{"id":1079,"date":"2014-05-16T23:43:41","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T23:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=1079"},"modified":"2014-06-13T18:31:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T18:31:11","slug":"seymour-movies-roving-with-the-dark-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=1079","title":{"rendered":"Seymour Movies: Roving with the Dark in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Tilda<\/a><\/p>\n

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Spider-Man, amazing or not, can wait. So can Godzilla and Seth Rogin. I can afford to let them all wait because I\u2019ve been out of the weekly movie-reviewing routine since Obama\u2019s first term and the best part about NOT being tethered to professional routine as a moviegoer is that you can go wander at will into something that\u2019s already been thoroughly hyped or strafed without having to organize your own 400-500-word reaction as you\u2019re watching it. Trolling and fishing away from the mainstream makes up one of the arcane, old school joys of cinephilia; one that\u2019s completely lost in this marketplace of shiny new toys that often shatter or wither minutes after being unwrapped. I didn\u2019t want bright and shiny and obvious. Those will wait. I wanted oily and murky and subtle. Which never do.<\/p>\n

And darkness was where I most wanted to go this past week to catch up on what I missed\u2026and to do so before some of these movies went away. DC is a good movie town, but as with all markets smaller than NY or LA, the theaters in Your Nation\u2019s Capital tend not to let smaller, relatively under-the-radar stuff linger too long in their rotation. So this was, mostly for the better, how my week went:<\/p>\n

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\"Blue<\/a><\/p>\n

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Blue Ruin<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 Did I recognize Eve Plumb towards the end of writer-director Jeremy Saulnier\u2019s spin-dry variations on the vigilante-movie formula? I did not, remembering her mostly as a little person on \u201cThe Brady Bunch,\u201d whose early 1970s heyday was somewhat past my use-by date for family-friendly sitcoms. Seeing the artist-formerly-known-as-Jan-Brady\u2019s name scroll by in the cast credits, however, was enough to trigger my one misgiving about this otherwise foxy thriller about revenge-obsessed Dwight (Macon Davis), whose parents\u2019 murder years before apparently led to his becoming a wan, accident-prone dumpster diver haunting Delaware shore parking lots and bathing in vacant summer homes. When the man jailed for his parents\u2019 murder is released, Dwight hunts for and eventually stabs the ex-con to a gruesome death in a public rest room. So begins a rat\u2019s nest of mutual retribution as the man\u2019s family comes after Dwight and his sister (Amy Hargreaves), a single mother of two, who\u2019s way too level headed to hang around this story for very long. \u201cI\u2019d forgive you if you were crazy,\u201d she tells Dwight before taking her little ones off to Pittsburgh for safety\u2019s sake. \u201cBut you\u2019re not. You\u2019re weak.\u201d So much for the broad-shouldered verities of Walking Tall and Kicking Ass, which Sauliner\u2019s script deflates with such delicacy that Dwight\u2019s seemingly inexhaustible luck and pluck look more pathetic than heroic. Still, Davis\u2019s doe-eyed intensity and well-oiled anxiety keep you from writing Dwight off as emphatically as his sister does.<\/p>\n

Blue Ruin<\/em>\u2019s espresso-edgy inversion of the revenge fantasy genre along with the movie\u2019s backwoods strip-mall ambiance has aroused comparisons to Blood Simple<\/em>. That alignment\u2019s somewhat off, I think; for one thing, Ruin<\/em> somehow manages to be both leaner in execution and richer in design than the Coen Bros. 1984 neo-noir. But I also wished there were maybe a little more wit in Saulnier\u2019s script beyond the throwaway admission from one of Dwight\u2019s nemeses (Kevin Kolack): \u201cYeah, well, killin\u2019 the mother wasn\u2019t the brightest move on our part, I\u2019ll give ya that.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while the inevitable chaos at the end buttresses the movie\u2019s point about revenge\u2019s pointlessness, seeing Plumb as the matriarch of Dwight\u2019s equally vindictive (and unhinged) antagonists made me wonder whether Saulnier\u2019s point would have been sharpened by making that family as smooth-faced and as all-American polished as\u2026the Brady Bunch. Maybe you risk unsettling and confusing audiences by making such moves, but isn\u2019t that what\u2019s supposed to happen along the cutting edge? That aside, I\u2019d still take Blue Ruin<\/em> over the next serial-killer melodrama a big studio tries to put over on us.<\/p>\n

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\"Under-the-Skin<\/a><\/p>\n

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Under the Skin \u2013<\/strong><\/em> Maybe Jonathan Glazer should consider switching the title of his 2000 crime thriller, Sexy Beast<\/em> with this one. The title\u2019s unavoidable when you see Scarlett Johansson\u2019s laconic, dark-haired predator cruising the streets of Edinburgh at all hours asking male strangers for directions or slowly stripping off her clothes as some of the poor saps who decide to ride home with her sink naked behind her into an inky pool of oblivion. Who or what Johansson\u2019s character is and what she and her peripheral motorbike-racing enablers do with the bodies of her captives are subject to interpretation, though what little you\u2019re permitted to see will likely make you wish you hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

In a way, Johansson\u2019s austere, elementally restrained performance (the kind that never ever gets recognized at awards time) is a companion piece to her invisible, all-vocal and just as sensitively-realized performance in Her<\/em>, another SF movie that annoyed almost as many people as it engaged Some reviewers, for instance. have complained of an overabundance of implication in Glazer\u2019s SF-horror chamber piece. Their grousing is another reason to be depressed since, once upon a time, even mainstream audiences would have been more than OK with leaving blank spaces open for interpretation. (And not just in foreign product \u2013 or doesn\u2019t anybody besides me like to stay up on weekends to watch Val Lewton movies like The Seventh Victim<\/em>?)<\/p>\n

Anyway, what matters in Under the Skin<\/em> is what happens to Johansson\u2019s alien invader and not to her victims, one of whom is a shy, physically deformed recluse who is almost as icily reserved as she is. Somehow, this encounter sets off a nascent curiosity within her about the nature of this earthly form she inhabits, whether checking out the voluptuous contours of her naked body or chucking up a slab of chocolate cake she tries, and fails, to consume. She\u2019s trying to figure out what being human means. In the process, we\u2019re trying to figure that out along with her. Some people say that theme \u2013 which is the basic raison d\u2019etre of any science fiction worth your time \u2013 is neither original nor interesting. This beef against SF isn’t original either. But Under the Skin<\/em> is, especially when framed against more hi-tech, in-your-face techno-fantasies. I wish there were more movies like it, the more obscure, the better.<\/p>\n

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\"Only<\/a><\/p>\n

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Only Lovers Left Alive<\/strong><\/em> –Jim Jarmusch isn\u2019t the first art-house icon whose work acquires greater definition when it tethers itself to genre \u2013 and with any luck, he won\u2019t be the last. While I find something to like about all his movies, even when, as in 1989\u2019s Mystery Train<\/em> or 2009\u2019s The Limits of Control,<\/em> he rambles and wanders his way around, or past, resolution, I think he is at his most arresting when his insouciant, deadpan imagination is taken up with the western (1995\u2019s Dead Man<\/em>), the crime thriller (1999\u2019s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai<\/em>) and even the escape-from-prison subgenre (1986\u2019s Down by Law<\/em>).<\/p>\n

He\u2019s finally taken up with vampires and you wonder what took him so long, especially when Only Lovers Left Alive<\/em> turns out to be, all at once, his wittiest, zestiest and most touching film ever. This is the vampire movie as a hipster hang \u2013 and little else. Its two protagonists, Adam (Tom \u201cLoki\u201d Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda \u201cOrlando\u201d Swinton who\u2019s never been as beguiling and cuddly as she is here), are as deeply addicted to each other as they were when they met each other a century or two ago. They are also addicted to blood and lead fairly routine lives, maintaining their habits from mostly different spots on the globe; Eve wanders the curvy streets of Tangier, sheathed in silk, checking in on her vampire mentor Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), who despite his disheveled state looks pretty hale for someone who was supposed to have been murdered at 29 years old in 1593 while Adam, a musical genius old enough to have given Schubert a hand, lives the gloomy-glam life of the reclusive rock legend inhabiting a ramshackle house in Detroit and collecting vintage guitars secured for him by a credulous idolater named Ian (Aaron Yelchin). Whenever Adam needs a supply of vintage O-Negative, he dresses up in surgical green, complete with mask and antique stethoscope, and sticks wads of cash in the hands of his connection (a droll Jeffrey Wright).<\/p>\n

When Adam and Eve get together, life is nocturnal bliss with late-night tours of the city\u2019s blasted streets. (\u201cDetroit has water. It will survive when the cities of the south are burning,\u201d Adam tells Eve with the airy assurance of someone who\u2019s watched History\u2019s wheels turn several dozen times.) But then, Eve\u2019s voracious little sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) flies in from L.A. with none of the older couple\u2019s restraint in taking a bite with her beverage. Still, nothing, not even Ava, can harsh Adam and Eve\u2019s mellow and you never want the hang to end, especially if those two keep their collection of 45\u2019s rolling on the turntable. For a movie that\u2019s bathed in shadows, Only Lovers Left Alive <\/em><\/em>is as radiant as the sound of Denise LaSalle\u2019s v<\/a>oice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Spider-Man, amazing or not, can wait. So can Godzilla and Seth Rogin. I can afford to let them all wait because I\u2019ve been out of the weekly movie-reviewing routine since Obama\u2019s first term and the best part about NOT being tethered to professional routine as a moviegoer is that you can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[495,482,484,501,491,498,499,492,480,493,496,479,477,494,486,483,481,497,490,488,487,500,478,489,485],"class_list":["post-1079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-aaron-yelchin","tag-amy-hargreaves","tag-blue-ruin","tag-christopher-marlowe","tag-dead-man","tag-denise-lasalle","tag-detroit","tag-down-by-law","tag-eve-plumb","tag-ghost-dog","tag-jeffrey-wright","tag-jeremy-saulnier","tag-jim-jarmusch","tag-john-hurt","tag-jonathan-glazer","tag-kevin-kolack","tag-macon-davis","tag-mia-wasikowska","tag-only-lovers-left-alive","tag-scarlett-johansson","tag-sexy-beast","tag-tangier","tag-tilda-swinton","tag-tom-hiddleston","tag-under-the-skin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1079"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1097,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions\/1097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}