Month: October 2011

Burn, Baby, Burn! LFM Mini-Review of The Thing

Mary Elizabeth Winstead lights it up in "The Thing."

By Jason Apuzzo. THE PITCH: Universal and director Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr. bring The Thing back to life as a direct prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 cult favorite about a shape-shifting alien discovered by a research team in the Antarctic – both films being based on John W. Campbell, Jr.’s classic 1938 sci-fi short story, “Who Goes There?”

THE SKINNY: While the 2011 version of The Thing will not likely be remembered as fondly as Howard Hawks’ 1951 classic, this new adaptation serves as a crisp, gripping prelude to Carpenter’s film, driven by a stand-out performance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead and suspenseful direction from Matthijs van Heijningen.

WHAT WORKS: • Mary Elizabeth Winstead radiates warmth and intelligence as American paleonthologist Dr. Kate Lloyd, in the same kind of role that once made Sigourney Weaver a star (playing Ripley in Alien). A conventional scream queen in her earlier roles, Winstead graduates here to depicting a resourceful, sympathetic female scientist who keeps her wits about her while the rest of her colleagues fall to pieces – both literally and figuratively.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje & Joel Edgerton as American helicopter pilots.

• Matthijs van Heijningen’s understated direction brings out the natural suspense of the story, allowing the isolated setting, mutual suspicions of the characters and the intrinsically frightening situation to do the heavy dramatic lifting.

• The cast feels credible as a hardy professional research crew, much more so actually than the (otherwise superb) cast in Carpenter’s film – and this has the effect of enhancing the suspense and paranoid vibe of the film. Indeed, Winstead’s heroism in the film consists precisely in her taking a more professional-scientific attitude toward the alien threat than that of her compatriots. (And on this point, the new version of The Thing is rarely played for laughs in the way that the Carpenter version sometimes seems to be.)

• One thing this 2011 Thing has over previous versions is that it exploits the alien’s saucer more than before, eventually even taking us inside it at the film’s climax to nice effect.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: • This new version of The Thing is burdened by the need to present the same grotesque, Hieronymus Bosch-show of creature-transformations as were depicted in the Carpenter version of the film. With that said, the transformations in this new film are slightly less disgusting, and often take place in shadow.

• Both the 1951 and 1982 versions of The Thing have iconic musical scores, from Dimitri Tiomkin (with his groundbreaking use of the theramin) and Ennio Morricone/John Carpenter, respectively. Composer Marco Beltrami’s score here is too conventional; he should’ve tried something more unusual or distinctive for this new film to keep the tradition of musical innovation going.

• As I mentioned last week with respect to the film’s screenplay, this new version of The Thing lacks humor – a major component of both the 1951 and 1982 films. Also: the new film drops one of the great gags of Carpenter’s film, which is depicting several of the researchers as having such bizarre personalities (particularly Richard Masur as Clark) as to seem alien even before the creature shows up.

Opening Pandora's box.

• There’s room to ask here whether it was a good idea to bring back this story in the form of a prequel to Carpenter’s film. There is, ultimately, very little about this version that qualifies as being ‘original’ or imaginative, even if its execution is solid. The Hawks version is tighter, more sophisticated and features larger Cold War connotations; the Carpenter version has more colorful characters and satiric flourishes. Possibly what was needed here was a totally different interpretation in order to take the film to the next level.

THE BOTTOM LINE: What makes this new version of The Thing work – which it does, in my opinion – is that it has the basic sense to tell what is already a great story straight, without the embellishments that contemporary filmmakers sometimes add when they don’t trust their material. Director Matthijs van Heijningen and screenwriters Eric Heisserer and Ronald Moore obviously believed in Campbell’s/Carpenter’s basic story material here, and therefore didn’t clutter the film up with obnoxious revisionisms or distractions like the political propaganda found in the Day the Earth Stood Still remake from 2008, or the bizarre plot involutions of 2007’s The Invasion (a flaccid remake of Invasion of The Body Snatchers). This by-the-book approach doesn’t necessarily make this new version of The Thing a classic, but it does make it effective and streamlined as an exercise in sci-fi horror.

Certainly the easiest thing in the world to say about this new version of The Thing is that it doesn’t rise to the level of Howard Hawks’ 1951 version, nor of John Carpenter’s 1982 film. I’m not sure how much that says, however; Hawks’ film is easily one of the greatest sci-fi films ever, and Carpenter is one of the greatest sci-fi/horror directors of all time. Judged against such standards, a lot of contemporary films and filmmakers would pale in comparison.

A better point of comparison for this new version of The Thing might be the recent wave of alien invasion thrillers from this past year – and here I think The Thing stands out as a solid, suspenseful film that is better than a whole variety of over-hyped/under-performing competitors from 2011, including: Super 8, Cowboys & Aliens, and an entire season’s worth of Falling Skies. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my aliens to be really terrifying, and of all the aliens I’ve seen from this past year – and I’ve seen a lot of them, with a few more still to come – the one I would least want to be caught in a room with (outside of Transformers’ Shockwave, who wouldn’t fit into a room to begin with) would be the omnivorous, protean, infinitely imitative and malevolent creature from The Thing. The creature in this new film still packs an unnerving, visceral punch, in much the same way that Carpenter’s did – even if the previous film’s spectacle of gore is slightly toned down here.

My advice if you are a fan of Carpenter’s film? Give this new one a shot, preferably late at night.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead projects authority and professionalism as Dr. Kate Lloyd.

One final point: films are star-driven, and there’s a special pleasure associated with watching a new star emerge in a film. I went into this film looking forward to seeing Joel Edgerton, whom I already knew to be a good young actor (and he’s good here, playing a rough-and-tumble American helicopter pilot), but the real discovery in this film was Mary Elizabeth Winstead. This is clearly going to be a break-out role for her, largely because of her ability to project intelligence and authority. And although she doesn’t yet have the screen presence that the young Sigourney Weaver showed back in the 1980s (she isn’t as lanky, sexy or vaguely odd as Sigourney), Winstead brings a conviction to this type of role that I haven’t seen since the Sigourney-heyday of the 1980s. And what’s nice here is that she doesn’t have to become a Kate Beckinsale-type action hero to do it; instead, like a classic female scientist from 50s sci-fi (think Faith Domergue from It Came from Beneath the Sea or This Island Earth) she uses her wits and innate professionalism to get herself out of jams – along with, of course, a handy flamethrower.

After all, no one ever said sci-fi women can’t heat things up.

Posted on October 14th, 2011 at 11:13pm.

Libertas @ The 2011 New York Film Festival: Traitors

Chaimae Ben Acha in "Traitors."

By Joe Bendel. They are like the Runaways of Tangier, except a Moroccan all-women punk group really is rather rebellious, just in its very existence. Yet family issues will preoccupy their fiery lead singer over the course of a typically eventful day for the band in Sean Gullette’s Traitors, which screens this Saturday as part of the 49th New York Film Festival’s Shorts Program #2.

Best known as the ragged mathematician in Darren Aronofsky’s Pi, Gullette makes his directorial debut with Traitors (that is, with an anarchy sign for the “a”), named after the band fronted by Malika. The camera truly loves hitherto unknown Chaimae Ben Acha as the lead singer, even the handheld digitals used by Gullette’s cinematographers Benoït Peverilli and Niko Tavernise. If there is one future international star represented at this year’s festival, it must be Acha.

For one thing, she can really belt it out Joan Jett style. We first encounter Traitors rehearsing a song that tells us all we need know about their opinion of Morocco’s cops and politicians. It’s not very high. In need of cash for an upcoming gig, Malika naturally plans to “borrow” some from her elegant, professional-class mother. However, in the process of rifling through her parents’ room she learns an upsetting secret.

As Malika and her bandmates careen through the night, we get a visceral sense of the Tangier underground youth culture. When the cops show up, they do their best to live up to Traitors’ cynical assessment. Yet, aside from petty public corruption, Gullette’s film avoids the larger potential macro-conflicts. Just what the local religious authorities would think of the band is left to viewers’ imagination. Still, crude sexism and unwelcomed lechery seem to be fairly widespread among the Moroccan men Malika encounters.

Acha gives a knockout performance, but she is not carrying the film alone. Firouz Rahal Bouzid and Abdesslam Bounouacha also contribute wonderfully human supporting turns as Malika’s parents. Running just over half an hour, Traitors is no mere sketch. By any standards of dramatic cinema, it is a wholly satisfying, self-contained film. A real discovery, Traitors screens this Saturday (10/15), as a selection of Shorts Program #2 at the 2011 NYFF.

Posted on October 14th, 2011 at 9:42am.

Totalitarian Kitsch: The Juche Idea on DVD

By Joe Bendel. Before Kim Il-sung, mass-murdering megalomania had never been so kitschy. The Kim dynasty’s tyrannous misrule has been marked by imposingly ugly architecture, stilted cinema, and truly bizarre mass “arirang” stadium performances, all of which promoted the so-called Juche Idea, his crypto-Confucian brand of self-isolating socialism. An expatriate leftist South Korean filmmaker takes on the challenge of making Juche propaganda art films for an international audience, when not weeding the vegetable patch of a North Korean arts collective in The Juche Idea (trailer above), Jim Finn’s experimental mockumentary mash-up, now available on DVD.

Before he bravely led the proletariat into the future, the crown prince Kim Jong-il wrote North Korea’s definitive book on film studies. Not surprisingly, he concluded any honest, class conscious film should scrupulously adhere to his father’s Juche Idea concepts. DPRK films tended to be a wee bit formulaic as a result, typically culminating with a tearful self-criticism session and a vow to rededicate one’s self to Communist Party, as Finn illustrates with several clips crying out for the Crow and Tom Servo treatment.

As Yoon Yung Lee, the filmmaker-in-residence, splices together her strange Chuck Workman-like Juche films, the insular nature of the North’s ideology-driven culture becomes inescapably obvious. As soon as any distance is applied to the cheesy visuals and overblown synchronized dance numbers, irony rushes in like air into a vacuum. There is also an unexpected abundance of accordion music to heighten the surreal vibe of it all.

Finn never directly addresses the brutal reality of DPRK concentration camps, intrusive secret police, and widespread famine. As a result, Juche Idea really ought to be seen in conjunction with other North Korean documentaries, like Mads Brügger’s fearlessly subversive Red Chapel, which Lorber Films has also just released on DVD.  Unlike the play-it-safe “Yes Men,” Brügger and his colleagues punk a target that wields absolute, unchecked power, on its own turf. You have yet to truly live until you have witnessed a pair of Danish-Korean comedians perform a slapstick rendition of “Wonderwall” for an audience of stone-faced DPRK apparatchik-minders in this mad expose-performance art hybrid.

In contrast, Juche Idea is all about the outrageous over-the-top propaganda serving the Great and Dear Leaders’ personality cults, without any reality-based context. Though it seems hard to miss the joke when a Russian tourist’s loose bowels lead to a lecture on the merits of North Korea’s socialized medicine, some of those protesting downtown might just swallow it whole.

Clearly, Finn is not exactly an underground conservative filmmaker, having also produced the short film Dick Cheney in a Cold, Dark Cell, which should have certainly maintained his standing in the experimental film community. Still, after watching Juche it is clear North Korea is a profoundly scary place, at least by any rational aesthetic standard.

Viewers who missed Brügger’s Chapel in theaters should definitely catch up with it first and then supplement it with Juche’s head-spinning images and sly satire. Though only sixty-two minutes, there are some nice supplements on the DVD, including some deleted scenes, such as a whacked-out Juche comic book given the motion-comic treatment, as well as Finn’s short film Great Man and Cinema, which essentially boils down the essence of Juche Idea to three minutes and forty-nine seconds. Recommended for the ironically-inclined and the propaganda-savvy, Juche Idea and Chapel are easily two of last week’s most notable DVD releases.

Posted on October 13th, 2011 at 5:05pm.

The Act of Valor Trailer; Film Opens Feb. 17th



By Jason Apuzzo. A trailer has just been released for Act of Valor, the Navy SEAL-themed movie that Govindini mentioned in her Atlantic column from yesterday, and that I mentioned in my first Terror Watch update.

On balance I like the look of the film, and the scale of it seems impressive for an indie production. Obviously the cooperation of the military was critical here. My understanding is that Act of Valor began as a documentary-style production about SEAL operations and then gradually morphed into a more conventional narrative – and the trailer certainly has a hybrid, docudrama feel to it. In any case, it looks like something that will be worth seeing in IMAX when it’s released in that format come February of next year.

Take a look and tell us what you think.

Posted on October 13th, 2011 at 5:04pm.

LFM’s Govindini Murty in The Atlantic on Conservatives and Their Approach to Hollywood

Behind the scenes photo from "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" (2011). Photo by Robert Zuckerman.

[Editor’s Note: LFM’s Govindini Murty has a piece today in The Atlantic, entitled: “Hey, Conservatives: It’s Safe to Go to the Movies Again.”]

By Govindini Murty. As our regular Libertas readers know, Jason and I have worked for over seven years to promote a greater diversity of voices in Hollywood. We’ve promoted hundreds of pro-freedom, pro-American, and conservative-friendly films, both through the Liberty Film Festival and the original Libertas blog, as well as the new Libertas Film Magazine. As I’ve said numerous times, we don’t do this because we want Hollywood dominated by conservative political propaganda any more than we want Hollywood dominated by liberal political propaganda. We do this because we care deeply about film and the arts and we feel that having a diversity of voices in our culture is crucial to maintaining the democratic values that make America great.

Chris Evans as Captain America.

However, Jason and I have been very concerned over the years by the conservative establishment’s refusal to seriously engage in film and the arts. By “engagement” I don’t mean reviewing a film here or there or supporting the odd conservative political documentary. I mean genuinely and passionately engaging in film and the arts: funding and supporting filmmakers, artists, and creative people, devoting a significant portion of their media platforms to supporting the arts (even when they don’t directly tie into the conservative political agenda), taking real pleasure in creating beautiful, profound, and arresting artworks that imaginatively inspire people. Conservatives have enormous resources at their disposal to have a greater voice in the culture if they want to. That they fail to seriously engage in the culture year after year is deeply troubling. It undermines both the growth of the conservative movement, as well as the vibrancy of our culture, which needs both sides engaged in order to create art and entertainment that represents all Americans.

So, I’ve written a piece in The Atlantic today (see below) that examines the issue of why conservatives are so reluctant to support conservative-friendly films. As our readers know, when Jason and I relaunched Libertas, we were determined to positively promote films and creative artists. We were tired of just complaining about Hollywood. Conservatives have complained about Hollywood for years, and it never seems to accomplish anything. We decided that rather than give the site over to partisan politics and to obsessing over every left-wing Hollywood affront, we wanted to dedicate our time to promoting films and artworks that broadly affirm freedom and individualism. We were inspired by the genuine change we had seen in the film industry in the last two to three years, in which a greater number of pro-freedom films are suddenly being made. There’s plenty of room for hope and excitement, and yet I don’t see this hope and excitement translating into the rest of the conservative world. Conservatives in the media certainly know about these films because they do cover them (often with snarky and dismissive reviews) – they just refuse to take them as a positive sign of change that should be embraced.

Dominic Cooper promoting "The Devil's Double."

I hope my Atlantic piece (see below) will inspire some honest debate amongst conservatives. I didn’t write a partisan piece – I wrote a piece that objectively deals with the issues as they appear. I truly appreciate all of our conservative, libertarian, independent, and liberal readers here at Libertas who have shown their commitment to supporting the idea of freedom in film. You’re the good ones – you get it. I hope the message spreads to the rest of the public as well, because the culture is too important to be treated as a partisan whipping post. It deserves to be treated honestly, objectively – and always with respect for the artists who create the works that give our culture meaning.

•••

From The Atlantic:

The recent news that MGM’s remake of Red Dawn may finally reach theaters should be reason for conservatives to celebrate. The Los Angeles Times reports that MGM is in talks to sell Red Dawn to Film District (the company behind Ryan Gosling’s Drive), who will likely release the film in 2012. The original Red Dawn is one of the iconic films of the cultural right. Written and directed by John Milius, the 1984 film depicted a group of plucky teens who fight off a Soviet invasion of the U.S. This new Red Dawn, of which I’ve seen an early cut, features a similarly patriotic storyline—and stars one of Hollywood’s hottest young leading men, Chris Hemsworth (Thor). And even factoring in some controversial re-edits that change the villains from the communist Chinese to the North Koreans, the new Red Dawn seems like exactly the kind of pro-American action fare that should please cultural conservatives.

But will conservatives actually support Red Dawn when it comes out?

After years of feeling burned by Hollywood, today’s conservatives seem reluctant to go to the movies, even to see films promoting their own values. A number of right-of-center-friendly movies have been made in recent years—ranging from big-budget studio fare like the Transformers movies or art-house films like The Devil’s Double, to overtly political documentaries like The Undefeated—yet conservatives have responded with little enthusiasm to such films. Indeed, at times conservatives seem more interested in debating left-leaning works like Avatar or Fahrenheit 9/11 than in supporting movies friendly to their own cause.

From "Mao's Last Dancer."

Witness the conservative public’s tepid response to two recent films on “conservative” subjects: the movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, and the Sarah Palin documentary The Undefeated. Both films received extensive media coverage earlier this year. Fox News and the Fox Business Network ran numerous segments on each film (with John Stossel devoting an entire show on Fox Business to Atlas Shrugged), and both films were widely discussed on talk radio and in the print media. Yet when the films were released, they fared poorly at the box office. Atlas Shrugged made only $4.6 million on a reported budget of $20 million, and The Undefeated made only $116,000 on a reported budget of $1 million. Granted, both films received mixed reviews, at best. Nonetheless, as conservative film critic Christian Toto pointed out in a recent Daily Caller article titled “Why don’t conservatives support conservative films?,” the popularity of Rand’s original Atlas Shrugged novel and of Sarah Palin as subject matter should presumably have led to greater enthusiasm among conservatives for these projects. Yet they didn’t.

Stranger still, even when offered more popular or critically acclaimed films, many conservatives still seem reluctant to support them.

For example, a well-reviewed film recently appeared in theaters that offers an implied justification for the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The Devil’s Double tells the true story of Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s gangster-like son, and his reluctant body double, Latif Yahia. Both roles in the film are played by rising star Dominic Cooper (Captain America), whose electric performance has made him one of Hollywood’s most sought-after leading men. The Devil’s Double depicts the Hussein regime pillaging and demoralizing Iraq’s people—and even includes flattering footage of George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney. And despite its seemingly right-of-center politics, the film was screened to rave reviews at Sundance, with Roger Ebert even calling it a “terrific show” and praising Dominic Cooper’s “astonishing dual performance.”

>>>Read the rest of the article at The Atlantic here.

Posted on October 12th, 2011 at 5:32pm.

[Editor’s update: Many thanks to Kevin Roderick for mentioning Govindini’s Atlantic piece in his article “Left coast writers splash in the Atlantic” on LA Observed. Kevin runs one of the great LA sites and I urge you all to check it out.]

[Many thanks as well to Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air for linking to Govindini’s Atlantic article.  Hot Air is always on top of the most interesting news and analysis, so be sure to check them out.]

[And of course, a big thank you as well to our friend Lars Larson.  Lars is one of the best-informed and most articulate talk radio hosts out there (and rapidly rising, with his radio show carried in over 200 markets).  Lars posted Govindini’s article on his site and he has always been supportive of Libertas Film Magazine and the cause of freedom in film.]

Libertas @ The 2011 New York Film Festival: My Week with Marilyn

Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe.

By Joe Bendel. Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe were about to achieve career highpoints in John Osborne’s The Entertainer and Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot, respectively. However, the chemistry was somewhat lacking in their one and only film together, The Prince and the Showgirl, tepidly received by critics and audiences alike in 1957. The behind-the-scenes story of their rocky shoot is told from the perspective of a smitten production assistant in Simon Curtis’s My Week with Marilyn (trailer here), the centerpiece selection of the 49th New York Film Festival.

Though to-the-manor-born, young Colin Clark wants to make his own way in the world working in motion pictures. Refusing to take no for an answer, Clark parlays a dubious introduction into a gofer job with Olivier’s production company. Recently knighted, the great actor is planning to direct the American bombshell in a light comedic role his wife, Vivien Leigh, originated on-stage. Unfortunately, when Monroe shows up with full entourage in tow, it is quickly apparent that she’s deeply enthralled by the method school of acting, dubious claptrap Sir Laurence has little patience for.

Despite beginning a healthy romance with Lucy, a wardrobe assistant arguably as attractive as the childlike and frequently doped-up Monroe, Clark falls hard for the famous sex symbol. While not exactly mutual, Monroe starts to rely on the solicitous young man’s emotional support. It all leads to much gossip and quite a bit of ill will on the set.

Bringing an icon back to life.

If Marilyn Monroe truly was a ragingly insecure woman who lived in a pronounced state of arrested development, then Michelle Williams plays her quite well indeed. Though she is already being positioned as an Oscar contender, her Monroe seems to be a blank slate on which the other characters project their desires. Was that all there really was to her? If so, how very sad.

In welcomed contrast, the British ensemble cast, including the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Michael “Foyle” Kitchen, and Julia Ormand (as Leigh, no small part to step into either), plays it to the hilt, bandying about witticisms as if they are in The Bad and the Beautiful, as rewritten by Noel Coward.

Yet, the casting of Kenneth Branagh as Olivier is particularly inspired. Not only does Branagh have the right “classically trained” presence and flair for razor-sharp dialogue, one can see parallels of his own career in that of Sir Laurence. Earning acclaim and the not infrequent comparison to Olivier with his early Shakespearean films, Branagh’s recent career had been somewhat checkered (including a critically drubbed remake of the Olivier vehicle, Sleuth), until scoring an unlikely comeback with Thor. Regardless, he plays the iconic thespian with genuine depth and charisma.

Granted, Week is based on his memoir, but the amount of screen time devoted to Eddie Redmayne’s Clark seems wildly misappropriated, considering the far more interesting actors and great larger than life figures of cinema history that are also assembled in the film. Frankly, his sad eyed, love-struck act quickly gets rather dull. Fortunately, the seasoned veterans like Branagh, Dench, and Sir Derek Jacobi can be relied upon to supply Week with periodic jolts of energy.

Curtis certainly keeps the film breezing along nicely, capturing a nice sense of the era along the way. Always pleasant viewing, Week features some wonderfully tasty supporting performances. It just seems to consistently focus on the two dullest people at a banquet of greatness. A case of a film whose sum of its parts is probably greater than its whole, Week screens again tonight (11/12) at the Walter Reade Theater as the Centerpiece of the 2011 NYFF. However, only standby tickets are available, so good luck.

Posted on October 12th, 2011 at 10:06am.