the witch: a great moment in horror

(2016. dir: Robert Eggers) Over the long and fascinating course of horror film history, there have been moments in which the train jumps the track and flies off into a whole new territory, inspiring the whole industry as it goes. There was Hammer, there was Michael Reeves, there was Night of the Living Dead, etc. Today, we have England's Ben Wheatley, with his Field in England and Kill List, and now Eggers with the Witch, a great movie, and unlike anything else you've ever seen.

Did you ever read the testimony given at the Salem Witch Trials? As a kid I was flummoxed by it, wondering how anyone could take such absurdities, equal parts sensational and banal, as truth, even for a moment. From an older vantage point, it seems possible that this community, so rigid in its roles and behaviors, so fixated on righteousness and fear of God, tried for a moment to expand its consciousness, much as the "tune in, turn on, drop out" hippie-mystics would in the late sixties, by allowing for a vast, dark, fantastical realm bordering upon and touching its own, and from this exercise in mind-expansion finding a momentary respite from the drudgery and circumscription of everyday life. In other words, a community built around and focused on an absent God tried to experience the reality of Him by allowing for the physical manifestation of His opposite.

They market the Witch as a horror film, but that's only true in the sense that, say, 2001 is a science-fiction film. But that's misleading, too: 2001 is epic in scope, encompassing more than its genre had previously allowed, whereas the Witch is small, human, very nearly claustrophobic. It's as if you tuned into PBS to watch a very exact and painstaking reproduction of life in Puritan America, only to find that all those crazed stories from the later witch-trials (a man in black taking signatures in a nefarious book, devils in animal form, cursed goats giving blood instead of milk, witches smeared with the fat of infants dancing naked and flying through the night) were actually part of life.

Put it this way: think of the Shining, the Kubrick version. It is one of the best horror films ever made, utterly chilling every time you watch it, brilliantly made, but still it is unmistakably a horror film. It uses the tropes, the themes, the established customs: it's got the jump-scares, the creep-scares, the use of incongruous, eerie images, as well as the traditional pacing, starting slow and accelerating to a train-wreck at the climax. The Witch, on the other hand, uses none of these. Both pacing and camera remain slow and steady, like life back then, moving at a rate which might possibly drive some horror-fans bonkers. The dialogue sounds strange, using verbiage which strikes the modern ear as stilted, almost Shakespearean, but which the actors carry off with grand aplomb. It's an achievement all the more admirable because the tiny cast -- a family of seven, exiled from the community, -- is half child-actors, one of whom (Harvey Scrimshaw as the just-pubescent Caleb) carries a daunting role, a role that might foil many an older actor.

And, ye gods, the use of music. It's as bold as Wheatley's in A Field in England or Anderson's in There Will Be Blood, setting a particular and unsettling tone without mucking down in the slough of the overweening.

2015 in review: the visit and while we're young

The Visit: (dir: M. Night Shyamalan) You think you've written him off, but don't get hasty. There's a reason that we all know his name, although few of us can pronounce it without stumbling. He's one of that mere handful of directors who have practically created a "genre" for themselves, like a "Hitchcock film" or a "Lubitsch comedy". "M. Night" movies share certain factors in common: first, you should go in knowing as little as possible, as there will be a twist toward the end which will will lose some magic if you prepare yourself. Second, there will be thrills (OK, some more thrilling than others), even downright scares, but, thirdly, everything will turn out alright in the end. This last has spelled his downfall more than once (Signs springs to mind), as his anti-cynicism, his possibly born-again zealotry for everything falling ultimately into place under the magnificent plan of an unspecified god, underwhelms and oversimplifies his sometimes beautifully complex and downright weird stories.

IN SUMMARY: It works. It's as unconventional as they come, Hansel and Gretel refigured for the modern world. Because of the rules attendant upon full enjoyment of M. Night Movies, I won't say anything else, just that, yes, his optimistic buoyancy remains intact and allows for some cheese, but there are true scares, and, most importantly, it just works.

While We're Young: (dir: Noah Baumbach) Flipping genders this time to explore the bro-crush between heterosexual males, Baumbach continues his observation of inter-relations between those enigmatic beasts, modern New York artists. He's also exploring that moment which happens in your forties when you realize you're supposed to be an adult, you're already in fact verging on becoming elderly, and you don't know what the fuck you're doing, or if your life is anything like what you're supposed to be doing at all.

Ben Stiller (is he ever funny? Tell me when he's been funny, and I'll watch it) and Naomi Watts are the main duo, but it's Adam Driver who steals the thing as the aspiring documentarian who wedges his way into their lives. The thing about Driver is his apparently complete openness, which makes him, paradoxically, completely enigmatic. The plot depends on his character being utterly charming, potentially wonderful, and equally potentially evil, and he pulls it off. Until the end, it's hard to tell if he's a good guy or a bad guy or something in between.

IN SUMMARY: Some interesting insights into the dilemmas of child-bearing at the last minute, the ethics of art-making, and the creative re-invigoration of a good marriage.

2015 in review: women and invasion

Hellions: (dir: Bruce McDonald) The latest from the Canadian director of Pontypool is an interesting horror film in which a Halloween home invasion by demonic children in masks acts as direct metaphor for the invasion of a teenager's body by an unwanted pregnancy. As soon as the craziness starts, the whole world turns soft pink, and remains so for much of the film. The children chant, "blood for baby," as the girl feels her own body turning against her to feed the alien invader. The best horror films work not only on symbolic levels but for straight spooks as well, and this one only works metaphorically, so it's of limited interest. Norayr Kasper gives it some great photography, though, some fantastic framing.

the Keeping Room: (dir: Daniel Barber) The Civil War is limping to a close, "Uncle Billy" Sherman and his monstrous ravagers are berserking across the South, and three forgotten women fight to survive in the empty shell of a once-lovely home. It's as if Barber took the Yankee-on-the-staircase scene from Gone With the Wind, stripped away the glamor, and expanded it to explore the experiences of women. Barber's skills are apparent from the beginning in a thunderously good opening involving a woman and a vicious dog barking one another down, the introduction of the Yankee marauders, and a stagecoach set aflame and running at full speed. As the morality play continues, his characters resist (albeit just barely, sometimes) the temptation to compress themselves into allegorical flatness.

A "keeping room", by the way, is an informal, secondary living room, usually near the kitchen. On this farm, it's separate from the main house, and it's where they do most of their living: cooking, eating, getting drunk, and the telling of truths. They go back to the main house, which feels like a grand, neglected museum, woefully vulnerable to invasion, only for sleeping.

Magic Mike XXL: (dir: Gregory Jacobs) This sequel to the 2012 Soderbergh-helmed, male-stripper extravaganza is frustrating and extraordinary in equal measure. It's essentially a road-trip movie, with the boys reunited (minus Matthew McConaughey, who has an Oscar on the mantel and perhaps no further time for such playthings) and looking for one last, explosive farewell before they put the semi-glamorous life on the pole behind them and fade into ordinary existence. It feels largely improvised, most successfully when Channing Tatum and Amber Heard are in charge (although Heard is too skinny now. Is Johnny Depp making her live in France or something?), and it often feels like a meandering excuse for these guys to Just Hang Out.

The extraordinary thing is its attitude towards women. Never have I seen a Boy Road-Movie (and this is, make no mistake, unabashedly that, complete with overuse of fist-bumping and "bro"-speak) with such care taken towards women. These men are not mere exhibitionists; they have a calling to make women feel beautiful and sexy. There is no discrimination against the portly or the aged, even in private amongst themselves. So, in a sense, it feels like a feminist tract: it's the best part of the sex industry, in which you sometimes meet men who are there because they do, gloriously and fully, love Woman as archetype and individual women as Her vice-regents, or, as this movie terms us, Her Queens.

On the other hand, because it exists entirely within the realm of Adult Entertainment, it becomes an example of that weirdly Freudian phenomenon, a world which is utterly sexualized in every respect. And the dances these caring gentlemen do (and they really are caring, and gentlemen) wind up being creepily invasive, with the woman who is being "adored", as they put it, forced to surrender herself completely into limpness and let her stripper-guy strap her spreadeagled and faux-fuck her, or hold her upside-down while he dry-fucks her face, etc. Obviously I have boundary issues, but this kind of thing, particularly in a room filled with hundreds of my howling peers, would seem more like hell than love to me.

My point is that this movie is a definite step in the right direction, and that in itself is a vaguely discouraging thing.

2015 in review: some glimpses

American Ultra: (dir: Nima Nourizadeh) Here's my confession: I watch the Harold and Kumar movies. Yes, I do. I do some fast-forwarding, sure, but things like getting stuck in the stop-motion sequence in the Christmas movie and terrorized by the giant snowman... what even sober viewer is not helpless against such stuff? Smoking ganj with a cheetah? The repeating and ever-widening circles of the NPH joke? The robotic waffle-maker who falls in love with Kumar and ends up saving their lives? Brilliant and hilarious.

H & K aside, I don't often cotton to the stoner comedies. This one is part stoner-fest, part love-story, but mostly comic-book-improbable action-film with ill-judged, hipster-"edgy" book-end sequences. Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, however, are great together, and John Leguziamo is close to perfect as the arsenal-toting, paranoid drug-dealer, pulling off with aplomb impossibilities like saying, "You're some sensitive nigger, bitch," with sympathy, as an actual compliment. Eisenberg has wonderful timing (panicking during a fight with his girlfriend: "Please don't use your grown-up voice with me"). The plot is wacky and gets out of hand, but you relax into it in the way you used to relax into absurdities like Air Force One, knowing that it's all ridiculously far-fetched, but will all come out OK in the end. Only this one's funnier, and has people like Walton Goggins in it, as a laughing assassin.

Tomorrowland: (dir: Brad Bird) A two-hour commercial for Disneyland, the space program, and campy sci-fi kitsch. Its inspiration seems to be all the apocalyptic media we have now, how unhealthy it is, how it leads to a "why bother?" kind of mindset. Its moral seems to be that cynical resignation is lazy; saving the world takes optimism and hard work.

All good points to make. Not a good movie at all.

Irrational Man: (dir: Woody Allen) I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it as long as he persists in his tailspin: even when Woody has a good idea these days, even when he's feeling inspired by it, it still doesn't work. He's literally forgotten how to write interesting dialogue. The only reason his movies still hold the interest they do is because all the best actors want to work with him. It's sad watching Emma Stone throw her all, which is considerable, into this thankless, predictable "I'm a young girl seducing an older man" buffalo-wallow.

The camera, the editing, especially the music (an addictive "Wade in the Water" from the Ramsey Lewis Trio pulsing beneath the action), it all flows smoothly enough that we keep watching, but in the end it's as if we've been skimming across the top of a story idea that's never fleshed out.

My advice to you: read Crime and Punishment while you're listening to the Ramsey Lewis Trio instead.

Ricki and the Flash: (dir: Jonathan Demme) Diablo Cody's most pedestrian script yet, which leaves it still about a hilltop or so higher than your standard Hollywood fare. I hate it with a passion when an actor tries to be a rock star, but, grudgingly, Meryl Streep and her band (including Rick Springfield shredding on his Gibson with both gravitas and skills) convince as a sort of lower-tier Bonnie Raitt combo. Her onstage banter, though, her hair, her politics, the cackling dirty-talk... it all feels forced. Then the story loses its focus, and you end up feeling like you got the wrong ending. Yes, there's a culmination, in which Ricki and her band tear up the joint at her estranged son's wedding and she reconciles with all her various, estranged family-members. It began, though, as a story about a woman and her daughter, and that part is left hanging about midway.

I blame Jonathan Demme for dragging Cody away from her own strange and compelling world and into the Hollywood Formula. Although it's ostensibly about women, about the effects of aging and betrayal and questionable choices on women, the shape of the movie has Old Studio Man written all over it. Why do these things always have to end with a wedding or a prom? It's so 1980s.

2015 in review: effie gray

(dir: Richard Laxton) Effie Gray Ruskin Millais, one of the Pre-Raphaelite "muses", is best known for the infamous incident upon which her marriage to art-philosopher John Ruskin broke asunder: it was annulled after several years on grounds of non-consummation. Effie claimed that when she stripped off on her wedding night, Ruskin, raised on the smooth bodies of statues and classical paintings, was disgusted by her pubic hair. This is the salacious story which has survived, because it makes for stunningly good copy, and may or may not bear some truth. Probably it was one, but not the only, cause.

Ruskin, certainly one of the great thinkers of the Victorian era, as influential and well-regarded among the artists of his time as Belinsky was among the pre-Revolutionary Russian literati, has been harshly treated in recent years. First he was unfairly shunted aside as a ridiculous posturer in Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner, and here he is painted as a cruel, impotent freak and a mama's boy, his myriad gifts presented as a sort of whitewash behind which he hid his true, malformed nature. Even a cursory glance over Ruskin's work reveals a man of deep thought, numinous sensibility, and empathy for his fellow man. In Effie Gray, Greg Wise's Ruskin is pampered, self-involved, careless of the pain of others. Of course, the man as gleaned through his recorded words and the man in action are always two disparate beings, so where lies the truth?

In the End of the Tour, the David Foster Wallace character says, "I think being shy basically means being self-absorbed to the point that it makes it hard being around other people." Whether or not the real Wallace spoke it, it rings true when describing a human of genius, who will carry in his head a separate world, live inside a paradigm other than this dominant one we all, without thought, agree to call "reality", and the words may well apply to Ruskin. Because he approached art from a carefully preserved purity of perspective, and because he cared passionately to communicate his insights clearly, his writings inflamed his contemporaries with inspiration and helped to broaden the artistic world and hasten its evolution. He was not only a vociferous champion of Turner's, but opened the way for the much-maligned Pre-Raphaelites, whose influence largely rerouted the history of painting. He was a man with a calling; he followed it with zeal, and the path necessitated a self-imposed seclusion from the usual pleasures of society.

I do enjoy the Pre-Raphaelites, but mostly I love their WAGs. Jane Morris, Fanny Cornforth, Gray, Maria Zambaco, Elizabeth Siddal. Their collective story is a fascinating one: they did a good deal of the suffering for the Pre-Raphaelites' art and got scant amounts of the credit for it. Effie Gray Ruskin Millais was never my favorite, but she leaves a path through the history books as a practical and talented woman, skilled in art herself, able to survive a public scandal and eke out a living as "help-meet" and muse to a genius, bearing him, I swear to God, eight children. Her household with Millais provided a solid fulcrum upon which the "Brotherhood" could swivel.

The movie is disingenuous from the beginning, painting Effie's family as poverty-stricken Scots snubbed by the Ruskins, wealthy Londoners. In fact, the families were both from Perth, and friendly; the Ruskins relocated to London for business reasons. Dakota Fanning's Effie is painted as a lonely, po-faced but good-hearted girl; in fact, she was a known flirt, under-educated, always vivacious and surrounded by suitors, and she initially laughed at the idea of marrying the stilted and bookish Ruskin. The current theory has it that she relented to save her father, who had lost his money in speculation, and Ruskin, although in love, was too scrupulous to make her sleep with him until she shared his feelings. It all sounds so, well, Victorian, but viewed within the parameters of the day, it is not an absurd idea. Later, while in Italy where Ruskin was writing his groundbreaking the Stones of Venice, Effie flirted and danced with Austrian officers, inspiring more than one duel and a scandal over missing diamonds, either stolen by or given to an admirer. In any case, the abyss between the couple's opposed temperaments was horribly apparent, and it appears that ending the marriage was initially Ruskin's idea. Annulment was preferred to divorce, in that he may have thought it could be kept reasonably private. He was wrong.

Regardless of all my historical objections, if the movie had been well-made, I'd be the first to love it. Emma Thompson's script, though, never comes much to life. Dakota Fanning's beauty is certainly the type the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood preferred, but she comes across as blank, lifeless, and unthinking. She shares no chemistry with Tom Sturridge's Millais, and when Emma Thompson as Lady Eastlake (the only lively performance in the film) takes an interest in her, there doesn't seem to be any reason for it.

IN SUMMARY: Quite beautiful, quite shallow, altogether unsatisfying.