Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, 2016

Directed by Burr Steers, 108 minutes

Lily James, Lena Headley, Sam Riley, Douglas Booth, Matt Smith, Jack Huston

Review by Katherine Scheetz

              No, this isn’t a cinematic work of art, written with smooth perfection or breaking new ground. By way of parody’s this falls in step with Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010) glazed with a dose of Jane Austen’s perceptive and provocative prose. The focus of the film is more on the swirl of British insults, ironic propriety and grossly exaggerated characters, than the zombie gore, which might deter those looking for more R-rated entrails.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has retained the skeleton of the story easiest to mock: Darcy (Riley) still swims in the lake, Bingley (Booth) is still the more handsome of the two, Mr. Collins (Smith) still dances like the leprechaun, the proposal scene is still the most interesting part, Elizabeth (James) still speaks her mind and a double wedding rounds things off. There’s just…a little more going on. The main plot change is Wickham’s (Huston) reformed zombies at St. Lazarus’ Church outside London, curbing their appetite with pig brain instead of human – not unlike the Twilight (2008) vampires.

              Of the ensemble of attempted caricatures, one performance is dead on. Matt Smith as Mister, excuse me, Parson Collins is just ridiculous. Bloody, bloody ridiculous.

             

Now for a couple complaints from an Austen purest: any self-respecting fan knows, no matter how the story changes, that Lady Catherine De Bourgh (Headley) would never reveal to Elizabeth Bennet that she admires her, even though we all know she does. The failing of writer/director Steers is most apparent however in the character of Mr. Bennet (Charles Dance), who being the instigator of so much of the lighthearted humor in the original, falls flat as a stoic head-of-the-house here. It is a much missed opportunity.

              The biggest blessing of this film is that it’s exposing Austen to those who would never have read her otherwise. Their reactions are delightful to Darcy fumbling out literatures most insulting marriage proposal and daggers being brandished at “barely tolerable” dance partners. For it is a truth universally acknowledged that watching Austen virgins become enthralled is bloody lovely.

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Jane Got a Gun

Jane Got a Gun, 2016

Directed by Gavin O’Connor, 98 minutes

Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor, Noah Emmerich

Review by Katherine Scheetz

              True to its trailer, which displayed virtually no plot, Jane Got a Gun starts off with a lot of questions.

When Jane’s (Portman) husband Hamm (Emmerich) comes home littered with bullet holes and declaring that the Bishop Boys are coming for them, this inexplicably resilient woman rides off into the unrelenting New Mexico Territory to the house of sullen drunkard Dan (Edgerton) to get help. With so much action right out of the gate we have no reason to give a cow-pie for any of the characters.

It’s a risky, but decisive move for O’Connor, who uses predictably placed flashbacks to unfold Jane’s relations to all the key players in the story. As in classic western fashion, all the bad guys are bad and all the good guys are good, it just takes us a while to figure out who is who, because of the flashback technique. Another benefit to this model is the dimensionality it adds to Jane. Unfortunately, she and her dying husband are the only characters afforded that luxury.

The fictitious town of Lullaby, New Mexico is a classically colorful setting, with the whorehouse, butcher, saloon, gunsmith and coffin maker being the main attractions. There’s a tinkering piano that floats out the swinging doors onto the muddy strip, which compliments an unobtrusive score of trembling camp fire guitar underlain by soulful strings.

Peppered with phrases like “bone orchard” and “perdition” the script is a thesaurus of boomtown slang dropped like chaps in the local brothel. Between that and the heavy-handed attempt at making “story” a theme, very few lines stand out like Edgerton’s wry “Let us hope the Bishop Boys are all very big and fat.”

Storytelling aside, O’Connor has a few moments of visual strength against the cerulean western sky and dusty bonfire light through Jane’s bullet-ridden, one-room homestead.

But all’s well that ends well and with a merciful, Hail Mary ending, the people we eventually come to root for, all ride off into a covered-wagon sunset.

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The Finest Hours

The Finest Hours, 2016

Directed by Craig Gillespie, 117 minutes

Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Eric Bana, Holliday Granger

Review by Katherine Scheetz

              Director Craig Gillespie (Million Dollar Arm) took the kind of story that reminds us there are good people out there and did to The Finest Hours what we all feared would happen when we saw who the producers were: he Disney-ified it. I would have preferred to see the version of this film directed by David Ayer (Training Day).

             

In February of 1952, in the seaside town of Wellfleet, Massachusetts a blizzard turned and waves roiled up to 70 feet. A thirty-six-foot lifeboat manned by four and captained by Coast Guard skipper Bernie Webber (Pine) took off from shore, headed to the wreckage of an oil tanker that had been ripped in half by the storm, in search of survivors.

There are no illusions that this was a suicide mission. Pride caused people to make bad calls and men died. It’s a gritty story and Gillespie through a series of poor decisions that range from caricatured costuming to unimaginative shots, sanded it smooth.

The final straw however is Carter Burwell’s Twilight-esque score. With crashing waves, sleet and snow streaking howling winds and men shouting at each other as the fractured hull of the tanker fills with sea water, this is a loud film. The added sensory of Burwell’s full orchestrations and swells of strings is more headache than harmony. 

Fortunately, the acting performances keep the film bobbing above the water by providing a glimpse at what the actual night might have been like, rather than the Disney night. It’s a very different role for Pine, especially coming from Into the Woods. There’s no charm to him, no glossy, flowing hair flips. When we meet Bernie he is quiet and follows orders. One of the redeeming parts of the film is watching Bernie come into his own, sans his will-not-take-no-for-an-answer woman Miriam (Granger), who seems injected into the story to play the role of figurehead for the for the town’s part in the rescue.

Another strength of the film is actively including the audience in the problem solving, especially on the tanker, which delays its inevitable sinking. Affleck is the initiative here, the morose, unlikable engine room lackey Ray Sybert, whose quick analytics keep the ship in their control long enough to, well, you’ve seen the poster.

              But the skeleton of the story is triumphant and if for no other reason than honoring those involved, it is good that this film was made. Maybe next time they’ll be more honest about it.

             

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The Hateful Eight

The Hateful Eight, 2015

Directed by Quentin Tarantino, 187 minutes

Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth

Review by Katherine Scheetz

              With shots of vast, snow-covered Wyoming boonies and gunslinger style font, tribute to the mighty gods of Western film is paid in the opening credits. Whether you like his style or not, you respect Tarantino’s nod at his cinematic heritage.

             

         Bounty Hunter John Ruth (Russell) has hired out the last stagecoach to Red Rock transporting outlaw Daisy Domergue (Leigh) and outrunning a blizzard. After two cleverly written verbal shoot outs, he reluctantly ends up with strays, Major Warren (Jackson) and Sheriff Mannix (Goggins), en route to Minnie’s Haberdashery, their rest stop to wait out the snowstorm. In the post-Civil War upheaval there could not be a more gregarious coach ride.

              Upon arrival at the cabin we wait patiently for each character to nail the door closed behind themselves and then, once a gloved hand slips poison into the coffee, settle in for what promises to be the bloodiest game of Whodunnit? we’ve ever seen. Tarantino does not disappoint.

              With displayed scene titles and four walls keeping them in, the illusion of a stage play is only lacking in red-velvet curtains framing the screen.

              Jennifer Jason Leigh is not the standard female of an old western, and boy, do the men want her to know it. She looks positively Carrie-like by the end of the film, though not without putting up a fight. Her groadie, seductive swagger earns her more than a few broken bones as does her sharp tongue. Watching the lit-stick-of-dynamite ensemble circle her, chained in place, is a testament to Leigh’s command of Daisy.

              With his usual finesse, Tarantino overdoes all the stereotypes: southern, white supremacy racist in an office daddy bought him, black Civil War vet gone rogue out in the west, old school, southern general and stoic, soulful cowboy. Even the minor characters bleed with super-saturated, Manifest Destiny enthusiasm. It is Tarantino’s way and he does it so very well against Ennio Morricone’s orchestral nail-biter of a score.

              If you can stomach chunks of human in another person’s hair, then enjoy what Tarantino has offered up.              

                           

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The Revenant

The Revenant, 2015

Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 156 minutes

Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domnhall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Forrest Goodluck

Review by Katherine Scheetz

In The Revenant, Director Iñárritu takes us to the ass-end of the earth and with establishing shots that stop your heart, turns us into believers.

The film chronicles frontiersman Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), who is known for surviving a grizzly bear attack and then crawling 200 miles through the unforgiving Dakota territory back to Fort Kiowa after being abandoned and left for dead.

At the time of the bear incident Glass’ fur-trading possé includes pretty boy Captain Henry (Gleeson), a crass, scalped Fitzgerald (Hardy), the naïve, smooth-faced Bridger (Poulter) and Glass’ half-Pawnee son, Hawk (Goodluck). For those that don’t know Gleeson’s name yet: he’s the ginger in any film you’ve seen since Harry Potter ended and he is one to watch. Meanwhile Hardy spits out his dialogue opposite a cool-headed DiCaprio. It’s blatant the two of them needed one another on set.

Yes, the mauling is rattling to watch but the virtue of the film is in how Iñárritu shows everything that follows. Glass sucks marrow out of snow covered animal skeletons. He cauterizes his own neck wound with gunpowder and flint. He cracks open the steaming carcass of a horse to survive yet another blizzard. In this role, DiCaprio tests the limits on the resilience of the human spirit.

Iñárritu doesn’t stop there. He threads in a narrative of the crumbling nations of Arikara and Pawnee, which include Glass’s Pawnee wife and son, giving unfiltered exposure to the festering flesh of how the west was really won. Fever-induced dreams unfold Glass’ backstory and the origin of his respect for the natural world. That reverence, learned from his time with his wife, is reinforced in a tender encounter with a weather-worn Pawnee man.

Settling like a fresh fallen snow atop the layers of story is the cinematography executed by Emmanuel Lubezki. He and Iñárritu romance us with amber firelight against blue-white birch bark. Just the panning landscapes and the minimal, hair-raising score by Ryûichi Sakamoto would make an excellent documentary. But it’s all done in natural lighting, it’s all done with the mud and sweat from the days before still caked on. The Revenant is a benchmark and with the audience's blessing, may Hollywood produce many more.

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The Good Dinosaur

The Good Dinosaur, 2015

Directed by Peter Sohn, 93 minutes

Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand, Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright

Review by Katherine Scheetz

              With phenomenon Inside Out (2015) grossing $90 million in her opening weekend, The Good Dinosaur (2015), at a mere $39 million on its Thanksgiving day release, is the starving artist, still-discovering-myself sibling at the holiday table in a family of engineers. Which is a shame, really, because there are elements of The Good Dinosaur that are genuinely a pleasure.

              Visually, it meets all the standards of an enigmatic Pixar piece: from pudding-like mud upon the silo and wind-swept fields freckled with longhorns, to the effervescent moment of fireflies bubbling up around Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) and Spot (Jack Bright, ). It is saturated with doe-eyed, pre-historic creatures and all their caricatured oddities. But it doesn’t exceed expectations, a grave that Disney-Pixar dug themselves into.

              In terms of atmosphere, composing brothers Mychael and Jeff Danna deliver a deliciously wholesome score, full prairie fiddles, piping Mexican standoff hums and deep horns evocative of rolling Midwest hills. Danna and Danna are, as usual, not afraid of taking non-traditional instruments and non-traditional sounds whether that be steel drums, Gregorian chants or Middle Eastern mandolin, in order to create the desired effect. If nothing else, this film is a lesson in how music informs the entire mood of a film. What makes the story relatable is the good-ole-American Manifest Destiny feel of the score. Without that, this is just an updated Land Before Time (1988).

             

The storytelling is cliché, to the point where we can’t stop ourselves from sighing when Dino-dad is washed away in the most Mufasa-like imitation that Disney should be suing itself. While the cast has done well with their voices, embodying each prairie-home-companion dinosaur personalities, the characters are simplistic, merely a representation of an archetype within the narrative.

              All these can be forgiven, as archetypes, caricatures and straightforward storytelling can be instructive and self-reflective. But the overabundance of morals leaves us bogged down with confusion. In between the mixed signals of advice from Poppa (Jeffrey Wright), lessons learned on the road and dream-induced flashbacks, the meanings of most of these messages gets lost. That being said, at the end of the film, one lesson does make it through the fog: when you are able to let go of judgment beautiful things can happen.

And I will say this: The longhorn droving T-Rex family nails it. Two words: bug harmonica.

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Spotlight

Spotlight, 2015

Directed by Tom McCarthy, 128 minutes

Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci

Review by Katherine Scheetz

In the slew of iconic Bostonian movies, Spotlight sits among those that embody the grey-cloud intensity that is more than a movie set in Boston but one that is, in essence, Boston. Think Good Will Hunting (1997) and The Departed (2006).

The narrative takes us in, immediately, to the freshly wounded: small children coloring in a police station room, guarded closely by their mother. Enter well-dressed, overpaid, Catholic lawyer, swinging around the familiar terrain as green police officers mutter about arraignments and trials. Fast forward 15 years and dart down the fluorescent hallways of the Boston Globe to the “Spotlight” special reporting team office, coffee brewing and desks peppered with papers to be piled and filed.

The catalyzing event is the entrance of Schreiber, quietly commanding as Marty Baron, the brand new, non-Catholic, Editor-in-Chief who assigns them the project of following up on a case of a child-molesting priest. One priest turns into three which turns into 14, which turns into, well you get the idea. It’s an investigative journalism avalanche.

Writers Josh Singer (The Fifth Estate) and Tom McCarthy (Up) have crafted a script with words chosen as meticulously as a newspaper article. Every character on the page matters. This intention is not lost on the glowing cast. Ruffalo is dynamite as Mike Rezendes, down to his parted hair, Neanderthal eating habits and slouch, determined under the weight of his shoulder bag. His interactions with Mitchell Garabedian played by the brilliant Stanley Tucci unfold with desperate grace. Tucci, as with all projects he touches, only enhances. Whether an enigmatic TV personality in a dystopian future, quirky husband to the colorful Julia Child or dry-humored liason to Anne Hathaway into the fashion world, Tucci lights up the characters around him. Spotlight is no exception. He nails Garabedian as the fed-up representation to the targeted victims with a nuanced and compassionate rage. McAdams slips out of her skin as Sasha Phieffer, particularly in her interviews with and connection to the survivors.

By way of costuming, the simplicity of the gender neutral, monochrome and functional early 2000s wardrobe is effective. It eliminates any distraction from the story the reporters are following. Except for the intentional smear of red adorning Cardinal Law’s garb. Nothing hints at villainy like costuming. McCarthy’s functional decisions are reflected throughout in minimal set design and glaring, artificial lighting. Every visual component has been considered carefully.

In a surprising score from Howard Shore we hear hints of the millennial music against a grey-rain piano canvas. Shore sprinkles the clacking of computer keystrokes in every once in a while to ground us again in the looming belly of the Boston Globe: the Spotlight team’s home base. The breath of a church pipe organ has a sobering effect in the score as well.

McCarthy has allowed the story to percolate through, playing the role of host to fast-paced, flawless writing and a strength that ripples through the cast in execution. It’s a film – and a story – that deserves the front page.

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