arts
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Tuesday, February 8, 2011
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Killer ‘Roommate’ issues By Paloma Trygar The Daily Cardinal
photo Courtesy Screen Gems
Leighton Meester’s performance as the crazed roommate of the title serves as the film’s center and lone redeeming grace.
Dorm-bound freshmen with random room assignments undoubtedly experience some level of anxiety when meeting their roommate for the first time. After all, the person with whom you share such small quarters for an entire year needs to be someone you can tolerate, and maybe even look forward to seeing every day. Will he or she be normal? Fun? A partier? A bookworm? The newly released film “The Roommate” depicts this exact scenario to the extreme. Minka Kelly plays Sara Matthews, a college freshman who doesn’t know anyone at her new college, and is randomly assigned a roommate. Unfortunately for Sarah, her roommate Rebecca, played by Leighton Meester of “Gossip Girl” fame, turns out to be anything but normal. In the beginning of the movie, Sara moves into her dorm and waits for her roommate to arrive. After a few hours pass without anyone showing up, Sara decides to spend the night out with newly acquainted friends from down the hall. When Sara returns to her dorm, drunk and clumsy, she meets Rebecca. Over the next few days the two girls bond over daily activities and forge what appears to be a normal friendship. But as days turn into weeks, Rebecca starts to exhibit strange behaviors.
Rebecca quickly becomes obsessive over Sara, calling her incessantly when she doesn’t come home at a certain time, and takes drastic measures to ensure that she is Sara’s only friend. As the movie progresses, more and more cringe-worthy scenes come into play. In the theater, audience members shriek in horror as Rebecca carries out the unfathomable in order to secure Sara as her best friend. Rebecca also begins to copy things about Sara. She gets the same tattoo and later dies her hair dark brown. “The Roommate” will not disappoint college students, as it is relatable and fast-paced. I went to see this movie with my actual roommate, which made the movie experience all that more frightening. I began to have flashbacks, like when my roommate bought a pair of leather boots that looked just like mine. Or the time she called me when I didn’t come home at 2 a.m. Was it all a ploy? During the movie, I would occasionally glance over at my roommate, wondering if she was getting ideas. The film’s plot keeps viewers on their toes with the originality of Rebecca’s schemes. Just when it appears Sara is finally alone, the camera changes focal points to show Rebecca watching in the background. There’s a cliché shower scene that most audiences have seen time and
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again in old thriller movies, yet it still creates a frightening effect. Yet although the movie keeps you on edge, the plot is somewhat predictable. When Sara tells Rebecca her fashion professor crossed the line and kissed her, it is no surprise Sara has a different professor the next day. This becomes a theme: Anyone who crosses Sara or threatens Rebecca’s friendship suffers a similar fate. Meester plays an astonishingly convincing sociopath. Her use of strange body movements and stalker behavior give off constant creepy, forboding vibes. Kelly, on the other hand, gives a mediocre performance. At times it feels like she’s putting more effort into appearing pretty than afraid, especially during the climax. Like Kristen Stewart’s performance in the “Twilight” series, Kelly comes off as corny and contrived, especially in scenes where Sara is supposedly bonding with Rebecca. Overall, the movie falls short of a true thriller, failing to startle its audience as Rebecca spins her devious web to keep Sara all to herself. I only jumped once during the whole film. Without Meester’s performance, “The Roommate” would have only been a mild success. But with Meester, it is great to watch the drama unfold.
‘Bellflower’ innovates and intrigues David Cottrell co-ttrell it on the mountain
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his was the second year that the Sundance Film Festival featured the NEXT program, a category for extremely lowbudget films, intended to give burgeoning filmmakers an opportunity to shine the spotlight on their labors of love. One of the films I saw at this year’s festival in the NEXT program was “Bellflower.” The movie didn’t win any awards, and I wouldn’t say it was one of the best films at the festival, but it was one of the most memorable. It was incredibly innovative and intriguing and helped its rag-tag group of creators garner some much-deserved attention. Written, directed, edited by and starring Evan Glodell, “Bellflower” is the story of two tough-guy gearhead buddies, Woodrow (Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson), who dream about starting their own gang to rule the wasteland when Armageddon finally comes. The two are life-long best friends from Wisconsin who moved out to California and spend their spare time building flamethrowers and working on outfitting their end-of-theworld muscle car, the Mother Medusa. Woodrow goes on a romantic journey with bohemian Milly (Jessie Wiseman) only to get his heart ripped out. That’s when things take a turn for the
Glodell as Woodrow photo Courtesy Coatwolf productions
dark and disturbing. The film defies categorization into any one genre in a way no film has in recent memory. It evolves from a mumblecore romance, to a gritty drama, and finally into a disturbing horror-esque tragedy that would put “Titus Andronicus” to shame. And to top it all off, the film has the genuinely warm heart of a bromance flick subtly beating throughout its entirety. Like “(500) Days of Summer” director Marc Webb, one of the breakout talents of Sundance 2009, Evan Glodell is also a Wisconsinite and former Madison resident. Originally from Baraboo, Glodell studied engineering at UW-Platteville for a semester, and studied filmmaking at UW-Milwaukee before moving to Madison. Ultimately he moved to California because, as he explained in the post-screening Q&A, “that’s what people from Wisconsin do.” At the Q&A after the screening, the first question came from a guy who said, “I just wanted to let you guys know that this is my second time seeing this movie. I passed up seeing other movies to see this again. That’s how badass it is.” Indeed, ‘badass’ seemed to be the word of the evening to describe the film. Although I witnessed several people walk out of the theater and never come back, a large portion of the midnightaudience was absolutely enamored with the film. I don’t necessarily think it is a totally polarizing film where you either love it or you hate it. I myself occupy a middle ground in which I appreciate the film for what it does right and where it innovates, but I also think it has some flaws. However, it did seem to push viewers to one extreme or the other. While Glodell wouldn’t reveal the film’s exact budget, he did note that it was “not even close” to the $50,000 limit for films in the NEXT category.
One of the most innovative aspects of the film was the camera it was shot on. Glodell designed it himself and co-star and producer Vince Grashaw likes to call him “an engineering madman” because of it. Glodell has dubbed the camera the “Coatwolf Model II” after his production company, Coatwolf Productions. The camera is a custom amalgamation of vintage camera parts, bellows and Russian lenses with the internal guts of an Si-2K Mini. In order to reposition the camera on set, four people were required to move in tandem, as the camera was also connected to a MacBook Pro, a deep-cycle battery, and a car inverter at all times. Glodell describes the process he went through to create the Coatwolf II as a bit like “camera hacking.” The footage produced by the Coatwolf II has a style totally its own. As one film blogger pointed out, it is a bit reminiscent of something that could come out of the popular Hipstermatic iPhone app—except that it’s high-definition digital video. The shots often seem like faux-vintage photographs that have come to life. The film’s distinct visual style and unconventional storytelling coalesce into something that can be simultaneously stunningly beautiful and absolutely horrifying. “Bellflower” has its fair share of problems, especially as the story debatably falls apart in the last act, and I would be hard-pressed to argue with anyone who genuinely disliked it. But it’s the type of movie you won’t soon forget after you see it, regardless of how you felt. And it will be quite a while before something else comes a long like it. The film was picked up for distribution by Oscilloscope, a relatively small indie-film distribution company that was founded by Adam Yauch, better known as MCA of the Beastie Boys. Oscilloscope is planning a limited release of “Bellflower” in theaters this summer. I highly suggest you go experience it for yourself. If you want to help David create his own version of the “Coatwolf Model II,” email him at dcottrell@wisc.edu.