Carrie: Shallow But Overall Some Good Thrills

Director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry, Stop-Loss) remakes a film that might have better been left the horror icon it was meant to be.  While there are a few good moments and a better second half than first, the film still never quite does what it needs to do to justify its existence as the remake of a classic.

Premise: Outcast Carrie, tortured at the hands of zealot mother and cruel peers, realizes her telekinetic powers to disastrous ends. Result: An inconsistent remake with some good moments that just doesn’t quite do enough.

The film begins with one of the strangest scenes in cinematic history where Margaret White (Julianne Moore) is either possessed or giving birth to a child without the aid of anesthetics, medicine or in fact even another human being to support her.  It is somehow both chilling and confounding, delivering a sense something is wrong both with this woman and possibly with the director.

But the strangeness continues onward as we encounter the birthed babe as now young teen Carrie White (Chloë Grace Moretz), with all the awkwardness we would expect as the offspring of an insane, religious zealot mother who nearly murdered her at birth. Things get worse as audiences become acquainted with Carrie’s schoolmates in Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde), Chris Hargenson (Portia Doubleday), Tina (Zoë Belkin), Heather (Samantha Weinstein), Nicki (Karissa Strain) and a gaggle of others.

Dark Shadows: Some Fun, Some Strange, Mostly Mediocre

Collaborating once again with Johnny Depp and wife Helena Bonham Carter, Director Tim Burton has cultivated in Dark Shadows some unexpected results. The first half of the film is surprisingly fun, energizing and coherent, a feat thought largely impossible from the trailers alone.  However, this results in a downside as well: the success of the first half creates higher than average expectations for the latter and sadly, these expectations, victimized by plot incoherence and some shockingly poor decision making, are far from fulfilled.

Premise: Imprisoned by a jealous witch, vampire Barnabas Collins is set free and returns to his ancestral home, where his dysfunctional descendants are in need of his protection. Result: A film that starts out strong only to end at the bottom of a cinematic ravine.

Based on the cult-classic 60s television series, Dark Shadows spans several centuries to cover the afflicted life of a Mr. Barnabas Collins (Depp).  The heir to a Maine Seafood Fortune cultivated by the British Collins family, Barnabas grows up in Collinsport (named for the family) in an American castle, known as Collinwood, in the late Eighteenth Century. Everything works wonderfully for Barnabas until his affair with the lovely housemaid Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) is cut short by his failure to reciprocate her love.

To Barnabas’s great misfortune, Bouchard turns out to be a powerful witch and uses all sorts of sinister sorcery to not only murder his parents and his true love Josette (Bella Heathcote), but also turn him into a Vampire to prolong his suffering for all of time.  She then has the townspeople bury the creature, never to be heard from again.

Of course, he is heard from again when a construction team happens upon his coffin and unwittingly releases him (note to reader: should you ever stumble upon a coffin that not only has been chained closed but also happens to move violently, run, don’t walk, away). Here Burton does a wonderful job of balancing humor and horror: in one moment Collins is joking, in another he is killing a half dozen people, and then back to joking again.  The moods switch quite frequently but also deftly, keeping the audience invested despite the emotional roller coaster.

Collins then reports to Collinwood, now in ruins, to resume the life that had been stolen from him. Here he stumbles upon a ragged Elizabth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) who is the de facto head of the crumbling household.  Within the 1972 Collinwood dwell some of the more bizarre creatures Burton has coinsured (and this not including the witch or vampire.)

Brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) is half deadbeat dad and half petty thief, daughter Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz) who looks desperate to take a mouth full of high-Octane meds, nephew David (Gulliver McGrath), who is supposedly crazy for seeing visions of his dead mother, and Dr. Hoffman (Bonham Carter) who juggles caring for David’ psychosis and her own alcoholism. Of course, there is also the help, consisting of old lady mute-pants Mrs. Johnson (Ray Shirley), Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley) who seems to have just escaped from Shawshank Prison, and, of course, the new and not a minute too soon Governess Victoria Winters (also Heathcote).

Ultimately, the film follows several key storylines, some better than others.  At the forefront are Barnabas’ actions to turn Collinwood into an inhabitable castle once more and the business into the pride of their family.  This, of course, invites the ire of the villainous Bouchard who seeks to both destroy and (lovingly?) ensnare Barnabas.  There is, of course, the third plotline that reunites Barnabas with a supposed ancestor of his former love.  As these plots build, there is significant humor intermingled with trademark Burton darkness that makes the film both entertaining and exciting.

But as the film nears its second half, the novelty has largely worn off.  This is due to some mind-boggling errors from Burton and his team.  At first, there is only an inkling that the bright lights of this film are flickering: a few bad jokes here and there, but not enough to distract from what is going well.

However, then, like some sudden phantom, the calamity is upon the audience and the echoes of screeching wheels overwhelms.  Scene after scene becomes more absurd than the last; some moments are just silly, taking their tolls as the story builds, but some just come completely out of nowhere (why is there a werewolf?  Why the ghost screamer?) As the chaos subsides at film’s end, we are left with a resolution that is rushed, clumsy, unfunny, and disappointing.  Unacceptably, it appears somehow like Burton lost interest in the film by the mid-mark and was replaced by a local grade school prose assignment.

The acting in the film is strong, however.  Depp, as always, manages to make this character memorable, fully embodying the creature, letting himself seep into every pore.  While at times the character clearly becomes a bit absurd and the even annoying, this is mostly due to the script he had to work with than the delivery. Green is also quite strong as the villain, swinging like a pendulum from seductive to maniacal. Pfieiffer is also quite strong, perhaps the most consistent along with Depp, as a shrewd but tired matriarch, embodying loth, exhaustion, and creepiness.

Haley and Bonham Carter are additional treats in the film; Bonham Carter is awkward and eerie as always, embodying the true aesthetic her husband has cultivated so assiduously.  Haley, for his part, is ten parts creepy, twenty parts filthy, and all the rest pure comedy.  His glassy eyes and slack-jawed musings are comedic gold and help to keep some scenes moving that otherwise would have sat in squalor.

Overall, Dark Shadows exceeds only expectations that were painfully low to begin with.  The film is enjoyable for a significant amount of time, but ends poorly, ebbing from cringe-inducing to just plain boredom.  Nevertheless, Burton does manage to do enough with the film to keep Dark Shadows from being a failure.  Instead, the film is a fair representation of the series and an equally middle of the road entertainment experience. Considering the final scenes, this is quite the compliment.

Rating: 6 – A mediocre Prosecco that a cute bartender served you

Hugo: An Instant Classic and Deeply Moving Children’s Film Minus the Instant Classic and Deeply Moving

It would certainly be a shame to overlook the many positive features of Martin Scorsese’s first family feature film and 3D adventure.  Hugo is certainly beautiful and as a fable and minor parallel to the life Scorcese himself lived, it is a carefully crafted film with the genuine purpose of transporting audiences back to an easier time, where time passed more slowly, where clichés lived before they were clichés, and where audiences did not have such impossible expectations from their filmmakers, like being entertained.  With this film there can be much described as “magical” although in honest totality, the most magical aspect of this film is its incredible ability to make its two hour length feel like an utter eternity.

Premise: A 1930s orphan in Paris who lives in the walls of a train station follows a mystery to a strange conclusion. Result: A pretty but very boring film that tells a deeply familiar tale we didn’t really care much for the first fifty times.

Hugo is a film that follows the young protagonist Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), through a Dickensian journey of poverty and discovery.  An orphan after the death of his Father to a terrible museum fire, abandoned by his drunk Uncle, and now living within the walls of a Parisian train station, Hugo lives his life mainly for a mysterious automaton once discovered by his father in the depths of the museum. Having learned from his father about clockwork, he is skilled in slowly repairing the creepy robot by stealing small wires and coils and the like from unsuspecting merchants.

Of course, that all changes when Hugo is caught by the grouchy toy shop owner Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley) who catches him in the act and forces the boy to give up his most prized position, father’s notebook which held notes regarding the automaton.  Hugo is destroyed by the loss and virtually stalks Méliès, pleading for it and eventually submitting to the sour merchant’s service to secure its return. 

It is here that the story takes a strange turn.  We are introduced to Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), Méliès’ adoptive god-daughter who becomes fast friends with the boy.  Both teach each other about imagination and adventure, through books and film, and eventually try to tackle the mystery of the automaton which they soon realize is linked to Méliès.

The second half of the film drags a tad less than the first half as mysteries are uncovered.  Ultimately, the film is about imagination, dreams, beauty and how all of this comes alive in film.  There is a seductive beauty about the hope that lives within creativity and these creative forces are themselves endless and beautiful.

However, try as it might, this film has two fatal flaws: its major strengths are ultimately underwhelming and its drawbacks are excruciating.  The film is very pretty, with some beautiful shots of Paris and vast expanses or intricate golden metal work.  But even these images are not appealing enough both to have any lasting impact or to make up for a story that is woefully dull, relatively uneventful, and worse, uninventive. 

This film tries too hard at times and doesn’t try at all at others.  The first half of the film is a graveyard of lost expressions and blank stares often across rooms or other vast expanses, where nothing happens but the ticking away of time.  The pacing in Hugo completely distracts from the almost too tedious for words plot, slowing life to a crawl.  The purpose seems to be some attempt at artistic expression, to dramatize the moments so that no observer, no matter how young or simple, could possibly miss how important this story is. 

Worse still, there are countless subplots which are either unnecessary or completely incomprehensible.  While it can certainly be argued that the Rene Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg) character is central to the discovery in this film, its delivery is listless and the payoff is sadly both grandiose and tired simultaneously, a bizarre feat in itself.

But the remaining plots seem to have no purpose at all, other than to distract audiences from the  meandering storyline: first, we have the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) who is both a vile and love struck buffoon, in one moment unleashing horrible cruelty upon children and the next fawning over a beauty named Lisette (Emily Mortimer) desperately trying to tug at our heartstrings.  In either scenario he is a walking cliché with a limp and even Cohen’s amusing antics come off as tired and forgettable.

Then there is the bizarre, tangential courting between Madame Emilie (Frances de la Tour) and Monsieur Frick (Richard Griffiths) which appears to serve no purpose other than as minor slap stick and a way to introduce two cute dogs.  Worse still was the plotline involving Monsieur Labisse (Christopher Lee) whose entire purpose is unkown. He appears in various scenes as the eerie librarian who knows where every book in the world seems to be despite his own clear lack of organization and who appears in random scenes just in time to say something that feels like it should mean anything that ultimately doesn’t.  The greatest loss here might have been the scenes that were clearly edited out that would make his character make sense.

The acting in this film is typically over-the-top and sappy, often exaggerated for the purposes of staging an event that requires our attention.  But attention is what’s given with no such value being returned.  In fact, the most shocking moment in the film’s end may have been that the lead character actually bathed, no longer looking like a dime-store Oliver Twist who’s fallen in a poorly placed chimney.

Sadly, for a film that pretends to honor the medium, Hugo does nothing to further the cinematic cause. Instead, the film wanders off in various directions giving audiences mildly interesting events and a few tear-jerking moments, but nothing even remotely close to making this film the classic it so desperately wants to be.

Rating: 5 – A luke-warm Pinot Grigio