Hey folks, Harry here with a pair of films I'm just dying to see... EIGHT WOMEN and THE RING. I'm hoping both are really good films with very beautiful ladies, and from what GhostBoy tells here... that's exactly what we get, plus great stories to boot! So here ya go...
Howdy,
The best time of the year has arrived; the weather gets cold and all the best movies come out....but unfortunately I'm having trouble enjoying it because a lot of my nerves were shot while watching the film that I'll go into directly following my review of...
Eight Women
Seven women, all part of or working for one familial unit, converge at their house on one blustery winter day to find the patriarch, thought only to be sleeping late, dead with a knife in his back. The heavy snow prevents them from leaving for help, and a mysteriously cut phone line keeps them from calling for it. One more woman arrives, and they all spend the day trying to figure out who killed the man, as well as bickering, revealing numerous secrets, and singing.
That's right, it's a musical. This new film from Francois Ozon is a gorgeously artifical technicolor gem, in which the characters fire perfectly timed lines at each other before breaking into heartfelt musical numbers. It's deliberately theatrical in set-up and execution; the whole movie takes place in the main room of the house, and it -- and the glorious costumes -- are a vibrant triumph of design and color coordination. Even more glorious is the cast, all of whom deserve mention for their impressive contributions. Firs off are the grand dames of French cinema Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux (as, respectively, the widow and her mother), their sure-to-be successors Isabelle Huppert (as Deneuve's sister) and Emmanuelle Beart (as the saucy French Maid), and Francois Truffaut's former wife Fanny Ardant (as the dead man's sister). The quite enticing Virginie Ledoyen and the impish Ludivine Sagnier are Deneauve's daughters, and rounding out the cast is Firmine Richard as the family cook.
These eight women run the age gamut from septunagarian to preadolsecent, and every one of them is remarkably beautiful. Of course it's easy to single out Ledoyen and the increasingly sexy Beart as the easiest on the eyes, but they actually are upstaged by Deneuve and Ardant. Everyone's performance is spot on -- not a beat is wasted -- but I think the highlight of the film would have to be Isabelle Huppert, who is a constant delight -- a far cry from her performance in 'The Piano Teacher,' although in many ways her repressed character here is quite similar to the one she played in that film). And just when we think her character is all about laughs, Ozon gives us a stunning close up of her face, in which her eyes fill with tears, and then spill over at just the right moment. It's sublime.
There are a few similar moments of beauty, but by and large the movie is a farce -- an old school murder mystery, we think at first, but one that grows increasingly kinky. Without giving too much away, the plot delves into not only murder, but suicide, prostitution, fellatio, lesbian affairs, and that old comedic standby -- incest. Plenty of heavy subject matter, to be sure, but it's all handled so delightfully contexts that revalations that should be shocking instead provoke massive laughs.
Unlike Ozon's last film, 'Under The Sand,' there are no great truths to be found here, no insights into the human condition or ruminations on life; instead, we get opulence, high comedy and nonstop beauty -- particularly in the form of these eight great actresses, any one of whom could steal a screen single handedly, but together are a potent enough combination for me to suggest that this just may rank with the year's best films.
The Ring
Maybe it's just me, but something about the core concept of 'The Ring' is really unnerving; you watch a videotape full of strange, oblique, seemingly unconnected images, and seven days later you die. I haven't seen Hideo Nakata's 1998 cult classic, but I've heard plenty about it, and something about the plot just left me feeling really uneasy.
So here is the American remake, directed by Gore Verbinski (who woulda thought the director of 'Mouse Hunt' would make this?). It's a good film, near great -- hindered only by some big logical holes that don't really become apparent until after the film is over, and some bad dialogue that is instantly recognizable as bad dialogue. Perhaps the infrequent special effects would have been better without any CGI enhancements.
What it does have is an increasingly effective sense of dread about it; you may recognize it as the kind of feeling you get watching 'The Shining.' It starts out from the first scene, and grows like a nasty knot inside your stomach. There are lots of great jump-out-of-your-seat-and-scream moments, and a few few really unexpected shocks, but where Verbinski has really hit the nail on the head is in the mood of the movie; it's full of fear, ever moment of it. It's a genuinely scary film.
The source of this can be traced partially to the way Verbinski has made the film -- which is a pretty masterful example of suspense filmmaking -- and partially to the videotape itself. I don't know, maybe others won't feel the same way, but I can't get it out of my head. It's short, maybe a minute long, and we see the whole thing at the same time that the heroine of the movie (played by Naomi Watts) does. There is nothing immediately shocking about it -- but a few of the images it contains, particularly involving the mirror, end up bearing so much weight that I get chills now even thinking about them.
I won't spoil any of it for you. I will say that Watts does a really impressive job, delivering on the great promise she showed last year in 'Mulholland Drive.' Her character is both terrified and determined, determined to get to the bottom of the mystery behind the tape before it kills her, and she gets the mix just right. The other performances in the film are all fine, but they all just revolve around her (her son is a little too Haley Joel Osment-ish, her ex-boyfriend is a little too bland, but it doesn't really matter). The other performance worth noting is that of Daveigh Chase, who plays a little girl who has a lot to do with why the movie is so scary. She was also the voice of Lilo in 'Lilo & Stitch;' that movie has been ruined for me forever.
The script by Ehren Kruger may have some shaky dialogue, but the pacing is tight, and he wisely doesn't offer too much explanation for certain things (both factors that I'm told were problems in the original). But most credit must go to Verbinski, who perfectly orchestrates all these visceral nightmare elements (the horse subplot evolves into one of the most horrifying scenes I've ever seen). This is the stuff that bad dreams are made from; I know I've going to have some.
All right...that's it for this time. I'm going to go try and get some sleep, but I've been having trouble doing that lately. Go ahead and laugh, maybe I just scare easily. Or maybe it's just a really scary movie.
I'm outta here...
