Mama (2013)

Often when I watch a PG-13 horror film, my expectations are kept at rock-bottom. It's not that it would be especially difficult for a film to be scary without being R rated, but it's usually something that just doesn't end up happening. Then again, R rated horror films can suck too, in fact most big horror films aren't very good no matter the rating, so I guess it's best to just expect a horror film to suck. That way when a good one comes along you'll be really pleased. Then if you're anything like me, your hopes will be raised and you'll go on a horror movie kick, only to be reminded once more that most of them suck. It's a viscous cycle.

The Guillermo del Toro produced "Mama" falls somewhere in the middle for me. It didn't suck by any means, but neither was it that great. I suppose for a PG-13 horror film it's a cut above what we're used to, but that doesn't excuse some questionable choices when it came to character designs which nearly ruin the entire experience, and an ending which seemed to come straight out of another film. And the film that the ending came out of was not very good.

Despite these issues the film begins strong with a very well done first 10 minutes which is horrifying, heartbreaking and atmospheric as hell. A man comes home after killing his wife and boss, and takes his two young daughters for a ride to nowhere in particular as he speeds along an icy highway. They fly off the road and crash, making their way to a cabin in the woods. As the man is about to shoot his daughters in despair, he is killed by a ghostly figure, who the girls call Mama.

After a long 5 year search, the man's brother, Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) finally finds the girls in the cabin. They are feral and can barely speak anymore, having seemingly survived by themselves in the woods the whole time. Of course, we know that they were raised by the ghost, but they don't know that. Lucas arranges for them to live in a house with himself and his girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain), a Joan Jett type who isn't a big fan of the whole "children" thing. Neither the less, she and the girls eventually start having a connection, which is a problem because Mama is still following them around. And she gets jealous.

Dude, don't go in the closet. You so know you do not want anything to do with anything that's in that closet. Just...stop.

There is some decent intrigue afoot as the mystery of who exactly Mama is and what she wants is decently engaging. And the suspense, enhanced by some fantastic lighting, camerawork, and (on occasion) subdued soundtrack is enough to warrant some halfway effective scares. That being said, there are a few too many jump scares which would have been more effective had they not relied on the orchestra sting, and the final mystery as to Mama's past and what she wants ends up being pretty old-hat. And to make it worse, what she wants ends up being not important at all, which tends to undermine the rest of the film leading up to the ending.

Ah, the ending. Before the ending 10 minutes came along, I was reasonably on board with "Mama." It wasn't great but I was interested. Then the ending hit and it became a Tim Burton movie. In fact, I'm pretty sure they got the same cliff from the end of "Dark Shadows." And while it did kind of make sense from a story perspective, the rest of the film had been relatively down-to-earth, at least as much as a ghost story can be, with a more claustrophobic setting of being trapped in a house with something that wants to kill you. Taking it to a showdown at the edge of a towing precipice seemed a little out of place.

"GREETINGS MORTAL. I AM THE VESSEL OF THE OUTER PLANES GOD. WE DEMAND MORE SPAGHETTI-O'S."

The ending isn't really what hurt "Mama" the most, however. What hurt this film more than anything else was the design of Mama herself. The movie makes a pretty severe error with not only showing way too much of her, but also making her look like a Muppet. I'm not even joking, she looks like a cartoon character with her elongated face, her close-set eyes, and weird twitchy mouth. And the terrible CG used to make her only enhances how ridiculous she looks, which is anything but scary.

Seriously, she looks like a ghost from "Luigi's Mansion."

I guess they were going for a surreal look to her, which is meant to be creepy, but whenever she appears all it does is destroy any tension the film had generated. At least, after you're done jumping from the obnoxious orchestra sting they inserted to artificially trick your body into thinking it's frightened. And after a moment late in the film when one of the characters gets killed and turned into a creature that resembles Mama, which was hilarious since she looked like Sam the Eagle if he were killed in "The Grudge," it's all downhill after that. There's no being scared of a monster that does that to people.

I will admit that I found Jessica Chastain to be alright in this, and she grew on me as the film went along despite being obnoxious at first glance. I'm still not a huge fan of hers though. I guess it's the same problem I have with Jennifer Lawrence. I just don't get the appeal. I am however a big fan of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and while he doesn't get as much to do here as I would have liked, seeing him is always awesome. The opening scene where he has lost his mind to the point of killing his kids (Nikolaj plays both brothers) is simply gut-wrenching, and the best part of the whole movie.

This whole problem could be solved nearly instantly if someone tossed the man a longsword.

Ironically it's the two little girls who steal the show from the two heavyweights. Megan Charpentier as the older sister Victoria had moments of outright brilliance as far as child acting goes, and the younger sister, Lily, played by Isabelle Nélisse deserves insane amounts of credit for being able to portray a fleshed out character with a vocabulary of about 5 words. Both of these girls are simply fantastic, and I'm interested to see where their careers take them. Between them and Morgana Davies from "The Hunter" it looks like there's a lot of talented young actresses to look forward to. Hopefully they won't pull a Carrie Henn and just disappear from acting after a promising start.

And yes, the only reason I bring her up is because Pvt. Spunkmeyer plays the psychologist in "Mama." And that's awesome.

For me the indie circuit is still one-upping the major releases as far as scary movies go. It's not that the major releases are bad, they're just formulaic. While that doesn't make them bad films necessarily, often times they're just kind of boring because of that. "Mama" suffers from that trap of being pretty easy to call, although I've seen it done much worse. Whether or not you think it's worth your time is up to you.

If only the actual movie was as subtle and slow building as the trailer was.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Mama" is worth a rental if you don't expect too much from it. It's not very scary, at least not for me, but I could see it scaring the bejesus out of someone. At least it's got Jamie Lannister in it. And there are far worse horror films as of late. Far. Far. Worse.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

I'm getting really sick and tired of all this crap. I'm getting so weary of never liking anything I'm supposed to think is amazing, that everyone tells me is amazing, that the consciousness says is amazing, and that the Academy Awards decides is amazing. I'm sick of it. I'm done, son. This was the last straw. From now on I don't care what the Tomatometer says - if it's rated at 90% or above, I'm just going to go ahead and assume it's not going to be very good.

What else am I supposed to think when a boring piece of clap-trap like "Zero Dark Thirty" gets a 93% while awesome movies like "The Last Stand" got a measly 59%,  "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" got 65%, and "Django Unchained," one of the best movies I've seen in years, is at an 88%?

Are you kidding me with this? Really, everyone? "Zero Dark Thirty" was rated better than "Django Unchained?" I'm not saying an 88% is something to be scoffed at, but was the fact that Quentin Tarantino makes enjoyable films such a turn-off to some of you? Or were you all so shaken in your ultra-PC, easily offended little bubbles by the dreaded "n-word" being used? Maybe you could explain why you called black dudes getting tortured in "Django" to be "in poor taste" whilst calling an Arab dude getting tortured in "Zero Dark Thirty" to be "provocative" and "powerful?"

Isn't it interesting where the line is drawn?

ZD30 is a plodding, self-fellatiating exercise in testing the limits of how far the audience is willing to blindly accept the notion that everything Kathryn Bigelow makes is fantastic, simply because that's what they've been told. All it has going for it is the fact that it's about terrorism, it shows waterboarding, and it attempts to paint both sides with multiple shades of grey. But the terrorism aspect is barely seen, the waterboarding lasts about a minute, and while it tries to be morally ambiguous it's clearly just as much American chest-thumping as any random Michael Bay movie is. Oh, and it's over two and a half hours. Because that was necessary.

Am I saying that "Zero Dark Thirty" is a bad film or that Kathryn Bigelow is a bad director? Well no, it's not techincally a "bad film," I am saying that it's boring and that she's severely overrated. Take that for what it's worth, and if you enjoyed this or "The Hurt Locker," then by all means don't allow me to detract from the entertainment you get from either film, since you're clearly in the camp that finds her work sublime. I just think you're all nuts because I found both films to be insufferable.

I could attempt to describe the plot of ZD30, but honestly I started blanking out pretty early on in the film in terms of what I was seeing and what anybody was talking about. I happen to be in luck, though, since the film is extraordinarily easy to sum up, because all that essentially happens is that:

1) Jessica Chastain works for the CIA. She wants to get Osama bin Laden.

2) They interrogate a metric crap-ton of Arab gentlemen in order to find bin Laden.

3) They find bin Laden. They shoot him in the face. Jessica Chastain has nothing to say. The End.

"Man, you guys. I sure am glad we're only in the last 20% of the movie, and that the previous 80% is talking. Otherwise that might have been exciting or something."

All that takes over two and a half hours. And despite its simplicity, throughout the entire affair I had little to no idea what was going on. The endless conversations which make up a vast amount of the run-time almost instantly devolve into a never-ending cycle of Arabic names that sound utterly alien to my ears, therefore making the connections impossible to follow. This of course is a problem since the whole point of the movie is to follow Jessica Chastain on her investigation, uncovering threads as they are revealed.

But how am I supposed to understand any of it when it's just a swirling cloud of names that all sound like "Abdul Al-Aldebwah," all connected to angry looking bearded men that all look identical to each other in their black and white surveillance camera mugshots, which is usually the only time we see their faces since we never actually meet any of them? I have no idea who any of these people are. And that's not limited to Arab people, either. I didn't even know who in the blue hell any of the Americans were. There were roughly 5 American characters in this movie who all looked alike, again, under their beards. These characters also acted nearly identically and liked to drift in and out of the film so often that I had no idea who I was looking at half the time.

 Ah yes. My three favorite characters: Beard, Beardy and um...Beard.

The film does such a poor job with clearly identifying characters that it dissolves into a mess of "Well that Arab dude wasn't helpful. Hey Random Bearded American #3, there's another Arab dude. Let's ask him. Oh good. That info might be useful. Make sure to tell Random Bearded American #2. Jessica, could you please stop being a bitch? We know you're upset we haven't caught bin Laden. We're working on it. You're adorable when you try to act tough, though."

That brings me to Jessica Chastain. You know, it's one thing to have to sit through a very long film you're not enjoying. It's quite another to sit through a very long film you're not enjoying with a main character you can't stand. I found Jessica Chastain's character Maya to be grating and one-dimensional, that one dimension being "obsessed with getting bin Laden." This is her one defining character trait, and the only thing we ever know about her.

And she's also kind of a bitch and swears at her boss, since that's professional. I guess that's supposed to make her a "strong female character," but seeing little Maya standing at the numerous briefings with her arms crossed, lips pursed, and eyes glaring out under furled brow came across more like a toddler holding its breath until it got to watch more cartoons. I'm not saying that for a women to be tough she has to be Briene of Tarth or anything, but with as instantly confrontational and puffed up in her bravado as Maya is while being a shallow as hell character, she comes across more like the demon fiance in any random romantic comedy who is holding back the male love interest from being with probably Katherine Heigl and will end up falling into a pool with a wedding dress on or get a cake dropped on her head or something by the end of it.

I don't care how cool her shades are. She's still boring as hell.

The only redeeming quality I found in ZD30 was the last 40 minutes or so, which shows the raid on bin Laden's compound. It's the only part of the film in which it feels like anything of substance is happening, which makes sense because it IS the only part where anything of substance happens. And to be fair, it is a very well shot and surprisingly tense scene, despite the fact that we know what's going happen. But it's less about any kind of surprise in the plot and more about watching the process with which the SEALs carry out the assault. Of course, I had no idea who any of these people were, so I felt nothing for them as characters, but hey, that's been par for the course for 2 hours leading up to it. Why start now?

Ah yes, the run time. It always seems to lead back to that, doesn't it? Here's the deal, and the last thing I'm going to say about "Zero Dark Thirty":

"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is 2 hours and 49 minutes. Everyone bitched and moaned and griped and whined about it being far too long, which admittedly it was. But you know what? Stuff happened in "The Hobbit." They fought goblins. And trolls. And wargs. And orcs. They flew on eagles. A ring of ultimate power and unimaginable evil was found. We saw 13 dwarves and a wizard cut their way through an army of goblins. We saw a goddamn dragon burn down a fortress built into a mountain. But no, that's "padded and overblown."

"Zero Dark Thirty" is 2 hours and 37 minutes long. That's only twelve minutes shorter than "The Hobbit." And you know what happens in that essentially identical amount of time? They water-board a guy, some car bombs go off, Jessica Chastain scowls at her boss a lot, and a bunch of Arabs get shot. We have all learned a valuable lesson. What is that lesson? F@#k if I know, but it's very important and you should give this movie Oscars. Roll credits.

How hard do you think I can type SYMBOLISM on my keyboard before it breaks something?

And by the way, what in the hell does "Zero Dark Thirty" even mean? I'm just wondering because the film never mentions it. That would have been nice.

Come to think of it, I don't care. It's probably military code for "pretentious."

Here's the trailer to "Zero Dark Thirty." Enjoy Jessica Chastain being uppity and Metallica's music actually becoming worse.

THE BOTTOM LINE - An insanely overrated piece of plodding, confusing garbage that is banking on the hope that you'll consider it a masterpiece because of who is directing it. Kathryn Bigelow has once again made a dull, full of itself snooze-fest that managed to irritate me even more than "The Hurt Locker," something I didn't think was possible. I miss "Point Break" Kathryn Bigelow.

Lawless (2012)

No cheeky lead-in for this one, folks. Not feeling it. I'll just say that I wish snazzy suits like dudes wore back in the 30's were still hip. I'd wear the crap out of those things.

"Lawless" focuses on Prohibition era Franklin County, Virginia, a place notorious as "The Wettest Country in The World." In Franklin County back then all you had to do to stub your toe on a moonshine still was to walk 12 feet and kick blindly. I'm also assuming it was likely also known as "The Most Flammable County in the World."

The Bondurant brothers run a fairly successful bootlegging operation, and have an understanding with the local police that allows them to continue doing so. The understanding is slightly complex, but it involves moonshine and the continued decreasing health of the sheriff's liver. The oldest brother Forrest (Tom Hardy) and middle brother Howard (Jason Clarke) are manly men - tough and no-nonsense. Forrest in particular has a special talent of being physically impossible to kill, which comes in handy when the local competition decides to do things like murder him. Apparently the anti-pain stuff in Bane's mask must still be in Tom Hardy's system, because when Forrest gets his throat cut, he just kind of sleeps it off and lowers his voice for a few days. No big deal.

"Are you sure you don't want to at least lay down? I'm pretty sure he made contact with your spine."

"You know I never miss a Redskins game. Keep driving."

"How are you breathing?"

The more wimpy third brother, Jack, is played by everyone's favorite fast-talking geek with the stupid name and very punchable face, Shia LaBeouf. I'm just going to go ahead and admit that I dislike him. Quite a bit, actually. When he first came on the scene I thought he was alright, but as the years have gone by his schtick has gotten more and more insufferable - reaching the capstone with the "Transformers" series.

Fortunately for us, in "Lawless" he plays someone who is a hick. So because of that, he speaks slowly and without much "witty" LaBeouf banter. I have to give him credit for actually being able to shut his mouth for once, but at the same time he's still not that spectacular. But when you're dealing with him, it's really just for the best to call it a day when he's not teeth-grindingly annoying. But hey, he has proven he can play a person of low to middling intelligence.

If you have that haircut, you are required by law to have an IQ under 85.

Even though "Lawless" follows Shia LaBeouf's Jack around most of the time, it really doesn't feel like Jack's story. The real main character here is clearly Forrest, and for the life of me I have no idea why that character wasn't put more front and center, despite nearly every event revolving around him. From the start of the film he's in charge of the bootlegging operation, and only steps down temporarily once, and the only reason he did that was because he needed to give the sutures a chance to glue his head back on his neck. But after that, once he's healed he's back in the thick of things. And I'm having difficultly remembering an occasion where Jack made himself indispensable.

That's not to say that Forrest isn't in the movie a lot, because he certainly is. Tom Hardy gets the second most amount of screen time next to Shia, it's just a matter of perspective. I don't really see the point of having the movie be told through the viewpoint of Jack. It'd be like watching "Die Hard" from the perspective of Argyle, the limo driver who drops McClaine off and waits in the parking garage for most of the movie until he does that one useful thing at the end. Yeah, he did do something, but in the long run, it wasn't anything that McClaine or someone else couldn't have found a way to accomplish just as well. Jack is just nowhere near as interesting or as cool as Forrest is.

Also, Tom Hardy sounds spot-on like Tom Berenger in "Platoon" in this. I kept waiting for him to ask Shia what he knew about death.

But as awesome as Tom Hardy was in "Lawless," there are only two things you'll remember - Gary Oldman and Guy Pearce. These guy were both amazing, although one gets totally shafted.

Gary Oldman plays a Chicago gangster who Jack sees gun down a car right in the middle of the street. Jack is admittedly impressed and inspired by the act. I'm not quite sure if Oldman really had too much else to do with the plot, even though he spares Shia's life at one point for reasons I can't really remember since it wasn't made abundantly clear. I think he was there mostly to showcase the brutality of a true criminal and to inspire the brothers to step up their game.

Oldman is only in this movie for 5 minutes. Tops. It's really a damn shame because casting Gary Oldman in anything for just 5 minutes is just a stupid thing to do. I wanted to see more of him, especially after he bashes in a dude's head with a shovel. It's brutal, shocking, and really really awesome. And funny. And it's the last you see of him. Damn.

"Gary? Back up. If you want to shoot the barber pole...Gary...you're shooting...GARY! BACK UP!"

Guy Pearce plays Rakes, a Special Deputy who comes to Virginia to shake down the bootleggers and get a cut of their profits. Pierce, I must admit, is pretty entertaining in this movie. I've never thought too much of him as an actor but I'll give credit where credit is due - after Gary Oldman he's the most entertaining character in the film. Fortunately for us he functions as what is essentially the main antagonist, so we see a lot of him. He actually reminds me a bit of Gary Oldman's character from "The Professional." He's over-the-top and corny, so much so that you really don't think a whole lot of him at first. That is, until you see him work.

His hair looks like a Michigan Wolverines helmet.

There are several scenes where so you see Rakes become an absolute monster. The most memorable one being the time he gives Shia LaBeouf the epic beating that I've fantasized giving him myself. It's particularly fun to watch as Rakes is a bit of a fastidious clean-freak, what with his impeccably neat suit. surgically combed hair and spotless gloves. He doesn't really get "serious" about the beating until Jack has the gall to bleed on his suit. Then it's personal. And yes, it's a bit weird having a guy who seems like he'd be better off in a Bond movie in this period piece, but he injects some much needed life into what is otherwise an almost plodding script.

Other than that there's really not more to recommend "Lawless." It's not bad. It's just not that memorable. I will say it's better than the overly long and far more tepid "Public Enemies" from a few years ago. That's not a huge endorsement, but it's something.

Pretty much just watch for me. Yeah, pretty much.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Lawless" is notable for having Shia LaBeouf not being completely insufferable, for Tom Hardy doing an awesome Tom Berenger impression, Guy Pearce having a silly haircut, and Gary Oldman hitting someone with a shovel. That's about it. If you like period pieces about 30's America, it's worth a look. Otherwise don't kick yourself over missing it.