Tag Archives: Jason Isaacs

Capsules

CAPSULE DOUBLE FEATURE: HOTEL (2001) & HOTEL (2004)

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There’s something inherently weird about hotels. After all, they are a temporary domicile, a place you call home for a limited time, and you share the experience with dozens of other people you will never know. (I’ve stayed on more than one occasion at a chain dubbing itself “Home 2,” like it’s the sequel to the much-loved original.) It might explain why we see so many films about them on this site, from hotels that house transient mental patients to hotels stored in the private parts of ancient vampires to hotels where couples meet again and again to decrepit hotels to hotels on the edge of the apocalypse and beyond. So maybe it shouldn’t be too surprising to find two different films in our suggestion box that are content to leave the title at Hotel. Arguably, that alone should tell you it’s about to get strange up in here.

Notably, this pair of films offers us differing points of view: one largely concerning the guests, the other centered on a member of the staff.

HOTEL (2001)

DIRECTED BY: Mike Figgis

FEATURING: Saffron Burrows, , , , , , Burt Reynolds, , David Schwimmer, Mark Strong

Still from Hotel (2001)

PLOT: A film company attempts to shoot a guerilla-style version of “The Duchess of Malfi” while based in a hotel that practices cannibalistic vampirism.

COMMENTS: This hotel variant is a directorial showcase. Figgis indulges all the techniques at his disposal: handheld cameras shooting hyper-saturated video, improvised dialogue, and the same quad-split screen storytelling that he indulged in Timecode. Some have suggested (and a line of dialogue insinuates) that he’s actually playing with Dogme 95 techniques, although his production violates most of Dogme’s rules. What he really seems to be doing is utilizing the same let’s-film-and-see-what-happens philosophy that he’s depicting. So it’s improvised. Real. Which is potentially interesting, especially when his actors are up to the challenge. But it can be equally deadening if they’re not. Sometimes there’s a payoff, like Burt Reynolds’ inexplicable turn as the director of a flamenco troupe, yes-anding his way through a scenario that would not seem to call for him at all. But you’re as likely to get a scene like Salma Hayek and Lucy Liu screaming at each other. Is that really the most interesting thing they could think of to do? It’s weak improv, which makes it weak cinema.

The all-star cast is a huge part of the appeal. It ends up playing like one of those live theatrical experiences where you get a different experience based upon which actors you choose to follow. The real-world examples of this can result in something classy or trashy, and much the same is true here. Consider Rhys Ifans’ gleefully confident turn as a power-mad director, a performance which borders on parody but is the liveliest thing in the film, until he is curiously sidelined before the halfway mark. His counterpoint is David Schwimmer’s Continue reading CAPSULE DOUBLE FEATURE: HOTEL (2001) & HOTEL (2004) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: SKELETONS (2010)

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DIRECTED BY: Nick Whitfield

FEATURING: Ed Gaughan, Andrew Buckley, Tuppence Middleton, Paprika Steen, 

PLOT: Two psychic investigators—memory extractors who literally find “skeletons in the closet”—investigate a missing person case at the request of an eccentric family.

Still from Skeletons (2010)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Skeletons is sort of a whimsical corporate memory scenario, with a dash of humor, on an obvious low budget. Its ambition makes you want to root for it, but the end result is so minor that it ultimately doesn’t leave a lasting impression.

COMMENTS: Naturally gifted but troubled Davis and big-boned Bennett, the more stable of the team, are a pair of—psychic exorcists? Through a combination of technology and mental gymnastics, they are able to enter into people’s memories (entering via their home closets) and discover their secrets. The rules to this procedure are never clearly laid out. We stumble upon certain concepts in the course of the investigation, which is generally a good way to introduce information while keeping up the suspense, but here the technique is sometimes clumsy. (Why the necessity to build a “bypass” around the family’s homestead after the “triangulation fails,” except to buy the script more time to explore a parallel plot development?) At other times, the procedure’s dodgy mechanics lead to amusingly absurd results: “glow chase” too often, and you might end up “going Bulgarian.” One of the strangest things about the premise, which was never explained to my satisfaction, is who exactly the market is for these services. It appears to be couples who are afraid to tell each other their deepest secrets and require professional interventions, New Age dilettantes, and skeptics who end up embarrassed by the revelations; not much of a customer base, in my opinion. Although it’s presented as an unusual assignment, the idea of the two being sent on a missing persons case makes more sense—perhaps their objective perspective will allow them to find a clue in someone’s memory that person would miss. In fact, the movie might work best as the pilot episode for a weekly psychic mystery series that never happened.

Gaughan and Butler, veterans of British television, show good comic timing and chemistry. Each shows a mixture of loyalty to, and exasperation with, the other that makes their long-term partnership believable. They spend their long walks (for budgetary reasons, I guess, no one in their organization owns a car) discussing whether Rasputin was morally admirable. Bennet is concerned about Gaughan’s lifestyle and covers for him, but that doesn’t stop the pair from bickering on the job. The supporting characters do their jobs well: Paprika Steen as the quirky possible widow/potential love interest, Jason Isaacs as the bullying boss. The oddly-named Tuppence Middleton is the weakest link, if only because her suspiciously mute character often plays like more of a plot device than an organic presence. The comedy works, at least in spurts, at its funniest when Gaughan reads off his bureaucratic checklist (“have you ever seen a bear?”) and makes sure clients dot their i’s when signing forms (“yeah, but can you verbally confirm it?”) All in all, Skeletons is an amiable, reasonably witty indie that can’t quite figure out how to efficiently get its multitude of ideas across to the audience, resulting in a near-miss at cult status.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an intriguing, well-acted, quietly funny film that, though it is outright weird most of the time and certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste, has a quirky charm and emotional heart all its own.”–Owen Van Spall, Eye for Film (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by “D-2.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: A CURE FOR WELLNESS (2017)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , , Harry Groener

PLOT: A young executive goes to a remote spa planning to recover his company’s CEO, who appears to have gone insane and joined a wellness cult; circumstances lead him to become a patient as he investigates the place and learns its dark secrets.

Still from A Cure for Wellness (2017)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Although it’s uneven to the point of frustration, A Cure for Wellness could be the weirdest Hollywood-backed movie of the year, making it one we need to consider. Gore Verbinski blew all the Hollywood goodwill he earned from directing the Pirates of the Caribbean series on this majestic vanity, so we are unlike to see anything this strange in cineplexes for a while.

COMMENTS: A Cure for Wellness is a spin on “Dracula”‘s basic plot. Dane DeHaan is Lockhart, the Jonathan Harker character, sent to fetch the Reinfield character (Harry Groener as CEO Pembroke) from the castle (now a sanitarium on a Swiss mountaintop) run by a mysterious aristocrat (now hospital director Volmer, a name that sounds like it could have come out of an unpublished Bram Stoker novella). The villagers living at the base of the mountain despise the residents of the castle—er, spa—-and there are even legends about ancient evils perpetrated by a degenerate Baron on the site now occupied by the sanitarium. There’s a Mina Harker-ish love interest (Mia Goth’s waify Hannah, enticing both Lockhart and Volmer). The bulk of the film has Lockhart imprisoned and convalescing, under friendly pretenses, in the demonic lair, investigating his surroundings and his host and making terrifying discoveries (Harker’s scenes inside the vampire’s castle were always the best part of “Dracula”). Water takes the place of blood as a symbol of the leeched life-force.

It’s a sturdy and well-tested horror structure, disguised just enough by the modern setting. Unfortunately, it does not completely pay off. Gore Verbinski has a chance to update the dusty old tale with new satirical furnishings: digs at the modern corporate structure and the wellness movement. The targets are set up, but not knocked down. Lockhart has a rich psychological backstory explaining how he became such a selfishly driven bastard, but while flashbacks suggest this history might hold a key to the story’s deeper meaning, it turns out to be either window dressing or a red herring. A Cure for Wellness can’t decide if it wants to be a straight horror story, a twisty psychological thriller, or a pure Surrealist dream movie. It doesn’t commit to any one of these genres, and in the end it settles for what may be the least interesting possible compromise between the trio of possibilities. (A movie’s not knowing what it wants to be is no bar to weirdness, but in this case I suspect the rough edges are more a result of uncertain waffling than inspired dementia).

When Lockhart first meets Pembroke, he has been tracking him through the spa’s labyrinthine steam room. He enters a room and finds that the exit has disappeared; impossibly, he’s now trapped inside four walls, filling up with steam. Turning in circles, he suddenly spies a doorway in one of the walls; a stag walks past it. He exits the chamber where he was trapped and finds the CEO sitting on a bench, sweating. Immediately, he forgets the eerie events of just a minute ago and starts interrogating his quarry about why he left the corporate boardroom. He doesn’t waste time asking why wild animals are roaming the halls; his experiences are immediately forgotten. That sort of thing suggests either sloppy screenwriting, or an “it’s all a dream” interpretation (a reading the script supports by repeatedly referring to a dreaming ballerina figurine crafted by Lockhart’s mom). If Wellness means to be a dream film like that more famous Surrealist institution down the road, The Hourglass Sanatorium, however, it shouldn’t take its silly conclusion so darn seriously.

It seems more likely that the script simply incorporates fuzzy possibilities of hallucinations into the story as a way to have its cake and eat it to. Fortunately, the cake is good–if, at two-and-a-half hours, there’s a little too much of it. Verbinski fixates on the eel as a horror image. They show up in the strangest places, and elicit delicious chills almost every time. The sanitarium is a winning setting, and slow camera pans through its off-white halls provide effective suspense. Also, I would advise not going to the dentist for at least a week after seeing this film. The whole thing may not add up to much, but the ian intensity of individual scenes is undeniable. I was totally enthralled by Wellness for the first hour or so, before it’s structure began to crumble into repetitive noodling. But it’s rare to see this much money thrown at the screen to evoke such elaborate weirdness—so I would urge readers to get out and see it on the big screen during its sure-to-be-short run.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…about as weird as modern Hollywood movies get… Simply put, nothing stranger is likely to make it to multiplexes any time soon. Savor the oddness.”–A.A.Dowd, The A.V. Club (contemporaneous)