Mama

The amount of films that Guillermo Del Toro has leant his name to over the past few years makes him seem like an eccentric collector, or perhaps a nurturing father trying to keep his children close; they’re all in the same vein as his widely acclaimed masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth, usually combining elements of Spanish fairytale and European horror with a dysfunctional household setting (it’s hard not to generalise, but this is essentially what happens in each film). The Orphanage was the first, and probably the most well-known of the group – a well-constructed twisting of the missing-child genre. There then followed such films as Julia’s Eyes and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, both individual and both excellent examples of Del Toro’s influence. Mama, the debut from Spanish director Andrés Muschietti, is a welcome contribution to this already rich genre.

 A man drives home after shooting his ex-wife in the head and kidnaps his two young daughters, Victoria and Lilly. While speeding down a remote snow-covered road in the mountains, the car skids and goes over the cliff, and, unhurt, they stumble to a deserted cabin where the father is taken by a tall, dark figure and never seen again. When the girls are found five years later by their uncle Lucas they have become feral: thin, unwashed and snarling – when under observation they seem to talk to an invisible being they call Mama, who seems to act as a maternal substitute for the children. Only Victoria, who has retained parts of her vocabulary, is willing to re-enter the human world; Lilly, on the other hand, remains unresponsive and sits in the corner eating moths. Lucas and his girlfriend (Jessica Chastain) decide to raise the girls themselves, but they soon come to realise that Mama is not just a product of over-active imaginations.

Credit must be given to the child actors in Mama. As in most horror films of the ‘pedophobic’ genre (The Exorcist, The Omen, Village of the Damned etc.) it’s hard to imagine how directors get their actors to give such unnerving, and sometimes terrifying, performances, particularly when surrounded by older, more experienced professionals, but these girls are very, very good. Their roles demand a certain seriousness – unhinged yet innocent, hardened by their experiences in the wild and uncertain about their new guardians. Jessica Chastain is also enjoyable as the black haired, bass-playing girlfriend - the rock-chick attitude is authentic and very watchable as we see her struggle to adapt to family life and is certainly a different change of pace from her character in this year’s Zero Dark Thirty.

 What raises Mama above the steady flow of mediocre horror is not just Del Toro’s influence, but also the way in which the director is unafraid to take risks. The standard horror tropes are still very much present (creepy crayon drawings, loud noises in the night, camera flashes in a dark room etc.) but there are countless other ways in which Mama surprises its audience. There’s a dream sequence, for example, that feels as if it shouldn’t belong in the main narrative at all, so different is it in style and tone that it could easily pass as a surreal little short film of its own. Similarly, the glimpses we get of ‘Mama’ herself are brilliant; so fleeting, fantastical and unexpected that you want to see more of her, yet at the same time you really don’t.

A satisfying combination of fantasy and horror, if you yearn for more of what Pan’s Labyrinth offered, Mama might not be able to fill the gap, but it undoubtedly tries hard.

Original source: http://www.impactnottingham.com/2013/03/review-mama/

Warm Bodies

 At first glance Warm Bodies doesn’t look too appealing – another paranormal romance, but from the perspective of a zombie? A zom-rom-com? It looks like the kind of thing small teenage boys will take their girlfriends to see come Valentine’s Day, but no, it’s actually a lot better than it sounds – adapted from the novel by Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies is a film that realises how ridiculous it appears and just goes with it. It doesn’t try to be a full-blown zombie thriller like 28 Days Later (though there is a brilliant reference to Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters - see picture) and it surprisingly doesn’t attempt to shove an unrealistic message of enduring love at its audience, as you’d think it would.

 It’s set after (or during) the zombie apocalypse and R is a zombie who lives in an airport with the rest of the un-dead population. Something of a hipster, he lives alone in an aeroplane listening to old vinyl records and only emerges to eat the living or to groan at his good friend M at the baggage reclaim desk. Then, when out on a hunting trip, R saves the life of Julie (whose dad is John Malkovich – if that doesn’t make a film worth watching, then what does?) and feels the need to protect her. As their relationship develops, he slowly recovers his humanity and they attempt to establish a bond between the human race and the un-dead.
 Even with names like R and Julie, it’s not immediately obvious that Warm Bodies has Shakespeare at its heart – not until the balcony scene half way through do the audience eventually realise that this is an un-dead version of Romeo and Juliet. Humans and zombies = Montagues and Capulets. It’s quite clever really, structuring the film around the original love story, and it doesn’t becoming overpowering at all; it’s simply there in the background for the audience to pick up on. 

 It’s hard, though, to applaud Nicholas Holt for his performance. He’s obviously having fun in the role, but to be honest, if most people stumbled down the street groaning like a zombie they’d probably be doing a pretty good job. Holt’s shown he can act well in films like X-Men First Class, A Single Man and the TV series Skins, but he seems to have been chosen for Warm Bodies simply because of his dashing-zombie good looks. Still charming though.
 The best thing about Warm Bodies is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously; it’s more a light-hearted comedy than a miserable tale of forbidden love and the bleak reality of death. No doubt there are people out there who’ll take one look at the poster and pass it off as a piece Twilight-inspired rubbish, like many of the other teen-orientated soft horror films that are circulating the cinemas these days (just to be clear: Twilight has its moments, but anything that tries to imitate it is usually not worth watching). R’s internal narration is what makes it such an enjoyable watch; endearing, observant and most importantly, self-aware – his mind seems to be completely human. ‘Don’t say anything creepy’, he repeats to himself as he sits down next to Julie. His insightful monologues and passing comments, coupled with Jonathon Levine’s sharp direction, is what makes Warm Bodies stand out in this stiff corpse of a genre. There is hope for us yet.

The Keep (1983)

Written, directed and produced by Michael Mann, and very loosely based on the F. Paul Wilson novel of the same name, The Keep was both a commercial and critical flop, but that didn’t stop Kino Klubb from hosting a screening of it at Broadway cinema, Nottingham, last night on a beautiful 35 millimetre print from the BFI.

The Keep begins with several armoured Nazi trucks travelling down a long, winding road through the Carpathian Alps in Romania. They arrive at a small village and disembark, and as the soldiers begin to walk the inhabitants run into their houses and slam the windows and Tangerine Dream starts to play. Something weird is going on.
 And then they reach The Keep, a great fortress of black stone stretching from one end of the screen to the other, and the dark entrance looks cold. Fearing nothing, the Nazis walk over the drawbridge and into the darkness and are immediately greeted by the janitor, a bearded man in a golden robe who gives them no words of welcome, but warns them against touching any of the 108 nickel crosses that adorn the walls of The Keep. As they walk its many passages, the Nazi captain remarks, ‘these walls are built backwards, almost as if it were designed not to keep something out, but to keep something in!’. Definitely weird. 

 Of the more well-known actors to star in The Keep, (Sir) Ian Mckellen is certainly the most bizarre, not least because we’re so used to seeing him as Magneto or Gandalf. He plays Dr Cuza, a Romanian scientist with an American accent brought to The Keep against his will to decipher a message written on the wall in a 500-year old dead language. Speaking about his fond memories of filming in a 2004 interview, he said he thought he had been ‘ill-cast’, going on to reveal that he had narrowly avoided a mental breakdown and had to be flown back to London from the filming location in a disused quarry in Wales. His character has a rare wasting disease that makes him appear thirty years older so that most of the time he travels about in a wheelchair looking sullen and uncomfortable.

 Mocking aside, however, The Keep is actually a very enjoyable film, and this is mostly, but not all, due to Tangerine Dream’s soundtrack. Nazis run in slow motion through the bright mist and the eerie synth begins to play like a distorted, less uplifting version of Chariots of Fire; these are the kind of moments that give the film its unexplainable power. The symbol of the nickel cross present throughout the film (and all over Broadway’s cinebar) combined with the somehow-beguiling special effects, makes The Keep look oddly attractive, giving it an 80s charm similar to Back to the Future or Lost Boys. It’s easy to see why it has such a cult following. The atmosphere is just brilliantly constructed – it’s very Lovecraftian and very surreal, so much so that even if the plot is at times incomprehensible, it doesn’t really matter.

 None of it matters: it’s just a lot of fun. It’s certainly not perfect, and not even that well-acted, but nowhere else can you get the simple joy of watching Nazis absorb mist through their eyes and then explode. Sadly The Keep has never been officially released on DVD or Blu-Ray in any country, so it may be hard to get hold of, but if ever you get a chance, prepare to face the evil that drives people out in the middle of a rainy night.

Original article: http://www.impactnottingham.com/2013/02/kino-klubb-presents-the-keep/