Paranormal Activity 2

Good news, wary fans:  Paranormal Activity 2 has avoided the Blair Witch 2 curse.  Although it doesn't cover a whole lot of new ground from last year's no-budget horror blockbuster, and it's not quite as good as the first film, the sequel is still a worthy successor with some impressive new scares that are especially fun to watch in a crowded theater. 

For anyone not caught up on the events of the first film:  Paranormal Activity was the story of Katie Featherson and Micah Sloat, a young couple who got more than they bargained for when they tried to use their fancy new video camera to capture a supposed supernatural being that was stalking their home in the middle of the night.  Needless to say, things didn't end well for either of them, and the moral of the film was simply this:  if you have a demon in your house that clearly does not enjoy being videotaped, turn the goddamn camera off, you morons.

The second film is actually a prequel.  It takes place roughly two months before the events of the first film and centers around the family of Katie's sister, Christy.  Like Katie and Micah, Christy and her family live perfectly normal lives in their beautiful suburban home (it seemed like half of the movie took place in their pool).  But of course, all is not normal:  it appears their home was actually the first stop for that pesky demon, who has its sights set on Christy's toddler son, Hunter, and it ain't gonna stop until it gets him.

Tod Williams takes over the directing duties from Oren Peli (who serves as a writer and executive producer on the sequel) who made the smart move to use what worked best from the first film, namely ythe creepy video footage.  Once again, the entire film is captured on video, taken either from the home security cameras installed after a supposed break-in, or from the teenage daughter's webcam.  Where the first film preyed on the relatively simple idea of what goes on in the house when everyone is asleep, Williams just goes for the straight haunted house story, which means the scares don't necessarily all happen at night.  In fact, some of the scariest moments happen in broad daylight.  The film was very reminiscent of the original Poltergeist (which is my favorite haunted house film), and so when it worked, it was on.

I did have a few gripes with the film:  like the first movie, it took forever to get going.  By halfway through the movie, I couldn't stand having to see one more shot of the front porch and the pool cleaner if nothing was going to happen there.  They also tried to loosely build some sort of origin for the demon when they really didn't need to, because it works better when it's just some creepy unexplained thing that won't get out of the house.  Fortunately, it wasn't something they dwelled on too much.

The movie was, for the most part, well-acted (although the dad did get a "WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" from a guy in our audience at the show I saw).  Even the teenage daughter isn't overly annoying.  And since it's a prequel, both Katie and Micah get to briefly reprise their roles as well.  And his two short scenes were enough to remind us all of what an incredible doofus Micah was.

If you weren't a fan of the first movie, Paranormal Activty 2 probably isn't going sway you.  It's basically more of the same in a bigger house with an extended family who are just as brain-dead when it comes to making smart decisions in a haunted house (the basement?!  really?!  why would go down there?!).  But if you were creeped out enough to enjoy the first film, I'd definitely recommend the sequel, since you'll most likely enjoy this one as well.

Winter's Bone

Winter's Bone is one of those little indie films that if you're lucky, you can find in limited release at a theater near you, where it's probably hidden away in the tiniest auditorium next to a concession stand that hasn't been open in years, and usually starts late because even the projectionist seems to have forgotten that it's playing there.  That tends to be my experience with these kinds of films, but luckily this movie was worth the aggravation.

Based upon the 2006 novel by Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone takes place in a ragingly poor community in rural Missouri, where 17-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) bears the difficult burden of having to take care of her sick mother and her younger brother and sister.  Her father Jessup is nowhere to be found after being arrested on a meth-lab charge, but they seem to be better off without him anyway, at least they think so.  When Ree learns that Jessup had put up their house to make his bail, and that they will lose the house unless he makes is impending court date, she starts a desperate search to find him.

While it seems logical that people would want to help a kid in so much trouble, that's not the case here.  With neighbors who appear to have come from the Deliverance School of Terrifying Rednecks (yes, even a banjo makes an appearance), it quickly becomes clear that nearly everyone in town knows something about Jessup's whereabouts, but no one is talking - to the point where Ree's life is in danger just looking for answers.

Directed by Debra Granik, Winter's Bone is bleak and pretty damn miserable.  It's not a pretty picture, seeing just how much meth addiction has destroyed entire communities already ravaged by poverty.  And it doesn't leave you believing things are going to get better anytime soon either.  But it's an extremely intense film that reaches a point where you can't imagine what the hell Jessup could have done to piss all of these people off.  While the final reveal is a bit anticlimatic, the buildup is brilliantly done and it didn't disappoint.

Jennifer Lawrence (soon to be seen as Mystique in X-Men: First Class) really carries the entire film, and she gives a terrific, no-nonsense performance, whether she's telling off a sheriff, teaching her siblings how to gut squirrels for dinner, or dealing with scary relatives and neighbors with names like Teardrop, Little Arthur, and Thump.  Some of these characters barely spoke a word in the film and they were still scary as all hell.

Hopefully, Winter's Bone will find it's way out of the little theater in the back of the multiplex and into a wider release soon.  Yeah, it's a small film, but a pretty riveting thriller nonetheless. 

The Kids Are All Right

The Kids Are All Right is about a family on the verge of becoming very messed up.  No, they're not messed up because the parents are a lesbian couple whose kids were conceived via a sperm donor.  In fact, that's the most normal part about them.  It's when the kids secretly decide to contact the aforementioned sperm donor when things inadvertently begin to unravel.

Workaholic doctor Nic (Annette Bening) and not-so-much of a workaholic Jules (Julianne Moore) are a happily married couple with two teenaged children:  recent high school graduate Joni (Alice in Wonderland's Mia Wasikowska), and 15-year-old Laser (the almost-Spiderman Josh Hutcherson).  While both kids are perfectly content with their two-mom family structure, Laser seeks a father figure in his life and pressures his now 18-year-old sister to contact the sperm bank where they were conceived to see if they can find their father.

Thankfully, their father Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a hipster organic gardner/restaurant owner who says "Right on!" a lot, is not completely weirded out upon learning he has two children, and he agrees to meet with them.  The meeting goes well, but soon enough their moms find out what is going on and suddenly they all have to deal with this unexpected addition to their family, which threatens to send their lives into a tailspin.  

Directed by Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids Are All Right was a favorite at Sundance this year and won the Best Feature Film "Teddy" award at the Berlin International Film Festival.  While I'm not sure it's headed for that kind of acclaim come awards time later this year (although the performances were certainly good enough - especially Mark Ruffalo, who steals every scene he's in), it's still a solid little film that's a nice break from the usual summer blockbuster madness.  It has some funny moments, it has quite a few sad moments that I wasn't expecting, but it's all completely relatable and a touching look at a family in crisis. 

The Kids Are All Right is currently in limited release, although it's already grossed an impressive $2.5 million in just 38 theaters nationwide.  It expands to 115 theaters today, and will hopefully expand further in the next few weeks.  If family dramedies are your thing, you can't go wrong with this one.

Despicable Me

Despicable Me is a movie that's so sweet that even the fart jokes are adorable.  In what's turning out to be a great year for animated films, this latest family adventure is definitely well worth checking out for both kids and adults.  And you don't even have to see it in 3D.

Gru (a Russian-accented Steve Carell) prides himself on being the world's finest supervillian.  Along with his army of yellow minions, he's managed to pull off a number of high-profile thefts, most notably the Times Square Jumbotron screen.  But when a new high-tech villian called Vector (Jason Segel) threatens to outdo him, Gru plans the ultimate heist:  he's going to steal the moon.  Unfortunately, the Bank of Evil refuses to give him a loan until he gets his hands on the shrink ray needed to pull off the crime, which Vector has already stolen and hidden away in his high-security fortress.

Desperate, Gru winds up adopting three orphaned young girls to sell cookies to Vector so he can sneak in and steal the shrink ray.  He intends to return the girls to the orphanage once the job is done, but of course within about 30 seconds they manage to melt his supervillian heart and make him realize the maybe the moon isn't the most important thing he needs in his life.

The story to Despicable Me is very predictable, and you can see most of the jokes coming a mile away.  Overall, I'd put it behind Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon on my list of favorite animated films this year (I have yet to see Shrek Forever After).  But even so, the movie is a lot of fun and it's absolutely adorable.  The voicework is top-notch.  Even the little girls were soliciting plenty of "awwww's" from audience I saw the movie with, which was mostly adults.  In addition to Carell's usual awesomness, the movie also features Russell Brand as Gru's gadget man, Dr. Nefario, whose advanced age tends to prevent him from hearing Gru's instructions correctly, to hilarious results.  The always classy Julie Andrews is also in the film as Gru's perpetually disappointed mother.

Gru's minions, which seem to have made up the movie's entire advertising campaign, are a blast.  They reminded me a bit of the slugs from Flushed Away.  They don't necessarily add anything to the story, they're mostly there to randomly pop up and cause some kind of comedic chaos.  What cracked me up the most about them is how, as strange as they were, they all had normal names like Phil or Kevin.  

I did not see the movie in 3D, which was fine, since it was a digital screening and looked just fine without it.  But it did seem like they had fun with a few scenes for the 3D version - such as the scene where the girls take Gru on a rollercoaster ride, and some extra scenes during the credits where the minions are trying to see how far out of the screen that they can jump.  So if you're a fan of the 3D, you'll probably enjoy that version even more.

If you find time in between Inception screenings this weekend, definitely check out Despciable Me.  You'll have a great time. 

Blu-Ray Review: The Road

The Road is a movie with a terrible reputation. At one point hoped to be a 2009 Oscar contender, it was quietly released into theaters after many delays and disappeared almost as quietly.  People who've Netflixed it out of curiousity and were perhaps fooled by its terrible trailer that made it look an action movie (the studio had no idea what to do with this film) were turned off by the gruesomness of the post-apocalyptic hellhole that this movie is. 

But if you see this movie when you know what you're getting into, you're going to discover that this is an amazing, criminally underlooked film.  Based on the 2006 Cormac McCarthy novel, The Road is a story about a father and son travelling through a world destroyed by an unknown disaster.  We never find out what caused the world to end, nor do we even learn the main characters' names, but that doesn't matter.  This is a story about survival, and what a father needs to do when his only job left in the world is protect his son. 

Unlike The Lovely Bones, an adaptation that I was so disappointed with, the film version of The Road doesn't pull any punches from the book, even though it doesn't include the book's most gruesome moment (yes, the baby scene, for those of you who've read the book, although it was apparently filmed).  The rest of it is all there, the cannibalism, the starvation, the absolute dread and danger in almost every place they go.  

A movie where much is left unexplained and the characters are nameless wouldn't work without good performances, and here the acting is extraordinary.  In a behind-the-scenes feature on the blu-ray, Viggo Mortensen actually holds up his copy of the book which is filled with notes about the story and his character and you can see every bit of it in his performance.  This is a character who is not a survivalist-type.  Ten years ago he was a normal guy, a husband and an expectant father.  Now he's someone who has to teach his child how to put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger if they get into trouble.  When a man threatens his son and tells him that he knows he's never shot anyone, he's right.  You sympathize with him because he's not an action hero.  He was such perfect casting for this role and it's unfortunate it went mostly unrecognized at awards time.

The same can be said for Kodi Smit-McPhee as the boy.  First of all, the kid is Australian, but you never know it watching the movie because his American accent is flawless.  Obviously, this is a tough role, not just because the things he goes through are horrible (again, he's barely 10 and he knows how to blow his brains out), but it's a character that played wrong could run the risk of becoming annoying.  But he's an amazing little actor, and his performance was downright heartbreaking.  There comes a point in the movie where you realize he's protecting his father almost as much as his father is protecting him, and their chemistry onscreen together is flawless. 

The movie also features Charlize Theron, who appears in flashbacks as the wife of Viggo's character, and is given a little more to do than she did in the book (although she ends the same way).  A barely-recognizable Robert Duvall has a small, but memorable role as a fellow survivor.  But it's the performance of Michael K. Williams as The Thief that's sticks in your head long after the movie has ended.

Director John Hillcoat really got this book, and he made an incredible film.  Yes, it's as depressing and disturbing as everyone says it is, and the ending is as ambiguous as the rest of the story was.  But regardless, I recommend giving it a chance.  It's a terrific film.