White Bird in a Blizzard (5/10): An uneven film that unsuccessfully mixes genres.

“And just like that, my virginity disappeared. Just like my mother.”

I did not make that quote up; Shailene Woodley’s character (Kat Connors) actually says this while she narrates her life to a psychologist played by Angela Bassett. I wasn’t familiar with director Gregg Araki’s previous work, but I found this mysterious thriller problematic and at odds with itself. On the one hand it focuses on Kat’s sexual awakening, but on the other we are introduced with some cartoonish characters like Eva Green’s Eve Connors who seems to be playing a similar role as she did in 300 and Sin City. She gives a very campy performance, while Woodley is playing an authentic character. I just found the tone of the film very strange and didn’t buy into the mix of styles. Araki is playing with genre conventions here mixing the coming of age tale with other familiar thrillers, but it didn’t work for me because the dialogue at times is unbelievable and Araki seems to be leaving us false hints of what actually happened only to pull the rug under us with a twist at the end of the film. White Bird in a Blizzard is based on Laura Kasischke’s novel of the same name and was adapted by Araki himself. I’ve never read the novel so I don’t know if it has a similar tone, but the film felt surreal at times. There are some great looking scenes during Kat’s dream sequences, but there isn’t much more going on story wise. The narration is awful and it also brings down the film. 

It’s funny because the plot of this film is what I thought The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby would be like. A woman goes missing and the film would revolve around the mystery behind her disappearance. Kat (Shailene Woodley) narrates the events of her mother’s disappearance (Eva Green) claiming she had never been in love with her father, Brock (Christopher Meloni). Kat believes she simply got fed up with Brock and walked out on him. Her relationship with her mother hasn’t been great either so she doesn’t seem to mind her absence. She is comfortable with her current situation and doesn’t think she even needs to talk to a psychologist about it. When she was young her mother treated her like a pet, but once she got older she began to resent her for her youth and beauty. Kat meanwhile is in a relationship with her next door neighbor, Phil (Shiloh Fernandez), who is her first love. Lately he hasn’t seemed too interested in spending time with her, and when her mother goes missing, she and her father file a report with Detective Scieziesciez (Thomas Jane) who she finds attractive despite the age difference. Kat is very open with her two best friends, Beth (Gabourey Sidibe) and  Mickey (Mark Indelicate) about her sexual life. There isn’t very much going on with the plot since Kat doesn’t think much about her mother’s mysterious disappearance and we know how she feels because she is narrating the story to her psychiatrist. Things change when a few years pass and Kat returns home from college. She discovers that her mother’s disappearance has affected her more than she realized and we begin to discover new elements about the mystery. This final act of the film plays out more as a traditional mystery movie and I was actually surprised with the final reveal. It is a shift of tone from what we had seen during the first half of the movie which played out as a coming of age sexual awakening tale. I can’t recommend White Bird in a Blizzard, but it does have its moments. Shailene Woodley delivers a very strong performance (but I still think she was better in The Descendants and The Spectacular Now) and she is a talented young actress. I wasn’t a fan of Eva Green’s campy performance, but I have read some praise. Other than Woodley’s performance I don’t think there is much more worth recommending here.

My Review: The East (7/10)

"Spy on us, we'll spy on you."

The East teams up director Zal Batmanglij with actress Brit Marling once again after their collaboration in Sound of My Voice. Once again they co-wrote the screenplay after having spent some time with several anarchist groups in order to write a believable script. The East is an interesting thriller that had me guessing what was going to happen next. It has its weak moments (the beginning is a little slow and the final act leaves several questions unanswered) but the middle act is very strong and it raises several ethical and moral questions. I loved Marling, Skarsgard, and Page in this film. There were some elements that reminded me a lot of Martha Marcy May Marlene despite this being an anarchist group and not a sect. That film had a much stronger ending, but here the middle act kind of creates a similar atmosphere with the leader of the group (Skarsgard) showing his influence and charisma over the rest. Perhaps this film doesn't work as a psychological character study like that one, but there are some weird things going on inside the group, but in a way you sympathize with them despite their "eye for an eye" philosophy. At the end you are left with a sense of having wanted to see more, but the movie is still entertaining and goes into unknown and unexplored territory. Marling is such a great actress, if she can't find the role she is looking for she doesn't lay down, she simply writes a character she would like to play and does it. Ellen Page is also great in her supporting performance and delivers once again on every scene. The East won't be on my list of top films of the year, but it is still highly recommendable watching!

Jane (Brit Marling) works for an important private intelligence agency run by Sharon (Patricia Clarkson) and is assigned to infiltrate an anarchist group known as The East. Jane has spent the last nine months getting prepared for her assignment by studying the reserved group. They are an eco-terrorist group that publicly attack the CEO's of big corporations such as oil companies or pharmaceutical drug distributors that are aware of the harm they cause and try to cover it up. The East pays these people with the same coin, for instance if a drug has dangerous side effects and these CEO's are paying people off to distribute them, they simply force the same drug on them. Once Jane infiltrates the group, under the covert name of Sarah, she befriends these eco-friendly anarchists who are led by Benji (Alexander Skarsgard). He is a charismatic leader and has the members of the group do strange things like eat food they gather from dumpsters or bathe each other. The other members of the group are Izzy (Ellen Page), Doc (Toby Kebbell), Luca (Shiloh Fernandez), Tess (Danielle MacDonald), and Thumbs (Aldis Hodge). As Jane begins recollecting information she becomes more and more sympathetic towards their cause as opposed to the private firm she works for that is only concerned in defending these rich CEO's. 

The East raises a lot of moral questions and lets the audience decide what side to take. It doesn't try to manipulate us into deciding one way or another. We see things through the lead character's eyes as she begins to be influenced by this group. They seem to be fighting for the right cause, but the way they do things through terrorist acts is immoral. Everyone seems to have their heart in the right place. The screenwriters did a decent job with the script creating a tense atmosphere that had me glued to the screen despite the flaws. I wasn't disappointed despite having high expectations for The East. My favorite thing about this movie beside the heavy political eco-friendly message were the performances from the strong cast.

My Review: Evil Dead (5/10)

¨No! You don't understand. There was something in the woods... and I think it's in here with us... now.¨

Hollywood has seemed to have run out of fresh ideas when it comes to making horror films and year after year they keep on bringing us either remakes of classic films or sequels. Evil Dead is perhaps one of the best known cult horror films of the 80´s, and Sam Raimi has decided to produce this remake of his original film. Other horror remakes are coming out this year (like Carrie) so I don’t think this will be a trend that is going to disappear anytime soon. Despite not being a horror fan I decided to watch this film because of newcomer Fede Alvarez, who made a name for himself in my home country of Uruguay with a music video titled Panic Attack where the capital city is completely destroyed by huge robots. Alvarez managed to accomplish this feat with a very low budget and he also directed some short films as well (El Cojonudo) which garnered the attention of some Hollywood people. Discovering Alvarez´s potential they decided to put him in charge of the direction of Evil Dead, a film he himself claimed to have been influenced by as a child. I don’t blame Alvarez for accepting this offer because anyone in his shoes would have done the same thing and it will probably help him grow in this industry, and perhaps in the future he will be able to produce his own personal projects. I appreciate the fact that Hollywood is looking for some outside talents, and in my opinion Alvarez doesn’t disappoint here. It´s impossible to remake a cult film like this and make it better, but somehow he manages to be unique in the midst of the predictability of the genre. He has proven to be very talented, but my problem with this film is that I really despise this genre so it was hard for me to criticize it fairly. I think these campy gory horror fests are all pretty much similar to each other and the only thing that really changes are the effects which over time become more realistic. This was just too gory for my taste and I never felt scared, only disgusted which isn’t something I look forward to in a movie. I´m not a fan of the Evil Dead franchise so I can’t honestly say if it lives up to the expectations of the fans.

The film is closely tied to the original film in that it involves a group of five friends who travel to a cabin in the middle of the woods and discover some mysterious book which summons the dead. Mia (Jane Levy) barely survived a drug overdose and her friends have decided to bring her to her family´s old cabin in order for her to recover. Her friends, Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) and Olivia (Jessica Lucas), along with her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) and his girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) promise to do what it takes to keep her in the cabin no matter how bad her craving for drugs gets. This isn’t the first time that Mia has suffered from a drug overdose, but her friends are determined it will be the last. Once they arrive at the cabin they smell a strange odor and find some dead animals in the cellar. Some kind of ritual has taken place and that is where Eric finds this strange book. He makes the big mistake of opening the book and reading out loud some strange passages. As soon as he does this something evil comes out of the woods and attacks Mia. That is where the horror begins to take place and all hell breaks loose. A storm prevents them from leaving and they are on their own against these evil forces.

Evil Dead is extremely gory, there is a lot of blood but hardly any scares. It also has some funny moments like in the original film, but it just didn’t work for me. A much better movie is Cabin in the Woods which does some interesting things breaking the genre and taking it to new places. This version is an interesting homage and some fans will probably enjoy it, while others will hate it. In my opinion Alvarez´s touch in this film makes it a little more tolerable, but I really don´t like these type of films unless there is some originality. The performances were pretty strong for a gory film, I enjoyed Jane Levy´s lead performance and Pucci also had some interesting and funny scenes. These characters are as stupid as pretty much every character we´ve seen in a horror movie. Who in their right mind would open a book like this and read the passages out loud in the middle of the woods? It is all part of the genre and we just have to play around with that fact. I really didn’t care for these characters either; it was hard for me to empathize with anyone of them. I never felt like I was being transported into the movie, but the effects were pretty realistic and well done. If you are a fan of gore you might enjoy this.

   

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My Review: Red Riding Hood (2/10)

¨ If you love her, you'll let her go.¨

We`ve all heard the fairytale before about little red riding hood and her visit to her grandma`s house, but this film takes a much darker spin on the familiar story; unfortunately it takes one for the worse. The story is so ridiculous that I think this will probably be the frontrunner for the worst film of the year. It`s too bad they couldn’t make a better film considering the director and the great cast that was involved in this project. In the first place you had director Catherine Hardwicke who has directed several interesting projects like Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown. Her most notorious movie, however, was Twilight and I know she got a lot of critiques for that, but even I enjoyed that film. Red Riding Hood is by far her worst film and doesn’t live up to her early work although she also missed the mark with The Nativity Story. The magnificent cast is also wasted in this film: Amanda Seyfried is an interesting actress but there was nothing she could do with the script she had to work with. Then there is the always dependable Gary Oldman, but I couldn’t help but think his role in this film was one I already had seen before. The great talents of Virginia Madsen and Julie Christie were also put to no good. David Johnson is the man responsible for massacring the story and his screenplay is probably the worst thing about this film since the dialogue is beyond ridiculous.

The story takes place somewhere during medieval times in a small village that is tormented by some sort of werewolf. The villagers have made a truce with the wolf by offering some sort of animal sacrifice every full moon as long as the beast stays away from them. Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is one of the local girls that is very much in love with a woodcutter named Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), the only problem is that her parents, Cesaire (Billy Burke) and Suzette (Virginia Madsen), want her to marry the wealthy Henry (Max Irons). Valerie and Peter decide to secretly run away together when all of a sudden a bell rings which serves as an alarm for a wolf attack. The beast has slaughtered Valerie`s older sister and the whole town is outraged. They decide to hunt the wolf in order to get their revenge. They also hire a famous werewolf hunter named Solomon (Gary Oldman) to help them with the hunt. Solomon brings along his guards and claims the wolf could be anyone from the village so he keeps a firm hand on all the villagers and his methods are rather harsh. The wolf proves to be a difficult match for Solomon and many more people begin to disappear. At the meantime Valerie has to decide who she can trust, Peter her longtime love, or Henry her soon to be husband. Anyone could be the werewolf and not even her grandmother (Julie Christie) is off the hook.

It would be hard to avoid comparisons between this movie and Twilight since the same director was involved in both projects and we have the whole love triangle deal, and yes even a werewolf. The difference in my opinion is that Twilight had a far better story and an unbelievably strong chemistry between the lead characters. The characters in Twilight are much better developed, and in this film they just seemed out of place in such wonderful scenery. Not even the beautiful white snow seemed real as the characters wore light clothes and no mist came out of their mouths. It was as if it were snowing at 80 degrees. Frozen is another film I watched this year which I hated and even that film at least captured the cold and freezing sensation. This movie wasn’t able to transmit any emotion at all. I didn’t feel entertained, scared, or amused by anything that was going on. The only highlight of the movie was perhaps the scenery, but that was it. The suspense doesn’t exist, and the ending is rather ridiculous. I completely hated this movie and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone at all. It was a waste of some talented people. I didn’t have a problem with the performances as much as I did with the story.

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