STF Films

If nothing else, Saw is proof that you can make a professional-looking film without a lot of money. Purportedly shot for a paltry $1 million, it nonetheless features a potent atmosphere, a polished sense of confidence, and a marquee of modest stars in Cary Elwes, Monica Potter, and Danny Glover. It’s a testament to solid craftsmanship and a promising start for first-time director James Wan. Unfortunately, a big part of that trick also proves Saw’s undoing. For the image and tone it so efficiently creates is nevertheless fairly shopworn, and though it has its share of unsettling moments, it’s not nearly as scary as it wants to be.

Certainly, Saw owes a great deal to Seven and similar works… perhaps too much. It succeeds in recreating the grungy, fluorescent-lit nihilism of David Fincher’s seminal thriller, and posits a scenario whose essence, at least, has some punch. But despite that, and despite yeoman efforts by Wan and his team, it never really finds its legs. Too many logical gaps rear their ugly heads; too much of the plot is half-baked and awkward. And while the suspense sometimes works, it can’t help but feel like leftovers from earlier, better movies.

The centerpiece is yet another serial killer — this one named “Jigsaw” — with a dark agenda and the ability to outsmart anyone who dares to challenge him. He’s indicative of the film’s mixed bag; though part of an increasingly insufferable cliché, he’s had more energy and imagination invested in him than most. His specialty is placing his victims in horrifying circumstances, and then seeing how far they will go to keep themselves alive. The idea is to teach them how precious life is, though considering his body count, the lesson isn’t taking very well. Nonetheless, there’s a kind of eerie resonance to his methodology, which at times shows real imagination. Wan works hard to make the most of it, reveling in the ghoulish details of Jigsaw’s traps and — during Saw’s best moments — forcing us to contemplate what we would do under such circumstances.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening, one of the most harrowing parts of the film. In a filthy, underground bathroom, two men awaken to find themselves chained to the pipes. The feckless Adam (screenwriter Leigh Whannell) is jittery and on edge while the quieter Dr. Gordon (Elwes) is calm enough to start thinking of ways out. A dead man lies between them, having apparently shot himself in the head; the revolver is still clutched in his hand. A message from Jigsaw informs them that Dr. Gordon has eight hours to kill Adam; if he doesn’t, then both men will die, along with Dr. Gordon’s family. They each have a hacksaw, which isn’t strong enough to cut their chains, but will carve through flesh and bone quite nicely.

The setup plays into the film’s strengths, creating an atmosphere of confusion and paranoia with only a few ground rules — set by a madman — to which the audience can cling. More importantly, it allows its heroes to genuinely think their way through their dilemma, seeking creative solutions only to find the killer two steps ahead of them. The process is eerie and unsettling and Wan clearly has a knack for such mind games, resulting in several intense, horrifying patches where Saw really hits its stride.

Unfortunately, that promise never quite reaches fruition. The opening scene eventually gives way to an unwieldy flashback narrative, in which we trace the path of Jigsaw’s project and the police hunt for him (which centers around a then-free Dr. Gordon). The back-and-forth between these precursor segments and the chained men in the bathroom is unduly intrusive, and achieves more in piecemeal than it does as a unified whole. When things start to labor, Saw falls back on flat-out clichés, pushing well-worn buttons when it should be finding new ways to surprise us. Internal logic starts to suffer as well, and the “wait a minute, why can he just…?” questions pile up faster than the film can compensate for them. Wan tries to gloss it over with the usual cocktail of shocks and twists; but despite a gallant effort, they lack the punch to silence our doubts. An aimless subplot involving Glover’s unhinged police detective further compounds matters, leaving Saw with a final grasp achingly short of its reach.

Were it merely a routine thriller, such dashed hopes would be expected, but Saw’s disappointments cut deeper because the filmmakers clearly have more on their minds. This is not a film that wants to settle for second-rate status. It tries hard, it works overtime, and at times, you can see quite clearly where it wants to go. But its limitations prove too cumbersome, and though occasionally frightening, it never musters the juice to clear its hurdles. Saw shows all the ambitions of a great thriller — give Wan and his crew some time and they’ll probably make one — but right now, ambition alone just isn’t enough.

More than any comic-book franchise, the Blade films are dependent upon their leading man. Though other creative forces make their presence known (particularly in Guillermo del Toro’s superior second installment), this has always been The Wesley Snipes Show. The title vampire hunter is a custom fit for Snipes’ onscreen presence, and the actor clearly relishes every chance to indulge in his character’s badassery. It’s telling, then, that the third Blade film forces him to share the stage with a pair of newcomers — suggesting that there wasn’t enough to fill 90 minutes unless they tacked on some gimmicks and diversions.

That being said, the gimmicks and diversions have their share of charms. Once again, Blade is pitted against the legions of undead who control an unknowing mortal world through proxies and minions. He’s armed with plenty of hi-tech toys from his craggy partner Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), which the film has fun trundling out. The gadgets have always been a staple of this series, and director David S. Goyer — who’s been Blade’s screenwriter since the beginning — finds some keen new ways to update traditional vampiric banes into the 21st century. The best is a sort of gigantic cheese cutter married to a lightsaber, though the more pedestrian UV bullets and jet-black muscle cars carry plenty of effects-laden punch as well.

On a more human level, the new sidekicks are eminently watchable. Realizing that he can’t operate alone, Blade reluctantly teams up with the Night Stalkers, a group of fellow hunters whose principal members gobble up an inordinate amount of screen time. Their function in the film is obvious: Whistler’s bow-toting daughter Abigail (Jessica Biel) is there for sex appeal, while the wise-cracking ex-bad guy Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) provides comic relief. And they do those jobs as well as anyone. Biel is, um, healthy, and while Reynolds often comes across as unduly smug, he possesses fine comic timing and hoards the lion’s share of the best lines.

And yet, if they’re such strong additions to the proceedings, why do they feel like more of a distraction than an asset? Perhaps it’s because so much of the rest of the film is running on fumes. The vampires themselves lack the rotting magnificence of del Toro’s villains, content instead to sneer a lot and make the usual vague proclamations of doom. Their centerpiece is the ancient founder of the vampire race (Dominic Purcell), a Mesopotamian strongman known as Drake who’s gone by other similar-sounding names over the centuries. As a threatening presence, he’s merely adequate: not so much bad as supremely predictable. So too, do the action scenes and overall thrust feel overly familiar. Goyer keeps the pacing up, but cribs a great deal from earlier films and offers little new beyond the nifty weapons and some arch humor. The fights are decent, but unremarkable save for the fact that they hold our attention. In light of that, the new characters are essentially Band-Aids, covering up the otherwise stale expectations of New Line’s naked franchising.

But the final proof of the pudding comes in the simple fact that we don’t see nearly enough of Snipes. He’s in good shape here, aging but still possessing the right combination of physical grace and snarling charisma to keep us engaged. In too many scenes, however, he’s competing with Biel and Reynolds for his due share of the spotlight. At times, the movie shifts completely away from him, relegating Blade to the sidelines while the other kids play in his sandbox. Had he struck better chemistry with his co-stars — or had they not had such emphasis placed upon them — he might have pulled us through on force of personality alone. The Blade films kick-started Marvel’s line of adaptations, bucking the odds by becoming the first in that pantheon to achieve a breakout hit. But if Blade himself can’t carry a movie with his own name on it, then perhaps the time has come to hang up the stakes for good.

In his horror treatise Danse Macabre, Stephen King sums up the problem that comes with revealing the monster lurking behind the door in a horror movie: what’s behind the door is never as frightening as the door itself. As the door slowly creaks open, the buildup is always scarier than the payoff because what we envision behind the door is inevitably more terrifying than what is actually behind it. With the gut-wrenching Korean chiller A Tale of Two Sisters, that sentiment holds true in a superficial sense, but that’s okay — because what’s behind the door ultimately proves more deeply haunting than anything we’d imagined.

Upon returning home from an unexplained stay at a mental hospital, Su-Mi (Im Soo-Jung) and her younger sister Su-Yeon (Moon Geun-Young) cling to each other while dealing with their cruel stepmother (a wickedly good Yeom Jeong-A) and whatever horrible things might be hiding in the dark, shadowy hallways or in Su-Yeon’s closet. Their reserved, ineffectual father (Kim Kab-Su) isn’t much help, so Su-Mi becomes the fierce guardian of her younger sister, protecting her against their stepmother and whatever other horrors inhabit the house. With its floral-wallpapered interior drenched in earth tones and deep reds, the sprawling, mysterious house creates a suffocating atmosphere of dread and unease. Su-Mi has nightmares of a ghostly girl crawling around on the floor, Su-Yeon hears someone creeping into her room at night, and on the ride home after a shocking dinner at the house, a guest softly remarks, “There was a girl under the sink.”

Inspired by a Korean folk tale that’s been filmed several times before, A Tale of Two Sisters begins as a fairly straightforward mix of haunted-house chills and domestic drama. It’s heart-stoppingly scary — the ever-building sense of dread punctuated by several expertly orchestrated jump scares. But is the house really haunted, or is it the girls’ imaginations? And why were they in the hospital? While the domestic drama is a bit shaky (at least the first time around, before we know the whole story), our sympathies are always firmly with the two sisters. But then writer-director Kim Jee-Woon pulls the rug out from under us, leaving us dazed as we try to put together all the pieces of the puzzle. When the door finally opens and we see what’s lurking behind it, A Tale of Sisters reveals itself as more than a simple horror tale: it’s a beautifully crafted and quietly heartbreaking meditation on adolescent turmoil, sisterly devotion, and painful, haunting regret.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to take the red pill…again.

That’s right, folks, The Matrix Reloaded, the long-awaited sequel to 1999′s groundbreaking sleeper hit that grossed more than $450 million worldwide, is finally here. As for whether or not it was worth the wait…well, I guess that depends on how confusing you like your movies to be. There’s no doubt that die-hard fans and techno-geeks who re-booted the first movie over and over again will happily download the sequel’s jaw-dropping special effects, but as for the rest of us, the film is so complex, cerebral and confusing that your brain might just shut down from information overload.

It is only a matter of time before the mechanized sentinels invade the city of Zion, the last human enclave on Earth. The citizens of Zion fully support Morpheus’s (Laurence Fishburne) conviction that Neo (Keanu Reeves) is the chosen One who will put an end to the war with the machines, but Neo has his own doubts after being haunted by disturbing visions of the future–visions which foreshadow the demise of his true love, Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss). Conflicted by varying degrees of passion, truth, faith, knowledge and purpose, Neo will eventually be forced to make the ultimate choice, or Zion will fall and humanity will cease to exist.

Fans of the first movie will be happy to know that, at least on a visual scale, The Matrix Reloaded delivers big-time. Where the first film was a thinking person’s action movie that combined elements of technology, martial arts, special effects and Japanese anime for a style that was all its own (and the Wachowskis’ inventive “bullet-time” photography didn’t hurt either), the sequel definitely advances to the next level. Some standout scenes include a spectacular battle between Neo and more than 100 Agent Smiths and an awesome freeway car chase that, at more than 15 minutes, will go down as one of the greatest in motion picture history.

The problem is that if you look past all the bells and whistles, you’ll find a film that’s not as tight, as focused or as free-flowing as the first movie. Never mind that the last 20 minutes felt choppy and ended with an anti-climactic cliffhanger, but some scenes go on far too long while others don’t seem to add much to the plot. That’s especially the case with Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), who was previously defeated by Neo and is now hell-bent on getting his revenge. Even though he’s featured in one of the film’s best scenes, he’s not really essential to the overall story (at least, not yet), and he feels more like a running joke to make the fans happy.

The Matrix Reloaded is also hampered by an incredible amount of exposition. Then again, so was the first film, but at least Morpheus explained the whole concept of the Matrix to Neo (and the rest of us) while showing it to him (and us) at the same time. This time around, the exposition is much more tedious and confusing (and, dare I say it, boring), especially during an 11th-hour revelation where Neo is forced to play the ultimate game of “Let’s Make a Deal” with a Donald Sutherland lookalike (don’t ask!).

There’s no doubt that the Wachowski Brothers have a vision, but where they once seemed inspired, now it feels like they’re just showing off. And when they aren’t trying to push the boundaries of special effects, they’re recycling old science fiction cliches. For example, after so much anticipation to finally see what Zion looks like, it merely resembles the same post-apocalyptic outpost we’ve seen before in The Road Warrior, 12 Monkeys and Waterworld.

It’s also worth mentioning that at no point did I ever get the impression that anyone was in any danger, especially Neo. Now that he has embraced his status as the all-knowing, all-powerful One, he’s virtually indestructible to the point where, no matter how many Agent Smiths are thrown his way, you know he’s going to win. There’s no real threat, and that keeps an already cold film from making a significant emotional impact.

The first Matrix gave Keanu Reeves the role of his career, and for good reason. Reeves is hardly known for his dramatic range, and since his character was largely reactive (instead of proactive), he wasn’t really required to “act.” Of course, he kicked ass during the fight scenes, and to that extent, his performance in Reloaded pushes him to the next level. Not only does he share a steamy love scene with Carrie-Anne Moss, but he also switches roles with Laurence Fishburne, who is more vulnerable and insecure than he was the last time around.

The supporting characters don’t seem to serve any real purpose, except to (hopefully) introduce elements for the third (and final) film. That goes for the beautiful Monica Bellucci, a Matrix trophy wife who will do whatever it takes to feel emotions, and Jada Pinkett Smith, a rebel ship captain who has a mysterious past with Morpheus. Only the razor-wielding, teleporting Twins have much to do, as they provide something different to the film’s key fight scenes.

If The Matrix Reloaded doesn’t feel like a complete movie, that’s because it’s not. It’s only half of a movie. The other half, The Matrix Revolutions, doesn’t open until November, so in the meantime, Reloaded will have to be judged as a single body of work. As it is, it’s cool, but it’s not inspired. Then again, I should mention that I didn’t really “get” the first Matrix until I saw it a few times, and my opinion here is based solely on a single viewing.

To that extent, I guess I’ll have to take the red pill…again.

What goes around, comes around…especially in Hollywood.

For proof of that, look no further than last November’s Far From Heaven, director Todd Haynes’ glorious ode to the Douglas Sirk melodramas of the 1950′s. Now director Peyton Reed (Bring It On) takes on the next decade with the super-saturated retro-romp Down With Love, a lovingly textured homage to the innocent Rock Hudson-Doris Day sex comedies of the early 1960′s. Thanks to groovy production values, a snappy soundtrack and the irresistible chemistry between Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor, Down With Love is a candy-colored pop-cultural feast that will perk you up with joy.

The time is 1962, and ambitious author Barbara Novak (Renee Zellweger) has just arrived in New York to promote her new female empowerment book “Down With Love.” After a couple of ill-fated attempts to secure an interview with top magazine reporter Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor), Barbara’s book gets a major plug on TV and becomes a national phenomenon. Now Catcher’s job is on the line, but the only way he can seduce Barbara and expose her as a fraud is by pretending to be someone else. The problem is, when sparks really begin to fly between them, Barbara and Catcher are torn between sticking to their professions or giving in to their true feelings.

Think of Down With Love as a blend of late 50′s-early 60′s classics like Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers by way of this year’s Valentine’s Day offering How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Actually, the premise is a little too reminiscent of 10 Days — with Catcher trying to make Barbara fall in love with him while she tries to fend him off — but at least the movie has a few tricks up its sleeve to make it more unique.

The biggest trick is that Down With Love is a Technicolor dream, bursting with more style, fashion, fun and charm than even Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me if You Can (which took place around the same time). Reed infuses real stock footage of New York City with snazzy apartments, fake backgrounds and jazzy dinner clubs to pay tribute to the classics, and as a result, the movie is very self-aware of its intentions with everyone in on the joke.

The problem is that Down With Love is a little too clever for its own good, and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge novelty wears off after a while. The supporting material isn’t strong enough to carry you through the film (although the big twist at the end has to be seen — and heard — to be believed!), and the sexual innuendoes fall short of their humorous potential while recalling similar gimmicks that were done better in the Austin Powers movies.

There’s no doubt that Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor did their homework while studying the campy, exaggerated mannerisms of Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Zellweger continues to make the right choices (after Bridget Jones’s Diary and Chicago) and prances around like an adorable Barbie-doll, while McGregor seems to relish hamming it up as the dapper playboy who can’t seem to keep his shirt on. Even Frasier’s David Hyde Pierce is perfectly cast as McGregor’s neurotic boss, recalling the similar characteristics of perennial Hudson-Day co-star Tony Randall (who makes an appearance here).

Down With Love is an entertaining love letter to a bygone era that’s more of a feast for the eyes than a stimulation of the mind, but stick around for the closing credits, when Zellweger and McGregor bring down the house with a glorious song-and-dance routine. It’s the best scene in the movie and hints at what the rest of the film could have been, but I wouldn’t worry. Now that the 50′s and the 60′s have had their due, it’s only a matter of time before some ambitious filmmaker takes on the 70′s and sets a love story against the backdrop of disco.

It would make perfect sense. After all, what goes around, comes around… especially in Hollywood.