Django Unchained

First up, I’m not a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino’s films.

In the past I have preferred his films when he’s exercised more restraint – Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown – and whilst I appreciated certain technical and structural aspects in Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bills, the films didn’t engage me in any way the registered real emotion or investment on my part as a viewer. And I think that’s the point with Tarantino’s films.

They’re fun, and enjoyable, in their stylised show-offiness and irreverence with the form, but ultimately it’s like going to the show grounds as a kid and going on all the rides. They’ll entertain you, for a brief period that you’re on them, but in the end they never go for as a long as you’d like, and they always cost more than you expect, and at all times there’s never any feeling that they’re giving you an experience that will affect your life.

I did enjoy Inglourious Basterds but as I’ve come to reflect on it, I enjoyed the opening sequence with Landa and the dairy farmer immensely, and then every sequence from that onwards less and less. It was fun, and silly, but ultimately didn’t actually offer up anything that made watching the film worthwhile.

So, finally to Django Unchained. In short, I had great fun watching this. So much more than I had expected to. Quickly, for me, 2013 is shaping up as the Year of Unexpected Joy in cinema. (As opposed to 2012, the Year of Ungodly Disappointment.) Two moments especially stood out. The first was the first bounty mission where Jamie Foxx’s Django accompanies Christoph Waltz’s King Schulz, which builds and builds into a mini-climax of pure cinema. It was everything you want in film: at turns dramatic and lofty, at others bloody and excessive, and for Tarantino it was unexpectedly poignant, emotional and restrained. And fun. Serious fun.

The only part of the film that eclipsed this sequence happens almost two-thirds of the way through. A dinner sequence between Django, Shulz, and Leonardo Di Caprio’s Calvin Candie (and his retinue) is astonishing. Long, twisting, ever-playful, this could easily serve as the major third-act climax of any film in its heightened drama. That it doesn’t, shows Tarantino’s refusal to offer up a simple film. What this sequence does best though is show-off his mastery of writing brilliant dialogue.

Much has been said of the violence in his films, and in this one in particular, but it’s a fruitless path to go down. There is very little violence in the key moments, like this sequence, and the action – so to speak – is with the words. Particularly in who controls the words. For most of the film, the controlling character is Schulz, who always appears to know more than everybody else and uses his words to achieve his own results. What makes this sequence so incredible, is the shifting control of the dialogue from Schulz, to Candie, and then to anybody who’ll claim it. It plays with the audience perfectly, and is almost a shame when it’s over.

The ending is almost perfunctory after this, but it’s handled with so much fun it’s hard to disappoint. The violence, as mentioned, is irrelevant. Tarantino shows in this particular film that he knows what he’s doing. The violence of revenge and retribution (usually towards those involved in the slave-trade) is over the top and comical. It is cinematic blood-letting, much the same as killing Nazis in Inglourious Basterds was. But the other violence, the real, factual violence of slavery in antebellum America is astonishingly restrained and withheld. Much is implied in cuts and sound, and most is kept offscreen. As a result, it is far more horrific for utilising our imagination rather than our blood-lust. A grown-up Tarantino indeed.

And so this is why I liked Django Unchained much more than many of his films. It did all that we come to expect from a Tarantino film, but it did more. It actually offered up some relevance and dialogue with a contemporary world. It’s hard to judge being out of the context of US society, but the acknowledgement and brutalising of white slave traders in this film is a necessary acknowledgement from white cinema. That Tarantino effectively kills off himself in this film – and his casual and flippant treatment of African American society in previous films – is something that I think he needed to do.

That Australia is included in this killing off – through the cameo of John Jarratt – is hopefully not missed by people, as it was hard to do so by me given that I saw this on Australia Day, in hardly a celebratory mood.

Final note: Samuel L. Jackson can act. Never seen this before.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Alternate Review)

The dwarf poster – not ordered by hotness.

First things first, I don’t awfully disagree with My Esteemed Colleague when it comes to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – after all, it’s not a bad film by any means. But I did have my own problems with it, not all of which can be assuaged by the development of the next two films.

OK, yes, New Zealand is very, very pretty. Thank you Peter Jackson, I think I’ve kind of got the idea now, some more, that the country is stunning. I really don’t know how many more panoramic shots of landscape with the lead characters trudging across it I could take, so here’s hoping the next two movies have none. Though I sincerely doubt it. Also, I think this will be my yearly 3D movie which reminds me I prefer to see things in 2D if possible. Though I will commend his use of the technology, I don’t like how it blurs things in motion and the edges of focus, and overall I find it rarely enhances my experience as much as the studios (and pricier tickets) would claim it does; instead, I usually find it annoying.

As for the content of the film itself… well, I didn’t really get into it until everyone left Rivendell, and that’s more than halfway through the film. Everything was just so portentous, with a score designed to really hammer home that Epic Things Are Happening from the start of the film. From the awkward prologue with Ian Holm and Elijah Wood to the too-long sequences that follow (Meet the Dwarves and Watch them Sing, Radagast the Brown, Elves Walk Slowly), the first half of the film never showed any lightness of touch, instead making everything serious, grave … and a bit dull. There’s a moment near the end, where Thorin runs into a fight, where I forgave the overly dramatic everything, but it was far from the first instance of the film trying so hard to emphasise its own importance that I found myself waiting it out rather than enjoying it.

Now, I studied The Hobbit in Year 7, but haven’t read it since then, so while I remember the broadest of strokes (including the bit that made me so annoyed as a kid that I stopped reading before the end) of the plot, I don’t know it nearly well enough to point out all the stuff taken from other parts of Tolkein’s canon. But it felt filled with extraneous details, and while I could see one more film, that there’s two to go really doesn’t fill me with faith that Peter Jackson will have relearned how to edit. Considering the audience is given a dozen dwarves (barely distinguished; except for James Nesbitt I really only could follow The Fat One and the Hot Ones), several fictional languages (spoken and written), a map’s worth of place names and a bunch of new species, I would have thought a little simplification was in order, but that didn’t seem the case – or like it is on the cards.

I didn’t hate the film – far from it. The second half onward I enjoyed especially, even as it veered towards the cartoonish. But it pushed the grandeur too hard and too early, for me, and so I didn’t enjoy it as much as My Esteemed Colleague, and wouldn’t put it on par with the first two Lord of the Rings, at least. Or even the third, which I liked less than the other two.

Honestly, it should be the first rule of Tolkein adaptations – when running long, cut the song.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Unexpectedly, and undocumented by many of the major coverage and reviews, Peter Jackson has delivered an extremely successful and entertaining adaptation of The Hobbit.

More on the reception later, because it’s worth dwelling first on the achievements of the film.

It seamlessly picks up the style, imagery and tone of the previous Lord of the Rings films in such a way that it is hard to feel over a decade has passed since The Fellowship of the Ring was first released. Aside from a curiously lumbering prologue that brings us back to Ian Holm’s Bilbo and Elijah Wood’s Frodo, the film picks up once we’re positioned in the time proper of the story. Admittedly, the introduction of the dwarves and their quest – to retake the homeland under the Lonely Mountain – is detailed and thorough, and some may feel too long for what is an adaptation of a short book. But ultimately it’s all necessary, as Jackson knows the relevance and resonance of these early scenes with Bilbo and the dwarves carries and underpins much of the crucial action throughout this film, and will have to do likewise for the coming two films.

This is not a retroactively constructed trilogy, formed out of three spontaneous stand-alone stories. These are thoughtful and considered plot points, made in full awareness of how long the journey will be, and how tedious it can become if it’s all spectacle without character-driven emotion and desire underneath. Much is the same in the original Lord of the Rings films.

The journey itself moves swiftly along, and continues the up-and-down episodic nature of the original novel, but introduces stronger thematic through-lines and overarching conflicts that stitch the episodes together into a continuous dramatic narrative. To be honest, this was something always missing from The Hobbit as a novel. It is a story written for children, in the manner of bed-time tales, which need to be short and almost televisual in the way they deliver a series of ongoing tribulations. Compared to The Lord of the Rings novels, this is a weakness of The Hobbit, and Jackson has improved the source novel immensely with this film.

The special effects will win the Oscar. That’s pretty much a given. Phenomenal.

Andrew Lesnie’s cinematography has never been better. What was so satisfying with this film was that Jackson and Lesnie’s camera allowed the audience time to actually sit in the environments, witness details and characters in wandering close-ups, something that wasn’t there in the original three films. Those had very much the staple of wide shots for new locations, close ups for dramatic moments, and everything else carried in standard mid to full shots. Here the camera is far more inventive and fluid, and it leaves impressions on the viewer more than the earlier films. The best example of this by far is the crucial Riddles in the Dark sequence where Bilbo encounters Gollum. Other moments, such as the flashback to the Battle of Azanulzibar (yeah I looked that up) and the climactic scene where the company fights off Azog and his wargs, are so captivating in the way the camera documents the scenes, that I could rewatch them over and over for all the tiny details included.

So I loved this film. More than I expected to. I expected to enjoy it, and more than some reviews had made out, but also because I didn’t like the book nearly as much as the longer, darker, more structurally sound trilogy. And yet I’d hazard an early stab at saying that I think this film is – as a film – more successful than any of the earlier three. It is, as a fantasy genre film, high above than almost anything else made before, something a lot of reviews are studiously ignoring. It is a testament to Jackson’s ability that these high-fantasy genre films are dissected on a level rarely afforded of the genre.

So why has there been negative coverage of the film’s release? Not to put too much stock in this, but Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 65%, whereas IMDB rates it an 8.3. It has grossed nearly $900 million to date. And it’s only been out a few weeks. Apparently there’s a divide between what critics are saying, and what people actually think.

Many people have lamented the fact that Jackson’s taken one short book and is turning it into a trilogy of films potentially as long as The Lord of the Rings, which was adapted from three very long books.

This is incredibly short-sighted and narrow-minded. Harsh, but necessary.

Some maths:

The Hobbit – 310 pages.

The Lord of the Rings – 1570 pages.

Brokeback Mountain – 65 pages.

—

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – 169 minutes (so far, we don’t know the running time of the next two films, and they could well be shorter).

The Lord of the Rings – 558 minutes.

Brokeback Mountain – 134 minutes.

It is often said short stories adapt best into films. Hitchcock did this often. It is too hard to fit all the detail from a novel into a film. A 310 page novel will always lose detail. Jackson actually had to lose material – and a lot of it – from the original trilogy in order to adapt it into three very long films. What that shows is a mark of his adaptations that the three films are coherent, let alone entertaining. To reduce that volume of pages and detail into just over 9 hours of film is incredible.

We can only speculate how long the total running time of The Hobbit trilogy will be, but what’s become apparent from this first film is that he’s not wanting to leave parts out, and is including parts from other areas of Tolkien’s oeuvre to improve the drama, tone and consistency of the original novel. To make a child’s story into a film faithfully, after adapting the rather adult The Lord of the Rings, would be ridiculous.

Finally, my favourite thing about viewing this film. It seemed clear whilst watching this that Jackson was very careful not to repeat the mistakes of prequels-past, and nullify what was so good about the original films. Additionally, the lengthy preproduction time on this film has served it well in that the story is much more considered than the first three, which had the feel of trying to control a runaway train. Every scene in this film is entertaining in its own right, but also is going to enrich and expand and damn well improve future viewings of The Lord of the Rings. Characters and events get hasty treatment there, and this film has managed to change that and hopefully – when all three are released – allow an extremely pleased viewer the chance to watch six films in chronological sequence and have an experience never put to film before.

Zodiac

This is David Fincher’s best film.

Funny thing is, if you adjust for inflation, this was his least-grossing film. Less than Fight Club, which had age-restriction limitations and gained more of a life in the then-new DVD market. Less than The Game, made before Fincher was a name to hang a film on. Less even than Alien 3, which after the rush of opening weekends surely must have died by word-of-mouth.

So why his best? Even his greatest?

First point: if we discount Alien 3 (he did disown it, after all), Zodiac is effectively the mid-point of Fincher’s films to date. After Seven, The Game, Fight Club and Panic Room, and before The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. More on this point later.

Second point: it’s important to consider what this film isn’t, rather than what it is.

It isn’t  a serial killer movie. Nor is it a murder-mystery. Nor is it a police procedural. Nor is it All The President’s Men, despite Fincher citing it as the key influence on the script and tone of the film, as it fails to be a film about a meaningful search for a higher truth and the betterment of society.

The fact that it isn’t a serial killer movie obviously had a major impact on how people received the film upon its release. It was billed as a serial killer story. Most of the publicity in magazines and in the trailers was all about how Fincher – the man who made Seven – was turning his gaze to a real-life, unsolved serial killer story. Even the real life Robert Graysmith – played by Jake Gyllenhall in the movie – spoke of how Fincher had become almost obsessive in his research of the case, to the point where he might even offer a solution in his film.

As a film based on real events, Zodiac is extraordinarily faithful to the truth. Where possible, the filmmakers spoke to eye-witnesses and cross-checked all available perspectives on events. The first documented victims of the Zodiac killer aren’t even shown in the film, because as there were no survivors, there was therefore no way of actually recreating the moment. All speculation was left out.

What you then have is a film that fails to satisfy the viewers who had gained so much appreciation from watching Seven. Despite its bleakness, the narrative of Seven is so artfully conclusive and resolved that an audience leaves the film knowing exactly where they stood in relation to what happened. Kevin Spacey was bad. Morgan Freeman was good. Brad Pitt was compromised, but we feel sorry for him. Bad things happened, but it’s over, and we’re glad it didn’t happen to us. Effectively, a roller coaster, taking you (and your stomach) places you’d rather not go, places you might not expect, but you can get off at the end and stand back and look at it. See how it works and appreciate the craft.

For the first 45 minutes of Zodiac there is the hint that it might go the same way. But it’s not long before the film deviates. Suddenly, crimes the audience witness are not actually those of the serial killer. No facts, no fingerprints, no handwriting (so much handwriting!) leads us to him. The Zodiac is forever at arm’s length, always out of the corner of our eye, and never where we want him to be.

(Interestingly, Fincher cast different actors for every appearance of the Zodiac, as per the descriptions of the eye-witnesses, none of which agree.)

What the audience does get in this film is the failure of police and of the media to understand, explain and identify this killer. Nothing adds up. Graysmith disappears down a rabbit-hole of facts and half-facts and guesses and theories in search of his moment of clarity.

Graysmith: I need to know who he is. I need to stand there, I need to look him in the eye and I need to know that it’s him.

None of this is important for the audience though, in the sense that, Fincher doesn’t want us to solve the case with Graysmith. He doesn’t deliberate over the clues because that’s not the focus. The focus is the search, the yearning for meaning. For one single thing to hang on to in a world that is increasingly disappearing into meaninglessness.

Zodiac charts the passage of time. Numerous montages display this. The characters grow old, move on, forget and let go. Technology is rendered obsolete, cases are left behind, the heroes of today are cartoon characters tomorrow. At one moment, Graysmith witnesses the broad strokes of the Zodiac case recreated in the actual Dirty Harry film. Cheap, brutal, but with closure. And meaningless.

But as Graysmith gets closer and closer to one possible moment, where he can look someone in the eye and just know this one single truth, he becomes Dirty Harry.

Graysmith: Just because you can’t prove it, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

Toschi: Easy, Dirty Harry.

This is Fincher’s statement on today. Film and society. He can’t make another Seven. It’s not real. It’s a thrill, a cheap trick, a spectacle that doesn’t actually change anything. The closest thing he’s made to Seven since was Panic Room, which was ultimately an exercise in style ahead of worthiness. According to Fincher’s Zodiac, life is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate, if one wants moral satisfaction. To succeed is to give up everything else, as in the case of Graysmith.

To return to my first point, this film is the halfway mark for Fincher. Everything since has been much more problematic than his earlier films, despite the reputation that Fight Club and Seven maintain. Benjamin Button is essentially a hymn to the inevitability of death. The Social Network is as daring and crucial to the documentation of contemporary media as Citizen Kane was in its day. And The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo actually managed to do what Panic Room didn’t – take a pulpy, hollow story and make it more than the sum of its parts.

Hopefully, when all’s said and done on Fincher’s career at some distant point in the future, Zodiac will garner much better appreciation than it did upon release. It’s definitely a film worth going back to, but with different expectations.

 

Wreck-It Ralph

Wreck-It Ralph

I had heard good things about Wreck-It Ralph, but encountered resistance when trying to get friends to see it with me. There was a lot of reluctance, some outright dismissal, and an overall lack of interest in seeing the newest animated feature from Disney.

Well, everyone who didn’t want to see it was wrong. Very, very wrong. Wreck-It Ralph was intelligent, very charming, funny, clever, exciting, adventurous and unexpected. The Standard Disney Sap lasts for about a minute of the entire film, most of which is a joyous exploration of the idea of arcade characters having freedom once their machine is turned off – much in the vein of the Toy Story films.

Now, I have a nostalgic affection for some of the games the film references, and perhaps I shouldn’t be so receptive when there’s jokes about Mario, Street Fighter or Q-Bert. But I grew up amongst computer games, so even the ones I never owned (such as, say, Sonic the Hedgehog) are still associations that I delighted in. But the film doesn’t require you to know, say, a history of Bowser or M. Bison to get the jokes – it just adds that extra layer of acknowledgement. Similarly, the three big games involved in the film – Fix It Felix, Jr., Heroes Duty and Sugar Rush, are all fictional, but all given such a reality that I was interested in playing all of them as the film progressed.

The thing that most delighted me about Wreck-It Ralph was that it ran rampant through the possibilities of the worlds it had created. Everything was so well-observed as to make me laugh delightedly just at the way the 8-bit characters were rendered in three dimensions, or the way that different video game characters were shown in their different styles, and yet still interacting with each other. The joke wasn’t just a reference to the game Tapper, but also a brief demonstration of how Tapper looks when it’s the local bar to all the video games in the arcade.

It would probably help if you’ve gone to an arcade ever, but it’s surprisingly not necessary to really enjoy the film. Wreck-It Ralph was delightful, and well worth seeing, adult or no.  Just be aware that it may make you sympathise, even if just for a moment, with the obvious villain in your next game. Because they are bad, and that’s good. They will never be good, and that’s not bad. But someday, someday, they may wish for something more. And that is very good indeed.

Due Date

Due Date

There’s a long and storied history of films where two mismatched folks travel cross-country together. The ‘normal’ one learns things from the ‘zany’ one, bonds are formed, misadventures had, and both characters learn and grow through the experience that has hopefully entertained the audience. To me, Due Date failed because it made one of the characters so horrible that I didn’t enjoy spending time with him. Worse than that, it tried to make me feel sympathy for a character I found fundamentally appalling.

Zach Galifianakis’ Ethan is such an arsehole that I resented the film trying to suggest he and Robert Downey, Jr’s Peter should be at all friends at the end of it. Perhaps it’s the influence of TAC ads, but when someone falls so heavily asleep at the wheel while driving that they careen off an overpass and land on their roof, I don’t think they’re a loveable scamp. Maybe it’s because I have no affection for stoner comedy, but when they insist on getting stoned while driving, not only that but in locking the windows so that their passengers (including their dog) are forced to get high as well, I don’t think they’re a charming oddball. And if someone is so high or stupid as to not be able to tell the difference between a petrol station and a major border crossing, I don’t think they’re sweetly naive.

And that’s not even getting into the ‘I have to masturbate for 35 minutes before bed to get to sleep. Sure, we’re sleeping in a car together because of my great incompetence at life, but doing this next to you is merely a wacky affectation and not, y’know, supremely self-centred and gross.’ Or how he tries to ruin a very good friendship through active allegations of cuckoldry. Or how he shoots his friend in the leg.

Due Date stacks the deck by making every character with a sliver of authority an overbearing prick, but that just put me firmly on Robert Downey, Jr.’s side throughout the film, whatever occasional flashes of anger or resentment he displayed. And in making the Ethan character so obnoxious, any growing bond between the two made me think less of friendship and more of burgeoning Stockholm Syndrome. The two leads are charismatic enough (and there’s a handful of glorified cameos for actors like Jamie Foxx and Juliette Lewis, plus a thankless role for Michelle Monaghan), but couldn’t make spending more time in Galifianakis’ character’s company seem anything more like a potentially lethal chore.

Or maybe I just resent the movie for trying to suggest Two and a Half Men is funny, not a sucking hole where comedy goes to die. Maddening.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower

The Perks of Being A Wallflower

The Perks of Being A Wallflower, adapted and directed by Stephen Chbosky from his own Young Adult novel, was very charming and anchored by some great performances. Though it also packs a bit of a kick at the end, it’s generally light, no matter how much teen angst is packed in. Logan Lerman stars as Charlie, a freshman entering high school with no friends and coming off a dark time. he soon meets Patrick and his step-sister Sam (Ezra Miller and Emma Watson), and through them begins to have a life, rather than just observing one.

The three leads are terrific, especially Ezra Miller, playing a complete 180 from Kevin in We Need To Talk About Kevin. Though it’s a little episodic and certain subplots are more hinted at than properly explored, the film was a joy to watch, mainly because the cast and characters were strong. Its setting is very much in past, a time when mix tapes made for loved ones were on actual tapes and no kid has a mobile phone, but is kept generic enough to not scream out ’90s’, an interesting tactic that makes its situations and scene-setting more universal, rather than generic.

Or maybe it was just good at evoking that age when hearing the perfect song could thrill you to the core and make you feel closer to the universe. Even if that song is David Bowie’s Heroes, something it’s hard to remember there was a time I’d never heard it before. All in all, I was greatly charmed, and now I kind of want to read the book.

Crazy, Stupid, Love

Just two attractive movie stars, doing their thang.

There’s a scene in the middle of Crazy, Stupid, Love that improves the film that went before, a well-cast but unexceptional story of a family’s romantic tribulations. Emma Stone’s Hannah has gone home with Ryan Gosling’s Jacob, intent on sleeping with him – ‘banging’, as she puts it. But though she’s had several drinks, she can’t turn her brain off enough to allow his pick-up artist moves to pass by without comment, even being impressed despite herself. He, meanwhile, is clearly charmed and disarmed by her, and is out of control for the first time in the film. It’s a gorgeous, funny, affectionate scene, one the rest of the film is buoyed by. If I didn’t already love Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling – and I did, because I am a right-thinking person – I would have loved them based on it alone.

As for the rest of the film… it’s pretty decent. A little creepy at times (13 year old boy is in love with his 17 year old babysitter is in love with boy’s father), but it often a nice, subtle look at love. It’s undercut by consistent use of the term ‘soulmate’ unironically – as someone who watched enough Dawson’s Creek to want to throw something every time someone refers to soulmates, the totemic referral to loving someone making them your soulmate really grates. The ending big, rousing speech is also an annoyingly conventional denouement to what had, up to that point, been refreshingly low-key and not purely following the romantic comedy template, so when the film does descend to such tropes, it suffers. 

But it stars Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, even Kevin Bacon and a former America’s Next Top Model finalist. It has a cast that highlights the good points and helps coast over the bad, is what I’m saying. It doesn’t manage to transcend romantic comedy formula, but it does occasionally give it a go, and so gets points for trying. 

The Cabin in the Woods & Funny Games

No subtitle here because I really don’t want this to turn into a wanky cinema studies essay.

Basically, I saw The Cabin in the Woods the other night. I really liked it. It was fun. And I noticed something a few other people have noticed – that the opening scene and title card is a direct homage/reference/copy of Funny Games, the 1997 film by Michael Haneke. Which immediately for me set up what The Cabin in the Woods was on about. There was no way this was going to be a straight horror film.

So as I watched the story unfold I was comparing it with my experience of watching Funny Games. And both basically do the same thing, say the same thing, they’re just coming from completely different directions. I don’t think I’m breaking new ground in saying that they’re both chewing freely on the saturation and exploitation of violence in film and media.

At this point, it’s interesting to note that in the 15 years between the releases of the two films, the same points about violence in cinema are still valid.

– Why are you doing this to us? – Why not?

The opening scenes of both films are rather banal. Banal in that they’re documenting everyday actions. Everyday exchanges. Coworkers in The Cabin in the Woods, and a family in Funny Games. Both everyday banal situations are then assaulted by blood red title cards.

This is key. For both Haneke and Goddard & Whedon, violence and extreme violence has become part of the everyday. And it’s sickening. The protagonists of each film are shit out of luck, doomed to die, doomed to suffer in front of us.

Funny Games mocks this doom to the audience. It sets up usual scenarios, ones we are familiar with (opportunities for victims to get the upper hand/escape/save each other) and discards them. There is no normality here. There is no escape. They invited horrific violence into their home, and it’s there to stay. The antagonists cheat to make sure there is no happy ending. They literally alter the story in front of the audience.

Similarly, The Cabin in the Woods messes with the usual expected tropes. The antagonists here are just everyday joes though, doing a job to satiate the needs of Cinema Horror, where victims must die in set ways and set orders. They also cheat, to gain their own results.

If there’s a fundamental difference between the two, it’s that Funny Games lays the blame of its horror at the feet of the audience. The Cabin in the Woods however, blames directors. Particularly those – though this is not overt – that aren’t so concerned with horror, they’re more interested in disgusting their audience. Gorno films.

Where Funny Games is an appeal for us to stop, to see violence for what it is, The Cabin in the Woods is more of a request to return to the good old days. Where terror reigned, not gore. The anticipation was the horror, the imagination that anything, something, might happen. Instead we’re so used to everything happening these days we don’t anticipate it. It’s there. Everywhere.

Remember when you could just throw a girl in a volcano?

So, what’s the point in discussing these things?

I guess it’s that I love the horror genre, but neither Funny Games nor The Cabin in the Woods are actually horror films. They’re about the genre, rather than in it. And neither are particularly terrifying. But both have valid points about the genre. But now that they’ve said their things, what are we going to do? Can we get back to pure horror, as The Cabin in the Woods asks of us? Or have we gone too far, ruined our souls, that we are beyond redemption when it comes to responsible use of violence in film?

I just wish we could take these two films, marry them, and give them to Polanski or Friedkin. Ones who actually know how to terrify you. Haneke is too concerned with making films for film students, and Whedon is always in favour of cheap laughs than worthwhile statements. So both these films are infinitely valuable for cinema, but ultimately worthless if you’re after horror.

Is horror gone from cinema?

– Macguffin

21 Jump Street

I can see why people liked 21 Jump Street – it was surprisingly fun. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum star as police academy friends whose not-so-youthful appearance gets them assigned as undercover high school students, in what even the film acknowledges is a tired 80’s throwback. Indeed, the film does a lot of acknowledging the clichés inherent in it while still embracing them, something it does with surprising skill.

Channing Tatum is actually charismatic and funny (something I’m not sure we knew he could be before 2012), and Jonah Hill makes a much better fake-teen than he does a real teen. While the script seems a little too fond of dick jokes, the film is a breezy action-comedy that goes down easier than it has any right to. Just have fun spotting the appearances of former cast members of the show.