GERALD'S GAME (2017) - Review

Gerald's Game

Horror/Thriller
1 hour and 43 minutes
Rated: TV-MA

Written by: Jeff Howard & Mike Flanagan
Directed by: Mike Flanagan
Produced by: Trevor Macy & Melinda Nishioka

Cast:
Carla Cugino
Bruce Greenwood

Some games you play. Some you survive.

Netflix has become quite the alternative when it comes to network television over the past several years, producing hit shows like House of Cards, Narcos, and Orange is the New Black. But it is only been recently that they have been daring to try their hand in the world of cinema. And why not? Made-for-TV movies have been a thing since, well, since television was invented. Although the majority of their film content has been booed by cinema purists (quite literally, they were booed at Cannes this year), the dismissal of their original films seems to be a slippery slope that is one that serves no merit whatsoever. Why not assess their films on a case by case basis as one does for films at the cinema?

With a renewed resurgence in Stephen King adaptations: both The Dark Tower and IT saw adaptations released this year, as well as a made-for-TV re-adaptation of The Mist, and soon re-imaginings of Salem's Lot, Pet Sematary, and The Stand are due to come our way, it only makes sense the Netflix would want to grab ahold of some of one of the most popular writer in the world's content to make their own contributions to the mix. Gerald's Game, King's 1992 psychological horror novel, may have seemed like an odd choice for them to make. With a plot consisting of a protagonist confined virtually to one spot for the entirety of the story, alone and isolated, one might have written it off as an un-filmable project and as something that exists brilliantly and purely in the medium of literature. So how does Mike Flanagan's adaptation stand up?

The storyline itself, is brilliant. Flanagan makes the wise decision to follow the events of the Stephen King novel nearly verbatim - unlike some other King adaptations that have come out this year - only excluding minor elements and changing a few details in order to fit time and visual constraints that the medium adheres to. By doing this, Flanagan respectfully recognizes the elements that made this story one of the most frightening ever told by the master of the macabre. The changes also allow for the film's two lead actors to really be front and center and shine through for its entirety.

And shine they do. Carla Cugino and Bruce Greenwood are perhaps some of the most under appreciated talents working in cinema today. Both are recognizable and have made appearances in countless popular movies, but neither has achieved the profound recognition that they deserve. Their performances in Gerald's Game solidify this shameful fact. Greenwood, for starters, plays a rather unsympathetic and overtly misogynistic Gerald - the kind that was present in King's book. The difference is here, director Flanagan has made the decision to include Gerald's voice and presence throughout. He functions as both id and the ego of thought during the mind's most panicked and desperate of situations. Cugino similarly functions as the super-ego, counteracting and reminding one of the observable information, while also playing all three - struggling for her life, chained to a bed, desperate for an out. These two titans of actors contribute to the film's thrilling and horrific storyline, really amping up the tension, sympathy, and horror in the places that demand it.

Despite being a made-for-TV movie, Gerald's Game is shot gorgeously. There are certain sequences that are stunning to behold in both beauty and horror - often times both simultaneously. Cinematographer Michael Fimognari does a brilliant job in utilizing shots and lighting especially to play with the expectations of the audience and put them into the mindset of the film's protagonist. Is what we are seeing reality, or merely a panic-induced nightmare of horror? This similarly reflects the tone that was present throughout King's novel. Perhaps the only faux pas regarding the film's technical end would be a sequence near the film's beginning where the clear shadow of a person can be seen when it was clearly not meant to be seen. More than likely, this indivudal was a crewmember who unfortunately stood in front of a light source, saw they had done just that, and moved out of the way. While this is clearly an embarrassing mistake, it does not detract from the overall viewing experience due to its brevity, and if one were to really press their luck - they may try to argue that this clear mistake only adds to the overall tone that the film presses, that being the mindset of a woman gripping onto sanity as it slips away from her. Still, one has to wonder how an overt mistake like that was not caught by Flanagan, who also served as the film's editor.

The film's effects work are equally terrific. An eclipse darkened memory plays out with all the surreal qualities of a bad dream. A gory and intense climax is shown in all its bloody and beautiful glory. And of course, the film's antagonist, stands out like the most terrifying vision one has ever had in nightmares. To the big budgeted studio horror movies, and even the indie horror movies, who have relied too heavily on CGI over the past two decades or so, take note. Gerald's Game showcases how to make a terrifying and thrilling horror film with a storyline grounded in reality that largely utilizes practical effects.

With an incredible cast delivering some of the best - if not the best - performances of their entire careers, a frightening and intense storyline that adheres closely to the original source material, and a reliance upon believable and shocking effects work, Gerald's Game triumphs over its made-for-TV stigma by being an absolutely brilliant film. Even despite one glaringly stupid faux pas.

9/10

MASSACRE TIME (1966) - Review

Massacre Time

Western
1 hour and 32 minutes
Rated: M

Written by: Fernando Di Leo
Directed by: Lucio Fulci
Produced by: Oreste Coltellacci

Cast:
Franco Nero
George Hilton
Nino Castelnuovo

THE MASSACRE MEN - They carry their hate in their holsters and a name on every bullet in their belts...

Before Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci earned his notoriety as The Godfather of Gore with such brutal flicks as Zombie, City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, and The House by the Cemetery, he made a name for himself like every other filmmaker by directing whatever scripts were to come his way - effectively making him a gun for hire. Massacre Time, the first of Fulci's three spaghetti westerns, came about in this exact fashion. The mid-1960s saw a large demand for these Italian-helmed westerns given the major success of Sergio Leone's films in the United States and abroad, as well as Sergio Corbucci's films in the European and Japanese markets. Fulci, a virtually relatively unknown filmmaker both inside and outside of Italy at this time, decided it best to try his hand at helming one of these iconic genre pictures before the boom completely fizzled out. Thus, Massacre Time.

The film is pretty run-of-the-mill with its storyline regarding a hero who has since moved away from his hometown to make a living for himself only to be called back home again to find the town he once knew and loved in a state of disarray at the hands of a tyrannical, wealthy landlord. In this sense, Massacre Time presents nothing new with its story, but given its budgetary and schedule limitations, one can see why screenwriter Fernando Di Leo chose to play it safe and keep the story in line with most other westerns of this and previous eras. Massacre Time's story does try new and inventive tricks regarding the relationship dynamics between its main characters, connecting them more on a personal level than most other westerns of this or previous eras, which allows for some really engaging depth and some genuinely surprising twists that lighten up its otherwise by-the-books story.

Fulci utilizes the film's simplicity to try new and engaging techniques that would ultimately pay off more brilliantly in his later films. For starters, the effects work within Massacre Time is largely impressive and it's truly surprising to see bodies riddled with bloodied bullet holes in an era where within most westerns men just fell to the ground to symbolize they had been shot, despite the lack of blood being a screaming cry to the contrary. A prolonged fight sequence between the film's protagonist and antagonist involving whips instead of fists or pistols is something new altogether to behold, and seeing the lash marks appear on the hero's face does seem all the more gruesome given the film's age. Fulci would go on to continue his fascination with whippings in his films Don't Torture a Duckling and The Beyond - in both cases, utilizes metal chains to really up the gore-ante. But seeing this violent precursor to The Godfather's later best remembered effects works proves to be all the more enjoyable with all of this in mind.

Overall, the fight sequences in Massacre Time are impressive. We don't get the drawn out standoffs of Leone, but what we do see are genuine massacres. In most cases where characters fire off their weapons, a minimum of three bodies will hit the ground. Fulci may not be presenting creative or mentally stimulating work with his gunfights, but given their ambitious and grand scale they become all the more engaging and entertaining to watch play out.

The film's score by Lallo Gori is outstanding and is quite honestly on par with some of the best musical scores from within this same genre. If you were to play Gori's score along with some of Ennio Morricone's most recognizable scores from Leone's spaghetti westerns, one might even believe the two pieces to be composed by the same man. Does that make Gori's score derivative? No, but it undeniably is trying to align itself with the more successful score in the way that Massacre Time as a whole is attempting to align itself with more profitable films. Cinematographer Riccardo Pallottini captures the rugged landscapes with enough capability for the audience to buy into the atmosphere of the movie, and editor Ornella Micheli paces the film terrifically - although since its original release Massacre Time has been cut, stitched together, recut, and then fixed again dozens of times so that it becomes questionable upon viewing the film now as to how much one is seeing is Micheli actually responsible for.

Having been released on the heels of Sergio Corbucci's enormously successful spaghetti western Django, Fulci took full advantage of casting Franco Nero, Django himself, as his hero for his first spaghetti western. Nero handles the role competently, and it is a wonder why the man's career never really blew up into the international superstardom it deserved. While the character of Tom Corbett is nowhere near as engaging or as memorable as Django, Nero's talent carries the character far enough for us to be engaged with him during the course of the film. The movie's two standout performances, however, belong to George Hilton - as the alcoholic brother of Nero's Corbett - and Nino Castelnuovo as the film's psychotic, and possibly incestuous, antagonist. Hilton provides Massacre Time with enough charm and humor to keep the movie engaging despite moments where its uninspired storyline is handled rather poorly. For example, many of the film's big surprises and twists are spoon fed to the audience within the last fifteen to twenty minutes. Hilton's screen presence also becomes larger - luckily or coincidentally enough - during this same time. It's a credit to Lucio Fulci that he could see that it was Hilton's character and talent, not Nero's, that would be the saving grace of this film and by allowing Hilton to really shine and get into his role, Fulci showed like all great directors he could make the best out of not much at all. With his performance as the evil Junior, Castelnuovo leaves an eerie and unclean feeling under the viewer's skin, despite his prim and proper bourgeois appearance throughout the movie. With the exception of some sweat and of course blood at the film's climax, Castelnuovo never manages to get a shroud of dust on his fancy white suit, thus adding to the weird and bizarre allure of his character.

While it may not be Lucio Fulci's best movie - or even his best spaghetti western for that matter - Massacre Time is a profoundly fun and entertaining movie that overcomes a great number of its shortcomings, particularly its uncreative storyline, through its use of talented actors delivering engaging performances, grand action sequences, competent cinematographer, a truly incredible score, and an overall brilliant sense of direction from a man who was, and sadly still is, one of Italy's most under appreciated talents.

6.5/10

IT (2017) - Review

It

Drama/Horror
2 hours and 15 minutes
Rated: R

Written by: Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman
Directed by: Andy Muschietti
Produced by: Seth Grahame-Smith, David Katzenberg, Roy Lee, Dan Lin, and Barbara Muschietti

Cast:
Jaeden Lieberher
Jeremy Ray Taylor
Sophia Lillis
Finn Wolfhard
Chosen Jacobs
Jack Dylan Grazer
Wyatt Oleff
Bill Skarsgård

You'll float too.

Twenty-seven years ago, Halloween III: Season of the Witch director Tommy Lee Wallace gave audiences the very first onscreen adaptation of Stephen King's gargantuan novel It by way of a two-part miniseries on the ABC network. The miniseries was deeply flawed and strayed in a number of ways from the source material, but with its inclusion of an iconic performance of Tim Curry as Pennywise the Dancing Clown and with the fact that so many kids and adolescents saw the miniseries when it aired - Wallace's adaptation has since gone on to develop a cult following (not unlike his entry in the Halloween franchise). With the return of the creature occurring every twenty-seven years, now in 2017 it only made sense for money-hungry producers to consider readapting King's grand novel, but this time for the cinema. And why not? As stated, Wallace's miniseries was flawed in major ways. This time, it seemed, audiences would be given a much truer adaptation of King's novel based on what was seen in trailers and discussed in interviews. So how did they do?

The story only follows the heroes, the Losers' Club, as they are children, ignoring the events of the novel where these characters are adults since that storyline will be developed later into a second It film. This was admittedly not a bad decision since the cinematic medium wouldn't be able to encapsulate the story of King's novel in its entirety without being well over six hours in length (a rough but probably honest estimate). The kids' storyline has been transposed from the original setting of the 1950s to the late-1980s. This is of course so that the producers and director Andy Muschietti can set the second film in the present day. This transposition of decades in no way affects the storyline in any damning or compelling way. Conversations of rock and roll that were present within the book have now been shifted to other music relevant to the era such as one character's secret obsession with the band New Kids On the Block. Again, the creative choice in the end perhaps only serves as a benefit to make the film relatable to audience members who also grew up in the late-1980s.

The film is photographed by cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung who does an intriguing job of casting an overall sense of darkness throughout the film. Moments set during daylight seem to have a desaturation about them, voiding the image of a great deal of its vibrancy. And sequences shot in the dark are dismally bleak and gray, giving the image a washed-out quality entirely. While this may take the eyes a second to adjust to, it's an effective way to shoot the film considering that the fictional town of Derry, which the film is set in, is meant to always have this cloud of dread hanging over it created by the creature that is Pennywise. By removing the brightness completely from the images, Chung has captured that cloud magnificently through the captured images on the screen.

The performances within It are the film's real show stoppers. The members of the Losers' Club do a great job with the material at hand and in many ways do capture the characters that King had initially put down on the page. Obviously the biggest standout, however, is Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. What Skarsgård manages to do with the role hits so much closer to what was on the page than what Tim Curry had done with it. That's not to write off Curry's performance in anyway, but in moments where Curry went for the silly and over-the-top stylings he is known best for, Skarsgård restrains himself. His Pennywise comes across very childlike with its one track mind, and yet one always sees the heart of the monster lurking behind his wandering eyes, waiting for its moment to strike and kill. The sequence occurring within the first ten minutes between Skarsgård and Jackson Robert Scott is unnervingly terrifying. Skarsgård conveys more through his eyes and drooling lips alone than most actors can deliver in a full bodied performance and it is truly a wonder to see.

All of this considered, It - like its 1990 made-for-television predecessor - is an enormously flawed movie. The previously mentioned sequence between Skarsgård and Scott is undermined by a particularly hokey use of CGI. Unfortunately, many - if not most - of the scare moments throughout the movie are undermined by the rubbery CGI utilized to capture them. This is problematic because knowing this monster is a shapeshifter means there understandably had to be moments within the film where CGI came into play, but the movie relies on it too heavily throughout and it becomes more of a distraction than a tool to aid in the fear. Perhaps someone should have showed director Andy Muschietti John Carpenter's The Thing so that he could have seen that it is entirely possible to make a great and terrifying movie about a shapeshifting creature effectively through practical effects work instead of CGI.

But It's biggest and most damning problem comes out of its direction. Muschietti has ultimately traded character development for scares. The film follows the formula of a few minutes of dialogue, then a scare sequence, then a few more minutes of dialogue, and a new scare sequence, all the way until the film's big confrontation between the Losers and Pennywise in the third act. This is a problem because we lose moments where character development really could have helped this movie shine. With King's novel clocking in at nearly 1200 pages in length, it makes sense to cut much of the character development, but not all of it entirely. The bully character Henry Bowers's rage at the Losers is something that could have easily been explained in a sentence of dialogue, but it is gone entirely from this movie. Certain Loser's backstories are either entirely gone too, are mixed together with the stories of other characters present in King's novel, or are handled so briskly that we barely get a chance to learn who our heroes are. This doesn't allow us as an audience to connect to all seven of these heroes the way that we should to really genuinely care or believe in them by the film's climax. By adding a rift in the group in the film's second act, Muschietti isn't doing anything to help the storyline either. In King's novel these were characters who would die for one another if it came to such drastic means. In Muschietti's film, one doesn't get the impression that that is the case.

By trading character development for scares, Muschietti creates another problem as well. It's monster movie textbook 101 to show as little of the monster as possible, leaving much to the imagination of the film's audience. Muschietti doesn't do that. In almost every scare sequence, Skarsgård shows up in his Pennywise attire. While his acting allows this to be frightening for the first several of these moments, before the movie has even reached its halfway mark, the audience has seen Pennywise so much he has lost nearly all of the frightening mystery that was present in the very first sequence. The film's final confrontation between Pennywise and the Losers suffers the hardest from all of this. It's hard to care about the Losers because we haven't spent enough time with them and their stories to develop the necessary level of interest, and it's hard to be intimidated by Pennywise because we've seen so much of him throughout the movie, leading to some painfully bad, if not unintentionally laughable, moments in what is meant to be the film's epic confrontation of a climax.

Despite its amazing performances and its dreary cinematography, It is a film that ultimately suffers from its directorial choices to trade character development for scare sequences. With the continual use of blatantly distracting CGI and the ever damning decision to show the monster at every scare, the movie fails to live up to both the hype it generated prior to its release, as well as King's masterwork novel.

4.5/10

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (1965) - Review

Planet of the Vampires

Horror/Sci-Fi
1 hour and 28 minutes
Rating: Unrated

Written by: Mario Bava, Alberto Bevilacqua, Callisto Cosulich, Antonio Román, Rafael J. Salvia, Ib Melchior, and Louis M. Heyward
Directed by: Mario Bava
Produced by: Fulvio Lucisano

Cast:
Barry Sullivan
Norma Bengell

This was the day the universe trembled before demon forces of the killer planet!

Normally when the list of writing credits for a single motion-picture reads off like an endless list of nobodies (save for perhaps the director who - let's face it - if you're going to have that many writers you might as well throw in the director of the film for good measure too) it is usually safe to assume that the movie is going to be riddled with problems and pocketed with an unearthly number of plot holes. While nine times out of ten this is the case, every so often there comes a movie that challenges this cinematic stereotype that more writers equals more problems. Such is the case with Mario Bava's 1965 horror/science-fiction hybrid: Planet of the Vampires.

Like most of Bava's films, Planet of the Vampires focused largely on the relationships between the characters and how those particular relationships ebbed and flowed once the characters were placed within a horrible situation where they either inevitably panicked and lost all control of themselves, thus putting everyone in terrible danger, or rose to the challenge and faced the darkness head on. In no way was this setup any different from Bava's more famous gialli films like The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace, nor was it different from his gothic horror films Black Sunday, The Whip and the Body, and Black Sabbath. Bava's talent as an auteur filmmaker was largely in his ability to understand and explore human nature enough to know how it would work, or fail to work, and comprehend horrific situations.

Within Planet of the Vampires, the astronaut heroes must comprehend forces that are much beyond their comprehension. How do they achieve such a feat? Well, it is a horror film, after all, so obviously some do not and perish. But others quickly learn that the fastest way to stay alive in an alien and hostile situation is to accept the facts that their eyes have placed before them, no matter how incomprehensible that task may seem. It is this exploration of human character and interaction during moments of peril that makes Planet of the Vampires really a much more triumphant and intelligent film than its no-budget or B movie title suggests it to be.

Equally as impressive as the story's character interactions are the film's sets. Bava, yet again, manages to create a great deal of something out of nothing, making a few cardboard and fiberglass rocks look like an entire, desolate alien planet simply through smoke and mirror tactics and his now famously disorienting kaleidoscopic light schemes. The interiors of the spacecrafts, while at times feeling a bit too 1960s Star Trek-y in nature, do in the end come across as also being impressive mainly for the same reasons. Bava, the special effects genius that he was, managed to make the interiors of the spacecrafts feel cavernous and enormous in size, when perhaps really they were only a series of one or more rooms with interchangeable walls and parts. Cinematographer Antonio Rinaldi (although it is also stated that Bava did much of the filming himself) captures these landscapes under dark and ominous lighting that is both eerie and, as stated before, kaleidoscopic in quality. No director (with the exception of Bava's predecessor Dario Argento) has ever been able to create so much dread within situations lighted under vibrant lights of reds, greens, purples, blues, and yellows. It was a skill that enormously added to the nightmarish quality of his overall visions.

The film's pacing should also be commended. The film moves from one sequence to the next, perhaps only feeling sluggish within the first five minutes of exposition. Every sequence that follows serves a critical point in developing the story at hand. Editors Romana Fortini and Antonio Gimeno utilize longer cuts during important moments of dialogue, but understand the need for quicker more exciting movements for the eyes to follow during moments of action. The action sequences are framed in an excellent manner as well, often through pulled back long shots, giving the audience much to marvel at from the intense fights themselves to the gorgeous, seemingly alien landscapes they are set against.

The film is not without its issues, however. The script does spoon-feed its audience a great deal. Much of the dialogue delivered is often characters thinking out loud, proposing plot points to themselves and the audience. By the time the film's villains make their presence known to the heroes, they too lay it all out in one great big monologue that takes away much of the film's mystery. Luckily enough, the film does include a twist conclusion that evokes so much in the way of Lovecraftian dread that it is almost enough to make up for the spoon-fed dialogue entirely ... almost. Many of the actors seem stiff, although this could be blatant direction on Bava's part in an attempt to make them seem devoid of emotion and much more logic-driven in nature. But it does feel a bit uncomfortable, especially considering the film's overall purpose of exploring human nature and how it bends and shapes in moments of peril. Many of the actors are dubbed into English (depending on what version of the film that one sees, of course) and the voice actors do little in the way of conveying any emotions over the foreign performers. Barry Sullivan and Norma Engell, however, do emote the most, which is perhaps good considering that they become the film's main focus despite its large cast.

Despite its shortcomings of both wooden performances and poorly written dialogue, Planet of the Vampires is a surprisingly intelligent B sci-fi/horror movie, one that has gone on to influence many more famous hybrids of these genres, including most notably Ridley Scott's Alien. Its exploration of human nature during moments of peril is signature Mario Bava, and overall, in this sense, the movie does not disappoint, speaking volumes for Bava's talent as an auteur. Beautiful set pieces and incredible special effects work - both churned out on a nothing-budget - further showcase Bava's talent as an auteur and add to the existing merit that Planet of the Vampires had off of its premise alone.

6.5/10