Ten Statements About....10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (2016)

"You're going to play Barrel of Monkeys Giant
Size Edition or else!"

“People are strange creatures. You can't always convince them that safety is in their best interest."

1) Mary Elizabeth Winstead owns this movie, and not just because she is the main character.  A lesser actress would be subsumed by John Goodman’s performance, but Winstead is able to keep the viewer’s attention, and gain his or her sympathy.

2) That’s not to take away from Goodman, who manages to walk a fine line between being creepy and being...well, sort of melancholic.  He keeps the suspense in this film running smoothly because he creates a character with different facets, so that when we’re sure he’s one thing we get some indication he might be something else.

3) That being said...there’s something that Winstead discovers towards the end of the second act that is pretty much unnecessary.  It adds nothing to the narrative, and diminishes Goodman from this interesting character to a cliche.  The whole subplot can be excised whole.

And up there you might find Roseanne's career...

4) You know what else can be excised whole? John Gallagher Jr.’s Emmett.  I get that he’s there so that Winstead’s Michelle has someone to explain things to, but Winstead and the director are talented enough to convey the things that need to be conveyed without Regulation Expository Dialogue.

5) Maybe it’s because it’s not used to punctuate violence like it’s used so many other places, but the use of 50‘s and 60‘s pop music here manages to be creepy, emphasizing the situation without slipping into the parodic.

6) I dunno...if you introduce an acid supposedly so toxic it’ll strip human flesh to the bone, you should show someone who falls into a pool of it has more than just a crispy temple....

7) Give ‘em credit...they introduce something, they use something.

8) The big revelation...I’m not sure about it.  Yeah, it’s there to cement the connection between this film and the original, but the way it’s shot is confusing and manages to obscure more than it reveals.  However...

Not time for a selfie, Mary Elizabeth....

9) This revelation does manage to throw Goodman’s Howard into a different life.  It makes you wonder how different the film would be if it concentrated solely on Howard’s survivalist tendencies and didn’t stray into the cliches it embraced earlier.

10) The ending seems to promise a sequel, which really isn’t necessary. My hope is that J.J. Abrams follows through on his original intention of making the Cloverfield franchise into an anthology of unrelated stories set in the same universe.

Overall...worthwhile for the excellent performances by Winstead and Goodman.  If you’re looking for something else, well...shrug.

Ten Statements About....SCOTT PILGRIM VERSUS THE WORLD (2010)

Beware Michael Sera's video-game-inspired power!

“Next time, we don't date the girl with eleven evil ex-boyfriends."
“It's seven."
“Oh, well, that's not that bad.”

1) This film has a great, well, texture.  The way director Edgar Wright’s storytelling approximates a video game creates something unique even among comic book movies--namely a movie that looks like a comic book contemporary to the making of this film.  The introductory panels for each character, the way papery graphic sound effects rise from actual sounds, the combat titles, the transitions all help to build the world Wright wants us to dwell in.

2) I know some people didn’t care for Michael Cera, but I think the film needed him as Pilgrim.  Sera has just the right level of insincerity in his performance that it works.  Through his eyes, we understand that Scott is a big dick, which is essential for us to buy into the journey he goes through.

3) You know, I think Elizabeth Winstead is stunning, but her Ramona is, well, a bit of a dick as well, and has less screentime to show any change she may have gone through.  I think that the film needed to give her that to justify the ending it came up with (an ending that was made up before the last issue of the comic came out).

There are so many jokes I could make, but none of them would
paint me in a good light...

4) But what the film really needs to do is more clearly justify and define the story arc for Ellen Wong’s Knives Cho.  Given how she’s treated by Scott in the first act and gets all stalker-y in the second, the argument the film seems to make for her in the third seems so disjointed and strange--and it leads to a denoument at (literally) the film’s end that seems to dispute that third act entirely.  That Wong almost makes it work is a credit to her as an actress.

5) Can I admit to having a slight crush on Allison Pill’s Kim Pine?  Maybe it’s the way she delivers each line with a sort of controlled fury, but she seems to draw the eye with each scene she’s in.

6) One of the things that makes this film work besides its unique look is how much fun so many of these actors, especially those that play Ramona’s seven evil ex’s.  I’m a big believer in the principle that if the people involved are having fun (without breaking the third wall), then that fun will rub off on the viewer, and it works here.

Yeah, it's a Michael Sera film...but don't fight this film's
unique, sugar-coated charms.

7) I really respect the fact that Wright establishes the video game motif of his world extremely quickly, and then sticks to the the rules inherent in such a background.  Hell, the resolution of the third act works only if we buy into his world-as-video-game conceit...and it’s to his credit that the big twist is set up very clearly, yet we might not figure out what went down right away.

8) Every time I see Brandon Routh, I am convinced he needs a bigger career.  His telekinetic (apparently in the world of Scott Pilgrim, veganism gives you super powers) Todd Ingram is one of the highlights of the film, and he makes the most of his screentime.  And apparently Thomas Jane gets to drag him off for violation of the Vegan Code.  And speaking of the Vegan Police....

9)  I do appreciate how, after Wright gives us the prerequisite hyper-kinetic fight scene (because, you know, video game and all), Scott ends up using his head and, in one memorable moment, his musical skills to triumph over each of the exes.  It shows that there are qualities that could raise Scott above his dickishness, and it makes that ultimate rise above his flaws work in that third act.

10) Bless this movie for being shot in Toronto and...being set in Toronto.  Hell, one of the major reasons Ramona becomes an object of desire for desire for Scott is because she’s from the States and, as such, is ‘exotic.’

Overall...this is one of those films, like Speed Racer and Josie And The Pussycats, that will get the following it deserves with distance.  Wright creates a world, sticks to it, and is unafraid to give us an unsympathetic lead (who becomes sympathetic through what he learns from the events of the film), and presents a unique moviegoing experience.  While the ending is a little sour, it doesn’t change the fact that this is a very good film.

Ten Statements About....THE THING (2011)

The quest for something hotter than Mary Elizabeth
Winstead contines....

"Not all of us are human."

1) I am beginning to suspect that it is impossible to make Mary Elizabeth Winstead look less than glowing...but then, I suspect no one on this film wanted to make Mary Elizabeth Winstead look less than glowing.

2) I give the production a great deal of credit for utilizing cues from the original Enrico Morricone score at key points in the film.

3) Unlike the Carpenter version, this film is filled to bursting with characters--in addition to Winstead's Kate, there's about a dozen Norwegian research scientists, the scientist who hires Kate to come with him and oversee the extraction of the creature, a group of heliocopter pilots, and some people I honestly didn't know why they were around. Because we have so many characters, we don't get a handle on many of them, so there's no sense of them as humans so we can't get all paranoid about them becoming Thing Clothes.

Yep...entertainment is hard to come by in the Antartic...

4) I will admit that the test Kate comes up with to determine who is human and who is Thing Clothes is pretty clever--or at least it would be if they didn't drag out the dubious wire-in-the-blood test Russell's character comes up with in the Carpenter version only to have it wrecked by The Thing. While there are a couple of clever shout backs to the Carpenter version, a couple of them only draws you out of the picture and go, 'hey, let's go watch the good version.'

5) Let's get this out of the way--the Thing is done primarily through CGI and this version of the creature is just too busy. Not content in doing one or two illogical things in depicting its monster, this version does a wild mishmosh of disparate elements that makes it hard for the eye to follow what's happening. With all the tentacles and teeth and claws, it's just gross instead of scary. There's nothing near the head-with-crab-legs gag of the Carpenter version (although there's an arm-with-anemonae-like-tendrils that comes close) in terms of sheer fear-making.

6) And while we're on the subject...there's not a lot of logic to which character ends up as Thing Clothes. One particular gag involving the only other female member of the cast simply makes no sense because there's no moment when she has contact with the alien cells. On the other hand, the one person who seems to be primed for Thing Clothes Status, Ulrich Thomsen's Sander--who insists on taking a tissue sample of the Thing and mucks around in its entrails--isn't revealed as such until the climax.

I call this piece...All Messed Up....

7) And speaking of the climax...there's no reason for it to happen at the place it did. The only reason I can think for director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. to place the final chase there was because it was one of the few things the Carpenter version apparently had no interest in visiting. But since all we get are digital lightshows...what's the point?

8) That being said, I have to admire the very dark ending. Admittedly, it doesn't match the absolutely perfect Carpenter ending, but the implication of what Kate has done due to her own paranoia is more disquieting that any of the waving tentacles and rows of teeth are.

9) I really wish that the script hadn't made Sander so much of an asshat. It lessens the whole paranoia aspect of the movie--and let's face it, the whole point of this version of the Thing is paranoia--if there's already tension and a lack of trust between people. And because there are good guys and bad guys in this film, the paranoia comes off as forced most of the time.

10) You know, the film makes such a big deal at first about being a period piece--a title tells us this takes place in 1982, we first meet Kate as she's grooving to Men At Work on her headphones--and yet once we get up to Thule Base, the script and the filmmaking is extremely mired in contemporary time. Hell, you should have seen how I rolled my eyes when I was treated to shakey-cam during a mass-conference scene debating strategies for dealing with The Thing.

Overall...this is not an awful film...but it's yet another one that just sits there, a piece of product designed to keep us from falling asleep for ninety minutes and change. If only the script had seized on some of the things that made it look like it could be promising and not get mired in all the Husker-Du-ing and contemporary troping...

Back at The Atlas--and they're still having projection problems; look, if you're going to give us just the audio track of the Regal Firstlook, why not forgo playing it as a whole and let me sit in my seat and listen to my podcasts. Not a lot of newer trailers--perhaps the only one that made me take notice was another viewing of the Liam-Neeson-Punches-Wolves-In-The-Head Survival Epic The Grey.