Things that Go Gab in the Night

Wise: Happy Halloween, Werth!  

Werth: Boo to you too, Wise.  Any plans for the year's most haunted evening?

Wise: I thought I might curl up at home with a bowl of candy corn and a double feature of scary movies.  

Werth: Vincent Price in House of Wax and Bette Davis in The Nanny?  

Wise: Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Katherine Heigl in 27 Dresses and The Ugly Truth.  

Werth: Heigl is a special kind of terrifying, but when I think of movies that scare me, only one movie is a guaranteed nightmare-causer, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980).

Wise: I hope that has nothing to do with my unfortunate, one-time comment about Noxzema and your T-zone. 

Werth: Based on the Stephen King novel, The Shining stars Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, a writer who packs up his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and young son Danny (Danny Lloyd) to be the caretaker of a closed-for-the-season hotel in the snowbound Colorado mountains. But the Torrance family is not alone in the Overlook Hotel, and soon the dark spirits that haunt the halls give a whole new meaning to cabin fever. 

The film is full of iconic horror images: REDRUM, Nicholson's face grinning through a hacked-open door, and those god-damned twins.

Wise: I assume you're not referring to the Olsens.

Werth: As with all of his films, Kubrick takes his time. The dread and fear of The Shining builds slowly with long tracking shots that follow Danny on his three-wheeler, holding us spellbound waiting for the horrors waiting around the next corner.

Kubrick uses the Overlook itself to put the audience on edge. The large ballrooms, hallways and rooms feel strangely claustrophobic, the emptiness of a normally bustling place causing an unease that leads to madness. And don't get me started on how uncomfortable the soundtrack makes me.

Wise: Let's not forget Jack O'Nicholson.

Werth: Let's not! Nicholson's angular eyebrows and wicked leer telegraph from the beginning that homicidal tendencies are not buried too deeply beneath his skin. While this makes his transformation less surprising, it is still, nonetheless, horrifying. Young Lloyd is ingenious, playing a kid's role that could be considered grounds for child abuse. 

But my favorite performance is from Duvall. Her bug-eyed awkwardness is perfect as she struggles to save herself and her son from the monster her husband has become—or perhaps always was. Behind the scenes footage shot by Kubrick's wife shows Kubrick assailing poor Duvall about her acting, turning her into a weeping, nerve-wracked mess. Whether Kubrick intended to shape Duvall's perforamnce or was just being an a-hole, in the end, Duvall, pardon the pun, shines.

Wise: Perhaps I'll postpone my Heigl-fest and delve into Francis Ford Coppola's foray into the blood-sucking undead, Bram Stoker's Dracula.  

Werth: Because Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula wouldn't fit on the marquees.

Wise: It was an attempt to bring the character closer to Stoker's original novel and away from the sinister elegance of Bela Lugosi's iconic version from the 1930's.  

Coppola begins the story in the 15th Century with a young and handsome Vlad Dracula (Gary Oldman) heading off to defend his castle and his bride from invading forces.  He defeats his enemies, although their treachery has convinced his young wife Elisabeta (Winona Ryder) that he has died in battle and she flings herself from the castle tower.

Werth: Tragically ending her budding medieval shoplifting career.

Wise: Heartbroken, the Count renounces his faith and swears allegiance to the darkness.  Skipping ahead 400 years, the film finds young lawyer Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) embarking on a business trip to Transylvania, but not before promising to marry his fiancée Mina (also Ryder) immediately upon his return.  

Imprisoning Harker with his three succubus brides, the Count journeys to London where he recognizes Mina as the image of his lost love and hatches a plan to seduce her into his undead existence.  


Werth: That's a lot of plot.   

Wise: And there's a lot more involving Hungarian nuns, a ruined Abby, gypsies, escaped wolves, a nickelodeon theater, grave robbing, stormy sea crossings, and stage coach chases.  

Werth: It's a grab bag of movie clichés.  

Wise: The movie itself is a mélange of styles and images: 19th Century paintings mixed with Byzantine design, classic Hollywood cinematography with 1960's cinema psychedelia, and capped off with a cast list that looks like credits on the best slacker film never made: Ryder, Reeves, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Richard E. Grant, Tom Waits, plus Anthony Hopkins as grizzled vampire hunter Van Helsing.  

Werth: Reality Bites Before Sunrise.  

Wise: Something like that.  It's a weird mix of compelling and preposterous, but filled with definite chills and a few blood-spurting scares.  


Werth: Sounds like someone will be sleeping with a stake and a garlic necklace until Halloween is over.  

Wise: Heck, I'll even pop Katherine Heigl in Killers into the DVD player to keep the undead away until next week's Film Gab.  

Let Them Eat Gab!

Werth: Wise! 

Wise: Werth! 

Werth: So, the Golden Globes were last weekend. Have you been making a dent in your awards season movie viewing?

Wise: I saw Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere. 

Werth: NY 1’s Neil Rosen would scold. 

Wise: I actually really liked it.  I think her movies can be something of an acquired taste, but once you fall for them, you fall for them hard.  One of her most interesting films is her version of Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst as the titular doomed queen.  

Werth: She’s not the first director you would think of for a period film... and you said ‘titular’.

Wise: Most of her work is very contemporary, sorting out the strange mores and odd habits of modern life, but she brings that same sensibility to Marie Antoinette.  The movie is a strange pop fantasy of a costume drama with an 80s New Wave and Post-Punk score and a cast that looks more like teen comedy than the usual line-up of Shakespeare-trained Brits either wolfing down the scenery or being so staid you can hardly feel a pulse.  

Marianne Faithful plays Marie Antoinette’s mother, the Empress of Austria; Molly Shannon and Shirley Henderson play gossipy ladies at court; Steve Coogan plays the Austrian ambassador who helps Marie negotiate French politics; Rip Torn plays randy Louis XV; and Jason Schwartzman plays Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette’s inept husband who inherits the throne of France long before he’s ready to be king. 

Werth: I kinda wished Louis got bit by a radioactive bug and then Marie made out with him while he hung upside down.

Wise: Sadly, that doesn’t happen, but they do have an interesting chemistry together playing young teenagers married almost the day they meet and without any idea how to deliver the much-wanted heir to the throne of France.  As the years pass, they develop an affectionate and very real relationship so the final scene of them being whisked away from Versailles and toward their eventual doom is quite affecting. 

Werth: Pauvre, pauvre Marie and Louis. 

Wise: There are a couple romantic scenes between Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen, a Swedish nobleman who leaves to fight in the American Revolution.  He’s played by Jamie Dornan, a former Calvin Klein model who unfortunately gets a little lost under his wig despite all the smoldering he attempts.  But the rest of the cast is great mostly because they are so different from the usual period line-up.  The costumes look very authentic to the time, but somehow they move a bit more freely and the actors seem enhanced by what they are wearing rather than buried by it.  

Werth: I liked the visual use of candy and, of course, cake throughout the film. Some shots made the costumes, shoes and sets look edible.

Wise: The film is a real visual delight, filled with sherbet-y colors and fanciful patterns, plus the production had unprecedented access to the real palace at Versailles which gives the film an opulence a Hollywood sett could never deliver.  But it’s not just a feature-length music video.Coppola favors long, silent takes while the camera trails the actors.  And even when there is dialogue, she uses it less for exposition, and more as part of the soundtrack.  There are occasional scenes where one actor speaks English while another replies in French.  

It might be disorienting at first, but I think Coppola is more interested in emoting a story than in telling it.  I don’t know that she’s a filmmaker for everyone, but I think if you’re able to succumb to her vision the rewards are immense.  

Werth: Jamie Dornan’s rewards are immense.

Wise: Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word “succumb.”  What’s your pick this week? 

Werth: If we’re going to talk about pre-Revolution France movies, I have to say my favorite, guillotines down, would be 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons.

Wise: I kind of had you pegged as a fan of Dirk Bogarde in A Tale of Two Cities. 

Werth: I prefer my ToTC Ronald Colman-style. From the moment I saw Dangerous Liaisons as a teen in my dear friend Leanne’s basement, I was spell-bound by the artful human manipulation depicted. Vincent Canby in the New York Times perfectly describes it as a "kind of lethal drawing-room comedy." Set in France in the 1780’s, Dangerous Liaisons features the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont—

Wise: Somebody stayed awake during French class.

Werth: —as they conspire to not only help each other get revenge on past lovers, but turn their clever ill deeds into a game where the reward will be a one-night only re-kindling of their old romance. However, the unexpected happens, and the Vicomte (played with eel-like charm by John Malkovich) violates his own love-worn philosophy by actually falling for the woman he has agreed to ruin. It becomes a sexual tug of war with powdered wigs, corsets and bustles and by the end of the movie, no one is left standing.

Wise: It’s like High Noon—but with bodices.

Werth: Christopher Hampton who wrote the screenplay (based on the play he adapted from the original Choderlos de Laclos novel) turns words into stylish, deadly-accurate weapons. The dialogue is as charming as it is vicious. And the cast is superb: Malkovich; Michelle Pfeiffer as his stunningly vulnerable mark; a young, lithe, sexually awakened Uma Thurman; bitchily ignorant Swoozie Kurtz; worldly 1950’s film veteran Mildred Natwick; and the grand dame overseeing this human chessboard is Glenn Close.

Wise: She doesn’t boil rabbits in this one.

Werth: She doesn’t have to. Her tongue seduces and flatters you in one instant, then emasculates you the next. Close’s ability to create a human device—a female calculator—is fully realized in Liaisons and her final scene is one of the most devastating breakdowns in cinema. As great as Jodie Foster was in The Accused that year, I still feel Close’s performance should have won her the Oscar®.

Wise: You neglected to mention the fine acting of Mr. Keanu Reeves.

Werth: I very much appreciated his ability to bring his character Ted into the 18th Century—a task he repeated in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula.

Wise: And now that we’ve circled back to the Coppola clan, I think it’s time to bid adieu.

Werth: Au revoir mes Film Gab lecteurs!

Wise: You really did stay awake in that French class.