Movie Review: The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford Prison Experiment
Directed by: Kyle Patrick Alvarez.
Written by: Tim Talbott.
Starring: Billy Crudup (Dr. Philip Zimbardo), Michael Angarano (Christopher Archer), Moises Arias (Anthony Carroll), Nicholas Braun (Karl Vandy), Gaius Charles (Paul Vogel), Keir Gilchrist (John Lovett), Ki Hong Lee (Gavin Lee / 4301), Thomas Mann (Prisoner 416), Ezra Miller (Daniel Culp / 8612), Logan Miller (Jerry Sherman / 5486), Tye Sheridan (Peter Mitchell / 819), Johnny Simmons (Jeff Jansen / 1037), James Wolk (Mike Penny), Nelsan Ellis (Jesse Fletcher), Olivia Thirlby (Dr. Christina Maslach).

I couldn’t help but think of another recent movie – Michael Almereyda’s Experimenter when I was watching The Stanford Prison Experiment. Both films are about infamous psychological experiments conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, and both deal with authority. Experimenter functions almost as a psychological experiment itself – one that Almereyda is conducting on the audience as they watch. The Stanford Prison Experiment doesn’t do that – it aims for a chilly, basic recounting of facts – a recreation of a simulation and its effective enough that my wife wondered if it was a documentary for a few minutes (then she saw Billy Crudup). Both films are effective – but Experimenter has another layer that raises it above this one, as good as it is.

The film stars the aforementioned Crudup as Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who in the early 1970s wanted to conduct an experiment at Stanford – and asked for young, male volunteers to participate. He turns a hallway and some offices into a prison ward – made half of the volunteer’s guards and the other half prisoners, and wanted to see how they would react. It was supposed to last two weeks, but was called off less than a week in. The experiment was too successful. The guards got too into their roles – and seemed to enjoy inflicting psychological torture on the prisoners, who in turn suffered from more psychological strain than anyone involved every would have thought possible. The guards keep pushing, and when they wonder if they have gone too far, Zimbardo assures them – tells them to keep going.

You know where the story is going from fairly early in the movie, even if you haven’t heard of the infamous experiment before. The early scenes have both the guards and prisoners behaving awkwardly, trying at times to stifle laughter as they try and fit into their roles. It doesn’t help them that the surroundings look like exactly what they are – an drab, boring, beige hallway in an institutional setting, and not like a prison at all. Which is what makes what is happens more disturbing – because everything that happens comes from within these young men.

To be honest, most of the performances kind of blend together – this was probably the goal of the experiment and the film, as all the prisoners dress alike, as do the guards, so individual personalities do not much come out. Two performances do stand out though – the first by Michael Angarano, as the leader of the guards, who adopts a strange speaking voice – somewhere between Captain from Cool Hand Luke and John Wayne – and is the one who ratchets up the abuse on the prisoners, delighting in his own sadistic streak of punishing them. The other is by Ezra Miller as the most rebellious of the prisoners – and not coincidentally, the first one who breaks. When he realizes he cannot win, he loses it.

The film is effective directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez – who is clearly inspired by Kubrick with his camera moves, and icy tone (oddly, the film won the screenplay prize at Sundance, when the screenplay really doesn’t seem that impressive – it’s the direction and the performances that sell it). The film does start to drab as it moves along – we know where this is headed, and the film starts to repeat itself, with only slightly worse results from the prisoners. The film is effective – surprisingly so – because it limits its scope – because it doesn’t venture too far from that hallway. But that also limits it a little – making the whole thing feel slightly oppressive. Then again, perhaps that’s the point.

Movie Review: Knock Knock

Knock Knock
Directed by: Eli Roth.   
Written by: Eli Roth & Nicolás López & Guillermo Amoedo and Anthony Overman and Michael Ronald Ross.  
Starring: Keanu Reeves (Evan Webber), Lorenza Izzo (Genesis), Ana de Armas (Bel), Aaron Burns (Louis), Ignacia Allamand (Karen Alvarado), Dan Baily (Jake), Megan Baily (Lisa), Colleen Camp (Vivian).

The problem with the films of Eli Roth is that there is always a decent idea at the core of the movie, that Roth than precedes to ruin by taking the dumbest, most obvious take on that idea. Could you make a good horror movie about young Americans acting like morons in foreign countries and getting tortured to death? Yes, you could – but Roth failed not only once, but twice with the Hostel movies – as he provided no context, no insight into his films – instead replacing it with a lot of gore (it’s three times if you include Aftershock, a film he co-wrote and co-starred in0 . His latest film, Knock Knock at least has some humor to – which is more than you can say for the rest of his films. But again, there is a way you could make a decent film out of this idea – a filmmaker like Michael Haneke has done it numerous times. But Roth has no real idea what the hell he’s doing here – and has made a ham-fisted, idiotic and misogynistic film.

The film stars Keanu Reeves as Evan Webber – a normal family man with a beautiful wife and two beautiful kids, who is left alone one weekend because he has some work to do, and the family is headed to the beach. Late on the first night, there is a knock on the door – and on the other side are two soaking wet, young beauties – Genesis (Lorenza Izzo) and Bel (Ana de Armas) who say they are lost. He invites them in, calls them an Uber (which won’t be there for 45 minutes). They are very forward with their sexuality, trying desperately to seduce him – and while he resists, at first, he eventually gives into temptation (although they practically force themselves on him) and they have a threesome. The next morning, they’re still in his house – and make it clear they are not leaving. They have gone from sexy to insane – and are now claiming to be only 15. They will spend the rest of the movie tormenting Webber – often while he is tied up.

You could make an interesting movie out of this premise – a film about Webber’s moral failing, and the price he pays for it. This is exactly the type of thing that Michael Haneke does exceptionally well – where even the most minor of transgressions are punished. But Roth isn’t Haneke – and he doesn’t even try to be. That isn’t the problem – the problem is that Roth has no idea what he’s doing. The portrait of the two women is in particular hateful – in the first act, they are mere sex objects – which would be fine if he were going somewhere else with the movie in the second or third act. Instead, he turns them into insane harpies for the next two acts, pushing them further and further into the realm of insanity. By the time they finally reveal why they hell they are doing this to Webber, its incredibly disappointing because its treated as an afterthought.

The best thing in the movie is the performance by Reeves – who really does make you feel sympathy for Webber. He tries to be a nice guy at first – and even does try and resist the two young women who are throwing themselves at him. He makes one, understandable (not forgivable) transgression – and has his life completely destroyed for it. Reeves goes full on Nicolas Cage in his performance – and it’s a wonder to behold really – especially when he starts screaming about free pizza. Reeves does what he can to save an awful movie – but he cannot do it.

In short, once again when I was done watching an Eli Roth movie I felt dirty. I felt that way after both Hostel movies and Aftershock – I wanted to wash the movie off of me. I felt the same way at the end of this film – but for different reasons. Roth has some provocative ideas in the films – about male sexual fantasies and young women – but he has no idea what to do with those ideas (having the two girls infantilize themselves and call Webber “daddy” isn’t the same thing as having an idea). Knock Knock is one of the worst films of the year – and once again, I am kicking myself for believing that Eli Roth may have actually made a good movie when I sat done to watch one. 

Movie ReviewL About Elly

About Elly
Directed by: Asghar Farhadi   
Written by: Asghar Farhadi & Azad Jafarian.
Starring: Golshifteh Farahani (Sepideh), Shahab Hosseini (Ahmad), Taraneh Alidoosti (Elly), Merila Zare'i (Shohreh), Mani Haghighi (Amir), Peyman Moaadi (Peyman), Ra'na Azadivar (Naazi), Ahmad Mehranfar (Manoochehr), Saber Abar (Alireza).

The characters in the films of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi are always only superficially happy – they are hiding a lot of secrets, that will over the course of the movie come out, and ruin everything. This was true of his Oscar winning A Separation and the follow-up, The Past (which everyone seemed to like more than I did – but I loved A Separation). This year saw the first release stateside of About Elly – his debut film, made before A Separation or The Past, and its fascinating to see where he started from – and it is a confident debut, that is undeniably the work of the same writer/director.

The film is about several families heading off for a beach vacation in a large, sprawling, dilapidated house down by the water. Everyone is part of a couple already – except for Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini) and Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti). Ahmad has recently gotten divorced from his German wife, and Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahami) thinks that Elly would be a good match for him. But Sepideh doesn’t know Elly very well at all – and no one else on the trip knows her at all. Everyone is seemingly having a good time on their first night – and Ahmad and Elly do seem to be getting along. But Elly says she has to return to the city – she has a sick mother. And then two of the children go into the water when they shouldn’t have – they end up okay, but no one can find Elly. Did she go into the water to try and save them, and drown? Did she leave without telling anyone? As the long day turns into a longer night and then back again, the couples talk and talk, and find out just how little they know about Elly –and each other, and frayed relationships start coming apart.

This is a film that sneaks up on you slowly. In its first act, it’s a fun, and kind of breezy. These characters could be middle class Americans on vacation – they seem secular, fun loving and easy going. When Elly goes missing however, that is when things start to become tense – and when the reality of living in Iran starts becoming apparently. Even if none of these characters are overly religious – they do know they could be consequences for inviting a single woman along with them on vacation – especially when they get word from her supposed brother, who is really her fiancé. But then, why was she there if she was engaged? Did she want to get married to this man? And what’s his reaction?

There are elements of the thriller genre here that isn’t readily apparent in Farhadi’s other films – which are more straight ahead dramas. Farhadi doesn’t use the genre hook as a crutch however – but really, masterfully uses it to evoke tension, which helps to fracture things even more. Sepideh in particular goes from being the most outgoing and fun loving of the bunch, to someone who is pretty much destroyed by what happened – growing older seemingly by the minute in the film’s second half, as one by one, everyone turns against her.

The film really is quite something – especially for a first time filmmaker. It’s funny, touching, thrilling and tragic –and it moves through this various stages of the movie with ease. We already know what Farhadi is capable of – A Separation is even better than About Elly – but this is a fascinating first chapter in what has become one of the more interesting voices to come out of International Cinema in the last few years.  

Movie Review: The Gallows

The Gallows
Directed by: Travis Cluff & Chris Lofing.
Written by: Travis Cluff & Chris Lofing. 
Starring: Reese Mishler (Reese Houser), Pfeifer Brown (Pfeifer Ross), Ryan Shoos (Ryan), Cassidy Gifford (Cassidy Spilker).

I have, at times, defended found footage horror movies – because even though many of them have become clichéd and silly, they are still capable of providing genuine scares. Most recently, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit was a legitimately scary horror film – and one that doesn’t use the found footage concept as an excuse for sloppy filmmaking. Yet, for every film like The Visit, that actually works, there is at least one like The Gallows – which does not. This is the type of movie that gives found footage horror films a bad name – it’s lazily written and shot, with bad acting and a poor overall concept. Worst of all, it provides zero actual scares. The film is only 81 minutes long – but its quite a dull slog.

The film is about Reese (Reese Mishler), a former high school football player who quit the team in order to join the school play. For reasons that make no sense whatsoever, the play they are putting on this year is the very same one the school put on 20 years ago – where a freak accident  lead to one of the leads hanging themselves on stage and dying in front of everyone. Reese is a terrible actor – but he’s landed the lead role (somehow) – and his buddy, Ryan (Ryan Shoos) has no problem pointing out just how horrible an actor he is. And then Ryan finds out Reese’s secret – he has a crush of the production’s leading lady – Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown) – a typical drama nerd. Ryan knows Reese will humiliate himself if he goes on stage- but has an idea: they can sneak in and smash the set so the production has to be cancelled. Ryan’s girlfriend Cassidy (Cassidy Gifford) tags along – and Pfeiffer shows up as well for unrelated reasons. But they cannot get very far into their plan – because they are not alone in the theater, and they also cannot get out. Someone wants to put them through precisely what that long dead star of the original production went through.

One of the first questions any found footage horror film has to answer is why would the people keep filming everything when their lives are in danger. The Gallows answers this in the most obvious way – the four teenagers need the light on the camera in order to see. At least, that’s how it begins – but as the film moves on, this becomes less and less plausible – especially when there are fewer and fewer of the teenagers left. Even less plausible is the twists and turns the movie takes – especially in its final act as it goes from silly to stupid.

There is not a moment in The Gallows that is original, nor at all scary. Horror movies need at least a bit of originality or novelty in order to scare you. When a film like The Gallows comes along, and doesn’t do anything the least bit original, it’s a dull experience watching it. The found footage genre isn’t to blame for a movie as bad as The Gallows – but movies like The Gallows are what give a perfectly fine genre like found footage a bad name. 

Movie Review: Youth

Youth
Directed by: Paolo Sorrentino.
Written by: Paolo Sorrentino.
Starring: Michael Caine (Fred Ballinger), Harvey Keitel (Mick Boyle), Rachel Weisz (Lena Ballinger), Paul Dano (Jimmy Tree), Jane Fonda (Brenda Morel), Mark Kozelek (Himself), Robert Seethaler (Luca Moroder), Alex Macqueen (Queen's Emissary), Luna Zimic Mijovic (Young Masseuse), Paloma Faith (Herself).

Italian director Paolo Sorrentino doesn’t really do subtle in his films, which when his films are good (like Il Divo) are part of their great charm, and when they are not - The Great Beauty - can make them somewhat insufferable. Okay, so The Great Beauty won the Foreign Language Film Oscar, and has a lot of fans, so maybe I’m wrong on that one – but it felt to me like warmed over Fellini – La Dolce Vita with all the excess and none of the insight, that slowly devolved into scene and scene of the same damn thing. There was undeniable craft on display in The Great Beauty – great shots and energy – but to me, the whole thing was sound and fury signifying if not nothing, than at least not all that much. The same can be said of his latest film Youth – although this film works better, because the lead performance by Michael Caine grounds the whole endeavor in a recognizable human reality, which allows for Sorrentino’s flights of fancy to not derail the whole film (although, they do come close at several points). The film doesn’t add up to a lot – but at least this time, I enjoyed the ride.

Caine stars as Fred Ballinger, an eldery composer and former conductor of the Venice Orchestra, who had a long and successful career that brought him fame and money – although he does lament the fact that his so called “Simple Songs” are what he is best remembered for, apparently thinking they were silly trifles, not quite worthy of him. He is spending his summer at a Swiss retreat – where he used to come with his wife, and now has come with his daughter and personal assistant, Lena (Rachel Weisz) and his longtime friend Mick (Harvey Keitel) – a once great film director, who is working with a stable of young writers on what he believes will be his “testamanet” – the only film of his that will matter. Caine, with his hair slicked back and large glasses, has clearly been made up to look like Toni Servillo – Sorrentino’s usual leading man, but he makes the character his own. Fred is sad, haunted by secrets in his past, and is ultimately just waiting for death. Mick won’t let his career go, but Fred has long since given that up – he doesn’t even want to perform for the Queen, much to the chagrin of the smiling emissary she keeps sending to see him to try and change his mind.

If Caine is the morose center of Youth, Sorrentino surronds him with more than enough craziness to buoy the proceedings, and make things entertaining. Paul Dano is deadpan hilarious as a movie star staying at the resort preparing for a role he doesn’t much talk about. The ultimate punchline to Dano’s performance is awful – the worse thing in the movie really, as it comes from nowhere, and has no point, but everything else with Dano is quite amusing – especially his interaction with the newly crowned Miss Universe, who isn’t the bimbo he assumes she is. Weisz is an actress who always strike me as too self-conscious, and that’s mainly true here as well, but she does have one terrific monologue that represents the best work she has ever done. Keitel hasn’t had a role this good in years, and he clearly relishes the role that allows him to be a comedic counterpoint to Caine. He is stuck a few times pretty much reciting the theme of the movie (in a touching scene involving binocolurs where the explains the difference between being young and being old for example), and his ultimate end feels cheap and unearned, but for the most part he is terrific. And then there’s Jane Fonda, who shows up late in the film for what is essentially a one scene cameo, as an aging movie star and frequent collaborator of Mick’s, who lays out just what she, and Hollywood thinks of him. This is in no way a subtle performance – Fonda goes maniacally over-the-top in the scene, but she’s brilliant just the same. The movie, which does tend to focus on young, naked (or nearly so) female bodies a little too much (seriously, it gets downright creepy at times) could use more of Fonda.

Not to be outdone by his cast, Sorrentino throws pretty much every cinematic trick in the book on the screen, creating some moments of inspired brilliance (including a couple of great fantasy sequences – one involving Caine imagining a return to conducting that goes horribly wrong, and one a demented music video featuring Pamola Faith, playing herself and being an awful good sport about it, considering what is said about her) – and some moments that strike me as Sorrentino simply showing off. But whenever the film threatens to spin out of control, Caine is always there to ground it yet again. His ultimate secrets are not that interesting, nor is his inevitable “redemption” – but along the way, Caine does some of the best work he has done in years. He pretty much saves the movie from itself.

Classic Movie Review: Creepshow (1982)

Creepshow (1982)
Directed by: George A. Romero.
Written by: Stephen King.
Starring: Hal Holbrook (Henry Northrup), Adrienne Barbeau (Wilma Northrup), Fritz Weaver (Dexter Stanley), Leslie Nielsen (Richard Vickers), Carrie Nye (Sylvia Grantham), E.G. Marshall (Upson Pratt), Viveca Lindfors (Aunt Bedelia), Ed Harris (Hank Blaine), Ted Danson (Harry Wentworth), Stephen King (Jordy Verrill), Warner Shook (Richard Grantham), Robert Harper (Charlie Gereson), Elizabeth Regan (Cass Blaine), Gaylen Ross (Becky Vickers), Jon Lormer (Nathan Grantham).
 

The 1982 George A. Romero/Stephen King collaboration Creepshow is basically an exercise in nostalgia – a way for two horror masters to pay tribute to something that meant a lot to their interest in the genre as children, and led them down their (separate) paths to redefining the horror genre in their own ways. In this case, Creepshow is a tribute to the E.C. Horror comics of the 1950s – something movie makes no effort to try and hide, and it has a framing device about the comics, and a few animated sequences as well. The film is an anthology – five shorts, written by King, and directed by Romero – that tell bizarre horror stories – the type that may well seem creepy or daring when you’re 10 – not so much when you’re 35 and have no personal connection to what Romero and King are so in love with.

None of the five stories in Creepshow are particularly good – but some are better than others. In the first, an old family relation comes home on Father’s Day – as the newest member of the family (Ed Harris) is treated to the old family story as to the time the woman in question killed her father, and why the dead father is still angry about it. In the second, King himself plays a dimwitted redneck who discovers what he thinks a meteor – and does the brilliant thing and touch it, only to start growing green hair all over his body no matter what he tries. The third stars Leslie Nielsen as a rich man who confronts his younger wife’s lover (Ted Danson) – and tricks him into playing a cruel game, even though he doesn’t get away clean either. The fourth, and longest, segment has a creature long trapped inside a crate – who a university Professor (Hal Holbrook) uses to get back at his shrew of a wife (Adrienne Barbeau). The segment is about a Howard Hughes type billionaire (E.G. Marshall), living in a “germ free penthouse”, which becomes infested with cockroaches.

The characters in Creepshow are all either stupid or assholes or both – and although horrible things befall them all, for the most part they deserve what happens to them. Both the victims and the perpetrators (who will become victims themselves) are this way – and no one gets away cleanly (except, oddly, for Holbrook’s character). Like all sorts of horror movies past and present, Creepshow is a movie that punishes its characters for their transgressions.

Creepshow is not a scary movie in the least. It is more of a campy comedy than anything else – a movie that King and Romero seem to have made as more of a lark than anything else. The actors are in on the joke – as they all go wildly over the top in performances that range from entertainingly bizarre (like Marshall) to awful (King). The wild performances are matched by special effects, makeup, bizarre camera angles, and animated sequences and over the top violence. There is not a second of Creepshow that you can take seriously at all – and all that is by design.

The conclusion I reached at the end of the movie is that Romero and King made precisely the movie they wanted to – it’s just that the movie didn’t interest me at all. It’s really very hard to get people to be nostalgic about something they do not remember and do not love. The best works of nostalgia find a way to make something new of the old – Quentin Tarantino’s entire career is based on this, nowhere more so than in Grindhouse, his double feature with Robert Rodriguez inspired by 1970s grindhouse films. Rodriguez’s feature, Planet Terror, looks, sounds and feels far more like a grindhouse film from the era than Tarantino’s Death Proof, does. But Death Proof is the far greater film than Planet Terror – simply because Tarantino takes his inspirations, and makes something wholly unique, and wholly his own out of them. That is where Creepshow fails to me. It doesn’t feel like either a Romero film or a King film. It feels like precisely what it is – two incredibly talented men having fun recreating something they loved in their youth. If you love those comics as well, you’ll love Creepshow. If you don’t, then there really is much here for you – just like there wasn’t much there for me.

Movie Review: The Good Dinosaur

The Good Dinosaur
Directed by: Peter Sohn.
Written by: Peter Sohn & Erik Benson & Meg LeFauve & Kelsey Mann & Bob Peterson & Meg LeFauve.
Starring: Raymond Ochoa (Arlo), Jack Bright (Spot), Jeffrey Wright (Poppa), Frances McDormand (Momma), Maleah Nipay-Padilla (Young Libby), Ryan Teeple (Young Buck), Jack McGraw (Young Arlo), Marcus Scribner (Buck), Peter Sohn (Forrest Woodbush), Steve Zahn (Thunderclap), Mandy Freund (Downpour), Steven Clay Hunter (Coldfront), A.J. Buckley (Nash), Anna Paquin (Ramsey), Sam Elliott (Butch), David Boat (Bubbha), Carrie Paff (Lurleane), Calum Grant (Pervis), John Ratzenberger (Earl).

Fair or not, Pixar is expected to produce a masterpiece every time out. During their 20 years of producing features, there are few forces in mainstream American movies that have been so consistently great in crafting high quality entertainment that both kids and adults can love. When we see a masterpiece like Inside Out just a few months ago, it’s a reminder of just how great they can be. The Good Dinosaur, Pixar’s latest, is not one of their best films – its more akin to their recent output like Brave or Monsters University – which is to say, it’s still way better than most animated films aimed at children being made today – visually stunning, smart, funny and touching – but just not quite up to the level of their best. Is it fair to call a very good film a disappointment? Not really, still that is what The Good Dinosaur will be for many.

The film centers on Arlo – a young dinosaur, born alongside his brother and sister – who are both bigger, stronger and braver than Arlo is. But Arlo has heart – and darn it, he tries hard, even if he isn’t quite capable of everything his siblings are. His loving parents support him – but also worry about him. Tragedy strikes his family – and in the aftermath, Arlo ends up chasing a small human – who we will eventually learn is called Spot – who he blames for the tragedy. They both end up in the river during a storm – and washed miles from home. With no one else to rely on, the pair rely on each other – eventually developing a friendship that helps to protect them on their journey home – a journey in which they will meet many dinosaurs – some good, and some decidedly not.

The story is admittedly relatively simple – it actually feels like something that would come out of Disney rather than Pixar – with its tragic beginning, and the ending where two characters from separate worlds having to make a choice. But while the story is simple, it certainly is well executed. The visuals of the film are at times stunning – the environment itself at times has an almost photo realism to it, that is offset against the more cartoony characters. Arlo and Spot make a lovable pair, and their bond is real. The film doesn’t flinch away from some of the more harsher realities of life in this time period – these moments, are the only ones that make me hesitate recommending the film for the youngest of children (for the record, my 4 year old covered her eyes a few times, but for the most part loved it).

The director is Peter Sohn – who has worked for Pixar for years, and is making his feature debut here. For a long time, I was under the impression that individual directors didn’t matter much with Pixar – but looking back, I don’t think that’s true (their best films are directed by Brad Bird, Pete Docter or Andrew Stanton- their worst are generally John Lasseter). The film had a troubled production – but the end result doesn’t really show those struggles.

The Good Dinosaur will not make anyone’s list of the best Pixar films ever made. It’s a little too simplistic for that, and the supporting cast of characters never rise up to the level of its central pairing. Still, in a landscape for animated films where most are fast moving, juvenile, high colored crap like Minions or Home or Hotel Transylvania, etc. – The Good Dinosaur is a genuinely moving, smart film that treats kids – and their parents – with respect. In short, while it may not have the magic of the best Pixar movies – it’s still a very good animated film. No one can be expected to make Inside Out every time out.