Monsters

Writer and director Gareth Edwards says that if Cloverfield is 9/11, then Monsters is five years into the war on terrorism and nobody cares anymore. Edwards’ comment is also apt because, while Cloverfield and Monsters are very different movies, there is a feeling they share, a commonality of how humans can be awed by forces beyond their control. Or perhaps it’s that we are overwhelmed trying to control forces beyond our control.

The premise of Monsters is that six years ago, NASA discovered “the possibility of alien life within our solar system.” The probe sent for samples breaks up over Mexico and shortly afterwards some rather strange and dangerous creatures began to appear. The northern half of Mexico is declared an Infected Zone. The military wages an ongoing battle to keep the creatures contained, but it seems that incursions outside the Zone are constantly being made and it may be a losing battle.

One of our “adventure holidays”

The cast consists of just two actors, Scoot McNairy as Andrew Kaulder and Whitney Able as Samantha Wynden. He is a photojournalist, desperate to shoot some actual alien action, rather than merely take pictures of day-old carnage. She’s the daughter of Andrew’s boss, a media tycoon, and Andrew must find a way to get her safely back to the U.S.

Andrew is not, at first, very likable. He’s cynical, driven, a bit desperate to make his name and make some money. Sam, on the other hand, is beautiful, bright, calm, a little lost, a little sad. The pair run up against a series of mishaps that ultimately means they have to traverse the Infected Zone by bus, truck and foot.

Along the way they meet an assortment of Mexican citizens and see a variety of military actions. The aliens are glimpsed — they appear to be gigantic octopi crossed with spiders, a huge bag-shaped head-body atop a thorax loaded with legs and tentacles — but as in many well-made monster movies, the full view of the creatures is saved for the climax of the film.

The kindness of the people along the route, Sam’s sweet-natured openness, Andrew’s hard-bitten façade; all are explored en route to the good ol’ U.S. of A. By the time the couple finally makes it to the small gap in the formidable border fence, they have grown close. But further surprises await them once they’ve returned to their own country.

Beyond the flash and dazzle

Your Humble Reviewer won’t give away any more of the story than that, but suffice to say this movie grabbed me and held on to the end. Monsters is one of the best movies, of any kind, made in the last few years.

The comparison with Cloverfield is certainly valid, but Monsters is deeper, a more complex take on a world that is stranger, more dangerous and certainly more wonderful than what went before. Cloverfield was all surface; Monsters digs deeper, uncovering the human stories that lie beneath the flash and dazzle of first, violent encounters. And, of course, the question of who the monsters of the title really are is a vexing one.

Another movie with which Monsters might be compared is District 9, the 2009 flick about ETs living in a South African slum. And that notion of extraterrestrials finding a place for themselves on Earth goes back further to 1988’s Alien Nation.

But Monsters is definitely its own movie. Imaginative, beautifully filmed, superbly acted, it will definitely make YHR’s list of the year’s best. Highly recommended./JE

DVD extras: Commentary track with Gareth Edwards, Whitney Able and Scoot McNairy; very short minidoc and a few deleted/extended scenes.

out of a possible five skulls.

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The Rite

Bill Maher, TV comic and well-known atheist, said of The Rite that he cannot be frightened by anyone he could escape by taking the stairs two at a time. Yes, Anthony Hopkins is in his 80s now, but he can still summon up enough bark to make the viewer fear his bite. (Though the old dude might lose a few teeth in the action.)

The Rite is about a young almost-priest named Michael Kovak, played by Colin O’Donoghue, who has pretty much lost his faith — if he ever had it at all. His father, played by Rutger Hauer, runs the family business, undertaking. Young Michael figures he can either go into his dad’s mortuary biz or become a priest. Kind of a narrow range of options he’s set himself.

No matter. He chooses the priesthood and graciously allows Holy Mother Church to put him through four years of university. When he sends a letter to his superior saying he’s going to bow out before taking the final step to priesthood, his superior blackmails him with the threat of having to pay back his “student loans,” amounting to $100,000. The alternative is for Michael to hightail it to Rome and learn all about exorcism.

The superior, played by the diminutive Toby Jones (Infamous and The Mist), claims that there is such a need for trained exorcists around the world that hundreds of thousands must be trained. At the same time, he acknowledges that the average age of nuns is very old. This all means that shortly we’re going to be inundated with demons — here, there and everywhere.

Devil-may-care attitude

Once in Rome, Michael starts his exorcism lessons. Also in the class is a beautiful young woman named Angeline, played by Alice Braga. She’s a reporter who wants to write about the growing use of exorcism.

Michael is also introduced to Father Lucas Trevant, played by the always entertaining Hopkins. The old man lives in a lonely, run-down old house with about a hundred cats. Father Lucas also treats the demon-afflicted in his sitting room. Among these victims is Rosaria, played by dark, wide-eyed Marta Gastini. Her story is interwoven with incidents from Michael’s life, confusing and spooking the young man.

When Rosaria’s young life comes to a bloody conclusion, there seems only one place for the offensive demon to go: into the saintly old priest himself. Now Michael and his gal-pal Angeline must exorcise Father Lucas — even though neither has experience at doing an exorcism and Michael isn’t even sure if he believes any of this supernatural rubbish.

Bring in the Campbell’s!

I’m with Michael on this one. While there are a couple of odd occurrences, for the most part everything that is displayed could be explained by mental illness. The possessed cought up long, nasty, old-fashioned nails (often in groups of three, reminding us of what happened to poor put-upon Jesus all those years ago), but there is none of that over-the-top demonic abandon demonstrated in The Exorcist.

The movie even makes fun of this fact. Old Father Lucas asks Michael: “What were you expecting? Spinning heads and pea soup?” Maybe not expecting it, but something a tad more interesting than veiny makeup and gravelly voices would have been welcome.

The Rite manages to conjure up a few scares, but they are rather small and weak. When Michael finally bests the demon, forcing it to reveal that it is the powerful Baal, all the young pseudo-priest does is kick him out. Seems to me that could have been some of the most interesting stuff for a movie on this topic. Alas, it is a movie of let-downs and anti-climax.

Let’s also just mention that this is yet another of those demonic-possession movies in which the Roman Catholic Church is shown to be the one-and-only church that has got the answers. No Baptist, Buddhist or Brahmin is going to help in this situation; demons of Hell only answer to Jesus and family.

Your Humble Reviewer would recommend this movie to fans of Hopkins and those who don’t want to see a barrage of gross, over-the-top imagery. This is demonic possession for gentlemen and ladies, and not the usual bloodthirsty crowd./JE

out of a possible five skulls.

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A Perfect Getaway

The old twist ending is pretty hard to pull off. The author O. Henry could do it. The television pioneer Rod Serling could do it. M. Night Shyamalan could do it, at least for a while. But for most movie-makers, it’s a difficult thing to do successfully.

Writer and director David Twohy manages to pull an almost perfect example of the twist ending in his 2009 movie A Perfect Getaway. It’s an entertaining, almost letter-perfect example of how enjoyable a well-done surprise can be for the movie-going public.

The cast is good, with Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich playing a city-type couple who are on a honeymoon trip to the wilds of Hawaii. Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez (recently booed by Your Humble Reviewer for her mediocrity in 30 Days of Night: Dark Days) are both excellent. In fact, Olyphant once again proved to YHR that he is one of the most enjoyable actors to watch working these days. He was excellent as the sheriff in The Crazies and YHR has been a fan since his pitch-perfect work in Deadwood. (How could the creator leave that series in the state in which it was left?)

Is that a real pupu platter?

The plot of A Perfect Getaway has to do with Zahn and Jovovich as newlyweds in Hawaii. They are looking to get away (get it?) from the main roads and have a little adventure in the land of flower necklaces and pupu platters. However, they find themselves running into a few rednecks along the way.

Without blowing the surprise, our heroic couple find themselves stuck not just with a couple that sees nothing wrong with butchering fresh meat as one camps along the beach, but a former super-soldier who points out that the back of his skull had to be replaced with a metal plate because most of his skull was blasted away in Iraq. Your Humble Reviewer has to admit… he hates when that happens.

Dim-witted set-up for twist

All the actors do a good job in A Perfect Getaway, with Steve Zahn doing his best as the generally useless dude, a comic specialty of his. He’s surprisingly good in this flick, as is Olyphant. The latter definitely has something more to offer than the usual pretty-boy good looks; the weird depths of his characters should alert viewers to his worthy depths as an actor.

Jovovich is good, though that term is relative with her. At her best (arguably 1997’s The Fifth Element), she is touching. At her usual, she is fine (most everything else).

Kiele Sanchez is very good as a seemingly nitwitted, southern dunderpate who has more to her character than anyone might suspect. She is probably the biggest surprise in this entire flick.

A Perfect Getaway is not perfect, but it’s definitely worth a couple of hours./JE

DVD extras: The disc contains an Unrated Director’s Cut that is 10 minutes longer than the theatrical release. That’s about it.

out of a possible five skulls.

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Carriers

Before the remade version of Star Trek, which was a fun and wild ride, Chris Pine was a big unknown — at least to Your Humble Reviewer. However, after Star Trek was released, anything with Chris Pine would be financially worth releasing on DVD.

Fans of the handsome actor need not worry about wasting their time on Carriers, a 2009 release written and directed by Alex Pastor and David Pastor. This is a very good pseudo-zombie movie, more along the lines of 28 Days Later than any Romero flick.

Something terrible has happened in the world and after all the cities have fallen to deadly plague and the majority of humans have turned into either corpses or the infected, one knot of survivors is attempting to find a future that is not entirely pointless. The big problem seems to be that nobody will stick to the few rules of survival necessary in this ghastly future.

Hard decisions must be made

Lou Taylor Pucci plays Danny Green, a young man who is remarkably uncynical after seeing most of his world destroyed by a ghastly plague. His brother Brian, played by Pine, is a little more hard-edged, significantly tougher and willing to make the hard decisions that will keep them alive.

Piper Perabo is Brian’s girlfriend and has made it some months as the Green brothers stick to their survival rules. Emily VanCamp is Kate, the fourth member of the party, and another realistic individual. While she is close to Danny, they are not linked romantically and thus linked more realistically.

There are scenes in which couples are torn apart for sheer survival reasons. The emotions on show seem realistic and their actions never arbitrary or scripted. Carriers is a good movie, in all senses of the word.

Authentic hopelessness

Your Humble Reviewer has stated earlier (please read the review) that he is a big fan of The Road. Carriers manages to get that sense of hopelessness and, yes, realism across in a way that several movie ripoffs of The Road have failed to do. The Book of Eli, for example, is a cheesy piece of crap in comparison with either of these flicks. YHR hates to make a generalization about any performer, but why is Denzel Washington ranked so highly as an actor? Did no one else see John Q? Wow, what a stinker. I think he’s a risk, as inconsistent in his quality as any actor YHR can think of.

Carriers is worth checking out, so long as the viewer isn’t simply looking for an action flick. The pace is a little slow, but the payoff is well worth the time involved. Recommended./JE

DVD extras: zip.

out of a possible five skulls.

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30 Days of Night: Dark Days

The first movie in the 30 Days of Night series (we might be facing such a cinematic disaster) was okay, but nothing special. Josh Hartnett, never one of the brightest looking or seeming actors in Hollywood, plays a sheriff in a small Alaskan town that is about to drop into a month of darkness. Coming over the horizon is a pack of hungry vampires, led by the usually extraordinary Danny Huston. Seems the vamps have figured out a way to finally take advantage of the inequity in the Earth’s spin and decided to chow down on some far-northern meatwads.

The first flick was a good idea executed with a small amount of style and a few pretty good actors. In addition to Huston, Ben Foster played the bloodsuckers’ minion; Your Humble Reviewer has been a fan of Foster since he played a half-managed psycho on Six Feet Under.

As well, Melissa George played Hartnett’s estranged wife, Stella, in the original and she was fine. Unfortunately, just about everything in the sequel is lame, including the choice of Kiele Sanchez in the continuing role of Stella, the main character in 30 Days of Night: Dark Days.

More predictable, less interesting

Barrow, Alaska, in the far, frozen north is the plot device that allowed the original to exist. The sequel chooses to leave the Arctic Circle and, though occasionally threatening to return to Barrow, stays in the warmer parts of the U.S. The movie mostly takes place in Los Angeles. How convenient.

Sanchez, as mentioned, is the lead in 30 Days 2, and she’s such a two-dimensional version of the previously fleshed-out Stella that the whole movie feels like an afterthought, a sketch of a sequel. There is more obvious, overt violence in this sequel, more scenes in which the audience has a large opportunity to realize what’s coming; so much so that it all feels phony.

Even the reliable Harold Perrineau (Michael from one of YHR’s fave-rave TV series, Lost) is wasted in this misery. Luckily for Harold — and his career — his character dies pretty early on during the sub-PC-game plot, so he cannot be blamed for much.

More like a day and a half of night

Your Humble Reviewer must remain open-minded when watching any movie, whether on the silver screen, DVD or a really good description from a demented fan. But after gleaning personal, concrete insights into a movie, all bets are off. 30 Days of Night: Dark Days is such a lamoid ripoff of the original that it is hardly recognizable as a sequel.

Wouldn’t it seem to any semi-rational filmmaker that keeping the concept of the “30 days of night” would be a minimum for making a sequel that specifically says in the title 30 Days of Night? That is how much respect the nitwits who made the sequel have for the original.

Surprisingly, the sequel was at least partly written by Steve Niles, who not only had a major hand in the original screenplay but also co-wrote the comic books on which the series is based. YHR suspects that money might be at the root of this crappy sequel. No big surprise, really. That’s Hollywood./JE

DVD extras: Director’s commentary, making-of doc.

out of a possible five skulls.

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