WITHOUT: SIFF gem

WITHOUT is the first film from writer/director Mark Jackson and it is a strong debut. The entire movie is shot on Whidbey island, it both opens and closes on the ferry. It is the story of 19 year old Joslyn , who is spending one week caring for an old man while his family travels. Josyln must feed, change and wash this man, who doesn't speak and occasionally moans at night. His home is in the middle of the woods and has no internet connection. This seclusion affects Joslyn, whom, we learn, was struggling with both loss and isolation long before coming to this house.

The first half of WITHOUT is mostly watching Joslyn take care of the old man and do yoga. The second half of the film is watching Joslyn unravel. Jackson introduces several mysteries that imply dark forces are at work. Joslyn seems surprised when she discovers a large bruise on her back. Every night she places her cell phone next to her bed, and every morning it is someplace else in the house. The film is slow paced but builds in creepy tension as Joslyn's isolation makes her desperate for human connection and causes her to act out, sexually and violently, towards the old man.
In WITHOUT the directing, cinematography and acting are all wonderful, and the movie belongs to newcomer Joslyn Jenson, who is in almost every shot and captures the severely repressed young women with a naturalness that carries the film through long scenes of little action.
WITHOUT ends without answering all the questions it raises, which bothered many viewers, but I enjoy open-ended films when done well, as this one is. I have several theories, and I look forward to discussing them with people who have seen WITHOUT. The movie stays with me, haunts me, because without everything answered the story is not over. 

LOVE: very void of emotion

I am still trying to understand what the full concept for LOVE was. 

The main storyline is simple enough: man in solo space station loses connection to Earth and begins to unravel as years pass and he remains in complete solitude; but I did not understand very much about the execution of this story. 

First off, this movie began to take form almost five years ago when the band Angels and Airwaves asked director William Eubank to make a film inspired by their music. As Eubank began working on a script that was music driven, not plot, he began to expand on it more until it became a feature length more complex then what he had began. Eubank basically spent the next four years building a space station set in his parent’s driveway with supplies he purchased at Home Depot. Considering the low budget the set does look impressive and I was amazed when I heard the director talking about the creative ways he made the set. Still, a well made set fails to make up for a weak script.

I would say that LOVE fails on every level. It opens with a Civil War segment that did not seem connected to the rest of the film. Neither did the four random interviews of men talking rather broadly about their feelings of isolation placed throughout the film. The movie seems to suggest these are archival footage, remaining fragments of the, perhaps, extinct Earth population, but I failed to find any value in them. Instead they fell flat and confused me. 

The score is fine, but not particularly exciting.  Considering the band's music was the inspiration for this film I had expected much more of a musical heavy, eye candy type of art film, but there are hardly any segments in the film put to music. It is almost always background, playing subtly in the back while our star spaceman pushes buttons and looks worried in his small station.

 At no time in this movie did I feel the theme of isolation was explored intelligently. Since we never see our lead have any kind of human interaction it is hard to understand what was lost for him when all communication ended.  I would have found it much more interesting if the entire movie had been just him, in his space station, slowly losing it. Maybe then the audience could have experienced his feelings of isolation, if we too were forced to endure the claustrophobia of his lonely destiny.

We see little of this man’s past, there is nothing personal about his story.  (We get one short video of his brother telling him he is an uncle, and fantasy moments of a sexy woman on all fours in a thong with wind blowing around her hair.  Original!)  Since the man is left very undeveloped I can only assume that he is meant to represent a broad sense of humanity. Trying to suggest this is a universal story is ludicrous since the only voices heard are white, male Americans saying next to nothing. I am a fan of open-ended films, but there needs to be at least one element of any art film that excites you, bothers you or stays with you. LOVE left next to no impression on me.

SIFF 2011

 

SIFF is here!!

So many movies!

So many choices....


For this years SIFF I plan on seeing at least ten movies, hopefully more.

Choosing the films is one of the funnest parts of the festival. I love getting the catalog, reading about movies and marking off one's that look good. Of course with 400 movies to flip through it can be overwhelming. I thin out the choices by focusing on films that are by and/or about women. If it is directed by a women and about women it will automatically peak my interest.
It's cool being able to go online to the SIFF site and watch trailers of most of the films (some don't have previews up) which helps give me an idea of the quality and style of a movie.
Horror is also one of my favorite genre's and most years I see some great movies in this catagory. last year I saw the super violent DREAM HOUSE, which had some very disturbing (and awesome) deaths. Three years ago I saw the amazing Swedish film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. This year there isn't any of the horror films I am very interested in. There were several that looked fun in the catalog but when I watched the previews they didn't look as good. THE INTRUDER, THE VILLAGE OF SHADOWS and WE ARE THE NIGHT are all horror movies where the previews made me uninterested.
I do want to see TROLLHUNTER, a fun looking "found footage" style monster movies about giant trolls. Also BELLFLOWER looks interesting, but I have a lot of American films on my list already and am trying to see one's from more countries.

Here are 4 movies at the very top of my list:
CIRCUMSTANCE directed by Maryam Keshavarz filmed in Lebanon
BELLE EPINE directed by Rebecca Ziotowski from France
WITHOUT directed by Mark Jackson filmed here on Whidbey Island
THE OFF HOURS directed by Megan Griffiths from Seattle and starring Tony Doupe, an acting teacher I had.

Other films that I hope to catch are LYS (Germany), WOMB (Germany/Hungary/France), PINOY SUNDAY (Taiwan), TABLOID (USA), AMADOR (Spain), FUCK MY LIFE (Chilli), TIMES AND WINDS (Turkey), JUAN (Denmark), THE WHISTLEBLOWER (Canada/Germany), JUCY (Australia), LOVE LIKE POISON (France)

The first movie I have seen has been LOVE (USA) and I will be writing a review of it along with all the films I see in the festival. So look for those soon. 

SCREAM 4! blast from the past

In one week, SCREAM 4 hits theaters, and I am kind of excited.

I have good memories of the first two SCREAM movies. I saw them both in theaters with good friends, pretty sure I saw the first one twice. I owned both of them (on VHS). The third SCREAM movie, sadly, I did not like one bit. To be fair, I have little memory of it, but I for sure was disappointed and thought it was not scary at all. It tipped the scales way to far on the clever side (failing to be so)  and went way to light on actual suspense.

Will SCREAM 4 have a death as good as Rose McGowen stuck in the cat door getting her neck broke from the garage door going up? I doubt it.

Will SCREAM 4 kill one of our leading characters? Neve, Courtney or David?????  Maybe.

I figure good or bad at least we get to check out Courtney and David together in the roles that first introduced the now married couple, who just now separated while filming this movie! Gossip. We also get to check out Neve Campbell who has pretty much gone away in the last 10+ years.
Then there is the new young cast who will possibly be awful, but I know Anna Paquin is in it, who's great, and I am predicting she gets offed early, Drew Barrymore style. The cast also has Emma Roberts, the cheerleader from Hero's, Adam Brody and Heather Graham, who played Barrymore's character in the movie within the movie in SCREAM 2.

So what are the chances it will be any good?

I think strong. I doubt it will be as good as the original, but its hard to do that. It looks as if they return to high school format, with our returning characters being the adults. It is a good formate and I think the years off has given it time to seem fresh again, while also bringing back nostalgic feelings.
It gets to make fun of itself all it wants because that is the world in SCREAM, characters who reference horror films. Also, the first SCREAM helped bring back the horror movie franchise, and now it has changed, so the movie has new cliches and horror movie trends to exploit.

The preview looks good enough. I am going to go ahead and predict that I will enjoy this movie! Makes me think about the old times. Maybe I will watch all three of them before I see the new one. Even SCREAM 3.

Drew Barrymore:entertaining or annoying?

DREW BARRYMORE

Oh Drew Barrymore, 

As a child I thought you were cool because you got to make movies I liked (FIRESTARTER) , then you had your naughty comeback as a teen (having sex on a car hood with Tom Skerritt in POISON IVY) and then you entered back into Hollywood with your daisy power, big smiles, David Letterman flashing, popularity and from there became a succesfull producer with your own production team, all while maintaining a laid-back, lots-of-giggles attitude. 

While over all you have a less then amazing filmography, it is unique. I did slightly obsess over you in high school and kind of love that you are often riding the line between cute and embarrassing. Plus, for a RomCom girl you have a bit of double chin I appreciate. 

I am going to go ahead and rate all your movies I have seen. I think it will be interesting to see how many are any good. Because regardless I like you somehow. I like your bad fashion moments, or crazy hair moments, or short marriages, you don't fit the mold of leading lady and still make the big bucks.

I am putting these in order of the movies I liked best-worst.  

1. DONNIE DARKO (2001)

Gotta pick this as my favorite movie from this list, sadly, maybe one of the worst acting jobs of her career (or what I have seen of it). I love Jake Gyllenhaal in this movie, and the music is great, and there is something just so cool about this movie despite its many flaws, Barrymore being a big one. To be fair, she helped produce this movie and played a huge part in it getting made and released so for that, I thank her. There is a moment in the movie, during the sisters dance troupe performance, that has several seconds of the most awkward acting I have ever seen. It is a cut to Drew Barrymore standing off stage and looking back and forth with her eyes. Seriously as strange as that sounds, watch for it. Very unfortunate. So, while number one on my list of her movies, not a strong performance by her. 

2. THE WEDDING SINGER (1998)

Also, one of the only Adam Sandler movies that I don't hate, I LOVE this movie. It's one of the best in it's genre and a true classic. It is funny and touching and I usually hate sentimental movies. It is also one of Drew's best characters, and hair-style. She is charming and funny and cute. Big A+ all around. 

3. SCREAM (1996)

Saw this movie in the theater with my girl-friends when I was 15. I loved it, and still do love this movie. Maybe the only successful movie to pull of the horror movie/teen comedy blend, it really is scary and funny and very nostalgic for me. Drew plays the opening girl who gets tormented and stabbed to death and it really is a great opening sequence. I saw this movie at the time I really really liked Drew so I was so freaked out watching her struggle and it affected me when she died. Also great in this movie is Skeet Ulrich being so greasy and gross but I remember thinking he was hot, eww. 

4. E.T (1982)

I don't watch this movie very often, but it is a real classic and very good and Drew is adorable. It is what created the first phase of her crazy career. Not much to say, it's E.T.

5. FIRESTARTER (1984)

This is a super cheesy movie and lots of the acting is weak, but she is a cool kid! She starts fire's with her mind and kills lots of people. Because the government is assholes and killed her parents. I loved this movie when I was a kid and still do.

6. MUSIC AND LYRICS (2007)

One of my top guilty pleasures, I was shocked by how much I enjoyed this movie. Several of my best friends in Olympia used to watch this all the time. My friend Steve once said "the only person as good at playing their go-to character as Drew Barrymore is Hugh Grant." But this movie really is a good RomCom guilty pleasure, and I really like the music for the fictional musicians in it.

7.CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND (2002)

Good movie. I only saw it once when it first came out, so I don't remember it all that well, but I know I liked it. Sam Rockwell  is always great and Clooney is a good director. I think Barrymore was fine, but maybe I thought she was miscast?

8. SEE YOU IN THE MORNING (1989)

A pretty good, little seen movie, starring Jeff Bridges. It is a family drama about a divoreced father and widow, both with two children, who fall in love. Drew is the troubled teenage daughter of the widow and she is pretty decent. This is maybe the last movie she made before going into rehab and writing her memoir. 

9. CHARLIE'S ANGELS (2000)

I liked this movie a lot when it came out. Pretty bad, but also pretty good. Bill Murrey is always entertaining, even when he seems to find the material lame, which I think he does in this movie. Barrymore is the best example of her own contradictions with this character because she rides the line of embarrassing and fun in this movie pretty damn tightly. 

10. POISON IVY (1992)

This is a GREAT bad movie. Barrymore plays the title character (Ivy), who is a troubled but hot teenage girl who befriends a lonely outcast girl (Sara Gilbert from Roseanne!) and as the name suggests, ends up sleeping with the father and murdering the mother. It is 90's sexual thriller at its best/worst. The sex scenes with Skerritt are gross though. 

11. GREY GARDENS (2009)

Of course, this is not nearly as good as the documentary made twenty years earlier, but it is maybe Drew's best performance. This is one of the only times I can say Drew really transforms herself into someone else, and even with an accent she pulls it off. She makes Little Edie sympathetic and likable despite being a complete mess of a person. I suggest seeing the documentary first, then this for a happier ending.

12. GOING THE DISTANCE (2010)
I just watched this RomCom a few nights ago. It wasn't as good as MUSIC AND LYRICS but it did have some really funny parts, as well as some really bad parts. Both Drew and Justin Long are good, have good chemistry and he has one really funny scene in a spray tan booth. At times his character can be a jerk, but in the end I liked where they ended up.

13.  GUNCRAZY (1992)

This movie is decent. Drew plays a poor teenager, obsessed with guns, who is stuck living with an abusive step-father. After he rapes her one day she murders him. She then meets up with her prison pen pal who has been let out early, and they go on a crime spree. Of course, they start off with good intentions but the world is against their type and they end up going out in a blaze of gun fire, much like a modern Bonnie and Clyde. Drew is good in this movie, another sex starlet role, made right after POISON IVY, and her co-star, James LeGros, is a much less creepy sex partner then Mr. Skerritt.


14. EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU (1996)

In this Woody Allen musical Drew is fun, but it is not one of his better films and her singing is only okay. I wouldn't see this movie again, but it is bearable, and we are getting down to where her movies start getting pretty bad. 

15. WAYNE'S WORLD 2 (1993)

Not as good as the first one, it still has funny parts. I haven't seen this since I was 14, so I don't remember it all that well, but I thought Drew was cool at the time. 

16. CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE (2003)

I saw this movie with a friend in Paris when I was 19 and traveling. It was fun and I enjoyed myself, but the movies pretty bad. While not boring, it is ridiculously over the top.  Bill Murray is gone, replaced by Bernie Mac who I don't like nearly enough, and Diaz is a little desperatley hyper in this one. Drew produced this one as well.

17. NEVER BEEN KISSED (1999)

An alright for its genre movie, I like Drew in this movie, but its way too sweet at the end for me, and I feel like I have never made it all the way through, just catch chunks of it here and there. I know this was one of the first big movies her production company produced, which is cool, but its not a very exciting addition to movies in general. 

18. EVERAFTER (1998)

I would never need to watch this movie again, but its a decent fairy tale story for girls. Pretty much the rest of the movies on this list or awful, so this is the last one I can really give any positive words about. Fairly dull, Drew is Cinderella who gets the guy, and maybe has some girl-positive messages, I think, but saw it a really long time ago. 

19.BOYS ON THE SIDE (1995)
Pretty, pretty, pretty bad movie. The characters are really cliched and it's a tear jerker that more tedious then sad. It as Whoopi Goldberg as a lesbian, Mary Elizabeth Parker dying of AIDS and Drew as the "wild girl" stuck with an abusive boyfriend. Who I think beats several of them up at one point.


20. 50 FIRST DATES (2004)

As I said before, I am generally not an Adam Sandler fan, and this movie is awful. Bad, stupid plot and not very funny jokes. Its all the bad parts of the RomCom genre and the worst parts of Sandlers humor put together.





MAD LOVE (1995)
First off, Chris'o'Donell is one of the lamest actors to have a short, but popular career. I don't like him ever and Drew's character in this is an obnoxious "wild girl" who charms boys by risking their lives all the time I guess.

22. BATMAN FOREVER (1995)
Well, everyone knows this movie is awful. Drew is in it for less then 3 minutes which is lucky for her.

23. BAD GIRLS (1994)

A really awful movie. A group of women start a cowgirl gang in the wild west and fight back against evil cowboy men. If this movie was any good at all I would have enjoyed it just because it is about strong women. But its bad, and all the women stay lame the whole movie. Drew does look cute in the western outfits though, so maybe it should be higher...
 

I want to see this movie!

I started reading about this film early last year but it only played in festivals, I am so happy its going to released soon! Female director and a creepy story and I love Michelle Williams. Check this out!

5 GREAT HORROR MOVIES YOU MAY NOT HAVE SEEN

I love scary movies. 

I could make a long list of horror films I like. This is 5 random movies that freaked me out in different ways, and not all of them are horror in the traditional sense. I picked these 5 because they are movies that many people have not seen. Below is a brief description of each movie and some of their horror highlights. 

1. A TALE OF TWO SISTERS 2003   dir. Ji-woon Kim

"There was a girl under the kitchen sink."

This is a scary movie. It starts with two sisters returning home after spending time in a hospital. In true creepy fashion their step-mother is clearly crazy and violent and their father is emotionally absent. TWO SISTERS  is a ghost story, and has a creepy female ghost with long black hair over her face, the same one used in many movies. But TWO SISTERS remains original, mostly in the creepy characters in the film. The family scenes, over meals mostly, are off putting and confusing. Early in the film you get the feeling that something doesn't add up, the conversations they have don't make sense at times, like a piece of the puzzle has been left out.    Watching it the first time my fear was increased as I struggled to make sense of everything. My mind raced to understand what was really going on and that added to my panic. The good news is on my second viewing, it all held together and made sense. A truly great, gory and suspenseful horror flick.   The best image used is a trail of blood being made by a dragged potato sack full of what sounds like a crying girl.

2. PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK1975   dir. Peter Weir

"What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream."

This isn't the scary movie to get when you want gore and screams and killers. It's really more of an art film, but it is very creepy and bothered me for awhile after I first saw it. The story takes place in Australia in 1900, following a group of girls who attend a privet school. On a field trip to Hanging Rock several of the girls go exploring and vanish. Their disappearance haunts many people, including two boys who spied on the girls as they started their exploration, and an orphan student who has a crush on one of the girls who goes missing, and who is not allowed on the field trip because her guardian  is behind on payments. The school also suffers financially as more and more girls are pulled from the school following the incident. This makes the head mistress rather mad, and she takes it out on the poor orphan girl. The costume designs are wonderful and the music is both lovely and haunting. While slow paced at times, the film builds to a devastating conclusion that leaves the audience horrified and curious as to what really happened to the missing girls. 

3. BLACK CHRISTMAS1974   dir. Bob Clark 

"Filthy Billy, I know what you did nasty Billy! "

The original and maybe best slasher movie ever made, BLACK CHRISTMAS is scary! It takes place in a sorority house over Christmas break as girls are murdered one by one. It opens with a POV shot through the killers eyes as he climbs up the side of the sorority house into their attic. The killer is creepy, never being seen, because he is always talking to himself and in a baby voice saying really creepy and gross things. Inside the house are two phone lines and the killer uses one to make obscene phone calls to the rest of the girls, after each phone call, he kills a girl. The reason this slasher film is superior to the hundreds that followed is the characters are not one dimensional. They are given personality, relationships and problems. It also offers a terrifying ending as the final girl learns the killer is in the house but can't leave without trying to get her friends out. We know they are all dead and that only the killer is left with her, but she bravely tries to get to them in time, knowing that a mad man is hiding near her. If you are a horror movie fan this is a must see. (Do NOT watch the remake, it is awful) 

4. REPULSION1965    dir. Roman Polanski 

 "I must get this crack mended"

This disturbing tale of madness was made several years before the more popular ROSEMARY'S BABY and shares several themes. REPULSION is the story of a beautiful young woman who is on the edge of insanity. She lives with her sister and works at a hair salon. Early in the movie there is a scene of her walking home from work past a construction sight, one of the workers watches her, blonde, long legs and calls out to her. We see this from his point of view, making us the spectator also. Soon the young women is left alone for a weekend when her sister and boyfriend go out of town. Immediately the young women begins to unravel. She stares at the cracks in the ceiling, thinking she can see them growing. She buys meat but forgets to put it in the fridge and it begins to rot. A man comes to visit and when he attempts to rape her, she kills him and this sends her over the edge. She barricades  herself in the apartment with the body and rotting meat. The cracks grow in size and soon she sees hands coming out of the walls to grab her. The cinematography is great in this movie and Catherine Deneuve as the young women is both sympathetic and terrifying.

THE BROOD1979 dir. David Cronenberg

"Thirty seconds after you're born you have a past and sixty seconds after that you begin to lie to yourself about 

it "

One of my favorite Cronenberg films, this gross movie has some of the scariest monsters I have seen. They are particularly scary because they look like children but have demon faces. One warning, much of the acting in this movie is bad. The lead actor is awful and scenes with him can be funny they are so bad. But, being a B movie this doesn't ruin the movie, just enhances its cheese factors. My favorite scene in the movie is one where a preschool teacher is beat to death by several of the monsters that look like children, in front of her class of real children who, of course, freak out and cry. The end reveal is grosser then gross, giving audiences some of the sickest imagery of breast feeding and child birth ever put on film. Not a movie to watch while eating.