Popcorn Kernels: Stuff 'N Things

I watched some things and wrote down what I thought about them. Here you go.

Arachnophobia

Year: 1990
Director: Frank Marshall
Cast: Jeff Daniels, Julian Sands, John Goodman
Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

A big city doctor moves his family to a sleepy rural town and struggles to make ends meet. It doesn’t help that a venomous spider infestation has descended upon the town and is killing all his patients.

90’s horror gets a bad rap. Sure, the dried-out slasher genre was puking out flicks like Leprechaun or The Ice Cream Man until Scream course-corrected everything, but as loathe as I am to admit it, the slasher genre isn’t the only thing going on in horror. That period saw the urban gothic masterpiece Candyman, the surreal thriller Jacob’s Ladder, and Peter Jackson’s cult gore classic Dead Alive. And then there’s a little 1990 film called Arachnophobia with its foot in two worlds.

The 80’s are represented by the ambassadorship of actors Julian Sands (of Warlock) and Harley Jane Kozak (of The House on Sorority Row, and I’m pleased to announce that I officially earned my horror nerd card when I squealed upon seeing her name in the opening credits), but the 90’s are revving up with a more Amblin-esque adventure-horror roller coaster vibe. There’s not a lot of gore (though some of the spider bite effects are memorably grotesque), but that 80’s staple is traded for some impressive puppetry, animatronics, and spider wrangling used to render a tangible, more-or-less wholly realistic menace. Mind you, Arachnophobia doesn’t necessarily seek to scare, but rather provide adrenaline spikes in a safe, fun environment. It’s  a creepy crawly campfire story.

Of course, the plot itself is as formulaic as an algebra test. There’s the requisite interesting drama (small town conservatives vs. an open-minded doctor with a stroke of bad luck) that is dropped entirely for a third act monsterpalooza, the supposed expert who immediately kicks the bucket, and a character arc so obvious it could be seen from space. However, none of that matters because the film is just so damn fun it’s hard to care about anything else.

Arachnophobia is a jack-in-the-box of thrills and spills, milking every last ounce of spine-tingle out of humanity’s collective disgust for spiders. It might seem like an easy job to make somebody afraid of an eight-legged monstrosity leaping out at them, but there’s more to it than that. The scares in Arachnophobia are impeccably crafted, playful tricks and treats. There are a lot of close calls, unnoticed crawling horrors, and the like. That’s enough to make you want to hug a can of Raid, but the scene where a spider descends on two little girls singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” while a knocked-over doll’s eyes slowly open is an out and out masterpiece moment of horror filmmaking. This movie isn’t creepy by accident.

Incidentally, it’s also not funny by accident. There’s quite a bit of strong comic relief here that helps ingratiate you with the film’s small town vibe. The biggest risk the film takes is including John Goodman as a pseudo-autistic, drawling exterminator, but his performance is so sharply timed (and his screen time so discreetly limited), that it unequivocally works. So there you have it. Arachnophobia is sunny. Arachnophobia is scary. It might be a little overfamiliar, but who really cares?

Rating: 8/10

Volver

Year: 200
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas
Run Time: 2 hours 1 minute
MPAA Rating: R

A young mom strains to handle the pressures of work, family, illness, gossip, incest, murder, and her mother returning from the grave. You know, the usual.

Pedro Almodóvar is an international film icon, but I’ve never seen a single one of his films before Volver. I know, I know, I’m a terrible person. I think we’ve established this by now. But even Volver, which is about as late-period Almodóvar as it gets, still brims with the energy, color, and life that his work is known for, making me all the more excited to revisit his earlier films. He share with George Miller the ability to still make films with the artistic and creative energy of a young man.

What’s really striking about Volver is how effortlessly it blends some surreally dark subject matter with its exploration of colorful life as it characters examine their pasts and analyze their futures. It’s an intensely optimistic film that doesn’t flinch from acknowledging life’s trials and tribulation. Consider Penélope Cruz’s Raimunda. In any other film, this single mom struggling to make ends meet would be a beatific saint (*cough cough Chocolat*), but she’s more Erin Brockovich than anything. Volver allows her to have human flaws: She’s a selfish, short-sighted, fiery woman who needs to learn and grow just as much as any of the other characters.

What Volver lacks in a strictly structured plot it makes up for in supremely well-realized human characters and a dazzling fantasy esthetic. Penélope Cruz is obviously a heavy hitter here (she won an Oscar while speaking a foreign language, for crying out loud), imbuing Raimunda with a sharp wit and maintaining a sympathetic character despite her obvious flaws and incomprehensible beauty. But the rest of the ensemble is equally committed to the film’s zany tone, especially Lola Dueñas as Soledad, Raimunda’s frumpy little sister. Her charming, almost nuclear awkwardness powers the film’s sentimentality and humor, and her line readings are always skin-crawlingly perfect.

These performances work in conjunction with the films stylized, boldly colorful universe to create a sugar-coated treat. Almodóvar’s confident filmmaking floods the frame with bold reds and the film’s warmth extends deep into your own soul. The delicate imagery is both whip-smart and just plain beautiful and the humor transcends the language barrier. What more could you want from the guy?

Rating: 9/10

Brooklyn

Year: 2015
Director: John Crowley
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson
Run Time: 1 hour 51 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

In the 1950’s, a young Irish immigrant is torn between building a new life (and love) in New York City and missing her family and friends back home.

Brooklyn is less a movie than it is a Norman Rockwell painting of 1950’s New York done up in dreamy pastels, and I mean that in the best way possible. It’s an uncannily pleasant motion picture: a darling comedy that knows it’s a low stakes trifle and thrives in that knowledge.

Without the burden of high-strung drama and Oscar reel theatrics, Brooklyn gives itself plenty of room to breathe. Every character in the ensemble is given their moment in the sun, and while not a one of them is particularly complex to any degree (save Ronan’s Eílis), they are fleshed-out, lived-in roles from the romantic leads (one boy to represent scrappy, forward-looking America, the other to represent the ginger Hell of sticking with what’s familiar all the way own to the bit parts, like Eílis’s coworkers and her fellow lodgers.

Brooklyn’s truest strength is the rigorous detail put into its exquisite costume design, sense of location, and color palette, but the glue that holds it all together is the chemistry between Saoirse Ronan and Emory Cohen. Ronan’s entire career has basically been long-winded proof that she can lead a film, but Cohen’s charismatic young swain Tony is an admirable standout for two reasons.

First, he takes a painfully static, goo goo-eyed, John Corbett in My Big Fat Greek Wedding character and turns him into an adorable, intensely compelling figure with just a twitch of his eyebrow. He says he based his performance on a cute little puppy dog, and this might just be the single finest acting choice in the history of cinema.

Second, I really hate Emory Cohen. Every time he appeared on Smash, I would joke that he was on tranquilizers. He landed my Worst Actor of 2013 slot for his role in The Place Beyond the Pines. And yet he managed to obliterate years of professional disdain in one fell swoop. I’m actually excited to see his next film, which - if you know me well - is about as shocking as Scrooge McDuck donating his swimming pool of gold coins to charity.

So yes, Brooklyn earns my esteem. Hard. It’s not a challenging motion picture, but since when does every movie need to be so edgy? It’s a silly, somewhat emotional good time, like a good piece of saltwater taffy.

Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 1408

I Think We're Alone Now

Year: 2016

Director: Dan Trachtenberg

Cast: John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Gallagher Jr.

Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Can we all just agree that 10 Cloverfield Lane’s alleged connection to the 2008 found footage monster film Cloverfield is a heap of garbage? That would make the rest of this review a whole lot easier. Put a pin in that title, which sounds more like a sequel to 9 Chickweed Lane anyway. Throw a sheet over the viral marketing campaign. And clear a special place in your septic tank for that snake oil salesman J. J. Abrams’ rickety claim that the films are “blood relatives.” And gag me with a spoon.

There. Now doesn’t that feel better?

In 10 Cloverfield Lane, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is a young woman on the run from a boyfriend, who runs straight into the arms of somebody much worse. After a car accident, she wakes up in the underground bunker of the surly and intimidating Howard (John Goodman, in his first non-Pixar role as a monster). Howard tells her that there has been an attack on American soil, the air is tainted, and that everybody outside the bunker is dead. Never certain whether or not she should believe the man who is holding her hostage while claiming to have saved her life, he must survive the bunker for as long as possible with Howard and the clueless handyman Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr.) until she can figure it out.

It’s a real Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt story, to be sure.

10 Cloverfield Lane is a small-scale film by necessity. Three actors, a handful of rooms, and the occasional overhead rumble aren’t exactly the stuff of Cecil B. DeMille style epics. However, the film doesn’t suffer for its smallness. Certain conversations in the film begin to chafe at the limited amount of shots available, but these rough patches are thankfully infrequent.

What the intimate setting truly achieves is a constant tension, an unflagging awareness of Michelle’s lack of privacy. She is trapped with a bipolar lunatic, her three-room world a sinister microcosm of the evils hat might be lurking aboveground. She’s pretty literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. Of course, none of this atmosphere would be quite as effective without the cornerstone of 10 Cloverfield Lane: John Goodman.

Goodman, of course, is a reasonably well-respected actor despite a rather profound lack of leading roles, but here he proves his worth as an endlessly versatile character actor. He dominates the screen, both with his size and sheer personality, exuding a sinister aura that clings to everything it touches. His shifting, sinister performance is far from over-the-top, which could have derailed such a tiny film, instead lurking in that oh so subtle realm of banal evil.

He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, papering a kind face over a bristling maw of anger that constantly lurks beneath the surface. He’s so compelling, in fact, that even when he’s not onscreen, you can still feel his presence looming omnipotently over every scene. Of course, it helps that he has two solid performers to play off of. Winstead is an ever-reliable genre presence who certainly earns her keep, and Gallagher’s dopey kindness provides an excellent foil, but Goodman is the star of the show and by God he earns it.

That’s what you get for finding a stranger in the Alps.

Goodman may be the crux of this operation, but 10 Cloverfield Lane likewise could not have survived without Ramsey Avery’s production design, a perfect evocation of the film’s peculiar tone. The slick metal and sharp edges of the bunker are softened with an outwardly cheery layer of homey, rustic decoration that contrast both with the harshness of the environs and the aggressive gruffness of Howard. It’s a wickedly playful set, one that exquisitely evokes the same dark sense of humor that produced this incredible pairing of music and material in the trailer.

And while the production design might provide a subtle juxtaposition, the sound design is here to remind us that this film can jar us out of our seats. A perilously indelicate combination of stark silence, far-off rumblings, and in-your-face shrillness, 10 Cloverfield Lane’s soundscape pummels you within an inch of your life. It’s nothing less than abrasive poetry designed to startle and to pummel.

All of these elements collide during the film’s best sequence: A game of Taboo that’s more unsettling than anything that’s been seen in theaters this year. It’s an intricate, successful attempt at combining the film’s best assets in a meticulously-crafted moment that’s simultaneously an unnerving character development, a canny switcheroo, and a genuinely threatening perversion of banal family life. It’s pretty much perfect.

And after that paragraph, I don’t feel so bad airing a couple grievances as we close out this review. Obviously, there’s those back-and-forth conversation scenes that can get a little drab, and a couple scenes repeat the same beats a little too close to each other, but for the most part my only real issue is with a rather crude character arc that Mary Elizabeth Winstead is jammed into. Well, that and a pretty dopey climax.

But that’s not enough to sink what is a very well-constructed ship. 10 Cloverfield Lane is an excellent, original exercise in small-scale psychological drama and it’s a superb way to spend a night out. Try not to come to it with any expectations based on that majestically idiotic title, and you’ll be golden.

TL;DR: 10 Cloverfield Lane is a solid, tense little film.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 927

Reviews In This Series

10 Cloverfield Lane (Trachtenberg, 2016)

The Cloverfield Paradox (Onah, 2018)

Archive: May 26, 2013

Never Drinking Again - The Hangover Part III

Year: 2013
Director: Todd Phillip
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis
Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Let’s start with the good. Evidently, the filmmakers listened to the critics ofThe Hangover II. The major complaints about that film were as follows:

 1) It was an exact rehash of the events of the original.

 2) The series unabashedly reveled in offensive frat boy comedy, relying on bodily humor, and generally being homophobic/racist/misogynistic/offensive to whatever groups those categories might have missed.

Part III’s plot certainly did manage to avoid the established Drug/Party/Hangover/Lather/Rinse/Repeat cycle of the first two, and the crude humor was at a low ebb – not entirely absent but generally not too aggressive.

Unfortunately, this was at the cost of alienating any fans the franchise might have had left. I’m in no way supporting the direction the movies were going, but by removing the elements the critics found unappealing they also removed anything that might make this film worth watching to anybody who actually enjoyed the first two.

A Hangover movie without the frat comedy is like a smore without the chocolate and marshmallow – less unhealthy but still not a satisfying treat. Without its trademark style, Part III didn’t have a leg to stand on – it’s not like there was a probing character drama hidden underneath the veneer of fat jokes.

 
Not exactly the Meryl Streep of comedy

I suppose I can’t call this a review if I don’t briefly touch on the actual plot of the film.

Alan (Zach Galifianakis)’s lazy manchild behavior has finally gotten to his father (Jeffrey Tambor, always a welcome presence) who loses his patience and begins a tirade which ends in his collapse on the floor. Cut to that scene from the trailer where Alan sings Ave Maria, which would be funny if I hadn’t already seen it 21 times.

His sister (Sasha Barrese) decides to hold an intervention for… something? I guess? He’s off his meds. Is this intervention to get him to start taking drugs? Anyway, she invites the Wolf Pack - his friends Stu (Ed Helms), Phil (Bradley Cooper), and her husband Doug (Justin Bartha, who is tragically underused in these films – and, may I say, much more handsome than Mr. Cooper in my opinion. Sorry Aunt Jill).

Also Melissa McCarthy is in the movie for approximately 12 seconds

So blah blah blah the Wolf Pack is driving him to the New Horizons rehabilitation center in Arizona. Before we continue, two things: First, these centers are almost always called New Horizons. I guess it’s a national chain. Second, I’m still not entirely sure why he’s going here. After some deep digging it seems that they are seeking to stop him from being such a lazy unmotivated weirdo. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this man doesn’t need rehab. He needs a firm slap in the face.

Then after some truly impressive narrative strong-arming, gang boss Marshall (John Goodman, who is phoning it in so hard that I can practically hear a dial tone) has captured Doug and is threatening to kill him if the Wolf Pack doesn’t track down Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong), who is on the run, having escaped from a Thai prison. Chow has hightailed it to Tijuana and he is the only person who knows where Marshall’s 21 million dollars of stolen gold bars are hidden.

There follows an inexplicably large number of scenes where the gang tries to drug Chow, after which he (rightly) locks them in a basement, pinning the blame for a robbery on them. They chase him back to Vegas (because of course) where he has taken up in the penthouse of Caesar’s Palace (because of course). Mr. Chow is basically a Bond villain at this point, hiding in his Evil Lair.

Anyway, things happen and the movie ends. I don’t want to spoil it and I don’t really care enough to write about it anyway. The events presented are largely devoid of discernable jokes, unless you think “haha, Alan’s a three-year-old” is so hilarious that it can carry an entire film.

The film is consistently dull, and in the patches where it isn’t, is mostly just annoying. One of the central relationships of the film is that between Alan and Chow, two lightning in a bottle characters who have no business having an entire plot built around them. At this point they are shrieking caricatures of what they used to be and prove once and for all that sometimes a bit part in a film is so effective because it is so brief.

It’s funny because he’s Asian

The strongest moments of The Hangover Part III are unambiguously those that call back to the original Hangover – the sequence with Heather Graham and her son in particular is alarmingly sweet and sincere. Of course, it’s much too early to feel nostalgia for a movie that debuted in 2009, but it was a far better film than this one and the scenes allow some relief from the plodding story of Part III while also reminding us that there was once life in these listlessly jerking marionettes known as Alan, Stu, and Phil.

This film is presented as the finale to the Hangover trilogy and, assuming that box office revenue isn’t so large as to necessitate a sequel, it’s nice to finally put a nail in the coffin of this uninspired, shuffling comedy. This film will undoubtedly fade into history as a milquetoasty nothing, which I suppose is better than being universally reviled.

TL;DR: The Hangover Part III is the third installment to a crass comedy franchise that is neither particularly crass or particularly comedic.

Rating: 3/10

Should I spend money on this?  If you are devoted to these characters or are a member of that resolute minority group that call themselves fans ofPart II, it might be worth it to watch their storylines be tied off. If you aren’t, skip it.

Word Count: 1027