Attack the Block

I just managed to catch a free screening of Attack the Block tonight in NYC at the Sunshine Theater, one of my favorite theaters in the city. It also happens to be about 2 blocks from my apartment (sick!). I was riding off a sweet buzz the film gave me, so I thought I would give it a quick write-up while the film was fresh in my mind.

I had heard some serious positive word of mouth about this movie for a while now. When I saw the poster and the original trailer, I couldn't help feeling that this is the type of film I loved as a kid. It is no secret that I am a sucker for a good monster movie. I have seen many disappointing monster flicks this year (Wolfman, I am looking at you), but I am here to tell you all that Attack the Block is a fantastic monster movie.

The film starts by introducing us to a set of what seems to be the most unlikable characters a film could possibly throw at you. These South London street thugs are not to be trifled with it seems, and director Joe Cornish tries hard to make that apparent. They are introduced via a shameless mugging of a helpless woman at knife point, which is rudely interrupted by a meteor that smashes into a car next to them. After a brief investigation, a cudly little E.T. pops out of the car and tries to maul the lead gang members face off. The gang, flustered, pursue E.T. until they corner and kill it.

Two things I noticed immediately:

1) This film wasted ZERO time getting to what we want to see. The E.T's show up in the first 5-10 minutes, with no pussy-footing about. This is a good thing.

2) These are not likable characters. This is a bit of a daring move. The audience does not like these characters straight away. It was an interesting opening and leaves a lot of room for the characters to grow as the movie progresses.

The action from there on in plays out fast and furious, with a truly masterful balance of comedic and horrific moments. Although audiences have seen these types of character arcs in the past, the growth of the characters is surprisingly believable in the movies short 90 minute time frame.

But, let's get to the meat and bones of the film. The aliens. The team that designed these aliens have put together one of the most effectively economic movie monsters ever created. The E.T.'s in this film are best described as a cross between the homicidal apes from Michael Crichton's Congo, and the werewolf from An American Werewolf in London :

+  = ? Maybe!

They have no eyes, and their fur is jet black. When I say black , I truly mean black. They are solid black, with absolutely NO variation. With no eyes, and color/light swallowing black fur, what the hell could make these things so interesting you might say? How about... fluorescent... glowing... teeth. Sweet baby Jesus... that looks AWESOME! The teeth are used throughout the film to endow the creatures with some sort of personality. When they are attacking, they light up with their mouths wide open. When they are stalking, they have their mouths closed which makes their glowing teeth look eerily like a pair of glowing eyes. When they die, the light extinguishes. Not only is this is a great tool for communicating to the audience that the creatures have some kind of personality, but it is also a great tool for creating suspense. I applaud this director for not going flash-cut happy on the action scenes. There are beautiful wide shots of the aliens creeping in on their prey, showing the audience silhouettes against the city- scape. I can't tell you how ecstatic I was to see a scene where a creature is filmed from a far distance, fully showing off it's approach, and holding on it until it springs. These types of shots show a surprising confidence in Cornish, who is not afraid to establish time and physical space and distance to create tension and allow the audience to truly buy into what is happening on the screen.

His confidence must have come from the creature designers. I am a huge proponent of practical effects in  movies. I can write a whole essay about this, but lets just say when something is CG, and it does not need to be, I get a little... vexed. I feel the greatest use of CG is to augment reality, to create something that cannot possibly be done via practical effects. I am happy to say that this film has found the sweet spot: The perfect balance of CG and practical effects, the results of which are beautiful. The creatures in the film have real-world weight. They smash things, claw at things but never ever to they feel what I can only describe as "floaty". Quite the opposite really. They are lumbering and sometimes even clumsy. The man-in-suit style practical effects breathe life into these creatures. The entire Star Wars Prequel Trilogy couldn't hold a candle to what was done in this film. The Prequels gave us lifeless, floaty, and most of the time annoying cartoon characters that gave the actors nothing to react to; and it showed. This film has a reach-out-and-touch-it reality that is backed up by incredible sound design and smart editing that leaves no audience member in doubt of what these creatures are, and what they are capable of.

The sound design for the creatures are also worth mentioning. Being an avid fan of monster movies, I have heard quite of bit of the soundscape that otherworldly, ethereal and fantastical creatures have to offer. Often the sound design is recycled. A lion growl here, a puma grunt there etc. etc. If you want to create something truly unique, memorable and frightening, it is just as important for the audience to be aurally bewildered as it is for them to be visually stunned . Some examples of this are:

1) Aliens from Aliens

I think this was a combination of 50 different animals, but all I remember was this horrible almost elephant-like trumpeting squeal that gave me goosebumps. This film has both the striking H.R. Gieger designed Alien, as well as the signature squeal that I will always remember

2) Jurassic Park

This film had more than one example, but the T-Rex and Raptor take the cake. I cannot possibly forget the first time I heard that T-Rex scream in the theater... it was both the most fascinating and frightening moment in my life.

3) Predator

Almost like a rattlesnake moving in slow motion, the methodical clicks and subsequent roar of the Predator is legendary.

4) Balrog from Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring

They created the sound of the Balrog by sliding two cinder blocks together. 'Nuff Said.

By the way, it is no coincidence that the genius Stan Winston created 3 of the 4 above famous movie monsters. His passing was a terrible blow to the practical effects industry. There are many more examples that I have to give, but I will likely write a whole other article on this later.

Attack the Block provides a unique sound for their monsters. This high pitched squeal sounds much like a husky woman's scream mixed with a chimpanzee. It is a unique sound that is menacing and adds tension to the already suspenseful scenes.

The monsters of this film are brilliantly implemented. The practical effects lead to an unprecedented level of physicality, while the sound design heightens the sense of dread. Both of these pieces come together in a beautiful visual and auditory experience that is sure to stay with audiences as the leave the theater.

This movie needs word of mouth. These screenings are meant to generate buzz. The movie deserves the positive feedback it has been getting. It also deserves more exposure. I would compare this film to one of my favorite monsters-run-amok movie: Tremors. Oddly enough, both monsters share the same "no-eyes" trait. If you have a theater near you that is playing the film either as a free screening, or during its limited release in July, please seek it out. You and your friends will have a great time at the theater.

I have more to say about the film, but I will likely include those as edits in the next few days. I just wanted to get this post up before the details of the film faded.

Valhalla Rising

My last post detailed two films that I was interested in watching solely based on the actor in the lead role. These also happened to be actors with great names. Valhalla Rising is no different. Continuing the trend of utterly cool names, Mads Mikkelson is an actor I had been interested in since I had seen him in Antoine Fuqua's re-imagining of King Arthur, where he played the Asian-influenced Tristam. The content of the Valhalla Rising was also something that immediately caught my attention: Vikings. Norse mythology, and by association, the Nordic cultures in general are topics of great interest for me. I love me a film with some god damned Vikings!

Just from viewing the trailers for this film, I could tell it was completely mis-represented. Because of this, I was almost ready for what I experienced. More on this after the main portion of the review...

I will try to sum up the film with an in-cohesive babbling of words and phrases:
Slow, deliberate, contemplative, bursts of violence, 30 lines of dialogue, beautifully shot, almost supernatural/fantastical.

If the above description confused you, do not worry: so will this film. It is at once the most beautiful and absolutely frustrating kind of movie I could watch.

Valhalla Rising is not for viewers looking for a concrete explanation of... well... anything. I would compare this in terms of pacing and plot, to Asif Kapadia's The Warrior. They are both metaphysical films about violence and faith. The difference between the films is that The Warrior is infinitely more accessible than Valhalla Rising. The Warrior tells an incredibly simplistic story about a man's turn from violence, and his road to revenge. It tells the story with landscape and movement, weaving a story using only a small amount of dialog. If The Warrior was a book that was light on the details, then Valhalla Rising is a book that gives you the introduction and the ending, and asks you to figure out what the hell happened in the middle, using fragments of scrambled phrases taken from the Bible and Beowulf.

Rising starts with an introduction of our "hero", One-Eye. I will let you guess why they call him that. One Eye is a warrior. He is being whored out to brawls that more often than not end in brutal death, which others bet money on. Oh yeah, and One Eye? He doesn't talk, and has no past that I could extract from the films dialog. And this is the first problem this film has: A main character with no dialog and no past to speak of (see what I did there?) makes for an incredibly hard character to connect too. You could argue that One Eye is not the focus here, and that the characters around him are the ones who the audience should be connecting too. If that is true, the film doesn't make it obvious, since a large percentage of the screen time is dedicated to One Eye.

That is not to say that is a terrible thing, given how striking Mads looks in the role. His One Eye is incredibly imposing, and embodies all of the physical attributes of someone with whom no one should ever fuck with. His (lack of an) eye, body scars and tatoos only further push to establish that One Eye has seen a lot (tehee!) of violence, and has somewhere along the line found that it is something he is good at.

Mads, as you may have figured, decides he doesn't like being jerked around and stages an escape, after which he and some other Christian Crusaders proceed to go on what seems to be the ultimate acid trip. That is the best way to explain it. The plot spirals into a series of incredibly mystical events, which lands the group in North America, nearly starving them all in the process. From here, things only get more psychedelic, with Native Americans showing up and and the band of merry travelers slowly losing their minds.

The film never really throws the audience a bone. As soon as you are coming to grips with an event that seemed almost fantastical, you are hit with another nearly inexplicable event that almost taunts you by saying "Try and explain THAT one!".

The near fantastical plot is completely counterbalanced by the down and dirty realistic look of the film. It is beautiful to behold. The film was shot primarily in Scotland, and is framed with an incredible eye for natural beauty. The film looks majestic. I saw this film in high definition, and truly feel that is the only way it should be experienced.

I originally thought it impossible that they ended up in the Americas, and was quite turned off by the thought. They start off by trying to sail to Jerusalem, in a small boat. The supposedly short commute turns into a harrowing never-ending descent into hell as they are thrown way the fuck off-course by what seems to be malicious mist. But as the movie trucked along, I grew to accept the fact that many of the events that occur are a mixture of real gritty, muddy violence and surreal moments, which include One Eye's prophetic dreams. The dreams are quite visceral, using this incredibly shocking red filter, which coupled with the fantastic cinematography, ingrained them into my memory. 

Let's talk about some of the violence in the film. First and foremost, the violence is quick and brutal. If you blink, you might miss it. I truly enjoyed the framing and filming of the action. My feelings toward the action scenes are similar to 13 Assassins in that the people in this film are truly trying to hurt each other. One Eye seems to have an unconventional "diving-chop" move that is so unpredictable and practical that I honestly believed that he could take on a group of 3 or more using this element of surprise. I got a full sense of geography and distance between the fighters, and the incredible landscape provided a dramatic stage for some of the violence that plays out.

The film does not hold back on the depictions of violence. Blood, gore, and innards are thrown about in a nonchalant fashion, but are not lingered upon. The violence is lean and mean; serving a purpose rather than being used as a dressing for gore-hounds. 

Oddly enough, the violence is about as sparse as the dialog. There are only a few scenes of action, and those scenes last only a short time. I did not mind this, since from the trailers, I was ready for this movie to NOT be an action film.

That was not the feeling that may others shared going into the movie. Take a look at the trailer for the film:

The trailer shows clips from every one of the brief action sequences. Although the trailer doesn't outright claim this to be a balls to the wall action film, it seems tailored to attract the crowd that would be interested in such a movie. The overuse of action shots in the trailer gives the false pretense that the film is focused on action, when nothing could be farther from the truth. Armed with only the add campaign, this movie likely played out to an audience that was not ready for the film they were about to experience. I can imagine as the the film progressed, the audience would grow increasingly mystified and even agitated by the films lofty plot and mystical nature.

I have already made the comparison of Valhalla Rising to The Warrior. Here is the trailer for that film for comparison:

The poster of the film (seen at the top of the post) however, was incredibly effective. It displays two of the films strongest attributes: the landscape, and the physical presence of the lead. I think I might actually purchase this bad-boy.

Valhalla Rising is a film that either captivates or aggravates the hell out of you. The lofty nature of the film makes it hard to make an audience truly care about any of the characters. But, as long as you are willing to take the plunge into rabbit hole, the experience can be rewarding. At once both a nightmare and a dream, this films descent into hell can be an incredibly engrossing experience, as long as you let go of the trappings of the average plot driven film and allow One Eye to take you on the journey.