MAMA

I don't review a lot of horror films on this site. It's not that that I don't like the genre, it's just that I'm fickle about it and a lot of the stuff out there doesn't interest me, but every now and than I'm inclined to dip my toe in. I did have some raised expectations for Mama however as it was produced by bona fide horror master Guillermo Del Toro and boasts an intriguing premise.

After the 2008 financial crash a banker goes mad, kills his wife and takes his 2 young daughters to a cabin in the woods for a murder-suicide. The girls survive, the father doesn't. Years later the girls are found still living in the cabin, now feral. When asked how they survived all those years, they point to an "imaginary" guardian named Mama.

After being cleaned up, the girls are placed with their uncle Luke (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, trying desperately to hide his accent) and his rocker girlfriend who, for some reason, is played by current Oscar nominee Jessica Chastian. If nothing else, this will be remembered as the movie were Jessica Chastain plays bass guitar and dresses as Lisbeth Slander light.

Unfortunately, that may be all it's remembered for as the film grows tedious and repetitive. We get lots of scenes of Luke and Chastain going about their day-to-day lives as the girls wonder around being wired, occasionally startling their foster parents by suddenly appearing next to them. Actually, I don't think it's the girls startling everyone as much as it's the loud sound effects that seem to follow them around. The sounds also strike during seemingly every scene transition to hilarious effect. It's as if first time director Andrés Muschietti was playing cinematic peekaboo with the audience. It's often startling, but never scary.

Scary would have involved tension and dread of some kind, but all the jump scares kill any sense of atmosphere the film might have had. It might have also helped to build some sort of relationship between the foster parents and the girls instead of just having the kids parade around on all fours. A really interesting movie could certainly be made about a pair of feral children reentering society but being haunted by a monster of some kind. It could be a fun mesh of psychological and supernatural thrillers the way The Shining or Halloween were. Starting with something real or believable before venturing off into the unknowable, but instead we get jump-scares.

Then there's the monster. Rarely have I gone into a movie so excited for a monster only to leave so disappointed. She looks completely conventional and moves in a jerky manor that suggests all sorts of recent monsters. I kept thinking she looked like an adult version of Samara from The Ring with more leaves in her hair. Also, it would have been best if the film didn't try to explain Mama. Instead, we're given a fairly extensive history complete with odd-colored flashbacks (the only time the film adopts a visual style of any kind) that play like C-grade Stephen King.

The end kind of pulls itself together. There are some effective moments near the end when it seems as if Mama has turned on the girls. There's a great tracking shot (which Muschietti copies from the short film on which this film is based) that follows the girls through the house that has all the tension, fear and dread that we should have been feeling throughout the film. We also get some of the missing character moments but by then it's too little too late. I love Del Toro as a director, but if he's going to keep producing movies, he's got to bring the same level of dedication he brings to his directorial efforts. Somewere in here is a movie I want to see, instead I got a film that affirmed my prejudices against modern horror. 

Grade: C+

LAWLESS

In the late 20's and early 30's the mountains of Franklin County, Virginia where so rife with bootleggers that at night the fires from the stills lit up the mountains like fireflies. This is the setting for John Hillcoat's new film Lawless. It centers on the area’s most infamous moonshiners, the three Bondurant brothers.

The leader is Forrest (Tom Hardy), a hulking man who, in Goodfallas parlance, doesn't have to move for anybody. Jason Clarke plays Howard, the muscle of the group. When Forrest says "sick 'em," Howard sicks 'em. Sometimes he does it when he hasn't been told. I guess stump whiskey does that to a man. The youngest is the put upon lookout, Jack (Shia LeBeouf). Over the years, a legend has grown up around the three boys, particularly Forrest, that they are invincible.

Of course, the problem with being invincible is that people are going to want to test that. In comes a special deputy named Charlie Rakes (Guy Pierce). Rakes is an odd man with his shaved eyebrows and a 3 inch gap in his hair part. His goal isn’t to stop the bootleggers but rather to extort a toll from them. The Bondurant’s refuse and face an all out war with Rakes and his small army of cops and hired thugs.

This all plays out predictably right down to the “look how well we’re doing” montage of the Brothers solidifying their rural empire. Still, Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave (he also provides the soundtrack) create a striking sense of immediacy here. This isn’t some generic, homogenized vision of the late 20’s, this feels like the real thing. The roosters fighting in the yard, the fog rolling in over the giant willow trees, and the Bell brand jars the Bondurant brothers use to store their White Lightning whiskey are all little details that help the film live and breathe.

The ensemble do a mostly commendable job. Hardy’s mono-syabic performance is menacing and weirdly warm at the same time. Jessica Chastain does some nice work with her underwritten character, and Guy Pearce’s is a very cartoonish villain, but holds back just enough to keep from going off the rails. Shia LeBeouf on the other hand is just okay; he’s made leaps in his acting ability, but not bounds. It looks as if we're going to be stuck with LeBeouf as a leading man for a while, but he's yet to demonstrate that he's earned that privilege.

The absolute best thing about the film is the exquisite soundtrack put together by Cave and Warren Ellis. The two rockers have provided moody instrumentals for several of Hillcoats other movies but here the pair have put together a house band, The Bootleggers, and have created one of the best roots soundtracks since O Brother Where Art Thou. The band, with the help of guest stars like Ralph Stanley and Emmylou Harris, cover a wide array of songs by Link Wray, John Lee Hooker and even The Velvet Underground, while throwing in a few originals too. It’s a slam-bang soundtrack that oozes personality form every note.

Lawless is a solid crime film held back by it’s own formula and a mediocre lead performance. However the verisimilitude with which the period, not to mention the violence, is portrayed coupled with a fantastic soundtrack help balance out the flaws. At the very least you should pick up the album.

Grade: B

Here's a sample of The Bootleggers cover of Link Wray's "Fire and Brimstone"

TREE OF LIFE

Allow me to be frank. Tarence Malicks new film Tree of Life is wasted on the big screen. It is a film that, especially in it’s wilder moments, demands an IMAX presentation. However, since Tree is not a big-budget tent-poll like Super 8 we are going to have to make due.

The film is slightly off-putting in it’s boldness. Near the beginning there is a breathtaking 15 or so minute sequence that is just the creation of the universe and the evolution of life on Earth. But the film is not simply about making the human experience feel insignificant next to the colossal sweep of time. It is about youth, and innocence.

The film eventually settles down a little bit an becomes about a boy named Jack (Hunter McCracken) growing up in 50’s Texas, from the moment of his birth till about the age of 10. Through the eyes of a child, the grown-up world is as strange and secret as God is to an adult. The world of this film is full of fragments. A baby playing with bubbles. The aftermath of a fire. Playing after school. The father (Brad Pitt) playing the organ at Church.

Yet the film is not frustrating in any sense. Everything is clear and unclear at the same time. It is an ode to the mystery of life. A meditation. A prayer. It is achingly intimate and auto-biographical, yet it never selfishly so. I find it fascinating that the film leaves room for the audience to think about their own childhood. How it compares and contrasts to the boy in the film. It is a childhood transcribed moment for moment onto celluloid, with all the purity, fear and wonder achingly intact.

Grade: A