The Boy [2016] Review

 I believe that "underwhelming" is the most suitable word to describe William Brent Bell's "The Boy" (2016), a horror movie too afraid to accept its own B-movie traits until the very end, although by then it is already much too late. Starring Lauren Cohan (of "Walking Dead" fame), "The Boy" essentially takes a tired concept (that emotionless porcelain dolls make for memorable movie monsters) and runs with it up until there is nowhere left to turn. By the time the credits were rolling, my brain had long since checked out of the theater.

  The film begins with little to no exposition, instead opting to thrust our young heroine, Greta Evans (Cohan), head-on into a dated English manor where she is to take residency as the entrusted nanny of Brahms, the beloved eight year old son of Mister and Misses Heelshire (Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle), while the latter two go to take a much needed "holiday" away from the country side. There is just one catch - the Brahms that Cohan's character is supposed to be watching is in fact an old, seemingly lifeless porcelain doll with perplexingly boyish features. That does not stop the Heelshire's from treating it as their own sacred son, however - they talk to it, kiss it goodnight, scold it when it does wrong, and even lay out a list of ground rules for Greta to follow while they are gone, including such tasks as reading it poetry every day and making sure that it stays well fed. Yet as soon as the Heelshire's leave the house to only Greta and the doll, and as soon as Greta begins neglecting the rules meticulously laid out before her, things begin to run amok. The usual shenanigans for movies in this genre begin to unfold - things move when they should not, doors slam shut on their own, articles of clothing go missing - and as you may suspect, it starts to feel as if there is a whole lot more going on with that damn doll than the Heelshire's are letting on. Greta is visited at least once a week by the Heelshire's grocery-man, and suitable love interest, Malcolm (Rupert Evans), a family friend who does not mind spilling the beans on the odd nature of her employment - that the real Brahms tragically died in a house fire nearly twenty years ago, and that ever since the doll turned up, the family has treated it like so. Greta opens up about her past as well, which includes a story about traveling from her home in America to the UK in order to escape an abusive relationship, a story that the films leans on heavily for its final act, but one that I feel is never fully or satisfactorily explained. Why did she decide to move from Montana to the UK, of all places? Why not simply a few states over, or to a neighboring country like Canada? Certainly there are other nannying jobs she could have taken, and just how did she come across the job for this hush-hush country hall, anyhow? The movie does not really seem to know, either.

  Outside of these events, as a matter of pure filmmaking, it seems highly...well, lazy to leave a film's atmosphere up to that of an inanimate doll. We know that it is a doll, we know that it looks creepy, it does us no good to simply drop a close-up shot of its face every time a household item moves around. One might think that the elaborate mansion the film takes place in would serve to provide ample tension with its long dark corridors and obligatory lack of wi-fi, but even then the film still undercuts itself too soon. We walk with our protagonist through Heelshire Manor's doors within five minutes of the movie's opening, and it simply feels like an old house, nothing more. It lacks the suspense and foreboding of the titular location in Guillermo del Toro's "Crimson Peak" (2015), a film that is wise to save its haunted mansion for the second half of its story, and is just one of many that nails down a certain consistency that constantly eludes "The Boy." This is proven to be true during the movie's final revelations. A fateful twist of the plot takes place, and the pace of the film almost completely shifts in the most abrupt manner possible, before it is quickly, dare I say, 'childishly,' resolved. 

  "The Boy" ends up hastily stumbling through its own motions in a manner that makes it hard to take seriously, and perhaps even worse, it leaves us unsure of whether or not we were supposed to in the first place. I did not hate the movie, but I cannot give it a quality seal of approval. The cast tries with what they have got, but this film, much like Brent Bell's previous "The Devil Inside" (2012) will undoubtedly end up lost in the data banks of the IMDB.

  And what do ya know? They were both released in January. Veto!

- Jared Mullis

  

San Andreas [2015] Review

  When I was in the second grade, my mother taught at the same school I was attending. She taught the third and fourth graders right down my hall, and in her class room was a hefty book about natural disasters - what they are, how they are caused, and when they have happened before. More than anything, though, I mostly just remember the pictures within that book. Photographs of Mount Vesuvius erupting, famed rivers overflowing, and houses taken to the ground by sink-holes that nobody knew existed. There was one photograph in that book that left a deep impression on me, however, taken during the events of the "Great San Francisco Earthquake" in 1906 (is it not funny how we human beings can take a terrible tragedy, put the word 'great' in front of it, and make it a sensational tragedy?) It showed a little girl, whom I would assume to be no more than seven years old, jumping across a crack that had formed in the ground with her arms flailing in the air and an expression of sheer terror on her face, and it was not the shifting earth, literally beneath her feet, nor the crumbling brick structures around her that left the biggest impression of my young mind, but that panicked look written across her eyes, and the fearful cry you could only imagine hearing from her mouth as the paved paths of the city she knew were ripped away before her. She went unnamed, and I have always wondered what became of her, as well as the person who took the photograph. I hope they helped each other through the tragedy.

  These are the people that I thought the most of while watching Brady Peyton's "San Andreas," (2015) the latest (and perhaps largest-scale) big-budget, Hollywood disaster film since Roland Emmerich's "2012" (2009). This film, like the one previously mentioned, takes a plausible worst-case scenario and turns the intensity up to eleven...and then twelve...and then thirteen, and so on. The difference, and reason that I believe I enjoyed "San Andreas" more than Emmerich's foray into computer generated destruction, lies in the fact that Peyton's film is based on matter rather than mythology, and with that comes the classic question of, "What if this were to actually happen?" That question is a tragic thing to consider while watching hundreds of people scramble for safety from falling debris, shards of glass, smoke clouds, and even a tsunami. Yes, a tsunami. All of these events are set off by a series of earthquakes almost a century past their expected due dates from the San Andreas fault line (hence the movie's title), and to make the matters worse, there is a somewhat shocking discovery made about the geographical location of San Francisco itself by two scientists, Lawrence Hayes (Paul Giamatti) and Dr. Kim Park (Will Yun Lee), that provides ample enough to tension to support our story as well as our main cast - which appropriately puts Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Biceps front and center for the majority of the film. I will not spoil what that discovery is, however.

  Johnson plays Raymond Gaines, a LA Fire Department Air Rescue pilot in the midst of a divorce from his wife Emma (Carla Gugino) for what can only be your standard movie reasonings, but mostly because summer movies require some bit of romantic drama. She is moving in with the illustriously rich real estate owner Daniel Riddick (Ioan Gruffudd, playing here with an air of sincerity yet snideness just right for the part) and taking their daughter Blake (Alexandria Daddario) with her. We go on to learn that they used to have another daughter who drowned at a young age, a death that still haunts the members of her family - particularly Raymond; given his job as a rescuer, he remembers her as the most important person he could not save. All of our characters are conveniently set into their places on opposite sides of the city right when the earthquakes begin to hit, and it is up to Gaines to shift gears into overdrive and save his family (and perhaps even his broken relationship, while he is at it) from total disaster.

  One would not be incorrect to claim that this sounds like typical summer movie fare - for the most part, it really is. What surprised me about "San Andreas" is how many times it just kept the ball rolling. No matter the odds, no matter the impossibly horrendous outcomes of the current predicament our characters are discovering themselves to be in, the film always finds a way to make the situation go from bad to worse without so much as a moment's notice. I can only imagine the creators of the stunts excitedly pitching several of their ideas to a group of executive producers in a stuffy board room tucked away somewhere in Hollywood, and it is no wonder why. Despite most of the "movie magic" being handled by scarily enhanced special effects, Dwayne Johnson is in what I like to call full superstar-action-hero mode. He naturally controls almost every scene he is in with the level-headed calmness required for his role as a rescue pilot, and is backed by nothing but solid to strong supporting actors. Paul Giamatti and his crew of scientists seem to be in the movie solely to either relieve the tension or ominously foreshadow it as the story dictates, and although it feels as if all their scenes are doing is moving us away from the "things falling apart" side of the story, they do prove to be fairly entertaining and informative...in that undeniably cheesy kind of way. Another thing I enjoyed about the movie was how it sometimes surprised me with its legitimate concern for teaching safety-measures to employ in the midst of an earthquake (or disastrous situations in general). I was curious to see how much of the instruction they gave in the film was knowledgable and was pleasantly surprised to find that most of its depiction on what to do in an earthquake was in accordance with the Southern California Earthquake Center's own advertised emergency plans for this kind of problem (you can find a link to their well written page on what "San Andreas" got 'right' and 'wrong' here).

  Ultimately, I had fun with "San Andreas" - a good deal more than I thought I would. Even when it slogs through obligations of half-baked character development and movie plot devices, it is summer fun on an over-exaggerated scale, just the way I like it. No part of the movie gave me this feeling more than at around the half way mark. Raymond and his wife are driving across the California countryside when their progress is abruptly halted by a monstrous split in the earth. They hop out of their stolen truck and walk to the edge of the pavement. "What is this?" she asks.

  Johnson stares, almost directly, into the camera.

  "The San Andreas fault."

- Jared Mullis

Mad Max: Fury Road [2015] Review

  "What a lovely day!"

  There is an obvious reason that cinematic veteran George Miller (Mad Max, Babe, and Happy Feet, among others) has this exuberant quote at the top of his movie posters for the latest installment in his monumentally monstrous series of motorized mayhem, "Mad Max: Fury Road" - because no other statement can define it better. Customized cars crash and burn in the scorched desert wasteland, pole vaulters wave back and forth while snagging passengers out of speeding vehicles, humans hang upside down as living blood-bags, and so much more. What a lovely day, indeed.

  Fury Road is a comeback for a certain kind of creativity that many of us had forgotten existed, one that Miller and his crew seem to be able to harness here better than anyone else: chaos. In a world where action blockbusters primarily exist on digitally produced superheroes and explosions (for reference, see "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and "San Andreas," both of which release this month) this determined group of filmmakers pave their own furious road down a path to what seems like chaos, while in reality, Miller probably could not have more control over the bombastic action taking place on screen - but that is this film's magic, and the magic of every "Mad Max" film at that - this untamable energy that looms around each scene like a spirit, granting the raw powers of speed and spontaneity to the live-action stunts being performed before our eyes, proving yet again that nothing is more exhilarating than the real deal.

  Perhaps this ethereal "spirit" is Max himself, physically embodied here by Tom Hardy as a shell of a man, perpetually haunted by the death of his wife and child. They appear to him in sporadic visions, and show that Max's past will always be catching up to him, much like the bloodthirsty fanatics tailing him across the wasteland in their all-consuming, awe-inspiring machines of war. Early on in the film, Hardy is forced to wear a metal face-mask, reminding us of his work as the hulking villain Bane in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises," (2012) and how visceral of an actor he can be when he is forced into desperate situations on screen. I like the scene where his only hope of survival is based on whether or not he can successfully hold a group of people at gunpoint - using a broken gun. There are several scenes similar to it in the sense that Max must use his guile and wit to succeed, but this is a particularly interesting part of the movie because it is the first time we truly get to see Furiosa (expertly portrayed by Charlize Theron), the leader of a small group of female stowaways who are rebelling against their tyrannical, misogynistic ruler and fleeing to the "Green Place," where they are to be treated as equals and given supposed sanctuary. Theron, sporting a shaved dome and black make-up streaked across her forehead, owns this role with more than enough intensity for a whole trilogy of Mad Max movies, and can devastate more with a single glance than a whole page of dialogue (which is appropriate, since time for chit-chat is understandably sparse in a 120 minute long chase sequence). Someone remarked that she would make a great silent-film actress, and I must agree. When Hardy and Theron are on screen together, it seems that anything is possible.

  They are both being chased by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays Byrne, who many may remember as "Toecutter" in the original Mad Max), and his army of followers. Arguably the best Mad Max villain to date, Immortan Joe is literally viewed as a god by his worshippers. According to one character (an apparent crazy named "Nux" who gets some enjoyable and well deserved screen time, played by Nicholas Hoult), a single glance from him promises eternal life, and those under his wing gladly follow him into near-certain death, being told that "Valhalla" awaits them on the other side. Ritualistically dawning a plastic body suit and a breathing mask that rests in an eternal grimace at the beginning of the movie, Miller transforms Immortan Joe into a half-human demon of the wastes, who treats those in his way as either property or nothing more than objects to justify his conquests. One of the more shocking and disgusting shots of the movie shows itself as Immortan is in his tower, surrounded by his women - what he has them doing I will not say, but I was genuinely appalled by this character.

  Fury Road is full of interesting shots and scenes meant to shock, though, and yet somehow, they almost all end in the audience's laughter. I think it is the pure delight we experience when we realize that we have just been shocked, and that Mr. Miller has presented to us something so ridiculous that we cannot help but laugh at it. You can feel the smile underneath everyone's faces as this chief of a director almost whispers to you, "Yes, that did just happen," after every scene.

  To summarize it all: nothing feels out of place in this movie. The action is ridiculous and over over-the-top, the characters speak in sharp looks and grunts with additional lines of frenzied dialogue in between, the "cool-down moments" last just long enough to get us excited by the time the next chase sequence begins, and - perhaps most importantly of all - everything feels fresh and supremely original. The legend goes that George Miller and a collaborative team of artists made a storyboard consisting of nearly 3,500 conceptual shots before even writing the script for this movie. Every scene and every stunt is broken down on a second-by-second basis, executed minutely, and without fail. "Mad Max: Fury Road" is the vision of a madman that has slowly been turning into reality for the past thirty years, and now that it is finally here, little else really needs to be said. How lovely is that?

- Jared Mullis

5/16/2015

P.S. Many die-hard fans of the "Mad Max" series have criticized Tom Hardy being cast as its titular character as opposed to Mel Gibson in the original trilogy. My say on the matter is that both actors do an excellent job portraying Max as a man broken down to relying on his bare and essential instinct: survive. That is what Max is at his core - he is an instinct. A force of nature. He is not an actor. Thank you for reading. Please feel welcome to leave a comment regarding your thoughts on the film!

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