Twixt (2011)

A long long time ago, there existed a filmmaker named Francis Ford Coppola. He made a string of genre-defining films that were critically appraised worldwide – the first two Godfather movies, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation – and he was regularly and rightfully renowned in film fanatic circles as one of the medium's best artists.

That was in the 70s, though. Now he makes movies like Twixt.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Starring: Val Kilmer, Elle Fanning, Bruce Dern

IMDb

Co-written with The Observer and Michelle.

Apparently the idea for this movie came to Coppola in a dream, which makes sense, as I also try to turn all of my dreams into movies. The only problem is, I can't get a studio to green-light a movie about conquering the king of the mole people who lives in the lost kingdom Atlantis with a sword made entirely out of cheese wedges as a metaphor for my own coming of age.

So to get out my frustration, I'm just going to talk about Twixt. Take a deep breath, guys; it's gonna be a weird-ass trip.

We start this off with a narration that I'm sure lead actor Val Kilmer recorded when he was working off a bad hangover from the previous night. He narrates about how there's this town with a clocktower with seven clockheads, none of which tell the right time – which really makes sense, when you don't try to think about it at all and instead move onto something else entirely.

He also says it was “a town of people who wanted to be left alone,” which might sound like a cool premise to set up a story, but really it's never elaborated on – so it mostly just comes off as kinda douchey on the part of the collective townfolk. As far as PR for this town goes, Kilmer isn't doing a good job. He just makes it sound like some shithole with nothing to do, so, I guess give him props for truth in advertising.

Then again, as we'll find out later, the town is also somewhat famous for having vampires hanging out there, which I guess would bring a higher concentration of Hot Topic shoppers there or something, so at least they'd have that.

The commercial for Hot Topic's new clothing line isn't looking too good...I recommend a re-shoot, preferably with a hot chick in that same position.

As for the vampires themselves, well, they're really more of an afterthought; never given real characters or even any purpose in the story. It's really quite astounding that Coppola managed to shoehorn in fucking vampires into this and made them the most forgettable thing in the movie. Oh, except that the lead vampire's name is Flamingo, and that they just kinda hang out on the other side of this lake in town. But I think the fact that his name is Flamingo is the more important part there.

I guess we're supposed to believe Kilmer's character, Hall Baltimore, is a pulp horror fiction writer who is going to this town to sell books. However, when he asks where the bookstore is, he's told there isn't one at all, and so he ends up selling books out of this random hardware store instead. So why did he come to this town again? Did he just pack his shit into his car and go 'alright, time to go drive in a random direction until I find a town shitty enough to just let me set up camp without warning'? I mean, either that or his agent massively fucked up somewhere along the line.

A vision into Val Kilmer's future.

His only real guest is Sheriff Bobby Lagrange, played by Bruce Dern, later of the much better movie Nebraska. I love one of Lagrange's first lines: “How does it feel to be a bargain basement Stephen King?” Well, I'd imagine not very good. Lagrange then proceeds to just sort of take one of Hall's books without paying and have him sign it, saying he's one of his biggest fans – gee, with fans who insult you and take your books without paying, who needs enemies?

"Also, your penmanship sucks."

Then, I guess, Lagrange wants to show Hall this dead body in the morgue as an inspiration for a new book, which Lagrange wants to help write, or something. The body for some reason is just held in the sheriff's office, and still has the stake that was used to murder her sticking out of the top of the body, because why remove that, anyway? Just leave it there as a warning to everyone else. A warning to what, you may ask? Uh...to not play with large wooden stakes, I guess...

"So why did you leave that stake in the body? Why not take it out?"
"Don't you bring your big-city smart guy bullshiiiiiit in here! We do things old school in this town! To make sure our dead bodies don't turn into vampires, we leave the stakes in for 30 days after!"
"I've never heard that about---"
"SILENCE!"

Hall goes out and finds this old hotel where apparently Edgar Allen Poe once stayed – pfft, yeah right, but whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night! He then partakes in one of the movie's favorite pastimes – getting into a Skype argument with his wife over money.

Skype chats are instant drama!

You know, I guess these scenes could be way worse, but they're pretty fuckin' bad coming from the guy who once gave us the masterfully crafted destruction of Michael Corleone's familial relationships, is Val Kilmer whining to his wife over Skype really the best we could expect? Here's one of the lines he delivers, so make up your own minds: “People ask why I'm so good at writing about witches, and I tell them it's because I married one!”

Riveting. Just...riveting.

Then he goes for a walk in the woods and the movie loses its mind! Apparently, while walking in the woods, he runs into this young girl played by Elle Fanning, who was in the much better Super 8 the same year as this came out. The girl has a conversation with Hall about, I don't know, her braces or something.

"I think my braces make me look ugly."
"No, the Anne Rice-wannabe makeup is what does that!"

Then she says she really enjoys Hall's books, so I guess it's good that he managed to find a thirteen-year-old girl who enjoyed his work! I wonder what pops up on Amazon's “also recommended” feature when you buy his shit?

Yeah, sounds about right. She also says she couldn't make it to Hall's book signing because she didn't know what time it was, on account of the seven clock faces all telling different times in the town. Which, again, isn't a ridiculous idea at all for a town to adopt that! Pfft, I mean, telling time is for losers.

Anyway, he then loses track of her and finds this mysterious house in the woods where some weird stuff is going on with a creepy priest guy hoarding 10 or so children into the basement, or some shit like that. Apparently the Elle Fanning girl is there too. I don't know – it's a very dreamlike, weird sequence and doesn't really have much context right now. The girl gets into an argument with the priest-looking dude, saying she “knows what he did,” but they separate and nothing comes of it yet.

Oh, and sometime during this weird sequence, he also runs into Edgar Allen Poe, because why not?

Well, never seen Edgar Allen Poe erotica before, so there is that novelty...

If none of this makes any sense to you, well, it's because most of that sequence was in the past, and Hall can now visit the past, or dream world, or whatever it is, when he falls asleep. This isn't really established very well at all, and the story as a whole is very muddled and hard to follow overall.

Hall investigates a bit, and even goes to a library – which I'm just now realizing would have been a much better place to hold that fucking book signing than a goddamned hardware store. That's a minor detail, but what else am I supposed to focus on? I get that Hall is reading up on the town history of some murders or something, but I'm not really convinced Val Kilmer can read – he did say yes to this script, after all.

There's another sequence where Hall goes to see the police chief and has to call the operator to get the phone number so he can call inside and get them to let him in. Then he knocks on the door and the deputy guy is in there anyway – so the entire thing was pointless. Amazing. The deputy goes on this whole spiel about it being Sunday so the sheriff's office is closed – then why he is there? The movie has no idea either.

"This town is so shitty, we just converted my house into a sheriff's office! MY LIFE IS ENDLESS MISERY!"

For that matter, the sheriff's office is just closed on Sunday in this town? I get that it's a small town, but come on, does crime take a break on Sundays? Are you just operating on good faith?

I guess Hall gets the idea to write a story about the town because of his dream sequence, which he gets the title “The Vampire Executions” from LaGrange. Speaking of that crazy old coot, LaGrange is apparently so into this vampire crap that he made a little wooden model of the execution chair, complete with a little girl doll in it getting murdered - with painted blood on it, mind you - when he presses a switch.

That's it, game over man!

I just...really have no fucking idea what mushrooms Coppola ate when he was making this, but I have a feeling they're the same ones needed to actually understand what the hell this movie was going for.

There's also a billion more scenes with the split-screen thing going on for Skype calls. He tells his wife about the book idea, and then he talks to this old coot from his publishing company, who is very insistent that he not use the “fog on the lake” line in his opening scene, as well as just kinda pushy in general. He really just seems way too eager and energetic. It's like, c'mon buddy, you're in Twixt, you can just relax now.

Then the very next scene, we get Hall sitting in front of a computer screen like a goddamn web-blogger trying to write the opening of the novel. Because this movie is a horrible abomination against good taste, he apparently can't think of anything that ISN'T the “fog on the lake” line to open the story – I guess he's a shitty writer; whodathunkit.

Boy, Dean Koontz's later work under a pseudonym really isn't that good, huh?

After a way-too-long scene of him trying to write, the movie just gives up and he starts rambling about gay basketball players from the 60s and all sorts of other completely random nonsense that sounds like I'm making it up – but no, rest assured, it's really in the movie. Why? I have no idea. And frankly, I don't really want to know. Coppola...I think your movie is broken beyond repair. This whole thing is the cinematic equivalent to a Blue Screen of Death – it's just done.

This about sums up the entire movie.

Or, wait, I got a better one – do you guys remember that Homestar Runner cartoon about the virus on Strong Bad's computer? That's what this movie is. Just complete random bullshit, getting more and more insane and incomprehensible with each scene and eventually kind of imploding on itself.

Then we get a scene where Hall breaks into the sheriff's office in the middle of the night to examine that body with the stake in it. I'm just fucking astounded that the sheriff's office is locked on a Sunday morning but then at night it's apparently wide open for anyone to break in. But hey, why make sense now?

"Why couldn't I have just come in the next day and asked about this in public, seeing as they're obviously cooperative with me so far? Because...well, I'm just a fucking idiot."

Because the movie isn't done ritualistically murdering our brain cells, we get a scene where Hall and the sheriff's guys actually use a Ouija board to try and contact the dead girl to see if they can figure out who killed her. Why bother with actual investigations? It's not like you're police officers or something! Just use a Ouija board; it's how all the best detectives do it. I mean I still haven't seen True Detective, but I'm pretty sure they do this kind of shit all the time on that show.

When your detective team is so sad you have to invite a random little kid who gets zero lines in the film into your group. Yes, really - that kid is never introduced as a real character and has no lines. But that doesn't surprise me at this point.

If these scenes I'm describing sound splattershot-random to you, it's because they pretty much are. None of these scenes really have any point to them and most of them end quite abruptly without accomplishing much in terms of the story. While I can see what Coppola was going for with the story, the way it's told really is pretty slipshod-poor. There's just no coherence to any of this and it's making it even kind of hard to write this review. They've finally done it! They've created the Anti-Cinema Freaks movie! A movie so incomprehensible I can't even describe it right!

What else is there to talk about? The scene where he confronts those vampires across the lake and nothing comes of it?

When the kid with lipstick, mascara and a black cape seems like the more sensible one in your movie.

Nah.

Maybe the scene where it's finally revealed, after a lengthy shouting match in Hall's hotel room, that Sheriff Bobby LaGrange was the "wooden stake" killer all along, because why wouldn't he be? There were so many clues, if you skipped to the end of the movie and watched the ending first. I mean otherwise it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever as there were zero clues. But whatever!

We then get another acid trip flashback where we see that  the creepy minister guy from the past killed all of the kids in his care because he was afraid of them getting turned into vampires. That is just...so logical, and makes so much sense, that I can't even come up with words to describe it. It's just the zenith of filmmaking and storytelling.

Then we see the Elle Fanning girl from before, who apparently tried to run away, and so he did the logical thing and kidnapped her, chaining her to the wall in a creepy out of the way building and torturing her.

I guess she got turned into a vampire somehow, but even that's not very clear.

So what was this guy's plan again? Vampires exist, so kill every human being you can rather than let the vampires get them? Well when you put it like THAT it sounds...completely batshit. Thanks for more murdered brain cells, movie!

Whatever – just get to the scene where Hall looks longingly over the random cliff we haven't seen before and sees his dead daughter's face reflected in the water for no reason:

Apparently Elle Fanning was Edgar Allen Poe's lost Lenore, or some shit like that. And yes, he is rolling in his grave right now!

Oh yeah, I did forget to mention that subplot? About the dead daughter? I'm just heartbroken over this now. How can I be trusted to review things in a professional manner at all? Eh, on second thought, it doesn't really matter.

Then Hall goes back to the sheriff's office where he finds the vampire-ghost of Elle Fanning waiting under the sheet to kill him, in a very bloody and violent manner...

...only for him to then wake up in a chair in a nice office, handing the book he just wrote to the publisher. Yes, I'm dead serious. This whole thing was basically just an allegory for a hack writer stealing someone else's ideas and using them as his own to make money. Truly worth all the fever-dream sequences and non-sequitur dialogue, right?

Even better is the ending text scroll we're left with:

Yes, the fact that Hall's new book did “pretty good business” really did deserve priority over the next bullet under it, which says that LaGrange was a murderer. Book sales always trump the lives of dead people. Great list there, movie!

Okay, I'm about ready to check into the psychiatric ward after this movie. I seriously just don't even know, man. I mean, it's awful, it really is – the acting's either wooden or extremely overdramatic, the story is a hackneyed mess which the numerous over-long dream sequences don't help, most scenes go nowhere, and the twist at the end is so random that I feel like it was just made up on the spot when Coppola wrote that scene.

But strangely, it isn't the worst thing I've ever seen – I mean, it does have a certain personal feel to it that likely comes from the fact that Coppola wrote, directed and produced the thing. And to be fair, despite the film's complete insanity, there really is nothing else like it out there – it is one of a kind, for better or for worse.

Plus, it's really funny to watch and riff on with friends. Never underestimate the power of that virtue.

My only lingering question about all this is, since Val Kilmer was once Batman, and one actor who used to be Batman got a super-cool meta-comedy film about his career, when do we get Kilmer's version of the same? My guess after seeing this movie is, not any time soon.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

The Best and Worst Films of 2011

Well, 2011 is over and all I can think to do is make a blog post about the best movies of the year…shut up, I do have a life!

Keep in mind that these are just my personal opinions, the films I enjoyed the most – not necessarily the most technically adept or profound, but the ones that touched me the most, and which I found to be the most entertaining.

Best

1. Super 8

This was just the most enjoyable film of the year – it might not have been the most artful, the most thought provoking or anything, but it was the most enjoyable, and if there’s one thing I love it’s a film that I can just watch and dig the hell out of everything it’s doing. Super 8 is just a killer homage to the Spielberg canon of old, with wonderful characters, a lot of energy and great visual hooks. It’s just a great all around story, and for me, that makes it the best of the year.

2. Hugo

What a wonderfully detailed film. This is so good it’s scary – it puts other kids’ films to shame with its attention to shading and lights and just all around details, in the story as well as in the scenery and CGI. This is masterful cinema and proves that Scorsese is the man. A lovely, sentimental story that speaks out to anyone who’s ever loved art, with layered characters, nuanced, believable performances and a stunning outcome overall. To childrens’ films, this is the equivalent of fine dining. Kids need to see this, but so does everyone else too.

3. The Adjustment Bureau

I love this movie because it is uplifting, life affirming and glorious – it takes a simple premise of ‘boy meets girl’ and does it up with a huge, epic backdrop and some awesome sci-fi leanings that make for one of the best, most original stories of the year. The film is visually stunning as well as wonderfully acted. Matt Damon continues to get more and more awesome, as he delivers a great performance in this one. This is a very complex film that tackles issues of human fate versus free will as well as the idea of a God, all handled subtly and without taking any one side in particular. It will make you think, that’s for sure. The Adjustment Bureau might have a cheesy ending, but the way it reaches that ending is so good that you won’t care.

4. The Descendants

In the wake of a family tragedy, Matt King (George Clooney) and his two daughters are thrust into a web that will make you laugh, cry and ponder all at different times, and it is that variety that gives The Descendants a place on this list. This movie is just excellently done, and I’m surprised at how much fun I had watching this despite its grave subject matter. But I think that was the point – this is a film about family, and its honest approach yields a cornucopia of emotions and interactions just like real life. The snappy writing and clever dialogue, though, elevates it above a simple ‘slice of life’ movie and turn it into a statement – we are all people and we deal with tragedy differently, and we can’t judge others solely based on one side of his or her personality. It’s a movie about loving your family and accepting those around you for who they are. Great acting and cinematography are only icing on the cake.

5. Kill the Irishman

Bad ass, man. This is a hard-hitting mob story based on true life events of Danny Greene, a sort of jack of all trades who nonetheless fell into a bloody, explosive other life with the mob despite his efforts to do good. This is a quick-paced, jam-packed film with something happening every second, and if you like any of the old Scorsese movies or the Godfather series or anything, this should be up your alley too. I don't know how accurate it is to the true events, but what it is is a great, gripping epic that keeps you interested all the way to the end. Ray Stevenson is fucking awesome in this as Greene, and he booms out commanding dialogue like he was damn well born to do it. Great performance, maybe my favorite of the year. Christopher Walken is cool, and the rest of the cast, made up of big names like Vincent D'Onofrio, Tony Darrow and more, is just icing on the cake. This is an awesome movie and you need to see it, end of story.

6. The Ides of March

Politics are a hungry game, a cut-throat sport in which one loses his soul, so to speak, and that is illustrated brilliantly in The Ides of March. Ryan Gosling, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and others are just the icing on the cake of this quite cold, brutal and calculating story that shows how politics work in a clear but not at all flattering light. This is a dramatic film that escapes the trap of being too sappy or too melodramatic – it’s a serious film for people who are serious about movies. Respectable, iconoclastic and well written.

7. The Debt

A tale that transcends a thirty-year period, The Debt is great because it keeps the thrills coming at a steady pace. I could never predict where this movie was going, and I found its dark, mature textures and unwinding tension to be arresting. This is a pretty gritty, hard-assed movie, and it takes no prisoners in telling its sometimes hard-to-tell story the best way it knows how – with conviction and weight. This is, again, a serious movie for serious people, and if you like historical films or dramas, The Debt will be up your alley.

8. Source Code

In the same mode as Adjustment Bureau, this is a kick ass sci fi story done up with romantic touches and epic storytelling to make for a real thrill ride, and pulled together with sweep and grace to make sure you’re hooked every minute. I loved this movie for its sleek, action packed nature and its abundance of heart and honesty. Just a hugely entertaining, well-written romp, and one that anyone can enjoy.

9. Insidious

A lot of people disliked this one, but then, a lot of people are idiots – Insidious is awesome, and while it lacks the subtlety or originality of the greatest horror movies, it makes up for that with Nightmare on Elm Street-styled flashiness and bombast, and really works due to its energy and bounce. This is an energetic film that doesn’t try too hard to be serious or pose itself as anything it’s not, and I like that about it. Add to that the fact that it’s tons of fun and packs some excellent, creative scares and homages to horror’s distant past, and you have a winner of a movie. Just a great flick.

10. Captain America

Easily the best Marvel superhero movie ever. This is just an overflowingly awesome, passionate flick that rocks out with some great dialogue, good character development, snappy action and a well-told story. It’s a meat-and-potatoes movie, one that ticks off all the boxes and does them well, and for that I will watch this any time I see it on.

But with every year also comes some pretty horrible crap, too. I didn’t pay money to see a lot of really bad movies in theaters this year, but there were a few that slipped through the cracks…

Worst/Disappointments

Priest

This ass-fest is one of the most creatively bereft films I’ve ever seen. It is amazing how many clichés there were in this, and how much tension they managed to suck out of the whole. An awfully soulless, toothless, ball less film that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies.

Season of the Witch

Season of the Witch is not a movie, it is a convention of Monty Python wannabes trading stale dialog in stilted accents on sets that look like they were made from stuff you can get at the Dollar Store. The plot is a ludicrously, woefully under-developed and half-assed debacle that you have to see to belief. So stupid it’s almost smart again. Key word – almost.

Pirates IV

A series that has long, long since worn out its welcome. Please never make another one of these movies.

30 Minutes or Less

Despicable garbage that tries for funny and comes off offensive to any kind of good taste. I hate these characters, I hate the situations they get into and I hate the implication that we’re supposed to find any of it funny. This is cancer in cinematic form.

J. Edgar

Eastwood finally bites off more than he can chew with this bloated and dull biopic about J. Edgar Hoover. Lacking the power and grace necessary to carry such a long, spacious film, J. Edgar is mostly just tiresome.

So that's 2011, and I hope you all enjoyed reading this list. You may disagree with me on any number of these films, and there are plenty I haven't even seen that very well could have made it on here. I hope to see even more great movies in 2012.

All images copyright of their original owners.

REVIEW: Super 8 (2011)

OK guys, this is it. This is the SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER WE HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! The messiah of big, explosive action movies! Truly a great piece of cinema that I am very honored to be reviewing here today.

Director: JJ Abrams

Starring: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1650062/

So this is the new J.J. Abrams movie, and I will be talking it up to anyone who will listen for the next few weeks. Super 8 is a movie that could have easily been released 15-20 years ago and have been great then, too. It’s in that ambiguous mutt of genre classification that combines action, romance and suspense, all in well-doled-out amounts, to create a new sort of genre that I will call simply “summer blockbuster.” And in that regard, this is just straight up awesome. This is the kind of Kick-Ass or Dark Knight level of excellence that I really just love. It’s just pure cinematic ecstasy.

But I guess I do have to actually talk about this movie, so here goes. This is basically a story about a bunch of kids in the late 70s who are filming a movie and accidentally get wrapped up in a huge government conspiracy, which results naturally in ALL OUT WAR! That sounded decent enough, and I expected this to be decent, maybe stretching into ‘good’ territory at best – I was wrong. This did have what I expected in terms of material and themes and whatnot, but it took them to a level that went far beyond those expectations, which surprised me. The plot felt fresh, the characters were a lot of fun and everything that happened was carried out with a real honest zeal.

Like this plot thread about the main kid’s mother being dead – haven’t we seen that a hundred times already? Yes, but Super 8 manages to make us care anyway. Through the strengths of the actors and the writing it invests you wholly in what’s going on. There’s one scene in particular with Joel Courtney’s and Elle Fanning’s characters in the middle of the movie that just floored me. I don’t want to spoil it, though. And this was Joel Courtney’s first film? Really awesome job for such a young actor!

Just the ways the characters interact in general is really well done. They feel like real kids. Their families feel like real families. Sure, sometimes there are moments where they seem to be a little too mature for their ages, but even that’s pretty hazy; it’s never flat-out unbelievable or anything. Everyone just did a great job with this, making it one hell of a memorable film. One character, at the beginning, is talking about making a movie, and says something like “You have to make the audience want these characters to live,” and the film does spectacular on that front. The parts in the beginning where they’re making the movie are almost as joyous as the more heavy-duty action you get later, if not moreso at times.

So, yeah, wasn’t there an ALL OUT WAR in this movie too? Yes, and it’s presented with a bombast and grandeur to it that I rarely see in most of these kinds of movies. You have your usual build-up and military invasion and what not, and it all looks really standard from the get go…but surprisingly I found myself actually feeling pretty threatened by these guys. They felt like real villains. It wasn’t like in Thor where their being there was played off as some kind of silly, trivial inconvenience – in Super 8 you know some serious trouble’s going down, and while of course the plot is pretty nonsensical and off-the-wall, it will have you hooked anyway.

By the end it pretty much evolves into a full-scale epic. There’s one scene where the kids are running through their formerly quiet suburb with all sorts of flames, gunshots, laser beams, grenades and general chaos going on all around them. It’s just wild, wild stuff, and is extremely gratifying to watch – isn’t this why you come to the movies? To see stuff as big and grand as this? This film takes me back to a time when I wasn’t disillusioned to this kind of grandiosity due to horrible writing and years of plastic-fake movies…but then, this is a good movie on any standard.

So yeah, Super 8 rocks. It’s one of those movies that just reminds me why I like going to the movies. It’s filled with youthful wonder and a healthy sense of adventure. The characters are so good that you’ll feel like you’re right there with them. The story is very well told in every aspect. J.J. Abrams has been quoted as saying that he wanted to take us back to a time when movies didn’t have everything about them revealed before it was even released – to enhance the surprise when actually going into the theater. And I think that worked really well here, because I had no idea what this was about, and each new plot twist kept me hooked. Super 8 is the best movie of the year so far and if you don’t see it, you’re missing out big time.