Movie Review: Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange

Directed by: Scott Derrickson.

Written by: Jon Spaihts and Scott Derrickson & C. Robert Cargill based on the comics by Steve Ditko.

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Stephen Strange), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Mordo), Rachel McAdams (Dr. Christine Palmer), Benedict Wong (Wong), Mads Mikkelsen (Kaecilius), Tilda Swinton (The Ancient One), Michael Stuhlbarg (Dr. Nicodemus West), Benjamin Bratt (Jonathan Pangborn), Scott Adkins (Lucian / Strong Zealot).

 

What the Marvel movies lack in originality, they make up for in consistency. Doctor Strange is the 14^th film in Marvel’s ongoing series of interconnected films, which have started to include more and more obscure characters, known only to comic fans – like, of course, Doctor Strange. Visually, the film is similar to many of Marvel’s other films – although there is a welcome change with some trippy imagery throughout, including some that seem inspired by Nolan’s Inception – and even if the end of the movie is more CGI soup, at least it’s interesting CGI soup. This is yet another origin story – one that is very similar to Iron Man, as a rich asshole eventually becomes, well, less of an asshole upon discovering new powers. Yet, even if Doctor Strange follows the Marvel formula to a T – it’s all so well down, so well-acted, and downright entertaining, that you hardly care.

 

The story this time is about Dr. Steven Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), a brilliant neuro-surgeon – a rich genius who apparently has no family, and whose only friend is his (former?) girlfriend, Dr. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) – and even she has grown tired of how self-involved he is. One day, Dr. Strange is doing what rich assholes in the movies always do – looking at his phone, while driving his expensive sports car at high speeds along a winding mountain road, when he crashes. He survives, but his hands are ruined. Unless he can find a miracle cure, he’s down as a surgeon – something he cannot accept. He finally finds his way to Nepal, under the tutelage of The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), a bald headed, New Age healing spouting woman, who is the Sorceress Supreme – who protects the world from more mystical threats. She will teach Dr. Strange a lot of magic, pretty quickly – which is good because they need Dr. Strange to help fight against another former student – Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) – who wants to bring about a Dark Age for reasons.

 

Doctor Strange has its problems to be sure – many of them are standard issue Marvel problems. The origin story here isn’t overly original – it follows the same sort of pattern where the hero slowly realizes what he can do, and then gets better and better at it – eventually realizing just how powerful he can be. He’s got a few sidekicks this time – the underutilized Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), as another student of The Ancient One’s – much more rigid in his belief system, and the library master Wong (Benedict Wong) – whose funny precisely because he’s so humorless. Doctor Strange has a love interest, played by a very talented actress, who is basically given nothing to do. The villain is hardly memorable at all – which is a feat in itself, because he’s played by Mads Mikkelsen, who would be near the top of anyone list as an actor to cast as a villain. (It’s odd, that 14 films in, and we’re still at a count of two truly memorable villains – Loki and Ultron – and the later is debatable).

 

But a few things elevate Doctor Strange as well. For one, Cumberbatch is perfectly cast in the lead role – doing a great job as a complete and total asshole in the early scenes, and then fitting into the role as the mystical wizard he becomes as it goes along. Marvel has generally cast their heroes well – and Cumberbatch is no exception – he’s gets you through the moments when the films screenplay seems to be on autopilot. The very real criticism of whitewashing aside, Tilda Swinton is terrific in the role of The Ancient One as well – this role is, of course, a cliché, but Swinton makes it feels fresh and new – the Doomed Mentor, who is more flawed than they first appear. Swinton can play just about anything – and she does a great job here as well. The direction is fine, the special effects among the best Marvel has ever done, and there is at least a twist on the usual fight scenes in this film – it’s not all punches and chases, etc.

 

At this point, the Marvel movies have become akin to a television series that just has a couple, supersized episodes a year. We know what we’re going to get with each episode, and we come back to get that. Marvel knows this, and they deliver precisely that, with little in the way of surprises. That makes the movies easy to criticize – it makes it easy to bemoan the lack of originality in their films. And yet, Doctor Strange comes in the same year in which Marvel’s rival DC fell on their face not once, but twice with Batman vs. Superman and Suicide Squad – making overstuffed, overlong and almost incoherent movies that satisfied no one. Perhaps we should be as hard on Marvel – who has done a remarkable job at delivering consistent entertaining, twice a year, every year.

Catch-Up Before the Sequel Comes Out: Sinister (2012)

Sinister (2012)

Directed by: Scott Derrickson.

Written by: Scott Derrickson & C. Robert Cargill.

Starring: Ethan Hawke (Ellison Oswalt), Juliet Rylance (Tracy), Fred Dalton Thompson (Sheriff), James Ransone (Deputy), Michael Hall D'Addario (Trevor), Clare Foley (Ashley), Vincent D'Onofrio (Professor Jonas).

  

Sinister is the type of horror that slowly gets under your skin and then stays there for days on end. It is a disturbing horror movie right from its opening frames – grainy, Super 8 footage of four bodies hanging from a tree – an image we will see in various forms repeatedly throughout the movie. Like many horror films before it, Sinister wants to turn the audience into voyeurs, right alongside its main character – so the film can implicate us at the same time. The main character this time is Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) – who makes one mistake after another during the course of the film, and yet almost all of them make sense given the information he has available to him at the time. That is a horrible person, who dooms himself from the start is obvious – but that he is a relatable horrible person is what makes the performance, and the movie, work as well as it does.

 

Ellison is a true crime writer, who had a hit 10 years ago, and has fallen on hard times since (one of his books, where he came up with a theory that turned out to be wrong, has somehow gotten people to blame him for some deaths, which makes no sense, but be cool, just roll with). He has decided to move – with his wife and two young kids – into the house where those four hanging people lived before their deaths (that tree is still in the backyard) – in the hopes of writing his new book, and maybe even finding clues to the location of the daughter who has been missing. He doesn’t tell his wife this is the murder house (he does tell her, when she asks that no, they did not move two houses away from a murder house, which isn’t a lie), and although that too strains credibility, again, just role with it. The Sheriff (Fred Dalton Thompson) doesn’t want Ellison there – which makes sense – but he doesn’t do much but act menacing. His deputy is played by James Ransone – and he’s pretty much hilarious in a way that somehow doesn’t detract from the horror as he wants to help Ellison, who he is a fan of. Vincent D’Onofrio shows up on Skype to help setup the ending – which doesn’t need that, but whatever, horror movies always feel the need to explain themselves.

 

But most of the movie is in fact just Hawke’s Ellison by himself. He stumbles across a box of home movies, and a projector of course, and watches them again and again and again – eventually getting them on his laptop so he can slow things down and discover more details. He seems to do most of this at nighttime, with all the lights off, in the attic of the old house – because really, that’s the most logical thing to do, and it in no way has anything to do with director Scott Derrickson just wanting to set the atmosphere. Hawke is convincing in this role – a seemingly normal, soft spoken guy, who is really a raging egomaniac and possibly a drunk to boot. Stephen King has always said one of his problem with Kubrick’s The Shining is that Jack Nicholson is so obviously crazy that it isn’t shocking when he turns. One of the things that works best about Sinister is how Hawke is convincing as a normal guy, before he slowly starts to reveal the depths he is willing to stoop to stroke his own ego. He has convinced himself he “needs” this book – but he doesn’t. He just wants it really bad.

 

The end of the movie is inevitable – it’s set up fairly early on, and proceeds there with little detours. We know what’s happening long before Hawke does. But while you could complain about that – or with some of the leaps in logic the movie takes – I’m not going to. Why? Basically because the movie works as it’s playing. While it may be easy to poke holes in the film afterwards, as it plays the film works – and does so with atmosphere, and not gore. It is an unsettling film that haunts your thoughts long after it’s over.

Movie Review: Deliver Us From Evil

Deliver Us From Evil
Directed by: Scott Derrickson.
Written by: Scott Derrickson  & Paul Harris Boardman based on the book by Ralph Sarchie and Lisa Collier Cool.
Starring: Eric Bana (Sarchie), Édgar Ramírez (Mendoza), Olivia Munn (Jen), Chris Coy (Jimmy), Dorian Missick (Gordon), Sean Harris (Santino), Joel McHale (Butler), Mike Houston (Nadler), Lulu Wilson (Christina), Olivia Horton (Jane), Scott Johnsen (Lt. Griggs).

There have been a lot of movies over the years about demonic possession. Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) are certainly two of the most influential films in cinema history – as we get multiple retreads every year that try, and fail, to tap into that same primal terror. Last summer’s The Conjuring is probably as good of a “copy” of these films as is possible to make. This summer’s Deliver Us From Evil is more like the vast majority of demonic possession movies – pretty much instantly forgettable. Directed by Scott Derrickson, Deliver Us from Evil is a well-made film, following its paint by numbers approach well, and trying to provide old school horror movies thrills – slowly building up the suspense before it really delivers the goods. It isn’t a particularly good horror film – but it’s not a bad one either. It gets the job done – I just wish it tried a little harder.

In the film, Eric Bana stars as Detective Sarchie – an NYPD Detective who seems to have a sixth sense for guessing what calls are going to be worse than others. This delights his partner – Butler (Joel McHale) – an adrenaline junkie, who likes working with Sarchie, because it guarantees him a lot of action. Sarchie has one of these hunches when a domestic disturbance call comes in. They arrive at the house, and find Iraq war veteran Jimmy (Chris Coy) has gone crazy, beaten his wife, and is just acting strange. He gets more feelings, which leads him to a strange search at the Bronx zoo for a war who threw her son into the lion pit (fortunately, the lions weren’t there at the time) – and the seemingly crazy call from Italian immigrants who think they hear something in their basement. The more he investigates the resulting cases, they more they become connected. He meets Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez) – a Jesuit priest, who thinks there is something weird, and wants to help. Meanwhile his wife, Jen (Olivia Munn) – is getting frustrated with him as he spends too much time on the job, and not enough with her and their daughter.

You can probably guess where this is going – and you’re right, You don’t have a Jesuit priest in your movie unless there is eventually going to an exorcism, and lots of demonic activity. You don’t make a point of the fact that your lead character is a lapsed Catholic, unless he is eventually going to have his faith restored. These cops don’t have wives and kids who have anything interesting to do in the movie except whine to the main character, and eventually get themselves into a situation where they need to be saved. Deliver Us From Evil dutifully sets up all of these plots elements, and just as dutifully knocks them down again,

Derrickson has directed horror movies before – the decent The Exorcism of Emily Rose (another knockoff of the aforementioned The Exorcist) as well as Sinister with Ethan Hawke – which I missed, but did get some surprisingly strong reviews. He knows how to construct a horror movie, and he does it here with efficiency. I liked the visual look of the film – that although the film takes place in the years between 2010 and 2013 – seems to have a color palette more suitable for a 1970s film. He doesn’t do anything new in the film, but what he does he does with skill.

There is nothing really wrong with Deliver Us From Evil. It does pretty much what it sets out to do. But I’ve seen a few too many films over the years that have little on their mind other than to repeat what Polanski and Friedkin made new and original. It takes a film as special, as well made, well-acted and genuinely frightening as The Conjuring to make me stand up and take notice. Deliver Us from Evil doesn’t do that. By this time next year, I doubt I’ll even remember which film about which demon with which priest and which non-believer this one is. There’s so many that just starts running together after a while.