Found Footage Roundup

FOUND FOOTAGE ROUNDUP

If you wanna talk about new frontiers in horror, "found footage" or "handheld horror" seems to be the thing that everyone wants a piece of. Its simplicity is both its strength and its downfall. There's a certain amount of novelty is starting something new, no doubt this was the initial attraction to handheld horror. But, while most horror films put you in the third person, handheld puts you in the first. The video camera makes you a character in the film. 

For the filmmaker the appeal is obvious. It's cheap, effective and trendy. Found footage can cut a budget down significantly and when done well gives the filmmaker the bragging rights to gloat over their thriftiness. But just because all this worked well for the Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal Activity doesn't mean it will for every attempted reboot of the vatican/exorcism film. Now I hope that serves as an introduction to my spiel about these two films. I watched them weeks apart but it's hard not to see the similarities. And even though neither thrilled me, I can say confidently that one trumped the other. 

So lets get into it:

The Poughkeepsie Tapes was an honorable idea. The film is centered around a series of tapes that have been found in a house in Poughkeepsie NY documenting the twisted escapades of a well disguised serial killer. The film serves as a faux-documentary, cutting back and forth between news segments, the tapes themselves and interviews/ narrations made by the filmmakers. Like I said, it was an honorable idea. Somewhere between a crime-thriller and an anthology film. But despite its good intentions it just didn't manage to find itself in time for an effective ending. In fact, I probably watched this film a couple weeks ago and I don't even remember what the hell happened. The whole thing came out looking more like a PSA for stranger danger than anything else. 

But I can also see why a film like this might be brutally disturbing to some. I could never claim this about jump-out scares because those never stop scaring me. Being someone who enjoys horror, though, the kind of scary that you feel in your gut and makes you feel like you need to wash the dirt off your brain is the kind of horror that you block out first. 

The Poughkeepsie Tapes certainly banks on that kind of scare. It's extremely disturbing and taps into the audience's sense of dread. But it takes a certain level of investment in a character to make you respond to a film like this. Because this film tried to fit an anthology of brief but disturbing stories, you don't have a chance to really care about what's happend to them (or at least not enough to finish the movie and get on with your life). 

There was a good intention behind this movie but it is NOTHING to write home about. Perhaps this is because it tries to fictionalize a character that we know exists. Serial killers are frightening, there's no doubt about that. And I'm not going to argue that this film exploits this real life horror because that would make me a goddamn hypocrite. But what I will say is that ... as immoral this will sound... the serial killer thing has been done. And worse? Real documentaries about serial killers exist. I suppose that is why this one seems so trivial. 

VERDICT: Don't bother with this one. If you want to be disturbed the way this film is aiming to make you, watch the A&E serial killer documentary series. 

Or on the other hand- don't.


V/H/S has been high on my list for a while. Why? Because it was a FUN idea. The guys over at Bloody Disgusting.com produced an anthology of horror stories. There's a lot of these kinds of things coming out ( ahem, ABCs of Horror) and V/H/S bridges the gap between found-footage and anthology horror quite nicely. I'm inclined to believe that the anthology format is a lasting trend that will ultimately be done to death but for now is refreshing and fun as hell. 

Now. Here's what works about this film. There are five segments and each is directed by a separate party. Yes, some are better than others but they all do something unique and surprisingly different from the one before. The key, I believe, in achieving this spooky, and often times hilarious film, is the fact that the people behind the thing are not A-listers. They aren't in it for the money like (God bless his sexy soul), Eli Roth might be. Does their passion for horror rest on the same plain? I don't doubt it for a second. But the industry can shackle you and this is precisely why this team was put at an advantage. These aren't the guys who sell horror movies, these are the guys who watch them, write about them, think about them and understand them. These are the guys who know what actually makes a good horror film and have the freedom to invent on this premise. 

To be real, V/H/S was less of a film for me and more of a commentary. It was made for people who know and appreciate a good scare. In the final segment of the film I found myself nodding, slack jawed in amusement. But it never surprised me that I would react this way cause these guys know what their doing, they're doing what all awesome filmmakers do: making a film that they would want to watch. 

To conclude, this film is by no means flawless. It's got its moments as does every horror film after the year 2000 but it isn't a film for the critics, it's a film for the  fans. And as a fan I approve this message.


VERDICT: Go ahead and watch it. 



HONORABLE MENTIONS IN THE FOUND FOOTAGE GENRE:

I want to mention a few found footage films that I GENUINELY enjoyed and want to review in the future so that if I go on another tangent I'll be able to look back and remind myself of these:

REC. (2007) - never bothered with the remake and neither should you.
Cloverfield (2008) - you don't have to agree with this one.
Home Movie (2008) - dark horse is all i have to say.
Undocumented (2010) - high on the list. this movie is awesome.
Chronicle (2012) - not a horror movie per se but completely underrated. 

Misc. Reviews: Spring Breakers (TIFF 2012)

Spring Breakers

To be released: March 5, 2013

Dir.: Harmony Korine

Starring: Selena Gomez, James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens & Ashley Benson

There’s no way to describe a movie like Spring Breakers without sounding either totally pretentious or scathingly critical. So for all those who aren’t being paid for a concrete opinion, there is a third position to take on this movie (generally the most appropriate one).

What the fuck was that?

Among sighs of relief and incredulous laughter, these are usually the first words muttered by audience members as the lights come up. And even the high and mightiest critics have agreed with these sentiments.

Here’s the story: Four girls, sick of their deadbeat college town hold up a restaurant and use their winnings to charter a greyhound bus down to St Petersburg, FL. Upon their arrival they partake in all sorts of illicit behaviour and gush about how this will forever be the best time of their lives. At one particular party, though, they’re arrested for possession of hard drugs and detained overnight. Luckily, they are bailed out the next day by a loopy rapper/drug dealer named Alien (Franco). He takes the girls back to his stomping ground and shows them in all his gold-toothed and cornrowed glory the “American dream” that he’s living complete with weaponry mounted on every wall, cash laying in casual stacks around the house and shorts- in every color. Needless to say, he loses a few groupies on the way. What follows is a chronicle of the remaining characters playing a hallucinogenic version of “happy family”.

Now before you go scratching your heads over that awful description, it should be made extra clear that this isn’t a movie about the adventures of impressionable college girls in the party capital of America. Nor is this a movie about the dangers of illegal drug use and drunken debauchery. In fact, I can almost guarantee you will hate this movie until you hear it’s true intention from the visionary himself.

During the post-screening Q&A at the film’s premiere at TIFF this past month, director Harmony Korine stated in not so many words that the film was meant to be a purely sensory experience.

So that explains why the first five minutes of the film is high definition shots of beer-bellies and neon bikinis prancing about to the musical stylings of Skrillex. While you’re trying to understand what it all means, you’re too busy wondering how someone could have drugged your non-existent drink and made you feel like you were on a horrifying carnival ride that you couldn’t get off.

Needless to say, by the end of the movie, once the trance has been broken and you start to ponder how you just spent the last hour and a half of your day, you’ll probably be inclined to throw your box of Glosettes directly at the screen for what it’s put you through. But rest assured that if you ever had any interest in heading south for a Spring Break adventure, you certainly won't any more.

Misc. Reviews: Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2

Twilight Breaking Dawn Part Two

Nearly four years ago, in the winter of eighth grade my friends and I lined up at nine in the morning outside Scotiabank Theatre in sub-zero weather for the first screening of Twilight. We huddled together waiting for the theatre to open its doors, switching out every ten minutes to run into the Chapters next door and buy Starbucks hot chocolates. While we waited, slowly succumbing to hypothermia like the true Twihards (or martyrs) we were, we tittered with excitement at the prospect of what we would soon be watching, a day and a half before the rest of the city. The film could have been Oscar-worthy or a total flop but I’m convinced that either way I would have ended up crying about Edward Cullen being a fictional character. In retrospect, I want to smack my thirteen-year-old self over the head for being so tasteless.

It was an act of fanfare that puzzles me to this day. However, a few weeks ago when I was offered a pair of tickets to the pre-screening of Breaking Dawn Part II, I accepted eagerly and huffed it way out to Yorkdale cinema on a Monday night to line up for a movie I had every reason to believe would be utter garbage.

Anyone who has fallen victim to the madness that is the Twilight series will agree that while the books made us cry, the movies made us laugh like only a cast of A-list celebrities deadpanning their way through a five-film contract can. Believe me, it’s no coincidence that the first premiere Kristen Stewart has cracked a smile at was that of the final film.

So is it the cheap laughs that brought thousands of people to the cinemas on opening night? Or the closure provided by watching the last film of a series? After having bookended the Twilight Saga with pre-screening events, I think I can understand why people are still attending these films.

Breaking Dawn Part II had a lot going for it at the 90-minute mark. It wasn’t taking itself too seriously, it had punch lines written into the script and the jokes were actually funny! But the strange thing about all this was the way the laughs were taking the piss out of the movie itself. It was as though the filmmakers had finally gaged the fact that they’d failed to make a likeable series that would attract anyone other than middle-schoolers and couples on date night and with that knowledge they’d set out to make the worst movie possible.

So why is it that when the film tries to be funny we actually begin to feel compassion for the characters? Perhaps it’s because we can imagine Kristen and Taylor and Rob in the final stretch like a bunch of kids graduating from their hick-town high school.

Or perhaps it’s just that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II type nostalgia (obviously on a smaller less life changing scale) that everyone feels remembering the last book in a beloved* series.

I suppose that the Twilight era, for many girls (or maybe just me), was a time of heartache at the realization that vampires didn’t exist and no teenaged boy would ever measure up to Edward. Back in a time when seventeen-years-old seemed like the promise land and the mere thought of waiting that three or four years was enough to make you catatonic.

But we all grew out of that eventually. And now, at seventeen, watching the Twilight series tank and realizing that even Kristen Stewart who got to be the Bella to Rob Pattinson’s Edward hates her job, I’ve found a certain resolve about the whole thing.

So perhaps that’s why people have stuck it out this long.  To see the series end and remind us that real life may not have vampires and werewolves and subliminal messages about abstinence, pregnancy and the inevitable threat of death that follows it, but that real life is, after all, better than the movies. Especially better than the movies that brainwash us to think otherwise.

Misc. Reviews: TIFF 2011- 50/50 (School Newspaper)

TIFF Toronto International Film Festival 2011             Matilda Davidson

         Though the end of summer is, to most Canadians, the beginning of the long, grey void known as winter, there is one thing that keeps the wheels of our city turning in those exhausting first weeks of September.

The Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF, rounds up some of the most prominent new films from around the world and screens them over a ten-day-period at cinemas all across Toronto’s downtown core. It’s been said that TIFF remains Toronto’s sole, true claim to cinema fame, which may be true, but ranking in the top three film festivals around the world (contending with France’s Festival de Cannes and Utah’s Sundance Film Festival), we’ve certainly landed ourselves a well-deserved spot on the map. To some, it may go unnoticed (besides the occasional rumor of celebrity sightings outside the Royal York), but it’s been known for film aficionados near and far to flock to the box office as soon as they can for their first choice of tickets. And this year was certainly no different.

        

While the big titles; Moneyball, The Ides of March, A Dangerous Method and 50/50 have been receiving gallons of recognition, as well as the expected talk of Oscar nominations, some smaller names have emerged from this year’s playbill generating Oscar buzz of their own.

Quebecois director Philippe Falardeau’s film Monsieur Lazhar is about an Algerian immigrant seeking political refuge in Quebec who accepts an offer to fill the position of a recently deceased elementary school teacher. It is also being called Canada’s Oscar contender for 2012 in the foreign film category. Moreover, though it remains unconfirmed, many believe that the People’s choice winner at TIFF this year, Where Do We Go Now? by Nadine Labaki, will have its much-anticipated best picture nomination at the 2012 Oscars. The reason for this assumption? Just take a look at some of the past People’s Choice winners: American Beauty (1999), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), The King’s Speech (2010). Get the idea? It’s no breaking news that TIFF has been the middleman between the Oscars and the independent film industry for quite some time now, putting us Torontonians just a few steps ahead of the game.

This year, 336 films from 65 countries were chosen to be screened from over 3,000 submissions to an audience of about 500,000 people over the course of ten days. These numbers have only grown over the past years, suggesting that TIFF is not yet at its peak of success, but rather on it’s way up. It’s safe to say that with stats like that, TIFF won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

50/50 (Jonathan Levine)

50/50 has a simple plotline. A slightly jaded 27-year-old, recently diagnosed with cancer dabbles in patient-doctor relationships and medicinal marijuana – hilarity manages to ensue. Throw in a few big names like Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and, you have yourself an offbeat comedy with a heartfelt message.

But for the film’s screenwriter, Will Reiser, the formula wasn’t quite as obvious when his own life took a similar turn. You guessed right, 50/50 is not only one of the season’s most adored films but also the semi-autobiographical rehash of Reiser’s experience with cancer. Spoiler alert: he lives.

Funny enough, Reiser and the film’s supporting actor Seth Rogen have been best friends since before the ordeal began. In interviews they often describe that period in their lives as almost comical in nature due to their lack of savoir-faire in the matter. This is something that the audience picks up on quickly as they witness various antics between the two leads. Sometime before the part where he destroys an ex-girlfriend’s painted masterpiece and after the part when he shaves his head, you begin to buckle with laughter. But ask anyone who’s seen it, by the end of the film you’ll have done your fair share of crying too.

50/50 is a prime example of a well-balanced film. The comedy is effective but not excessive and the serious subject matter, though sometimes forgotten, is never lost. In an almost constant sea of poorly written comedies, this one proves to be not only an exception yet rather a moving powerhouse of a movie with great performances and an undeniably uplifting conclusion.

Matilda Davidson, 16

Misc. Reviews: Best of 2011/2012 School Year (School Newspaper Article)

Best Movies of the 2011/2012 school year

by Matilda Davidson

1. Bridesmaids (Paul Feig)

Starring: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne)

Considered the most hilarious installment in the SNL movie franchise, Bridesmaids hones the perfect combination of witty humor and crude exploits proving that it is a movie worth seeing again, and again, and again…

3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II (David Yates)

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint

The final installment in the Harry Potter series was not only this year’s highest grossing film, but the third highest grossing film of all time. Part II has been proclaimed the best of the series and has garnered numerous rumors around Oscar nominations. I could say more but you’ve probably already seen it (five times) and don’t need any further convincing. It would be a crime not to include HP 7 in this list.

  

4. 50/50 (Jonathan Levine)

Starring: Joseph Gordon Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick

The only time you’ll ever hear someone refer to one’s struggle with cancer as heartwarming and hilarious will, no doubt, be in reference to this movie. The film is simply made more genuine by the fact that it is the life story of screenwriter Will Reiser. A hit at the Toronto International Film Festival, 50/50 is a film worth seeing.

5. The Ides of March (George Clooney)

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Evan Rachel Wood, George Clooney

In George Clooney’s directorial debut, adapted from the play Farragut North, The Ides of March, is a political drama set in a modern day presidential race. Deemed a “contemporary noir” and the zeitgeist of 21^st century politics, the film not only displays an overwhelming amount of talented actors, but is said to be the role that advances Gosling from boyish heartthrob to leading man material.

6. Melancholia (Lars von Trier)

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland

This fall’s Melancholia has been notorious for two things: the first, sending audience members out of the theatre in fits of nausea and two, portraying the bleakest perspective on the end of the world that most have seen to this day. However, despite it’s difficult subject matter, Melancholia has been very well received by critics for it’s stellar performances and stunning cinematography.

 Matilda Davidson, 16.