Thriller
Mr. Brooks
Kevin Costner plays Earl Brooks, a successful business man who’s just won a Man of the Year award, has a beautiful house, a great wife and a gorgeous daughter. Everything is perfect. Except Mr. Brooks has an addiction to killing and he’s constantly fighting temptation to give in. Two years have passed since his last kill and Marshall (who the hell is Marshall, you say!) thinks they deserve a treat.
Mr. Brooks is a great film that unashamedly revels in its subject and is darkly funny. It should easily appeal to Dexter fans being from the killers point of view and making the bastard likeable! But there’s no cosy way out here. Brooks will kill anyone he takes a fancy to. It’s Costner’s best role for years, easily, and he seems to have a lot of fun with it, letting his guard down to show Earl is, like any addict, prone to obsessive emotions; Marshall both tempts and calms him luckily. His double-act with William Hurt is a joy.
Hold on… I’ve gotten ahead of myself. A double-act? Two killers? No. This is Fight Club style, embodied conscience territory and it’s very well written. Marshall pops up at all sorts of awkward moments and Earl talks to him, though this is only for the viewers benefit as other characters don’t even suspect Earl may be barking. Repeat viewings should reveal all sorts about the character that is easy to miss first time around. It’s not so much a split personality as a partnership. They make independent decisions and congratulate each other, or argue. Marshall even comforts Earl in one moment and has a mardy fit in another! Of course, it’s all Earl which just makes the sick depths of his mind all the more fascinating.
His killings are meticulous and perfect down to the last detail. Well, they should be. He’s a little out of practice and a voyeur captures his endeavours on camera and blackmails him. But actually he just wants to join in. Marshall isn’t happy, but Earl has a plan. To further complicate matters, millionaire Det. Atwood (Demi Moore, actually quite good. I know, it’s just vulgar. “Demi Moore” and “good” in the same sentence) is getting closer to catching the notorious Thumbprint Killer (Brooks) through the same voyeur. Meanwhile an escaped convict is after her, while she’s dealing with a messy divorce.
Complicated? Not really, but the film does rather have a lot of plates to keep spinning. (And I haven’t even mentioned the daughter, dropping out of school because of a secret. Marshall thinks she’s lying… just how far does the secret go?). Towards the end all the threads crash together and annoyingly cripple the film for a good period of time. Thankfully the last act takes the threads and ties them up beautifully with much relish, so much so, you may find yourself cheering him on. Before you feel guilty, you’ll also be cheering for Atwood, who gives the film a good kick up the arse a couple of times, just as it becomes too much about Earl and Marshall. She has two major action sequences and they are very well staged, especially a gunfight neat the end.
I sat watching the entire thing with a huge grin. Highly recommended. It isn’t going to set the world on fire, but it has enough ideas to carve it’s own niche in a busy genre.
The R1 DVD has a DTS sound mix and for the most part, being a drama, there’s nothing to test your speakers. Except for the gunfight I mentioned which has incredible punch.
The Orphange (El Olfanato)
Laura (Belén Rueda) returns to the abandoned orphanage where she spent her childhood, intending to reopen it with her husband and young son, Simon. Simon has several imaginary friends, but are they so make-believe? Or in fact, former residents? Soon after, he disappears and in desperation Laura tries to believe in his stories in the hope they will lead her to him.
The Orphanage is a good old fashioned ghost story. Produced by Guillermo del Toro, this is a perfect companion to Pan’s Labyrinth or his earlier Devil’s Backbone. The story is detailed and in fact, director Juan Antonio Bayona spends as much time on the back story as on the scares, both combining to make one very memorable film. Nothing original really, but ghost films like this are few and far between, especially ones that get it so right.
It is frequently and genuinely scary, though not gory (except for one brief moment), relying instead on suggestion and sound. The DVD mix is superb with the creaky old building groaning so much you’ll think someone is crawling around your own house. As with a lot of stories of this type, it perhaps loses a little pace in the third act as it has to start to tie everything up, however, tie up it does and in the most beautiful fashion. Maybe you’ll guess the outcome, but you should still find it a moving conclusion. The story is clever enough to offer a variety of interpretations and as such I expect it will keep coming back to me. One scene in particular with the sinister, masked Tomas is very ambiguous. It’s got a great cast and Belén Rueda’s brilliant and intense performance as Laura unravels especially holds it all together.
Elegantly written and the photography is wonderful throughout varied weather and seasons. Inside, the house always seems warm, but with scary potential. That can’t have been straightforward because after all, for the story to work, we have to believe it can be a welcoming home for children, not just a hell mouth, so to speak. However, it is foreboding, especially in a greenish night vision sequence that will have you biting your finger nails down to nothing!
If you haven’t tried foreign films before, this and Del Toro’s others are an excellent place to start. Hollywood forgot how to make scary yet substantial films ages ago and so you’re selling yourself short by ignoring Spanish and Asian releases.
From Dusk Till Dawn
I love this movie. One of my favourite horrors when you need to see some straightforward balls-out vampire killing action!
I wish I could have seen it without knowing what it actually was, because the shock of the switch from thriller to horror would have been great fun. It’s great that Rodriguez put full effort into that first half to give us well rounded characters, because a problem with a lot of horror films is the thin characters. What’s also lacking is a sense of humour, but last section is full of laughs, especially Tom Savini trying to hide his new teeth! Or the vamp that disintegrates on a pool table and his eyes roll into the pockets!
Speaking of which, the gore never gets boring. So many gags, you could watch this several times and still see something new and disgusting. The script is fantastic, full of quotable lines, but you need a good cast to deliver it and this lot are dead-on. Even Tarantino, working to his, erm, strengths. Juliette Lewis I thought would be wrong, but she strikes a good tone between schoolgirl and temptress to Richie’s nightmare. Harvey Kietel is as dependable as ever and Clooney is obviously having a riot. Well, I say “obviously”, but the outtakes show him frequently pissed off and without his usual humour, so maybe it just proves what a good actor he actually is. And it does no harm to have room for cult favourites like the afore mentioned Tom Savini and Fred Williamson.
Everything oozes confidences in this movie. All the scenes have that little extra they didn’t actually need, but looks cool anyway. It will possibly always stand as Rodriguez’ best film because it’s the most perfect fit for his seat of the pants directing style and there aren’t many stories that can stand such a change in tone and still work fully committed to both styles.
“And I don’t want to hear anything about “I don’t believe in vampires” because I don’t believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what I saw is fucking vampires!”
