Hostel: Part II (2007)
**
Dir: Eli Roth
Starring: Lauren German, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips
MPAA: R
After several promises by writer/director Roth that this would be that rare sequel that doesn't just retread the original, Hostel: Part II goes on to do exactly that. There are some interesting new wrinkles, and some nasty new setpieces (the Countess Bathory sequence in particular is a nauseating standout), but for the most part you're in for more of the same.
This time our leads are three art-school girls traveling through eastern Europe who are enticed into traveling to a familiar hostel due to promises of an exotic spa getaway. Since we've seen Hostel we know where this is headed, and soon they are captive and bloody.
There's a great scene when they are checking into the hostel and their passports are scanned and we follow the information as it's sent to the Elite Hunting Club members for bidding. It's positively chilling watching as people place their bids from cell phones and laptops while golfing, working, spending time with the grandkids, etc. This is easily the best thing about the movie, the increased focus on the club members. It's an unexpected change, and one that does a lot to help the sequel feel fresh.
MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD:
While I think this may be a bit less violent than the first movie, the murder scenes are still remarkably gruesome. The aforementioned Countess Bathory sequence is a Grand Guignol moment that is not only shocking for the content but also for Matarazzo's fearlessness...she is clearly truly suspended upside-down and naked for the scene (no stuntwoman here, as plenty of close-ups and multiple cast & crew interviews and commentaries prove), and she gives her all to the performance.
The other big shock moment in the movie involves a male character's genitalia cut off with bolt cutters (in full close-up, no less) and fed to a dog. The dude deserved it, but that doesn't make it any easier to watch without spending the rest of your life with your legs crossed.
I know I already gave a spoiler warning, but I gotta talk about the ending so here come EVEN MORE SPOILERY SPOILERS: our final girl escapes via the worst possible method for a movie like this: she buys her way out. That's it. She doesn't use her wits, or her inner strength, or her outer strength...she uses money. "Hey guy, I'd like to buy my way out of this slaughterhouse. I have more money than all your rich clients combined, here have some!"
Really?
Really. So...what's the message here, Eli? Horror movies get a lot of undeserved flack for being amoral, but one thing most of the best ones have is a final girl (and it's almost always a girl) who claws her way out of the movie alive through a combination of brains and brawn, proving the monster outmatched by her cunning and/or wiles. Not here, though. Our heroine saves her own ass through the power of her mighty checkbook. I just watched a man get his schwanz fed to a pack of dogs and that was the SECOND most nauseating thing about the climax of this movie.
END SPOILERS
While there was a lot to like about Hostel, I really don't think part II brought enough new to the table. There are shocks, and the leads are for the most part more likable than the leads from the first movie, but in the end it just felt too much like a trip I had already taken.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
"You could spend all your money in there."
Hostel (2005)
**1/2
Dir: Eli Roth
Starring: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson
MPAA: R
Roth's sophomore feature (following the comic-horror goopfest Cabin Fever) follows a group of fratboy douchebags on their travels through Amsterdam, where they are promised debauchery beyond their capacity to imagine. For the first half-hour or so, that's exactly what they get...a hedonistic tour filled with sex, drugs, and more sex.
Lest you forget that this is Eli Roth behind the camera, they are soon headed to Slovakia on the promise of even greater bacchanalia, which of course leads to them getting tied to chairs and being gruesomely tortured and (in most cases) murdered. It seems there is a club that has its members pay top dollar to torture and murder unsuspecting tourists. They call themselves a "hunting club", but there doesn't seem to be much hunting involved as tourists are corralled and drugged by the objects of their desire at the titular hostel, then tied down for the wealthy club members to poke, prod, slice, burn, shoot, etc. as they see fit.
The movie toys with your expectations fairly well, as the character most would pick out as the lone survivor is offed fairly quickly (well...as quickly as a movie this sadistically queasy will allow). None of the three main guys are particularly likable, but you can't help rooting for them to escape because godDAMN that looks painful!
Speaking of which, let's talk a little about "torture porn", which is a term that detractors of movies like this or the Saw movies tend to throw around, as though the movies were just 90 minutes of people being tortured. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware the movie isn't Spongebob Hostelpants (though don't you kinda want to see someone tie Spongebob to a chair and yank out those buck teeth with pliers? No? Just me? Moving on.) but it doesn't deserve the reputation it has as a wallow in artless depravity. The violence is graphic but effective, and it makes you squirm because that's exactly what it's setting out to do. There's some honest-to-god suspense in this movie, and it's pretty far from a wall-to-wall gorefest. If you like horror and don't mind if it's gruesome, this is definitely worth a look.
**1/2
Dir: Eli Roth
Starring: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson
MPAA: R
Roth's sophomore feature (following the comic-horror goopfest Cabin Fever) follows a group of fratboy douchebags on their travels through Amsterdam, where they are promised debauchery beyond their capacity to imagine. For the first half-hour or so, that's exactly what they get...a hedonistic tour filled with sex, drugs, and more sex.
Lest you forget that this is Eli Roth behind the camera, they are soon headed to Slovakia on the promise of even greater bacchanalia, which of course leads to them getting tied to chairs and being gruesomely tortured and (in most cases) murdered. It seems there is a club that has its members pay top dollar to torture and murder unsuspecting tourists. They call themselves a "hunting club", but there doesn't seem to be much hunting involved as tourists are corralled and drugged by the objects of their desire at the titular hostel, then tied down for the wealthy club members to poke, prod, slice, burn, shoot, etc. as they see fit.
The movie toys with your expectations fairly well, as the character most would pick out as the lone survivor is offed fairly quickly (well...as quickly as a movie this sadistically queasy will allow). None of the three main guys are particularly likable, but you can't help rooting for them to escape because godDAMN that looks painful!
Speaking of which, let's talk a little about "torture porn", which is a term that detractors of movies like this or the Saw movies tend to throw around, as though the movies were just 90 minutes of people being tortured. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware the movie isn't Spongebob Hostelpants (though don't you kinda want to see someone tie Spongebob to a chair and yank out those buck teeth with pliers? No? Just me? Moving on.) but it doesn't deserve the reputation it has as a wallow in artless depravity. The violence is graphic but effective, and it makes you squirm because that's exactly what it's setting out to do. There's some honest-to-god suspense in this movie, and it's pretty far from a wall-to-wall gorefest. If you like horror and don't mind if it's gruesome, this is definitely worth a look.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
"Some lessons can't be taught, Elektra. They must be lived to be understood."
Elektra (2005)
*1/2
Dir: Rob Bowman
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Goran Visnjic, Terence Stamp
MPAA: PG-13
First of all, let's talk about Daredevil for a minute. While I recognize that it's not a particularly good movie, I liked Daredevil. It's greatest flaw (and it had a whooooole lotta flaws) was that it tried to stuff many years worth of comic book stories into one 90-minute movie. It may not have been great, but it was ambitious and I gotta hand it to a movie that has ambition. There are worse things than your reach exceeding your grasp, and I can appreciate the enthusiasm that Daredevil was approached with by the filmmakers.
That being said, the spinoff Elektra has exactly the opposite problem. There's maybe enough material here to merit an hourlong (45 minutes without commercials) TV pilot, but nowhere near enough to support a 90+ minute movie.
Despite being dead at the end of Daredevil (uh...spoilers, I guess), Elektra Natchios is now alive and well (if it's established how much time has passed since DD, I missed it) and working as a shadowy government assassin (is there any other kind?). The opening scene shows promise, establishing her prowess as she offs a few generic mob dudes, but after that scene is finished the movie doesn't slow down so much as it screeches to a grinding halt.
It is established that Elektra has OCD because she lines up some fruit and she counts stuff. Why is this established? I have no idea, because absolutely nothing is done with it. It may have been a clever touch, it's gotta be difficult to be a mystical ninja assassin who has to make time to line up her fruit, and I'd probably enjoy a movie about an OCD ninja, but this movie has no follow-through.
I haven't said anything about the plot, because neither did any of the five credited writers (3 screenwriters, 2 "characters by"). There's a young girl and her dad, and they're in danger, and there are a metric shitload of evil ninjas, and there's a dude with tattoos that come to life, and there's a blind ninja master, and there's all sorts of comic booky mysticism, and it's all crushingly boring.
Garner is talented and beautiful, and she's a more than capable action movie lead, but she deserves a much better movie than this. There is no reason whatsoever that a movie with this many ninjas should be this plodding and lifeless.
Elektra Natchios came back from the dead. If only her movie could do the same.
*1/2
Dir: Rob Bowman
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Goran Visnjic, Terence Stamp
MPAA: PG-13
First of all, let's talk about Daredevil for a minute. While I recognize that it's not a particularly good movie, I liked Daredevil. It's greatest flaw (and it had a whooooole lotta flaws) was that it tried to stuff many years worth of comic book stories into one 90-minute movie. It may not have been great, but it was ambitious and I gotta hand it to a movie that has ambition. There are worse things than your reach exceeding your grasp, and I can appreciate the enthusiasm that Daredevil was approached with by the filmmakers.
That being said, the spinoff Elektra has exactly the opposite problem. There's maybe enough material here to merit an hourlong (45 minutes without commercials) TV pilot, but nowhere near enough to support a 90+ minute movie.
Despite being dead at the end of Daredevil (uh...spoilers, I guess), Elektra Natchios is now alive and well (if it's established how much time has passed since DD, I missed it) and working as a shadowy government assassin (is there any other kind?). The opening scene shows promise, establishing her prowess as she offs a few generic mob dudes, but after that scene is finished the movie doesn't slow down so much as it screeches to a grinding halt.
It is established that Elektra has OCD because she lines up some fruit and she counts stuff. Why is this established? I have no idea, because absolutely nothing is done with it. It may have been a clever touch, it's gotta be difficult to be a mystical ninja assassin who has to make time to line up her fruit, and I'd probably enjoy a movie about an OCD ninja, but this movie has no follow-through.
I haven't said anything about the plot, because neither did any of the five credited writers (3 screenwriters, 2 "characters by"). There's a young girl and her dad, and they're in danger, and there are a metric shitload of evil ninjas, and there's a dude with tattoos that come to life, and there's a blind ninja master, and there's all sorts of comic booky mysticism, and it's all crushingly boring.
Garner is talented and beautiful, and she's a more than capable action movie lead, but she deserves a much better movie than this. There is no reason whatsoever that a movie with this many ninjas should be this plodding and lifeless.
Elektra Natchios came back from the dead. If only her movie could do the same.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
"He didn't say nothing to me about it."
Badlands (1973)
***1/2
Dir: Terrence Malick
Starring: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates
MPAA: PG
Confession time: until I watched Badlands for the first time this week, I had never seen an entire Terrence Malick film. I know he's kind of a big deal among movie nerds, and I tried watching The Thin Red Line a time or two (which, in all honesty, I found insufferable), but for the most part his work has passed me by. For what it's worth, I liked Badlands quite a bit, though it's difficult to express emotion about a movie that is almost clinically detached from its characters and situations.
Sheen and Spacek are Kit & Holly, murderous young lovers on the run based on Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, notorious real-life killers who terrorized Nebraska in 1958. The film is highly fictionalized (hence the change in character names), but still sticks fairly close to some details of Starkweather and Fugate's murder spree.
The low-key approach proves chilling, especially in the scenes where Sheen commits murder almost as an offhand impulse. The murders aren't set up as action scenes or suspense sequences, only as the inevitable conclusions to crossing paths with Sheen and Spacek. The violence isn't glamorized or played up in any way, and that only serves to deepen the impact of it.
I've seen other takes on the Starkweather/Fugate story (most notably the TV miniseries biopic Murder In The Heartland with Tim Roth & Fairuza Balk, and Oliver Stone's infamous Natural Born Killers with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as a couple clearly inspired by Starkweather and Fugate), and while they were good this works on another level.
Spoilers ahead (as much as one can spoil a 38-year-old movie based on a true story): towards the end, after Sheen has been arrested, he is seen giving mementos to the deputies. His pen, his comb, his lighter...he's a celebrity, after all, why not act accordingly? It's an oddly unsettling moment, and it's part of what makes the movie as a whole work so well. It doesn't examine his motives or his personality, but it shows how cognizant he is of what he's done and the fact that it makes him a celebrity (which Stone handles with significantly less subtlety in Natural Born Killers). The scene is almost funny, despite the tragic events leading to it.
It's been about a week since I've seen the movie, but it's still on my mind. Haunting and lyrical when it could easily have been sleazy and exploitative, it made me want to seek out more of Malick's work and learn more about the true story that inspired it.
***1/2
Dir: Terrence Malick
Starring: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates
MPAA: PG
Confession time: until I watched Badlands for the first time this week, I had never seen an entire Terrence Malick film. I know he's kind of a big deal among movie nerds, and I tried watching The Thin Red Line a time or two (which, in all honesty, I found insufferable), but for the most part his work has passed me by. For what it's worth, I liked Badlands quite a bit, though it's difficult to express emotion about a movie that is almost clinically detached from its characters and situations.
Sheen and Spacek are Kit & Holly, murderous young lovers on the run based on Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, notorious real-life killers who terrorized Nebraska in 1958. The film is highly fictionalized (hence the change in character names), but still sticks fairly close to some details of Starkweather and Fugate's murder spree.
The low-key approach proves chilling, especially in the scenes where Sheen commits murder almost as an offhand impulse. The murders aren't set up as action scenes or suspense sequences, only as the inevitable conclusions to crossing paths with Sheen and Spacek. The violence isn't glamorized or played up in any way, and that only serves to deepen the impact of it.
I've seen other takes on the Starkweather/Fugate story (most notably the TV miniseries biopic Murder In The Heartland with Tim Roth & Fairuza Balk, and Oliver Stone's infamous Natural Born Killers with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as a couple clearly inspired by Starkweather and Fugate), and while they were good this works on another level.
Spoilers ahead (as much as one can spoil a 38-year-old movie based on a true story): towards the end, after Sheen has been arrested, he is seen giving mementos to the deputies. His pen, his comb, his lighter...he's a celebrity, after all, why not act accordingly? It's an oddly unsettling moment, and it's part of what makes the movie as a whole work so well. It doesn't examine his motives or his personality, but it shows how cognizant he is of what he's done and the fact that it makes him a celebrity (which Stone handles with significantly less subtlety in Natural Born Killers). The scene is almost funny, despite the tragic events leading to it.
It's been about a week since I've seen the movie, but it's still on my mind. Haunting and lyrical when it could easily have been sleazy and exploitative, it made me want to seek out more of Malick's work and learn more about the true story that inspired it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)