bryant | Jul. 22nd, 2006

Jul. 22nd, 2006

It's a bad sign when the promotional material for a movie spends a lot of time talking about how it was shot under adverse conditions. Say, the whole movie was filmed in 8 days several miles from "civilization" in a cabin with no electricity in the middle of the winter. Me, I'm hard-pressed to say you've left civilization if you're close enough to get back via snowmobile in less than an hour, but that's me. Either way, the shoot shouldn't be the most important thing about a movie.

The promotional material for Subject 2 also talks a lot about how it's a new take on the Frankenstein legend, and that's true enough. It's the strength of the film. Mad scientists, nanotechnology, and hints of darker stuff are pretty effective. The concepts are great, and the setting is pretty good too.

However, the acting is wooden and the script doesn't inject the concepts with life. Further, the movie squanders its sense of isolation a little more than halfway through when a visitor shows up. There's a nasty little twist at the very end, but that's the only place where the movie shows any sense of humor. It's a regrettable waste of a pretty decent idea.

Grade: C-.

The program book makes all these wild claims about how The Echo (aka Sigaw) is the most gorgeous thing since sliced bread. If they're to be believed, Yam Laranas, who wrote, directed, and shot the film, is a peer of Christopher Doyle in his cinematography. The praise is nigh on fulsome.

And as you no doubt knew with an opening paragraph like that, it's pretty much accurate. The Echo is a ghost story set in a ramshackle old condo complex. It's minimalist in cast, without ever putting too many people on screen at once; it's one of those movies where the haunted building is perhaps the most important cast member. The cinematography has a key role, thusly. It bears the burden well. Almost every shot uses natural light, and Laranas must have had perfect timing and an unerring sense for appropriate times in order to make the long decrepit hallways and looming doorways as perfect as he did.

This is paired with a deft sense of horror. The Echo is, in fact, a pretty scary movie, which is a neat accomplishment considering that nothing ever lays a hand on our protagonist. The tension ratchets up nicely over the repeated course of a circular haunting, as if the worn patterns of the ghosts were building momentum until they must by the laws of physics break their wheel and careen into the lives of those around them.

When this played in L.A., Laranas was pretty much an instant hit. He's signed up for a Hollywood remake, he got an agent, and from his blog (linked above) he's pretty much on top of the world. I hope he keeps making movies with this kind of talent.

Grade: A- (and I'm not actually a big ghost movie fan).

The promotional material for Subject Two also talks a lot about how it's a new take on the Frankenstein legend, and that's true enough. It's the strength of the film. Mad scientists, nanotechnology, and hints of darker stuff are pretty effective. The concepts are great, and the setting is pretty good too.

Grade: C-.

From one low budget horror film with a message to another. The Descendant is very earnest, and better filmed than Subject Two -- less polished, but better pacing, and better acting on the whole. The protagonist, Jamie, is somewhat stiff, but his grandparents and the reclusive denizens of Ste. Harmonie make up for him performance-wise.

It's hard to describe the movie without giving away too much. Jamie's mother dies, and he goes to find out why she didn't talk to her grandparents in twenty-odd years. The town they live in has a secret, and that's the movie right there.

The earnest part comes in when you hit the plot twist. This is, I think, the movie M. Night Shyamalan should have made instead of The Village. It's his sort of gut-punch impact, or it would be if it had been made with a bit more skill.

The message is powerful, but the desire to get the point across seems to have led Philippe Spurrell, the director, into skimping on plausibility. His desire to make the crimes of the village as immediate as possible instead make them so implausible as to weaken the whole movie. A step back from the material would have benefitted the whole thing immensely.

Grade: C+ for the movie, B- for the intent.

So this is easy: it was a big collection of short films, everything from trailer remixes to Flash animation bits to traditional animation. It was fairly good. I guess you could reasonably stick your name on this kind of thing if your cutting and editing of shorts was really innovative, but in this case a bit of static between shorts doesn't count. It was still fun to watch. I'd probably go for taking a break instead of watching one of these again next year, just cause it's all viewable elsewhere fairly easily.

Grade: I dunno, how do you grade a compendium? I liked it.

I have absolutely no idea what Ressonances was doing on the program. I mean, there've been some movies I didn't enjoy, but I get why they were there -- interesting ideas, or love of the genre, or whatever. But this just bit.

The program says that Philippe Robert, the director, worked on a number of French flicks. When I finally found him on IMDB, it turns out he was a camera operator (and Ressonances isn't listed at all). I'm surprised that his first feature film was so damned muddy and impenetrable; it looks like it was filmed at night with very little lighting. You'd think a camera operator would know better.

Peering through the murk, I tried to take the movie as a parody/homage to the classic monster in the woods movie. But it wasn't really funny. I think the biggest laugh came when one of the characters referred to Zidane's jersey as his lucky number, and that's only funny because of the headbutt, which happened after the movie was made.

Grade: D.

I have absolutely no idea what Resonnances was doing on the program. I mean, there’ve been some movies I didn’t enjoy, but I get why they were there — interesting ideas, or love of the genre, or whatever. But this just bit.

The program says that Philippe Robert, the director, worked on a number of French flicks. When I finally found him on IMDB, it turns out he was a camera operator (and Ressonances isn’t listed at all). I’m surprised that his first feature film was so damned muddy and impenetrable; it looks like it was filmed at night with very little lighting. You’d think a camera operator would know better.

Peering through the murk, I tried to take the movie as a parody/homage to the classic monster in the woods movie. But it wasn’t really funny. I think the biggest laugh came when one of the characters referred to Zidane’s jersey as his lucky number, and that’s only funny because of the headbutt, which happened after the movie was made.

Grade: D.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]