Well, your girlfriend has donned the UGGs and the smell of pumpkin candles and lattes are in the air, so you know what that means, October has begun. We here at The Buzz are not unaffected by this magical month, so let us celebrate this most romanticized of seasons with the most brutal, unflinching genre in film: horror. Yes, following up the positive response to last month being “sci-fi” month, this month will be themed around the freakiest films you’ll ever see. We kick it off with an unsettling short film, and highlight a horrifying horror Blu-Ray, plus we’ll take a look at a new fall show and one of the most unique films in recent memory, plus all the news you need to know. So don’t fear the reaper, it’s time for this week’s Buzz.
Movies: Another week, another release from A24, and once again the team knocks it out of the park. Lockeis a truly fascinating film from Steven Knight (director of Eastern Promises and Dirty Pretty Things) and starring Tom Hardy, and only Tom Hardy (though Luther’s Ruth Wilson and Sherlock’s Andrew Scott have voice roles). The ingenious and innovative conceit of Locke is that it has, save an opening establishing shot, one location and one actor. The entire 84 minutes of action takes place in Ivan Locke’s car as he drives away from his construction site. With a large concrete pour scheduled for the following morning and a family waiting at home for him to join them for a football match, Ivan Locke receives a phone call which forces him to abandon it all and drive to London. To spoil the central conceit of the film, introduced early on, is to ruin some of the magic, but rest assured, this isn’t The Drop. The so-called “criminal life” used so often in films to create drama isn’t at all present in Locke, and yet it more brilliantly, poetically and realistically grapples with what it means to be a man than any of those tough talking allegories.
A series of phone calls between Ivan and his boss, his co-worker, his wife and a woman named Bethan reveal Ivan’s true integrity, and how such a sense of honor can destroy everything a man has built for himself. The film employs a Joyce-like embrace of the tension within the banal, and its protagonist is that extraordinary Hemingway vision of the ideal man, whose grace under pressure and strong moral code fuel the film and keep it moving forward even with the absence of twists and turns. The viewer finds themselves drawn in to intricate discussions of permits and building codes, as though the inner workings of the concrete business were the highest form of suspense possible, and its all due to an absolutely top-notch, career best performance from Tom Hardy. For 84 straight minutes, Hardy performed the dazzling feat of carrying and driving the narrative of a film, interacting either with off-screen voices or nothing at all, and he does so with a brilliant flair and a grounded humanity that make Locke an absolutely astounding piece of cinema. It’s stripped down, raw, honest humanity, taking the viewer on a journey into what it truly means to be a man, tearing down its protagonist, robbing him of everything except the one thing that defines him, his sense of duty. It’s the anti-Mad Men, an exploration not of the artifice of manliness, but the soul of the masculine identity, and how pride does come before the fall, but that such a fall is noble, is glorious and is righteous. Available in select theaters and on demand, Locke is a must-see mediation on identity and honor.
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Remastering a film for Blu-Ray is a tricky proposition. Sure, most often, people want the picture as clear and crisp as possible, but one need only look at a Blu-Ray transfer of, say, cult classic Clerks to see how painful trying to “clear up” a film referred for its low-budget nature is. With that in mind, while The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a landmark piece of horror cinema (and indeed cinema in general) which still delivers the suspense and scares today, the fear was how a film whose tension and believability rested on how grainy and homemade (and therefor real) the footage looked could work on format best known for making The Twilight Zone and Star Trek look like they were shot last week.
Well, we’re pleased to say The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 40th Anniversary Blu-Ray is gorgeous in all the right ways. The team behind the digital remastering ensured that the film retains all of the grain and grit of the original, so instead of feeling as though they’re watching some new digital film, the home viewer is transported back to what it was like seeing the original film, first run in theaters, with an undamaged print of flickering gold. The sound quality, while still retaining that amateurish hiss that sets the viewer on edge, is crisp, making every chainsaw rev and skull crack send a shiver up your spine. Be sure to score the Collector’s Edition for four different audio commentaries, 10 featurettes, deleted scenes and outtakes and even a blooper reel. Any film fan needs this horror staple, which relaunched the entire genre and helped bring about the modern day “slasher” film. It’s haunting, unsettling and truly inspired.
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TV: Whether you know Ioan Griffudd as the guy from the first set of god-awful Fantastic Four movies or you don’t know him at all (and those really are the only two options, honestly) get ready to know him as Dr. Henry Morgan, because if there’s any justice in the world, Forever is here to stay. The light-hearted ABC drama with a sci-fi twist has aired three episodes thus far, each one a delight. The story of Henry, a man who, through mysterious circumstances, cannot die is constructed in a manner that both feels fresh and new and yet still recalls the 90’s-era sci-fi TV fare like Angel or Forever Knight, complete with orchestral hits on the commercial breaks and “message” monologues that make one feel as though it’s almost time to switch over to a new episode of Seinfeld while sipping Surge, and its great. It’s a show with enough mystery to intrigue, without so complicated a mythos as to vex. Of course, they try and create a female foil/love interest that isn’t nearly as interesting as the plots Henry wrestles with, and the show’s most interesting dynamic is the addition of Judd Hersche, who plays Dr. Henry Morgan’s adopted son (Morgan, having lived 200-plus years, found the baby during WWII and raised him himself). There’s enough there for the show to explore, such as why Henry wakes up in the East River naked after “dying” and who the mysterious stranger is that continues to antagonize him from a distance, and Griffudd is utterly compelling as the lead. It’s not an Emmy contender, and doesn’t have the pull of some of the more intense dramas even within the “comic book-y” genre, but its fun for what it is, and makes for a comfortable hour of mental decompression with its easy to follow stories and engaging characters, so tune in to ABC Tuesdays at 10 p.m. Eastern, right after Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
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News: Remember how much you loved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon back in the day? Ang Lee’s magical kung-fu film was, for many of us, the first subtitled film we ever saw. It was mind-blowing, and seems to be the talk of the town whatever town you went to, even earning a Best Picture nomination. People wanted to see more films from that director, from that country, from that genre. And yet, even those years ago, it’s tough to recall anyone asking for a direct sequel. Now, however, the Weinstein’s have taken up the cause to answer the call no one made, and have announced a sequel to the film more than ten years later (just like they did with Sin City 2, and we saw how that turned out).
Of course, a film so not-at-all-demanded from the director taking the place of the visionary director who made the first film worth watching needs to reach as broad an audience as possible, so the Weinsteins made a huge, groundbreaking announcement that their sequel will be available on the same day on both IMAX screens and Netflix. This announcement surprised everyone, most of all the IMAX theaters themselves, who apparently were uninformed about this joint opening strategy before signing on. Now AMC and several other chains are rebelling, refusing to screen the film at all.
And before some folks chime in with the usual “It’s the future, get out of the way, man, if you can’t go with it”, let’s just clarify, it may be the future, but it’s also bullsh*t. What most people don’t realize is these theaters pay to have these films on the screen, then have to pay the projectionist, and pay to maintain the rooms in which the film is screened, then turn over the money from admissions right back to the studios, hoping to make their money back on concessions alone (hence the prices everyone is so fond of complaining about). The only thing that makes such an endeavor possibly profitable is that such an arrangement is founded on the knowledge that people who want to see the film have to come to the theatre. Take that away, and these theaters are being made to pay an exorbitant amount of money to a distributor, plus pay their employees and turn over all of the ticket profits, all hoping most people would rather pay to sit in a theatre and watch a film in the format it was meant to be seen rather than stream it for free on their cell-phone anywhere they like. And anyone who’s ever ridden the G train at around 8pm will know the cell-phone option is the one most often take (normal without headphones or a regard for people around them, but that’s a subject to tackle at a different time). It’s undeniable the way we view movies has and will change, but pushback from those once sacred movie houses can give lovers of the big screen hope that maybe the tides might turn in our favor for at least a flickering moment.
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Short Film: It’s a testament to the haunting, unsettling power of this week’s short that this critic only watched it as often as he absolutely had to. Clocking it at just about 3 minutes, Lights Out manages to be more unsettling than most feature length horror films, mostly by taking our fear of the dark to the extreme, without any blood, gore or even much action. Replicating the all-to-common fear of the unknown shape in the shadow, Lights Out retains a constant sense of dread (a la the fantastic leering shots from John Carpenter’sHalloween or the too-Technicolor opening of Blue Velvet) that keeps the audience on edge until the final moments. Admittedly, some may argue the pay off isn’t as strong as it could have been, and with the lights on in the daytime, its undeniably true. But for most people, who watch short films on their laptop from the comfort of their bed at night, we’d just like to offer a heartfelt apology for robbing you of a night’s sleep. When its a film this superbly crafted, though, its worth it.
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