Martin Donovan Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Damned if you have a mic, damned if you don't... Coming to you loudly (at least in my case) is the latest episode of The Cinematical Roundtable, and this time, we don't even dare leave the lobby before offering up our thoughts on the rock-'em-sock-'em likes of 12 Rounds, in addition to the week's other wide releases, The Haunting in Connecticut and Monsters vs. Aliens.

Rounding out the proverbial 'we' this week is Brian Orndorf, he of multiple outlets, not the least of which are eFilmCritic and DVD Talk. Also, my good friend Tyler serves as a last-minute substitute for a colleague fallen ill (that, or he just really didn't want to sit through a John Cena flick). He knows his stuff, which I can't say for all in our field, and he happened to be co-anchor of our college movie talk show, "Matinee Idle," which was pretty much a podcast before podcasts were podcasts.

So... yeah. He's good people. Enjoy!




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Oh, actual events. Long have you reigned as the trump card in horror marketing, and only slightly less long have you been exposed as mostly malarkey. That hasn't stopped scarier films from finding their fans, nor the hokum from earning its opening weekend before vanishing into a blur of like-minded teen-targeting supernatural fare. Peter Cornwell's The Haunting in Connecticut falls firmly into the latter category, a run-of-the-mill spooker that often opts for Dolby jolts and Avid farts over character investment that itself rarely extends beyond asking why special effects happen to good people.

The crux of Connecticut is based on the allegedly true story in which a family found themselves terrorized in their new home, a former mortuary, back in 1987. While eldest son Matt (Kyle Gallner) receives and recovers from treatments for his cancer, he alone finds spirits roaming the house and tormenting his dreams. His parents (Virginia Madsen and Martin Donovan) just try keep him comforted, assuring him and themselves that it's simply a side effect, but a similarly ill priest (Elias Koteas) suggests that being close to death has indeed put them closer to the realm of the dead, which is in turn bringing escalating harm to the household...

At this point, touting any horror movie as 'based on a true story' or 'inspired by true events' or however you phrase it serves to me as an indication that "we didn't think this was scary enough, but we want the gulliable teens to buy tickets" -- a marketing tactic which occasionally backfires (my younger brother knocked the plausibility of The Strangers on this count, but if they DIDN'T say it... would it have been a scarier film? How about a successful one?).

Regardless, The Haunting in Connecticut -- starring Virginia Madsen, Martin Donovan and Elias Koteas -- appears to be following in those footsteps, with first a poster and then a trailer purporting that this tale of a family tormented in their new home with a mysterious past is at least fact-based(-ish). (Why, yes, you're correct in thinking that they already remade The Amityville Horror.)

Throw in a bunch of loud noises, and you've got yourself a probably PG-13 one-weekend wonder that was shot in 2007, but won't get dumped in theaters by Lionsgate (without press screenings, natch) until 2009. In fact, I'm willing to bet that it'll land somewhere between next Feburary (in the wake of other teen-targeting horror fare of The Unborn -- which actually looks creepy, if familiar -- and The Uninvited and My Bloody Valentine 3D and Friday the 13th) and maybe next April, before hitting DVD just in time for Halloween renters to settle for anything vaguely supernatural on the 'new release' wall.

Or, who knows, it could be good; if it takes proving me wrong to do that, I've eaten feet for less. (True story.)

As someone who grew up in Connecticut, I can agree the state is good for two things, Christmas and hauntings. We've already seen a few versions of Christmas in Connecticut, and now it is time for us to see a movie called The Haunting in Connecticut. I only wish that Ed Warren, one of the state's legendary and expert ghost experts, was still around to offer some help with it. At least his wife and partner, Lorraine is still with us. Anyway, now that Connecticut is welcoming so many film productions to shoot in state, it is only fair that our reputation for spookiness be well represented. And hey, if such a movie wants to use my last name, then that's cool, too. Like countless other residents of the state, my family thought our house was haunted. Of course, The Haunting in Connecticut is not based on my family; instead it is based on a documentary titled A Haunting in Connecticut, which presented the true story of the Parkers and the evil ghost that terrorized their home.

We already learned The Haunting in Connecticut would star Virginia Madsen, as Sara Campbell (again, no relation), but now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, we have more of the Campbell clan: Martin Donovan (Weeds) will play Madsen's husband, while Kyle Gallner (Big Love) will play their cancer-ridden son. Also joining the cast is Elias Koteas (Zodiac), who will play the obligatory priest who comes to help the family. In my day, you'd either call The Warrens -- who actually appear in the original documentary -- or someone from the local historical society (this is what my mom did), but seeing as how the convention of this genre is to follow the model of The Exorcist, a priest is a requirement. And yes, it seems there was at least one in A Haunting in Connecticut, so I shouldn't complain. Ironically, despite Connecticut's currently trendy tax breaks, The Haunting in Connecticut began shooting this week in Winnipeg.

Much like Jodie Foster's Flightplan, Wind Chill is an example of a 'first hour' movie. The first hour, played alone, would make for an intriguing and suspenseful short film, with Emily Blunt and Ashton Holmes starring as two unnamed characters, college students who don't know each other but agree to share a car because they both need to travel the snowbound roads to Delaware. Because of the odd things he says and the questions he avoids during the trip, the girl begins to suspect that the boy is not who he says he is, and she starts to question why he seems intent on getting off the main highway and taking the back roads. Eventually, their car will end up swerving off the road and barreling into a snow drift, which is exactly the point when you should get up and leave the theater. Just leave the rest of it to your imagination, because what really happens next is not only stupid, it's also complicated-stupid -- a few innocuous boo-moments that require an entire confusing, extraneous backstory to give them some plausibility.

The only way to make Wind Chill interesting is to examine it the way a lot of people in Hollywood are going to -- as an opportunity to scrutinize the star-potential of Emily Blunt. After practically upstaging star Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada with only a small supporting role, Blunt began to be compared to a young Kate Winslet and was put on a fast-track; she has since inked deals to appear in the big-budget Julia Roberts-Tom Hanks drama Charlie Wilson's War and to play young Queen Victoria in the Scorsese-produced biopic, among other projects. The stage is almost entirely hers in Wind Chill, and she certainly does hold her own, giving an entirely full-throated, aggressive performance as the antsy college student, and even remaining committed and engaged in the role after the plot turns into a morass of stupidity. Like an actor working off a green-screen, there are moments in Wind Chill where Blunt has to act like she's facing some terrifying special effects, and she plays up her horrified reactions appropriately.

Nina Deer's (Elisha Cuthbert) life is infused with sex. At school, she is attached at the hip to her best friend Michelle (Katy Mixon), a girl who is seemingly unable to talk about anyone without announcing that she wants to "f*ck him," or demanding that know if Nina thinks he wants to do the same to her. When not talking specifically about sex, Michelle wonders aloud about the genitalia of the boys in the area, specifically that of basketball star Connor (Shawn Ashmore) who, yes, she also wants to do. At home, meanwhile, it's clear that Nina is being sexually abused by her father, a fact that dominates virtually every moment of her life. With Michelle, she plays the part of the easily-shocked, virginal friend. With her father (a miscast Martin Donovan, looking uncomfortable and out of place), she's something else entirely, and finds herself deeply conflicted about their relationship. She knows she's being abused, and fantasizes in great detail about killing her father, both to punish him and free herself. On the other hand, though, she's profoundly aware of her sexual power over him, and takes secret, forbidden pleasure in the way he responds to her. Throw into this mix a mother (Edie Falco) who prefers the oblivion of painkillers to the reality of her own household and a newly-arrived deaf and dumb godchild (Dot, played by Camilla Belle), and you've got the The Quiet, a movie seething with unrealized potential.

Who doesn't love "a Lifetime movie on crack?" That's what Variety's David Rooney called The Quiet when he reviewed its Toronto screening last year and, though he clearly didn't mean it as a compliment, Sony Pictures Classics (showing reassuring faith in both Lifetime and crack) acquired North American distribution rights to the film last week.

The film is described as a "sexually charged dramedy," which stars Camilla Belle as a teenager who, in addition to being deaf, hasn't spoken since she was seven, when her mother died. Orphaned, she is sent to live with her godparents (played by Edie Falco and Martin Donovan) who turn out to be just as messed up as you might expect in Lifetime movies on crack: Drug use, infidelity, and cheerleader fetishes are just a few of the quirks on display. The whole thing sounds not unlike The Opposite of Sex to me -- I wonder what it is about Donovan that gets him cast in dark, sexually frank movies about teenage girls.

SPC already has the film set up for release in LA and NY at the end of August; they're surely hoping for box office success, something that Rooney says is totally dependent upon "Teens dumb enough to buy [the movie's premise] or adults stoned enough to find it funny." Yikes. Hey, a voice-over has been added (again with The Opposite of Sex) since he saw it -- will that help, David?