Popcorn Kernels: Q4 2016 Review Purge, Vol. 2

It’s time to clear out more cobwebs from the ol’ backlog of 2016, to create a clean slate ready for Oscar season! So here are some reviews of flicks I watched in December 2016 that weren’t quite so vital to write about in full.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Year: 2010
Director: Jalmari Helander
Cast: Jorma Tommila, Peeter Jakobi, Onni Tommila
Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

In a secluded Finish mountain village, a young boy must stop the evil original Santa Claus from being unleashed upon his friends by a nearby mountaintop dig.

I love me some Christmas horror. There’s something about subverting all the manufactured Hallmark cheeriness of the season that appeals to me, and it helps that I genuinely love the holiday itself. But I genuinely wasn’t prepared for Rare Exports, a Finnish Christmas fairy tale with an unusually somber tone. It’s a stab at Guillermo del Toro-esque weight and spectacle that doesn’t seem fitting of the down-and-dirty genre that brought us Jack Frost and Santa’s Slay.

That tone is what allows it to stand out from the crowd, as well as its focus on a type of rural mountain community not normally seen in Hollywood cinema. The realism with which it presents the struggles of the townsfolk, which are getting tougher around Christmastime even without the invasion of a killer Santa, is outstanding. But the unfortunate fact is that these things are exactly what prevent it from being a particularly great Christmas horror film. The intent is spectacular, but the execution is rather lackluster, holding off on horror for a pretty dull 45 minutes of setup and throttling the film’s chances for entertainment with an overserious tone.

Fortunately, when the horror does kick in, it centers on a truly uncanny image that overcomes the abrasive protagonists (who accidentally trap what they believe to be an employee of the dig site and almost instantly decide to prod him with sticks and hold him hostage – delightful!), the jumps in logic, and the rather silly denouement. That image is of a silent, naked old man who crouches in the shadows, unmoving. It’s a sight that chills the spine enough that it doesn’t thaw until the credits roll.

And, to be fair, the silly finale is a tremendous bit of fun that leads to a charming concluding punchline. It just doesn’t necessarily feel like a natural extension of the almost neorealist goings-on that propel the first half of the movie. Visually speaking, Rare Exports is well made (especially a wonderful bit of business with the recurring image of an advent calendar), and the actors are decent, but the tone and the pacing are just a little too wonky to wholeheartedly recommend.

Rare Exports won’t be entering my Christmas season rotation, but it’s at least an interesting curio that I don’t regret watching. It’s a slice of sub-del Toro fairy tale fruitcake with an uncanny confidence in its own construction.

Rating: 6/10

The Color Purple

Year: 1985
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey
Run Time: 2 hours 34 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG

In the South in the early 1900’s, Celie is married off to an abusive husband and relies on the strength of the women in her life to survive.

You couldn’t pay me to even pretend I care more about Steven Spielberg’s serious movies. I’m a Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones kind of guy. I’ve never seen Lincoln or Schindler’s List and I’m happy to let it remain that way. However, attached as I am to a certain drama-loving individual, recently I was given the choice to sit through The Color Purple or face a life of loneliness and regret. I chose the former, and thus was I introduced to Spielberg’s very first foray into the world of prestige drama.

And while the length of this film is indefensible (I could cut at least half an hour without batting an eye), spending time with these characters really did help th efilm grow on me. It doesn’t hurt that this is still a Spielberg movie, so as miserable as the characters’ lives frequently are, it never descends into the ultragrim territory of, say, Precious. And damn, is he a fun director.

The Color Purple might be maudlin as all hell, especially in its third act (a joyful reunion is pockmarked by a woman wearing an enormous flowing cape, for crying out loud), but visually speaking the man knows exactly what he’s doing. Whether it be the way he uses silhouette to portray Celie’s journey and self-identity, the recurring motif that links the sky with freedom, or the decision to stage its grandest scene of female empowerment around a dinner table, it’s clear that a great deal of thought, skill, and care went into this production.

Plus, the story (based on the Alice Walker novel of the same name) is a delicate and earnest tale about women that is still one of the more powerful narratives about female connection and empowerment out there. Although most of the people Celie meets throughout her life start out as enemies or rivals, they slowly realize they share a bond of sisterhood that can never be taken away from them or defined by the male (and white)-dominated society they’re trapped in. It’s wonderful stuff, despite some of Spielberg’s more cartoonish additions (a bar fight scene with Oprah looks like it was lifted straight out of Looney Tunes). Whoopi Goldberg gives an indelible debut performance, giving you intimate access to Celie’s thoughts and feeling using just her marvelously expressive face, the story is uplifting but doesn’t shy away from cold reality, and it’s good enough to forgive that grotesquely bloated run time. If that’s not a mark of true quality, I don’t know what is.

Rating: 7/10

Headhunters

Year: 2011
Director: Morten Tyldum
Cast: Aksel Hennie, Synnøve Macody Lund, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

An art thief/corporate recruiter must escape from an implacable assassin.

I should probably expand my scope a little before I make this assertion, but as far as I can tell, I love Norwegian movies. From films like Cold Prey or Dead Snow, it seems like the entire country has been gobbling up American genre films for decades until deciding in a snap that they can make some themselves. And they’re better. I can now expand this theory from sci-fi/horror to the action/thriller genre as well. Passengers director Morten Tyldum’s adaption of Jo Nesbø’s best-selling novel Headhunters is – put simply – a high-octane treat.

Although it’s a simple, snappy little crime thriller, it benefits from its European flavor. First of all, the lead isn’t preposterously handsome and debonair. He’s a regular Joe (or Jo) who just happens to be very good at stealing art. His lack of perfection makes his predicament seem that much more dangerous, because you’re not so certain that he can Jason Statham his way out of trouble. Plus, there’s a certain blasé attitude toward nudity and violence that makes the whole thing feel more visceral and human. While the filmmaking itself is very polished, the people and circumstances are not, giving it an edge that it wields like a razor-sharp blade.

I can’t say that I have much in particular to write about Headhunters, because it’s an elemental – almost primal – narrative, except to say that it’s a well-oiled machine. Every genre element is in the perfect position to keep your heart pumping along to its electric rhythm. It’s an exciting, harrowing, twisty, frequently gross tale of the lengths one man will go for survival. It has a James Bondian attitude toward women, which is always unfortunate, but it is what it is. And what it is is very captivating.

Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1298

Forrest Butler

Year: 2013

Director: Lee Daniels

Cast: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo

Run Time: 2 hours 12 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

For those of you who think Mr. Daniels needs to get his ego in check, let me clear the air. Due to copyright issues with a 1916 silent short film, of all things, the production company was unable to use their original title, The Butler. Thus Lee Daniels' The Butler was unceremoniously shoved into existence, and it is an enormously cumbersome title that I shall only use as a mark of solidarity to the poor filmmakers who were saddled with it.

Written by Danny Strong (who most notably played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's hard to tell if this is a step up or a step down), Lee Daniels' The Butler is ostensibly based on a true story. Yeah, so is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Adapted loosely from the life of White House butler Charles Allen, basically the only element they retained was that he was a butler. Oh, and he was black.

Well, we're off to a good start.

People have been up in arms about this film's dubious depictions of certain presidents and historical events to which I respond "duh." It's a historical film about how terribly black people were mistreated in America. The details are gonna be fudged a little to emphasize the emotion rather than 100% accurate historical fact. And anybody who thinks Martin Luther King, Jr.'s last words were about how awesome butlers are probably also thinks that Leatherface is still out there in a nursing home somewhere.

The film follows Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), a man who was born on a plantation and watched his mother (Mariah Carey who doesn't open her mouth once, thankfully) raped and his father killed by a white landowner (Alex Pettyfer, and a role that is essentially pure evil still doesn't stop me from wanting to make out with him). This super slavey narrative takes place in 1926, and correct me if I'm wrong but that one does feel a little off to me. 

Anyway he is taken in, taught how to serve in a house, and eventually makes his way to the whitest house of all (in more ways than one) serving a variety of stunt casted actors wearing prosthetics. I mean... American presidents. Here's where the Forrest Gumpiness really kicks in as Cecil serves his way through critical presidencies and his son Louis (David Oyelowo) finds his way smack dab into the middle of the Civil Rights movement.

And some pretty fantastic hairstyles.

Louis sits in at Woolworth's, Freedom Rides, hangs out with Black Panthers, and is even in the hotel room with Martin Luther King the day of his assassination. The length to which Strong reaches to cover every last expanse of the movement leads to a scattershot narrative led by events and setpieces that are not so much defined by the world of the movie as they are by the audience's previous knowledge of history.

If you sat a six-year-old, or perhaps a foreigner with little knowledge of American history in front of Lee Daniels' The Butler, all the meaningful lingering shots and presidential imitators in the world wouldn't help them decipher the main storyline. The script relies heavily on narration (Come on, Danny Strong! I trusted you!) and meanders through history from the Eisenhower presidency to Nelson Mandela, eventually skipping freaking decades to the 2008 election.

Now for all the flaws and mostly generic filmmaking in LDtB, it does get its point across. White people were truly awful to black people in America. Even today, that message has value and is an important thing to remember. This is where we came from. Slavery, segregation, and the KKK aren't just fairy tales from a long forgotten time. Some of this stuff happened less than half a century ago. The film's depiction of the atrocities committed against the black community are immediate and affecting in a way that makes one realize history isn't just in books. This all played out on the national stage and there are people alive today who saw it happen.

And one scene in particular stands out as the Greensboro sit ins are intercut with a White House dinner party. This artistic touch shows finally that there was somebody alive behind the camera with a few tricks up his sleeve. Only a few, but at least they're there.

So the movie isn't boring, no not at all. It was quite engaging in terms of raising awareness despite its flaws as a narrative. On the backs of Whitaker, Oyelowo, and Oprah Winfrey especially as Cecil's put-upon wife Gloria, the film is elevated above what could have been a tepid and thoroughly mediocre affair.

As if She would put her support behind something subpar. 

TL;DR: Lee Daniels' The Butler is generic but its depiction of historical events make them more real than any textbook.

Rating: 6/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Catch it on Netflix when it comes out in a year, you won't mind missing it in theaters.

Word Count: 853