Movie Review: Splice
Jun 7th, 2010 by admin
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror/Thriller
Year: 2009
The newest addition to sci-fi films done right got its release this weekend (as of 6.7.10) and it goes by the name of Splice. A thriller regarding two brilliant scientists exploring the realm of cloning and insistent on using human genes, even if illegitimately. When their experiment proves successful, Klive Nicoli (Adrien Brody; The Pianist, The Village, Love the Hard Way) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley; My Life Without Me, Go) allow it to proceed to term and then further, resulting in the birth of a creature, part human, part animal and full of trouble.
Expecting a horror film more than anything else, this film far succeeded my expectations, giving us a convincing drama, based in the relationship of these two scientists who are also intimately involved with each other. As the experiment proceeds, the bond of their relationship is tested. Here and there it seems their roles are a bit too harshly scripted, but the caliber of these two actors skills is for the most part able to surpass those hurdles. The sci-fi aspect of the film thankfully breezes past the technical side of things and is far more concerned with the aftermath, bringing up questions — while providing no answers — to questions dealing with ethics and morality when it comes to human cloning.
Having recently read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, I was struck by the wonderful way this movie and that book compliment each other. The two could not be more extreme in their outlook, but at the core the questions being brought up and the issues that are being dealt with are often the same and these two sources provide extremely different outlooks. It will be interesting, once Never Let Me Go the movie is released this fall, to watch the two films side by side.
In general, I would highly recommend this film to any fan of sci-fi, keeping in mind that it is not entirely perfect and it does manage to hold on to a handful of cheesy moments that one could have done without or that could have been easily changed on a screenplay rewrite. Nevertheless, this film is a must watch for any fan of the genre and for those that might be interested on the philosophical arguments of cloning.
Rating: 
Comments: NOT FOR CHILDREN! I was astounded, at the theater, that one couple brought their kids to the theater. The scary moments and the frightening creature were not enough, to get them to walk out. Neither was the full nude scene of the creature strapped down to the table. It took a scene far more grave than that to finally empty out their seats. There are two scenes in particular here that might disturb a lot people, so exercise caution.
Esperanza lost her daughter! She took her to the hospital and left her there overnight for the removal of her tonsils. Routine procedure. And yet, when she returns the following day, the pre-teen is already in a coffin, wrapped up and under a hazard seal labeling her contagious. All Esperanza can do is sign the papers for the creamation and accept that her daughter is dead. She is trying to deal with this, already suffering by being a single mom, living with a woman who also lost her husband in the same accident in which Esperanza’s own died, and working at a hardware store where it seems her work goes under appreciated.
Michael Peterson (Tom Hardy; Layer Cake, RocknRolla) just wants to be famous. He knew he was destined for something big but he was born into mundane circumstances, to a nondescript family and really…he has a temper. What starts as bad behavior in school, petty thievery and yard fights, develops into the holding of a Post Office, where he acquires a small sum of money and seven years in prison after getting caught. And then the flood gates opened, because there, in that world of misfits and criminals, Michael Peterson, who later went on to adopt the alter ego — fighting name, as they called it — of Charlie Bronson, finds his place where he is feared, notorious and eventually goes on to become one of the most interesting and infamous people in the British penal system. The short sentence evolves, due to his unruly behavior; it develops into fight after fight and an eventual landing at an asylum for the criminally insane. With a brief stint in the real world after release — when the staff at the asylum figure out that he is simply too much of a liability in the institution, which apparently merits his release as certifiably sane — Peterson goes on to become a bare knuckles fighter in the underbelly of his hometown and inevitably lands back in prison where he remains.
Bronson, the film, is told from Michael Peterson’s own perspective, with a heavy dose of his unique personality splattered all over the screen, running in tandem with clever editing and a tongue in cheek use of epic music, this film is from the very opening scene a spectacle to behold, the one carnival creep show that makes your skin crawl and you are entirely unable to look away from. The fact that Refn (the director) gets us to care about this brutal man is more than a simple achievement, considering the raw, violent undertone that seeps through every scene in this film, with rising tensions that do not allow the audience to ever feel at peace while Bronson is present.
This movie is a must own, if you are able to bear the violence of its nature, but if nothing else a must watch, if only to witness Hardy’s stellar performance, Refn’s carefully orchestrated directing, Matthew Newman’s artistically timed editing or Larry Smith’s gifted cinematography. There is so much right with this picture that it is easy to overlook the few things that are wrong, namely some fighting choreography that falls a bit short of realistic, particularly when shown in slow motion and a not very well attached love subplot that feels rather empty in comparison to the rest of the film. While it might not be perfect, it is probably the most enjoyable nihilistic movie I have seen since Fight Club while at the same time making you wonder what is broken here, the man? The system? Or both?
Quentin Tarantino what Quentin Tarantino does best, but somehow this film got blown up with hype and tossed into nominations for Best Film which I am not sure are deserved. While I did enjoy this film as I tend to enjoy most Tarantino films; while it is entertaining and fun to watch; while it has some pretty good cinematography and directing…it also seems to me that it was one of the most overrated films of the year.
Unfortunately, the division between the two stories is altogether too easily felt. Shosanna’s story is dramatic, powerful, interesting and extremely well handled, amounting for about ninety percent of the best acting in this film–Christoph Waltz as Colonel Landa is nothing short of fabulous and absolutely earned his Oscar–which holds the key to most of the plot here. The story of the Inglorious Basterds, who ironically lend their name to the title of this film, is by far the weakest and one might argue pointless. The acting falls through, severely poor on the part of some (Eli Roth) or overdone on the part of others (Brad Pitt). Their mission itself seems superfluous and redundant, given that everything they are working for is already being handled by Shosanna and her boyfriend Marcel at the cinema. Unless Shosanna failed terribly–which she didn’t–the story of the Inglorious Bastards is moot and one ends up watching a film where either the Inglorious Bastards succeed, or Shosanna succeeds, or both, which really cuts down on the thrill that should be carried by a movie of this caliber.
The acting must be commended in the part of Christoph Waltz and Mélanie Laurent, who do a fantastic job with their roles and it is a shame that Waltz character is so mishandled in the end, contradicting everything he had been set up to be. Brad Pitt is a few notches over the top, but does a good enough job to provide a number of laughs, even if his character is about as important to the movie as the Inglorious Basterds as a group seem to be to the plot. The participants of the bar scene, and the farmer in the opening scene do quite a good job in their scenes as well, but their characters are so relegated to the sidelines that unfortunately their talent is not properly displayed.
I was always under the impression that a good documentary ought to be unbiased, but over the last decade a number of politically charged documentaries have hit the mainstream with a vengeance and it seems the new sub-genre of loaded docs is becoming more and more acceptable. Michael Moore comes to mind, but even this particular doc seems to be skewed, mostly because it is merely told form one person’s point of view: a reporter wrongly arrested by the Americans under charges that he had conspired to kill British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
There are documentaries that are one sided because they have an agenda and then there are the ones that have to be one sided because the people being put on the hot seat are too afraid to even talk about it. This is one of the latter, giving us an disturbingly clear picture of how badly managed the Iraq war during its first years, and how corrupt the Bush Administration was throughout the process.
I know I have used the word disturbing a number of times in regards to the three previous documentaries, but this takes disturbing to a whole new level, particularly because it deals with the ugliest side of our own soldiers. Unless you have been living under a rock the last half decade, you have already heard of the atrocities and human right violations that were taking place in the American run prison of Abu Gharib in Iraq. One can’t even bother to use the word alleged, because there are so many photographs documenting the horrible treatment of the prisoners that denial becomes moot. The very people involved do not deny the incident and THAT is what makes this documentary so mind gruelingly interesting, in that it becomes a psychological breakdown of what happened, who was involved and how to compartmentalize the blame, because everybody involved is pointing fingers.
You sort of have to know what you are getting into when you go see a Terry Gilliam film, otherwise you are going to run out of there feeling like you want to thump somebody’s butt with your boot. The fact is, from my experience, that Gilliam tends to split the audience into two groups, the ones that think he is some sort of underrated genius and the ones that, well…think he is not. That’s a terrible way to describe the rift that Gilliam can create with his films, considering that a lot of the people I have met, that do not like his work, are militant about it.
No stranger to on-set troubles (See the Lost in La Mancha documentary), Terry Gilliam found an innovative way to solve this issue, utilizing the talent of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Collin Farrell to fill in for the role, requiring some re-working and re-shooting in order to get it to work. Strangely enough, it almost seems to fit in too perfectly with the storyline we are presented with, which, to nobody’s surprise, is one little white pill short of a trip.
Trying to describe this film in one paragraph is difficult and it most likely sounds like a mind warp, but if you know Terry Gilliam’s style, then you also know this is pretty much his default setting. The plot reads, strangely, very much like a combination of Being John Malkovich and Mirror Mask. Needless to say, the visuals are stunningly strange and interesting, taking us from the somewhat weird world we are used to, to the uber weird world that exists inside the good Doctor’s mind.
All that Elroy Fletcher (Danny Glover; Blindness) has that comes close to a claim to fame is that Fats Waller, a famous jazz player, once lived in the corner apartment that is now both his house and his movie rental business. At a time when everybody has moved on to DVD and on to the digital age, Elroy and his ‘son’ Mike (Mos Def; Cadillac Records, The Italian Job) continue to rent VHS to a small group of people in the community with an unwavering sense of loyalty to the tiny shop. The only problem is that the Be Kind Rewind video store is in danger of being shut down to be turned into tenements and unless they can improve their business model, the store — like Fats Waller — is going to be history.
OK, so not every movie I watch is the sort that should be up for award consideration, but then again, who does? Every once in a while you gotta indulge those other itches. True, my wife did sort of talk me into seeing this one, but at the same time she did not exactly have to twist my arm. Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau have always been a pleasant combination on the screen for me. Kristen Bell and Malin Akerman are nice on the eyes and Kristin Davis brings with her a bit of that air which she carried in Sex in the City and does come across a bit sexy. So if nothing else, there is a cast to look at. The movie is not bad though. In fact, from a married point of view it is actually rather funny, the way Mr. & Mrs. Smith was funny. Cause things are bound to come up on the screen which make you chuckle at the fact that either you have done that before to your spouse or your spouse has done it to you.
Shortly after the attacks on the twin towers in New York the rumors started, that no Jewish people perished. It was said that the Zionist had gotten word in advance and warned every person of Jewish decent to stay away from the towers that morning, so that the bombings could proceed, to serve their ends, without the needless spilling of Jewish blood. Who started these rumors or why, is a bit unclear, though the motive behind them are pretty damned transparent. Marc Levin uses this stage to question those rumors and the fact that shortly after the book titled the Protocols of Zion, became ever popular again, selling off the shelves like hot cakes.
Because I know this is how it works, I will tell you right now, this film is in black and white, so we can filter out those of you that are already not interested and focus on the ones that are. If you are still reading, then allow me to say this is an absolute gem coming quietly and under the radar out of Mexico. Even I, who like to think keep an eye and an ear in that direction, entirely missed this one until a couple of years later, and then it got bogged down in my ridiculously long (topped out) Netflix list that it seems it took another couple of years to get to it. But what a film!
Kowaanisqatsi, the first installment, is described by the director as being a film about the Northern Hemisphere. I personally feel that is is more a film about Western culture and first world countries, to be more specific, for it focuses on the differences and similarities between nature in its purest state and the technology that now drives those particular nations. Roughly translated from the Hopi language, it means Life in Turmoil, though the director admits that he would have much rather have given these films no name at all, settling with the obscure word in the Hopi language only in the end because ‘it had no baggage attached to it’ and not because it has anything to do with the Hopi peoples. Without lines of dialogue, scene after scene portrayed, show us a world that is wonderous and terrifying, descructive by its own means and by means we ourselves have created. Beautifully calm and uncomfortably crowded all at once, the director does a great job setting a pace that escalates from the relaxing and tame, to the nauseously absurd. Quite literally, part of me felt ill after the climactic, frenetic editing that works organically with the score to build up the momentum that eventually pushes you off the edge and manages to restore some calm before the film is over. Though many of the images are dated back to the late seventies, a lot of this can be overlooked given the perspective and the new point of view that Reggio and his gifted cinematographer Fricke, give us. The arguments are left for you to make, the film simply shows us our environment as it was and our environment as it is. Both have been beautiful and terrible, there is no dispute there, it is only a matter of looking at how things are progressing and wondering what can be done to better it.
The second film is aptly titled Powaqqatsi, which translated as the director intended from the Hopi language means Life in Transition, but perhaps more obscurely and more accurate a life that consumes another way of life for its benefit. Godfrey Reggio describes this as the story of the southern hemisphere, but once again I think it more accurately could be said to be the life of the third world countries upon the first world countries have made their mark. True enough, every shooting location was in the southern hemisphere and it will bring to those of us unfamiliar with their way of life a collection of shots that are, just as Kowaanisqatsi was, both thrilling, delighful, disturbing and heart-wrenching. It is a humbling experience, one that has perhaps raised voice to the accusation that Reggio was trying to romanticize poverty, something he claims not to have intended to do. His intentions? To show the way of life as it stands in a process of change, as caused by globalization and the influence of first world civilization. Without a doubt I found this to be the most beautiful of the three films, and even in its gritty, dirty scenes, one can find a certain beauty to a much simpler way of life, though undeniable there is a lot of ugliness as well. Credit must go once again to Fricke for managing the subjects so well in the eye of the camera and to Philip Glass who composes a fabulous score — in my opinion the best of the three he did for all these films.
The third film is called Naqoyqatsi and its rough translation would be Life as War and it is what Reggio describes a film that encompasses the gobal conflict, life of the world as a whole in the direction it is headed. Much like the other films, this too uses archival footage and originally shot footage to tell its tale though, remarkably enough, it does a major leap towards the usage of CG and filtering that changes the original pictures. While this film manages to get done what it set out to get done and show us a startlingly prophetic and frightening troublesome way of life, it also falls prey to the very thing it is trying to criticize, because this film uses a lot of technology to make its point about technology. It is an ironic twist that some might call apt and others might call hypocritical, but no matter where you fall it is obviously done with intention, as admitted by Reggio himself in a talk in New York. What I have a hard time determining is whether I like it or not. Time and time again I feel like this film, unlike the other two, brings down a heavy hammer that is nothing close to subtle and that bothered me, while at the same time I realized it also worked incredibly well in some places. Really, the largerst shortfall here is the fact that in the last decade since this film was released, CG has advanced tremendously and the images used here, while perhaps appropriate for the early years of the millenium, no longer hold up. Heavy use of polarizing filters, colorization and other effects also make the entire landscape for this film austere, manipulated and too blunt. And I had to ask myself if perhaps it may not have been better to make it subtle and let the images speak for themselves.
Not a bad attempt, on the part of David Lynch’s daughter who for all intents and purposes is making her directorial debut for the big screen. This film is essentially a who-dunnit thriller focused on an incident surrounding two less than stellar cops, one drug addicted couple, and an unfortunate family who all come together under some stressful circumstances that spiral out of control and result in some untimely deaths. By the time the federal agents arrive, there is only the drug addicted woman, a child and a cop left to question and it is absolutely necessary to get down to the truth, which might not be what one expects…
I might, perhaps unfairly, toss this film into the ‘typical Asian horror’ pile, and by that you might gather that this film is not in fact the tale that you are likely familiar thanks mostly to Disney. There is in fact very little in common between this film and that fairy tale, other than the fact that the main character, like the one in the other story, spends most of her life locked away. The reasons are, however, entirely different.
Every once in a while, animated gems burst their proud heads from the masses to remind adults across the world that animation is NOT just for kids and that it ought to be given a fair shot of seriousness. It is sad that most adults will not give it that chance, but if you are open-minded enough for it, please give this one a shot. Much like Persepolis before it, or The Triplets of Belleville, this film does not have the young in mind as its target audience.
Meet Barton Fink, gifted writer and generally a purist, writing from the heart, or so he tells himself. He is writing for the ordinary man, he tells himself. He is the voice of the voiceless, he tells himself. And then he gets the opportunity to work for Hollywood, which needless to say fills him with fright, but he goes and he braves it and he settles in his decrepit room, with nothing but an old image of a woman in the beach to inspire him and a very interesting neighbor to interrupt. Barton Fink realizes he is hitting a wall, and he is about to find out a lot about himself, and his neighbor and the common man, as an affair turns into more than he bargained for.
I will be honest and admit that when I first saw the trailer for this Wes Anderson film, my knee-jerk reaction was to think: What the eff just went wrong here? Not only did the subject seem stupid (forgive me Mr. Fox fans but I did not grow up with the story), but the animation seemed like it had just gotten a kick to the face all for the worse. It was like getting punted back to the bad old days when animation was not yet perfect, all of which was intentionally done by the genial Anderson.
Don’t quote me on this but I am pretty sure that the book on which this was based (which has the same title) is supposed to be non-fiction, which makes this story just a bit quirkier than it already is. It is a story about Jedi Knights, which is an ironic funny cause Ewan McGregor played the young Obi Wan in the first three episodes (the crappy ones yes) of the Star Wars saga. But this is not some sci-fi space travel movie, this is about a particularly specialized unit in the military that specializes in psychological warfare, all the way down to its lunatic extremes. The belief was that one of these men could in fact kill a goat with his mind, which is where this movie gets its name. Bob Wilton, is a journalist trying to validate himself, who accidentally runs into one of these psychological soldiers, recently reactivated and he finds himself getting the story of his life in the most uncharacteristic of ways.
If Avatar was one of the best films you will see 2009, The Road is likely to be one of the greatest films you will not. Which is a shame, but it seems the universe has been conspiring against this movie from the very start, to the point that I fear it will be overlooked for some very well deserved prizes come award season. This movie, based on the highly acclaimed book by Cormac McCarthy of the same title, was supposed to be released late 2008, or at least that is what word in the rumor mill said. Early screenings apparently sent it back into the editing room to be released early 2009; those plans were then ditched in favor of a late release trying to get some better positioning for the awards…though I fear they might have overshot it and released it far too late because, in all honesty, nobody wants to watch such a sad tale over the holidays with the family around.
With nothing but a gun, two bullets (one for his boy, one for himself) and a cart full of supplies, man and boy travel the lonely roads, encountering brief glimpses of life, which will both test and fortify their bonds. Emotionally, this is a very difficult movie to watch, particularly for a parent, where the question is not only ‘what is the point of going on living in a dead world?’ but also ‘would you have it in you to kill your own child in order to save him?’ This and many other similar questions are brought to the forefront of this film whose bitterly realistic view hits like a horse’s kick but manages to hold a candle of hope against a very austere background.
Credit must also be given to Mortensen, who plays perhaps his greatest role to date, carrying the entire film with only the help of Smit-McPhee, who is doing his largest role, and with the aid of a very small, but very effective supporting cast which includes Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce and Molly Parker. Viggo Mortensen displays a range on his acting ability that not only establishes credibility to his role, but which goes a long way in defining that bond between father and child which becomes so crucial to this film. All around, this movie hits all the right notes, however melancholy or frightening they might be, which is a sad thing, considering that this film is playing only in a handful of theaters and likely will be buried under the rest of the holiday season’s movie-trash such as movies with talking chipmunks. My advise? If you are OK with emotionally trying movies, seek this film out as soon as possible before it comes off the theaters, and you might just be surprised at how a can of peaches, can be the humble highlight of an entire film. Moving and horrifying in turn, this starkly beautiful film is likely one of 2009′s most underrated films.