Aint Them Bodies Saints ****

Short Take: After a robbery gone wrong, a man takes the rap for shooting a cop and is robbed of a life of with the woman he loves.

Reel Take: David Lowery’s Aint Them Bodies Saints is tailor made for the art house circuit. The film is deeply atmospheric, beautifully photographed, somewhat abstract yet accessible. It was developed at the Sundance Institute, but it is likely to get Lowery noticed far beyond the indie film scene.

Set somewhere in Texas sometime in the 1970s, Billy Muldoon (Casey Affleck) and his wife Ruth (Rooney Mara) are a couple of small town thieves. The film opens with a soft focused sun-drenched field. They are having a lovers quarrel. Ruth tells Billy she doesn’t want to go to jail. In the next breath she tells him she thinks she’s pregnant. So ends the pretty prelude.

Soon a botched robbery ends in a shootout. A cohort in the crime is fatally wounded and Ruth shoots a sheriff’s deputy. Billy takes the rap for shooting the officer and Ruth gives birth to a beautiful baby girl.

Fast forward four years, Ruth is living a quiet life with Sylvie. She is well protected and provided for their deceased cohort’s father (and apparent surrogate father to Ruth and Billy), an enigmatic town shopkeeper named Skerrit, richly played by Keith Carradine. Billy writes Ruth love letters, promising to return to her and their daughter. Meanwhile, the cop who was shot has takes quite a shine to Ruth.

It’s obvious right from the start that this is a story that isn’t going to have a happy ending, but that’s not to say it doesn’t end well. There is a melancholy cast over the whole film and at times it’s even palpably sad. At first blush it’s a very simple story, but the layers of each character make it wonderfully absorbing.

Billy’s single-minded devotion to and love for Ruth is beautiful and tragic, as his blind faith that he will live happily ever after with Ruth and his daughter. Affleck’s slightly peculiar voice and cadence seem perfect for Billy and he seems to revel in vehicles like Saints. Mara’s intensely focused performance in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was earnest and solid, but here we get to see a different side of Mara’s range and it works.

Ben Foster gives a refreshingly normal performance as the officer who fancies Ruth. Nate Parker as Sweetie, Billy’s only ally, gives a reserved performance with a quiet strength. But the person who gives the best and most intriguing performance (IMHO) is Carradine. He gives away just enough to peak your curiosity but leaves you wondering. One gets the feeling Lowery didn’t have to say much to Carradine, just let him deliver.

Lowery’s direction and vision is wonderfully nuanced and somehow timeless. He has drawn understandable comparisons to Terrence Malick, especially The Badlands. Like Malick’s work, Saints has a poetic quality to it, a tone poem of sorts, complete with a Texas twang. Saints is strangely abstract in the sense that there’s a lot of background story of which we know nothing.

I have since learned that Lowery created a graphic novel prequel. I have also since learned that the film’s curious title doesn’t actually mean anything; guess it just sounds good, and it does somehow suit it.

Rated R for some violence.
Review by Michelle Keenan

Insidious: Chapter 2 ****

Short Take: Follow up to the 2010 surprise hit Insidious is even more accomplished than its predecessor although the convoluted plot threads are sometimes hard to follow.

Reel Take: I cannot believe that the James Wan who gave us the first Saw movie is the same James Wan who directed Insidious, The Conjuring, and now Insidious: Chapter 2. It just goes to show that it is possible to adapt your style to something different and, in the case of these films, something better. To be fair the first Saw is a lot better than those that followed it but it’s a far cry from what the Malaysian born director is turning out now.

Insidious: Chapter 2 and its two predecessors show that it is still possible to terrify an audience by not showing them everything. I prefer this approach because it’s more about the craft of filmmaking where you have to use different elements such as lighting, sound, and editing to produce the desired results. It also leaves the audience anticipating more rather than leaving them with nowhere to go once you’ve shown them everything.

For those of you who saw Insidious, this picks up where that one left off and answers the questions raised by the ending. If you haven’t seen the first one, here’s a brief summary. The Lambert family’s oldest son inexplicably lapses into a coma. Paranormal investigators are called in and discover that the boy can astral project himself into a spirit region called “The Further” Once there he is subjected to demonic forces but eventually finds his way back. Once back however, it appears that the father has issues.

Chapter2 goes into the father’s story which is a good bit more complicated and at times hard to follow. When he was younger the same thing happened to him but to a much deeper extent. As the investigators from the first film delve into his past, it unlocks an incredibly evil presence which is growing in strength and starting to control the events of all involved. This requires a return trip to “The Further” which results in several horrific discoveries and a life and death encounter.

To say any more would give too much away so I’ll stop here but the film is so well crafted that it would still be effective on repeat viewings even when you know what’s coming. In fact repeat viewings may be necessary to sort it all out. If the movie has a weakness it’s that there’s a little too much plot here to digest at one time. In fact the tie-in with the first film is so well integrated that you feel it was all one story that had to be turned into two films.

Everyone is back from the first film. In addition to co-writer/director Wan and co-writer/actor Leigh Whannell, there’s the cast of Lambert family members Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey, and Ty Simpkins as well as investigators Steve Coulter, Angus Sampson, and surprisingly Lin Shaye.

Although I concede that Chapter 2 is the better film, I prefer the first installment as it’s easier to follow. Actually I can’t wait for the home video release so that I can watch both films back to back.

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of terror and violence, and thematic elements.
Review by Chip Kaufmann

Riddick ***

Short Take: The third installment of Vin Diesel’s The Chronicles of Riddick series lacks the mainstream ability of the sequel and the fighting trim of the original.

Reel Take: 2000’s Pitch Black, which introduced the Richard B. Riddick character, was basically a ripoff of 1979’s Alien which was itself a ripoff of 1958’s It, The Terror From Beyond Space. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s done all the time in the movie business. As I said last month, it’s not what you do but what you do with it that counts.

Pitch Black was an effective, modestly budgeted sci-fi thriller that combined aspects of the “be afraid of the dark” school of filmmaking with gruesome alien creatures that give you good reason to be. A spaceship carrying dangerous criminal Riddick (Vin Diesel) crashes on an alien planet where he escapes but when the ship and its crew are attacked, he returns to help them. Riddick’s signature ability is that he has Village of the Damned eyes that glow and he can see everything even when it’s pitch black outside (hence the title).

The sequel called The Chronicles of Riddick (which is now the name for the franchise) appeared in 2004 and was a big budgeted affair with lots of CGI and even Dame Judi Dench in a small role. In this installment Riddick is taken to a planet where he leads a rebellion that overthrows the tyrant ruler whereupon he is named the new ruler in his place. Vast and ambitious compared to the first film, Chronicles lost millions.

Nine years later, and with the recent successes of the Fast & Furious sequels behind him, Diesel is back with a third installment because he likes the Riddick character. He even mortgaged his house to help fund the $38 million dollar budget. While more than the first one, that’s 2/3 less than the sequel and a small budget for this type of film which writer-director David Twohy (who did the first two) makes the most of.

There’s really no reason for this movie except as a vanity project for Diesel. In fact for most of its 2 hour running time Riddick seems like a remake of the first film. Of course that was 13 years ago and today’s media saturated moviegoers have short attention spans but still…

Plot summary: Left for dead on an alien planet, Riddick develops a plan to get bounty hunters and their spaceships there so he can hijack them. Once the ships arrive they’re attacked by alien creatures and everyone must fight to stay alive. Sound familiar?

I didn’t hate Riddick but after awhile I felt like saying “and your point is?” two hours of battling CGI creatures against a Dune like background narrated in faux film noir style just didn’t do it for me but if you like the character it could be a different story. Oh, and for the record, the part of the film with Riddick and his alien “dog” didn’t work for me either. Can you say Castaway?

Rated R for strong violence, language, and some sexual content
Review by Chip Kaufmann

Still Mine ****1/2

Short Take: A salty, independent 80-something year old man sets out to build a suitable house for his bride of 61 years as dementia begins to threaten the life they’ve known.

Reel Take: Still Mine is a wonderful little film that will certainly appeal to the older end of the art house cinema crowd. Based on a true story, James Cromwell plays Craig Morrison, a salty octogenerarian, who battled Canadian bureaucracy while building a new and safer house for his bride of sixty-one years.

Craig and Irene (Genevieve Bujold) are hardy self sufficient New Brunswick stock (I guess the equivalent good old Yankee stock in this country). They have a farm and small sawmill. It’s made quite clear early on that they are out of step with the modern world. Craig is old school and doesn’t have any use for the petty coddling and micromanaging of current society.

When Irene begins exhibiting signs of dementia (or Alzheimer’s as the case may be), Craig decides to build a new one-story home on their property where they’ll be able to live out their years. At 85 years of age he begins selecting trees, milling the lumber, and building a fine crafted home. The problem is he doesn’t have plans, permits or rubberstamped lumber. He doesn’t start out looking to break the law, but when the red tape gets out and Irene grows worse, he becomes defiant.

Still Mine is meant to be a moving and uplifting movie, the kind that could easily drift into schmaltzy territory. Fortunately for us it was not made for the Hallmark Channel. Equally fortunate however is that Canadian writer/director Michael McGowan filmmaker didn’t make another Amour (Michael Haneke’s deeply depressing but critically praised film from last year). Still Mine is uplifting but bittersweet at the same time.

Craig’s devotion to Irene is beautiful. His resolve to protect their way of life and care for her is Herculean. That they are still in love with each other is never in doubt, but but their relationship isn’t presented as perfect, nor placed on a pedestal.

The scenes that worked best for me were the ones that depict a refreshing real couple. Now in the twilight of their years, having spent a lifetime with one another, they’ve loved and they’ve fought, they’ve succeeded and struggled. We empathize for both of them.

James Cromwell is a tour de force as the stoic Craig Morrison. Genevieve Bujold is luminous and brings playful light to the film. Their chemistry palpable and together they elevate this film to a better level.

The film sort of glosses over the ugly side of dementia, but like a suspenseful thriller versus a gory horror film, one doesn’t have show it all, merely alluding to it can be more powerful and certainly more dignified. Still Mine can be summed up in three words – dignity, determination and love.

PG-13 for some thematic elements and some brief sensuality/partial nudity
Review by Michelle Keenan

The Family *

Short Take: A violent and repulsive film that wastes the talents of its actors and can’t decide whether it’s a wants to be a campy, quirky dark comedy or an unrepentant Mafioso blood bath.

Reel Take: Going in to The Family I expected to be entertained, if nothing else. I did not expect to hate it – and Boy Howdy did I! The Family is one of the singularly worst movies I’ve ever had the displeasure of sitting through. I wanted my money back and I didn’t even pay to see it. If you get one thing out of this month’s issue, it’s this – The Family is not worth your time.

Rotten Tomatoes says is supposed to be an off-beat action-comedy. This indicates that ultimately the film will be funny. The Family is very deliberately intended to be an ‘off-beat’ [dark] comedy. However its scattered comic moments are lost to a body county the size of the population of Normandy. The whole thing is ill-conceived, ugly and simply just not funny.

A former mobster-turned-informant (Robert De Niro) and his family are sent to France on the witness relocation program. Instead of being grateful that Daddy got a get-out-of-jail free card for being a snitch, they are unappreciative and hate France. This actually could have been funny, but it’s not.

They play off rather out-moded, stereo-typical uppity French jokes, which actually only serve to make them look like ugly Americans. Really, the only awful people in France seem to be the Manzoni’s. Offend one of them or displease them in any way and they’ll kill you or beat you to a pulp. Again, this is supposed to be funny, but it’s not.

Assigned to protect them, in what’s got to be the worst role of his career is Tommy Lee Jones. While Jones’s character tries to keep the whole family from destroying Normandy and blowing their cover, the mob boss Giovanni sent up the river learns their location and sends his hit men after them. Meanwhile there’s a weird subplot involving underage sex, attempted rape and suicide. Don’t ask…

Robert De Niro does his best to make the most of the material, but it’s a lost cause. Michelle Pfeiffer also tries her darnedest to steady the sinking ship, but to no avail. The less we say to even acknowledge that Jones is in the movie the better. Great actors, great potential, totally shot to hell. Maybe Tarantino could have pulled it off, but writer-director Luc Besson did not.

The Family should be buried in cement shoes.

Rated R for violence, language and brief sexuality.
Review by Michelle Keenan