Being a fan of horror is a double-edged sword. You seek out as many movies as you
can, looking for more and more scares, but that effort also numbs you to the images
onscreen, making you more and more difficult to frighten. Eventually you’re watching
things you know intellectually are terrifying, even if you don’t find yourself the
least bit scared. Add to that the sorry state of Hollywood horror, in which most major
releases are trend-following cash grabs, and watching horror can by and large be a
thankless pursuit.
But every so often something sneaks into major release that surprises you by making
the dark walk home through quiet streets feel like it could be your last, and causing
you to turn on every light once you’re safely indoors. Writer/director
Scott Derrickson’s new film,
Sinister, is one of those rare gems.
The film stars
Ethan Hawke as a true-crime writer who moves his family into a house where a horrific family
murder took place. He’s desperate to write the next
In Cold Blood, but the stress of strained finances and a failing marriage are driving him to drink
and to hear many things going bump in the night. Not helping his state of mind are
the images he sees on a bunch of super 8 films he finds in the attic of the house,
depicting not only the murders there, but also connected ones in other cities. The
movie’s eventual twist can be seen from the very start, but because the movie is essentially
told from his perspective, the predictability doesn’t become a weakness. Within that
framework, Derrickson creates a bone-chilling occult thriller that has plenty of make-you-jump
moments that might be cheap adrenaline rushes from lesser films, but seem earned given
just how much skill he displays (with a huge assist from
Christopher Young’s fantastically macabre soundtrack) at creating a frightening atmosphere.
View the Opens tomorrow at theaters across the
trailer.
area.
Ben Affleck’s latest has been getting big Oscar buzz ever since it screened at the Toronto International
Film Festival last month, and with good reason. It’s easily his best film yet as a
director, and also has all the sorts of things one looks for in a Best Picture nominee:
a grand scope, a historical basis, an uplifting story of human triumph. The film is
based on the true story of the escape of six employees of the American consulate in
Iran, who had escaped from the embassy compound to the home of the Canadian ambassador
while the rest of the embassy was taken hostage in 1979. In order to get them out,
a CIA exfiltration expert (played by Affleck), with the help of some contacts in Hollywood,
creates a cover story about location scouting a film production in the hopes of passing
off the six as a Canadian movie crew in order to get them out in a daring broad-daylight
escape via the airport.
With each film under his belt as director, Affleck shows more storytelling assurance,
and
Argo moves along briskly, with a great balance of humor in the ludicrousness of the operation
to set up a fake movie in the Hollywood circus set against the life-or-death survival
story of the escapees. The escape sequence itself is a skillful set piece of tension
and thrills—though it does go a little overboard in the way Affleck has them just
getting out under the wire in a half dozen different ways that seem a little too constructed
to be as true to life as much of the rest of the film feels. Still, it’s such a fun
ride, at that point it seems pointless to complain.
View the trailer. Opens tomorrow at theaters
across the area.
When watching the classic William Wyler adaptation of Emily Brontë’s only novel, the
essential misery and pettiness of the doomed would-be lovers, Heathcliff and Catherine,
is somewhat concealed under the romantic sweep of Wyler’s period drama. Audiences
arriving for
Andrea Arnold’s new take on the novel may be a little disoriented by the utter lack of period piece
airs put on this story, as well as the impressionistic techniques she uses to tell
the story. Fans of Arnold’s work will be familiar with her style: extremely visually
oriented, preferring to let a handheld camera watch in voyeuristic close-up rather
than rely on dialogue to be the primary delivery method for the narrative.
But even more striking than that style is the way in which she strips these characters
down to their abusive and vindictive cores. Catherine (Kaya Scodelario) is as fickle and opportunistic as ever, while Heathcliff (James Howson) is sullen and feral, and as he puts up with the continued abuse doled out by Catherine’s
horrible brother, Hindley, he becomes as tempestuous and violent as the storms that
lash the Yorkshire countryside. That landscape, richly colored through Arnold’s lens,
plays practically as much of a role in the film as the leads, as the harsh environment,
with occasional moments of unspeakable beauty (one could really just spend the entire
running time marveling at Arnold and cinematographer
Robbie Ryan’s staggeringly gorgeous compositions), reflects the alternating romance and despair
of the classic relationship between these two. When the end comes, the feeling is
less one of overwhelming tragedy for their missed opportunities, and more one of relief
that they can stop tormenting one another.
View the trailer. Opens tomorrow at E
Street Cinema.
Each year the AFL/CIO puts on a festival of movies about work and the working class,
blending serious documentaries and dramas about labor with comedies on the absurdities
of working life. On the latter end of things, they always have a spot in the schedule
for the cult classic
Office Space, which is joined by the underrated 2009 Greg Mottola film
Adventureland. Other well-known titles on the docket are
Billy Elliot, the early Martin Scorsese effort
Boxcar Bertha,
Newsies witha young Christian Bale, and Stanley Donen’s Doris Day-starring
The Pajama Game. Things kicked off this afternoon at the AFL/CIO headquarters with a noontime screening
of a Woody Guthrie documentary; there’s another noon screening tomorrow of a documentary
about clash between Wisconsin governor
Scott Walker and union workers. Tomorrow night, a full schedule of weekend screenings, mostly
at the AFI, begins with
BURN: One Year on the Front Lines to Save Detroit, a documentary about one of the most active firehouses in the country, located in
the struggling city of Detroit.
View the trailer for BURN: One Year on the Front Lines to Save Detroit. Opens today and runs through October 18, with screenings at the AFL/CIO
headquarters, the AFI, and Busboys & Poets.
See the full schedule for details.
Robert Rossellini became one of the most well-known figures in Italian cinema after World War II, helping
define the neorealist movement that was the dominant legacy of that time. But as that
movement cooled in the early ’50s, his own style began to evolve, as well. It was
with this 1954 English-language film starring Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders that
he really shook things up, creating what the young critics of the soon-to-explode
French New Wave would call the first “modern” film. Rossellini, telling the story
of an unraveling couple on a trip to Italy to sell property, often abandons the strict
adherence to moving the plot forward that typified commercial cinema in the first
half of the 20th century, allowing scenes to play out in lengthy sequences that are
more about establishing environment and mood than taking the story from point A to
B. It’s a landmark in the history of the movies, and considered by many to be Rossellini’s
finest moment.
View a scene from the movie. Saturday
and Sunday at 4:30 PM at the National Gallery of Art.
Blu-ray/DVD Pick of the Week:
Magical Mystery Tour
For all the accolades the Beatles received during their career for both their music
and their movies, the one major misstep that stands out like those post-”Helter Skelter”
blisters on Ringo’s fingers is this hourlong movie the band made for the BBC. The
plot involves a bus tour where strange and mysterious things begin to happen, all
interspersed with what are essentially music videos for a half dozen songs from the
accompanying record. The film was largely unscripted, and it shows in the haphazard
plotting and generally sloppy construction.
But for a band that seemingly did everything so well—except, of course, communicate
with one another as they neared the end of their run—
Magical Mystery Tour is kind of a humanizing effort: Even the Beatles had creative disasters. This week’s
release is also likely the best anyone’s seen, as the film went for years without
any restoration efforts due to its poor reputation. With a slew of extra footage and
a full restoration (including a new 5.1 surround sound audio mix), this is still probably
an essential for Beatles completists, and at least an interesting curiosity for the
rest of us.
Special Features: Audio commentary from Paul McCartney, a making-of featurette, alternate
footage shot for a number of songs, a Top of the Pops promo clip, and a number of
deleted scenes.
