Happy Halloween!

I hope that everyone is having an exceptionally scary night! Have fun watching a new gem like Paranormal Activity, or a classic like Halloween, natch, or trick'r'treating around the neighborhood!

Happy scares!

Weekly Review -- Camera Enigma

Surveillance (2008) -- The anatomy of a crime is a strange thing to dissect, indeed. However, once you give the task to Jennifer Lynch, not only do you get impressive results, you are also left scratching your head in bewilderment whilst reconfiguring the past two hours in your mind. FBI agents Anderson (Julia Ormond) and Hallaway (Bill Pullman) have just arrived at a small-town police station to investigate reports of a murder and kidnapping. They start interviewing witnesses that include a little girl (Ryan Simpkins) and a drug addict (Pell James), but soon realize that there are numerous pieces missing from this puzzle... Lynch builds a world that is merciless in its inhumanity, with merely shades of white sneaking through the clearly divided black and grey. The screenplay makes some great points about evil that some people can be capable of; one scene presents a wonderful example of wordplay, while some others weigh different levels of brutality within the story's context. The cinematography -- chosen specifically by the filmmaker to suit each of the eyewitnesses' narrative -- is one of the film's most exceptional elements, ranging from ominously grainy to luminously colored, each of the sequences drawing on both its aesthetic and its momentum. Although it would be unfair to compare Lynch to her filmmaker father, I believe it is fair to note that his influence here is undeniable. From the quirky supporting characters like the absentminded soccer mom and the inquisitive receptionist, to the police officers that would rather wax philosophical than analyze a crime scene, this movie is a slice of the unlawfully bizarre. Ormond and Pullman are authoritative as the leads, deftly maneuvering through the screenplay's layers. James is excellent at portraying her character's evolution, while Simpkins is a revelation as the child survivor. While Surveillance starts off somewhat -- somewhat relating strictly to the Lynchian sense of the word -- as a mystery thriller, it grows into a narrative that defies convention at every turn. On the surface, it is an excitingly unpolished question mark, drawing us deeper and deeper into its puzzles; at its core, it is a study of good versus evil in a world that often disregards the former and glorifies the latter, sometimes through the very lense that our gaze penetrates.

8/10

Weekly Review -- No smoking, vandalizing or eventual recording, please

Vacancy 2: The First Cut (2008) -- We all knew it was coming. As soon as Nimród Antal's 2007 chiller Vacancy became a moderate success, a sequel or prequel or some other addition would undoubtedly be in the works. A couple of years later, here we are, with a movie so inferior to the original that it is instantly forgettable. Jessica (Agnes Bruckner), her boyfriend Caleb (Trevor Wright) and his best friend Tanner (Arjay Smith) are on their way to Jessica's parents' farm. After realizing that they cannot quite show up at the dead hour of night, they decide to stay at the Meadow View Inn, unaware that dirty bathrooms and bad reception will soon be meaningless when compared to the motel employees' proclivity for snuff... The entire movie feels obligatory and forced, mostly due to one-dimensional characters, boring acting and cheap, plasticized cinematography. Vacancy's characters had a poignant background that made them resilient and gave them survivor potential, whereas the prequel's leads are not sufficiently thought out to make us care. The entire expository set-up for the characters' situation seems to be propelled by the screenplay's need for one, rather than serving the purpose of being one of the story's key aspects. Bruckner is a pretty tough heroine at times, but also bland on occasion, generally bringing nothing new to the slasher genre; Wright is convincing for what he has to work with, while Smith hits all the right notes with the juiciest role of the bunch. The villains are threatening when they are not being stereotypically over the top and when they are not stealing the Strangers' disguises. The movie looks as though someone had shot it with a personal video camera, which might not necessarily be a bad thing, but which is far from good if the method overrides the story's own effectiveness. All in all, Vacancy 2 is your run-of-the-mill horror film. Stick with the original and give this one a miss.

4/10

Weekly Review -- Empty interiors

The Informers (2009) -- Bret Easton Ellis is the type of author that generally polarizes readers all around the map with his biting dissections of isolation, greed, materialism, hedonism, sexuality, values and beliefs. The same is generally true of movie adaptations of his works. Mary Harron played with dark humor in her American Psycho adaptation, while Roger Avary's Rules of Attraction examined the jaded wistfulness and bored cynicism of 1980s' privileged youth with flashy, regretful glee. However, Gregor Jordan's The Informers is a couple of notches lower on the effectiveness scale, mostly due to its lack of creative focus on thematic resonance. The story concerns a group of 1983 Los Angeles residents, all involved in one way or another with the suck-you-dry world of show business. The group includes rich kid Graham (Jon Foster), his cheating movie producer father William (Billy Bob Thornton), pill-popping mother Laura (Kim Basinger), promiscuous girlfriend Christie (Amber Heard) and best friend and occasional lover Martin (Austin Nichols). As is habitual for Ellis's works, all of the characters live life with no thought of tomorrow, lost in the drug-fuelled chaos of meaningless sex, unforgivable crime and foggy human connections. The narrative is nestled in the context of the emerging AIDS epidemic, as well as the ever-potent and intoxicating Hollywood scene. All the ingredients are there for a drama that crosses over into serious satire of fame and its excesses, yet Jordan seems content to tell the story in a linear fashion, without using techniques that might elevate it from an unswerving narrative to a multi-layered tale of woe amid riches. Ellis's works are shrewdly unconventional; one should not try to box them into a standard of any kind, nor should one try telling them without finding overtones of bitter humor shading all of the story elements, and Jordan does find some of them using his camerawork and metaphorical details, such as the black-and-white music video that subtly places a sexually charged scene into a context of fleeting zeitgeist. The most poignant scenes are those involving an elusive stillness, a calm before yet another emotional storm; a calm that we know is deceitful, because we are well aware that Ellis's characters' soulless voracity prevents them from ever finding peace. The last scene took my breath away, both in its emotional significance and its stark aesthetic, and it suggests that Jordan might have needed only a few different artistic choices to present an extraordinary film. The acting is the most captivating part of The Informers, with most of the cast getting a chance to play out of character. Thornton is at his weaselly best as the principal character's father, while Winona Ryder shines as a reporter caught up in some unfinished business. However, it is Chris Isaak who is a revelation as a neglectful playboy father, and whose character's exchanges with his son border on highly disturbing. All in all, the movie is a miss, when it could have been a clear hit. The Informers has potential, but it needed to be slightly more controversial, slightly more cynical in the face of its obvious absurdity, in order to get to its boiling point.

6/10