Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

If the archetypal Denzel Washington performance can be summarized in a single word, it would be “control”. No matter who he’s playing, we in the audience trust that his character has things under control. Robert Zemeckis knows we expect this, which is why he opens his 2012 character drama Flight with Denzel strutting down a hotel hallway to Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright” after ripping a line of cocaine. In fact, it’s so in line with what we expect from his characters, it could certainly be seen as a cocky needle drop so on-the-nose that it’s meant to play for laughs. But like the plane that Denzel’s pilot character Whip Whitaker flips mid-air later in the first act, Zemeckis inverts Denzel’s cool, calm and collected persona in his story of compromised heroism. Washington has been outstanding in many films but his work in Flight remains my favorite of his still-thriving career.

As Whip Whitaker, Denzel exudes the brand of confidence we expect of our commercial captains and it’s not unearned. After taking off from Orlando, Whitaker ably navigates through a storm during takeoff so perilous that it even rattles his young co-pilot Ken Evans (Brian Geraghty). We learn Whip was likely able to stay so sedate during the emergency because he’s still drunk the night before, a condition he exacerbates by pouring a couple shooters of vodka into an orange juice bottle while addressing the cockpit after the fracas. A sudden mechanical failure leads Evans to cede control of the plane back to Whitaker, who turns an uncontrolled nosedive into a crash landing that spares the lives of almost all aboard. Whip wakes up in the hospital with Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood), a friend of Whip’s since their days together in the Navy, by his bed on behalf of the pilots union.

Now it’s Charlie’s turn to navigate a vessel on the ground even more unstable than the one Whip maneuvered in the sky. Charlie and Whip go back a ways but the former doesn’t seem to realize the extent of the latter’s personal issues until he learns more about the details of the emergency crash-land. Charlie brings in a “co-pilot” in the form of criminal negligence attorney Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle), who calls attention to the toxicology report done in the hospital that indicates Whip’s BAC as .0.24%. Given the scale of the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board is forced to conduct a thorough investigation and though Whitaker’s actions were heroic, his compromised state during the flight means he could be facing serious prison time. While waiting for the NTSB to rule on the cause of the crash, Whip finds comfort in the arms of Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a fellow addict he met while recovering in the hospital.

Wisely, Zemeckis doesn’t allow his film to get mired in the bureaucracy of lawyers prepping for the public hearing the NTSB will hold to pass along their findings about the incident. Flight is focused on Whip, what drives him to drink and why it’s so difficult for him to confront his alcoholism. He sees in Nicole a wounded soul struggling to overcome her demons but doesn’t quite seem to consider how much alike they may be. Like everyone else, she’s in awe of the expertise and instinct that allowed him to save all but 6 of the 102 people onboard that fateful flight. But the stress of the NTSB’s in-depth inquiry leads Whip to hit the bottle even harder than usual, causing Nicole to take the role of caretaker more than girlfriend. She hasn’t known him long but knows he needs help, twisting his arm to attend an AA meeting in which he sullenly sits cross-armed before leaving a few minutes after it begins.

As a Denzel Washington vehicle, what Flight does so brilliantly is make us reconsider the confident characters that the larger-than-life actor has portrayed in the past and wonder how many had the struggles that Whip has here. If the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one, he’s been stubbornly standing with his heels together for years. Even though it cost him his marriage and a relationship with his now-teenaged son, his addiction remains the most crucial priority in Whip’s existence. Calling the aftermath of the crash a “come to Jesus moment” lines up nicely with the “Act Of God” designation that can appear on accident reports. When Lang brings up the term while surveying the crash site with Whitaker, Whip solemnly ponders “whose God would do this?” Zemeckis taps on the theme of religion earlier in the movie, by way of a cancer patient character played by James Badge Dale who posits that even if you hate God, you’d be a fool not to believe in one.

Though every actor who appears in Flight, including John Goodman and Melissa Leo, makes the absolute best of the screen time they have, Washington is not only perfect for this role but flawless in his execution. After spending more time with Charlie and Hugh after the accident, he’s all too happy to direct his indignation at the airline for giving him a plane that was doomed to fail but isn’t able to admit that his intoxicated state points to deep moral failing. The scene where he attends the funeral of one of the flight attendants shines a spotlight on the vulnerability that Washington brings to this performance. He spends most of his time up to the NTSB hearing scrambling to cover his six, specifically in trying to convince one of the surviving flight attendants that he was in good shape to fly. His desperation and consternation in this moment flies in the face of the stoic, sun-glassed specialist we see in the opening moments of the movie.

Rewatching Flight after seeing Zemeckis’ disastrous Here in theaters last month, it’s a testament to just how right or wrong the veteran filmmaker can go depending on the story he’s piloting. After the one-two punch of What Lies Beneath and Cast Away — the latter which incidentally hinges on a plane crash — in 2000, he spent the rest of the decade on mo-cap animated ventures that leaned into technical innovation. Though the terrifying aircraft setpiece in Flight utilizes CG effects, they still look convincing and Zemeckis holsters the technical wizardry throughout the remainder of the film. He trusts his actors and knows that the special effect is in watching these performers make magic in their interaction with one another.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

When it comes to horror, I’d like to think that I’ve seen my fair share of both the bonafide classics and the most chattered-about of recent entries. But there’s a title that I’ve seen name-checked more and more in interviews and reviews over the past several years and that’s Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession. Up until last year, it was a bit difficult to access the film (at least in the US) but the cult film finally arrived on streaming for the first time in 2023, thanks to the horror service Shudder. This past summer, it was also announced that Robert Pattinson and Smile 2 director/writer Parker Finn are in the process of remaking the movie, which should widen the original’s audience even further. So it seemed a fitting time to go back and remedy a horror blindspot whose reputation has improved considerably since its initial release in 1981.

At its most fundamental level, Possession is the story of a struggling marriage devolving past the point of recognition. It begins with Anna (Isabelle Adjani) asking Mark (Sam Neill) for a divorce, a request that he doesn’t take especially well at the outset but at least tries to remain civil about. The pair discuss living arrangements and shared custody for their son Bob (Michael Hogben) but after causing a scene at a restaurant, Mark turns to booze to distract himself from the pain of losing his wife. While picking Bob up for school one day, Mark notices that Anna has seemingly left him by himself for days and things get stranger when Mark meets Bob’s teacher Helen (also played by Adjani) and she looks almost identical to Anna. Suspicious of Anna’s goings-on following their separation, Mark hires a private investigator to see what’s keeping Anna from taking care of their son.

The aspect of Possession that usually comes up first when it’s discussed is the intensity of the performances, particularly the dual role by Isabelle Adjani. A flashback sequence set in a subway station showcases spasmodic acting from Adjani so manic and visceral that it went on to inspire homages from a Massive Attack music video starring Rosamund Pike to a similar one-take scene in The First Omen earlier this year. While this is unquestionably Adjani’s most unhinged sequence in terms of physical performance, there are several other scenes of confrontation with Sam Neill’s character that aren’t far behind in terms of ferocity. An argument earlier in the film leads Anna to slap Mark in retaliation, presumably for the first time in their marriage. When he turns back to face her, the fear in her eyes slowly softens and gives way to a demented smile that she unsuccessfully tries to wipe away.

Sam Neill is still best known for his role as Dr. Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park series but he’s many, many miles away from that paleontologist’s placid personality in Possession. Even in the quieter scenes, Neill has a crazed sort of look in his eyes that never makes us feel certain he won’t lash out in a violent rage at a moment’s notice. As his journey into Anna’s troubled psyche and concerning activities creeps along, there’s little question that Mark is losing his grip on reality and sense of self in the process. Even when he rocks back and forth in a chair we see him sit in during several different points in the movie, his body is so rigid that it doesn’t even register that he’s getting any benefit or comfort from the activity. The makeup used on Adjani and Neill makes them appear as pale as ghosts through most of the movie, making it easier to view their characters as a pair of incensed apparitions haunting each other.

Given the personal nature of the narrative, it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that Andrzej Żuławski wrote and directed Possession — which he describes as “essentially a very true-to-life autobiographical story” — on the back of a messy divorce. Not only does this inform the numerous scenes of explosive domestic strife but it also underlines Mark’s paranoia about Anna’s lover Heinrich (played by Heinz Bennent) and why she chooses to be with him. Without giving too much away, the inclusion of a Kafkaesque creation and the evocation of doppelgängers later on in the film point to Mark’s fear of the unknown and neurotic insecurity about his own shortcomings. Even without much context into Żuławski’s personal life, it’s fascinating watching him work out his troubled thoughts through this bizarre and beguiling beast of a film.

There are so many movies about demonic and supernatural possession that horror fans may go into Possession expecting familiar narrative beats of the subgenre but the film certainly doesn’t adhere to any such formula. In fact, the simple title generates several questions about which characters in Żuławski’s story are actually possessed and who or what is possessing them. On first viewing, I can’t say I have concrete answers for those questions and yet still feel that it’s a perfect title to sum up the essence of the picture. The acting, not just from the two leads but from all of the performers, feels like it was the product of humans whose spirits temporarily left their body so they could house otherworldly spirits that move and speak in ways that can’t be easily deciphered. If you want to know what it feels like to be in the grips of madness, spending two hours with Possession may just be the ticket.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

“History is ultimately an inventory of ghosts.” – Guillermo del Toro

“What is a ghost?” These are the first words we hear a voice ponder at the outset of The Devil’s Backbone, Guillermo del Toro’s breakthrough work that scored him the strongest critical reviews of his career up to that point. As the voiceover continues to consider if a ghost can be “an emotion suspended in time, like a blurred photograph, like an insect trapped in amber,” we understand that del Toro is not setting up a traditional horror movie or ghost story. Set towards the end of the Spanish Civil War, it’s a film that wades in the melancholy generated by senseless violence and the ripple effect of irreversible acts. In keeping with a motif del Toro continues to evoke in his work, human beings in his tales can act more monstrous than the actual monsters (in this case, apparitions) themselves.

We meet young Carlos (Fernando Tielve) as he is taken to an orphanage in the Spanish countryside after his father is killed in action. The orphanage’s headmistress Carmen (Marisa Paredes) is reticent to take on one more child, as they’re already struggling to take care of the orphans in their care already, but the head doctor Casares (Federico Luppi) convinces her to take Carlos in. At first, the orphanage bully Jaime (Íñigo Garcés) is needlessly cruel to Carlos and leaves him alone in the dark after the pair go to fill pitchers of water overnight. It’s here that Carlos first sees the ghost of Santi (Junio Valverde), a boy who died at the orphanage under mysterious circumstances years ago. As the conflict between the loyalists and nationalists rages on outside the confines of the orphanage, the violence threatens to make its way through the gates.

The first drafts of The Devil’s Backbone date back to Guillermo del Toro’s college days in the 1980s, even though the project wasn’t fully realized until many years for its release in 2001. Given this, along with the fact that del Toro felt the need to return to his roots after the commercial failure of 1997’s Mimic, it doesn’t seem a stretch to call The Devil’s Backbone his most personal work. While he wasn’t around in the 1930s when the movie takes place, he did go to an all-male Jesuit school with conditions similar to an orphanage and recalls hearing disembodied voices on the grounds. Much in the way that the audience finds its way into this story through Carlos, del Toro must have found his voice most clearly through the protagonist (who he’s described as a “force of innocence”) as well.

Del Toro also explores a surrogate father role for Carlos by way of the kindly Dr. Casares, who gives him the nickname “Carlitos” and looks out for him when his peers give him a harder time. Whether he’s reciting poetry or listening to music on his phonograph, his gentle disposition is a respite from the harsh realities of Carlos’s world. By comparison, the lead administrator Carmen is much colder and more cynical, burdened by a wooden artificial leg that causes her constant pain. Both supporters of the Republican loyalists, Casares and Carmen speculate on the outcome of the war, with the former characteristically optimistic that the loyalists will triumph and the latter dour about what she perceives as an inevitable victory for the nationalists. When discussing how dispiriting the war’s outcome looks, she laments, “Sometimes, I think that we are the ghosts,” a line that carries unintentional metatextual significance, as The Devil’s Backbone was released the same year as fellow ghost story The Others.

As much as the war is a metaphor for the ghost story and vice versa, The Devil’s Backbone contains several spine-chilling moments that stand on their own. The majority of these are courtesy of Santi, an eerie composite of ghoulish makeup and special effects that are still hauntingly effective more than 20 years later. My favorite detail is how Santi is surrounded by murky particles that aren’t easy to see when he moves but when he stands still, they float and coalesce in a way that calls attention to his ghastly presence. He also has a head wound with blood that slowly trickles up, another clue as to how Santi met his untimely demise. The sight of him is unnerving as is but his voice alone can make the hair on your arm stand on end; his portentous refrain of “many of you will die” tap us into the fear that Carlos feels in his midst.

As scary as Santi is, del Toro makes it clear that Carlos has other threats to his life that aren’t of the otherworldly or supernatural kind. In addition to the cruelty of some of the orphans and the threat of violence from the war, there’s also a groundskeeper (played by Eduardo Noriega) who lashes out at the kids from time to time. When he finds them sneaking around in the basement of a supply house, he grabs Jaime by his hair and viciously chastises them for trespassing. He then cuts Jaime across the cheek and then runs the children off, warning Carlos, “A single word about this and I’ll rip you in half.” Those who have seen Pan’s Labyrinth, which del Toro has called a “spiritual successor” to The Devil’s Backbone, may find parallels between Noriega’s character and the brutal Captain Vidal from that film.

Del Toro masterfully bookends his tale with an expansion on the opening line, musing that in addition to simply being a spirit of the dead, a ghost can also be an embodiment of a past mistake or residual energy of tragic events that replay over and over. We’re also given more context into who is narrating and at what point in time they’re doing so, leading to a powerful denouement and unforgettable final image. The Devil’s Backbone is a pivotal work in del Toro’s career when he found the courage to tell stories his own way.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

At this point, it’s difficult to imagine that another performer will top Meryl Streep’s record for Oscar nominations in the acting categories. Over the past 45 years, she’s been nominated for either Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress a combined 21 times. It’s a mind-blowing figure and while acting awards don’t mean everything, they certainly contribute to Streep’s status as one of the most gifted actresses in film history. Her first Oscar win came in 1980 for her work in the divorce drama Kramer Vs. Kramer but her first nomination came the year prior for a film that had nominations in 8 other categories and wins in 5. Though The Deer Hunter can be seen as a movie dominated by masculinity, Streep provides a crucial counterbalance in a role that helped shoot the young actress into stardom.

Set during the late 60s in the Southern Steel Valley near Pittsburgh, The Deer Hunter centers around the relationship between three close friends before, during and after their deployment in Vietnam. The leader of the trio is Mike (Robert De Niro), who everyone seems to instinctually follow out of the steel mill when the 5 o’clock bell has rung. Right by his side is Nick (Christopher Walken), who is housemates and likely best friends with Mike as well. Then there’s the soft-spoken Steven (John Savage), who may not have Mike or Nick’s assertiveness but has loyalty to spare, evidenced by the fact that he’s marrying Angela (Rutanya Alda) even though she’s pregnant with another man’s baby. Shortly after Steven and Angela’s spirited wedding, the three men go off to war and what they experience together alters their relationship with each other and their community forever.

Streep plays Linda, whose soft features and warm demeanor have captured the affection of both Mike and Nick. She’s introduced in The Deer Hunter adorn with a lovely bridesmaid’s dress while anxiously preparing a meal for her alcoholic and abusive father. In an attempt to flee from his monstrous presence, she asks Nick if she can stay at their house while they go on a hunting trip and later when they go overseas to fight. Later at the wedding, Nick returns the favor and hastily ups the ante with an even more serious question: asking if she’ll marry him. Even though glances across the dance floor imply that she also has feelings for Mike too, she excitedly says “yes” to Nick’s proposal and awaits their return home so they can have a wedding of their own.

The second act of the film largely centers on the three brothers in arms during their time in the Vietnam War, which leave each of them broken in different ways. Steven loses both of his legs due to a fall from a helicopter, while a PTSD-ridden Nick goes AWOL and recklessly drifts from one Chinese gambling den to another. Mike returns to his small hometown of Clairton and while Linda is overjoyed to see him, she is understandably worried about her absent fiancé. The final act is where Streep’s performance really shines, imbued with quiet yearning and shattering heartache that realigns the emotional core of the film. After Mike finds Linda crying in the grocery store where she works, Linda laments “did you ever think life would turn out like this?” to him in the car a moment later.

As it turns out, Streep may have been mining from ongoing personal experiences when crafting her Oscar-nominated performance. During the filming of The Deer Hunter, Streep was in a committed relationship with John Cazale, who also stars in the movie as one of Mike’s hunting buddies in his final film role. Tragically, Cazale was diagnosed with lung cancer that quickly spread to his bones, a fact that he withheld from the production studio EMI because he was worried he would be pulled from the production for insurance reasons. Robert De Niro was fully behind his friend and co-star, threatening to walk if the EMI dismissed him from set and, as it was finally revealed just a few years ago, De Niro was the one who paid Cazale’s insurance premium so he could stay on. Since the clock was ticking, director Michael Cimino shot all of Cazale’s scenes first and sadly, Cazale passed shortly after filming wrapped.

Even though Streep and Cazale don’t share many scenes together in The Deer Hunter, the real-life events give both of their performances an added layer of sorrow even independent of one another. ”I was so close that I hadn’t noticed his deterioration,” Streep later said of Cazale. ”John’s death came as a shock to me because I didn’t expect it.” In the film, Linda doesn’t deal with the same circumstances that Streep had to travail off-set but her character does suffer heartbreak and loss all the same. When Linda first embraces Mike upon his arrival home, she lets out such a cry of relief and surprise that it hits the senses like a thunderbolt. But when she realizes that Nick isn’t going to make it back, her spirit sinks as high as it rose when Mike hugged her at their door. Streep doesn’t have an abundance of screen time in The Deer Hunter but she pours her heart into every second that she’s on screen.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

Though 2006’s Snakes On A Plane contains one of Samuel L. Jackson’s most famous movie lines, another film with “Snake” in the title which premiered later that same year has one of Jackson’s most accomplished performances. Black Snake Moan was released by Paramount Vantage in March of 2007 against the biker comedy Wild Hogs, which made more in its opening weekend than Moan could amass during its entire domestic run. While that’s dispiriting, it’s not exactly difficult to see why; Paramount Vantage tried to market the film with a titillating poster and trailer that drastically shortchange its thematic complexity. Yes, it’s a movie whose risqué subject material was bound to raise some eyebrows, but its provocations are backed by compelling characters and a nuanced storyline about addiction and redemption.

Jackson stars as Lazarus Redd, a former blues musician-turned-gardener whose wife Rose (Adriane Lenox) is leaving him for his brother Deke (Leonard L. Thomas) after an affair happening behind his back. Coming back from town one morning, he discovers a young woman named Rae (Christina Ricci) beaten and unconscious on the side of the road. Lazarus tasks himself with tending to Rae’s fever and wounds and when she deliriously runs out of his house one night, he does what he considers to be the sensible solution: chains her to his radiator to keep her from running away. He then learns that Rae’s sex addiction is well known around town now that her boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) is away on National Guard deployment. Ever the devout man, Laz keeps Rae confined at his house even after she recuperates, seeing it as his spiritual duty to rid her of sin.

In a lesser movie, this premise could set Lazarus up as a religious kook who’s gone off the deep end and, naturally, we’d root for Rae to break free from his secluded farm. But Black Snake Moan doesn’t settle for those kinds of rote characterizations and routine plotting. Writer-director Craig Brewer is more interested in the ways that these two people, who seemingly have nothing in common, will draw out their surprising similarities in close quarters. Though Rae initially tries to use sex to parlay her way out of her waist chain, she soon finds that Lazarus has no interest in a sexual relationship with her. Both characters have emotional wounds that have festered over time and, though the circumstances are highly unusual, they find that they can help heal one another in their time together.

Jackson is sensational as Lazarus, a man who has tried all sorts of ways to battle his demons and has found the closest thing to salvation in the form of blues music. The veteran actor took months to learn the guitar from scratch, even getting some help with his chops from the prop master while on the set of Snakes On A Plane. Not only does Jackson play several songs on guitar in Black Snake Moan but he also accompanies himself with blues singing as well. In the style of Son House, who pops up in archive footage interludes at a few points in the story, Jackson alternates between singing and speaking when belting out his tunes. He may not have the most conventionally pleasing voice but Jackson is pitch-perfect in terms of allowing the character to cathartically sublimate his anger and sadness.

When it came to crafting the character, Jackson drew from experiences he had with family members who grew up in the Deep South, specifically his grandfather. That could be the main reason that his work here comes across as deeply-felt and personal, tapping into an emotive range that Jackson seems to reserve for his finest on-screen work. “We ain’t gonna be moved,” he growls with conviction after he makes the decision to hold Rae captive by chain. In trying to exorcise her demons, Lazarus knows that his methods aren’t legal, and maybe not even moral, but feels it’s the only way to get the evil out of someone he sees as “possessed” by sin. Jackson is brilliant at balancing Lazarus’s religious convictions with his deep sense of sympathy for Rae’s tragic background.

Ricci has a challenging role here, not only as someone who is struggling immensely with infidelity and nymphomania but also fighting hard against bettering herself. Rae is a character for whom seduction is practiced out of habit and is conducted like a first language, until she finds that Lazarus isn’t fluent. Walking right up to the line of exploitation, Brewer has Ricci in very little clothing for most of Black Snake Moan and I would understand some being upset with how Rae as a character and Ricci as an actress are portrayed here. It’s an unquestionably brave performance that attempts to authentically capture the experience of having a specific kind of sexual dysfunction that could easily be played for cheap thrills in more immature films.

Black Snake Moan is an immaculately-crafted two-hander between a pair of broken souls who are chained together through their shared pain and freed by hard-fought understanding.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

Though movies of any genre can potentially be considered cult films, there’s something particularly exciting about scary movies that develop an undeniable cult following. Horror fans tend to be quite effusive when rallying behind overlooked releases and in the days and weeks leading up to Halloween every year, people are always looking for spooky titles that they haven’t seen before. October is the time of year when cinephiles and non-cinephiles alike trade horror movie suggestions with one another the same way that autumnal aficionados swap spooky stories around a bonfire. Screened at a few film festivals starting in 2007 before going direct-to-DVD in 2009, the anthology film Trick ‘r Treat is one of these word-of-mouth treasures that has earned its reputation as annual traditional viewing.

Split up into four chapters with a wraparound tale that brings everything together, Trick ‘r Treat is loosely structured around a diminutive demon named Sam (Quinn Lord) who oversees Halloween celebrants in small-town Ohio. He trick-or-treats at the house of school principal Steven Wilkins (Dylan Baker), whose candy isn’t as sweet as it would seem to be on the outside. Sam sees a group of teenagers recruit outcast Rhonda (Samm Todd) to join them for a ritual at a haunted quarry where a tragedy occurred years prior. Then he sees young Laurie (Anna Paquin) trying to find a date for a Halloween bash that her sister Danielle (Lauren Lee Smith) is hosting deep in the woods. Finally, Sam pays a visit to Principal Wilkins’ crotchety neighbor Mr. Kreeg (Brian Cox) to “reignite” his Halloween spirit.

Written and directed by Michael Dougherty, who would later go on to create the similarly campy Krampus and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Trick ‘r Treat is adapted from an animated short Dougherty crafted back in 1996 called Season’s Greetings. It’s here that the creature masquerading as a tiny trick-or-treater known as Sam made his debut, complete with orange footie pajamas and burlap sack covering his head. It’s not mentioned in the film but Sam’s name is short for Samhain, the Celtic pagan observance late into Halloween night that marks the “darker half” of the year. Naturally, it’s the perfect setting for a set of interweaving narratives where Sam seems to be watching events transpire from a distance and intervene if a Halloween tradition is being violated. Like Jason Voorhees’ machete or Freddy Krueger’s knife glove, Sam also has his signature weapon in the form of a broken (and especially sharp) jack-o-lantern-shaped lollipop.

Speaking of jack-o-lanterns, I would put the menagerie of carved pumpkins assembled for Trick ‘r Treat as one of the finest in cinematic history. The opening segment alone, which features Leslie Bibb and Tahmoh Penikett as a horny couple trying to take down decorations early, features the kind of ghosts and headstones you’d see in most front yards this time of year but also sports some particularly ornate jack-o-lanterns too. Before that, there’s a match cut from a 1950s-style instructional video about trick-or-treating that transitions into a glowing pumpkin akin to the one featured in the opening of Halloween. But the film really delivers the gourds in the final chapter, where Sam is called to teach Mr. Kreeg about the true meaning of Halloween. There’s a specific shot of a suddenly crowded porch that will give the “it’s fall, y’all” crowd the kind of giddy feeling that Christmas enthusiasts reserve for the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.

It’s hard to pick a favorite segment in Trick ‘r Treat but if I had to offer just one up, it’d be the “Halloween School Bus Massacre” chapter towards the film’s mid-section. It so perfectly encapsulates the tropes that we associate with campfire tales while subverting some of the traditional story beats and providing some deeply creepy images along the way. We briefly meet the teenagers in this story during the “Principal” sequence, where they say they’re collecting pumpkins for charity, but we soon learn that they’re actually using them for a seance. The interaction between the kids is authentic and Rhonda is the kind of other-side-of-the-tracks protagonist whose glasses are just bound to get smashed one way or another. There’s an extended flashback that just oozes hazy dread and, once again, the set design is stellar for the fog-enraptured quarry where the kids must travel down a creaky elevator to place the pumpkins.

In weaving between these tales, Dougherty includes comic book bubbles like “earlier”, “later”, and “meanwhile” to clue us into the movie’s chronology. The opening credits also foreshadow events in the film by way of comic-style drawings and, fittingly, Trick ‘r Treat was adapted into a graphic novel after Warner Bros released the movie to home video in 2009. For having such an unceremonious release, the film nevertheless spawned a healthy line of merchandise that still seems to sell well to this day. Anecdotally, I’ve seen more youngsters dressed up as Sam every Halloween since Trick ‘r Treat has been released and if Dougherty is able to bring a sequel into fruition, it should only further cement the movie’s position in the frightgeist.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

When Robert De Niro was given a copy of Jake LaMotta’s autobiography Raging Bull: My Story from the boxer himself in the early 1970s, it came with a personalized inscription. LaMotta made it out to “the only actor in the world that could play my crazy ‘whacked out’ life and make it come alive again,” words that would seemingly resonate with De Niro as he read the memoir while filming The Godfather Part II. Taken with the pugilist’s story, he went to Martin Scorsese, who had recently directed the actor in Mean Streets, with the idea to turn the book into a film. Uninterested in making a sports picture, Scorsese turned it down several times, until parallels with the filmmaker’s personal life brought him back to the idea. The box office failure of New York, New York in 1977 is said to have contributed to Scorsese’s subsequent cocaine overdose, an incident that left him shaken and ready to tell LaMotta’s tragic story of self-destruction at last.

Spanning between the years of 1941 to 1964, Raging Bull follows middleweight fighter Jake LaMotta (De Niro) from promising up-and-comer to burned-out club owner. His younger brother Joey (Joe Pesci) helps manage his career, talking Jake through his setbacks while trying to introduce the possibility of taking the help of mobster Salvy Batts (Frank Vincent) for a title shot. While Jake is a formidable force inside the ring, he seems utterly lost when he steps out of the ropes into the real world. Though he’s already married, he strikes up a friendship with 15-year-old Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) and leaves his wife for her years later. Their happiness is short-lived, as Jake’s jealousy and sexual insecurities perpetually get the best of him and eventually lead him to violently alienate himself from his friends and family.

De Niro, of course, has countless indelible film performances but his work in Raging Bull feels like the Citizen Kane of the actor’s unforgettable roles. Like Orson Welles in that film, De Niro undergoes a physical transformation with the help of makeup and prosthetics to demonstrate the passing of time but he famously took it further than that. It’s reported that De Niro gained approximately 60 pounds to accurately recreate the paunch that LaMotta procured later in his life after he no longer had to make weight for matches. To further replicate LaMotta’s appearance, makeup artist Mike Westmore crafted a nose mold whose crooked disfigurement reflected years of abuse at the hands of various boxing gloves. These facial fittings would also allow for the required fake blood to be squirted from De Niro’s cheeks and mouth for the close-ups inside the ring.

The performance obviously extends far past appearance and the psychological complexity with which De Niro is able to imbue LaMotta is one of the largest reasons Raging Bull comes across as much more of a character study than a typical boxing movie. From his first scene with Joey, Jake expresses lament for his “little girl’s hands” and, in a misguided attempt to reinstate his masculinity, goads Joey to hit him in the face repeatedly. When taken with Jake’s last interaction in the film with Joey, a desperate attempt by the former to reconcile with the latter, we see how it’s impossible for Jake to separate his life in the ring from life outside it. The way that Jake forces an overly-long hug on Joey notably resembles how two fighters would clinch in the middle of a boxing bout. For Jake, even a loving embrace mimics hand-to-hand combat strategy.

Romantic relationships add a layer of sexual anxiety to De Niro’s performance that make it even more difficult to watch but nevertheless impressive from an artistic perspective. Jake first meets Vickie behind a chain link fence, their vision of one another obscured and the distance between them inevitable. She is a prize that he can’t help but fight to win. De Niro is understandably at his most charming in this scene, a trait he lends to many of his film performances, but there’s an obvious undercurrent of menace that Jake bobs and weaves around while trying to make a good first impression. Once married, things don’t get easier from there, as Jake has such low self-esteem that he can’t respect a woman who would sleep with him. A scene where he puts a sexual encounter with Vickie on ice, so to speak, perfectly encapsulates Jake’s carnal hang-ups and the bitter jealousies that they create.

Expecting Raging Bull to be his last major movie for a while, and possibly ever, Martin Scorsese pulled out all the stops for the project. Teaming back up with Who’s That Knocking at My Door editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who has subsequently edited each of his films since, Scorsese was exacting with how the film was to be cut. This also applies to the sound design as well, which brings home the brutality of the boxers’ blows to their bodies. In addition to the impact noises, sound editor Frank Warner also incorporates clips of elephant braying and horse neighing during LaMotta’s fight with Sugar Ray Robinson. This contrasts with Jake’s insistence late in the film that he is “not an animal”, unintentionally mirroring another black-and-white movie released in 1980 that was also nominated for 8 Academy Awards.

The Sugar Ray sequence remains Raging Bull‘s most brutally memorable scene, the sound dimming to silence as Jake waits on the ropes to receive his punishment at the hands of Robinson. De Niro’s look of defeat and self-loathing as he waits for the punches tells the entire story of what this guy is about in a single frame. As Jake takes his licks, Michael Chapman’s monochromatic cinematography obscures the difference between blood, sweat, and tears. It’s a baptism of bodily fluid in keeping with co-writer Paul Schrader’s career-long fascination with perceived penance and turbulent absolution. But it’s De Niro who puts a blood-stained cherry on top of the scene, sauntering with a pulverized face over to his opponent’s corner and bragging “you never got me down, Ray.” While watching LaMotta tear himself down doesn’t necessarily make Raging Bull one of the more enjoyable collaborations between Scorsese and De Niro, it remains one of their most accomplished.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

35 years ago, macabre maestro Tim Burton directed his second feature and what would still remain one of the finest achievements of his career. The horror comedy Beetlejuice set up many motifs that Burton would continue to explore for years to come: gothic imagery, creepy visual effects, spooky setpieces and the sending-up of all things “normal”. The film also continued Burton’s collaboration with composer Danny Elfman, with whom he had teamed up three years prior for his feature debut Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. It was the first time Elfman, who led new wave band Oingo Boingo at the time, had written music specifically for a movie but he seemingly got a hang of things quite quickly. Since then, he’s gone on to score nearly every project in Burton’s filmography and Elfman’s music has become a significant part of the director’s idiosyncratic brand.

Beetlejuice begins with lovebirds Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara Maitland (Geena Davis) on a two-week vacation at their home in the New England countryside. Things take a turn when their car swerves off a bridge during a trip back from town and neither of them end up making it. Slowly coming to terms with their transition into the afterlife, the Maitlands watch in horror as their residence is overtaken by New York yuppies Charles (Jeffrey Jones) and Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara). Though they aren’t able to see the phantom Maitlands, their daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder) is somehow able to confer with the apparitions and wants to help them adjust to their altered state. Along the way, the Maitlands get in touch with Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), a boorish “bio-exorcist” who offers to scare the Deetzes away from Adam and Barbara’s earthly abode.

From the first frame — the production logo for The Geffen Company — Elfman is front and center as one of Beetlejuice‘s brightest stars. As Burton and cinematographer Thomas E. Ackerman take us through a bird’s-eye tour over the fictional town of Winter River, the score undulates with a busy tuba bass line and a manic trumpet melody to match. The half-time percussion along with the bouncing piano figures recall the exhibitionist novelty of a carnival barker, a prelude of kookiness with promises of the freakish delights to come. It’s off the wall and triumphant at the same time, a ghoulish amuse-bouche that also serves as one of Elfman’s most iconic pieces of movie music. “Main Titles” is a perfect sonic introduction to this strange and singular world but Elfman doesn’t stop there.

The upbeat “Travel Music” makes for a peppy counterpoint to the deadly car crash that ends our protagonists’ mortal lives early in the film. The lopsided tango of “Obituaries” suggests that the Maitlands’ dance with death has only begun, while “Enter…’The Family'” underlines the buffoonish nature by which Burton regards the new well-to-do homeowners. Composer Michael Andrews must have had “Lydia Discovers?” in mind when he wrote “Liquid Spear Waltz” for Donnie Darko, another film about a troubled teen communing with the dead. “The Incantation” coincides with the film’s climax and appropriately pulls out all the stops, weaving together haunting harp lines and wondrous trombone fills with a creepy organ under all of it.

Of course, Beetlejuice fans will also note the indelible mark that the music of the recently-departed Harry Belafonte have on the movie as well. We hear Adam listening to two of Belafonte’s calypso classics when he’s working on his model city in the attic, which sets up how two more of his songs will be used later on. During a dinner after they’ve completely transformed the house, the Deetzes and their snobby guests become supernaturally possessed to sing and dance along with “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)”. Originally, the forlorn “If I Didn’t Care” was selected for the scene but the rowdy “Day-O” is clearly a much better pick. “Jump In The Line (Shake, Señora)” was eventually selected as the song that Lydia would dance along to during the film’s conclusion, wisely replacing the Percy Sledge serenade “When a Man Loves a Woman”.

Beetlejuice is such a bizarre concoction of lavish morbidity and offbeat humor that it’s somewhat surprising the movie found a big audience. Grossing just under $75 million in the US alone, its box office take puts it in the top ten of 1988’s highest grossing films. It also has the distinct honor of being the first disc shipped via Netflix’s soon-to-be-defunct DVD-by-mail service when it launched 25 years ago. Naturally, talks of a sequel have been circulating since the film’s initial success but have just recently begun to pick back up again. Warner Bros. has announced that a follow-up is officially underway, with Burton and Keaton set to return along with Elfman as well. In fact, the iconic composer even quelled fears regarding Keaton’s age difference between the two movies. “That’s the beauty of the Beetlejuice makeup,” Elfman opined. “He already looked like he was 150 in the first one!”

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

In the age of endless streaming services with innumerable films and series a tap away, it’s difficult to imagine a home viewing experience that was limited to TV and tape. When writer/director David Cronenberg made Videodrome 40 years ago, long before the internet and smartphones existed, he was able to extrapolate the temptations of televised images and make what is still the most prophetic and prescient movie of his career. It’s also the film that could be described as “definitive Cronenberg”, given that it incorporates so many of the themes that he has explored throughout his filmography: graphic violence and its effect on the psyche, the allure of sadomasochism and the Kafkaesque notion of flesh melding with the horrifying unknown.

Our conduit into Videodrome is Max Renn, a seedy TV producer played by James Woods in one of his very best performances. The tagline for Renn’s Canadian-based TV station CIVIC-TV is “the one you take to bed with you” and it specializes in sensationalized and sleazy programming designed to shock and titillate. Always on the lookout for something edgier, Renn’s eyes widen when CIVIC-TV’s satellite operator Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) picks up a pirate signal that depicts torture and murder. Where the average person may be repulsed by such images, Renn sees it as the next new thing in subversive content and begins broadcasting this show dubbed “Videodrome” on his network. The decision to air the feed draws him deeper into the rabbit hole and becomes an all-consuming force in Renn’s life.

His new girlfriend Nicki Brand (Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry) becomes so enamored with a taped episode of Videodrome that she travels to Pittsburgh, the origin of the broadcast’s signal, with the intent of auditioning to be on the show. In her absence, Renn seeks out media studies personality Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley) to try to dig up more about who makes Videodrome and how they make its ultraviolence look so convincing. He also meets O’Blivion’s daughter Bianca (Sonja Smits), who runs a sort of halfway home called Cathode Ray Mission, where vagrants are encouraged to watch non-stop TV as a means of rehabilitation. The lines between television and reality start to blur for Renn and we’re treated to his nightmarish hallucinations in the process.

Though Videodrome was generally well-received by critics during its initial release, the paltry box office — about $2 million against a $6 million budget — was indicative of the film’s divisive reaction from audiences. Infamously, a reaction card from a test screening of the movie found one participant scrawl the word “SUCKED” in large letters under the section pertaining to what they disliked about the film. Time has certainly been much kinder to the movie and not only has it achieved a sizable cult following but also a penetrative sphere of influence as well. Recent films that interpolate body horror and technology like Titane and Annihilation owe a debt not only to Cronenberg’s work overall but specifically to his 1983 classic.

It’s downright shocking how much Cronenberg got right in Videodrome with his vision of how television could “evolve” and permeate every facet of our lives. “The television screen has become the retina of the mind’s eye,” Brian O’Blivion opines during a talk show appearance. “Of course O’Blivion is not the name I was born with; that’s my television name. Soon, all of us will have special names.” To reiterate the obvious, this film preceded usernames, online personas and social media but somehow, Cronenberg knew that’s where we were headed. For better or worse, he understands human nature and how quickly we would put the “vice” in “personal devices”. After all, cybersex is about as old as the internet itself and if you haven’t heard, pornography can even be accessed on one’s phone now! But you didn’t hear that from me.

The characters in Videodrome talk often about not being able to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake on television and, eventually, in real life. Renn’s instinctual cynicism tells him that what he’s seeing on Videodrome is a production and that it couldn’t actually be just genuine beatings and killings on repeat. With years of reality television under our collective belts, we now have similar levels of distrust about what we see on our menagerie of black mirrors. With deepfake technology getting more sophisticated by the day, it won’t take long before the unreal may not be discernible from the real when it comes to the media we all consume constantly.

Aside from being forward-thinking as all get-out, Videodrome is seductive and hypnotic as its own twisted blend of dystopian science fiction and gross-out horror. The grotesque practical effects come courtesy of inaugural Best Makeup Academy Award winner Rick Baker, who helps personify the blurred line between flesh and machine in unnerving fashion. There’s a third act kill that’s not quite as brutal as the iconic “mind-blowing” scene from Scanners but it’s not too far off. To aid in the uneasy mood that envelops the film, Cronenberg consulted fellow Canadian and personal friend Howard Shore to craft a synthesizer-heavy music score that rocks the sonic landscape throughout. Within the first two sub-octave notes over the title card, we know we’re in for an otherworldly experience.

Each player in the cast lends something special to Videodrome but James Woods is perfect for this lead role as someone that the audience can simultaneously be repulsed by and be drawn in by. Skulking around the seedy streets of Toronto with a trench coat and frequently alit cigarette, he’s like a private eye seeking out softcore porn – Sam Smut, if you like – for his insatiable viewers. As he examines new footage with potential clients, he considers its merit by asking, “can we get away with it? Do we wanna get away with it?” But as we get drawn into the mystery with Renn and his sanity deteriorates, he’s our audience surrogate whether we like it or not. Woods has always had a dangerous and.unpredictable quality as an actor and Cronenberg utilizes it perfectly. As long as humans are around, there will be new screens close by and the relevancy of the messages embedded in Videodrome will remain evergreen.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

More than any other movie genre, horror tends to benefit most from sensationalist headlines recapping hyperbolic audience reactions from initial screenings. Terrifier 2, which is still playing in theaters at the moment, has reportedly been making viewers faint and vomit at the cinema. Earlier this year, David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future was, according to one source, expected to cause walk-outs and panic attacks in moviegoers. When Goodnight Mommy premiered at Venice Film Festival in 2014, it didn’t provoke responses quite as extreme as those other films but by the time it was released in the US over a year later, the Austrian import had nevertheless developed a formidable reputation for itself as a disturbing tour de force in familial horror.

The film begins with twin brothers Lukas and Elias (played by real-life twins Elias and Lukas Schwarz) racing around playing games outside their home in the countryside. Their mother (played by Susanne Wuest) soon returns from a cosmetic surgery procedure that has left her face and hair covered in creepy bandages. Aside from her off-putting appearance, her demeanor is more strict than usual and her punishments on the boys seem to be more severe too. The changes are drastic enough that the twins become obsessed with the notion that this woman may not be their mom and may instead be some kind of imposter who has taken her place. Determined to learn the truth, Lukas and Elias take drastic measures to find out what is really going on.

Goodnight Mommy is psychological horror in the most pure sense because it chiefly concerns how one idea, no matter how strange or unlikely, can consume our thoughts and our minds. The seeds of doubt beg for water to grow roots and watching the tree blossom as an outside observer can be a terrifying process. By the time the twins realize how far they’ve been taken with this conviction that a stranger could be posing as their mother, it’s already far too late. This certainly isn’t the most violent horror film out there but the context of its bloodshed makes it more squirm-inducing than movies where random bystanders meet grisly ends. We know these three characters so well before the acts of violence begin, which makes it more difficult to sit through.

This is a testament to the steadfast trio of performances at the movie’s heart that draws us further into the excruciating mystery at the center of the story. Wuest and the Schwarzes play characters that have quite a few ugly traits; Mother is often sullen and stern after her arrival home, where the boys are often mischievous and disobedient even before they begin their nefarious investigation. The unsettling material that comes later in the movie doesn’t work unless we already have empathy for these people first and the performers put in the work to give us those emotional stakes. For some, this family may just be too cold-blooded to garner much sympathy but I found their struggle to be as enthralling as it was heartbreaking.

Goodnight Mommy is the fictional feature debut for Austrian filmmaking duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala after a documentary they made together two years prior. The influence of fellow Austrian director Michael Haneke, specifically his psychological thrillers Funny Games and Caché, can be felt throughout Franz and Fiala’s unshakable chiller. Like Haneke, the pair understands that absence of stimulus can be much more frightening than too much. The rural lake house that serves as the film’s primary location is devoid of any decorative sentimentalities on the inside or outside that would seem even vaguely comforting. The set design is stark and utilitarian, with every edge of the interiors being cut with the kind of clinical precision that was presumably used during the inciting surgical event.

This chilly aesthetic also applies to the brilliantly sparing music score by Olga Neuwirth, which allows the terror to build organically in every scene and doesn’t give into easy moments to jolt the audience. The sound design follows suit, giving us enough space between the sonic peaks and valleys to fill our own interpretation to what could be happening behind a door or on the other side of a wall. Some horror movies indulge overly quiet moments to set up a jump scare but Goodnight Mommy follows a different rhythm that may throw American audiences off. Not all European horror films are this patient but the ones that are can be unbearably tense.

It’s no surprise that an international horror movie as effective as this one would generate an American remake but it’s a bit surprising that it wasn’t released with a bit more fanfare behind it. Matt Sobel’s Goodnight Mommy was unceremoniously dumped just last month onto Amazon Prime, a service that’s still working on building up the quality of its original films. Naomi Watts, who, fittingly enough, starred in the US remake of Funny Games, plays the maternal role while Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti play the twin brothers. This new take may work for those who haven’t seen the original but after being so thoroughly taken with it seven years ago, it was hard for me to see the redo as anything but inferior by comparison.

Sobel’s film simultaneously pulls punches where it counts and overplays its hand when it could stand to be more subtle. The thornier subject matter has been cut back so much that it robs the story of its visceral impact and misses the point of what made the original so shocking. The broad strokes of the narrative remain the same but it follows a more Americanized arc that rushes to console us when things get a little too scary. The overbearing music score by Alex Weston supports this notion, telling us exactly how we should feel instead of nudging us into the dark corners to explore. The ending of this new version is meant to leave audiences with the sentiment that “hey, everything might be okay after all!” Comparatively, the final shot from the Austrian original is so eerie that it still haunts me to this day.