Mother's Day [2011] [18]

DIR: Darren Lynn Bousman

It's easy (and often fun, I won't deny it) to be sniffy about the recent trend for horror remakes. Horror may always have been the genre that ate itself, but lately it seems to have chowed down with almost disturbing zeal, and regurgitated a lot of foul smelling rubbish into cinemas. And that makesit all the more puzzling to me that most of the reviews I've seen for Mother's Day have been one star pannings, because this – while no classic – is one of the best remakes to come along in some time, and a pretty entertaining horror film in its own right.

The setup is pretty straightforward home invasion horror. A band of brothers (Patrick Flueger, Warren Kole and Matt O'Leary) who have just robbed a bank, one of them getting shot in the process, roll up to their Mother's house, but soon discover that she has moved, and that the new owners (Jaime King and Frank Grillo) are having a party in the basement. Desperate to find the money they have been sending their mother, so they have a fee to enable themselves to cross into Mexico, they take the party goers hostage, and call their Mother (Rebecca DeMornay) and Sister (Deborah Ann Woll) to the house.

So far, so standard then, but there are a couple of elements at work here that enable Mother's Day to stand out. Chief among them is Rebecca DeMornay's performance as the titular criminal matriarch. It has been years since she did anything of note, and she's little short of revelatory here, ungodly beautiful at 51, and giving a complex and engaging performance that powers every scene she's in. While there is always an undertone of threat in DeMornay's performance it is the outward friendliness with which she greets her son's hostages, and the way she seems to want them to be comfortable – without doing anything to help them – that is most disturbing. In many ways she's like the perverted nightmare vision of a perfect sitcom mom, even making a cake for the hostages. DeMornay takes the character credibly through several stages, from the outwardly friendly parent who just wants to get her boys out of these nice people's way to a brutal monster who will do just about anything if she is crossed, it's chilling and layered work, and makes Mother's Day worth seeing all by itself.

However, that's not the only interesting thing in the film. The rest of the bad guy performances are all pretty good, with Flueger, Cole and O'Leary giving each of the boys their own distinct personalities, and making each of them a different kind of threat, and True Blood's Deborah Ann Woll giving a performance that almost matches DeMornay's in its subtle complexities. The screenplay also works quite well, okay some of the dialogue is rather perfunctory, but the characters are well developed and there is an impressively uncompromising tone, a bleakness that gives the film a bit more punch than your average horror picture. This is especially true of the film's emphasis on punishment, which reaches its ultimate expression in a very tough scene in which two innocents are given the chance to live if they will pick up a knife and stab the other to death.

Darren Lynn Bousman does a solid, if not massively personal feeling, job behind the camera. There's a nice, John Carpenteresque, cold open, and a tendency to keep much of the worst violence just off screen, or just out of focus, which allows the imagination to go to work, but overall it's not as distinctive as the barmy and underrated Repo: The Genetic Opera.

On the downside, 112 minutes is long - too long - for a pretty basic home invasion horror, and outside of Shawn Ashmore as the Doctor trying help the injured bank robber the performances from the films good guys (especially the wooden Jaime King) are less impressive than those of the bad guys. The film does slip into standard slasher silliness towards the end (a moment with a nailgun is laughable), but finds its feet again in the last moments with a great coda. On the whole, Mother's Day isn't perfect, but it's much better than I expected it to be, much better than it really has any right to be, and if you're looking to see a nasty little horror movie, it's well worth a look.

VHS Memories: Pump Up the Volume

Maybe it's the fact that I'm coming up to my 30th birthday, maybe it's just that there seems to be a 90's nostalgia coming around, but I've been thinking back, recently, on my teenage years, and on my formative years as a movie fan. 1989 was the year I discovered cinema, but it was in the 90's that I became an obsessive, helped along by the tedium of a prolonged hospitalisation in 1992, when I had two liver transplants.

This being the 90's, and me being young and with little disposable income, the way I ended up seeing movies for the first time was often on VHS (most of them rented from an independent store called Upfront Video). So, in this new series I'll be looking back on, and then re-reviewing, some of the titles that made an impression on me through my VCR in those formative years. I'd welcome any of your VHS memories in the comments, whether they're about the film up for review or not, or you could drop me a line at sam@24fps.org.uk.


First up...

PUMP UP THE VOLUME
DIR: Allan Moyle

The Memories: I was an impressionable 11 years old in 1992 when I first saw this movie (I think it was my first 15 certificate). I was a fan of Christian Slater's on the back of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (watch for that in a future VHS Memories) and so I wanted to see this when it came out, despite its forbidden status. It was rented for me when I was in hospital after my transplants, at a time when I was decimating the local video shop at a rate of about 3 titles a day because I was in isolation and had nothing else to do besides talk to doctors and have blood tests.

I remember being rather embarrassed by the film's frequent droppings of the F Bomb (I'm over that, as regular readers may have noted) but thinking that it (largely thanks to Slater's character; rebellious pirate radio DJ 'Hard Harry' / Wallflower high school student Mark) was incredibly cool. There were a lot of sexual references that I didn't get, but one thing... well, two things, did make an impression. BOOBS! I do believe that Samantha Mathis' nude scene marked the first time I had ever seen breasts. I remain a fan. I also remember liking Mathis' performance, and the film's eclectic soundtrack. A few years later I took it to show to my friend Guy, and it became a big favourite of ours . I haven't seen Pump Up the Volume for about five years. How will it hold up? Let's find out...


The Movie: I imagine that the reason I was allowed to finish watching Pump Up the Volume the first time I saw it was that a lot of it was going over my eleven year old head. Harry's references in his radio monologues to cock rings, the 'eat me beat me' lady, and homosexuality (in a call with a listener) and his simulated masturbation on air, these were all things that I just didn't understand at the time.

One of the great, and sometimes infuriating, things about cinema is that your relationship with every film you see is always in flux. Movies are never the same twice, they change as you do, and I have to say that's especially true of Pump Up the Volume and, sadly, not in a good way. When I was fifteen Hard Harry was cool, because he was rebelling against his clearly evil school and its principal (who is basically depicted as Satan) and because he was on the radio, and that seemed like a cool thing to do (still does, hence The Screening Room). Fifteen years on though, Allan Moyle's screenplay often feels facile; dealing in cheap declamatory statements and shallow characterisations, especially of the film's authority figures. I don't believe in much of what goes on at the film's Hubert Humphrey High (especially the laughable twist which has them setting up a 24 hour helpline in response to Harry's show, how the hell is that funded or staffed?) and its staff are a collection of high school movie clichés from the milquetoast guidance counsellor to the evil principal to the cool young English teacher.


The students scarcely fare better. Most of the film's teenagers (including Seth Green, at the start of his roughly fifteen year career playing a high schooler) get very short shrift; a couple of scenes each, and little personality. Outside of Mark (Harry) and Samantha Mathis – amateurish in her first film - as his love interest Nora the only character with a real arc is Paige; the school's star pupil who, listening to Harry, decides to blow up all her nice things in the microwave. It's a transformation we don't believe, because we don't see it from her point of view, there's no sense of the journey between Daddy's princess and BOOM! (Cheryl Pollak's performance does little to help, to be fair).

However, there are still things I like about this film, things that do work. Chief among them is Christian Slater's performance. Slater has always been a better actor than he's credited as, much more than the mini Jack Nicholson he's often dismissed as, and this is actually one of his best roles. During his extended monologues as Harry (though less so during the film opening horseplay which has him pretending to wank. Twice.) you can see why his audience listens to him, he's a voice much like theirs; a bit lost, a bit confused, often very immature, but eloquent in how he sums up what he sees around him, and passionate about denouncing it (even if he doesn't really know what else to do). Slater is forceful and charismatic in these scenes, and all the more impressive given that he's really got nothing to act against for most of the time, and it is in the film's two main radio shows (after the suicide of a listener and after a school meeting discussing Harry and his influence respectively) that Moyle's dialogue is at its best and feels the least like it is smacking you around the face with its message. As with Avatar's 'trees good, war bad' message it's not so much that I'm not on board with Moyle's 'free speech is awesome' moral as it is that he sometimes spoonfeeds us that message with such force that we choke on it.

The other great thing here is the film's soundtrack. From Pixies awesome UK Surf mix of Wave of Mutilation to the repeated use of Everybody Knows (which introduced both me and Guy to Leonard Cohen) and from an ultra rare Beastie Boys track to Cowboy Junkies, the film is packed with an original and eclectic mix of music which feels much less dated than the rest of the fashions on display here (okay, Ice T's Girls LGBNAF notwithstanding). Moyle uses the music well, never letting it speak for the film or instruct us how to feel, rather its part of the fabric of the society his teenage characters create for themselves; perhaps the film's most realistic touch.

Overall, Pump Up the Volume is probably a film best watched when you're fifteen and angry with your school, you Dad and the girl who just refused to go out with you, but it still has more ideas than you're likely to find in any three recent American teen movies, even if it sometimes articulates them with a 2x4. It's deeply flawed, and would work better if it were more clearly satirical, but it remains interesting if only for Slater's charismatic performance.

Screening Room Episode 13

The Screening Room is the podcast I present, along with my friend and colleague Michael Ewins, over at www.multimediamouth.com. In this latest episode Mike and I review Rio Breaks, Last Night, X-Men: First Class and talk superhero movies and DVD and Blu Ray releases. It's a varied 90 odd minutes of movie chat. Enjoy.



Comments on the show would be welcomed at either sam@multimediamouth.com or sam@24fps.org.uk

24FPS Top 100: No. 59

59: THE DESCENT (2005)
DIR: Neil Marshall

Why is it on the List?
For horror fans, Neil Marshall's second movie (after soldiers vs werewolves debut Dog Soldiers) offers fantastic value for money. It is essentially two knuckle whitening horror movies for the price of one, served up in just 95 minutes of your time.

After twenty minutes of setup, acquainting us with the all female cast of characters, with whom we are about to spend the next hour in the dark of an unexplored system of caves, the first of these horror movies begins in earnest; a tense journey through the caves, during which Marshall continually raises the stakes with claustrophobic scare sequences, injuries and the revelation that the girls are not in the cave system they thought they were in.

After about 40 minutes of that, the film explodes into high gear as it becomes a terrifying and brutal monster movie, featuring truly scary creature design, splashy violence and some truly iconic final girl imagery. Okay, so it's not the most original horror film you'll ever see, but Marshall arranges the elements so well that the jump scares work every time (even on subsequent viewings). In fact, one scare in this film, for me, is just about as good a jump scare as there has ever been in a movie. It happens the first time you really see a 'crawler', and it makes me have to catch my breath even now (you can see it below in Standout Scenes).

However, The Descent isn't just a scare machine. The characters are broadly written, but well played by Marshall's all female cast, with Shauna MacDonald standing out as the initially nervous and frightened woman who finds unexpected reserves of strength (and gets a final girl shot so cool it deserves to rank with Sissy Spacek covered in pigs blood, in a film we'll discuss later in this list), but while the performances are good, it is the photography that really impresses here.

The Descent was shot on a set, but Marshall and DP Sam McCurdy make the environment feel very real (and very threatening) through their use of camera and lighting. There is little cheating the light here, most of the cave sequences are lit with torches, infra red cameras, lighters, glowsticks or some other available source of light. Obviously as well as adding to the verisimilitude, this allows Marshall to have his monsters use the shadows effectively, and means that the dark itself, even when there's nothing in it, becomes scary.

It's not the smartest film on this list, but The Descent is a fun, frightening ride, with something for every horror fan from creepy 'what's that in the background' moments to unbelievable tension (the collapsing tunnel) to good old fashioned ultraviolence. What's not to like?


Standout Scenes
"What the Fuck was that?"
Our first proper look at a 'crawler', and it's fucking scary.

The Tunnel
I'm claustrophobic, so this sequence in which a tunnel collapses, threatening to trap one of the girls inside, is one of my worst nightmares.


If you would like to buy The Descent, and help 24FPS out at the same time, please use the link below. Thanks.

DVD Review: The OWLS / Hooters

The OWLS
DIR: Cheryl Dunye

Cheryl Dunye is a legitimately groundbreaking filmmaker, in 1996 her first feature The Watermelon Woman made history by its very existence; it was the first film directed by a black lesbian. In the intervening fifteen years she's been quite quiet, her only subsequent feature being 2004 Eddie Griffin comedy My Baby's Daddy, which she didn't even have a hand in writing. The OWLS (it stands for Older Wiser Lesbians) is clearly a much more personal work, and an effort to break new ground as she did with her first film, but at just 66 minutes this 'lesbain noir' still finds plenty of time to stumble.

There is a thread that runs through the film, a mystery surrounding the death of a minor character named Cricket, and I wished that that had been much more of the movie, because for all its faults – largely a flatness to the bulk of the performances - it's the story driven idea that I'm interested in here.

Unfortunately this digressive film never seems to make up its mind what it is, there's the noir story, there are the intertwined relationships of the central characters (most of whom used to be in a band together, which sadly we never see or hear) and then there are the pieces to camera. This is a truly bizzare addition to the film. Dunye frequently cuts to interview footage, some of it in character, some of it not (there is also a moment where this seems blurred, Dunye using the real name of another player while I had thought she was in character, it is to the film's massive discredit that I can't tell whether this was intentional). During the out of character interviews, and especially during the film's closing credits, this seems to be a manifesto for lesbian filmmakers, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but honestly, would it hurt to decide which film to make?

There are some good moments though, Guinevere Turner puts in a typically charismatic performance, and VS Brodie (though her character is underdeveloped) also transcends the dramatic flatness on display, while Dunye does find a few interesting images. However, The OWLS is inconsistent at best, pretentious at worst and schizophrenic overall.


Hooters
DIR: Anna Margarita Albelo

Hooters, which chronicles the workshopping and making of The OWLS, is a considerably more interesting film than the one it is about. From time to time the director Anna Margaria Albelo really imposes herself on the film and this can, especially in the terrible opening credits sequence, be achingly pretentious and extremely annoying, however, for the most part this a pretty straightforward filmmaking documentary, and though it's not the best of its kind the process it chronicles is unusual enough to intrigue.

What's really interesting about Hooters is the way that it manages (perhaps without wanting to) to illuminate why The OWLS doesn't work. It covers a fractious workshopping process , in which the whole cast and crew are encouraged to put ideas into the script, leading screenwriter Guinevere Turner to become very frustrated and confess that she wished they'd let people give ideas, then let her, or some other single voice, write it rather than create this patchwork (she's right too, much of the final script is banal, and it feels very disjointed). It's also interesting to see the political and generational arguments – largely between the equally forceful and charismatic Guinevere Turner and Deak Evgenikos - that arise in this process (again much more so than when these ideas are shoehorned into The OWLS), even though, as a straight man, I stand rather outside the debates being had here.

Hooters is also good on the process of shooting, and by involving itself with the whole crew, rather than turning the focus on Dunye, gets a more intimate, and more critical, view of the process than is typical. Again problems with the collective model raise their head, with actress (and a director herself) Lisa Gornick, raising objections to Dunye's direction, and there seems to be a lot of stalling during the miniscule five day shoot.

Hooters does sometimes get sidetracked by politics - and once by asking the crew what kind of underwear they are currently wearing; Guinevere Turner's idea – but on the whole it's a pretty interesting film. To me it plays more like a how NOT to for filmmakers than anything else, and exposes why Dunye's model produced a pretty bad film, but that's actually more interesting than if it had shown things going swimmingly. Certainly this is the part of this DVD double bill that I'd recommend you check out.

If you would like to buy The OWLS and Hooters, and help 24FPS out at the same time, please use the link below. Thanks.

X-Men: First Class [12A]

DIR: Matthew Vaughn
CAST: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon,
Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne, January Jones

While it is not the superlative defying thing of wonder that some have declared it to be, X-Men: First Class is an excellent blockbuster; intelligent as well as exciting, and easily the best of a now five film old franchise.

British director Matthew Vaughn was originally due to helm the third X-Men film (and vestiges of his work are still to be seen in that flawed movie, notably the botched casting of Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut). It is definitely to the benefit of the franchise that he ended up doing this film instead, having amassed more experience with both special effects (on Stardust) and superheroes (on the brilliant Kick Ass) in the interim. He brings all this to the table, along with a now long running and fruitful collaboration with screenwriter Jane Goldman.

First Class, for me, took a little while to get going. The first half hour is largely exposition, and often feel like several different movies (Charles Xavier in Revenge of the Nerds vs Magneto: Nazi Hunter) trying to play out all at once. It's not very cohesive, and the stuff that works best (Magneto: Nazi Hunter) feels a bit compromised, like it needs more room to breathe – its own movie perhaps. There are also some botched moments in the first act, most notable is a scene reintroducing Kevin Bacon as the film's evil bastard in chief (though he's never called it in the movie I believe the comic called his character Mr Sinister, which is a name made for Kevin Bacon). It's not that it's a terrible scene, more that it seems like an excuse to get the lovely Rose Byrne to run around in her pants for five minutes for no real reason, which, frankly, is beneath both her talent and her dignity.

The movie really makes the shift out of first gear last once it brings the main characters together, and that's largely because Vaughn has called on two of the best British actors of their generation; James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender to play Xavier and Magneto. The friendship between these characters has always been central to the X-Men films, and here we get to see both its making and its breaking. McAvoy and Fassbender each avoid impersonating the actors who have previously played their characters, but manage to give their portrayals enough of a flavour of, respectively, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen that we can see how they grew into those people. Beyond that though, these are two great performances that really complement each other, showing Xavier and Magneto as two sides of the same coin. However, it is Fassbender who runs away with the film, from the early scenes as he hunts Bacon's Sebastian Shaw and other Nazis across the world to the final moments of the film, in which he truly becomes Magneto, Fassbender brings real dramatic weight to everything – no easy feat in the midst of a gigantic action set piece playing off the Cuban missile crisis. Even in the film's lighter moments, Fassbender's force and intensity leap off the screen, as good as he was in Fish Tank and Hunger, this may in fact be his best work to date.

The other major characters are Bacon's Sebastian Shaw, which is a welcome return for a great and underrated actor, and Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, perhaps a surprising follow up to Winter's Bone, and a good training ground for her own franchise launcher The Hunger Games. Bacon is clearly having an absolute ball as the energy absorbing Shaw; he's slimy and evil, and while he may seem a weak physical threat the character's sheer ruthlessness makes him a threatening villain, and the scenes he shares with Fassbender are some of the film's most compelling; two fine actors going at each other in scenes that deal with big themes and real moral complexities. Lawrence is also good here, and the progression of her character from one who constantly uses her powers to look normal to become the character we know from the first three is well written and affectingly played by Lawrence, especially in a scene with McAvoy when she first appears, naked, in full Mystique look, in front of Xavier.

The problem that has always dogged the X-Men franchise is an overabundance of characters, and that's also felt in this film. Outside of Xavier, Magneto, Shaw and Mystique there is little real character development (Shaw's cronies are the most affected by this; January Jones' credit may as well be for her cleavage and the rest of the bad guys – including Vaughn's lucky charm Jason Flemyng as Azazel – get about four lines between them), the others are really just special effects waiting to happen, which is a shame because the young actors playing them (especially Nicholas Hoult as Beast) are all pretty good.

The outstanding part of the film is its action heavy climax. Most superhero films abandon whatever themes they've been working through for the past hour and a half for a last twenty minutes of characters fighting. Not this one. For much of the film the political content is rather like being smacked in the face with contemporary resonance, but the use of the Cuban missile crisis is clever and thrilling,but that's not why it works. The last twenty minutes or so is where Vaughn and Goldman draw all the threads, all the themes, together into an almost operatic crescendo of thrills, effects and interpersonal drama. The balancing act achieved here by Vaughn, the writers and editors Lee Smith and Eddie Hamilton is outstanding. Fassbender and McAvoy both seem to raise their performances one more notch too.

X-Men: First Class has a few issues, but overall this is great blockbuster cinema. It mixes action, drama and a few laughs capably, it is character driven, powered by excellent performances, but never forgets to deliver thrills or great action choreography (thanks Azazel), it's also a thematically developed and interesting film, which will make it interesting to revisit in the future. Whatever its minor problems, this is another fine addition to the filmography of Matthew Vaughn, who is becoming one of Britain's most interesting directors (and, almost uniquely, doing so in the mainstream) and it is likely to be one of the best mainstream films you see this year.

Last Night [12A]

DIR: Massey Tadjedin
CAST: Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington,
Guillaume Canet, Eva Mendes

There is nothing especially original, nor especially wrong, about the central idea of Last Night. It's the story of a young couple (Knightley and Worthington), who have been married for three years. At a party Joanna thinks her husband Michael seems attracted to a co-worker (Mendes as Laura). They argue. The next day, Michael goes on an out of town business trip with Laura, and Joanna bumps into old flame Alex (Canet). Mind-numbingly predictable relationship dramas play out.

The situation is interesting enough, and there is a lot of potential for drama in Last Night, as both sides of a couple contemplate cheating, the night after an argument about what constitutes cheating (ooh, irony), but the potential is undone at every turn by hideously botched execution.

Writer and first time director Tadjedin has to take much of the blame here. First of all, her script is utterly banal; the characters thin, their problems prosaic and, most damagingly, their marriage utterly unconvincing. Even the argument that opens the film doesn't really establish much about Joanna and Michael's relationship, rendered as it is in the same hushed tones as the rest of the film. This film is devoid of passion – be it in marriage or even in the heat of infidelity – instead it feels like we are watching these empty vessels float though, respectively, New York and Philadelphia. The tedious, wet, dialogue made me long for the brutal, sweary, snap of David Mamet or the wit of (classic) Woody Allen, unfortunately Tadjedin gives us little insight or humour, and the 12A rating means that she can't really push the dialogue.

That's not to say that the script is Tadjedin's only problem. Her directorial style is a mix of the sort of stagy, static scenes that say 'oh shit, I'm directing and I've got no clue what I'm doing' and flourishes like the endless jump cutting and dialogue from the next scene coming in over the current one, with which Tadjedin seems to shout 'Look, I saw Breathless'. It's often an infuriating watch, vacillating between being somnolently static and annoyingly jumpy.

However, the final, hobbling, blow is struck by the casting, or rather the miscasting. I will make no apologies for being a fan of Keira Knightley, even though she's not one of the world's five great actresses she consistently makes interesting choices and, rather than doing the endless blockbuster roles she could be taking, stretches herself as an actress, and her performances generally get better with each movie she makes. Sadly she comes unstuck here, but it's not really her fault. Knightley is too delicate seeming for this role, and also too youthful (yes, Michael and Joanna are a young couple, but there is no sense in Knightley of the worldliness that Joanna needs). It's largely the fault of a character as shallow as a puddle in the Sahara, but Knightley just never convinces in the role, either in her nostalgic longing for Alex or her need for stability with Michael. Unfortunately Knightley is probably the best thing in the movie.

Sam Worthington is best known as a teaky and uncertainly accented presence in action blockbusters, and if that's what you like then tuck in, because here he's a teaky and uncertainly accented (which is perverse, because he's speaking in his real Aussie accent and still it sounds like a bad put on) presence in an unutterably boring drama. His story with Mendes is so dull and schematic that it feels like time stops when they are on screen, and he brings so little emotion to the table that nothing has any weight. Mendes, for her part, is so poorly drawn that she's barely worth mentioning; less a character than a walking Pandora's Box of temptation. Equally schematic is Canet; smug, annoying and woefully one note as Joanna's very forward old flame. Ultimately these characters deserve each other, they're all dull and none of them is remotely likeable, so what's to get interested in? Who cares if Michael and Joanna break up, it's not like we have any more investment in their marriage than they appear to have. Who cares about any of it? There is never any sense of watching people live their lives here, with every scene the film is more contrived, more like a (poor) drama, and for us to care about what happens to these people, that has to go away.

Overall, Last Night is a boring, schematically written, near characterless, piece of ephemera. It's not offensively bad, just unspeakably dull. The only real positive for me was getting to look at Keira Knightley for 90 minutes.