who he meets at a poker game, as they bond and decide to play the gambling circuit down to New Orleans to alleviate Gerry’s financial hardships.

The plot, however, largely takes a backseat to character development as the final destination is blurred by the events of the moment. By focusing on the protagonists, the ever-changing scenery around them is given little notice. The title suggests a splash of local Southern colour, yet the film doesn’t really deliver any. Though it opens with the image of a rainbow and there is a strong rainbow

motif Mississippi Grind lacks all that positivity associated with it. The cinematography lends itself to the overall grinding, dark feel, with plenty of artificial light throughout.

Although Reynolds’ character is introduced as someone capable of being the driving force of the action his potential omnipotence slowly drifts into powerlessness. The enigmatic presence he possesses at the outset starts to unravel as it becomes clear he isn’t any more comfortable in his own skin than his companion is. Since he lacks any agency in the narrative, the film feels directionless, like the kind of game the men are used to betting on.

Mendelsohn’s central performance is the film’s strongest hand, totally believable as the smalltown real estate agent and gambler with nothing more to look forward to in life but the relieving of his debts. He is, if completely hollow, nevertheless a complete character. Mendelsohn manages the difficult task of adding complexity while remaining wholly unlikeable. In a number of incidents it’s clear he is a man consumed by the cycle of gambling and winning, with any moral principles left by the wayside.

One of the film’s central themes seems to be fear of loneliness. Curtis lives on the road looking for new people with which to converse, yet he has no stable companions. One of the only people he does form a connection with is a prostitute called Simone (Sienna Miller), but their connection proves fleeting. For Gerry, gambling has driven away his nearest and dearest, so his attachment to Curtis is for more than just monetary gain.

In keeping with the theme of grind and lack of resolution, the film’s denouement is as unsatisfying as the rest of the film. Once the film ends there is no confidence that these

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“Mendelsohn’s central performance is the film’s strongest hand, totally believable as the small-town real estate agent and gambler with nothing more to look forward to in life but the relieving of his debts.”

characters will actually turn their lives around.

More likely, they will return to where they were at the beginning of the narrative. For Gerry, that is sitting in his car listening to poker tips outside a gambling house in Iowa. The rainbows in Mississippi Grind play out as an ironic counterpoint to what’s on screen – because what’s there is at no point colourful. But, then again, maybe that’s the point.

JAMES MCGOVERN

Lone Gunman: Jack O’Connell as Garry Hook in ‘71 19

THE LAST WITCH HUNTER DIRECTED BY BRECK EISNER WRITTEN BY CORY GOODMAN & MATT SAZAMA STARRING VIN DIESEL, ROSE LESLIE & ELIJAH WOOD RELEASE DATE OCTOBER 21ST

I hate average films. A good film can be enjoyed on many levels, a truly terrible film on fewer, but with the self righteous vigour that the piece you are watching is excrement committed to celluloid. An average film has none of these benefits and leaves the viewer confused and angered, the will to live slowly ebbing from them. The newest film to be condemned to this necropolis is The Last Witch Hunter.

Vin Diesel has never been a selling point on any film I have seen. The Fast and Furious franchise encapsulates the levels of machismo usually found in a particularly hormonal men’s changing room at the gym. Not even the ever more daring and ever less realistic car stunts can save it in my eyes. When your career defining role involves saying the word “Groot” again and again with different intonations, you know you need a new agent.

However, once again Diesel steps into the bland, overly serious action role, this time battling the occult rather than badly cast gangsters. As reluctantly immortal witch hunter Kaulder he glowers adeptly in a

role with little humour and zero nuance awarded it by the script. Around him secondary characters vary from thin (Rose Leslie displaying her skills as not quite a love interest, and not quite an actress) to anorexic Elijah Wood (bizarrely miscast as a priest annotating Diesel’s antics). Julie Engelbrecht narrowly escapes criticism as the feral witch queen but that may just be down to her prosthetics and autotuned voice. Michael Caine, cast obviously so that unwary cinema goers might fall into the trap of thinking his participation would result in a better film, looks better as a corpse than he did alive in the first ten minutes.

And it’s all mind-numbingly average. There are signs of a better film here, but they’re buried very deeply. The witch-tree, a towering, menacing structure where the film’s opening fight occurs is stunning, but then the film devolves visually into grey tones, save for flashbacks to Kaulder’s thirteenth century life, which borders on twee. Breck Eisner, whose 2010 The Crazies was fresh and solid has delivered something disappointingly stale, with no rough edges to

“The special effects are copacetic but not very dazzling and the inevitable sequel baiting doesn’t leave the audience hungry for more. The title is a misnomer.”

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hugely criticise. There are ideas, like the concept of a witch council and the guardian of the witch prison, that are introduced nicely and then are wasted when they reappear.

The villain doesn’t appear until too late in the film, and the final twist is both irritating and confusing, only to be resolved in thirty seconds. The special effects are copacetic but not very dazzling and the inevitable sequel baiting doesn’t leave the audience hungry for more. The title is a misnomer.

Ultimately, there’s nothing to hate in this film, and that makes it even more hateful.

It winds its way to its conclusion purposefully but without any enjoyment. It refuses to be silly, or outlandish at any point, which could have been its saving grace. The only laugh in it is unintentional and comes from Vin Diesel shouting at an inappropriate moment. At the press screening the guards had night vision goggles to prevent the audience from illegally filming it. They needn’t have bothered. There was nothing to see that you would want to show to anyone else.

THOMAS EMMET

T

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Listen To Me Marlon DIRECTED BY STEVAN RILEY WRITTEN BY STEVAN RILEY & PETER ETTEDUGI STARRING MARLON BANDO RELEASE DATE OCTOBER 30TH Marlon Brando has had many roles during his career. He’s Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and Don Corleone in The Godfather. Notoriously difficult to work with and at the same time heralded as one of the greatest screen actors of all time. His interest in primitivism and his work with the civil rights movement of the sixties struggle to match his movie star persona. He seems to have multiple personalities that are difficult to reconcile with each other.

The voice-over is comprised almost entirely of the man himself in interviews or home voice recordings, Brando on Brando. We hear him say that he hopes one day the tapes will create a “highly personalised” account of his life, Listen to me Marlon sees

“After 95 minutes with the man; intelligent, caring, flawed and ultimately human, the film leaves you with just as many questions as it does answers..” that dream made a reality. Meticulously researched but never didactic, it takes us on a journey through his eventful and often turbulent life. Brando narrates his own story from youth to young manhood and beyond.

The director/editor Stevan Riley creates an intriguing sound-image relationship. We listen to Brando’s internal monologue as accompanied by clips of his many films. The lines between man and actor are blurred showing reality and how we perceive it can be confused. Here the documentary proves his worth. It provides a layered account of not just Marlon Brando but of celebrity culture and the artifice of Hollywood. Brando’s explosive rise to fame and subsequent fall and rise again sees him become a comment on the conservative capitalism and elitism of the film industry. His disillusionment while obvious is never bitter. We watch the toll fame takes on his personal life as it becomes harder for him to ground himself in reality.

Brando appears as the centre of the rock

and roll generation of the fifties, he stands on the side-lines of history fighting for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr. and transforms into some of the most memorable characters of cinema history. Despite all this, Brando is not glorified. The documentary studies him as a great actor and an interesting man but never a perfect one, far from it. Brando’s monologue is humble to contrast his stellar film career and matches the ups and many downs of his personal life.

The tone is uneven in places hopping from pure emotional narrative to more fact filled passages. The chronologically told life story is peppered with audio clips from Brando’s later life adding the depth of hindsight his younger self didn’t have. It’s quite poetic in style, pairing Brando’s stream of consciousness with both home and Hollywood movies.

Listen to me Marlon is beautiful, probing and expertly crafted. Acting as a window into the life and mind of a star by approaching him as a man who happened to lead an interesting life. It derives power from its ability to broach complicated subjects ranging from misrepresentation of minorities on film to body image struggles to psychoanalysis without ever losing its focus or emotional impact. After 95 minutes with the man; intelligent, caring, flawed and ultimately human, the film leaves you with just as many questions as it does answers. Listen to me Marlon is a study not of a character but of the complexities and delicacy of human nature, well told and well worth a watch.

REBECCA WYNNE-WALSH

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The Pacifier

M A D MAX : FURY ROAD

“A car chase should last fifteen minutes, not be the basis of an apparently dynamic and children origi“As nalthe film.”

Hype is a dangerous Mad Max: to see the surly teens gain confidence and Lulu Recently a friend ofthing. mine dubbed Vin Fury Diesel “a Road was all about the hype.

The trailer! realizes that girls do indeed run the world. modern day Jean-Claude Van Damme”.

“EveryTomone Hardy and Charlize Bald Nichloves them, but Theron! all the movies they’ve olasbeen Hoult! those awareofof the three Of course, the film is about a Navy SEAL, so it in Even are shit,” he not claimed the two actors. disjointed films that preceded Fury Road packs in a good load of car chases and a heap were for the most part excited by its bizarre, of booby traps that the Goonies couldn’t even “But what about The Pacifier!” I countered, to otherworldly trailer.

Manyofflocked theirscoffs, lo- I imagine. The enemies turn out to be a pair of a resounding chorus scoffs. toWell, cal HMV or torrent watch Vin the Diesel originalmay hapless North Korean spies, and their bumam here to provesite youtowrong. films order to fully prepare this classic bling antics give the action sequences the beinVan Damme-esque in hisfor universal appeal, in the Fiveremains star reviews popped upclasperfect comedic touch to keep the film famibutmaking.

The Pacifier a modern family on posters then the second trailer, an-with ly-friendly (but still enormously entertaining). sic that and proves VininDiesel can lead a film ticipation reached its peak the captain. film The most memorable moment of the film marthe quiet confidence of abefore salty sea even came out. And the film itself? Average. ries Shane’s newfound love for the kids and his military expertise in a series of deadly snares The Pacifier possesses all the elements of a solTheidtrailer waswith genius.

Toosweet oftenfamily the filmguarding the GHOST project. The scene encapheist film a gooey, center: makers blow their celluloid load on too many sulates how The Pacifier is, much like Vin Diesel, clear good guys, a twist ending, topped off with plotareveals even just the best and parts of theThe the perfect combination of hardness and heart. healthyor balance of feel-good action. film.heartwarming Max is not guilty of this but it with is guilty comedy begins U.S. of Navy tricking audience to go a film thatbeing wasn’tsent as to SEALitsShane Wolfe (Vin Diesel) thought beautiful as itafter look provoking, after a rowdy family or of masterful five children thought was. Where to even begin? theiritfather, Howard Plummer, is George assassinat-could have cast anyone in the role and to see Miller waited over thirty years, and in that Hardy wasted is an intense pity. However the ed for his work on a confidential government timeproject. bungled the sequel to Babe (the budget Shane must care for them and try tofilm decided it needed to switch focus onto could been sspent therapy bills for findhave Plummer’ secreton project GHOST, whichan entirely new and entirely stupidly named all the children affected by it),while lost atheir Justice is hidden inside the house, mothercharacter called Imperator Furiosa. This is League weofcould do with, Juliefranchise (Faith Ford, Faith &allHope fame)with goes tothe apex of where the hype and the actual the Zurich ominous approach aofsafety Batman v Superto investigate deposit box thatfilm diverge. Reviewers practically vomited man: Dawn ofleft Justice andNaturally, created aShane’ strange Plummer behind. s mili-the words “feminist heroine” onto the page. dancing penguins franchise (Happy Feet) tary methods clash with the kids’ wildness, andThe furor created by this feminist take on the instead.

How anything coherent going he unsuccessfully attempts to was impose order.Mad Max mythos led me to believe that Charto come from man that soften erratichis was obviHowever, as athe children heart Shanelize Theron would be continuing her line of inously a question never thatnot was never asked.Vontensely strong, if flawed women in mainstream softens his commands, unlike Captain Trapp in The Sound of Music. Quite perfectly,cinema. But no, she’s just bald and has one thelittle family and edge-of-yourWhile arresting, the film is in just seriespro-arm.Despite She does thatbonding any other female prothevisually eldest son Seth plays Rolfe a aschool seat action sequences, Roger Ebert of bizarre events plastered over with a ninetagonist hasn’t done, and has nothing to claimed add duction of The Sound of Music toward the end that this film provides “nothing compelling”.

I ty-minute car chase.

A car chase should last to the rich tapestry of existing strong female of the movie, which Shane and the rest of the counter there is something – no, someone fifteen minutes, not be the of anThe apparleads.that That arm I might add is never family help produce.

Thebasis parallels Pacifieraction – enormously compelling core. The Paciently dynamic and film. The concept any exposition.

It’s left asataits self-indulgent dares to draw tugoriginal at the heartstrings.

It’s impos-given fier contains a number of brilliant performancof a sible man not playing a guitar that spat flames must mystery, as most of this particularly uninspirto resist shedding a tear as the family Kane’sneeds kookyan nanny, Brad Garrett have in “climb one ofevery Miller’mountain”. s fever ing es film– Carol is. Nothing explanation be- as allbeen workwonderful together to thethere vice principal to hate, dreams but on film it is both distracting and cause isn’t one. everyone It’s purelyloves a visual trickand Lauren Graham as a delightful interest for bonkers.

And not bonkers in about the funfamily way that audience memberslove to believe The common complaint films isto convince Shane all these away and Vin Diesel the the verywhiny underrated Pan is, more Shane in the grimy, might– but be astrip deeper mythos than scraps of children involved. at the be-there remains as the reliable, muscular, astonishingly loosely attempting to be would steam agree punky way. ginning of The Pacifier with theseGeorge Miller’s dream diary committed to film. sweet cornerstone of the film. His voice, like an Details like the fixing villainsthe two children being atas if grievances, kids with trackers SUV gently over gravel, beinboth opposite ends of the spectrum physically and Fury Road hasrumbling been declared a cultcan film they’re animals and feeding them with vacustern and sensitive as he sympathize mentally (one has the bodyHowever, of a manthe andchildren the some quarters.

Not only is learns that atowoefully um-sealed army meals. with kids whodefinition have just lost mind of aendearing child, the to other the body of audia misrepresented of atheir cultfather. film, Shane it’s prove bothhas Shane and the is both Captain Von Trapp and Maria to the rauchild and the mind of a man) fall disappointentirely untrue.

The film is an overhyped ence thanks to a cast of surprisingly charming cous children, skillfully switching beingly flat because they areSnow just that, in butmess of Plummer such self-indulgence and disrespect child actors. Brittany is thedetails bubbly tween disciplinarian andtoloving pseudo-parent. a film that has attentionZoe, deficit disorder tofor cohesion with regards storytelling and justifiably indignant while Max Thieriot wards all of its concepts.

Immortan Joe, the character development that it’ s hardly quesfully embraces his role as her awkward teenage Just that as Julie Andrews’ spunk film’brother s villainSeth. is little more than Bane in aa feminist wig. tionable it belongs heregood-hearted in the graveyard Lulu Plummer brings is the cosmic center of The Sound of Music, edge to the film when Shane teaches her andof overrated trash. To misquote Nicholas Diesel Pacifier with hisfilm.” underWhich us nicely Tom s Nuxpowers “oh whatThe a film, what an awful her brings other Girl Scoutonto friends toHardy. defendNuthem-Hoult’ stated charisma and dulcet tones.

These anced performer that he is, there is little he selves against the bullying Boy Scouts. Charclassic films really aren’t that unalike. At their canacter do todevelopment save this apocalyptic version for of most a is highly unusual heart, both are about families dealing with NASCAR from coming a crashing halt.prokids inrace a family comedy,toyet The Pacifier loss, military might, and unlikely guardians.

His vides Max is not even mad, just broody.

They the audience the rare but shining chance

soften his heart Shane softens his commands, not unlike Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music.”

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UNDERR OVERR

Thomas Emmet he isn’t mad about F Clare Martin ex The Pacifier do

RRATED/ RRATED

mmet tells us why bout Fury Road and tin explains why er doesn’t suck!

MAD MAX : FURY ROAD Hype is a dangerous thing. Mad Max: Fury Road was all about the hype. The trailer!

Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron! Bald Nicholas Hoult! Even those not aware of the three disjointed films that preceded Fury Road were for the most part excited by its bizarre, otherworldly trailer. Many flocked to their local HMV or torrent site to watch the original films in order to fully prepare for this classic in the making. Five star reviews popped up on posters and then in the second trailer, anticipation reached its peak before the film even came out. And the film itself? Average.

The trailer was genius. Too often the filmmakers blow their celluloid load on too many plot reveals or even just the best parts of the film. Max is not guilty of this but it is guilty of tricking its audience to go a film that wasn’t as thought provoking, beautiful or masterful as it thought it was. Where to even begin? George Miller waited over thirty years, and in that time bungled the sequel to Babe (the budget could have been spent on therapy bills for all the children affected by it), lost a Justice League franchise we could all do with, with the ominous approach of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and created a strange dancing penguins franchise (Happy Feet) instead. How anything coherent was going to come from a man that erratic was obviously a question never that was never asked.

While visually arresting, the film is just a series of bizarre events plastered over with a ninety-minute car chase. A car chase should last fifteen minutes, not be the basis of an apparently dynamic and original film. The concept of a man playing a guitar that spat flames must have been wonderful in one of Miller’s fever dreams but on film it is both distracting and bonkers. And not bonkers in the fun way that the very underrated Pan is, more in the grimy, loosely attempting to be steam punky way.

Details like the villains two children being at opposite ends of the spectrum physically and mentally (one has the body of a man and the mind of a child, the other has the body of a child and the mind of a man) fall disappointingly flat because they are just that, details in a film that has attention deficit disorder towards all of its concepts. Immortan Joe, the film’s villain is little more than Bane in a wig.

Which brings us nicely onto Tom Hardy. Nuanced performer that he is, there is little he can do to save this apocalyptic version of a NASCAR race from coming to a crashing halt.

His Max is not even mad, just broody. They

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“A car chase should last 15 minutes, not be the basis of an apparently dynamic and original film.” could have cast anyone in the role and to see Hardy wasted is an intense pity. However the film decided it needed to switch focus onto an entirely new and entirely stupidly named character called Imperator Furiosa. This is the apex of where the hype and the actual film diverge. Reviewers practically vomited the words “feminist heroine” onto the page.

The furor created by this feminist take on the Mad Max mythos led me to believe that Charlize Theron would be continuing her line of intensely strong, if flawed women in mainstream cinema. But no, she’s just bald and has one arm. She does little that any other female protagonist hasn’t done, and has nothing to add to the rich tapestry of existing strong female action leads. That arm I might add is never given any exposition. It’s left as a self-indulgent mystery, as most of this particularly uninspiring film is. Nothing needs an explanation because there isn’t one. It’s purely a visual trick to convince audience members to believe there might be a deeper mythos than scraps of George Miller’s dream diary committed to film.

Fury Road has been declared a cult film in some quarters. Not only is that a woefully misrepresented definition of a cult film, it’s entirely untrue. The film is an overhyped mess of such self-indulgence and disrespect for cohesion with regards to storytelling and character development that it’s hardly questionable that it belongs here in the graveyard of overrated trash. To misquote Nicholas Hoult’s Nux “oh what a film, what an awful film.”

The Horro Taking O

THOMAS EMMET TA OF THE KEYBOA

There is a conspiracy trying to destroy cinema for the modern audience. It doesn’t lie in Hollywood’s reliance on superhero sequels and shoddy reboots. It is not in James Cameron jettisoning all film except for Avatar.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t have anything to do with Marion Cotillard. No, the downfall of cinema is in the rise of the keyboard warrior.

For every acclaimed review there is now a wave of self-righteous offense condensed into 140 characters. This summer’s blockbusters are an accurate reflection of the new trend. Jurassic World, a record breaking sequel that utilises Chris Pratt’s charms to the maximum, and Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, a very solid piece of cinema, have both earned huge box office tallies. They have also fallen prey to criticism from the self-appointed judge, jury and executioner that ironically refers to itself as the Twitterati. Jurassic World was attacked for conforming to the stereotype that women have to be uptight while men are carefree. Age of Ultron was lambasted for Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow character claiming to be a monster because she is unable have children. While the first criticism is slightly more justified than the second, film-goers seem to be missing out on the main point of cinema: entertainment.

Both films are exciting and diverting, with Jurassic World far surpassing its predecessors. Age of Ultron finally gave James Spader a role to chew on, both maniacal and tragic. And the idea of Joss Whedon, famous for answering the question “why do you write these strong women characters?” with “because you’re still asking that question”, being shamed off Twitter is deplorable. Whedon, who made Trojan efforts in his work on Buffy, Dollhouse and Firefly to create strong female role models for the tween audience, should never have been exposed to this level of vitriol from the mouth breathers. Black Widow had been a character whose motivations were never clear. She was being used as a different set piece in each of the preceding films she had been in, and while her tragic backstory is slightly clichéd, it works in relation to her journey in the movie and her burgeoning relationship with Bruce Banner. The character herself is unrealistic, and like all of the Avengers not representative of the general population. So the idea of her feeling she is a monster because she can’t have children is not reflective of Whedon having a retrograde view that women are useless if they cannot reproduce, but rather a trope that serves the story.

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“For every acclaimed review there is now a wave of self-righteous offense condensed into 140 characters.”

rror Of g Offense

ET TACKLES THE RISE BOARD WARRIOR

version of a realistic James Bond whose excessive dalliances with girls and booze are detrimental rather than complementary.

The journey the characters go on through this unnamed city take them to areas that the militia have already taken over, so it stands to reason that there would be very few people willing to help them. As the larger plot is revealed, concerning Americans taking advantage of Asian industries in their continued attempts of monopolisation, the us vs. them theme makes more sense.

It’s just a shame that criticism for the film condemned it to the bargain bin.

Stonewall is the controversy that on the surface appears the most absurd. The film concerns the eponymous riots of 1969, where LGBT activists railed against police oppression. The uproar when the trailer was released in which a white male character is shown throwing a brick (not necessarily the first) was quite unexpected.

The explosion of social media commentary had some valid points. No transgender characters were being represented though they were integral to the riots. Most of the characters seemed to be white. These criticisms were entirely justified, however the idea of boycotting the film on the basis of a trailer, which many claimed they would do, makes no sense. There are exceptional trailers that have led to the direst of films. To judge a film on its trailer would be immature. There was also a stirring argument that the film was

One particular victim of this new wave of offense was a smaller action film released earlier this year, No Escape. The film concerns the unlikely pairing of comedy actors Owen Wilson and Lake Bell. They play parents who’ve moved to an unnamed Asian country for a new job that happens to coincide with a militia uprising. The film was released to lukewarm reviews that focused their criticisms on the portrayal of Asian characters as one dimensional.

The reviews should instead have focused on the improbable success of headlining such a bizarre pairing. However, the film was water boarded into virtual obscurity in this country, most people questioning what Owen Wilson was doing in an action film on bus posters that passed through Dublin.

The film itself however was excellent, so it is a pity that the reviews and accusations of racism sank it.

Hugely tense sequences play out at a breakneck speed and the moral choices made by Owen Wilson’s character are well examined and extremely palpable. One particular scene where Wilson’s oldest daughter is almost forced to shoot her father had audience members around me shielding their eyes. The alleged xenophobia is overhyped.

Not every Asian character is the cardboard cutout the film was accused of portraying.

Pierce Brosnan also features, doing his best

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too timely to be coincidental and that the filmmakers were taking advantage of the recent legalization of gay marriage in both the US and Ireland. That allegation is entirely untrue, as the director, Roland Emmerich has been talking about the film since 2013.

People seemed to miss the obvious point that if anybody was expecting a sensitive portrayal of the Stonewall riots, it was never going to be delivered by the director of The Day After Tomorrow.

And this brings us back to the initial point, that cinema serves as entertainment, not education. If a factually correct version of the Stonewall riots was wanted, there are numerous excellent documentaries on the topic. Creative license has to be utilised in mainstream cinema, in order to tell a story as cinematically as possible. As it turns out from the first few reviews the film is indeed awful, not just an inaccurate portrayal but appallingly made.

This wave of labeling things too sensitively will ruin a lot of films in years to come, but hopefully when this trend begins to regulate itself a little more and stops becoming a knee jerk reaction it might possibly be useful. But for now, it is just a horrible pain.

Thomas Emmet

“I am in Blood...”

Cathal Kavanagh traces the history of Macbeth on the silver screen

Australian director Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth was released at the start of this month. This latest adaptation is far and away the most high-profile version of the Scottish Play to make it to the screen in recent decades. In 2006, James McEvoy played Macbeth in a Scottish restaurant, while a young Sam Worthington featured in a version set in the Melbourne underworld. An entire generation of current college students may be familiar with a 2010 TV version starring Patrick Stewart as the blood-stained Thane, pictures of which adorned textbook copies of the play for the bacchanal of stress and premature balding officially known as the Leaving Cert. But we have to go back over 40 years, to the primordial mists of 1971, for the last major feature film of the play by a ‘big name’ director, when Roman Polanski released his own hyper-violent vision of tribal, medieval Scotland.

Kurzel, along with his leads Michael Fassbender and Marion Cottiliard, have stuck true to tradition when adapting Shakespeare for screen, by altering and tweaking aspects of the story to give their own version more narrative power, to ratchet up the atmospheric tension among the moors and the blasted heath. The new film starts with the open-air funeral of the Macbeths’ young son,

a character whose existence is only briefly alluded to in the text. The additional element of parental grieving adds another layer of psychological anguish to be mined in the process of the pair’s later murderous conniving. The presence of the three witches is stripped of almost all obvious supernatural cliché. Of course, neither the play itself nor the act of re-arranging the elements of it to suit the director’s purposes are particularly new. People have been adapting Macbeth, and Shakespeare in general, for as long as film itself has existed, and have normally been perfectly content to drag the play in whichever direction they wish, whether to incorporate Asian folklore or a bleak, post-war existentialism.

With Shakespeare typically being conceived in the popular mind as the patron saint of English literature, it’s no shock that the early history of film was tied up with the works of the Bard. The oldest existing adaptation of his work is a short scene from King John made in 1899. Macbeth and Banquo’s earliest foray into the medium of cinema came in 1908, when it was the first of 7 Shakespeare films released by the Vitagraph Company, who released 14 of them before 1912. In a premonition of anxieties that were later to attend

“The additional element of parental grieving adds another layer of psychological anguish to be mined in the process of the pair’s later murderous conniving.”

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Roman Polanski’s version in 1971, police in the city of Chicago had the film censored on account of the emphasis given to the murder of Duncan.

They complained that in contrast to the stage, on screen “you see the dagger enter and come out and see the blood flow and the wound that’s left”.

Film had arrived, and so had its power to shock.

The Scottish Play was produced repeatedly in the silent era, the most notable example probably being a 1916 version starring Herbert Beerbohm Tree, by all accounts the leading Shakespearean of his day. The film is now lost.

The first production to feature a name central to the history of film came in 1948, when Orson Welles contrived to commit his own version to the screen.

Welles, still in his early thirties, already had a commercial hit The Stranger behind him, not to mention his media mogul magnum opus Citizen Kane.

But his idea for a filmic Macbeth ran into problems and he ended up seeking help from ‘B’ Western film studio Republic Pictures. For $750,000, a figure only one fifth of what Laurence Olivier was being given to complete his Hamlet around the same time, he got it made. Shot in 23 days, Welles used the original text as a template to mould the film he wanted

” to make. A ‘Holy Father’ figure shows up at various points to banish the witches and transcribe the illiterate Macbeth’s letters. He is nowhere to be found in the play, an addition allowing Welles to underline the Christian/Pagan dichotomy he saw at its heart.

It’s a strange film, though ultimately a rewarding one. Filmed in intimidating monochrome at the dawn of the Technicolor era, Welles’ Macbeth focuses on the main character’s mental instability in a way that later productions seem to have struggled with. Much has been made of Kurzel and Fassbender’s insistence regarding the latest incarnation of the play, that Macbeth himself suffered from what would now be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from decades of killing men at close hand as an integral part of his job. Welles tried to convey the inner life of his lead in various ways throughout the film. When Macbeth learns that Fleance, son of Banquo, has escaped the clutches of the hired murderers, Welles rigged a tracking shot in a claustrophobic, abandoned salt mine to emphasise the mental oppression of the king.

Probably the most acclaimed version of Macbeth doesn’t share a word in common with the original.

Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 Kumonosu-Jô (translated loosely as Throne of Blood) re-sets the action in 16th century Japan, with Macbeth and Banquo recast as samurai Washizu and Miki. Using the highly stylised elements of Nōh theatre and incorporating Japanese folklore as told by early modern playwright Zeami Motokiyo, Kurosawa produced a synthesis of European and Japanese literary history possibly unequalled before or since. Washizu and Miki meet only one witch, not three, and the way she is presented is ripped straight from Early Modern Japanese stories more familiar to the film’s original audience. Once Washizu is installed as the Great Lord, he is ultimately killed not by his own insanity or the fact that a Macduff was in fact ‘untimely ripp’d’ from his mother’s womb. Rather, he falls victim to a hail of anonymously fired arrows, as his soldiers rebel and rise in arms against him.

Starting and finishing Throne of Blood, fog and mist obscure the screen, and a chorus of voices lament the once-majestic ruins of Spider Web Castle on the foothills of Mt. Fuji (where much of the film was shot). The scenes emphasise the futility of military struggle, the ultimate desolation that awaits us all, and serve as the film’s bleak reminder of the depressing, inescapable circularity of history.

Such ideas are echoed repeatedly in later productions of the play on both stage and screen, and were powerfully, explicitly stated in the 1962 work of Polish critic Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary.

In some ways the history of late twentieth century Shakespeare revolves around the towering figure of Kott. He emphasised the brutality and the violence of Shakespeare’s universe from the perspective of a man to live through both Nazi and Soviet invasions of his country. His vision of history in the plays was of a ‘Grand Mechanism’, a staircase a man ascends by killing the king, only to be pushed off it into the void by a new pretender coming to kill him. Uneasy lies the head, indeed. He said of Macbeth that a production “not evoking a picture of the world flooded with blood would inevitably be false”. Notice the sheer amount of it attending to Duncan’s murdered torso in Kurzel’s version and you sense

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what the critic was talking about. Bleak stuff.

Kott’s influence shows up in Trevor Nunn’s 1982 filming of his black-box RSC production, starring Ian McKellen. It also turns up in Roman Polanski’s 1971 version, violent for its day and made only months after the director’s wife was murdered by the Manson ‘family’ in California. His version is violent and dark, even if it was accused by some of lacking a certain psychological intensity among the period costumes and the drastically shortened text. The Banquo’s ghost scene sees a caged bear privy to proceedings. With Macbeth killed at the film’s close, we see Donalbain, brother of the new king Malcolm and potential future usurper, travel off on his own to meet the prophesising witches himself. Similarly, in the new film, Fleance, young son of the infant Banquo, reappears, sword in hand, vanishing into the highland fog to one day fulfil the prediction that ‘your sons shall be kings’.

The Grand Mechanism continues. A long way from the Christian symbolism of Welles. And a long way from Jacobean London. But urgent, enthralling and very much a product of our time.

Cathal Kavanagh

CriticsCorner

Adam Kempenaar

Adam Kempenaar is the co-host and founder of the Chicago based podcast, Filmspotting. He spoke with TFR about his experience studying film in college and how he went on to become a film critic.

What were your early experiences of film and what were the films that made you realize you wanted to be involved in film later in life?

From my extensive research of your website I gather you studied film in college. Do you think it set you up well the job you have now?

My first experience being exhilarated at the movies was seeing Star Wars at the drive-in when I was probably 5 years old. The two movies that had the biggest impact on me in terms of really becoming a cinephile and wanting to also make movies were Reservoir Dogs and Blue Velvet. I saw both during the summer before my senior year in high school. Those were the first movies where I was keenly aware of a director’s hand at work – that there was an artist, in collaboration with other artists, who was responsible for what I was watching.

I would never say a degree in film or filmmaking is required to be a critic, but it certainly helps. The basic vocabulary, the whole foundation really for what we discuss every week, comes from the time I spent as a student studying film and also making them – not to mention getting exposed to some essential pieces of cinema.

Was it always film criticism that you leaned towards or did you ever try your hand at filmmaking? If so, how did criticism win out in the end?

I was definitely focused on making movies initially. I spent a year in the MFA program for Film & Video Production at Columbia College Chicago and made a handful of short films and videos there. I was proud of my work - such as it was - but recognized at some point that there was something missing. I was also the type of person who was interested in some security, getting married, starting a family. I found a job in the media field that allowed me to use my video editing skills, which led to more work in journalism. As a grad student in journalism and film at the University of Iowa, I had my first opportunities to write reviews for the student newspaper and also do a weekly radio show on the campus radio station. Some of the current segments we do on Filmspotting – Top 5 lists, Massacre Theatre - were part of that original show, “Burn Hollywood Burn.”

Who are your film critic idols?

So many. Roger Ebert was my first. David Edelstein was one of the first web critics I followed regularly, when he was with Slate. A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips are always smart. Scott Tobias and all the ex-Dissolve folks always inspire me. I appreciate the erudition and brashness of Calum Marsh. Matt Zoller Seitz and Kevin B. Lee, especially for their video essays.

Seeing as FS is a podcast you might be somewhat biased but do you think the internet has been a good thing for film criticism? Anyone with a web-cam or blog can be a critic now, do you think the standard’s been lowered because of this?

At the end of the day content and quality win out. Yes, anyone with an Internet connection can be a critic now, but if you have nothing to say nobody will care.

Finally, it’s the obvious one, what advice would you have for film students looking to pursue film criticism in the future?

Read, watch, write voraciously. Embrace criticism as a conversation between you and your audience. Don’t waste energy recapping plot, and don’t approach reviewing as a scorecard of good/bad. You should be personal and wrestle with ideas.

“Yes, anyone with an Internet connection can be a critic now, but if you have nothing to say nobody will care” Interview by Louie Carroll 30 30

A Graduate’s review of the Graduate

Former Trinity Student Conor O’Donovan takes a look at this sixties classic and questions how relevant it is to someone in his position...

I wasn’t always worried about my future. Until very recently I thought I had a reasonable idea of what I was going to do after I donned the robes next Tuesday (do come down and say hello). All the same, I thought sitting down to watch an old classic would calm any residual nerves I was having.

It started off well. I immediately identified with Benjamin, even if he was a bit more downbeat about graduating than I was. Benjamin’s background seemed tangible to me, even from across the decades. Here was an upscale young man who had written for the college paper, just like me. He also apparently preferred to keep to himself during flights. It’s almost as if Mr. Nicholls was reading out of my diary.

This sense of identification soon began to wear off as it became clear exactly what kind of situation Benjamin had gotten himself into. Fifteen minutes in, I was forced to lower the volume a few bars, and then plug in my headphones. I can’t imagine the furore which would have ensued had my flatmates heard what was unfolding. I simply can’t. I don’t think Mr Nicholls fully appreciated the situation he was putting me in with his frankly salacious cinematography.

I won’t divulge the details of the episode in question. Suffice to say, it was less Netflix and chill, more Netflix and feel deeply uncomfortable. I don’t hold Benjy responsible for the circumstances in which he found himself. He was the first to admit it was a strange situation. That said, I found it hard to root for him in the scene depicting his 21st birthday party. Though I’ll admit Benjy’s birthday present works as a rich metaphor for social isolation, I did not find the scene authentic. Personally, I would have been unable to contain my excitement had I received

a full diving suit on my 21st birthday. Needless to say I was all for Benjy’s father pushing him back underneath the water.

The cinematic techniques employed by Mr Nicholls were quite engaging. I’ll concede the sequence showing the development of Benjamin and Mrs Robinson’s involvement was a fine example of supple montage editing, even if the content was a little too rich for my blood. The claustrophobic camera work in the opening scenes at the party made me feel like I was there, albeit a strangely taciturn version of myself. Personally, I would have jumped at the opportunity to explore the plastics industry, as it was in the late sixties.

If I had a P45 for every time Benjamin fails to get on a good thing in this film, my employment history would be chequered, to say the very least. I must confess, Benjamin won me back later in the film. Although his choice of venue for his first date was unconventional, his affection for Elaine is obviously genuine. His decision to marry her

“Fifteen minutes in, I was forced to lower the volume a few bars, and then plug in my headphones.

I can’t imagine the furore which would have ensued had my flatmates heard what was unfolding” 31

demonstrates more of the good sense that Benjamin seems capable of every once in a while.

Even when he appears to be rebelling, it is clear his underlying motives are heavily informed by the what others might think; the couple’s first kiss comes as Benjamin attempts to prevent Elaine making a scene outside the strip club. The final act shows Benjamin utilising more of this down to earth, common sense. One fatal flaw is the failure to bring the diving suit back into play. I’m willing to accept, however, that Benjamin is the type of character who is happy with what he has.

That said, his decision to follow Elaine back to Berkeley shows spunk and no small amount of grit. The perseverance he shows is also commendable. The relentlessness with which he torments Elaine with offers of marriage show that he is perhaps a romantic after all.

When it is clear that Elaine is on board, the need to disrupt the wedding seems unclear. A strongly worded telegram would have cleared everything up. It is good, however, to see Benjamin get one over the old farts, even if his behaviour isn’t all that different. As the bus drives off into the sunset he has the look of a man only just realising that his car is completely out of petrol. As for my own future, if a college educated young man in the prime of his life has to endure such boredom and ennui, then what hope is there for any of us?

Conor O’Donovan

Like what you see?

For more reviews, features and interviews find us online at www.trinit y filmreview.com

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