One Hot Scary Mess of a Halloween Mama by. The Rolling Bone
I’m
generally leery of PG-13 horror movies.
In an attempt to attract the widest possible audience they usually have
to water down the project; images that are too graphic, nudity or language that
is too profane all wind up on the cutting room floor in an attempt to pass the
censors, oftentimes leaving behind a toothless movie. Mama,
(2013) directed by Andres’ Muschietti and produced by Guillermo Del Toro tells
a story that wouldn’t require a stiffer rating, but it disappoints for what it decides to show. A modern ghost story with a very creepy
premise, Mama ultimately
becomes more of a CGI driven “creature flick” with an ending that
underwhelms. Muschietti shows promise,
and Del Toro’s fingerprints are evident, as the film does many things
right. Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) leads a decent
cast including Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game
Of Thrones), but it isn’t poor acting that undoes the film. Despite a scary premise and some really
disturbing visuals, the chills just don’t add up in this film but, the movie
does entertain enough to mildly recommend it.
The
first scenes in the movie are shot using a color filter that renders the images
a dull and lifeless gray, and the first color we see is the red of a child’s
hat. This technique has become a
Hollywood staple since Schindler’s
List, but it works to lend an almost fairy-tale like feel to the films
earliest scenes. The movie begins with a frantic Father (Coster-Waldau) loading
his two frightened daughters into a car, and speeding away from a horrible
crime into snowy wilderness. Driving too
fast for the conditions, the man sends the car over a cliff where it plummets
into a snowy ravine. The trio wanders
the wilderness before finding a decrepit cabin that appears abandoned. Unfortunately for his daughters, the refuge
they have found will not shield them from the violence their father wishes to
commit against them; luckily, “Mama” will.
Five
years after that horrible day, two hunters stumble across the cabin and
discover the girls still alive. They
have become feral, and their odd mannerisms and movement indicate they have
modeled their behavior after “something.”
What exactly that “something” is becomes the focus of a psychologist
(Daniel Kash) who is assigned joint custody of the girls along with their Uncle
Lukas (Coster-Waldau again) and his rocker girlfriend Annabel (Chastain.) The Uncle just happens to be the twin
brother of their father, but Muschietti wastes the opportunity to explore why
that would be especially painful for the girls.
Muschietti misses the boat by not showing many of the sessions that Dr.
Dreyfuss (Kash) has with Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse) and Victoria (Megan
Charpentier) as the disturbed girls are the most genuinely scary element of the
movie. Instead the viewer is given most
of the girls back story through the dialogue of other characters, and we come
to find that a caretaker watched over the girls for the five years they spent
in the cabin. Dreyfuss becomes convinced that an actual woman, the “Mama” the
girls speak of, must have fostered the girls and enlists his secretary to look
for clues to her identity. When strange
things begin to happen in the house however, signs point to a less human kind of caretaker.
As the
movie progresses we are given the story behind “Mama” through Annabel’s dreams,
old news clippings, and the secretary’s conversations with Dr. Dreyfuss. The story is pretty compelling, and clues us
into “Mama’s” maternal instinct for the girls.
What doesn’t work is Mama’s jealousy over the character of Annabel. We are supposed to believe that the girls
have built a bond with Annabel, a reluctant Mother thrust into the role of
protector. The three actors just don’t
spend that much time together until the last third of the movie, and by that
time the movie has become a CGI “chase scene.” The movie wastes time with the
side story of Uncle Lukas, when it could have concentrated on the more compelling
story lines. The few spare scenes we see which are supposed to highlight the
reluctant mother angle just aren’t that effective, but the movie does have a
few scenes with great dialogue.
Explaining “Mama” to Dr. Dreyfuss the secretary tells him that “a ghost
is an emotion bent out of shape.” She
goes on to explain Mother’s hideous form, explaining that corpses left to the
elements begin to twist and change, but are “doomed to repeat until wrong is
right.” It’s the essence of the movie,
but Muschietti decides it’s not scary enough and tries to “special effect” it
the rest of the way.
Muschietti
does shoot many scenes right. The
opening credits roll as we see crayon drawings the girls have made while in the
cabin with “Mama,” and the pictures are definitely not right. In another scene the camera winds through a
darkened dollhouse, the tiny figures inside posed in menacing ways before
panning out to reveal the girl’s bedroom and an opening closet door. These scenes really build the suspense, and
with the masterful shadow work of “Mama,” Muschietti sets the bar rather high
for her actual appearance. He doesn’t
reach it, and hence deflates the entire movie in the process. The movie doesn’t have the worst CGI in the
world, but the director had a better movie on his hands before he went
digital. It’s worth a watch but, better
movies with similar themes are out there and for the record I’ll take “Ripley”
and the Aliens bitch anytime.
“When you Change the way you look at
Things, the Things you look at Change.” Dr. Wayne Dyer
Explain it to Me by. Jack Scharber
It
begins with a helicopter camera shot of a yellow Volkswagen bug driving along a
windy road through the Rocky Mountains. Inside the tired old vehicle is a
relatively normal family man, husband, father heading north to a resort hotel for
a job interview. The eerie music of a funeral march accompanies the unfolding
scene; is it there possibly alerting the viewer that you will have to own up to
pay for what humanity has done? Who or what has died? Suddenly you are no
longer following the vehicle but have gone right off the road and over the
cliff into your subconscious.
The film
is the cult classic Stanley Kubrick version of Stephen King’s name making
novel, The Shining. What the brilliant
documentary Room 237 attempts to do is pull in a variety of theories about
the overall central theme of the film into a narrative of a disruptive
mind-bending nature. Unsettling, puzzling, outlandish and interesting, these
scenarios make the film that much more confusing, coupled with the fact that
Kubrick was a notorious recluse who often times played the Svengali with the
audiences’ imagination; his intentions are hard to find. However, these film theories
have some credence, that if like the believers, you too have viewed the film
over a half a dozen times and are willing to go off the main road in search of
answers.
The
documentary Room 237 touches upon the belief by Bill Blackmore that the
film was Kubrick’s attempt to discuss cinematically and allegorically the
genocide of the American Indians by the white European settlers of incursion
and the resulting bloodbath and slow goodbyes that followed; this theory is
reinforced by the subtle product placement of Calumet Baking Powder cans in the
storeroom (Calumet is a traditional Native American smoking pipe, used to
signify a treaty or pact), there are
also the multitude of Native American motifs that hang throughout the hotel and
the fact that the Overlook Hotel was built upon a large Native American burial
ground.
He's not talking about ObamaCare
In
addition there is the “far-out” theory by Jay Wiedner that the film was nothing
more than Kubrick’s attempt to tell the general public that he helped NASA fake
the Apollo 11 moon landing; the evidence of course being that Danny wears an
Apollo 11 sweater in the film, the fact that the moon is roughly 237,000 miles
away from earth (Room 237) and the deal with the devil or witch that
Nicholson’s character makes in the film is all an allusion to Kubrick’s own
deal with a shadow government and all of which takes place in room 237 (Moon
Room); take into account Jack’s speech to Wendy about obligations and
contracts??? Head scratching questions
abound.
Film
theorist Geoffrey Cocks believes that the film is about the holocaust of the
Jews by the hands of Nazis in WWII because Jack’s character uses an old Eagle
typewriter (which is a German company) with a large 42 on it (1942 being the
year of Hitler’s final solution). The
documentary also discusses the fact that there are unmanageable scenes within
the Overlook Hotel that deal with the “impossible window” of the Overlook
manager’s office, where no feat of architectural engineering could result in
what is shown on screen. This is
coupled with the fact that the young boy Danny’s big-wheel rides throughout the
hotel often make no sense at all; he goes from the main level of the hotel on
the first ride to one level higher on his second ride and then somewhere in
between for his third and final ride (could this be symbolism for his
subconscious?) and all of this from a director who was known in the business as
a perfectionist. What was Kubrick trying
to tell us?
Note
the amazing use of colors throughout the film (the Gold Room, the Red, Black
and White bathrooms, the walls of blood coming from closed elevator doors) all
of which supports the belief that it could be a brilliant director’s alchemical
formula for messing with the viewer’s mind and subconscious. It is a little
known fact that Kubrick had studied
subliminal images at the offices of Madison Avenue advertising executives
before filming the movie. Why? Rattle your brains with the realization of
asking this strange question: why is Jack reading a Playgirl magazine in the lobby of the hotel before he meets with
the hotel manager for his job interview? What the hell does an issue of Playgirl have any business in a lobby
anywhere? Is this the dentist episode from Seinfeld?
Why does it appear that people are turned into suitcases through the use of a
lap-dissolve? Could that be a reference to the extermination of the Jews, the
Native Americans or both?
Is the
film Stanley Kubrick’s solution how to escape the nightmare of the past by
retracing your steps and erasing the past footprints as we navigate the
labyrinth that is this mortal coil? There is also the fact that a labyrinth never existed in the King
novel. Why did Kubrick incorporate one into his film? Then there is the
enigmatic character of Bill Watson in the film; a minor character that speaks
only 2 lines, but why was he there at all to begin with? Was he a metaphor for
the real shadow government that is in charge? Is he the silent manager of a job
interview who never speaks but only takes notes? Are we supposed to view the
film as one theorist suggests, forwards and backwards, through the process of superimposed
film projections; are you kidding me? All of these theories take host in the
excellent documentary Room 237; because like the film,
its’ fans and theorists, insanity isThe
Shining on film. However, you must always realize that you can get out
of the maze. You simply have to trust your own instincts and you might go a
little mad in the process, but it is well worth it; consider it a contractyou've made with the director.
Malaise into Middle Aged Family Man by.
The Rolling Bone
Lightning Bolt, Pearl Jam’s 10th
studio release, certainly has a thunderous opening. The first three songs on the album, “Getaway,”
“Mind Your Manners,” and “My Father’s Son” belong firmly in the “hard rock” end
of the spectrum of Pearl Jam’s 22 years of music. The album however makes a departure as the
remaining nine songs find the band taking the foot off the gas pedal and exploring
a more diverse musical landscape. “Pendulum” showcases an atmospheric sound
more reminiscent of a Pink Floyd album, while “Sleeping By Myself” has a
country feel and features Eddie Vedder on the ukulele. It’s an odd mix of songs sonically, but while
the musical vehicle changes throughout the album, Vedder stays on point
thematically with love and mortality as his favorite subjects. Like Lennon once imagined a world without
Heaven or Hell, Vedder opines on our stubborn insistence in Faith, and Love as
our ultimate salvation.
“Getaway,” the album’s opening track
begins with a riff eerily similar to Weezer’s “Hash Pipe,” and puts the
listener on notice; this is going to be a rock album. The lyrics to the song
find Vedder visiting a topic he will touch on throughout the album. “But I
found my place and it’s all right/we’re all searching for a better way/get this
off my plate it’s all right/I’ve got my own way to believe.” He is stating a
case for personal Spirituality over formal Religion: “And if you want to have to pray it’s all
right/ we all be thinking with our different brain.” It’s not the message that Vedder
disapproves of, it’s the messenger that gets under his skin. Like a man who’s
dinner has been interrupted by the Jehovah’s Witnesses at his door for the last
time he intones, “For God’s sake, mine is mine and yours won’t take its place/
Now, make your getaway.” Vedder
continues down this path on the album’s second track, “Mind Your Manners.” The
song opens with a riff that would make you think you shuffled to a Rage Against
The Machine track by mistake. Gritty
opening aside, the song ultimately reminds of “Spin the Black Circle” or
“Blood” from the band’s own back catalog by its conclusion. It’s as angry as we find Vedder and company
on the album, from the staccato opening riff to its punk rock sing-along
ending: “Go to Heaven/That’s swell/How do you like it/Living in Hell?” The song
questions our willingness to wage war for a God that ultimately might not
exist: “May not live another life/May not solve a
mystery.” Vedder completes his
theological treatise in the song “Infallible” by concluding that society is
missing the entire point of religion: “Keep on locking your doors/keep on just
as before/Pay disasters no mind/didn’t get you this time.” It’s not that God chooses to spare some, he
is saying, but rather we are choosing not to help one another: “Of everything
that’s possible/in the hearts and minds of man/somehow it’s the biggest
thing/that keeps slipping through our hands.”
On an
album as diverse as Lightning Bolt, the song “Pendulum” stands apart
from the other 11 songs as the band’s boldest experiment. It begins with
an echoed organ effect that swims out of the speakers like a Cold war submarine
on the ocean floor before picking up a guitar line reminiscent of Urge
Overkill’s “Girl You’ll Be a Woman Soon” amidst some interesting percussion.
It’s a sparse arrangement, hearkening back to earlier work on Ten, most
notably “Oceans” and the intro/outro of “Release” and “Once.” The lyrics are
pretty depressing, as Vedder’s trademark baritone paints a portrait of true
melancholia that shows the band has come full circle from his days as surfer
turned rock star. The difference being that these more accomplished musicians have
achieved an organic sound on “Pendulum” they only previously scratched the
surface of. The ocean muse he frequently sings to is fully realized with this
track. It’s the albums low point philosophically as Vedder tells us “We are
here then we go.” The song only speaks
to only one half of the pendulum swing however; the rest of the album finds
Vedder rising above his usual “dust in the wind” sentimentality. Mortality be
damned, he is saying elsewhere, it’s who we spend our precious time with that
really matters.
This idea is expressed most vividly on the
song “Sirens,” which also happens to be the first single from the album. Musically, the track sounds similar to the
songs on Pearl Jam’s last album Backspacer. It’s a mid-tempo number without a truly
memorable chorus, but the words seem to be among Vedder’s most confessional and
it has a great guitar solo that sounds like Prince and the Revolution are
sitting in for thirty seconds. The song
finds Vedder once again pondering his own mortality: “Hear the sirens/hear the
circus so profound/I hear the sirens more and more in this here town.” A Rock
musician approaching middle-age, Vedder has become acutely aware that the end
can come at any time, but having outlived some of his contemporaries, he’s
learned that Death is the easy part.
It’s the lives we leave behind, the grief that is sure to come and how
we ultimately are remembered by those we’ve loved that’s the struggle. “Want
you to know that should I go/ I always loved you, held you high too.” The line borders on the edge of Hallmark
territory, but Vedder sings it so earnestly it comes across as genuine; the
dysfunctional love he so brilliantly captured early in his career. Who would believe the Voice of Grunge has
become a family man? “Just to know we’re safe, I am a grateful man,” he sings,
adding “I didn’t care before you were here” and “All things change, let this
remain.” It’s a powerful song and an obvious song to lead with as a single but
not very indicative of the album as a whole.
Lightning
Bolt is said to have been recorded at two different intervals by the band,
and that may in part explain the album’s lack of cohesiveness. “Sirens,” “Let
the Records Play,” “Swallowed Whole” and “Future Days” all sound similar to the
material on Backspacer. “Let The
Records Play” has the band celebrating Vinyl once again, this time in the guise
of a man who does his spiritual healing by drinking and listening to records.
The lyrics are largely forgettable, but the song does catch Mike McReady and
Stone Gossard in prime form and what may best be described as a Stevie Ray
Vaughn tribute. “Future Days” reminds somewhat of “Just Breathe” from the last
album, and has the singer once again optimistic about love, “I believe, cuz I
can see/our future days, days of you and me.” The song lacks the power of
“Sirens” or “Just Breathe” however, and as an acoustic ballad; it leaves the
album on a much lighter note than it began; perhaps that’s the point. Pearl Jam have a catalog full of greatest hits
and those looking to find one here are sure to be disappointed, but that’s not
to say the album is disappointing. It offers a world-wearied look, and perhaps
a realization that while rock music has changed lives it hasn’t changed the
world.
Something in the Mist
by. Jack Scharber
Frank
Darabont’s 2007 bleak, disturbing and entertaining horror film adaptation of
Stephen King’s novella The Mist confounds all Hollywood and
mainstream expectations. The film gives viewers’ hints at what was to come in
his smash television series The Walking Dead. It had come after The Shawshank Redemption
and The
Green Mile, both of which were Stephen King adaptations as well; the
film was saddled with the embodiment of post 9/11 fear that featured an
ensemble cast that would become a trademark of Darabont’s style. The film
defied all of the happy-ever-after endings that had become the Hollywood
trademark; it was a breath of fresh air and it was released on Thanksgiving
weekend. Remember, we too have much to be thankful for.
The
film took on both the religious right and the dovish left. There were race
relations between a strong black man and the characteristically strong white
leading man. Spooky whispered government research was being conducted on a
mountain nearby the small New England town, when after a natural storm, a
strange supernatural mist began coming down the slope. Army trucks raced to the
shore, but to combat what? The power lines were dead, the phones were down and
the town’s only grocery store had become the town hall. Chaos abounded. One
thing was clear; there was something
in the mist.
Marcia
Gay Harden believed, “It’s death.”
We
the viewers, first got our sneak peek into the mist through the backdoor of the
grocery store, the backdoor being a metaphor for one’s subconscious. However, there were still some things you had to take
on faith. We began to ask like Thomas Jane’s lead character, “What they hell
were those tentacles even attached to?”
Ladies
and gentlemen, the weird had been let loose; get prepared.
“Now
do you see? Now do you believe?”
“You
scare people badly enough, you can get’em to do anything.”
Politics
and religion, but what about big business?
At
the end of the film, after a group of five made a bold run for it in an old 4x4
escaping both radiation acid spewing spiders and dinosaur large Mantises, the
truck ran out of gas. They’d gone as far as they could go. With one gun left
and only four bullets, decisions had to be made. What if the mist was
worldwide? What if there was nothing left to run to? What would you do then?
So, Thomas Jane’s character made the only sane choice he had left, but he like
all of us had to live with it; live with all of his or her, yours or mine past
actions and choices, despite the awful consequences. Because believe me, often
times, the monsters of our own creation.
Happy Halloween.
