Quarantine is a well-done, original entry into the zombie-film genre. It starts out a bit slowly, but picks up when the zombies enter the picture. Jennifer Carpenter of Showtime’s Dexter stars as late-night TV host Angela Vidal. Angela and her cameraman, Scott Percival (Steve Harris of TV’s The Practice), are filming an expose about the night shift of an LA fire station when a call comes through for a medical emergency at a nearby apartment complex.
Angela and Scott ride along, filming and narrating, and enter the apartment complex with firefighters Fletcher (Jonathon Schaech) and Jake (Jay Hernandez) and police officers Danny (Columbus Short) and James (Andrew Fiscella), already on scene. They are met by building manager Yuri (Rade Serbedzija), who takes them up to the apartment of Ms. Espinoza (Jeannie Epper), where there’ve been complaints of loud, unnerving shrieks and screams. When Espinoza doesn’t answer, Yuri lets them all in. The wavering, shifting light of Scott’s camera reveals glimpses of a corpse-pale, disheveled figure hiding in the shadows with head lowered, seemingly disoriented, panicked, delirious.
As the officers approach and try to subdue and reassure her, Ms. Espinoza suddenly screams like a savage and attacks, biting James in the onrush. The firefighters and other officer subdue her and haul James away, leaving Ms. Espinosa confined inside the apartment with Fletcher staying behind to keep her restrained. James is rushed downstairs to the building’s lobby but when Jake and Danny try to exit the building, they find the main entrance locked; for reasons that will shortly become more apparent, no one can get out. Fortunately, a veterinarian (Greg Germann) lives in the building and he provides improvisational treatment to the wounded officer while chaos reigns all around.
As sirens scream from all directions outside, some disembodied voice over a bullhorn instructs everyone inside to remain calm and wait patiently while steps are taken to get everyone safely out. James can’t wait though, and Jake and Danny immediately begin looking for another way out. As they do so, we hear a loud scream from above and Fletcher suddenly comes plummeting into the lobby floor from several floors above, bones crunching, blood splattering in a pool below his head. He’s alive but in even more desperate need of medical attention than James. Regardless, the lockdown remains in place and this time, as Angela and the others try to get out, they are threatened at gunpoint. No one will be let out under any circumstances.
The story rapidly unfolds from here, with the situation becoming more and more desperate as the people inside the building realize they’re not only imprisoned and forcibly quarantined, but also shut-in with something from out of a nightmare.
The entire film is shot from Scott’s perspective, using herky-jerky handycam footage, creating a frenetic, claustrophobic and confused feel. There is no mood or background music here, nor is any needed; Quarantine feels gritty and realistic, as if we’re watching real-time footage of a horrific event instead of a movie. Though there are a few inconsistencies, Quarantine is, overall, fairly scary and suspension of disbelief is easy.
The performances are solid too. I’ve read a few complaints about Carpenter--that she’s over the top. And while there’s some validity to that, with a film like this, overacting is far preferable to under acting. For the most part, I found her believable, even compelling at times, albeit occasionally grating. Director John Erick Dowdle keeps the action moving at an almost nauseating pace and, to his credit, does a respectable job of making us care about these characters before bringing them to horrific endings. And although the first few minutes are a bit slow, Dowdle creates a believable, real-world environment that unravels with surreal, nightmarish intensity inside that quarantined apartment complex.
Quarantine is creative and original, employing a nice twist on the zombie movie, with relatively little violence or blood for a horror film. While Quarantine is by no means a great film nor truly ground breaking, if you’re in the mood for a few scares, it’s not a bad choice.
Starring: Jennifer Carpenter, Steve Harris, Jay Hernandez, Columbus Short, Greg Germann, Johnathan Schaech
Directed by John Erick Dowdle
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Dolores Claiborne (1995)
Kathy Bates gives a career-defining performance as the title character in this big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. To paraphrase King himself regarding the plot: Dolores Claiborne is about a woman who gets away with one murder (her husband’s) only to fall under suspicion for another murder many years later she didn’t commit (her employer’s). While that’s an accurate synopsis, this film is about so much more.
Dolores Claiborne is an involving character study, an examination of family ties and of the ways childhood experiences mold us and sometimes haunt long after we think they’re buried. Most of all, this film reminds that some relationships, no matter how strained or dysfunctional, are so integral to identity, that they can never be completely left behind.
The film opens on an affluent-looking home along the shores of a coastal town in Maine. We hear a loud, dramatic commotion as the camera moves into the house and then see Dolores Claiborne standing over a fallen woman at the foot of a large staircase, rolling pin upraised as if to kill. The woman on the floor chides Dolores to ‘do it,’ but the mailman arrives first, interrupting.
The scene then shifts to a newspaper bureau in New York City where reporter Selena St. George (Jennifer Jason Leigh) receives the fax of a local newspaper story regarding Dolores Claiborne’s arrest for the attempted murder of her employer, Vera Donovan. There’s an anonymous handwritten note too, asking if the suspect is Selena’s mother. It is of course and Selena heads home for the first time in many years.
Upon Dolores and Selena’s reunion, we quickly see that the relationship is deeply tense, with most of the hostility coming from Selena. Selena drives the pair home from the police station and as they enter Dolores’ shack, their conversation awakens an old memory for Dolores. Here the film shifts into flashback mode--the first of many--and we meet a younger, happier Dolores and an adolescent Selena (Ellen Muth). We also meet Joe St. George (David Strathairn), Selena’s father and Dolores’ long-deceased husband. The three at first seem like a typical, lower-middle-class American family. But even in this early flashback, we sense more to the family dynamic than meets the eye; there is something dark, even sinister lurking beneath the apparent normalcy. Much darker.
From that first flashback, the film alternates between present day and flashbacks to Selena’s childhood and to Dolores and Joe’s marriage. Each flashback scrapes away a little more of the seeming normalcy, revealing secrets so terrible that adult Selena has repressed the worst memories from that time. In their place Selena has substituted rage, bitterness and blame towards her mother. There’s no proof (Dolores was never charged in Joe’s death), but Selena knows Dolores murdered Joe and deeply resents it. And indeed, Dolores did in fact murder Joe but had good reason. Very good reason. It is those reasons that Selena has repressed, those reasons she must remember and come to terms with to make peace with Dolores and, most importantly, with herself.
Dolores Claiborne unfolds like a finely structured novel, with the present-day scenes presented in subdued, monochrome tints and the flashbacks presented in rich, colorful pastels. For me, this color scheme was a clever symbol, representing the ideal, perfect family on the one hand and the souring of those delusions, the loss of innocence on the other.
Although the film boasts strong performances all around, the rapport between Bates and Leigh is the centerpiece. Their relationship is intense and complicated without devolving into melodrama. There is never any doubt of the love between these women nor of the deep pain. Almost as compelling is the relationship between Dolores and Joe. Stripped of his facades, Joe is an abusive, cowardly monster. I imagine any woman who’s ever suffered through an abusive relationship might feel like cheering during the film’s final confrontation between Joe and Dolores, when Joe gets his comeuppance. Strathairn’s portrayal is not only good but, in a way, almost admirable; it couldn’t have been easy to portray such a fiend.
The relationship between Vera Donovan (Judy Parfitt) and Dolores is also quite compelling. Vera is a rich old widow who’s employed Dolores as her housekeeper and personal assistant for many, many years. Though the pairs’ relationship is antagonistic on the surface, Vera chooses Dolores as her caregiver in the final days of life; we eventually learn that the film's opening scene was in fact Vera's attempt at euthanasia and at provoking Dolores to help. We also learn in one of the flashbacks that it is Vera who first plants the idea of murder into Dolores’ mind as a solution for Joe.
Christopher Plummer plays local detective John Mackey, a man who, like Selena, knows Dolores murdered Joe but is haunted by the fact he couldn’t prove it. He sees Dolores’ current impending murder charge as a chance for redemption, a chance to finally nail her and bring his career to a successful close.
Bates holds everything together. She breathes such life into Dolores, that she could easily be someone the audience knows. The pacing may be a bit slow for some, but I greatly appreciated director Taylor Hackford's measured approach. If you enjoy Stephen King adaptations or good, character-centered drama in general, Dolores Claiborne is a solid choice. Highly recommended.
Starring: Cathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, David Strathairn, Judy Parfitt
Directed by Taylor Hackford
Dolores Claiborne is an involving character study, an examination of family ties and of the ways childhood experiences mold us and sometimes haunt long after we think they’re buried. Most of all, this film reminds that some relationships, no matter how strained or dysfunctional, are so integral to identity, that they can never be completely left behind.
The film opens on an affluent-looking home along the shores of a coastal town in Maine. We hear a loud, dramatic commotion as the camera moves into the house and then see Dolores Claiborne standing over a fallen woman at the foot of a large staircase, rolling pin upraised as if to kill. The woman on the floor chides Dolores to ‘do it,’ but the mailman arrives first, interrupting.
The scene then shifts to a newspaper bureau in New York City where reporter Selena St. George (Jennifer Jason Leigh) receives the fax of a local newspaper story regarding Dolores Claiborne’s arrest for the attempted murder of her employer, Vera Donovan. There’s an anonymous handwritten note too, asking if the suspect is Selena’s mother. It is of course and Selena heads home for the first time in many years.
Upon Dolores and Selena’s reunion, we quickly see that the relationship is deeply tense, with most of the hostility coming from Selena. Selena drives the pair home from the police station and as they enter Dolores’ shack, their conversation awakens an old memory for Dolores. Here the film shifts into flashback mode--the first of many--and we meet a younger, happier Dolores and an adolescent Selena (Ellen Muth). We also meet Joe St. George (David Strathairn), Selena’s father and Dolores’ long-deceased husband. The three at first seem like a typical, lower-middle-class American family. But even in this early flashback, we sense more to the family dynamic than meets the eye; there is something dark, even sinister lurking beneath the apparent normalcy. Much darker.
From that first flashback, the film alternates between present day and flashbacks to Selena’s childhood and to Dolores and Joe’s marriage. Each flashback scrapes away a little more of the seeming normalcy, revealing secrets so terrible that adult Selena has repressed the worst memories from that time. In their place Selena has substituted rage, bitterness and blame towards her mother. There’s no proof (Dolores was never charged in Joe’s death), but Selena knows Dolores murdered Joe and deeply resents it. And indeed, Dolores did in fact murder Joe but had good reason. Very good reason. It is those reasons that Selena has repressed, those reasons she must remember and come to terms with to make peace with Dolores and, most importantly, with herself.
Dolores Claiborne unfolds like a finely structured novel, with the present-day scenes presented in subdued, monochrome tints and the flashbacks presented in rich, colorful pastels. For me, this color scheme was a clever symbol, representing the ideal, perfect family on the one hand and the souring of those delusions, the loss of innocence on the other.
Although the film boasts strong performances all around, the rapport between Bates and Leigh is the centerpiece. Their relationship is intense and complicated without devolving into melodrama. There is never any doubt of the love between these women nor of the deep pain. Almost as compelling is the relationship between Dolores and Joe. Stripped of his facades, Joe is an abusive, cowardly monster. I imagine any woman who’s ever suffered through an abusive relationship might feel like cheering during the film’s final confrontation between Joe and Dolores, when Joe gets his comeuppance. Strathairn’s portrayal is not only good but, in a way, almost admirable; it couldn’t have been easy to portray such a fiend.
The relationship between Vera Donovan (Judy Parfitt) and Dolores is also quite compelling. Vera is a rich old widow who’s employed Dolores as her housekeeper and personal assistant for many, many years. Though the pairs’ relationship is antagonistic on the surface, Vera chooses Dolores as her caregiver in the final days of life; we eventually learn that the film's opening scene was in fact Vera's attempt at euthanasia and at provoking Dolores to help. We also learn in one of the flashbacks that it is Vera who first plants the idea of murder into Dolores’ mind as a solution for Joe.
Christopher Plummer plays local detective John Mackey, a man who, like Selena, knows Dolores murdered Joe but is haunted by the fact he couldn’t prove it. He sees Dolores’ current impending murder charge as a chance for redemption, a chance to finally nail her and bring his career to a successful close.
Bates holds everything together. She breathes such life into Dolores, that she could easily be someone the audience knows. The pacing may be a bit slow for some, but I greatly appreciated director Taylor Hackford's measured approach. If you enjoy Stephen King adaptations or good, character-centered drama in general, Dolores Claiborne is a solid choice. Highly recommended.
Starring: Cathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, David Strathairn, Judy Parfitt
Directed by Taylor Hackford
Friday, September 4, 2009
Sherlock Holmes sequel: No mystery
From the looks of its trailer (embedded below), the new Sherlock Holmes movie looks promising (though, admittedly, I’ve never been much of a Guy Ritchie fan). But now comes the news that Warner Bros is already working on a sequel.
The Risky Biz Blog reports that three months ahead of the film’s American release, the studio is far enough along in development to be considering a writing team. According to The Biz story, they’re considering Kieran and Michele Mulroney, who wrote the recent film Paper Man” and also scripted “Justice League: Mortal.”
Robert Downey Jr., of course, is a hot draw at the moment (and also one of my personal favorites) and I’m sure this film will make a ton of cash. It might even set some Christmas Day opening records.
Undoubtedly, this move represents a great deal of faith on Warners’ part, but doesn’t it also smell of excess? This is the very issue so many have complained about regarding Hollywood in the last few years: the obsession with the bottom line, with churning out quantity over quality.
Lure a big name, create a franchise around it, make tons of money and then rush out a sequel (or sequels). Perhaps I’m a bit pessimistic here; there have been recent exceptions to this rule (Superman Returns comes to mind), but in Hollywood, greed usually wins the day.
No matter how much we might like to forget when we plop ourselves down in that darkened theater, Hollywood is a business, first and foremost. And that, is elementary.
Ghost Rider Sequel: Nic Cage's head burns again
According to a recent Variety Story, Columbia Pictures has begun serious work on a sequel to the 2007 Nicolas Cage superhero film Ghost Rider.
This may be good news for hardcore Nicolas Cage fans, but for anyone who saw the original Ghost Rider and hated it (and most people did), it’s at best, yawn inducing; at worst, it’s nausea inducing.
On the upside, this time around Columbia is attempting to hire writer David S. Goyer. Fans of the superhero genre may actually get excited considering Goyer’s resume, which includes The Dark Knight and Batman Begins. Apparently, Goyer worked on a Ghost Rider script years ago and then abandoned the project for various reasons (these things happen nonstop in Hollywood). Even more interesting, according to this story by website Hit Fix, Nicolas Cage recently hinted that the script may revolve around the ghost rider being hired by the Vatican to do its dirty work.
I saw the original film and was duly unimpressed. Moreover, Nicolas Cage isn’t an actor I get particularly excited over; but his name on the marquee doesn’t constitute an automatic pass for me either (he has done a couple of outstanding films). Since I enjoy a good superhero movie as much as the next fanboy, here’s to hoping a new Ghost Rider film is The Dark Knight of scull-burning, motorcycle-riding, chain-wielding superhero pics.
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