30 Days of Night

I am told I must provide a context for these reviews. In this instance, this will not take long: I watched 30 Days Of Night last night, on my own, at home. Here's one more contextual tidbit: the main reason I wanted to see this film was sartorial. When I bought my Canada Goose jacket back in December, I was told that it’s the same one Josh Hartnett wears in the movie. And it’s true, it is! His is admittedly a different colour: mine is black, while his is the colour of spattered brains and dried blood. But if I look half a good as Josh does, it was an excellent purchase indeed.

On rottentomatoes.com, 30 Days Of Night is sitting at 49%. Which isn’t exactly good. In fact it’s more or less exactly half bad. The movie has a fun premise (that in the Arctic Circle, where it stays dark for 30 days in mid-winter, vampires can get down to some serious eating without being bothered by any pesky sunlight). There are times when you get a glimpse of the darkly claustrophobic film it could have been (there are creepy Anne Frank metaphors when the survivors spend several days hiding out in an attic). And there are some nice gorey bits (watching the good guys reluctantly hack the head off a 5-year-old with an axe was particularly pleasing). But the vamps themselves are pretty silly-looking. With their slanty Mongoloid eyes, they look sort of Down Syndrome-y. It’s hard to be frightened of a creature that looks like it should be doing the 100m at the Special Olympics. Far from cutting their heads off, you feel like Josh should be giving them hugs and telling them they’re doing a good job. They also speak in a language so guttural it sounds like they spend most of the film trying to rid themselves of a particularly persistent and annoying throat itch. As is so often the case with horrors, the film is let down because the bad guys just aren't all that horrific.

It's too bad really. It's a nice premise. There are some scary moments. The performances are fine. And Josh really does look great in that jacket.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Last Sunday (April 20th) after a long, delicious and increasingly alcoholic afternoon tea at Ivan and Robyn's, I met up with Madeleine at the Scotiabank Centre, where we saw the 7.10 pm show of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Sometime recently, in an article I think I read somewhere or other, someone may or may not have said (I’m all about the details) that Judd Apatow had created a new comedy genre. Certainly his films (and the films he has had a hand in producing, like this one written and starring by his mate Jason Segel) share a set of characteristics: written-on-the-back-of-a-Rizla plots; heavily improvised dialogue; Paul Rudd; and geeky male leads who inexplicably (despite being unemployed, emotionally retarded and fat) manage to persuade the hot female leads to sleep with them. He also has a fondness for showing his characters’ nether regions. (If you thought you’d seen rather too much of Katherine Heigl‘s vagina in Knocked Up, be wary: by the closing credits the back of your own hand will seem strange and unfamiliar compared to Segel’s penis.)

With their all-over-the-place narratives (the plot arcs are more like plot amoebas) and improv’d performances, it’s tempting to call Apatow’s films situationLESS comedies. But that’s not quite right either: these aren’t Seinfeldian stories about nothing. In many ways, they’re classic Hollywood boy-meets-girl. Let’s just say, then, that in Apatow’s films situation takes a backseat to character. In a way, he’s the new Woody Allen. He creates his characters in some detail, before releasing them into some vaguely-sketched scenario and standing back to film the results. Okay yes, I know I’m being unfair to Woody: his films address “big issues” (said in a voice like James Earl Jones imitating the singer from Crash Test Dummies in an echo chamber). Apatow’s are pure candy-floss and vanish from the mind as soon as you leave the cinema (except the shots of Segel’s manhood, which I can unfortunately still see now). They’re dumb. They wear their crassness like a corsage of inflated luminous condoms. They sacrifice linearity for random one-off non-sequitur jokes. They rely far too much on large portions of the cast getting drunk / stoned / an amusing medical condition. (And really, does Paul Rudd have photos of Apatow sodomising lemurs that he ALWAYS manages to get cast in these things?)

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I wonder why I liked this film. Best not to think too much then. Maybe this whole review could have been summed up like this: I laughed. And really, when so few other comedies achieve even that, perhaps that's enough.

[Rec] - 16:45, 19 April, 2008

It's [Rec] as in, y'know, 'Record'. As in 'on a video camera'.

A small television crew stumbles into the outbreak of a zombie plague in an old, and quite spooky, apartment block somewhere in Spain. The crew, the residents, a couple of fire-fighters and two policemen are sealed in as the authorities realize what's going on. The director seems to have a thing for panties as there are several struggles that result in a flash of cotton (sometimes a very grimy, bloody and soiled flash of cotton). Or maybe it's not the director, maybe I just noticed because I have a thing for panties...hmmmmm. Anyway, it's all very tense and claustrophobic. I managed not to scream though. There's a plot twist near the end that is so totally inspired by video games: The main character, Angela, discovers a tape-recorder in the abandoned penthouse/satanic-lab, providing a rough, sketchy exposition on the literally devilish source of the plague. Disappointing ending, and obviously a little derivative, but still worth it.

In a nutshell: It's Blair Witch Project meets Silent Hill (the game, not the movie) meets 28 Days Later.

Private Property - 18:00, 18 April, 2008

Sitting middle, middle - squished in between a large man with a round head on my left and a couple of old ladies on my right (complaining about BT. natch) - I hunched down to watch Private Property at the BFI (all on my own).

Eeek. It was all a bit excruciating. Incredibly well-observed and icky, especially the scenes in front of the television. The normally scary Isabelle Huppert stars as the unconventional mother of a pair of layabout twins. Hysterics ensue when Mom Huppert decides to sell the family home.

Here's the Metacritic page for the movie.