The Coen brothers have yet to make a disappointing movie in my eyes. Their dark comedy, "Fargo," is my favorite film of all-time, so my standards are set quite high. Regardless, their latest darkly comic drama is a homerun, scoring serious points for remaining true to their style while exploring a supernatural aspect that felt simultaneously felt different and like something that they've had up their sleeves for years now.
The film opens with a Yiddish language prologue where a wife tells a man that the man he met on the road may be a dybbuk- a demon that inhabits the body of the recently dead. We then move on to our main character, Larry Gopnik, a Jewish man whose life begins to seriously suck recently. He wonders and seeks advice from three rabbis, but he continues to wonder God is doing to him. Is he a modern version of the infamous story of Job?
For those of you unfamiliar with that story, in the Bible, Satan goes to heaven and talks to God. He makes a bet that Job, who has always been faithful, would curse God's name if he took everything away from him. God takes away his assets, including his family, who are killed tragically. After everything, God then covers his body in boils, and Job picks up a rock, says "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away," and begins to scrape all the growths off.
If you're like me, you have many questions for God, but for the sake of story, let's just accept it temporarily and continue. His wife announces that she wants a divorce as she runs away from his best friend, Sy Ableman, who greets him with a bottle of wine and a hug after leaving several messages with the subject, "Let's have a nice talk." His daughter and brother are stealing money, the daughter most likely for a nose job and the son for pot. The son hides the money he owes in his transistor radio which is then confiscated. He tries not to get his ass kicked by the dealer/bully, but in the meantime, this stoner has a Bar Mitzvah coming up. His brother sleeps on the couch and has to drain his cysts with a suction device that makes a disgusting sound and provides a worse mental image. Worse yet, with his tenure meeting coming up, he is left to be bribed and then threatened to be blackmailed for taking the bribe by the same student that failed his midterm. A very interesting note- the student failed the midterm for not understanding the mathematics portion of physics but claimed to get the allegories. This is a theme to watch for in the rest of the film.
Larry goes to visit the aforementioned "three rabbis" to no avail. One has an unusual fascination with the parking lot. The second tells a fascinating story about an orthodontist who discovers that a man has the words, "help me save me" written in Hebrew on the inside of his teeth, but but Larry learns that he would have been better off not hearing the story in the first place. The third...well, I wouldn't give that away. It's much more interesting to discover what the Coens have to say rather than have it explained to you.
Everything considered, this movie is damn funny. Every actor, although most are unknowns, come up like the parts were written for them. Michael Stuhlbarg from the stage being the most famous actor, embodies Larry Gopnik to craft a Job that lives in doubt as his world comes crashing down. This actor received a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal, but this reviewer feels disappointed that he was left out come Oscar-time. There is also Fred Melamed who plays one of the Coens' best characters, Sy Ableman. The character crafted is one of sweet simplicity but with an unmentioned creepiness to keep everything he does under a microscope.
I was reminded of several other movies. The awakening Gopnik has reminded me of Lester Burnham's awakening in "American Beauty," but what each does with the awakening is quite different. Larry's brother had me considering a cross between David Helfgott from "Shine" and Walter from "The Big Lebowski." Although I was reminded of other similarities, this is ultimately the Coen Brothers' film, and it is an original journey into such.
This is one of the year's best films and a new favorite in my collection. I will explain no more except the fact that the Coens have made "Fargo," "No Country for Old Men," and now "A Serious Man." They are born filmmakers, and I am confident that "A Serious Man" will be a film studied by students in the future.
Rated R for language, some sexuality/nudity, and some brief violence.
Buy the movie here.
Look out for a future posting where I analyze some motives I believed were present in the film.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The House of The Devil- ** out of ****
I absolutely love being able to give credibility to the indie-horror scene since a great deal of their movies have genuinely interesting characters, very good writing, an interesting concept/execution, and good acting, but The House of the Devil bored me to the point that I almost started cheering for Satan so something suspenseful, dramatic, comedic, scary, thrilling, interesting, or relevant would happen. Instead, this hour and a half long movie could have had some characters cut as well as its length since there were stretches of time where nothing consisting of any one of the seven elements I mentioned before was present.
A sophomore in college (Samantha) is getting an apartment so (I guess) she doesn't have to live with her messy, slutty, coke-snorting roommate any more. The down payment is $300 in five days, so when Sam sees a flyer for a "BABY$ITTER," she calls the number. However, when she gets to the house out in the middle of nowhere, the man tells her that he lied. She won't be taking care of a child, but there is his wife's mother upstairs, but Sam may or may not even see her, so she's just there for four hours in case the mother needs her. He also mentions that she takes pride in her isolation so to not bother her. He agrees to pay her $400 for one night and mentions several times that she should order a pizza from the number on the fridge. Of course, she accepts, sends her friend with the only means of transportation away, and orders a pizza.
Cue the random sounds in the house that are never explained, the vile-tasting candy in the living room, and the uninvestigated smell of dead bodies coming from the basement. Let me explain one of the stretches where I started to space out: Sam orders a pizza and starts waiting for it to come. She was getting bored because there's nothing interesting on the one single news channel she watches, so after looking through the entire house (the places she looks are not used or explored later), she plays her walkman and dances through the house for about five minutes until she slams her ass into a table and breaks a vase. She then goes downstairs and gets a dustpan to clean up the broken vase. She hears a strange noise and goes upstairs. The buzzer rings really loudly to make you jump, and then the pizza comes. She eats a slice.
Regardless of how boring the movie was, I did like the fact that it was placed in the time period (late 70s, early 80s) without beating the viewer over the head with it. The costuming, camera equipment, score, title cards, and other things (pay phone, phone with chord, etc) were all effective and great, but in my opinion, there was no suspense, build-up, or effective characters. Please read no more if you wish to see the film. There are spoilers for the ending for the rest of the review.
I love it when (horror) movies try not to explain too much, but this one explained the wrong things. It was trying to go for an ending that could be interpreted different ways (either the ritual worked and was real or it didn't and wasn't), but in trying that, I felt that it abandoned several supernatural elements in the realm of suspense/thrills while Samantha was left in the house, given the title and plotline. Instead, in trying to remain middle of the line, I thought it became somewhat predictable and didn't really go anywhere.
For instance, in the scene where the friend was shot, I was thrust into the movie, but in hindsight, I thought that that ruined a possibility for suspense. I would have been more interested in the film and stayed thrust into it for a longer period if the friend met the creepy guy and there was some kind of chemistry. Perhaps they left for a drink, see the eclipse...anything, so when Sam called the friend's phone, the viewer would think she was out with the guy and not shot in the face. Of course, when the creepy guy delivers the pizza, some mystery would be present as to what has happened to the friend.
That's another thing, there wasn't much of a mystery present. The man is trying to find a specific girl to get knocked up by Satan, so he posts a false babysitting ad. Why not a housesitting ad? Then, he might get more positive responses from girls he likes. After all, why would he need a babysitter for an elderly woman whom he mentions likes her privacy and probably won't even be seen during the night? Do any of these thoughts ever cross the heroine's mind? I guess they weren't convenient to the storyline.
Back to the mystery. There's obviously something sinister happening in the house (yes, dramatic irony is used when the room is shown with the giant bethogram and three dead bodies on it), but we knew what happened to the friend, know that theyre out doing some Satanic things/waiting for Sam to get poisoned/preparing for the lunar eclipse. What's left? Only the amount of time until Sam discovers all that. Can that suspense be stretched in about 40 minutes? 20 minutes?
What's necessary for a scene to work is that there must be some kind of conflict present, and there really wasn't much for stretches of time in the film. Sam was in a conflict with boredom and the possibility of a noise that turned out to be...well...not really much of anything important. As a matter of fact, I think the movie forgot what was causing the noises after they happened because absolutely no explanation was present. Actually, I only heard maybe one or two noises such as something hitting a pipe. It was implied that that was something from the basement, but why was that necessary? And if the noise was obviously something with the plumbing, why did she go upstairs? Why did Sam have to break the vase? Why did she get dinner around 9:00 or 9:30 at night? I felt that the film wasn't trying to build an atmosphere but instead simply fill time.
My "review" of this movie can be easily thrown away because I'm sure you didn't like some or all of the horror films I liked (Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, Carrie, The Descent, Bug, The Mist, Paranormal Activity, Scream 1 and 2 (even though they're parodies), Drag Me to Hell (a horror/comedy but still fun and had interesting characters), Let the Right One In, The Shining, and many more), but I felt very disappointed by this film and thought it was a missed opportunity. It wasn't a failure, but I guess I was expecting something else. Perhaps next time I'll watch a horror movie in which I haven't met anyone who inadvertantly reinacted practically the entire middle portion while they were bored and alone at home.
Rated R for some bloody violence.
Buy the movie here.
A sophomore in college (Samantha) is getting an apartment so (I guess) she doesn't have to live with her messy, slutty, coke-snorting roommate any more. The down payment is $300 in five days, so when Sam sees a flyer for a "BABY$ITTER," she calls the number. However, when she gets to the house out in the middle of nowhere, the man tells her that he lied. She won't be taking care of a child, but there is his wife's mother upstairs, but Sam may or may not even see her, so she's just there for four hours in case the mother needs her. He also mentions that she takes pride in her isolation so to not bother her. He agrees to pay her $400 for one night and mentions several times that she should order a pizza from the number on the fridge. Of course, she accepts, sends her friend with the only means of transportation away, and orders a pizza.
Cue the random sounds in the house that are never explained, the vile-tasting candy in the living room, and the uninvestigated smell of dead bodies coming from the basement. Let me explain one of the stretches where I started to space out: Sam orders a pizza and starts waiting for it to come. She was getting bored because there's nothing interesting on the one single news channel she watches, so after looking through the entire house (the places she looks are not used or explored later), she plays her walkman and dances through the house for about five minutes until she slams her ass into a table and breaks a vase. She then goes downstairs and gets a dustpan to clean up the broken vase. She hears a strange noise and goes upstairs. The buzzer rings really loudly to make you jump, and then the pizza comes. She eats a slice.
Regardless of how boring the movie was, I did like the fact that it was placed in the time period (late 70s, early 80s) without beating the viewer over the head with it. The costuming, camera equipment, score, title cards, and other things (pay phone, phone with chord, etc) were all effective and great, but in my opinion, there was no suspense, build-up, or effective characters. Please read no more if you wish to see the film. There are spoilers for the ending for the rest of the review.
I love it when (horror) movies try not to explain too much, but this one explained the wrong things. It was trying to go for an ending that could be interpreted different ways (either the ritual worked and was real or it didn't and wasn't), but in trying that, I felt that it abandoned several supernatural elements in the realm of suspense/thrills while Samantha was left in the house, given the title and plotline. Instead, in trying to remain middle of the line, I thought it became somewhat predictable and didn't really go anywhere.
For instance, in the scene where the friend was shot, I was thrust into the movie, but in hindsight, I thought that that ruined a possibility for suspense. I would have been more interested in the film and stayed thrust into it for a longer period if the friend met the creepy guy and there was some kind of chemistry. Perhaps they left for a drink, see the eclipse...anything, so when Sam called the friend's phone, the viewer would think she was out with the guy and not shot in the face. Of course, when the creepy guy delivers the pizza, some mystery would be present as to what has happened to the friend.
That's another thing, there wasn't much of a mystery present. The man is trying to find a specific girl to get knocked up by Satan, so he posts a false babysitting ad. Why not a housesitting ad? Then, he might get more positive responses from girls he likes. After all, why would he need a babysitter for an elderly woman whom he mentions likes her privacy and probably won't even be seen during the night? Do any of these thoughts ever cross the heroine's mind? I guess they weren't convenient to the storyline.
Back to the mystery. There's obviously something sinister happening in the house (yes, dramatic irony is used when the room is shown with the giant bethogram and three dead bodies on it), but we knew what happened to the friend, know that theyre out doing some Satanic things/waiting for Sam to get poisoned/preparing for the lunar eclipse. What's left? Only the amount of time until Sam discovers all that. Can that suspense be stretched in about 40 minutes? 20 minutes?
What's necessary for a scene to work is that there must be some kind of conflict present, and there really wasn't much for stretches of time in the film. Sam was in a conflict with boredom and the possibility of a noise that turned out to be...well...not really much of anything important. As a matter of fact, I think the movie forgot what was causing the noises after they happened because absolutely no explanation was present. Actually, I only heard maybe one or two noises such as something hitting a pipe. It was implied that that was something from the basement, but why was that necessary? And if the noise was obviously something with the plumbing, why did she go upstairs? Why did Sam have to break the vase? Why did she get dinner around 9:00 or 9:30 at night? I felt that the film wasn't trying to build an atmosphere but instead simply fill time.
My "review" of this movie can be easily thrown away because I'm sure you didn't like some or all of the horror films I liked (Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, Carrie, The Descent, Bug, The Mist, Paranormal Activity, Scream 1 and 2 (even though they're parodies), Drag Me to Hell (a horror/comedy but still fun and had interesting characters), Let the Right One In, The Shining, and many more), but I felt very disappointed by this film and thought it was a missed opportunity. It wasn't a failure, but I guess I was expecting something else. Perhaps next time I'll watch a horror movie in which I haven't met anyone who inadvertantly reinacted practically the entire middle portion while they were bored and alone at home.
Rated R for some bloody violence.
Buy the movie here.
Intro
This blog will be used for me to publish reviews and posts I write of movies. They are one passion I have in life, and a friend convinced me to publish my words, so I can become another internet blogger...the difference is that I'm currently pursuing a filmmaking and criticism degree, so I hope I have something to offer.
One thing to keep in mind when you read my reviews: no critic's word is golden. Whenever a critic speaks their word, it is always their opinion. The idea is that people who value getting worth out of movies should find a critic with whom they share similar opinions on past movies and use their insight to decide what movies they should and should not see. I pay attention to two critics primarily, Roger Ebert and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, but occasionally, one or the other gives and opinion I don't agree with. Keep that in mind when you read my reviews.
-Jon
One thing to keep in mind when you read my reviews: no critic's word is golden. Whenever a critic speaks their word, it is always their opinion. The idea is that people who value getting worth out of movies should find a critic with whom they share similar opinions on past movies and use their insight to decide what movies they should and should not see. I pay attention to two critics primarily, Roger Ebert and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, but occasionally, one or the other gives and opinion I don't agree with. Keep that in mind when you read my reviews.
-Jon
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