Film Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Anthologies are common in the horror genre, whether two or more directors band together on a project, or whether one director takes on several short stories alone. Usually the result is that at least one of the entries is pretty weak, but the strongest entry makes the film worthwhile. Once in a while, however, you get something like Mario Bava's Black Sabbath, which has three strong entries. Bava's secret is that he was never very strong on plot or story or character; he could direct the hell out of any old script with his astonishing use of colors, mood and atmosphere. The best thing about Black Sabbath -- which the distributor American International Pictures re-titled to cash in on the success of Bava's Black Sunday -- is that it actually does have some good stories. In the first one, "The Telephone," a woman gets a phone call and learns that a dangerous man from her past has been released from jail; the entire story is set in her apartment, and Bava makes you jump each time the phone rings.

I think it's safe to tell you, without spoiling the movie, that The Men Who Stare at Goats includes a couple of scenes with Jeff Bridges and George Clooney dancing around. The scenes are amusing and a little strange -- why are soldiers dancing? But they did fit consistently with the film as a whole. However, I was reminded of moments in movies that aren't musicals, but suddenly shift to some crazy kind of dance or musical number. I love these moments, and in fact I wish the dance scenes in The Men Who Stare at Goats were a little less toned-down and a little more "WTF?"

Okay, I'm kind of BS'ing you here. The Men Who Stare at Goats is a flimsy excuse. I really just wanted to write about surreal dance numbers in otherwise straightforward movies, because that can be so much fun. Last year's Adam Sandler vehicle Bedtime Stories was an annoying dud ... except for one glorious, shining moment where Guy Pearce launched into a song-and-dance number. Sometimes these dance moments are the best part of a movie, sometimes they spoil the mood and sometimes they're just one more weird aspect of an altogether bizarre film. Here are seven of my favorites.

If there were any justice, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) would be counted as one of the great movie debuts of all time. (Yes, up there next to Citizen Kane.) In some quarters it is, but the fact that it's a horror film and the fact that it has languished for decades in the public domain (and many, many cheap, sub-par VHS tapes and DVDs) counts against it. Not to mention that younger zombie fans that come to the movie for the first time will most likely be surprised -- and probably disappointed -- as to how slow and thoughtful it really is. But if you consider things besides gore and terror to be important in your horror movies, then Night of the Living Dead endures, not just as one of the great genre movies of all time, but one of the greatest movies ever made, period. (It's currently ranked at #260 on the list of the 1000 greatest movies of all time at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?.)

Night of the Living Dead achieved several notable things during its time. Firstly, it established an artistic tone and a directorial signature that Romero would carry through the rest of his career, up to the present day. Secondly, it was an independent film (produced, of all places, in Pittsburgh) long before "independent film" came to be a marketing term. It was made by a cast and crew of people who genuinely wanted to make it, and -- somehow -- it was actually distributed and shown in theaters. Thirdly, by casting an African-American (the late Duane Jones) in its lead role, by introducing the "basement versus the ground floor" conflict, and by featuring gun-toting rednecks as the clean-up crew, it managed to subtly suggest a few ideas about America at the time, and indeed, it still suggests a few things about America in 2009.

Watch Night of the Living Dead on SlashControl!

In Austin, you can set your watch by the fall film festivals. We don't just have SXSW in the spring. Starting around Labor Day, it feels like we have a film festival practically every week, from Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) to the Austin Polish Film Festival, Austin Asian American Film Festival and of course Fantastic Fest. One of the oldest and biggest of these local autumn fests is Austin Film Festival (AFF), which spans eight days and seven screening venues, and includes a screenwriters' conference. In 2009, AFF celebrated its 16th year.

AFF focuses on screenwriters even in its film programming selections, as was evident with the opening-night film. Serious Moonlight is best known as the last script written by the late actress/filmmaker Adrienne Shelly. I admit I wasn't fond of the movie, but director Cheryl Hines was a trip -- mock-vampy on the red carpet (as shown above), and full of excitement about her film. Her screening was up against heavy competition: Matthew Weiner brought an episode of Mad Men to the festival and didn't reveal which one until just before it screened. (It turned out to be this season's "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency" episode.) Weiner also was featured in panels during the conference portion of AFF.

This is a no-brainer, right? Everyone loves Hitchcock. But it was not always so. The great director, whose North by Northwest comes out on a new, 50th Anniversary DVD and Blu-Ray on Tuesday, was once considered a populist panderer with little artistic value in his work. Even if you were a film critic, it was not the done thing to explore the mood and structure of a film. And even the rare critic that did that, such as Manny Farber or James Agee, tended not to go crazy over Hitchcock's work. (He was too popular and supposedly did not need defending.) At the time, it was more important in film to have a strong moral message, or to impress audiences with size and scale. Hitchcock worked in the lowest genres, telling stories about creeps and murderers and kidnappers, none of which had any benefit to society. Yes, Hitchcock was nominated for Best Director five times, so it's clear that other filmmakers at the very least acknowledged his skill, but he was mostly nominated for his biggest hits, like Rebecca, Spellbound, Rear Window and Psycho (just as George Lucas was nominated for Star Wars) and he never won.

The first thing everyone seems to mention about Serious Moonlight is that its screenplay is the last one written by the late Adrienne Shelly. Actress Cheryl Hines, who had a role in Shelly's film Waitress, is making her feature directorial debut with the dark comedy, which stars Meg Ryan and Timothy Hutton. The movie opened Austin Film Festival this year. It sounds like a sure-fire comedy, but unfortunately it just left me with a headache.

Serious Moonlight focuses on a married couple, Louise (Meg Ryan) and Ian (Timothy Hutton), who are supposed to meet in their country house for a rendezvous, but both arrive a day early. Louise wants to surprise her husband, but finds out that he also has a surprise: he's leaving her. She refuses to accept this, and ends up cracking him on the head with a vase, binding him with duct tape, and refusing to let him loose until he comes to his senses and realizes how much he loves her and wants to stay with her.

Director Claire Denis -- who was born in France but raised in colonial Africa -- enjoyed a measure of art-house buzz when she leapt onto the scene in 1989 with her film Chocolat (not to be confused with the awful 2000 Johnny Depp/Juliette Binoche movie of the same name). Siskel & Ebert praised it and Denis on their show at the time. In 2000, her film Beau Travail topped the Film Comment critics' poll of the best films of the year. But in-between, she couldn't catch a break. She has a tendency to make "mood pieces" rather than plot-driven films; these tend to cause people to think, thus making them very uncomfortable. Some of her movies couldn't get distribution and remain difficult to see. Others received only the tiniest distribution and even most critics didn't notice them. Such is the case with her wonderful new 35 Shots of Rum (2 screens), which is one of the year's best films.

It remains to be seen what Mad Max fans will think, but the businesses of Australia are excited that work on Mad Max 4: Fury Road will begin immediately, according to a story today in the Daily Telegraph. There is no confirmation as to who will be starring in the film, but it will most likely not be Mel Gibson. The likeliest candidate as of now is Sam Worthington (Terminator: Salvation) (not Tom Hardy), with Charlize Theron as the leading lady. Original Mad Max director George Miller -- who most recently gave us Happy Feet -- will once again helm.

Either way, the locals are thrilled. Some of the locations used on the previous three films, Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2 (a.k.a. The Road Warrior) (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), have become local attractions. The owner of one such attraction, the Silverton Hotel, said, (insert Australian accent here): "This is bloody huge. Absolutely magnificent. Silverton depends on the film industry, it survives on the film industry, and if Mad Max is going to be filmed here it's going to be just tremendous."

The production is expected to provide more than 500 local jobs and funnel tens of millions of dollars into the local economy. Pre-production begins immediately, with shooting scheduled to begin next year.

UPDATE: Watch a video after the jump of director George Miller introducing some of the vehicles being used in the new Mad Max movie, as well as addressing some of the casting rumors. According to the man himself, nothing is definitive yet and he still has a lot more people to see.

While watching Michael Mann's Heat, I discovered the "cup of coffee test" for screen villains. I found myself thinking again of that great scene in which the cop (Al Pacino) and the villain (Robert De Niro) sat down to share a cup of coffee. It was a simple gesture, with no chasing or guns or shooting. Just talking. But it demonstrated on a thematic and visual level that this hero and this villain were actually very close to one another. They were very similar people, with similar natures.

I started applying this test to almost every movie. Not surprisingly, most of them fall apart. Most movie villains simply sneer and cackle and try to take over the world. But think of Batman and the Joker in The Dark Knight. They don't literally have coffee together, but they do sit down together for a talk; the movie presents them as equals, and separate from the rest of the world. They understand one another better than anyone else. Consider, also, Col. Landa (Christoph Waltz) in Inglourious Basterds, who sits down several times with several heroes over several different kinds of beverages (ranging from milk to wine). He's snaky, but smart and always cordial.

Sometimes the rule gets a little gray. For example, Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich don't exactly stop for coffee in In the Line of Fire, but they do have a quick, revealing phone conversation in which it is established that they are kindred spirits. And it's unlikely that Clarice Starling would sit down for coffee with Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs -- mainly because he would probably use it to kill her -- but they do sit down and talk together.

And then, sometimes, all it takes to be a cool villain is a black mask and a respiratory problem. What do you think, dear readers? Do your favorite villains pass the "cup of coffee" test?

Just take a look at that weekend box office. Sure, the critically panned Couples Retreat came in at #1, earning over $32 million on 3000 screens. But scan down the list and look at #4, which was Paranormal Activity. It earned $7.9 million on 160 screens. That's not a typo. One hundred and sixty screens. If we take the average, Paranormal Activity earned $49,375 per screen, and Couples Retreat took in a paltry $10,666 per screen. That's five times as many butts in the seats for the horror film than for the unfunny comedy (which means that there must have been a lot of empty seats at the latter). There's a simple reason for this: Paranormal Activity is a genuinely scary movie.

The same goes for any of the "body genres," i.e. comedies, steamy films, weepies, etc. If they genuinely work, and genuinely elicit the response that they promise, they will be a hit every time. Horror buffs -- myself included -- probably see more than a dozen new "scary" movies in the theater each year, but it's only once every few years that we actually get scared at one of them. Paranormal Activity achieves this by doing something very simple and not at all new: it doesn't show anything (or, rather, it shows very little). It knows that nothing that can be shown onscreen can equal the fears and nightmares of the people in the audience, and that the fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all.