Short Take: Three Horror Movies.

The scariest thing about the Paranormal Activity movies is still how popular they are. How this brand of cheaply done and cheaply looking films can manage to outgross much better projects is a sad reminder that today's audiences are victim of cattle thinking. Once they get used to a "series", they don't care how many times they are told the same story. These movies prove that audiences enjoy the act of not thinking. The third installment in the series, goes back to the very beginning and explores why numbers 1 and 2 happened. To say the reasons are preposterous would be nothing compared to the way in which the filmmakers rely on facile trickery and obvious techniques to try and scare us. The effects have been getting consistently better, something which can't be said about the acting and plot devices. This one, set in the 80s, has us wondering how did these progressive people guess that everything should've been filmed in case a movie was made about them decades later. The film doesn't rely try to adjust itself to the settings and to the spirit of the era, it goes straight for the established process that's worked for them in the past, the only thing they've changed is the medium by which we see the demonic activities. One must wonder, by the time they get to Paranormal Activity 45 will the stories be displayed using cave paintings? Grade *

The only good thing that came out of Dream House must've been Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz getting married. The rest is an outrageously bad attempt at mating Shutter Island, Memento and any Stephen King novel involving snow and houses. If you've seen the trailer, you don't need to bother with the rest of the movie. What remains mysterious is why people like Sheridan, Watts and pretty much everyone else involved in the production (the underrated Elias Koteas for example) saw in the lazy screenplay and the redundant characters.  Grade *

The Change-Up tries to invent the wheel by taking Freaky Friday and adding curse words, boobs and poop jokes. Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds play bets buds who go through a body exchange situation after peeing in a magical fountain. One's a control freak lawyer, the other's a slacker. You don't need to try hard to guess which one plays which; one of the many reasons why you wonder why was this movie even made. Everything about it has been done before and in much better ways. Props to Leslie Mann for always adding a very human layer to her characters. Grade *

My Own Love Song *½

Director: Olivier Dahan
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Forest Whitaker
Madeline Zima, Elias Koteas, Nick Nolte

If there's something you can't accuse Olivier Dahan of is subtlety. More than a storyteller he's a pointer, someone who constructs entire universes just to point out a specifically dramatic trait or event in his characters' lives.
Remember how everything in La Vie en Rose for example, was a constant attempt at over dramatizing the already melodramatic life of chanteuse Edith Piaf?
The incoherent editing, the fantastical plot twists, the heightening of emotions through exaggerated visual aids, all with the purpose of exploiting sentiment.
It's not a coincidence that when we first meet Billie (Zima) in this film, she's desperately looking for her wedding band. Minutes later we learn that Billie's husband, like her ring, has disappeared without a trace.
This is the kind of thing Dahan does to point what will become obvious, it's as if he doesn't trust his audience and is constantly trying to tell everything twice.
When My Own Love Song begins we meet former country singer Jane (Zellweger) she's sitting alone in a bar waiting for people she can be mean to apparently.
A stranger approaches her in the way men approach lonely women in bars and Jane proceeds to kick and chew his balls in every way she can. Seconds later, we and the stranger learn that she's in a wheelchair.
Ah, seems to go Dahan's mind, Jane is a bitch because life has been a bitch to her!
After this display of self pity and contempt for humanity Jane wheels herself to her humble house. So far we know she's handicapped, bitter and likes to go to bars. Consequently we will learn she lost her husband in a car accident, had to give up her son to social services and most shocking of all, she has stopped singing! Jane is a Susan Hayward character without the camp.
Jane's best friend is Joey (Whitaker) who can just be described as a magical negro. Period.
He has a stutter, he delivers life changing advice in every line of dialogue and he also talks to angels.
We really can't see why he would even like being around Jane if it wasn't because we know he has a role to fulfill in transforming her hum-drum life. This chance comes in the shape of a trip to Baton Rouge where Joey expects to meet a famous author (who writes about angels) and he also intends to trick Jane into attending her son's first communion (how he finds out this is even occurring is as preposterous as anything you'll see in this film).
They take off towards their own figurative Emerald City where each plans to have their wishes granted. Along the way they meet quirky characters, like the aforementioned Billie and a strange singer (Nolte) who confuses urban legends with myth and has a penchant for magic brownies.
My Own Love Song perhaps would be a better movie if Dahan had concentrated on developing the characters as opposed to finding ways in which to symbolize their every thought in some exciting visual manner. When Jane writes a song about birds we are stuck with a cutesy sequence where the characters walk accompanied by animated birds straight out of a Wes Anderson after school special.
The movie however is mostly a very French take on what an American movie must be like. Get a couple Oscar winners, a soundtrack made out of Bob Dylan songs, squeeze the hell out of quirk and filter all this through the all-American genre by excellence that is the road movie.
It's a pity that the film represents a return to form for Zellweger who has been so intermittent on the big screen this decade. Her Jane might not be extraordinary but the actress does her best with the little she's given, both the actress and the character deserve a much better film.

Shutter Island **1/2

Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley
Emily Mortimer, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Elias Koteas
Max von Sydow, Ted Levine, Jackie Earle Haley, John Carroll Lynch

The opening scene in Shutter Island contains the entire movie; the Paramount Studio logo fills the screen while an ominous string music fills the air. Then all of a sudden the title cards appear, with no dissolves or fade outs. Seconds later we see U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) head over a toilet, suffering an extreme bout of sea sickness.
He cleans up, fixes his tie and goes outside where he meets his new partner Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) as they approach the title island (an Alcatraz like fort that harbors an asylum for the criminally insane).
In the old fashioned typography of the credits and the musical nod (which reminds you of something Franz Waxman would've done) Martin Scorsese declares his film will be a throwback to classic noir, gothic and horror films.
But for those paying enough attention, he also gives away the film's plot-and polarizing twists-direct and indirectly (those caring to find out in advance need to do no more than psychoanalyze the concept of vomiting and get creative after an apparent continuity error).
It can be said that because of this effect the film is arguably spoiled for those seeking a mystery flick and also ruined for those seeking a psychological study who instead of being rewarded with a complex whodunit get a facile howcatchem.
Scorsese, who's always been a precise filmmaker, has trouble conveying both predominant aspects of the film and while he obviously has a lot to say (the whole movie is filled with infinite movie homages and references) he tries to say it all at once.
This is evident in the convoluted plot, adapted by Laeta Kalogridis from a novel by Dennis Lehane, which shows us the investigation the marshals conduct in the island (the mysterious disappearance of a patient played by the excellent Mortimer) but also tries to convey the troubles inside Teddy's mind (related to the death of his wife, played by a beautifully creepy Williams) the extent of which also involves WWII traumas and HUAC conspiracies.
Soon the plot has trouble finding its way, if any, among the constant new information we receive; this somehow never really deepens the mystery but makes the film drag, as people who know what's coming undergo an endurance test and those unaware of the twists are drowned by the intense, but vague, dream sequences.
Therefore the film is at its best, when along with editor extraordinaire Thelma Schoonmaker and director of photography Robert Richardson, Scorsese indulges the audience with the power of his images.
There are scenes, involving surreal dreams and flashbacks, that go to places he's rarely visited since The Last Temptation of Christ; places where Michelle Williams bursts into flames and Nazi soldiers are executed in front of the frozen corpses they originated.
Some of these moments achieve the kind of beautiful nightmare qualities David Lynch has become an expert at and while giving Marty mostly new territory to explore, fail to click within the whole.
If one of the purposes of Shutter Island was to blur the division between reality and imagination (or to study if there is any when it comes to specific human perception) Marty's obviously more into one than the other (deciding which is which brings yet another dilemma).
For someone with Scorsese's kind of attention to detail, we also wonder why would he give the audience clues about the mystery and then forget to keep up the game.
The best element of the film is arguably Leonardo DiCaprio who gives one of his richest performances letting himself fall completely into whatever the movie is (he works that final line to the extent that he convinces us we saw a much better movie). He's obviously onto something no one else is and creates an affecting portrait of fear, passion and confidence about to shatter.
He is excellent in moments where other actors might've exaggerated and seeps into the brooding essence of someone like Robert Mitchum (appropriate given Out of the Past hugely shaped the feel of the film), his interaction with the superb, if somehow underused, cast is revelatory.
There's a scene with Clarkson that probably would've made a much more interesting film and his moments with the Vincent Price-like Kingsley and the perversely calm von Sydow, both playing asylum doctors, are spellbinding.
As a whole the experience of Shutter Island can be reduced to a paraphrase of the film's closing scene and lead us to wonder if a so-so Scorsese movie is worse than no Marty at all.

Two Lovers ***1/2

Director: James Gray
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw
Isabella Rossellini, Moni Moshonov, Bob Ari, Elias Koteas

From its washed out, spare aesthetic, to its anachronistic use of technology, "Two Lovers" feels like a piece of stolen time. Director James Gray (who also wrote the screenplay with Eric Menello) even made sure that the font used for the film's title in the credits, looked like something out of a seventies drama.
For once, this move isn't a selfconscious spectacle (unlike his previous movies tried to jam crime film references down out throats) but a melancholic ode to the fact that the movie's themes are inarguably timeless.
Set in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach, the movie starts as Leonard (Phoenix) jumps into the bay attempting suicide.
He doesn't succeed and arrives to his parents' apartment completely wet. His mother Ruth (Rossellini) greets him with an offscreen "hello". After seeing the state she shows up in, she hollers for her husband Reuben (Moshonov) only to say "he's tried to do it again".
Leonard has already entered his room, episodes like this seemingly the most familiar thing, and his parents remain discussing his "bipolar problem" right outside his door.
The manchild moved in with his parents after a failed engagement and works in their dry cleaning business. He sleeps until noon, only because Ruth enters his room and wakes him up, while he flirts with the idea of becoming a photographer.
To his parents, his mother especially, Leonard is still a child and this comes to show in his relationships. Looking back at his torn engagement he has a flashback where his fiancée simply tells him "I have to go".
It is this kind of reasoning that opens the door to the film's central problem. He spots his neighbor Michelle (Paltrow) in the hall one day and invites her to his apartment while she hides from her crazy father; and just like a child would, he shows her his living room, introduces her to his parents and doesn't ask her to stay for dinner.
He's smitten. The next time he sees her he follows her to the subway, waits for her to see him first and then rides with her making awkward small talk.
While he feeds his crush his parents introduce him to Sandra (Shaw), daughter of his father's new business associate.
While it's obvious that she's into him, completely aware of the "set up", he continues dangling with thoughts of Michelle.
In her he sees the promise of glamor, excitement and Manhattan, with Sandra there's just the perpetuation of a lifestyle he obviously doesn't feel good in.
This doesn't stop him from pursuing both of them and by the end he will have to make a choice. At the hands of Gray this choice however doesn't come down to a basic choosing between two women, but choosing his own lifestyle.
The women in question, albeit being very human, realistic characters, are archetypes of the paths Leonard's life can take. Which is why "Two Lovers" might look and talk like a traditional romantic drama, but is far from being it.
Phoenix is smooth and wonderful making Leonard someone who deals with his demons as practically as he can. All of his choices seem to be easy to take and his disregard for responsibility is always covered by the "he was dumped" card.
The actor evokes James Dean's Jim Stark and in some scenes is as haunted as Brando was in "Last Tango in Paris", but the truth is that it's not easy to place his kind of performance and compare it directly to someone specific.
He might recall Method actors and seventies' geniuses, but what he does is all his'. Shaw and Paltrow provide wonderful supporting turns.
Shaw's Sandra is a delight to watch; she lives ruled by family laws and courting standards, but while she doesn't seem to ask for more than she can get, we know that she has compromised with herself.
Paltrow's femme fatale on the other side is an explosion of hysterics and unnecessary drama, that the actress makes her so refreshing and seductive is a miracle and proof that if we were in Leonard's position we wouldn't be able to resist her charms either.
And Rossellini (who inherited her mother's heartbreaking smile) is the film's most powerful female figure. Her overbearing need to see her son happy makes her a deity of sorts (notice how we know she's there in several scenes but we don't see her, she's omnipresent) and the fact that Rossellini plays her without recurring to Jewish mother clichés is surprising.
When Leonard first kisses Sandra in his apartment, he turns and looks at the pictures in his wall, he pulls away from Sandra and says he can't continue with mom "standing" there.
That moment sums up the bittersweet dilemma in "Two Lovers" and Leonard's incapacity to become a man of his own without blaming a woman for what he turns into.
Early on Gray makes us see who's good for Leonard, but we never really know if he's good for anyone, or if he ever will be.