A few movies to catch up on tonight, two of which happen to star Amanda Seyfried. Chloe is Atom Egoyan’s interesting tale of a middle-aged couple (Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore) who have a comfortable life and a lovely home shared with their teenaged son. Moore suspects that Neeson, a college professor, has been conducting an affair or two with his students. She notices a young prostitute (Seyfried) working near her office and, figuring that her husband would be attracted to her youth, concocts a plan to have the prostitute “accidentally” meet him and gauge his capacity for infidelity.
I’m not sure what most viewers would think of such a plan. As someone who believes in flexible relationships and honesty between partners, I figured it would end badly, and of course it does. I did appreciate that Egoyan’s script is complex enough that it does not demonize the prostitute, even as the relationship between the two women gets a lot more intimate. I did not always care for where the plot wanted to take me – especially in the end – but the actors did well with what they were given. Like some of his other films, Egoyan mixes eroticism with an examination of the moments in relationships that are rarely discussed.
Gone, on the other hand, is a by-the-numbers revenge picture where Seyfried is given a second chance to confront her kidnapper when he returns and takes her sister instead. She tries to tell the police, but they do not believe her, nor do they believe that she was ever kidnapped, due to lack of evidence. So, the film chiefly consists of her doggedly pursuing one slender clue after another, occasionally doubting her own sanity, but generally focused on revenge.
The Chernobyl Diaries was a surprisingly effective horror film set (of course) in the abandoned city adjacent to what remains of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which had a catastrophic meltdown over 25 years ago. Four young Americans and a couple of other tourists hire a Russian called Uri to take them there on what he promises to be a unique opportunity: to walk through the buildings of a place that had to be abandoned immediately. When they arrive at a security checkpoint, Uri is surprised that the guards refuse them entry, so he offers to take them in through a back road.
The tour proceeds as advertised; Uri parks his van in the town square and they walk through an apartment building, viewing the ruined power station from a balcony. Uri explains that the radiation levels are safe as long as they do not stay long and as long as they do not go close to the plant. When they return to the van and discover their distributor cap severed, you can imagine how things start to go terribly wrong.
The Chernobyl Diaries is not a great film but it is far better than I expected, especially in the first two thirds when the cast is still making their way through a creepy foreign landscape. I was not as enthusiastic about the nature of what terrorizes them, but it was appropriate enough given the setup. It felt like a bit of a wasted opportunity in the end.
The Woman in Black is probably best known for being Daniel Radcliffe’s first film after Harry Potter, and he is suitably serious as a young widower and father tasked with sorting through the estate of a house off the shore of a decidedly cursed English village. The house is haunted by the woman in black, who hung herself after her young son drowned in the nearby marsh due to the someone else’s negligence. Now, whenever the local children die – which is often – she can be seen in the background, driving them to do it.
Plotwise, The Woman in Black mixes both standard ghost story tropes with more contemporary ideas about how (and if) the ghost can be placated. The art direction is the true star here, not quite reaching the level of Alajandro Amenabar’s The Others but definitely in the same ballpark. Amusingly, this big-screen version shares the same source novel as a 1989 TV-movie starring Adrian Rawlins, who also played James Potter. From what I recall of the TV version, this new version is significantly darker.
Yikes, three weeks since my last post. It’s been a busy time, primarily concerned with the birthdays of the two people I love most in the world (Jack turning 10 and Nicole turning 25), driving up to Kingston, and driving back with Nicole and the cats. As I write this we are one small happy family together under one roof for the summer, with regular visits to and from Jack. I like traveling, and enjoyed the trains to Kingston, but I am glad to have the break. Regular relationship commuting resumes in September.
This review is of course about the Marvel movie directed by Joss Whedon, not the much less interesting adaptation of the classic British series about John Steed and Mrs. Peel. Though it would be fun to see Whedon try his hand at that too.
I finally got around to watching this charming ghost story by writer/director Ti West, whose Cabin Fever 2 was a surprisingly good reframing of Eli Roth’s original. The Innkeepers is the story of Claire and Luke (Sara Paxton and Pat Healy), two young people in charge of an old small town inn on its last weekend of operation. The inn is vacant apart from a visiting actress (Kelly McGillis), a newly separated mother with her son, and a 19th century ghost that Luke swears to have seen once and is now trying to capture on audio. Claire offers to help, carrying his tape recorder and microphone through the deserted rooms while he sleeps during her part of the overnight shift.
I did not expect much from this film – the trailer makes it look pretty awful – but as it went through its rather predictable motions I did find myself warming to the combination of John Cusack’s way-serious Edgar Allan Poe and director James McTeigue’s vision of 19th century Baltimore. Luke Evans, Alice Eve, and Brendan Gleeson do a nice job of holding the center while Cusack runs around and chews the scenery.
This is a pretty charming film from one of the great independent animation houses – Aardman, home to Wallace and Gromit and famous for using stop-motion and claymation for feature-length features and Oscar-winning shorts. They also do the occasional CG project, like Flushed Away and the extremely enjoyable Arthur Christmas. All of their films are characterized by a definite English sensibility and gentle good humour combined with a lot of sight gags. Hugh Grant and Martin Freeman lead the voice cast, with Grant a natural for the conflicted, sensitive Pirate Captain.
