THE MASTER -- Blu-Ray/DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 2/13/13

 

It wasn't until I looked up the lyrics to the song "Slow Boat to China" that I really started to get what Paul Thomas Anderson's THE MASTER (2012) is about.  When I understood that, the ending suddenly took on the emotional significance that I'd missed first time around. 

But that happens now and then with a movie as enigmatic as this one.  You think that little of any real depth is happening for over two hours until you can stop and look back at it all.  Anderson isn't methodically connecting the dots to reveal a big plot here.  He's interested mainly in telling us about some intriguing people and what they mean to each other.

Joaquin Phoenix plays troubled WWII veteran and drifter Freddie Quell, a man whose crudely manic obsession with sex is intertwined with a need for closeness and acceptance.  Struggling to find his way after leaving the Navy, he ends up with a burgeoning cult called The Cause, which is led by the eccentric, charismatic genius Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman, JACK GOES BOATING). 

Despite the disapproval of Dodd's domineering wife Peggy (Amy Adams) and other members of the group, Dodd finds the impulsive, unpredictable, and sometimes violent Freddie both a challenge and an inspiration, eventually making him a valued confidant and symbol of the movement's beneficial effect.  "If we cannot help him," he tells a dubious Peggy, "then it is we who have failed."

This is first demonstrated when Dodd, as payment for some wonderful homemade hooch that Freddie is known for, gives him an informal "processing" session meant to help him relive a past event and alter it for the better.  Dodd is later accused of being a simple hypnotist but we're never really sure whether or not he's a complete charlatan, especially since his wife seems so fiercely devoted to The Cause.  But he clearly thinks he can help Freddie for real, or at least turn him into everything he himself wants to be if he only had the freedom ("You will be my guinea pig and protege", he tells him) which seems to invigorate him with a genuine sense of purpose.

Dodd's strange methods both anger and fascinate Freddie until he begins to actively seek his spiritual counselling.  We find out enough about Freddie during these sessions to make him even more of a sympathetic character, while in the two men we see the beginnings of a deep platonic love that will come to dominate both their lives.  Most of the rest of THE MASTER is an exploration of this strange symbiotic relationship that brings out the best and worst in both men while disrupting those around them.

In a brilliant, endlessly inventive performance by Joaquim Phoenix, Freddie Quell is wiry, twitchy, and heartrendingly needy despite an air of self-assurance.  His confusion and uncertainty are underscored by Paul Thomas Anderson's disorienting and often dreamlike images which, augmented by some stream-of-consciousness editing and a dizzying musical score, keep the viewer off-balance much of the time.  Still, Anderson's direction is utterly surehanded and glows with a keen visual sense.

Hoffman's role is less showy but, as Lancaster Dodd, he radiates an off-kilter genius similar to that of Orson Welles while letting a childlike glee show through during certain unguarded moments with Freddie.  Amy Adams, who was so wonderfully appealing in SUNSHINE CLEANING, is no less impressive here as what may be the true power behind The Cause.  The rest of the cast are fine, including Laura Dern as a fervent follower and BAD SEED Patty McCormack as a wealthy dowager who first sponsors and then takes legal action against Dodd.

The Blu-Ray/DVD combo from Image Entertainment is in 1.85:1 letterbox with Dolby 5.1 sound and subtitles in English and Spanish.  Extras consist of 20 minutes of outtakes and additional scenes  (very nicely edited together and scored), an 8-minute short "Unguided Message", teasers and trailers, and (Blu-Ray only) John Huston's 1946 documentary about WWII veterans, "Let There Be Light."  The keepcase contains a postcard of Philip Seymour Hoffman to send to some unsuspecting person on your mailing list.

Paul Thomas Anderson seems to be inviting viewers to watch his enigmatic character study more than once and figure things out for themselves.  It's not a movie that lays everything out neatly for us to fully assimilate first time around.  If you want, you can explore it, mine it for nuggets, and interpret it freely.  THE MASTER ends with a whispered, acapella rendition of "Slow Boat to China", in a lovely platonic love scene that's about as disarming as anything I've seen in quite awhile.

THE MASTER -- Blu-Ray/DVD Review by Porfle

PROTEGE -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 2/20/09

 

If you saw DONNIE BRASCO (or better yet, read the riveting book by Joe Pistone, who lived it), you'll already have an idea of the conflicting loyalties and constant fear of discovery experienced by undercover cop Nick (Daniel Wu) in the offbeat Hong Kong cop thriller PROTEGE, aka "Moon To" (2007).

For years Nick has been living as the trusted protege to Lin Quin (a makeup-aged Andy Lau), an ailing heroin kingpin who wishes to make a last big score so that his family will be set for life when he dies. Not the usual cartoon villain, Lau portrays Quin as a practical businessman who loves his family and rationalizes that his drugs only ruin the lives of weak-willed lowlifes. But when a botched drug raid indicates a rat within the organization with Nick as a suspect, Quin displays his ruthless and lethal side in a tense interrogation scene.

As Donnie Brasco developed warm feelings for his aging mob mentor Benjamin 'Lefty' Ruggiero over the years, so Nick finds himself caring for the dying Quin and his unsuspecting family. But the pain and suffering caused by Quin's heroin is brought home when Nick meets Fan (Zhang Jing Chu), a single mother living in his apartment building with her adorable three-year-old daughter. Fan is a wretched addict hiding from the abusive husband (Louis Koo) who got her hooked and who uses their own daughter to help him smuggle drugs. As Nick becomes more involved with Fan, trying his best to help her and her daughter, his inner conflicts slowly begin to reach a breaking point.

PROTEGE isn't your typical Hong Kong actioner--there isn't a single chop, kick, or really outlandish stunt--but the human drama is pretty intense. Just as you start to think it's going to be all about police vs. bad guys, the story goes in unexpected directions as Nick's relationships with Quin and Fan keep him in constant emotional turmoil.

The very first scene gives a good indication that we're in for something unusual. With brilliantly sunlit clouds swirling past outside, Fan shoots up in her crumbling apartment, then slowly sinks onto the couch, dead to the world. As harsh light shines through paper-patched windows and ragged curtains drift in the breeze, a bright red doll carriage rolls into the frame. Fan's daughter approaches her mother tentatively, plucks the needle from her arm, toddles over to the wastebasket, and daintily drops it in, as though she's done this countless times before. The scene is both horrible yet somehow dreamily ethereal, and a provocative way to start a movie.

Former Shaw Brothers actor Derek Yee's direction is sharp and imaginative yet remarkably unflamboyant, allowing him to emphasize certain scenes using only subtle stylistic changes. When he slowly rocks his camera from side to side during Nick and Fan's disturbing sex scene (Nick is awakened on the couch by a heroin-addled Fan and then frightened by her ecstatic convulsions during intercourse) it isn't merely to make the visuals more kinetic but to convey her disorientation from reality and his own confused feelings.

Certain moments related to Fan's shocking deterioration seem right out of a horror movie, while time-lapse shots of roiling clouds speeding past her slumlike apartment building (Yee photographs this location and its slovenly interiors beautifully) are unsettlingly surreal. Conversely, the film assumes a colorful travelogue look when Quin takes Nick to Thailand to meet the main man in the heroin chain. Beautiful country settings with hazy blue mountains and dazzling poppy fields serve as a stark contrast to the dark, miserable end result of such an endeavor.

Yee's screenplay is intended to enlighten us about the various aspects and consequences of heroin trafficking, and from this pastoral starting point (which sometimes has the bland instructional tone of an educational film) we're shown how the raw materials are refined in Quin's warehouse "kitchen" and turned into bricks of almost pure heroin for distribution. Early on, a mixup of ingredients that threatens to ruin an entire batch leads to a tense montage with Quin and his employees scrambling to salvage it. Yee and editor Kong Chi-Leung speed things up here and almost have us rooting for the bad guys to succeed, which gives us an idea of what Nick's daily life must be like.

The one really riveting action sequence in the film comes when a group of Customs officers, unaware that Nick is an undercover agent, apprehend him after he leaves the kitchen and brutally beat him until he leads them back to it. Suddenly all hell breaks loose as Quin's "cooks" dash to destroy the evidence while the Customs officers break down the steel door. Their leader is played by Liu Kai Chi, who was a renegade cop in 2005's KILL ZONE (aka "Saat po long") and is even more wonderfully out-of-control here. Graphic violence ensues, and a harrowing escape attempt from a window to a balcony below leads to one of the most realistic high-fall death scenes ever filmed. This sequence definitely got my heart pounding for awhile.

Daniel Wu brings a quiet strength and intensity to his role--we can see how Nick cares not only for Fan and her child but for the devastation Quin's family will endure when his crimes are exposed. Andy Lau is so likable as Quin that we can almost sympathize with him until he expresses his contemptuous disregard for the misery he causes. As Fan, Zhang Jing Chu does a remarkable job conveying a delicate waiflike quality one moment and then transforming into a mindless degenerate the next. (Described as a "cunning linguist" in Bey Logan's commentary, she had to learn Cantonese for the part.) Louis Koo comes off as a bit of a caricature as her no-good husband, yet he's interesting to watch and his eventual fate is nicely-played. Director Yee himself appears as Nick's boss on the police force. As for Liu Kai Chi, well, he's a wild man. I love the guy.

In 2.35:1 widescreen with Dolby Digital sound, the DVD looks and sounds fine. While this Dragon Dynasty release contains only one disc, there are the usual substantive extras, including the highly-informed and enthusiastic commentary we've come to expect from Hong Kong cinema expert Bey Logan. There's a well-produced "making of" featurette that lasts almost half an hour, followed by low-key, thoughtful interviews with Daniel Wu, Zhang Jing Chu, and producer Peter Chan. These indicate the depth of interest in the subject by all involved and how much research was done, particularly in talking to actual addicts and trying to discern what leads them to pursue heroin use at the cost of their own lives. The theatrical trailer is included, and the film can be watched in either the original Cantonese or the English dub with subtitles for the hard-of-hearing.

PROTEGE is that rare thriller that is so emotionally involving that it doesn't need to keep the viewer's interest stoked with a succession of fights and stunts. Rapid-fire editing and flashy camerawork are used sparingly (and are all the more effective for it in certain scenes), with the emphasis placed instead on rich characterizations, gripping suspense, and some images that are genuinely haunting. "Why do people take drugs?" Nick keeps asking himself throughout the story, and at the end, he finds out the hard way.

 

PROTEGE -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE WOODS -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted in 2006 

 

Heather (Agnes Bruckner) is a troubled girl who doesn't get along with her mom.  One day she decides to express her pent-up feelings by setting fire to the woods next to her house, almost burning it down.  Now her bitchy, self-centered mom (Emma Campbell) and her sympathetic dad (the redoubtable Bruce Campbell) are taking her to an exclusive and very secluded girls' boarding school in the middle of a dense, dark forest.  Here, in this strict and highly regimented atmosphere deep in THE WOODS (2006), it is hoped that Heather will learn to be a proper young lady who doesn't set things on fire.

Things begin to look creepy right away; the school is a large, foreboding building that is hundreds of years old and has vines growing through all the windows and across the walls, all the teachers are spinsterish former students who are weird, and the headmistress, Ms. Traverse (Patricia Clarkson), is a strange woman who always looks like there's something dark and ominous on her mind.  She gives Heather a peculiar aptitude test, ostensibly to determine whether or not she qualifies for a scholarship.  But, as it turns out later, this test is for a far different purpose altogether.



Heather makes friends with a timid girl named Marcy (Lauren Birkell) and enemies with the school bitch, Samantha (Rachel Nichols), while doing her best to alienate her teachers enough to get sent home.  Meanwhile, she begins to have frightening nightmares about wandering through the dark woods and encountering ghostly figures that come after her.  She also notices that a particular bed in the corner, about four bunks down from hers, is always empty.  It belongs to Ann, a girl who supposedly tried to kill herself a few weeks earlier. 

When Ann finally returns, her wrists wrapped in gauze, she appears haunted and deeply disturbed.  Heather awakens that night to see a thick tangle of vines creeping over the floor toward Ann's bed, covered by a blanket of mist. Was this a dream?  In any case, the next morning Ann's bed is empty once again, save for a pile of leaves shaped like a human body.  Woo-OOO-ooo...!

And things are just getting started.  THE WOODS is an engaging and very well-rendered spook tale that has a few elements in common with SUSPIRIA, and although it isn't quite as scary or as beautiful as Dario Argento's masterpiece, it's still directed with great care and skill by Lucky McKee (MAY) and exquisitely photographed and edited.  It also reminds me of some of those atmospheric Canadian horror flicks I used to watch on cable and VHS back in the early 80s.  And the fact that it's a period piece, taking place in 1965 and featuring some cool Leslie Gore songs including the classic "You Don't Own Me", gives it added ambience. 



It doesn't rely on blood and gore for its scares, but doesn't shy away from it, either--there are some pretty splattery scenes here and there, especially when certain characters start to wield a big, red axe that figures prominently throughout.  And when the woods attack and it's time to crank up the old CGI, it actually looks fairly convincing for a change.

The mystery behind the school deepens as Heather discovers more about its history--mainly the story of three strange girls who emerged from the woods one day about a hundred years earlier and were taken in.  They later turned out to be witches, and began to exert their evil influence in bad ways.  The headmistress at the time tried to stop them, and the main witch introduced her to the big, red axe.  Now, Heather realizes that the school is still in the witch business and is recruiting girls who excell in Ms. Traverse's "aptitude test", and who can hear the voices in the woods calling to them as Heather does. 

In fact, as it turns out, "the force" is particularly strong with Heather and Ms. Traverse has something especially bad planned for her.  And as bad turns to worse, Heather is eventually told that it's her turn to sleep in the empty bed in the corner.  Woo-OOO-ooo...!  (Okay, I'll stop doing that now.)

Agnes Bruckner is an appealing young actress and does a fine job as Heather, and the rest of the cast, both young and old, are outstanding as well.  As Ms. Traverse, Patricia Clarkson is just as good at playing restrained, understated creepiness as she was as Margaret White in the excellent TV remake of CARRIE.  And Bruce Campbell...well, he's Bruce Campbell.  He's great as good ol' Dad, eventually racing to his daughter's rescue as she's trapped in the horrific culmination of the witches' evil machinations.  He even gets to wield the big, red axe!  But watch out, Bruce...as Scotty tried to tell you way back in THE EVIL DEAD:  "But the trees, Ash.  They know.  Don't you see, Ash?  They're alive!"

THE WOODS -- Movie Review by Porfle

THE FOREST -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 4/4/16

 

Try getting lost in a forest, and you'll understand what a scary place it can be.  Naturally, it's been the setting for horror films that either pretty much get it right (THE WOODS) or woefully get it wrong (THE EVIL WOODS).

Director Jason Zada's THE FOREST (2016) pretty much gets it right.  In fact, for a movie about a forest in which a forest is the star--namely, the lush, legendary Aokigahara Forest in Japan, in which people are said to lose themselves in order to commit suicide--this one is about as spooky and evocative as such a film can get.

From the moment we see Sara Price (Natalie Dormer, W.E., THE HUNGER GAMES, "Game of Thrones") getting her first psychic premonition that her identical twin sister Jess is in danger in said forest, and immediately flying to Tokyo where the missing sister teaches English, we're already beginning a gradual descent into this film's somber and oppressively ominous mood. 

Not only is an overall ambience of creepiness established early, but Sara hasn't even left her hotel and entered the forest before we're subjected to the first in a series of jump scares that flash-freeze the blood. 

Some of these, as in HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959), involve frizzy-haired old ladies.  Who, coincidentally, have often been left to die in the forest in years past by families who didn't know what else to do with them. 

Even when THE FOREST isn't goosing us, it's creeping us out in other ways.  Not the least of these is when Sara enters a visitors' center and is left in a room full of dead bodies that have been retrieved from the forest.  When one of them appears to move, is it really happening, or is Sara's mind already playing tricks on her?  This question will be a major concern throughout the story.

Sara meets a handsome Australian journalist named Aiden (Taylor Kinney, ZERO DARK THIRTY) who's about to trek into the woods with an experienced guide, Michi (Yukiyoshi Ozawa), and invites her along if he can include her in the article he's writing.  We share her relief in finding a kindred spirit such as he, but also her misgivings about his motives. (Was that a glint of recognition in his eyes when he first saw her?)

Thus begins the heart of the film's gripping story, replete with the dead bodies of those who have committed suicide, angry and terrifying ghosts who may or may not be real, teasing clues concerning Jess' whereabouts, and Sara's continuing doubts about both Aiden's trustworthiness and her own sanity.  Doubts which we, the viewers, must apprehensively share as things get scarier and scarier and we see it all through her eyes.

THE FOREST establishes an extremely effective fact-based mythology about the "suicide forest" that makes us fear any deviation from the beaten path (from which the main characters must, of course, deviate) and dread the prospect of being left out there all alone in the dark of night. 

It also has a way of deriving supernatural-type scares from even the more realistic situations in which Sara's overactive imagination gets the better of her.  This eventually brings us to a point where potential madness and delusion are far more frightening than ghosts. 

The beautifully-photographed forest locations are richly foreboding, while the Japanese setting with its history of ghost stories and legends adds to the exotic nature of the story. 

The filmmakers really run with this premise--ghosts, dead people, horrifying visions that may or may not be there--and just keep thinking of ways to creep us out with it.  Even when the film is unable to fully maintain its level of sustained fear, it stays interesting enough to keep our attention the whole time. 

Dormer finds just the right note to play Sara, somewhere between anxiety and resignation, while searching for her trouble-prone twin.  Kinney remains jovial but enigmatic as Aiden, and like Sara we're never quite sure of him.  The rest of the cast are good including Eoin Macken ("Merlin") as Sara's concerned husband Rob.

The Blu-ray+Digital HD from Universal Studios Home Entertainment is in 1080p high resolution widescreen with English DTS-HD master audio 5.1.  Subtitles are in English, French, and Spanish.  Extras include the featurette "Exploring 'The Forest'", galleries, storyboards, and an intimate commentary track by director Jason Zada.

With moments that'll have you jumping in your seat and an overall feeling of creeping fear, THE FOREST overcomes even its occasional lapses and a not-quite-satisfying ending (for me, anyway) to succeed as a memorably effective and exceedingly well-made modern horror story. 

THE FOREST -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

A GOOD WOMAN -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

(This review originally appeared online in 2006 and was reposted on 3/4/13.)

 

When I first saw the trailer, I got the impression this was going to be an utterly serious drama about infidelity. So I was pretty surprised to find that A GOOD WOMAN (2004) is not only studiously droll, but it's based on Oscar Wilde's play "Lady Windermere's Fan."

I like Oscar Wilde because no matter what he wrote, almost every page has several quotable quips that are amusingly clever and insightful, or just amusingly snide. This movie has a good number of such lines, but I only recognized a few of them from the play itself, so scriptwriter Howard Himelstein must've either come up with them on his own or mined other Oscar Wilde works for them, or both.

"Some women bring happiness wherever they go. Others--whenever they go."

The latter is certainly true of Mrs. Erlynne (Helen Hunt), whose livelihood consists of leeching off of well-to-do married men until their wives finally get wise and start closing her bank accounts. Currently finding herself without such support, she hops an ocean liner to Italy in search of greener wallets and soon casts a predatory eye on the husband of young Lady Windermeyer (Scarlett Johansson), or "Meg" when she's at home.

Meg and Robert (Mark Umbers) have been married for only a year and are blissfully happy, which will soon change drastically after Mrs. Erlynne encounters Robert in a shop as he's picking out a gift for Meg's birthday. Mrs. Erlynne persuades him to buy her a fan, which will figure prominently in the plot later on, and then goes about sinking her claws into him.

"Marital bliss is a great burden to place on two people. Sometimes a third person is needed to lighten the load."

Before long, all the wealthy vacationers along the Italian coast are abuzz with gossip about Robert's numerous secret visits to "that wicked woman's" apartment, especially the dotty old Contessa Lucchino (Milena Vukotic). Not only is she Meg's friend, but her brother-in-law Tuppy (Tom Wilkinson, who played Carmine Falcone in BATMAN BEGINS and is very likable here) has fallen under Mrs. Erlynne's spell and is resolved to marry her despite her infamous reputation.

Meanwhile, the amorous and gleefully immoral Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell Moore) has the hots for Meg and is circling around her seemingly doomed marriage like a vulture. And Meg, of course, eventually discovers what everyone else is already gossiping their heads off about and is devastated.

Up to that point, A GOOD WOMAN seems to be a rather dry attempt at comedy with an overly-realistic tone, and the fact that most of the characters go around spouting impossibly witty, though amusing, one-liners with every breath gives the dialogue an artificial quality. These jaded sophisticates just aren't farcical enough to rattle off epigrams like "sausages and women--if you want to enjoy the experience, never watch the preparation of either" or "I like America...name me another society that's gone from barbarism to decadence without bothering to create a civilization in between" off the top of their heads. That sort of thing plays okay in a broader comedy, especially if it's being performed onstage and set in an earlier era. But against the backdrop of the Italian coast in 1930, with the realistic atmosphere and period detail of a film like THE GREAT GATSBY, it seems almost surreal.

And when Meg happens to look through her husband's checkbook and finds that he's been paying large sums of money to Mrs. Erlynne all along (the final tip-off that he's cheating on her), the movie takes a somewhat jarring turn into the utter seriousness that the trailer seemed to suggest. Director Mike Barker even gives us a shot in which an overhead camera pulls slowly away from Meg as she sits at the desk, heartbroken. Later, on Lord Darlington's yacht after Meg has made the agonizing decision to leave Robert and run away with her foppish admirer, a final showdown between Meg and Mrs. Erlynne is painfully melodramatic, almost soap-operatic. There's even a "you're hurting me!" thrown in for good measure (I thought Frank Drebin was the only person who could still say that with a straight face).

So, curious as to just how far the tone of A GOOD WOMAN had strayed from the play on which it is based, I resolved to actually read "Lady Windermere's Fan." To my surprise, the original play isn't the lighthearted farce I expected it to be. There are a lot of great comedy lines and funny situations, to be sure, but there's also a good deal of straight-faced drama. Although the movie takes enormous liberties with the play, the most important scenes--Meg's birthday party being disrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Erlynne, their confrontation at Lord Darlington's, and the final resolution--are represented well enough to remain more or less true to the tone of the play.

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

The best part of the movie, in fact, is its handling of the play's final act, in which Mrs. Erlynne pays a last, highly-emotional visit to the Windermere home and finds redemption. Earlier on, there's a huge plot twist that I'm not even going to hint to you about, and the way it and everything else is resolved in the end is very satisfying, right up to a final surprise just before the fade-out that actually put a smile on my face. So, while I had mixed feelings about the rest of A GOOD WOMAN, the fact that I felt pretty good about it when it was over compels me to cut it considerable slack.

A GOOD WOMAN -- Movie Review by Porfle