This Is Where I Leave You: adapted by Jonathan Tropper from his own novel; directed by Shawn Levy; starring Jason Bateman (Judd Altman), Tina Fey (Wendy Altman), Jane Fonda (Hillary Altman), Adam Driver (Phillip Altman), Rose Byrne (Penny Moore), Corey Stoll (Paul Altman), Kathryn Hahn (Annie Altman), Connie Britton (Tracy Sullivan), and Timothy Olyphant (Horry Callen) (2014): Affable, sitcomesque family dramedy with a likable cast and some sharp writing. It's a good time-filler, and the first time I've ever actually liked Adam Driver. Lightly recommended.
The Judge: written by David Dobkin, Nick Schenk, and Bill Dubuque; directed by David Dobkin; starring Robert Downey Jr. (Hank Palmer), Robert Duvall (Joseph Palmer), Vera Farmiga (Samantha Powell), Billy Bob Thornton (Dwight Dickham), Vincent D'Onofrio (Glen Palmer), and Jeremy Strong (Dale Palmer) (2014): Robert Downey Jr. plays Robert Downey Jr., the quick-witted heel with a heart of gold, in this family drama. Robert Duvall plays his stern, distant father, a county court judge accused of a murder that occurred on the same day as the funeral for Duvall's wife of 50 years. Family secrets and old resentments surface: Downey Jr. hasn't returned to his small Indiana hometown since college. Does he have an old girlfriend? Yes! The acting is pretty much uniformly superb while the writing comes and goes. But wow, does Indiana ever go to trial quickly! No backlog there! They're already in the courtroom before anyone's looked at security footage from a relevant gas station! Lightly recommended.
Space Station 76: written by Jack Plotnick, Sam Pancake, Jennifer Elise Cox, Kali Rocha, and Michael Stoyanov; directed by Jack Plotnick; starring Patrick Wilson (Captain Glenn), Liv Tyler (Lieutenant Jessica Marlowe), Marisa Coughlan (Misty), Matt Bomer (Ted), Jerry O'Connell (Steve), Kylie Rogers (Sunshine), Kali Rocha (Donna), and Keir Dullea (Mr. Marlowe) (2014): Extraordinarily odd mix of satire and relationship drama that takes place on a space station, and in a future, meant to resemble the worlds of Space: 1999, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and perhaps a touch of first-season Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Everyone's got a problem, from a Captain struggling with his own closeted homosexuality to a little girl struggling with a mother hamster that keeps eating her own babies. This is not the laugh-out loud parody its own ads seemed to be selling, though I did laugh out loud several times (Matt Bomer's klunky 70's robot hand keeps stealing the show). The stars are all quite charming. Oh, and I also laughed out loud when the standard 1970's tri-colour hologram showed up. That's attention to historical detail! Recommended.
The Conjuring: written by Chad and Carey Hayes; directed by James Wan; starring Vera Farmiga (Lorraine warren), Patrick Wilson (Ed Warren), Lili Taylor (Carolyn Perron), and Ron Livingston (Roger Perron) (2013): This haunted-house movie is based on a true story to only a slightly greater extent than Thor: The Dark World is based on my experiences at Kitchener-Waterloo's Oktoberfest in 1990. It kicks off what looks to be a whole series of movies about the adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren, self-proclaimed ghost-hunters and demonologists who have been part of a number of what turned out to be America's great ghost hoaxes, including The Amityville Horror.
James Wan directs with a certain amount of skill, though much of it has been borrowed from other movies, most notably Poltergeist and The Exorcist. And the narrative lifts so many specific points from The Amityville Horror (book and movie) that it sometimes seems like a remake. Family buys a new house which makes them house-poor, setting off financial difficulties? Check. Little girl has imaginary playmate that turns out to be a supernatural entity? Check. Family dog hates ghost house? Check. Events seem to repeatedly spike at a time just after 3 a.m. in the morning? Check. Secret room? Check. Entire house unnaturally cold? Check.
Unfortunately, there's no invisible marching band, which I think is a goddamned shame.
The secret room caused the first moment of incredulous hilarity for me. See, the secret room they discover behind a false wall isn't just a room -- it's the entire basement. WHERE THE FURNACE IS LOCATED! I mean, they were going to find it at some point, weren't they? Either that or freeze.
Ghostly and/or demoniac shenanigans ensue. The ghost-hunters are brought in. At this point, the movie slides from simply annoying to offensive for two solid reasons, reasons made much more solid by The Conjuring's claims to be "true."
For one, an exorcism occupies at the climax of the movie. And we've had too many real-life incidents involving people killed by enthusiastic exorcists revealed over the past few years for this sort of thing to be at all dramatically compelling. Nauseating and disturbing, yes.
Secondly, at least some of the supernatural happenings end up supporting the idea that the Salem Witch Trials executed actual Satan-worshipping, magic-using, evil witches. Give me a fucking break. Just because those women have been dead for several centuries doesn't make their terrible fate any less horrifying. What a revolting development!
The actors do what they can with the material -- the four main adult characters are decently acted. Another blow to my ability to even remotely suspend disbelief came when I realized that Patrick Wilson's period hair and get-up (the movie is set in 1971) makes him look like Bob Odenkirk. So I thought, geez, what a great movie this would be with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross playing the paranormal investigators!
By the time we get to a scene in which Wilson must act as an "amateur" exorcist (the Roman Catholic "professional" being unavailable), we're perilously close to the hilarious exorcism of Jonah Hill in This is the End. And let me tell you, this movie really could have used Jay Baruchel clutching a crucifix improvised from two spatulas and spouting the lines he remembered from The Exorcist. Not recommended.
Insidious, written by Leigh Whannell, directed by James Wan, starring Patrick Wilson (Josh Lambert), Rose Byrne (Renai Lambert), Ty Simpkins (Dalton Lambert), Barbara Hershey (Lorraine Lambert), Lin Shaye (Elise Rainier), Leigh Whannell (Specs) and Angus Sampson (Tucker) (2011): Surprisingly 'old-school' ghost story given that the writer and director are best known for their work on the hardcore Saw films. If it weren't for the last twenty minutes and the subsequent, exhausted 'twist' ending, this would be a really solid film.
Young Dalton Lambert goes into a medically inexplicable coma. His family searches for answers. Weird things happen. A psychic is consulted. More weird things happen. That's the movie with the major twists and revelations unrevealed.
Wan and Whannel get a lot of productive mileage out of showing little and suggesting a lot, of quick scares and odd things lurking in the outskirts of the frame. The cosmology introduced by the psychic to explain what's going on makes a certain amount of sense, though it's not developed enough to be all that convincing for long. A visual homage to Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is a bit jarring; that one supernatural entity looks an awful lot like Darth Maul undercuts a certain amount of tension.
Rose Byrne is a stand-out as the worried mother. Byrne's face in repose tends to look sad anyway -- I think it's her eyebrows -- and the look suits the material. Patrick Wilson is fine as the father, who has supernatural secrets of his own, though he appears to lose about 50 IQ points in the last twenty minutes. When the psychic tells you not to draw attention to yourself, don't run around yelling at every supernatural entity you encounter, that's all I've got to say.
The movie also joins the horror sub-sub-sub-genre of 'Monsters who love novelty songs,' as one entity really likes Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," which was already terrifying enough on its own. Hell's playlist must be really awful. Recommended.
