Paranormal Activity 3

"This isn't Casper the f**king friendly ghost."

I am unapologetically a huge fan of the Paranormal Activity movies. They quite frankly scare the crap out of me and make living alone significantly less pleasant. Every time someone in a condo adjacent to mine makes a noise I can hear through the ceiling or wall, these movies immediately cross my mind. I don’t believe at all or ghosts in spirits, but the fact that these ridiculous films cross my mind every time I hear an unexplained noise is a testament to their effectiveness in ruining my sleeping habits. While the Saw films spiraled further and further into absurdity and irrelevance after the second movie, the Paranormal Activity films have gotten better with each installment, an extreme rarity for a horror franchise.

The first in the series was a surprisingly great film made by someone who has likely seen hundreds of horror movies and had a perfect understanding of how to build tension and create real horror without special effects (or money). The fact that you are never given a visual representation of the ghost/spirit/whatever (hereafter referred to as “The Whatever”) adds much to the effect, and watching every scene with the knowledge that it is likely in the room there with the characters (and they don’t see it) adds a level of suspense I have never seen executed so well in a horror film.

PA1 was a runaway success, and of course all successful films in Hollywood must have a sequel. I was initially hesitant about the idea of any continuation of the series and felt that major studio involvement and a larger budget would rob the movie of its indie charm and take the series in a different (and less subtle) direction. My fears were abated when I ended up enjoying the second film more than the first. PA2 benefitted greatly from the increase in production values and larger budget and did a great job of retaining the homemade feel of the first. I also appreciated how the writers made the story fit in so well with PA1 as the first film was clearly made without the intention of further sequels. The second film created a much larger story for the series, added new characters and a mythology from which further sequels could be made.

Based on the quality of the second film, my faith in the idea of sequels in this franchise was restored. The third film is, without a doubt, the best in the series yet. Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (who made the fantastic Catfish last year), this latest installment is the best-directed and best-written film in the series thus far. The producers made a smart decision to change up the directors from the second film to keep the franchise fresh and allow a different (but still consistent) vision of what a Paranormal Activity film means.

I don’t want to divulge much of the story as I personally find it one of the most enjoyable parts of these films, but the film follows the two sisters in the 1980s as children around the time The Whatever first starts hanging out with the family. Kristi (the sister with the baby from the second film) can see The Whatever all times, refers to it as Toby, and the rest of the family thinks it is just an imaginary friend. Once some weird stuff starts happening around the house, the girls’ mom’s boyfriend decides to set up cameras around the house to see what’s up. If you have seen the first two films, you can probably guess how that goes.

The “gotcha” moments in this film are fewer than the previous films and it spends more time on building the story and situations before everything goes to hell in the last half hour. The finale is fantastic and is the best segment in the series so far. If you are not gripping your seat during the last scene, you are a much stronger person than I. This film, like the first two, is an effective mix of the stationary cameras set up (with no one manning them) and handheld video cameras. It has a distinct documentary feel and adds a realness to the movie that would not be attained with conventional cinematography. This isn't Blair Witch Project running around and screaming; it is slow, methodical camerawork that keeps you constantly at the edge of your seat.

Unrelated to the quality of the film itself, I would like to draw attention to the fact that PA3 might have one of the best marketing campaigns I have ever seen. A downfall of the first two films was that if you had seen the trailers, you went into the movie knowing some of the scary parts and would end up waiting for them the whole movie. In a brilliant move, none of the scenes in the trailers for PA3 are in the actual film. The overall concept is the same and communicated through the trailers, but none of the scares are given away.

I believe that the directors recognized the issue with the marketing for PA1 and PA2 and filmed extra scenes specifically for the trailers, as several things that happen in them don’t make any sense in the context of the overall story of the final film. My reasoning for this is (minor spoiler alert) is that Julie (the mom) doesn’t believe anything is happening in the house because she never sees anything weird happening herself (until towards the end). This is a key part of the story as Dennis (the boyfriend) is constantly trying to convince her that something is up with the house and she refuses to believe him. The trailers for the film show several things happening to Julie directly, and I am pretty sure she would believe something was going on if she got yanked into the bedroom by something invisible (end spoilers). Regardless of how these alternative scenes came about, you can safely watch all of the trailers to pump yourself up for the film without ruining any of the scares. The always-intelligent commenters on YouTube state repeatedly that they were “disappointed” that the final film doesn’t contain any scenes from the trailer, but I can assure you that this is a positive.

If you didn’t like the first two installments, you won’t like the third. The film is identical in concept as the first two and won’t win over anyone who didn’t like it the first two times around. If you did like the first two, I can’t imagine you not enjoying the third. The scares are better, the story is stronger, and the overall atmosphere is much more effective. If this is the final Paranormal Activity, then the series will go down in history as one of the best horror trilogies of all time. As of this writing, the film has made $84 million from a budget of $5 million, so I would not be surprised to hear of a new installment next Halloween. If the films continue to be this good, this is a series of movies I will happily continue to lose sleep over. 

Moneyball

"Would you rather get one shot in the head or five in the chest and bleed to death?"

"Are those my only options?"

Moneyball, like Social Network, is an interesting movie about a topic that should be, by conventional logic, not interesting at all. This film is about baseball statistics, but you don’t need to appreciate nor have a deep understanding of the sport to enjoy it. If you decide not to watch this movie because you don’t appreciate or know anything about baseball, that’s the same as saying you won’t watch Cool Runnings because you don’t know anything about bobsledding or won’t watch Apollo 13 because you don’t know anything about space travel. I hope you don’t make this decision as this is one of the best films of the year and you would be missing out on a great story.

The production of Moneyball was a bit of a nightmare and it seems a miracle that the finished result is as good as it is. The film adaptation of Michael Lewis’ famous novel was originally drafted by writer Stan Chervin, and when Brad Pitt became attached to the project as a producer and lead star and hired Steve Zaillian (Schindler’s List, Gangs of New York) to do a new draft of the script. Steven Soderbergh (the Ocean’s films, Che, Traffic) was signed on to direct, but he wanted to do an untraditional film with player interviews and take a non-narrative approach. In June 2009, a few days before filming was supposed to begin, the picture was put on hold until they could find a new director who had the same vision as the producers. Benett Miller (Capote) was chosen as a replacement director  and recent Oscar-winning writer Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Charlie Wilson’s War) was brought in to do a third draft of the screenplay. Finally, in July 2010, over a year later, filming began. After seeing the finished film, I am glad the film went through the turbulence that it did, as it prevented it from being a cash-grab adaptation of a successful book.

Moneyball is the story of the Oakland Athletics’ general manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), who utilizes a non-traditional approach to scouting players called “sabermetrics.” He hires Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a young economics grad to be the brains of the operation and help him choose players. Beane’s decision to go against the grain is met with serious resistance from the team’s manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and the older scouts who are used to picking players using more subjective measures such as how nice their face looks. When the Athletics do not perform as expected, Beane is forced to choose between staying the course and continuing to believe in his methods or cave and go back to the way things were.

Moneyball is a character sketch of Billy Beane and I am forced to wonder if he is as interesting a person in real life as Brad Pitt portrays him to be. In any case, Brad Pitt is in full-on cool-dude mode and they may as well have made this a fiction movie and called him Tyler Durden again. He is charismatic, smooth and fast-talking and controls every room he enters with his commanding presence. He pushes his belief in sabermetrics on others like a used-car salesman and isn’t afraid to cut people loose when they don’t buy into his story.

Behind all the smooth-talking, however, is man with a life of disappointment, regret and lack of self-worth. He failed in his professional baseball career, his marriage, and is constantly searching for his place in the world. The film cuts back and forth between parts of Beane’s life to give the audience a better understanding of what made him the man he is today. Your feelings towards him will turn from admiration to sympathy before the credits roll.

Like The Social Network, many changes were made in the transition from Michael Lewis’ book to film, and if you have read the book, this film may drive you insane. Peter Brand is not a real character but is a combination of Paul DePodesta and a few other characters mashed into one. Many of the events and their causes are different in the film than the book (and real life). If you have read the book, I urge you to relax your expectations and think to yourself what story this movie is trying to tell and what changes are necessary to make a movie about baseball statistics a captivating story for a broader audience.

This film is a serious Oscar contender for Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Adapted Screenplay. As it stands now with the films that have been released this year, I would put my money on it to win all of the above including Brad Pitt finally winning best actor. However, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has yet to come out, and many feel that Fincher got robbed last year when he didn’t win for the Social Network. It will also be interesting to see if the rabid critical praise for Drive translates into Oscar nominations. Regardless of the awards it does or does not win, I give this movie my highest recommendation and hope that you see it despite how you may feel about baseball.

Win Win

"This kid's got man-strength, dude."

The writer/director of Win Win, Thomas McCarthy, is killing it right now. After impressing audiences in season four of The Wire and several other small roles, he started his writing and acting career with two phenomenal films back-to-back; The Station Agent and The Visitor. With Win Win, he is now three for three, and this is probably his best film to date. The strength of McCarthy’s films seems to lie in the characters, and he continues to create characters that are both fascinating and jarringly realistic.

The always reliable Paul Giamatti stars as Mike Flaherty, a lawyer in a small town who is struggling to make ends meet and provide for his family. Mike has an elderly client, Leo (Burt Young), who is developing Alzheimer’s and doesn’t want to leave his home. Mike finds out that Leo is somewhat wealthy and his estate will pay $1,500 per month to his legal guardian; a sum of money that would help out with Mike’s money troubles. Mike decides to take on guardianship but doesn’t want to take care of Leo so he puts him in a nursing home. He lies to himself by saying Leo will be better off there but knows deep down this is the wrong thing to do.

Mike is the protagonist of the story, but how often do you see a protagonist do something as immoral as putting an old man in a home against his well? You might tell yourself, “I would never do something like that,” but are you certain? Can anyone honestly say they have never sacrificed someone else’s well-being for their own benefit? It is choices like this that transcend McCarthy’s characters from movie people into real people and they allow the audience to empathize with the situations that much more.

Everything seems to be working out and Mike’s financial pressures are relieved for the time being, until Leo’s unknown grandson Kyle (Alex Schafer) shows up hoping to live with Leo. This is impossible as Mike has stuck him in the nursing home, so Mike decides to take Kyle into his own house until he can figure out what to do with him. Kyle doesn’t have any other relatives other than his drug-addicted mother in rehab from whom he ran away in the first place. Mike’s wife Jackie (Amy Ryan) is not pleased by Kyle’s smoking and the fact he looks like a criminal, though the family begins to love him as if he were one of their own. Mike’s betrayal of Leo then threatens to surface, and the win-win situation he has created balances on the edge of a knife.

Kyle is, like Mike, another fascinating character. You are never given the full picture of his troubled past but you are able to ascertain details (an absent mother with an abusive boyfriend, etc.) through the handful of times he opens his mouth. Kyle is an angry teenager but is not a lost cause; he simply longs for a true emotional connection with someone and his genuineness as a person comes out in his interactions with Mike’s kids. Kyle’s outlet for his anger is in his wrestling, but even there he lacks self-control.

I won’t go into the story anymore, but the plot does a good job of avoiding the normal clichés of sports movies and family dramas. The outcome of the film is more or less predictable and there are no huge surprises, but it is enjoyable to watch the pieces to fall into place. It is fun to see Mike try to wiggle his way out of the mess he has created himself and you will be moved several times before the credits roll. There is a standout scene where Kyle is reunited with his mother and you experience firsthand the hatred he has built up toward her. It is painful to watch and sad to see a son who literally has nothing left for his mother.

Come Oscar season, Win Win will all but disappear beneath the hype of big hitters like Drive, The Ides of March, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Dangerous Method, J. Edgar, and Moneyball. Win Win does not look to compete with those films, not on budget nor on scope, but you would be doing yourself a disservice to miss out on this great movie.

Drive

"My hands are a little dirty."

"So are mine."

There has been much hype leading up to the wide release of Drive these past few months. The film received a standing ovation at Cannes, director Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising, the Pusher Trilogy) received best director at the festival, it boasts a ridiculous 93% on RottenTomatoes, and I have seen more than one Facebook status proclaiming Drive as “the best movie ever.” I went in with high expectations, and though the film falls slightly short, it is a great film and I certainly enjoyed it.

Drive is a textbook example of style over substance, and is an even rarer example of that type of film working to tell a compelling story. There is little plot, sparse dialogue, and few characters in Drive, but the way in which the story is told keeps the audience invested in the characters and interested in the outcome. This is not an action-filled car chase movie as the trailers would have you believe, but a slow-burn thriller character study that will drive impatient film goers mad.

I have been a Ryan Gosling fan after watching him knock it out of the park twice in a row in Half Nelson and Lars and the Real Girl. His performance in Blue Valentine afterwards cemented him in my eyes as one of the best actors in films today. His performance in Drive is good, though the script does not require a significant amount of acting on his part. He carries a strong intensity through his character, and when he speaks, everyone listens.

The main character of Drive is unnamed, but that’s fine, as Ryan Gosling really plays two different characters in this film: a quiet, thoughtful mechanic and stunt driver who also moonlights as a getaway driver (Quiet Ryan), and the unhinged, murderous Ryan, who kills without hesitation (Angry Ryan). His name isn’t important as you don’t learn anything about Ryan in this film, and you never find out what happened to him to make him the way he is. All you need to know is that he is equally a gifted driver and mechanic as he is emotionally unstable.

For the majority of the movie, you watch Quiet Ryan go about his daily life and are offered small glimpses of Angry Ryan, such as when a man recognizes him at a coffee shop from one of his previous jobs. Quiet Ryan works during the day as a mechanic for Shannon (Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston), who is indebted to a pair of mobsters, Bernie (Albert Brooks) and Nino (Ron Perlman). Perlman is always a treat, though I wish both him and Brooks got more screen time and I feel like both characters are somewhat unutilized.

Quiet Ryan meets his new neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan), whose husband is in prison, leaving her alone to take care of their son, Benicio. Quiet Ryan helps her out around the house and begins to care for both Irene and Benicio. When Irene’s husband, Standard, is released from prison, his criminal past puts his family in danger. Quiet Ryan offers to help Standard on a job in exchange for his family’s protection, but things don’t go exactly as planned. Angry Ryan must then find a way to set everything straight.

 Ryan Gosling has described Drive as his “superhero movie,” and this is a perfect description. Quiet Ryan’s leather driving gloves serve as his uniform, and when the gloves come on, Angry Ryan is unleashed and people are going to get hurt. Like the main character himself, the movie relishes in its ability to flip back and forth between total serenity and total destruction in mere seconds (the elevator scene is a perfect example of this). Drive has a handful of scenes that are surprisingly violent, and part of me wonders if it would be more effective if the gore was more subtle and the camera focused more on the characters themselves rather than the knife/fork/foot being used. In any case, it is an artistic choice by the filmmakers, but it makes the film difficult to recommend to everybody.  This is a bit of a shame as the rest of the movie is generally appropriate for most audiences.

Drive’s aesthetic style is definitely winning it points, particularly with the critics. The movie uses slow-motion to great extent and very wisely (you could frame almost any shot from this film on a wall).I definitely dig the 80’s vibe, though it largely disappears after the opening credits. Cliff Martinez’ ambient soundtrack does the job well, and music cues are used sparsely but effectively.

(Begin spoilers)

I was let down, however, by the last ten minutes of Drive, including the ending. First off, the editing during Angry Ryan’s final conversation with Bernie is quite frankly terrible (to refresh, it splices back and forth between their conversation inside the restaurant and the events that happen afterwards outside the restaurant). There is a reason that more movies do not do this: it is confusing, hard to follow, distracting, and it takes away any intensity that either scene is trying to create. You also spend half the scene trying to figure out what’s going on. As a mental exercise, when you watch Drive, think about how much more effective each of the two scenes would be on their own.

Another movie off the top of my head that also does this is The Matrix Reloaded about three quarters of the way through the film. When Morpheus is explaining the plan to break into the building that houses the Architect, it cuts away to the characters actually carrying out the tasks. It is extremely confusing and completely pointless. I recognize this is nitpicking on a three minute scene, but the entire film builds up to this scene and it completely falls flat. For a movie that is so focused on its editing style, this stood out to me as amateurish and ill advised.

I also have some issues with the final stabbing scene with Bernie and the ending itself. In the stabbing scene, it can be safely assumed that Angry Ryan knows full well that Bernie is going to try and kill him during their meeting. From how the scene plays out, I think it can also be assumed that Ryan’s plan is to 1) kill Bernie, and 2) leave the money. With these assumptions, why on earth would Ryan then leave his back to Bernie, allowing himself to get stabbed and risk his life if his plan was to kill Bernie anyway? Angry Ryan kills without hesitation in every other scene in the movie. Why not just take Bernie outside, kill him and leave the money? Someone pointed out to me that maybe Ryan thought Bernie wouldn’t try and kill him if he gave up the money. I don’t buy this, as Ryan saw that Bernie had killed Shannon in a previous scene and Bernie also has motivation to kill Ryan as he confessed to drowning his partner, Nino. I found the way that Angry Ryan acted in this scene was jarringly inconsistent with his character in other situations throughout the movie.

Afterwards, Angry Ryan just takes off out of town. I assume this is because Bernie tells him he is going to spend the rest of the life looking over his shoulder. But why? The money belonged to the mob, but they don’t know anything about Ryan or the fact that he has it. Everyone who knows about the money is dead, why leave it? He doesn’t leave it because it’s the right thing to do, he actually suggests keeping and running away with Irene and Benicio it in a previous scene. I don’t understand why he decides to leave or why he leaves the money. It’s not what he wants to do, and I don’t see any obstacles to him getting what he wants (to stay with Irene and Benicio and keep the money).

(End spoilers).

Despite my nagging issues with the final ten minutes of the film, Drive is a great film, and one I definitely recommend if you can stomach the violence. It is a well-made film through and through, and is worth watching for the aesthetics alone. Ryan Gosling continues along his path to becoming one of the biggest stars in Hollywood (three movies this year alone), and this film will likely be remembered as one of his best.