Conjuring the World's End

I saw two movies in August, one for which I’d had a smidge of hope and one for which I had high hopes.  The one for which I’d had only a smidge of hope in the first place, The Conjuring, was quite disappointing.  Director James Wan gave us a few startling jumps, but nothing really frightening.

Lesson the First:  When the family dog refuses to enter the big isolated house they bought at auction, the human family shouldn’t enter either.  Alas, humans never learn.

In The Conjuring, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren discover the real thing in a secluded farmhouse that the Perron family bought with the last of their savings.  The clothes and hair are the first clue that we’re in the 1970s.  The music seems occasionally out of time.  The mentality is older — God and Demons are one thing, but the Warrens believe unhappy women were witches and could control the actions of the living centuries after their own deaths.

While there are plenty of frights and gasps and starts, this movie talks too much, shows too much, and tries to make believe it’s practically a documentary.  I’ll see Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor in just about anything, but I hope they pick better going forward.  A good cast did what they could with the material, but when it devolved to absurd records of a woman called Bathsheba (Lesson the Second:  If you want your daughter to be a good girl, there are certain names you oughtn’t stick her with) accused of consorting with Satan and centuries later she was the evil presence in the house in which, for some reason, we could see as well as hear clapping hands.  For goodness’ sake. 

Just a note re witches: Everyone knows that women accused of being witches were not consorting with Satan; they merely had property or power that the local men wanted.  Real witches were entirely different:  Read Roald Dahl’s The Witches.  He explains it all.

Now for the good movie of August:  The World’s End, which is the name of a pub.  A good start.  Director Edgar Wright introduces us to 1990 Newton Haven, a cozy-looking small town somewhere in England, then passes by a little real life that’s not fun at all, and brings us back to Newton Haven 20 years later.  1990 is amusingly narrated and yet what we see rather conflicts with what the narrator recalls.  Five friends somehow graduated from school and went on a pub crawl called “The Golden Mile” in their home town — yes, Newton Haven — which includes 12 delightfully named pubs at which the boys had intended to have one pint each.  That’s twelve pints per boy.  As anyone might imagine, it didn’t work out.

(c) 2013 Focus Features

Twenty years later, a sadder but no wiser Gary King (the scathingly brilliant Simon Pegg) wants to get the band back together, as ’twere, and do the Golden Mile.  Life didn’t go so awfully well after high school (or whatever they call it in England), and Gary thinks re-living this epic night with his old pals will save him. His pals (whom he hasn't seen in many years) disagree, but go along because he lies to them.

Simon Pegg as Gary King and the Map

This is Simon Pegg and Nick Frost at their hilarious best, having a fine time with Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan and Martin Freeman as all five pals grown up.  The touristy map that could pass for a hotel placemat shows the route through town to the 12 pubs, and Gary marks off each one as they achieve it.  The present attempt is as doomed as the first, but not for the same reasons as the 1990 crawl.

Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Eddie Marsan in a pub.

The brisk script by Pegg and Edgar Wright (co-writers of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) builds and grows under Wright’s whimsical direction.  The humans are all totally real, dreaming of a barely recognizable past that did not prepare them for adult life they don’t really know how to live, with Gary in particular compounding his unhappiness with foolhardy dreams of reliving past glories.  Bruce Springsteen sang about it, and Pegg & Wright have written a sweet, thoughtful, and incredibly funny film about it all.

And then there’s the darkness. 

The men gradually realize that not only have they changed, so has their home town.  Rediscovery of all this is a jolly journey for us, not so much for the guys.  In lesser, duller hands this would just be about 5 merely chronologically adult males behaving foolishly and getting gutter laughs.  Pegg & Wright go much further, touching on dreams of freedom, lost youth...and then they take a roundabout turn into crazy.

Frost, Rosamund Pike, Considine, Marsan, Freeman, and Pegg.  In a pub.

From the quickest shot of a passerby to the leads, the cast is formidable.  I’ll just list a few:

Simon Pegg as Gary King

Nick Frost as Andy Knightley

Martin Freeman as Oliver Chamberlain

Paddy Considine as Steven Prince

Eddie Marsan as Peter Page

Rosamund Pike as Sam Chamberlain (Oliver’s kid sister, love interest for both Gary & Steve since childhood)

Pierce Brosnan as Guy Shephard, the cool teacher

David Bradley as Crazy Basil

With a special non-appearance by Bill Nighy

The World’s End has two lessons:  1) you cannot go home again, and 2) if your high school memories are warm and fuzzy, you’re probably misremembering.  The World’s End has a terrific script well directed by Edgar Wright, and its cast is top notch and pitch perfect.  I will see this again and again and find more to laugh about.  Because humans are funny.

~ Molly Matera, signing off and purchasing another ticket!

Time Marches On, Days Dwindle Down

I’d intended to write a good deal more this month than I have, and as March draws to a close, it is evident that I haven’t done more than scribble disjointed notes.  So, in order to be an April Fool with fresh energy and material, I’m just jotting down some brief thoughts on the two films and two plays I’ve seen in the past few weeks, forgiving myself, and moving on.

Venus in Fur was a delightful surprise.  Oh yes, I’d been told the performances were marvelous and it was hilarious.  They were and it is.  Initially, though, I had to object to what appeared to be the Deus ex machina of the ending. 

Then I slept on it, and realized that the whole play had led just there.  The two larger than life yet totally realistic characters:  Vanda, the aspiring actress, played by the remarkable Nina Arianda; and Thomas, the playwright/director, played by Hugh Dancy in an exhilarating performance of a role that could have been subsumed by the power of Vanda and Ms Arianda.  We meet him first, so we think he’s the protagonist.  But is he?

The epitome of what this playwright abhors in modern woman shows up to audition for his play, and late.  She becomes the woman he most desires.  She switches back and forth.  If you can stop laughing long enough to think, it's fascinating. Who is acting upon whom?  Who is acting?  It’s a very funny play — perhaps a smidge too long in its last third — but you really don’t want to miss these performances.  Not to mention the tight, bright, lightning-flashed direction by Walter Bobbie.

And then, my second John Ford play in a month was extraordinarily inventive, memorable, well-acted — well, mostly —  smartly produced, directed, designed, and totally worthy of the always exciting Cheek by Jowl company.  Yes, I’m talking about their production of ′Tis Pity She’s A Whore presently running at BAM.

Onstage, as we entered the Harvey Theatre, is a teenage girl’s bedroom, complete with posters on the red walls and a teenage girl lolling on the bed.  This is Annabella, in a crisp, funny, sexy, graceful, youthful and age-old performance by Lydia Wilson.  Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod have taken John Ford’s play of the first quarter of the 17^th century and tossed it into the air to create a timeless — while quirkily old-fashioned — Italy via England.  It’s an image, a darting, dancing dream, an idea of a play, telling us more about people than one would have thought John Ford knew.  The actors gather round that simple central prop/set piece, the girl’s red bed, and enact scenes that take place here, there, and everywhere.  Why?  Because all that anyone cares about in this play is that girl’s bed and what happens there. 

This was a shortened version of the play, running two hours (without intermission) so probably has a lower death count than usual — but enough.  What violence we see onstage is disturbing.  The violence we do not see because it’s done barely offstage in the bathroom is still more disturbing.  Mind you, this play also has a lot of laughs.

Donnellan has filled this production with movement and song and dance and stomping and sometimes that drowned out the words.  I see some technical difficulties holding back this extraordinary, willful, mad production, but none that would keep me from urging you to get to the BAM Harvey soon.  It closes this weekend.

Lydia Wilson and Jack Gordon (C) Manuel Harlan

Two Movies I Missed on the Big Screen

For Chills and Thrills:

Drive starts with rules.  The driver will give you five minutes.  Within those five minutes he’s yours, whatever happens.  Before or after that window, you’re on your own.  The first five minutes of this movie are excruciatingly tense.  I was in awe of the direction, the cinematography, the writing.  Hooked.

Ryan Gosling is the Driver.  His character is precise, smart.  He drives for the movies (stunt driver), and robbers (wheelman), and wouldn’t mind a real racetrack.  Shane wanted a peaceful life, too.  Well we can’t have everything.

This isn’t a relaxing film, it’s damned disturbing, but so worth it.  Its spare script is by Hossein Amini, directed so tightly it hurts by Nicolas Winding Refn.  This is deep noir, Los Angeles, cars, speed, guns, bad people.  And a few goods ones caught in the middle. Gosling gives a riveting, ravishing performance that makes me wonder what movies the award shows are viewing.  Bryan Cranston is superb, Albert Brooks is terrifying, there’s not a moment to catch your breath in this film, it’s that engrossing. 

It’s also a western.  I think you’ll recognize it.  Let me know.

To Weep with Laughter:

My cousin recommended Paul as a comedy that is actually funny.  He got that right.  Paul includes witty, scintillating and absurd writing, expert characterizations and execution of them with brilliant casting.  Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are back, this time as two comic book geeks speaking English with the occasional Klingon on a road trip to the UFO-sighting sites of America.  Two Englishmen, an RV, a roadside diner (Jane Lynch!), a car crash….and an Alien.  Plus a mysterious voice ordering about an absurd number of men in black (one of whom is the delightful Jason Bateman), a crazy gun-toting bible thumper, a girl, and the extraterrestrial illegal alien himself, Paul, voiced by Seth Rogen. If you want to be happy, see Paul.

So.  Two plays, two movies, not a bad month.  More to come....

~ Molly Matera, signing off, asking you to support your local starving artist -- go see a play!