Merrick lived in a haunted house once. Real hauntings are much scarier than what you've seen in the movies...
MiraJeff was kind enough to send in two reviews: ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL and AN AMERICAN HAUNTING.
The later faces almost certain doom when it opens against MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III this Friday. Perhaps it’s an appropriate fate for director Courtney Solomon, who helmed DUNGEONS & DRAGONS a few years back. By most accounts, he thoroughly screwed-up HAUNTING as well.
Here’s MiraJeff…
Greetings AICN, MiraJeff here with a look at a couple of movies that didn’t quite live up to my high expectations, Art School Confidential and An American Haunting, both failures on different levels.
ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL
Ghost World director Terry Zwigoff and writer Daniel Clowes reunite to adapt Clowes’ original comic, but unfortunately the result an uneven comedy/mystery that seriously runs out of steam in its third act. We first see a young Jerome Platz getting beat up and then drawing pictures of emptying poopy toilets on the bullies who torment him. The kid’s a regular Picasso. Years later, Jerome (Max Minghella) is an idealistic college freshman who’s ready for a fresh start as an art major at the Strathmore Institute.
The film kicks off with a tongue-in-cheek look at various art school archetypes around campus, the highlights of which have to be the guy with a guitar case full of bongs and a barefoot chick stepping on a broken glass beer bottle. The oddball marching band music gives the impression that Strathmore is like the school in Animal House, but one look at the student body tells us we are far removed from the land of frats and toga parties. Essentially, we are at NYU, and I would know as well as anyone. Jerome’s roommates are a flamboyant fashion student (Grandma’s Boy’s brilliant Nick Swardson) and an edgy senior film major (Ethan Suplee) who is making a movie about the campus legend, the Strathmore Strangler. Eventually we meet Jerome’s way beyond quirky art class, taught by a smug has-been played by producer John Malkovich.
The class includes Jerome’s new best friend Bardo (GB’s oddball Joel David Moore) and mysterious ladies man Jonah (Scream 3’s Matt Keeslar) whose simplistic style is quickly mistaken for talent. The film also co-stars Anjelica Huston as a professor, Michael Lerner as a dealer, Adam Scott doing a fabulously pompous asshole artist, Steve Buscemi as a guy named Broadway Bob, and Jim Broadbent who seems to be having an absolute ball playing an eccentric painter with a penchant for cigarettes and whiskey. And I haven’t even mentioned Jerome’s muse, the nude model who captures his heart and imagination, played by Sophia Myles. The film is really about Jerome using his art to attract the attention of this girl.
Does it sound like there’s a lot going on in this movie? There is. Sometimes, too much can be a bad thing. But things undeniably take a turn for the worse when things get significantly darker in the third act, as the story turns its attention to unmasking the identity of the Strangler, whose identity is never really in doubt. What is unpredictable is what happens to Jerome. The film seems to be saying that all great artists must suffer for their art, and questions the whole idea of what is art in the first place, but the message isn’t very clear. I think we’re supposed to feel that Jerome is the best artist in his class, or at least the most fundamentally talented, but if the point of the film is that art is subjective, then what is the point of having Jerome spend the whole movie trying to win the class exhibition to get his own art show?
Like any art school, the film itself is a radical protest of conventional college movies, and is sure to be considered controversial by some just for visual gags like Kill A Cop For Fun, Support Your Local Rapist and Murder=Gay. The script works best when Clowes veers into Kevin Smith territory with stories about bumping cunts and the choice analogy that art school is like a pussy buffet, which is especially true here at NYU because half the male student population is gay… not that there’s anything wrong with that. The dialogue crackles and pops at times and there are lots of background gags that are worth a few laughs, but the ending just doesn’t work, and also scams out on any dialogue.
Minghella, son of Anthony the English Patient, is a relative newcomer and a talented one at that. He has a role in Akeelah and the Bee and played Clooney’s son in Syriana, so I hearing him speak in his own British accent when I interviewed him was very different. The Columbia student does an impressive job carrying the film and manages to hold his own against the veteran cast. Unfortunately the material lets him down and leaves his character with nowhere to go. Broadbent is excellent is always, and really lets himself go in this movie. Myles and Keeslar were a bit too bland for my taste, and I definitely wanted to see more of the Grandma’s Boys guys and Suplee. The highlight of the entire film may have been Buscemi quoting himself in Fargo, which I immediately recognized as one of the coolest things I’ve heard all year. Keep your ears open for it and if you’re a fan of Fargo, you won’t be able to miss it.
On the bright side, the first half of the movie is often hilarious, and I’d like to stress that this review is a recommendation of the film. I liked it, it was entertaining and different in a good way, it just didn’t add up to that much for me and felt like a disappointment coming from guys like Zwigoff and Clowes. Art School Confidential is a smart comedy that gets a little too smart for its own good.
AN AMERICAN HAUNTING
It’s sad that in spite of a very cool-looking, atmospheric trailer, it seems An American Haunting is a complete mess of a movie. The film caught my eye a few months ago when it appeared set to go straight to video or cable. It built up some positive Internet buzz (not sure where it came from) and has somehow managed to score a wide release on May 5th, opposite Tommy Cruise’s new movie. Unfortunately, this pointless, convoluted attempt at counter-programming is an futile exercise in genre clichés that fails to pick up on trail blazed by last year’s superior Exorcism of Emily Rose.
To begin with, writer/director Courtney Solomon introduces an incredibly lame framing device that does not work at all. I’ve tried my hand at writing a 19th century thriller about axe murderess Lizzie Borden and let me tell you, it’s no easy task. My screenplay, Forty Whacks, also incorporated a framing device to try and make the story relevant in the present, which is what Solomon was going for here, but it appears we both failed miserably.
An American Haunting is purportedly about the only case in U.S. history in which a spirit was found to have caused the death of a human. It is the most documented case of the paranormal ever recorded, but really, what the hell does that mean. A lot of people wrote about it because no one had any idea what to make of it? The poltergeist was supposed to have haunted Red River, Tennessee in 1818, and allegedly spooked President Andrew Jackson, but there’s nothing in this movie that suggests an otherworldly entity. Instead, we’re supposed to infer that the ghost is all in Betsy Bell’s mind, brought on by her father’s guilt about a taboo sexual incident that may or may not have occurred.
For one, the acting and the casting are way off. Rachel Hurd-Wood has the pale face and blank, innocent stare down cold, but she’s nothing more than an empty void. She’s also not an especially skillful screamer, and certainly can’t hold a melting candle to Jennifer Carpenter. Meanwhile, James D’Arcy is terribly miscast as Betsy’s teacher, who functions in the film like the town doctor and resident ghost expert. Who the hell is this guy besides an algebra teacher? D’Arcy’s performance is stiff and lifeless and there’s not even any point or payoff to his character. Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek somehow manage to transcend the B-movie material, but even they don’t get off clean, as Sutherland spirals into over-the-top theatrics.
The biggest culprit of this heap of garbage is Solomon, whose editing is suspect at best. The film often switches between black and white and color with almost no sense of rhyme or reason, and his camera swirls from close-up to close-up like a bad Gaspar Noe film. We’re treated to the same boring shot of the camera going up the stairs, Betsy’s bedroom doorknob, etc. etc. And the Haunting itself is cribbed directly out of other films’ playbooks. Are we really supposed to get scared when bed sheets remove themselves and pillows and windows explode? Are we really supposed to be afraid when the “ghost” grabs Betsy, pulls her hair, and slaps her a few times, or restrains her hands to the bed?
The only lively character in the film was a menacing wolf and even that only looked real half the time. The rest, it looked like a blurry dog. The only other semi-cool scenes include a carriage crash and Sutherland’s character unable to commit suicide. There are some truly mind-numblingly bad special effects too. Solomon might have had something here if he had a different child actress, a different editor, and let someone else direct his script. I don’t want to harp on this film anymore, but avoid it like the plague.
That’s all for now, folks. I’ll be back tomorrow with a look at a pair of “westerns,” Down in the Valley and The Proposition. Tonight I’m going to check out J.J.’s big screen debut and I simply can’t wait. Keep checking back for reports from the Tribeca Film Festival, including a star-studded screening of the Jeff Goldblum mockumentary, Pittsburgh.
‘Til next time, this is MiraJeff signing off…
