Horror movies have moved away from set pieces that are scary on their own, and Crimson Peak corrects that trend, but also moves away from being scary in any other way. Photos courtesy Universal Pictures.
From the first trailer straight to its release, Crimson Peak promised to be an electrifying, visuals-driven horror movie with rich colors and music and set pieces, a horror movie interested in looking good, not just good enough to jump out from around a corner for a scare and then scurry back behind it, a rejection of the cheapness that has dominated the genre for nearly a decade now. And it is. It delivers on that promise completely. But while watching it, you realize that’s not all you want.
The film’s plot is a big source of the unsatisfying feeling, despite being a great, old-fashioned haunted house setup. Burgeoning author Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), who lives in America in the 1800s with her oil tycoon father, Carter (Jim Beaver), falls swiftly in love with a charming English lord, Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) as he visits to ask Carter Cushing for a loan. Edith Cushing marries Sharpe and is whisked away with him to his mansion in Cumbria, where he lives with his sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain), only to find the house is decayed to the point that it can barely be called a house anymore and is also severely haunted. Through the haunting, Cushing begins to discover the truth about her new husband and sister-in-law.
The simplest explanation of why Crimson Peak is disappointing is all the scares are spoiled in the trailer, and while that is true, it’s more complicated than that. The scares aren’t just fewer than expected, they’re too loosely packed, and the movie turns its focus away from the ghosts and to the natural aspects. This should be a good thing — the best horror movies, after all, are the ones that focus on things that can happen in real life — but it all falls flat.
To say nothing else good about Pan, it is the final affirmation of Hugh Jackman’s utter magnificence. In a movie that drains the life from its other actors, Jackman is a dervish of energy and charisma and even a little bit of menace every time he hits the screen. Photos courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
When Pan’s Labyrinth got pushed back from a July 24 release that it surely would have dominated to do re-shoots, it was clear something was very wrong. Now that the movie’s come out, it’s more clear than ever, but it’s still not clear what that wrong thing is.
The ostensible origin story of Peter Pan begins with Peter (Levi Miller) dropped off at an orphanage in 1930’s London, because all fairy tales must be set in England, by his mother, Mary (a dreadfully wasted Amanda Seyfried). After a cut to the dog days of World War II when bombings were a daily occurrence in the city and a weird storyline with Peter’s best buddy, Nibs (Louis MacDougall), and a nun who was hording all the rations, Peter and the other orphans are abducted by pirates and brought to Neverland to work in Blackbeard’s (Hugh Jackman) fairy dust mine. During what was supposed to be his execution for insubordination, Peter discovers that he can fly and that he is the prophesied savior of the fairies who will kill Blackbeard.
With The Martian holding steady in the no. 1 spot, it’s time to take a look at how space has been used as a setting in movies over the years.
The first space movie — the first science fiction movie, really — was the 1902 French short Le voyage dans la lune, or A Trip to the Moon in English. Made just after the Industrial Revolution when we had basically no idea what the moon was really like, the short was an exercise in pure creativity. The shot six minutes in of the moon anthropomorphized only to be punched in the eye remains one of the most iconic images in film history.
As a purely visual exercise, The Walk will get your blood pumping. Photos courtesy TriStar Pictures.
The Walk is a playful, visually stunning film, but every moment of joyful levity, every jaw-dropping stunt, is ruined by
Ever since I was a little boy, I have always been looking for places to put my wire. When I was 16, I- That. It’s ruined by that.
