31 Days of Halloween: Crimson Peak

[31 Days of Halloween 2015: CRIMSON PEAK is now playing in theaters everywhere.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

*Note: As with last year’s 31 Days of Halloween marathon of horror movie reviews, we’ll be diving deep into the new release section looking for modern horror fare, hoping for the best, but frankly expecting the worst.*

Review by Bob Ignizio

Given his known love of classic horror films, not to mention his track record for making effective horror films of his own (CRONOS, THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE, PAN’S LABYRINTH), the prospect of filmmaker Guillermo del Toro putting his spin on a gothic horror/romance inspired by early Hammer films, Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, and Mario Bava’s color saturated sixties shockers is a tantalizing one.

The film in question is CRIMSON PEAK, in which heroine Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) falls for Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a charming aristocrat fallen on hard times. Along with his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain), Sir Thomas is doing everything he can to acquire the necessary cash to perfect an invention he believes will change their fortunes. To this end he goes before an investment group led by Edith’s father Carter (Jim Beaver), but the soft Englishman doesn’t impress these hardscrabble Americans who worked to get to where they are. Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam) provides the requisite love triangle as a longtime friend of Edith’s who gamely accepts that his puppy dog crush goes unreturned.

A Most Violent, and Stylish, Year

By Pamela Zoslov

J.C. Chandor's new thriller, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR, is set in New York City in 1981, a time when the city was gritty and the specter of crime was ever-present. It was also, says Cynthia Deering, owner of Deering Vintage, the city's leading destination for well-curated retro clothes, a revolutionary time for women's fashion.


“Minimalism was a shocking new concept,” Deering says. “The 'power suit' was just beginning to find its way into the wardrobes of the most confident women.”

A Most Violent Year

Review by Pamela Zoslov

J.C. Chandor is a filmmaker who seems to have something to say, but who says it in a remarkably inarticulate way. The ultimate expression of this was ALL IS LOST, Chandor's nearly wordless film that featured Robert Redford adrift in his sinking yacht. Tedious though it was, that film at least spared us the leaden dialogue that characterized his debut, MARGIN CALL, a would-be GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS about the financial industry.

Chandor's new film, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR, finds him again in the business world, this time 1981 New York City (Chandor is the son of an investment banker). At the center of the drama is Abel Morales, the ambitious Mexican-born head of a successful heating-oil business. Although he has the demeanor, pompadour, and expensive tailoring of a Mob boss, his ethics are impeccable. (Even his name – “morals” – reflects his probity and Chandor's literalness.) “I run a fair and clean business. I have never taken anything from everybody,” Morales asserts, though he seems to have purchased the business from the father of his Mob-connected wife Anna (Jessica Chastain), whose long, manicured talons look poised to draw blood. Anna keeps the books for the business, cooking them when necessary. She defends her husband as “an honorable man” but alternately calls him “a pussy” when he refuses to carry a gun.

Interstellar

Review by Matt Finley

When Christopher Nolan released INCEPTION in 2010 there was some rightful, if overblown, fervor around the fact that a studio had trusted a blockbuster director with an indie film ethos to realize his own multi-million-dollar vision. It was neither a comic book adaptation nor nostalgic remake nor by-committee studio script, and it totally crushed at the box office.

 Fast forward several years, and it turns out the film’s success wasn’t the game-changing industry bellwether some had hoped. Still, it got a lot of people very excited for Nolan's next original outing, and the potential of that future film to further nudge the line between boundary-pushing story concepts and crowd-pleasing action.

Mama

Review by Bob Ignizio

As a fan of horror, science fiction, and fantasy films, I realize that accepting a certain amount of pseudo-science, illogical human behavior, and flat-out nonsense in general goes with the territory. All I ask is that a film have some idea of what its tone is and a decent understanding of its own internal logic and rules. The more serious in tone and rooted in the real world a film tries to be, the more I'm going to hold it to those standards. That's why a film like THE HAUNTING (1963), which presents itself as a film that takes both its paranormal subject matter and human psychology fairly seriously, is held to a much higher standard than your average dead teenager movie. It might seem unfair, but for what it's worth THE HAUNTING passes with flying colors, while just about every FRIDAY THE 13TH film after the first two land somewhere between a C minus and an F on my scale, despite having the bar set much lower.

Zero Dark Thirty

Review by Bob Ignizio

ZERO DARK THIRTY tells the story of how the CIA found al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as a classic hero's tale. One exceptional individual, in this case Maya (Jessica Chastain), stands her ground and, when necessary, stands up to her superiors to insure that the job gets done. Sure, other people help along the way, and it's the Navy SEALs who ultimately take the bad guy out, but only because Maya stuck to her convictions.

Where facts are checkable to a reasonable degree of certainty, the movie appears to be truthful. Given the still top-secret nature of much of what went on, however, there's no way to say with any real certainty that THIS IS WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. After all, one doesn't have to be a conspiracy nut to recognize that the United States government isn't above massaging the truth in the interest of a compelling narrative (anyone remember Jessica Lynch?), and in Hollywood, playing fast and loose with the truth is just par for the course.

Lawless

Review by Bob Ignizio

LAWLESS tells the more or less true story of prohibition era moonshiners the Bondurant brothers: Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke), and Jack (Shia LeBouf). They're hardly the only ones in Franklin County, Virginia making and selling bootleg liquor, but they are the only ones who refuse to give a cut of their profits to the new Attorney General and his lackey, Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce). It doesn't take long for the feud between the two factions to turn violent, and Forrest winds up with his throat cut. Don't worry, he gets better.

Given the larger than life nature of these characters, it's hard for the film not to glamorize them. However, as was the case in THE PROPOSITION, director John Hillcoat's previous collaboration with screenwriter/composer Nick Cave, the violence these men do is presented in ugly, unflinching detail that makes it difficult to view anyone in the film as a hero. That said, this is nowhere near as bleak a film as THE PROPOSITION. In between throat-cuttings, castrations, and machine gun assassinations, LAWLESS actually has a considerable amount of humor. There's even a little romance, with Chicago expatriate Maggie (Jessica Chastain) doing her best to get the attention of the clueless Forrest. Meanwhile, Jack takes on the seemingly futile pursuit of courting Mennonite preacher's daughter Bertha (Mia Wasikowska).

Take Shelter (now available on home video)

[TAKE SHELTER is now available on home video.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

I first became aware of the excellent actor Michael Shannon in BUG, that was doomed by a misleading market campaign that made it appear to be a straight forward horror film instead of the psychological drama with horror elements that it was. TAKE SHELTER could almost be a companion piece to that film. It's quieter and more grounded in reality, but once again Shannon plays a man whose sanity is in question, and while by no means a horror film it does use some techniques of the genre.

Curtis (Shannon) is a hard-working regular guy who is either beginning to experience the onset of schizophrenia, an affliction that runs in his family, or having psychic flashes of a grim future where friends, neighbors and trusted pets attack like they're in a zombie movie and a storm rains brown water. Curtis recognizes that he may have an illness, but he has a hard time reaching out for help. Eventually he does see a psychiatrist, but to hedge his bets he begins taking precautions to protect his family – wife Samatha (Jessica Chastain) and hearing-impaired daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart). While caging up the lovable family dog and enlarging his backyard storm shelter seem reasonable actions to Curits, to everyone else he seems a little bit crazy. But what if he's right?